Chapter 26

Josie and Noah drove to the stationhouse. The arrest warrant for Seth Lee was their top priority for the moment. Turner sat at his desk, throwing his tiny foam basketball over and over again into the small net next to his blotter. He didn't look up when they walked in and waited until they were seated to speak. "Let me guess. Jane Doe died from a stab wound."

"You're so smart," Josie said, intentionally keeping the sarcasm from her tone.

Turner's gaze snapped toward her, confusion creasing his forehead. Josie liked it when he didn't know what to make of her, or when he wasn't sure if she was insulting him or not. Let him wonder.

Noah said, "Her name is April Carlson. We've got a lot to catch you up on."

Josie started preparing the arrest warrant while Noah brought Turner up to speed. She kept glancing over at him while Noah spoke. It was difficult to tell if he was listening. Most of the time he wasn't even looking at Noah, his gaze wandering around the room. Using his feet, he rocked the seat of his chair back and forth. His long fingers drummed against his desk, unless they were throwing his tiny basketball at its tiny hoop. If Noah noticed any of this, he didn't let on. When he finished, he asked, "What did Mira Summers say when you asked her about Seth Lee?"

Turner leaned forward and dribbled the foam ball along the surface of his desk. "She didn't say anything. By the time I got up there, she'd already been discharged. Some work friend came and picked her up. Bobbi Ann Thomas. Summers is staying at Thomas's house, which is good since Stabby Stabberson is still out there."

Noah said, "Did you try to follow up with Mira Summers at her friend's residence?"

Turner pushed his chair away from the desk and tried to make a basket from three feet away. As usual, he missed. "This isn't my first day, LT. Thomas said she was resting. Refused to wake her up. Told me to come back later."

Josie stopped typing. It had been hours since they saw him outside the morgue. "Did you go back later?"

Turner reached for the ball again. Threw it. Missed. "No, because the LT wanted me to do a bunch of other shit. Speaking of which…"

He picked up a stack of papers from his desk. They were clipped together in a thick pile. He tossed the packet across to Noah and resumed playing desk basketball. "Summers's phone? A whole lot of nothing. She didn't make any calls on Sunday morning and didn't get any. No text messages either."

"What about Friday and Saturday?" asked Josie.

"She texted back and forth with Bobbi. They talked about work and yoga class. On Saturday, Summers had a reminder text about her stable session on Sunday and some dentist appointment coming up next week. That's it. Pretty sad for a woman her age. Lonely spinster with a cat by the looks of it."

"So every woman who lives independently is sad?" Josie said, immediately regretting taking the bait.

A smirk lifted one side of Turner's mouth. "Come on, sweetheart. There's gotta be something wrong with her if she doesn't have someone in her life, don't you think?"

Bastard.

"Or she keeps meeting people like you and decided it was far better to be alone, champ," Josie shot back.

She glanced at Noah, who was flipping through the reports. To anyone else, he'd look stone-faced, but she knew him well enough to know that the purse of his lips was him holding back laughter. Before Turner could respond, Noah asked, "Social media?"

"She's got Instagram and TikTok accounts. Looks like she uses both to view other people's shit but not post anything of her own. Probably because her life is so damn boring."

This time Josie ignored his comment.

Noah handed the pages back to him. "Now that we know the identity of Jane Doe, and Detective Loughlin has sent over a copy of her file on April Carlson's disappearance, you can familiarize yourself with that and see if you can find any connection to Seth Lee or Mira Summers."

Turner took the stack of pages back with a long sigh. "Don't you think I'd be better used in the field? I could go back to Bobbi Ann Thomas's house. See if Mira's awake yet and ask her about Seth Lee."

Noah gave him the look Josie thought of as his ‘take precisely no bullshit' look which she hardly ever got to see and had to admit was pretty damn sexy. Turner had a way of bringing it out in him. "You can do that, too, after you review the Carlson file. Right now, I think you'd be most useful doing what I tell you to do, Turner. Did you have a chance to check out the GPS from Summers's car?"

Turner fished out another sheaf of papers and threw them onto Noah's desk. "No surprises there. Sunday, she left her house and went directly to Tranquil Trails without stopping. She was there for three hours and seventeen minutes and then she got into her car, drove to the produce stand, and stopped there for thirteen minutes."

Thirteen minutes. That was all it took for Seth Lee to stab two women and leave them bleeding. Then again, Josie knew from personal experience that it only took seconds for an entire life to be shattered by violence. "Then she left the produce stand and got into the accident."

Turner waggled his brows and grinned. "Not so fast, sweetheart. She stopped along the road. Before the accident. For twenty-two minutes."

Noah said, "What?"

Josie said, "Where?"

Turner stood up and walked over to the corkboard map, pointing to a red pushpin that hadn't been there the night before. Pointing to it, he said, "According to the report, my best guess is right here."

Josie momentarily abandoned the arrest warrant and joined him, studying the map. The pin was about a mile and a half from the accident.

Noah stood beside her. "I don't see anything anywhere near where she stopped."

"Because there's nothing," Josie said. "Absolutely nothing. Why would she stop?"

"Why would she stop but not call 911?" said Turner.

It was a valid question. Mira had been stabbed. She was bleeding profusely. Had she felt so faint that she pulled over? Had she lost consciousness for twenty-two minutes, then wakened only to get back on the road? That was the only thing that made sense.

Josie said, "Turner, what about the geofence results? Did those come in?"

He rolled his eyes. "What do you think? I've been stuck here all morning buried in reports."

Josie folded her arms over her chest, ignoring his dig. "Just tell us about the results."

He walked back over to his desk, pulling another document out from under his tiny basketball. He thrust it at her as he came back to the map. She skimmed the results, Noah following along over her shoulder. Turner pointed to the map. "It tagged a bunch of devices in the area between the horse place and the accident. Now look, you know we just get a list of devices with no names attached first. Then we have to try to match those devices to a pattern of movement that's consistent with the crime. Like if a guy goes into a corner store and robs it and then an eyewitness puts him at the bus stop down the street, and the geofence shows a device leaving the corner store and going to the bus stop, we can ask for the personal identifying information from that device—because it follows a pattern that matches what we know about the perpetrator's movements."

Josie smiled at him. "You're really getting the hang of this procedure thing, aren't you?"

Turner's mouth hung open.

With a frustrated sigh, Noah said, "We know how it works, Turner. We need to know if there's anything we can use to put Seth Lee at the crime scene."

Turner turned back to the map, stroking his beard. "No."

"No?" said Josie.

Turner dropped his hand to his side and shrugged. "Hey, I'm just telling you what this shit says, honey. No devices stopped at the produce stand other than Mira Summers's phone. Listen, you were the one who said this guy is some kind of off-the-grid-survivalist-tech-is-the-devil lunatic. I don't know why you're surprised."

The stairwell door whooshed open, and the Chief stalked in, pulling up short to peer at the three of them, suspicion deepening every line in his craggy face. One bushy eyebrow kinked. "You three getting along, or what?"

Gretchen would have said, "Or what."

Josie said nothing.

Turner slung one arm across Josie's shoulders and the other across Noah's and pulled them into his sides, like they were old friends. "One big happy family, Chief."

Chief Chitwood didn't look convinced. Josie stepped out from under Turner's arm, putting a foot between them.

"Fraley," the Chief snapped, striding toward his office. "Meet me in my office in five minutes. You'll brief me on the Summers case and then I need about an hour of your time. The DA wants to have a conference call about that double murder you caught last year. The one over the drug dispute. It's going to trial soon."

He slammed the door behind him. Turner left Noah standing by the corkboard while he scooped up his car keys and phone from his desk. "Looks like we've all got our assignments. I'll be at Bobbi Thomas's house to talk to Mira Summers about our big suspect. Who knows? Maybe once I tell her Lee's prints are all over the murder weapon, she'll conveniently remember that he stabbed her."

Josie thought about offering to do the interview instead or at least to go with him, but then decided against it. The sooner they got the arrest warrant signed for Seth Lee, the better. What if he had the child who drew the picture? What if the child had witnessed the attack? Would Seth let them live? Or was the child in some dank, sunless hole starving to death like April Carlson had? Josie needed to stay put and finish her paperwork.

She didn't entirely trust Turner to do anything, really, but it made sense for them to split the workload.

Turner winked at her. "You don't need to come with me, honey. I'm a big boy. I've done this before. You stay here with your hubby and your little keyboard."

Josie glared as she watched him walk out the door. She glanced up at Noah. Annoyance was etched into every line of his face. She nudged him with her elbow. "Are you going to say anything?"

His eyes remained on the door. "My mother always said that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."