Chapter 44

FORTY-FOUR

Josie squeezed his fingers again, putting more pressure on them until his shoulders relaxed slightly. “She told you where to find her.”

He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Yes. She said to come by myself, that she didn’t want anyone else to see her or know what was going on. I got really worried at that point but then she said she didn’t need the police or an ambulance or anything. Just me. Then she started crying and just begging me to do what she said, and she’d explain everything when I got there. She told me to come to Harper’s Peak. I was never there so she told me to park in any one of the lots and walk up to the church.”

Gretchen’s phone chirped. Quickly, she took it out and responded to a text before resuming her note-taking.

“Did she give you directions to the church?” asked Josie.

“Yeah. It was dark so I brought a flashlight. I kept expecting someone to stop me but no one did. There was some wedding going on in the one building and a concert happening outside some other building. No one even noticed me.”

“Were the lights on inside the church?” The church wasn’t visible from any of the resort buildings, as far as Josie knew. Even if it was, no guest would think anything of seeing lights in the windows of a building on the edge of the resort. Since the church was closed off, staff members might have found it suspicious but according to the owner and managing director, no reports concerning the church had been made recently.

“Yeah,” said Jared. “She had told me to go in the back. The door was open. I called for her, but she didn’t answer. I went inside and—and?—”

He squeezed his eyes shut. The tremors went from his fingers up his arm. Soon, his entire body quivered. Josie hesitated. They were so close to finding out what happened, but she didn’t want to send him over the edge. He was already so traumatized. “Jared,” she said. “Breathe. That’s all you need to do in this moment. Breathe. That’s it.”

He nodded, the movement jerky.

Gretchen mouthed, Grandmother’s on the way .

Josie was glad. She didn’t want to leave him alone. “We’re going to stop now.”

His eyes sprang open, searching for her as if he was afraid she’d already left. “Please,” he said. “I want to—to finish telling you. If I do, it will help you catch him, right? Then he’ll go to prison for what he did to my mom?”

“It will help,” Josie agreed. “We’re going to do everything we can to catch him and work with prosecutors so they can do their part.”

It was the best she could do. There were no guarantees in her line of work. Killers eluded police. Investigations fell apart. Evidence sometimes wasn’t plentiful or convincing enough to build an airtight case. Juries acquitted, sometimes in the face of mountains of evidence that the defendants had committed the crimes for which they were on trial. There were technicalities and any number of missteps that could occur and lead to a murderer going free. Right now, Jared Rowe didn’t need to know any of that.

“I went inside the church. That’s when I—I saw her. In the middle aisle. She was—she was already dead. I mean, I think. She had to be. There was so much blood. I got out my phone to call 911 and I started to run toward her, but then I don’t know. He was there, just like this dark figure, almost like a shadow, and he was on me, stabbing and stabbing. For a second, I thought I was hallucinating him, like he was some kind of demon or something. I got my hands up. It went so fast. One second I was walking in and seeing my mom and the next second there was this huge knife straight through my whole hand! I think I passed out. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor and something heavy landed on my back. I couldn’t breathe.”

“You were under the pulpit,” Josie told him. “It was tipped onto its side. It probably knocked the wind out of you when it landed.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s how it felt except I didn’t even think of that at the time. I just thought I was going to die. Right then. It felt like forever until I could breathe again. He was walking around. I saw his boots but that was it. I couldn’t move. I tried to talk but it was hard. I begged him to let me go. He never said a word. He just…left.”

Gretchen jumped in. “Did you ever hear or sense anyone else there with him?”

“No. I mean, it was dark and I didn’t have a chance to look around or anything but I don’t remember anyone but him.”

“One last question,” Josie said. “This may seem strange but, Jared, was or is anyone in your family in law enforcement? Retired police officer or assistant district attorney?”

His brow furrowed. “I, um, my grandfather was a cop. He retired when I was in preschool, I think. He lives in the nursing home up on that big hill. Rockview or something?”

Josie’s grandmother had lived there in her last years. “I know it. What’s his name?”

“Hugh Weaver.”