Her Deadly Touch: An absolutely addictive crime thriller and mystery novel (Detective Josie Quinn Book 12)

by Lisa Regan

  Josie took out her phone and pulled up Facebook to search for Krystal Duncan. Her profile picture was of her and a young girl Josie assumed was Bianca Duncan. The girl had looked like a near carbon copy of her mother save for her nose, which was wider and flatter. In the photo, Bianca was dressed in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt with the word “Love” emblazoned in gold across it. One hand rested on her narrow hip. On her other side, Krystal, wearing khaki capris and a pink open-shouldered blouse, leaned in so that the two were cheek to cheek. Both smiled brightly. Josie felt a suffocating sadness. She had lost a lot of people in her life, and although she had never had children of her own, she couldn’t imagine anything worse than losing a child. Now both daughter and mother were gone.

  Why?

  Josie scrolled through Krystal’s page, but her privacy settings were strict, and all Josie could glean from it were a few more photos of Krystal and Bianca. “These are all old posts,” Josie said. “All focused on Bianca.”

  “Exactly,” said Gretchen. “Bianca was her life and once she died, it was like time stopped for Krystal. Here we are.”

  Josie pocketed her phone and looked up. The law firm that Krystal Duncan had worked for was housed in a four-story, gray brick building in an area filled with office buildings where West Denton bled into South Denton. Josie followed Gretchen inside. They took the elevator to the third floor and found the suite housing the law offices of Abt and Defeo. Just inside was a swanky guest area with long, shiny leather couches surrounding a teak coffee table. Along one wall sat a small coffee bar with stacks of clean mugs that had the firm’s name emblazoned on them as well as various options for coffee and tea. A glass partition separated the guest area from the rest of the suite. A young woman with short blonde hair sat on the other side. As they approached, she slid the window open. Her smile faltered as Gretchen gave her a wave.

  “You’re here about Krystal again, aren’t you?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Gretchen said.

  Josie offered the woman her credentials as well. She took a cursory look and handed them back. To Josie, she said, “I’m Carly Howe. We had a staff meeting this morning about Krystal. Mr. Defeo wanted us to know before the press found out.”

  “I’m glad that he told you,” Gretchen said. “The press got wind of it this morning. They’ve been calling our press liaison since six a.m. It will probably be on WYEP’s noon newscast.”

  Carly shook her head slowly. “It’s just awful. I just can’t imagine… Mr. Defeo said you suspect foul play. I don’t understand who would want to hurt Krystal. She’d already been through so much.”

  Josie said, “That’s what we’d like to figure out. Can you tell us if everyone who worked with Krystal is here today?”

  Carly nodded. “Yes, everyone’s here today. Mr. Defeo said you’d be coming by for some files and that you might want to talk with us. Why don’t you come on back?”

  She leaned to the right and then they heard a buzz and the sound of a lock disengaging. Gretchen reached for the handle of the door beside the window and opened it. Inside, Carly’s desk was stacked high with letter boxes. She walked around the desk and pointed to them. “These are the files. I can help you carry them out to your car when you’re ready to leave.”

  “That would be great,” Gretchen said.

  Josie pointed to the door they’d just walked through. “That’s a lot of security for a personal injury firm. Have you had problems?”

  Carly laughed. “Nothing serious. We just have a lot of clients who love to show up without an appointment and want to stay and chat for hours. It’s easier to tell them the attorneys aren’t here when they can’t get past the front lobby.”

  Josie looked beyond her where several desks were arranged in an open area. Only two were occupied—one by a woman in her sixties and another by a woman in her forties, from what Josie could tell. Both spoke on their phones although they shot furtive glances over at Josie and Gretchen. Beyond the desks were several rooms, each labeled with the names of the firm’s partners, Gil Defeo and Richard Abt, as well as their function: a conference room, a file room, and a break room.

  “I’m sure we can set you up in the conference room if you’d like,” said Carly.

  “Yes,” Gretchen said. “That would work.”

  Josie said, “Detective Palmer here tells me you were closest to Krystal.”

  For the first time, Josie saw a crack in Carly’s sunny receptionist façade. Her brown eyes glimmered with tears. “Yes. I’m the one who told Gil he should talk with the police when Krystal didn’t come to work. It just wasn’t normal for her to not answer any calls. I mean, work was all she had left after Bianca passed. I never thought that someone would hurt her though. I mean I thought maybe she did something to herself, but never… I don’t know who would do such a thing.”

  Josie said, “Your boss told Detective Palmer that her friendships deteriorated after the bus crash.”

  Carly nodded and leaned back against a stack of boxes. “It’s terrible, really, but I think people didn’t know what to say to her. Like, how to talk to her. It’s really hard. What do you say to someone who loses a child?”

  “What did you say?” Gretchen asked.

  Carly blinked slowly, as if surprised by the question. “I didn’t say anything. I listened.”

  Josie said, “She was lucky to have a friend like you.”

  Carly threw her arms in the air and let them fall back to her sides. “Fat lot of good it did. I wasn’t there for her when she needed me most.”

  “What happened to Krystal is not your fault,” Gretchen assured her.

  Carly chewed on the nail of one of her index fingers. “I guess.”

  Josie said, “If Krystal had met someone new or had been having trouble with anyone in her life, do you think she would have told you?”

  “If you asked me last week, I would have said yes, but now? I’m not so sure,” Carly confessed. “I mean, I thought she told me everything. It seemed to help her when she talked with me. Krystal was really high-strung, you know? Even before Bianca passed away, she was always anxious. Wound real tight. Stressed about everything. I thought we were really close, but who knows? She had other friendships—before Bianca died—but they were mostly superficial. That’s why she smo—”

  Carly broke off. A hand flew to her mouth.

  Josie said, “It’s okay, Carly.”

  She removed her hand from her face and shook her head. “I’m so sorry. That was private. I shouldn’t—Krystal wouldn’t want me to say anything.”

  Gretchen’s expression was grave. “Carly, Krystal is no longer with us and someone very bad killed her. At this point, we don’t know what’s going to be important to finding her killer so we need to know everything, even the private stuff. I promise you, you’re not doing anything wrong by telling us.”

  Carly looked over at her coworkers, but they were still speaking on their phones. Her shoulders slumped. She hugged herself. Lowering her voice, she said, “It’s just that they’re still going to talk about her in the press, you know? Between the trial for the bus driver and now her murder—this is media gold. I don’t want her reputation ruined. I know that sounds stupid, but she was my friend.”

  Josie said, “We’ll do everything we can to keep anything you tell us out of the press.”

  “They’ll make it seem like she was a bad mother, and she was not. Not at all. That bus crash was no one’s fault but the driver’s. He was drunk. But that won’t matter to the press. They’ll make it out like it was Krystal’s fault that Bianca died or that she was on the bus just because—look, it’s not a crime to let your kid ride the school bus, no matter what you do in your private time.”

  “Carly,” Gretchen said. “We’ll do everything we can to protect Krystal’s reputation. I promise you that.”

  Carly sighed, took a beat, and then said, “She smoked pot, okay? Like, a lot. Every day. But never when she had to be at work or care for Bianca. It was at night,
once she and Bianca were in for the day. She said it was the only thing that helped her.”

  “Medical marijuana?” Josie asked. “Prescribed by a doctor?”

  “No,” she said quietly.

  Josie glanced at Gretchen, who gave her a curt shake of her head. It was their work shorthand. Silent communication. Josie was asking if they’d found any marijuana at Krystal’s house, and Gretchen was answering that they had not. To Carly, Josie said, “Did she take anything else?”

  “No, never. She drank wine sometimes but that was it. But the press won’t see it that way. If they find out she was a pothead, they’ll blow it way out of proportion and the story won’t be about those kids dying or Krystal being murdered, it will be about Krystal being some kind of drug addict and terrible mother, which she was not.”

  Gretchen asked, “Do you have any idea where she got her supply?”

  Carly hugged herself tighter. “I don’t know. Some guy under the East Bridge. That’s all she told me.”

  “Thank you, Carly,” Josie said. “That is helpful.”

  Carly didn’t look convinced. After a second, her eyes widened. “Do you think it was her dealer who did this to her?”

  Gretchen said, “We really can’t say at this point, but we’ll look into the person who was providing her with marijuana and go from there.”

  Josie asked, “Is there anyone else she talks to? Anyone else she might confide in?”

  “Not that I can think of. I mean, other than that support group she’s in—the one for the parents of the kids who were killed in the crash with Bianca.”

  Gretchen said, “You mentioned that the last time we spoke. I did talk with the other parents, but no one had seen her since their last meeting, and no one had any ideas where she could have been. It might be worth talking to the person who runs the group to see if they’ve got any information. By any chance, do you know who that is? Or where the group meets?”

  “No, I’m sorry. But I’m sure if you ask one of the other parents, you could find out.”

  “Thank you,” said Josie. “One last thing before we talk to your colleagues. Does the word ‘Pritch’ mean anything to you?”

  Carly’s brow furrowed. “Pritch?” she said. “What is that? Like, a name?”

  “We don’t know,” Josie said. “We were just wondering if it meant anything to you? If you’d ever heard Krystal talk about a person or place called ‘Pritch’ or maybe something close to it.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” Carly said. “Where’d you get that from, anyway?”

  “We’re not at liberty to say,” Gretchen told her.

  Chapter Nine

  They spent over two hours at Abt and Defeo interviewing the rest of the staff as well as the two attorneys. No one had anything to add to what Carly had told them and none of them recognized the word “Pritch”—as a name or a place or even the partial name of a person or place. Josie and Gretchen loaded almost a dozen boxes into the back of Gretchen’s car and headed for lunch.

  “First day back,” Gretchen said as she pulled up in front of Josie’s favorite restaurant. “I’m buying.”

  Josie gave her a smile as they walked in and found a table in a back corner of the place where they could discuss the details of a murder case without being disturbed or alarming anyone.

  “Have you seen the Chief yet?” Gretchen asked Josie after the waitress took their order.

  “No. I was in early this morning, but he didn’t come out of his office.”

  “He’s still pissed,” Gretchen told her.

  Josie reached into her pocket and felt the rosary beads, warm against her fingertips. “As opposed to what?”

  Gretchen snorted. “Good point.” She put her notebook onto the table but didn’t open it. Instead, her gaze bore into Josie. “You okay?”

  Josie shrugged, feeling the saliva in her mouth dry up. She thought about yesterday’s near-miss in the liquor store parking lot. But I didn’t go in, she reminded herself.

  “Josie,” said Gretchen, and Josie knew Gretchen was serious because she almost never called her by her first name. It was always “boss.” Josie had been the interim Chief of Police before Chitwood was hired and everyone in the department had called her “boss.” She was the one who had hired Gretchen. Even after Chitwood came on as Chief, the staff still called her “boss.”

  Josie swallowed, willing her voice not to crack when she spoke. “I’m—I’m—”

  “Don’t say fine. That’s not an acceptable answer.”

  “Why does everyone want to talk about stuff all the time?” Josie asked irritably, the words pushing out before she could moderate her tone.

  Gretchen laughed, a good old-fashioned belly laugh.

  “I’m being serious,” Josie said when Gretchen didn’t stop.

  “I know,” Gretchen said finally, settling down with a sigh. “I know you’re serious. The easy answer to your question is that we’re worried about you. The reason I asked is because I think that when we are dealing with stuff—big stuff, hard stuff—we don’t even know what we’re feeling until we try to say it out loud. I mean, sometimes. To be fair, asking you if you’re okay after you lost Lisette is a pretty stupid question. So let me rephrase: what’s your level of not being okay right now?”

  This time Josie laughed. In the four months since Lisette’s murder, this was the best question anyone had asked her. “On a scale of one to ten? Ten being I can’t even function and I want to die? One being a mild feeling of discomfort? A six. Although it seems to change each hour.”

  They fell silent as the waitress brought their drinks. Once she left, Gretchen said, “That sounds about right. You ever get to an eight or nine and you call me, you got that? I know you’ve got Noah, but I’m here, too.”

  “What do I say?” Josie asked, only half joking, because she wasn’t good at dealing with her own emotions. “‘Hey Gretchen, I’m at an eight?’ Or do I need a secret word or something?”

  The waitress came back and set their entrees in front of them. Again, Gretchen waited until she was gone to speak. “Sure, why not?” Looking at her plate, she said, “You get to an eight and all you have to say is ‘ravioli’ and whatever we’re doing, wherever we are, I’ll get you the hell out of there. Or come get you. Whatever the case may be.”

  “Ravioli,” Josie said, unable to suppress her smile.

  “You got it,” Gretchen said, digging into her plate of pasta.

  Josie watched her eat for a few seconds. Then she took a bite of her burger and turned her thoughts back to the case. “The support group that Carly talked about for the parents of the kids killed in the bus crash—how long had Krystal been going to that?”

  Gretchen dabbed her chin with a napkin. “About eighteen months. Maybe a little longer. The crash was over two years ago. I’m thinking that if she met with these people every week for nearly two years, at least one or two of them might know more about her personal life than they initially let on. Now that we’ve got a murder on our hands, I’d like to talk to them again—this time in person.”

  “We can start with Dee Tenney,” Josie said. “When Noah took her back to the station yesterday to get her statement, he didn’t know about the ‘Pritch’ thing yet so he didn’t have a chance to ask her.”

  “We’ll go after lunch. But first I want to get over to the East Bridge and show Krystal’s picture around, see if anyone will admit to selling her drugs or at least to seeing her down there.”

  Denton had two bridges that spanned a branch of the Susquehanna River. One was located in South Denton. It was small and saw little traffic. The other was the East Bridge, which was much larger and well-used by motorists. Due to its more central location, the area underneath it was home to a good deal of the city’s homeless population as well as its drug users and dealers. No matter how much time and resources Denton PD spent trying to eradicate the drug activity from beneath the East Bridge, it never quite went away. The sun was high in the sky as they parked near the bridg
e and picked their way down the incline to the bank of the river, dodging rocks, weeds, discarded food wrappers, and empty beer bottles. Josie spied some used needles and tiny plastic bags used to hold a number of different drugs.

  On the bank of the river, the air was cooler, for which Josie was grateful. A light breeze lifted the hair from the back of her neck. A few people stood near the water. When they noticed Josie and Gretchen, they started walking briskly under the bridge where a cluster of tents and lean-tos made from cardboard boxes and blankets sat like crooked decaying teeth in the maw of the hollow beneath the bridge. As the people they’d seen on the bank disappeared among the shelters, Josie saw some blankets and other types of coverings ripple as the occupants peeked out to see the new arrivals. Beyond the tent homes, a group of people scattered, running up the hill and away from the bridge. It was typical of any time the police visited the area.

  They spent an hour flashing Krystal’s photo around to the reluctant occupants beneath the bridge. No one under the East Bridge ever wanted to speak with police, but over the years and the course of various cases, a handful of people had come to some sort of grudging trust in Josie. One of those people was a woman who informed Josie that she had seen Krystal there about once a week for several years and that she always talked to a man named Skinny D. Josie texted Noah and asked him to check their database for anyone by that nickname who had been questioned, detained, or arrested in Denton in the past several years. If he’d been selling drugs under the East Bridge for any length of time, chances were good that he’d had contact with their department at some point or another.

  After getting a description from her and searching around a little more, they found Skinny D along the top of the bridge. He’d been with the group who had fled when Josie and Gretchen first showed up. As Josie’s informant had told them, he wasn’t skinny at all. She put him at about five foot eight and three hundred pounds. A white tank top hugged his thick frame. His khaki shorts were wrinkled and bore a myriad of old stains. Greasy black hair had been pulled behind his head in a messy man-bun. Thick glasses with black frames sat on his narrow nose. Josie couldn’t decide if he was in his mid-twenties or his mid-forties. It was hard to tell. His face was unlined and yet, he had the look of someone who had seen a lot in life. His bridge enterprise was probably his full-time job. He leaned against one of the concrete barriers that separated the start of the bridge from the shoulder of the road. A cigarette dangled from his thin lips. Dark beady eyes tracked their approach.