Chapter 21

TWENTY-ONE

For the dozenth time, Josie’s gaze drifted away from the CCTV feed to her phone screen and the picture she’d taken of the second polaroid. She blinked, hoping to clear some of the grit from her eyes, and looked back to the large television that showed a haggard Remy Tate still talking to Noah and Gretchen in one of Denton PD’s two interview rooms. They’d been at it for hours. The clock on the wall ticked past onea.m. So far, Remy had admitted to having an affair but wouldn’t disclose the identity of his mistress.

Early on, Noah had taken on the role of the good guy, easing into the smooth and friendly persona he often donned when interviewing male suspects or persons of interest who knew they’d done something wrong but were afraid to admit it. Now, Noah inched his chair closer to Remy’s so that their knees nearly touched. He lowered his voice as if Gretchen wasn’t standing over them with her arms crossed, glaring. “Look, Remy, I get it, okay? Your wife’s pregnancy was difficult. Then the baby came along, and she wasn’t sleeping. Probably pretty crabby, right? Too tired to fool around. Not feeling sexy anymore, not in the mood, blah blah blah. Maybe snapping at you or pushing you away when you tried to touch her.”

Josie knew that Noah would never say such things under normal circumstances but right now he was playing a character. A man who understood and shared questionable morals. A man Remy Tate could confide in.

Remy kept his eyes on his lap but nodded.

“Must have been hard,” Noah continued. “I know you love your daughter. Fatherhood’s amazing, right?”

Another nod.

“But let’s be real here. We’ve got needs, right? Maybe it was a mistake to cheat. I think we can agree on that, can’t we?”

“Yes,” Remy said. “But listen, I didn’t technically cheat.”

Noah smiled knowingly. “I know what you’re saying. I do. But I’m wondering if your wife would have seen it that way. You know how women are.”

Remy nodded. “Right. You’re right. Cleo would definitely have seen it the wrong way. Listen, I’m not proud of myself. I wish I could take it back.”

Noah shrugged. “But shit happens. You can’t undo what you did, but you can give us the name of your mistress so that she can clear your name and we can get on with looking for the real killer. What do you say?”

With a sigh, Remy said, “I…I really can’t.”

Josie startled at the long groan that sounded behind her. Over her shoulder, she saw the Chief. She hadn’t heard him come in even though the viewing room was roughly the size of a walk-in closet. Now he watched the interview, silent and stock-still, one arm crossed over his chest while his other hand rubbed at his chin.

“His mistress is married,” he announced.

Josie had been thinking the same thing.

“Or worse,” he added.

Josie squirmed in her seat at the thought that Remy might have been involved in a sexual relationship with an underage girl. Why else would he guard the secret so closely? But Josie couldn’t see Kellan Neal covering that up. Maybe he wanted to protect his son-in-law’s reputation or, more likely, didn’t want the fact that Remy had a mistress to make it into the press and take away from finding Cleo’s actual killer, but Josie was certain Neal would never protect his son-in-law if he’d committed a crime.

The Chief said, “We should look at babysitters.”

“They didn’t have one yet,” Josie said. “Cleo did everything.”

Gretchen finally stepped forward and snapped, “You can tell us who she is or we can take your entire life apart and find her anyway. First thing tomorrow morning, our team will be interviewing your family, friends, coworkers, everyone you know. We’ll get a warrant for the contents of your phone, since you’ve refused to consent to a search, and we will find her. If you think the press won’t notice how closely we’re looking at you, you’re sorely mistaken. You really don’t want to be tried in the court of public opinion. People will think you killed your wife, or that you hired someone to do it for you.”

Remy looked stricken. Still, he refused to give them a name. The interview continued. At this rate, they’d be here all night.

Josie went back to studying the polaroid.

The Chief sat down in the folding chair next to her. “You should be home, sleeping. Like Turner.”

“Do you honestly think I’d be asleep right now?” she said, without taking her eyes off the picture.

The Chief reached over and tapped a long finger against her phone screen. “Because you know where this is.”

Josie laughed. “If I knew where this was, we would have been there hours ago.”

“If you didn’t know where it was, you wouldn’t be obsessing this hard,” he replied. “I’ve seen you work, Quinn. I know this look.”

She sighed and held her phone flat, looking at the polaroid from a different angle. “What look is that?”

“The one you get when the answer is floating around somewhere in the back of your mind, but you just can’t catch it.”

She met his flinty eyes and smiled. “I didn’t know I had a look that went with that.”

“Well, you do. So let’s get at it. What is this guy showing us?”

On the CCTV, Noah and Gretchen circled round and round with Remy Tate.

Josie pushed her phone across the table so that it was between them. “Asphalt, white line, building in the distance. Windows. This could be anywhere.”

“No. It can’t be anywhere. If we’re right about what’s going on here, this guy intends to abduct a woman, get her to this location, and stab her to death. He can’t do that just anywhere.”

Josie nodded. “Okay, yes. It has to be remote. He’s stayed away from cameras thus far, so he’d choose a place where it was not very likely that he’d be caught on surveillance driving there, being there, leaving there.”

“That eliminates central Denton or any of the business areas that are densely populated,” said the Chief. “Keep going.”

“All right. The outskirts of the city. Still a huge area to cover. But it would have to be a place where no people, or at least not many people, would be coming or going. Or at least a place that would be unoccupied long enough for him to commit murder. It might have cameras but maybe they don’t cover the entire area—like the parking lot.”

“Abandoned buildings, then,” said the Chief. “An office building, maybe?”

Josie tapped against the top right of the photo. “A building with lots of glass. Lots of windows.”

“An unfinished office building, perhaps.”

“Could be.”

In the interview room, Gretchen changed topics from the identity of Remy’s mistress to how the relationship began.

The Chief pointed to the spear of light that sliced through the center of the photo. Whatever might be between the asphalt and the building—shrubs, parking spaces, anything that might help narrow down the location, was obscured by the flash. “It gets sun though. Look at this glare. Or, I guess this could just be the camera flash reflecting off the windows. Abandoned or unfinished buildings with lots of windows, asphalt parking lot. Outskirts of town.”

That still didn’t narrow things down. Without driving through the mountains in every remote part of the city—which would take hours, if not days—trying to locate any and all abandoned office buildings with asphalt parking lots, or trying to pull permits for construction projects on the outskirts of the city, which would also be time-consuming, they were not going to find this place.

But the killer wanted them to find it. Josie was certain of that. This was a game. If they didn’t figure out where to go from this photo, they couldn’t play. Josie didn’t think he would give them a clue they couldn’t follow, no matter how obscure. She had to look at the scene differently. Why, for example, would he give them a photo with such glare on it? So much glare that the rest of the area could barely be viewed.

Unless it wasn’t a glare at all.

“It’s a light,” Josie blurted out.

“What?”

She picked up the phone and zoomed in on the portion of the photo where the asphalt ended and the streak of light began. “This is from a light that is recessed into the concrete.”

The Chief frowned. “Maybe.”

Something veiled in Josie’s memories screamed to be uncovered. Her heartbeat ticked up. “Not maybe. It’s a light.”

“What kind of parking lot has recessed lights in the ground?”

Josie’s eyes were drawn to the white lines again. The shape of a T. Except maybe not a T. They were missing the larger picture because the killer only showed them what he wanted them to see. “It’s not a parking lot.”

If not a T shape, then what? Why the recessed lighting?

The glass. Something about the glass. Remote location. Outskirts of the city.

The Chief said, “If it’s not a parking lot, what is it?”

The veil in Josie’s memory fell away. “It’s a helipad.”