Chapter 43

FORTY-THREE

“Someone’s grandmother.” Gretchen kept repeating Edgar Garcia’s words as she and Josie got off the elevator on the sixth floor of Denton Memorial Hospital. The woman he’d gone on to describe could have been any woman over seventy with short white hair, slightly hunched shoulders and a little extra weight around her middle. At first, Josie thought Garcia had decided to lie to them. What kind of elderly woman stole classic cars in the middle of the night and used them to pick up a murderer at a remote location?

Then she realized that it was entirely possible that the ‘grandmother’ wasn’t the one actually moving the cars. Maybe she was just the set-up person. She made the arrangement with Garcia, ensured that the key to the lot would be available, and then the killer was the one who took them off the lot, stashed them at the murder scenes ahead of time, and returned them when he was finished. Garcia had confirmed that since the classic cars didn’t belong to clients, his boss hadn’t noticed when a couple of them were missing from the lot during the day.

“What kind of grandmother would help a serial killer?” Gretchen said as they turned down the hallway toward Jared Rowe’s room. Almost all the patient doors were closed. Still, the muffled sounds of hospital machines, televisions, and conversations filtered through.

Josie didn’t answer because they’d reached room 604. Noah and Turner had gone to the auto repair shop to oversee the impounding of the classic vehicles so that she and Gretchen could interview the boy. They had taken brief detours at both their homes to shower and change their clothes so as not to further traumatize him with the stench of his own mother’s decomposition. Gretchen rapped lightly against the door and pushed it open when they heard a muffled, ‘Come in.’

Jared Rowe’s eyes were filled with a deadness that sent a shiver up Josie’s spine. He was shut down, his emotions buried deep in a place he could not access. At least, not right now. Josie recognized the look. How many times had she done the same thing in her own life? Starting when she was a child, learning how to cut her psyche off from the trauma and pain being inflicted on her, until the habit became as natural as breathing. Whenever those excruciating emotions threatened to return, she drowned them with Wild Turkey, until it started affecting her relationship with Noah. She hadn’t had a drink in years.

Looking at Jared Rowe, she really wanted one now.

Gretchen approached the bed, introducing them, and flashing her credentials. Jared’s gaze flitted over them quickly and then focused on the ceiling above him. His face had regained some color. A blue hospital gown had replaced his bloodied clothing. Bandages covered his forearms. The hand that had been pierced through with the knife was wrapped in gauze. An IV fed fluids into a vein in his other hand.

Josie studied the vital signs on the monitor beside his bed. The numbers looked good considering what he had been through. “Jared, we need to ask you some questions.”

Eyes still on the ceiling, he gave a small nod.

“Jared,” Gretchen said. “I’m very sorry about your mom.”

“Can you tell us her name?” asked Josie.

“Ev—” He cleared his throat. “Everly.”

Gretchen jotted the name down on her notepad. “Is your dad at home?”

His tone was flat. “He doesn’t live here. My parents are divorced. He lives in Jersey.”

Josie glanced at his vitals again. Still stable. “Jared, can you tell us what happened? How did you and your mom end up in the church at Harper’s Peak?”

He licked his lips. For a heartbeat, his eyes met Josie’s and she knew, in spite of his flat affect, that he was only a hair’s breadth from losing control of his emotions, to giving in to the terror she saw behind his mask.

There wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do for him.

Josie knew that from experience. His heart rate ticked upward. She reached over the bedrail to the hand with the IV in it and covered his fingers with her palm. “Breathe.”

Nodding, he tipped his head back and closed his eyes, drawing in deep breaths. Josie watched his heart rate return to its baseline. His fingers trembled under her touch. They waited. When he opened his eyes again, he said, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Gretchen got closer, until her stomach pressed against the bedrail. “We can come back, Jared. If you can tell us anything at all now, it will help but we’re not going to push.”

He found Josie again and she felt something spark between them. Did he recognize his own grief and trauma in her? Despite all the work she’d done to process it? All the therapy? “How?” he murmured.

She knew what he was asking. How was he going to live now? Get through the days? The nights? How was he going to survive the loss of his mother? Josie said the only thing she could think of—the way she’d survived Lisette’s death. “One minute at a time.”

Gretchen said, “Who can we call for you, Jared? Someone in town? Other family? A friend or neighbor?”

He told her the name of his grandmother, but he didn’t know her phone number. “It’s in my cell phone. He took it.”

Josie felt a brief stab of excitement. If the killer took Jared’s cell phone, they might be able to track his movements. She looked at Gretchen, who was already on her phone, firing off a text to Noah.

“That’s okay,” Josie assured him. “We’ll find it and get in touch with her.”

As he kept eye contact with her, the shaking in his fingers began to subside. “My mom called me. It was late, real late. Like one in the morning. She wasn’t, um, home. I work at Sandman’s restaurant in the summer. I help close, so I don’t get home till after midnight usually. That’s the only reason I was still awake when she called. I saw her before I went to work. At, like, four. She works at a bank. She’s usually coming home as I’m leaving.”

Gretchen scribbled on her notepad as he spoke while Josie kept the interview going. “How did she seem? Was she stressed about anything lately?”

“No. She was her normal self,” he said. “I mean, she’s, uh, always stressed about the bills and stuff, but that was it.”

“Was she having issues with anyone lately?” Josie asked. “Boyfriend, ex-boyfriend? Coworker? Neighbor? Anyone at all?”

He shook his head. “She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Her ex just got married. He hasn’t been around in a couple of years. I don’t think she’s having trouble with anyone else.”

Josie didn’t correct his use of the present tense. “Did she say anything to you about being followed or feeling like someone was watching her lately?”

“No, nothing.”

“I assume you each have your own vehicle?”

“That’s right,” Jared said. “Hers was home when I got there but then she wasn’t and I thought it was weird. I started to get a little freaked out. I texted her but she didn’t respond. I waited a half hour and called but it went to voicemail. I was wondering if I should, um, call the police or something, but then she called me.”

Gretchen continued to take notes, documenting his account. Josie knew she was being quiet so as not to break the connection he obviously felt with her.

Under Josie’s hand, his fingers began to shake again. “She called you from her phone?”

“Yes.” He sucked in a deep breath and exhaled shakily. “I knew something was wrong from how, uh, high-pitched her voice sounded.”

He stopped, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Josie lightly squeezed his fingers. “Take your time. Stop when you need to and remember, the moment you tell us you’re done, we leave. Like Detective Palmer said, we can come back.”

Nodding, he continued. “She said that she was in trouble and needed me to come get her. She wouldn’t tell me what kind of trouble. She wouldn’t say much at all. Wouldn’t answer any of my questions. Just kept repeating herself. She was in trouble and needed me. It was really weird. I think—um—now I think that he made her call and that he was telling her what to say and what not to say because she would never ask me to come if he was there. She wouldn’t put me in danger like that. I was so freaked out that I went. I just…went.”