Chapter 48

FORTY-EIGHT

Disjointed memories of the Cook family homicides flashed through Josie’s mind. At the time, it felt like something she could never possibly forget but after so many years on the job, witnessing so much depravity and cruelty, it became harder to draw up memories from a scene she’d responded to when she was just a rookie. She’d been so inexperienced and stupid. She’d made many mistakes. Most of them were excusable and even expected. The seasoned field training officer they’d paired her with, Artie Peluso, often covered for the minor mishaps.

But there were some things she had to take accountability for whether he wanted to protect her or not. What happened on the Cook case was one of them.

“Shit,” she muttered.

“The Cook family.” Turner said, “LT, you remember this?”

Noah leaned forward to look at the dates on the photo that filled Josie’s screen. “Before my time. I joined the department two years after Josie.”

“I was a rookie,” Josie said. “My field training officer, Artie Peluso, and I responded to a 911 call in the historic district.”

Josie started clicking through reports, scanning them to refresh her memory. “Evan and Amelia Cook had three children and they were hosting a student from Ireland through some program. Not an exchange program, something else. They were having extensive carpentry work done in their home. It went on for months. They’d hired this guy named Roger Bell. He had done work for a lot of families in that neighborhood. If I recall, he came highly recommended by neighbors.”

She clicked through more of the file until she found his mug shot. Shaggy dark hair hung to his shoulders. A tattoo of a black snake curled up one side of his neck. Only slivers of his brown irises were visible thanks to his two black eyes. Most of his face was swollen and bruised. A deep cut scored his lower lip. Back then, a lot of the officers on the Denton PD weren’t above roughing up suspects who “resisted arrest.” Those suspects, like Roger Bell, were usually being arrested for heinous crimes. Not that that made it right. Josie hadn’t heard anything, but she’d bet her paycheck that’s what had happened based on the photo filling the screen. She’d never met Roger Bell in person. After being called to the initial scene, her involvement in the case was over.

Gretchen went back to her desk. “I’m going to access the file, too. Print out some stuff. This will go faster with both of us going over it.”

Josie skimmed over more of the reports, reading off the pertinent information. “A witness reported that Roger Bell became fixated on the foreign student, Miranda O’Malley. She was sixteen.”

“How old was Bell?” asked Noah.

Josie went back to his arrest information. “Twenty-two.”

Gretchen continued searching the Cook file. “Let’s see,” she mumbled under her breath. “Here we go. A witness reported that Miranda became uncomfortable with the amount of attention Bell was giving her and the nature of it and told the Cooks. They fired him. He kept coming back around though, convinced that Miranda reciprocated his feelings. One day, Mr. Cook threatened to call the police. Bell left but he came back soon after and stabbed everyone in the house.”

“Seems like Mr. Bell didn’t take rejection very well,” Turner said.

There was so much Josie didn’t remember about the Cook case—things she had never known since she wasn’t involved in the investigation—but she remembered, even now, how normal everything had seemed when she and Peluso pulled up to the sprawling Victorian. It was late afternoon, nearing dinner. Kids played and rode their bikes in the street. It was springtime. Warm. Some neighbors had their windows open. The smell of meals being cooked filled the air. A television in a nearby house played a talk show, its sound up high, the host discussing summer reads.

“Why this case?” asked Turner. “Why is the killer trying to recreate this scene?”

Josie pulled up the crime scene photos again and started clicking through them slowly. They’d been taken out of order and in the file, they were arranged haphazardly. Typically, photos of crime scenes located indoors were taken starting outside the building at the nearest intersection and then coming in closer until they moved to the interior. Then each room on each floor was photographed as well as the backyard and garage, if necessary. Crime scenes were documented that way so that when the case went to court, the prosecutor could more easily make jurors feel as though they’d been there. It also helped them to grasp the layout of the building.

The photos in the Cook file were shuffled around with the backyard first, then the street view, then the foyer. Josie remembered standing in that foyer, inhaling the coppery scent of blood even before they’d found the bodies. The next series of pictures were from the second floor. With each photo, more memories returned. The way her heart had thundered in her chest as she and Peluso cleared each room. How hard it had been to stay upright, to take every step carefully and methodically when she was dizzy from adrenaline. The phantom fingers of terror that crawled up the back of her neck, leaving her unsettled even after the house was cleared.

Shaking off the sensations of that day, Josie kept sifting through the photos of the second floor. The master bedroom, pristine with its bed made. The bathroom crammed with toiletries for six people. The bedroom shared by the youngest and eldest sister—each side markedly different, one outfitted for a toddler and the other for a young girl on the verge of being a teenager. Miranda O’Malley’s bedroom, messy with clothes strewn across the bed and on the floor. A backpack overstuffed with makeup, clothes, and books sat next to the door. One of the night tables and her desk chair crowded the door as well. The small wooden desk had been pulled away from the wall. Josie hadn’t really registered those details that day but now it looked like she’d been rearranging furniture. The final bedroom belonged to the Cooks’ teenage son. It, too, was in the kind of disarray one would expect to see in a teen’s inner sanctum. Discarded clothes on the floor around the bed. Empty soda cans on every available surface. On the bed was an overturned backpack with items spilling out of it: books, a magazine with a big-busted, scantily clad woman on the cover, pens, gum, chewing tobacco, an iPod, a slim brown leather case of some sort, and earphones.

It was all so normal. A bustling household. Snapshots of a family on any given day. But one floor down: bloody carnage.

Josie took a deep breath as the first pictures of the downstairs flashed across the screen. “Here,” she said. “This is the scene he’s recreating—well, the scenes. Look closely. What’s missing?”

Twice they went through the relevant photos. Then Noah said, “The knife. Our killer left it at each scene. There’s no knife in the Cook family crime scene photos.”

“I haven’t gotten that far.” Gretchen clicked her mouse furiously. “Bell took it with him?”

“No, it was there. I saw it with my own eyes.” This part of the case Josie remembered more clearly because of the shitstorm that had followed. “It was in the kitchen. It just wasn’t photographed.”

Other than the blood pooling and streaking the tile floor and spattered across the cabinets and walls, the kitchen looked unremarkable. Dishes dried in the rack next to the sink. Lined up neatly on the countertop were appliances, a butcher block, and a utensil jar. Appointment cards and children’s drawings covered the fridge. The normalcy cradling the horror always bothered Josie.

“The knife wasn’t photographed?” Turner’s fingers drummed against his thigh. “How is that even possible?”

Noah met Josie’s eyes. “Hugh Weaver.”

She held his gaze. “He was the crime scene tech that day. He was supposed to have help, but the other guys were late. He started anyway.”

“He was drunk,” Noah filled in.

“Yes,” said Josie. “I thought he was. Peluso thought so, too.”

Gretchen arched a brow. “Is that why he missed the knife? Because he was inebriated?”

“That’s not the only reason.” Josie pushed the rest of the story out before she lost her nerve. How Lampson had arrived on-scene and immediately zeroed in on a group of teenage girls. How he’d cornered one of them. How she’d looked like a defenseless rabbit staring into the gaping jaw of an apex predator. “She was Miranda O’Malley’s best friend. Lived nearby. Lampson maintained that was the only reason he needed to talk to her so badly. I found out later that he wanted her to get into the back of his car and wait for him so he could take her to the stationhouse to get her statement. She didn’t want to get in.”

“Knowing Frisk,” said Noah, voice filled with disgust, “he would have made a stop on the way there.”

Josie said, “I couldn’t just stand by.”

The rage that had filled her entire body that day was imprinted on her. Unimaginable carnage had waited inside the house, and Lampson couldn’t care less. He was too busy doing what he always did. What he was never held accountable for—harassing teenage girls.

“Oh shit,” Turner said, “You left your post, didn’t you?”

Josie looked up at him. “I got another officer, Dusty Branson, to come up on the porch to take my place.”

“So what was the problem?” Turner asked.

“I was a hothead back then.”

It had taken her years to be able to control her anger.

Noah knew her better than anyone. “You went after Lampson.”