Chapter 32

Josie stared at the photos of the envelope, Tranquil Trails brochure, and Post-it note now arrayed on the corkboard. After sending Noah to Bobbi's to drop off the cat, Josie had gotten checked out at the hospital. No permanent damage to her vocal cords, luckily. Then she went home with Noah to their sweet, cuddly dog. She got lots of Trout snuggles, took the longest bubble bath of her life, and got a full night's sleep. As refreshed as she felt, with lots of ibuprofen on board to dull the pain all over her body, she still couldn't figure out the significance of the note or why Mira Summers had taped it to the underside of a kitchen drawer. Josie had even had two cups of coffee to jump-start her day and she was still stumped. The handwriting on the Post-it was the same as on the outside of the envelope. It said: He's here. We have to tell. It was unsigned.

"He" had to be Seth. Who else? They didn't know who had given Mira the envelope, but Hummel was trying to pull prints from it as well as from the Tranquil Trails brochure and Post-it which might shed some light on that. Still, the message "we have to tell" was bothering Josie. Tell what and to who? Tell the authorities about the child in his custody? For all they knew, the child was Seth's. Or did the "we have to tell" refer to April? But April had been kept without sunlight for the better part of a year, so if Seth had been camped out on the Lees' property with her, that didn't make much sense. Also, Denton PD had searched the property extensively and hadn't found any evidence that April had been kept there.

Josie was guessing that if Seth was, in fact, driving a box truck, he'd probably locked her in the back most of the time. A white box truck on the Tranquil Trails property would have drawn Rebecca's attention for sure. Then again, they had no way of knowing how old the note was or when Mira had received it. She'd become a client at Tranquil Trails three years ago. Had she received it before then? Before moving to Denton? Or after? Had she received the brochure with the Post-it note affixed to it stating ‘He's here,' and then decided to become a client at Tranquil Trails? She'd been meeting secretly with Seth at the produce stand, so she had clearly known he was there. Was this how she'd found out?

The stairwell door whooshed open, and a gust of hot air rushed over her. The edges of the pages that weren't completely secured fluttered briefly. Footsteps trudged behind her. Then came the creak of Gretchen's desk chair. Josie knew it by heart. No matter how much WD-40 Noah sprayed on it, it always creaked.

"Stop obsessing," Gretchen told her.

Without tearing her eyes from the pages, Josie said, "I can't help it."

"Try."

Gretchen was right. The note wasn't going to help them find Seth Lee or the child in his custody or, now, Mira Summers. All it did was raise more questions than it answered. But why hide it in a place nobody would ever look? It hardly seemed worth hiding at all. Was she missing something? It had to have some meaning to Mira that Josie couldn't yet see.

"Seriously," Gretchen said. "Stop."

It still hurt to talk but the painkillers helped. "I can't help it."

The door opened again and this time, Noah strode through it, his phone and a notepad in hand. As he walked past her, he said, "Stop obsessing."

Gretchen said, "She can't help it."

"Try," said Noah.

Josie turned and put her hands on her hips, the motion only setting off a dull ache in her shoulder and hand. "You two should be life coaches."

Gretchen snorted.

The door to the great room opened for the third time in less than twenty minutes. Hummel this time. A folder was tucked under his arm. Josie was struck at how different he looked in his regular uniform and not a Tyvek suit. "You're all here," he said, striding toward their desks. He looked at Mettner's old desk—no, Turner's desk—and his expression darkened. "Almost all of you."

"Do you have something that is going to break the Summers/Carlson case wide open?" Gretchen asked.

"I wish." Hummel sighed and took out his phone. "Shit. I should have brought coffee to soften this blow."

"Surely it's not that bad," Josie said. "Unless you couldn't get prints from the envelope and its contents that we found at Mira's house last night?"

"Um, I did," Hummel said. "But I don't think it's really helpful. Probably just confuses things more. Unfortunately, nothing I have for you today is going to locate Seth Lee, the child in question, or Mira Summers."

Josie tried not to let her disappointment show.

Noah leaned back in his desk chair and folded his arms over his chest. "What do you have?"

"The only set of prints from the envelope found in Mira's house—with brochure and Post-it—that I got hits on were Mira Summers's?—"

"To be expected," said Josie.

"—and April Carlson."

"What?" said Josie.

Gretchen's chair creaked again. "April Carlson gave that brochure to Mira?"

Hummel shrugged. "Listen, I just process the evidence. I can't tell you who did what, but both women's prints were on those items."

He's here. We have to tell.

They had no way to know how old that message was, but Josie was certain that April had delivered it to Mira. But why? How did April know Seth? Or that he had a child? The most obvious answer was that April had encountered them both as a teacher and yet, Heather's extensive investigation into April's disappearance hadn't turned up any connection to Seth Lee—or even Mira Summers. Neither of their names appeared anywhere in Heather's file. Josie had checked twice.

"Also this." Hummel took the folder from beneath his arm and put it on Noah's desk, opening it to reveal several photos which he spread before them. "I took a close look at the tire tracks from the crime scene at Tranquil Trails. I have a buddy at the state lab who is an expert in tire tracks. I asked him to confirm my findings, which he did." He pointed at the first photo. "The tracks are consistent with a type of tire called an XDA5, distributed by a tire company based in New York. They're made specifically for box trucks. None of the vehicles registered to the Lees or to Tranquil Trails use this particular tire. However, the tracks are a match to the kind the state police found near April Carlson's car after she disappeared from Route 80." Here, he indicated a different set of photos. "I'm not saying they're the same tires, just that they're the same kind of tire at both scenes."

"Which means that there is a possibility that the same guy was at both scenes," Gretchen said.

"Yes," Hummel answered. "But lots of box trucks use this kind of tire, so there's no way to prove that it was the same truck."

"You were right," Noah said. "This is good stuff, but it doesn't point us in a direction and right now we've got three people we need to find."

Hummel sighed. "I told you so."

"What else do you have?" Josie asked, sensing there was more. Hummel was never one to linger.

He pulled up a photo on his phone and turned it toward them. Josie crowded next to Noah to see it. "That's one of the clumps of hair we found on April Carlson's clothes at the scene of the accident," she explained to Noah.

"It's not hair," Hummel said, swinging the phone so Gretchen could see. "The lab doesn't know what it is, but it's not hair. Not human or animal."

"Then it's some kind of fiber," Gretchen said.

Hummel shook his head. "Nope. It's not synthetic."

"Then what the hell is it?" asked Noah.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Hummel said.

"Send me that photo," Josie told him.

He took out his phone and texted it to her. "The lab will do more analysis to try and figure out what it is, but that will take a while."

Staring at the photo on her own phone, Josie said, "If it's not synthetic and it's not hair, it has to be from a tree or a plant."

"That makes sense," Gretchen said. "But what? Dandelion fluff?"

Josie shook her head. "No. Way too thick for that."

"It really does look like hair," Noah said. "Very short, coarse hair. Remember when Dougherty had that Siberian husky and used to brush her out every day? Big clumps of her hair would fall out and end up all over his uniform. Looked just like that only the hair was longer." He reached up and rested his hand on Josie's hip. "Our resident amateur botanist doesn't know what it is?"

She smiled at him. "Out of my area of expertise."

Gretchen said, "If it's some kind of plant or something, what's the quickest way to find out what it is?"

"Find an actual botanist," Josie suggested.

Hummel said, "Let me know what you find out. It would be good information to have for future cases. I'm out."

After he left, Gretchen stood up and stretched her arms over her head. "Our only witness has been abducted. Our suspect is still at large. None of the clues we have so far give us any direction as to where to find them. We still have no idea who drew the picture or how Seth Lee came to have a child with him. His last known address was a bust. We know that he was meeting Mira at the produce stand pretty regularly, but we have no idea what his connection is to April Carlson, why he took her or why he held her for a year."

Josie looked at the corkboard again. The drawings. Seth's face. The map of Tranquil Trails Gretchen had formed using Google Maps printouts. The cryptic note. Gretchen was right. Everything about this case seemed disjointed, out of whack. They were missing something. Some glue that held all the ill-fitting pieces together. "Seriously," she said. "Life coaching. Or maybe a motivational speaker."

Noah didn't look up from his computer, but he snickered.

Gretchen said, "I'm asking you where we should go from here."

Josie spun away from the board. "Where all of this started."