Chapter 51

FIFTY-ONE

Along one side of the whiteboard, Gretchen scrawled the names of people who had been present at the Cook scene. Frisk Lampson, Hugh Weaver, Josie, Artie Peluso, Dusty Branson, Bud Ernst.

Josie joined Gretchen at the board. She held her hand out and Gretchen gave her the marker. “I’ve been thinking about this, but there’s a problem. This guy is targeting children and grandchildren, right? I don’t have children.” She crossed off her name.

Over his shoulder, Noah said, “Branson’s in prison. He never had kids.”

Josie drew a line through his name. “Peluso has two sons. One is a gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps and last I heard, he was stationed overseas. His other son is an FBI agent working out of the Minneapolis field office.”

Gretchen frowned. “We should make sure they’re still alive and accounted for, though.”

Josie nodded but crossed off Peluso’s name as well. Then she put a final line through the last name on the list. “Bud Ernst never had children.”

“What if it’s not just children?” Gretchen suggested. “What if it’s any family member? A spouse? A sibling?”

A chill enveloped Josie’s body as the faces of Noah and Trinity flashed through her mind. But Noah could more than handle himself and even though Trinity was still staying with them, so was Drake. She couldn’t be safer.

“Neal wasn’t there that day,” Turner pointed out. “He was still targeted.”

Josie shook off the fear needling her. “True.”

“If he’s not limiting himself to people who were at the scene,” Gretchen said, “who’s left? The Chief at the time? He covered for Lampson and Branson, too.”

“He’s dead,” Josie said. “But I guess we could still check on his family.”

“You girls—” Turner broke off when Josie and Gretchen turned to glower at him. “Ladies…no? Women?”

“Detectives,” Josie said. “Just say detectives.”

He shook his head and muttered, “Everything’s gotta be so hard.”

“Turner,” Josie snapped.

“Okay, okay. You detectives should start making some phone calls.”

Two hours later, they were still at their desks, exhausted, weary and with more questions than answers. In the past month, Artie Peluso’s wife had been killed in a hit-and-run accident in the town where they lived in South Jersey. Dusty Branson’s mother had fallen down the steps of her home in Maryland and broken her neck. Bud Ernst had been strangled to death in an apparent home invasion in the Poconos, where he’d retired. None of the crimes had occurred in Denton PD’s jurisdiction. A call to the police department handling Ernst’s homicide revealed that no polaroid had been found at the crime scene.

None of it seemed coincidental. All of it sent Josie’s heart into overdrive. Hers was the only name left on the list, but another round of phone calls assured her that everyone she loved was safe and accounted for and now, all of them had been warned. Shannon, Christian, Patrick, and Brenna were going to spend the next few days in Callowhill, which was two hours away. Chief Chitwood had agreed to let Misty, Harris, and Cindy Quinn, Harris’s grandmother, stay at his farmhouse. Drake and Trinity refused to leave. Josie didn’t press the issue since she was confident her sister was safe with Drake.

The search for Simon and Felicity Cook, as well as Roger Bell, turned up nothing.

“Simon and Felicity stopped existing after the trial,” Noah said. “There’s nothing, although I found an old story on the WYEP website that said after the murders, they were separated and put into foster care. I guess there was no family nearby or willing to take them in. The articles don’t reference any family members other than Miranda O’Malley’s parents, who flew over from Ireland to attend the trial.”

“So no grandmother?” said Turner.

“I searched Amelia and Evan Cooks’ names to see if I could locate their parents,” said Gretchen. “Amelia’s parents were still alive at the time of the trial, but her mother died two years later and her father died shortly after. Maybe an aunt or something?”

Noah sighed. “Mapping out the Cook family tree could take some time.”

Chief Chitwood’s door flew open. He poked his head out and hollered, “Fraley!” even though Noah was right there. “Get in here. We need to talk about exactly what we’re going to release to the press at this point.”

As Noah disappeared into the Chief’s office, Turner said, “Let’s get the foster care records.”

“We can try,” said Josie. “But I doubt we’ll be able to without anything connecting Simon Cook directly to any of the current murders. We don’t have enough probable cause for a warrant. All we have is a theory that he’s behind these killings.”

Gretchen pushed a hand through her spiked hair. “Shit.”

Apparently unconcerned, Turner went back to scrolling on his phone. “In case you were wondering, Bell existed for a couple of years after the trial and then poof! Gone. Nothing. No records.”

“They changed their names,” Josie suggested. “If Simon and Felicity were adopted, they might have taken on their adoptive families’ names. It would make sense to do it, especially if they were worried that Bell might try to finish what he started.”

“If I’m Roger Bell, and this whole city knows I’m a stone-cold killer,” said Turner, “I’d change my name, too.”

A headache started to pulse in Josie’s temples. She fished through her desk drawers until she came up with a bottle of ibuprofen.

Gretchen said, “You can’t look up name changes. The records are sealed by the courts.”

Josie tossed two ibuprofen into her mouth and swallowed them dry. “Sealed records,” she echoed. Is that what Stella Townsend had been after? Her grandfather’s involvement in the Cook case? She would have been able to glean most of the details from public sources since the murders and the trial were covered widely in the local press. Was she trying to track down the Cook children for some reason? They’d searched Stella’s laptop and found lots of notes pertaining to Frisk Lampson and her wide-ranging ideas for an exposé, but Josie didn’t recall seeing any mention of the Cook case. Then again, up until the day she was murdered, she was still meeting with Remy Tate in hopes of getting the information she was after.

“We’re back to the polaroid,” Gretchen said. “Unless we can figure out a way to find Simon or Felicity Cook.”

“There’s no one left for this guy to kill,” Turner said. “We’re missing someone on the list.”

Josie turned toward the dry-erase board and silently read off the names again. Her, Lampson, Weaver, Peluso, Branson, Ernst, and Neal. They’d been looking strictly at law enforcement and the prosecution, but the names on the list weren’t the only people who’d contributed to Roger Bell going free.

The overwhelming fatigue Josie had been fighting all evening receded, replaced by a buzz of anxiety. “We overlooked someone. Someone major,” she said. “Bell’s defense attorney. He wrote and filed the motion that kept the knife out of evidence. He was just doing his job but he was good at it.”

“He still live around here?” Turner asked. “Does he have kids?”

Quickly, Josie pulled up the dockets and found the name. The contents of her stomach curdled. “Yes and yes,” she said.

“Who is it?” Turner’s eyebrows knit with what looked like concern. “Quinn, you okay? You look sick or something.”

“Bell’s defense attorney was Andrew Bowen, and he hates me. I put his mother in prison for murder.”