Just say it, Arch. Rip the band-aid off.
“My name is Detective Malone. He’s Detective Banks.” I keep her hand in mine and perch on the edge of her short, wooden coffee table. “We’re sorry, but your daughter’s body was discovered inside your car this morning. She died before emergency responders arrived at the scene.”
It’s never fun telling someone they’ve lost a loved one. It sucks when an adult loses their parent. It sucks even more when a husband loses his wife, or a wife loses her husband. But to tell a mom about her dead child? That’s pure torture, and the sound of a grieving mother’s animalistic cries is something I’ve found has a habit of imprinting on a man’s psyche.
But once the howling slows and the sobbing quietens, the comatose silence feels somehow worse.
“It would help a lot if you could talk to us, Ms. Ryan.” Drake crosses the single, open-plan space, leaving the kitchen behind and setting a delicate china cup on a small side table. “I know this is the worst day of your life, and I know it hurts. Deep in your heart and soul.” He comes around and sits on the coffee table beside me. His shoulder touches mine, and his knee taps my thigh, but neither of us can summon the energy to snarl. Not while Sylvia Ryan stares blankly at her hands. “Josey’s death wasn’t accidental, Ms. Ryan. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t a wild act of nature.”
Slowly, she brings glittering, bloodshot eyes up.
“Josey was murdered, so if you could talk to us, we promise to do our very best to find who did this to her.”
“What made you report her missing last night?” I keep my voice gentle. My words soft. “Transcripts show you making a report at nine o’clock last night, but Josey is eighteen. It’s summer break. Nine isn’t all that late. What prompted you to make that call?”
She drops her gaze and exhales a shuddering breath. “She was supposed to be home by seven.”
“So only two hours?” Drake presses. “Two hours, and you jump straight to the police, instead of assuming she might’ve caught up with friends?”
She shakes her head. “It wouldn’t have bothered me if she wanted to stay out. It wouldn’t even have been an issue if she had found a party anddecided to get wild for a night. But she would’ve told me.” Her eyes flicker back to mine. “We’ve always been really good with communication, and we… our phones…” She looks around her living room, searching for the device. “We have that app on our phones that shows where we are. We do that for each other, because we never want the other to worry.”
“Can we see your phone, Ms. Ryan?” I spy it wedged between couch cushions, the bottom half poking out. “It would be helpful if we knew where the app tracked her to last.”
“Yeah, she…” She nods. But she doesn’t grab it. “Yeah.”
Inching forward, I snatch it up and swipe the screen, prepared to ask her for the pin code, but her apps reveal themselves to me anyway. No security needed.
“It stopped working last night at seven-forty-five,” she rasps. “Which is… it’s…” She shakes her head. “I’m not dumb, detectives. I know what that means.”
I take out my phone and pull up my texts to Fletch. Then I copy GPS coordinates across.
Me
I’m sending you the last locations her phone pinged last night. You might find our death scene at one of them. Let me know what’s what.
“It looks like she was at an address about twelve blocks from here. Residential.” I turn the phone and show Sylvia the map. “Do you know whose house this is? She was there until six-thirty.”
“That’s the Carpenters’ house.” Her voice crackles on a whimper. “Josey’s a really smart girl, detectives. Really,reallysmart. She graduated top of her class in May, and got accepted to Copeland U for the fall. She’s planning to be a forensic psychologist, because she cares about the law and she wants to help… she…” She drops her face into her hands and groans. “She’s smart, so the Carpenters… She tutors their eighth-grader, Susan.”
Susan Carpenter.I glance across and watch as Drake writes her name in his notebook.8th grade. Then the wordaddress. But he leaves the space after it blank.
“She tutors for a few families,” Sylvia continues on a pained exhale. “She has for years.”
“Could you get us a list of each family?” Drake asks gently. “Their names, their addresses, and if you know it, a typical schedule for when she’d see each one.”
Exhausted, she merely nods and drops her head.
“So she was tutoring Susan last night until six thirty,” I continue. “You expected her home at seven.” Except, according to the GPS app, Josey drove toward the city afterwards, not home. “Do you know why she’d go to…” I zoom in on the next check-in point and discover a cinema. “Maybe she had plans to go to the movies?” I spin the phone and show her. “Perhaps one of Josey’s friends called her and suggested a movie night?”
“No, I…” She takes back her phone and clasps it between both hands. “Tairneyy Keen is her best friend. Her closest friend in the entire world.” Swallowing, she brings swollen eyes up again. “I thought the same thing you did, so I texted her a couple of times just to check. Tried calling. By seven thirty, I called Tairneyy instead.”
“But they weren’t together?” Drake murmurs.
She shakes her head. “Tairneyy was at home with her folks. She could tell I was worried, so she changed our call to video and showed me where she was. Even her parents came to the phone. We only have one car. We…” She draws a shuddering breath. “I work shifts at a nursing home, and the bus stop is literally out the front, so when Josey got her license, we figured we could share and make it work. She had it last night, since the buses don’t stop out front of the Carpenters’ house. But since she had it and I didn’t, I couldn’t drive to the cinema myself to check. I was going to,” she whimpers. “I told Tairneyy I’d catch a bus, but Frank…” Shaky, she reaches up and knuckles fresh tears from beneath her eyes. “Tairneyy’s dad said he’d drive in and check it out.”
“He never found her car?” Drake questions. “What time did he drive in?”
“He got there just before eight,” she rasps. “He said he didn’t see my car, and he didn’t see Jose. He even convinced the manager at the movie theater to let him check every cinema, even the ones being used.”