Find Her Alive

by Regan, Lisa

“No,” she said, even though she wanted him to go with her, badly. “I need you here with my grandmother and Trout.” She looked at Mettner. “I need to tell Shannon and Christian about the Bone Artist.”

  Mettner held her gaze. “That’s your call, but it has to stay out of the press.”

  Gretchen said, “Mett and I will stay on. We’ll start running down leads.”

  Mettner looked at Noah. “You go home and get some rest, too. We’ll call you both if anything develops.”

  Josie was reluctant to leave. She wanted to run down every lead herself, but she knew that wasn’t possible. Her team would not let her or Trinity down—that she knew with absolute conviction. For now, she had to follow the trail Trinity had left for her. She pointed to the Bone Artist file, now spread out across the conference room table. “Just one thing: I’d like to take a copy of that with me.”

  Thirty-Two

  Alex shook the snow from his boots at the back door and knocked three times. Hanna opened the door with a smile. A blast of hot air engulfed him. Almost immediately he began to feel uncomfortable and sweaty. He’d grown so used to being outside and cold, now the stifling inside of the house bothered him. But he needed to eat. He sat at the table in front of a plate of food that Hanna had prepared for him.

  “Mom,” he tried. “There haven’t been any incidents in a long time. I’ve helped with Zandra, keeping her from hurting you. Things have been good. Plus, she’s twelve years old now. She’s more mature. I was just thinking that maybe… maybe things could change.”

  “Well, your father…” She drifted off and, in that moment, he hated her for never standing up to Frances.

  The front door scraped open. Alex listened as Frances stomped the snow from his boots in the foyer and took his coat, hat, and gloves off. He tromped into the kitchen, giving Alex a brief glare before sitting down at the dinner table. While Hanna served him dinner, he talked about his day, the weather, the imbeciles he had to deal with in his work. When he finished, she served him coffee and then she went into the other room and came back with a stack of papers which she placed in front of him.

  “What is this?” Frances asked.

  “An Agreement of Sale for the property behind this one. One hundred acres! I’m going to buy it.”

  He paged through the document. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because we always wanted property of our own. This is our chance.”

  “You expect me to keep up with one hundred acres?”

  “No, I—”

  “There’s not even a house on the land!”

  “Well, we could build—”

  “No,” he said. “This is a stupid idea.”

  He pushed the pages away from him and stood up. When he reached the doorway, Hanna said, “I wasn’t asking you. It’s my money. I can buy the land if I choose. We’re not married. I don’t need your permission.”

  Alex felt a shockwave punch through the room. Frances turned back to her and pointed a finger in her face. “You know why I could never marry you. These children—”

  She cut him off. “They need a legacy. Something for when I’m gone.”

  He walked over to the table, picked up the Agreement of Sale and tore it in half. “If you want to keep your precious children, you’ll never speak of this again.”

  Thirty-Three

  Callowhill was a small town two hours east of Denton. Town, Josie thought, as she drove through its streets in the early hours of the morning, was a strong word for Callowhill. It had one main street where the essentials were grouped together: a police station, post office, library, gas station, fire house, pharmacy and an urgent care center. The rest of the town was spread across the two square miles of rolling hills and small mountains surrounding the town center. The Paynes lived in a large faux-brick luxury home situated on four acres of land. A narrow, single-lane road led to their driveway. Josie knew there were additional houses along the road, but she rarely saw any neighbors when she visited.

  She pulled up in front of the three-car garage, parking next to Shannon’s SUV, and made her way up the walk to the front door. They’d given her a key the first time she visited, but she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she should ring the doorbell. As she did every time she visited, she paused at the front door and looked around. She could have grown up here. She should have grown up here. What would it have been like if she hadn’t been torn away from her family just after birth? What would she be like?

  What would Trinity be like?

  As the thoughts whirled through her mind, Christian opened the front door. “You okay?”

  Josie gave him a weak smile and stepped inside. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m just… tired.”

  He waved her through the cavernous, marble-tiled foyer into the kitchen, where Shannon sat at their island countertop, a cup of coffee in hand. Josie took a good look at her parents. They clearly hadn’t slept. Christian’s salt and pepper hair was greasy and in disarray. Stubble covered his face, and large bags hung beneath his bloodshot eyes. He looked smaller somehow in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. Josie was so used to seeing him in suits. Shannon wore cotton pajamas. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Dark circles gathered beneath her eyes. Her nose was bright red from crying. To Josie, it seemed she had aged a decade in mere hours.

  Here she was, about to shatter them once again with her news.

  Shannon met her eyes, set her mug onto the countertop, and whispered, “Just tell us.”

  Josie stood in place, her feet concrete blocks. “We believe that Trinity was abducted by a serial killer.”

  The words hung in the air for several seconds. Then a strangled cry escaped Shannon’s throat. She clamped both her hands over her mouth, as if she were trying to stop more sound from coming out. Christian stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his face into the top of her head.

  Josie took a step forward, and with the most clinical detachment she could muster, gave them a brief summary of the reasoning behind her team’s theory that the Bone Artist had Trinity and what little they knew about him, careful not to say anything that would devastate them even more. She already knew that one or both of them would Google the Bone Artist in private, and that would be enough to ratchet up their anxiety to life-threatening levels.

  Shannon wept silently as Josie spoke. Christian remained calm until Josie finished and then leaned on his wife, sobbing. Josie watched them dissolve. Part of her wanted to go to them, collapse into their collective embrace and let all her own grief and fear loose. They were her parents, after all. But she couldn’t do that. The moment she gave in to those crushing feelings, the moment she stopped driving forward, all would be lost. Trinity needed her. Whether she wanted to be Josie’s sister or not, Josie was going to do everything she could to find her.

  After a few moments, Shannon and Christian’s tears subsided. Shannon snatched a napkin from the holder in the center of the countertop and handed it to her husband before taking one for herself. As she dabbed her eyes, she said, “You came here to tell us this?”

  “Not just that,” Josie said. “I need to look through Trinity’s things myself.”

  Christian said, “Josie, if those letters were here, believe me, we would have found them.”

  “Not the letters. She had a diary. That’s what her message said. Read my diary. Not my letters. She wrote it in shorthand, not just because she was pressed for time in the seconds she had between this guy pulling into the cabin’s driveway and coming to her car to take her, but because she was trying to tell me something. The diary—wherever it is—is written in shorthand. Whatever was in it, she didn’t want anyone to read it.”

  “Honey,” Shannon said, “There’s no diary either. We would have called you right away if we found a whole diary filled with shorthand.”

  “She’s hidden it somewhere,” Josie said.

  “Where?” Christian asked.

  Somewhere only I would know to look, Josie thought. Even as the
words filled her mind, she thought of how absurd that assertion was—Trinity had accused Josie of not knowing her at all the last time they spoke. Why would Trinity think that Josie, and Josie alone, could figure out where she’d hidden her high school diary?

  “I don’t know where,” Josie said. “I just know I have to look.”

  Christian guided her upstairs. The door to the attic, a panel with fold-out stairs affixed to it, was open. Scattered all over the long hallway were boxes. Some of them had been dumped onto the floor. Others sat open, their contents in disarray. Christian stepped over piles of clothes, CDs, paperback books, VHS tapes, shoes, and various other items. He pointed to the door of Trinity’s bedroom. Josie knew that since Trinity had moved out years ago, they’d cleaned it out so that it was basically a guest room now. Still, Josie knew that Trinity stayed in that room whenever she was home. “You can have a look,” Christian said.

  Josie stepped into the room to see that Shannon and Christian really hadn’t left any stone unturned. The mattress was off center, the drawers of the nightstand hung open, the closet door was ajar, the sheets and towels on shelves inside of it were disheveled.

  “Do you need help?” Christian asked.

  “No,” Josie said. “Thank you.”

  He left her. She spent several minutes studying every corner of the room, trying to think where Trinity would have left a high school diary. Josie took a thorough look around, even testing the edges of the wall to wall carpet to make sure there weren’t any places it peeled back, before deciding that, as an adult, Trinity wouldn’t have hidden any diary in here. In fact, the last time Trinity probably handled the diary was when she was in high school. Working on that assumption, Josie went back to the hall and began to methodically search the boxes as well as the items that Shannon and Christian had already removed from them and left scattered on the floor. She checked the compartment of every jewelry box, cosmetic bag, purse, even inside shoes. Any item that had a compartment, no matter how small, Josie deconstructed.

  She found nothing.

  Nothing except the realization that she and Trinity, despite being raised hours apart in two very different environments, and despite how different they were as adults, had had very similar tastes as teenagers. Trinity had many of the same CDs, movies, books, and even clothes that Josie had liked as a teen. Josie hadn’t been able to afford nearly as much as Trinity had collected, but she had certainly admired and enjoyed many of the same things.

  They’d both worn skinny jeans and listened to an eclectic range of music which included albums by Nelly Furtado, Jennifer Lopez, Matchbox 20, Leanne Womack, and Rascal Flatts. Tears stung the backs of Josie’s eyes as she wondered if Trinity had ever sung along with the same anthems of Josie’s teenage years, felt the same escape in Nelly Furtado’s ‘I’m Like a Bird’ and reassurance in Jennifer Lopez’s ‘I’m Gonna Be Alright’. They’d both also had the same pink and turquoise caboodle—a large plastic cosmetics case that kids their age were crazy over in the early 2000s. Josie had given her own away ages ago. With a stab of nostalgia, she opened Trinity’s to find two dried up tubes of body glitter which made her laugh in spite of the situation. She had liked most of the things that teenagers at that time liked, but she wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing body glitter. She searched the compartments, but they were empty.

  She found a silver-plated trinket box and flipped it open to find a Tiffany’s charm bracelet. Josie touched it reverently. It seemed so big and chunky now with its silver chain links and huge heart-shaped charm announcing: Please return to Tiffany & Co. Many of the wealthier girls in Josie’s school had had these. She had coveted them all through high school, but she knew they were expensive, and Lisette was hardly rich. She set it aside and moved on to a new bin of Trinity’s belongings, this one containing the movies Trinity had collected during high school.

  Shannon’s voice startled her from her thoughts. “No one even watches VHS tapes anymore,” she said, pointing to a pile of movies from the early 2000s in Josie’s lap. “I’m not even sure you can sell them on eBay as vintage. I’ll have to tell her to just get rid of them when she—”

  She broke off and covered her eyes with one hand. Josie pushed the movies aside and stood up. Gently, she pulled Shannon’s hand away from her face. “When she gets back,” Josie finished for her. “She can go through these things when she gets back. Look at these movies—these were my favorites at that age, too: Miss Congeniality, Return to Me, Erin Brockovich, Notting Hill, Shakespeare in Love.”

  Shannon smiled. “She loved to watch movies. She’d sit for hours in her bedroom and watch movie after movie. I think it was a good distraction for her.”

  Josie held up one of the tapes. “This one was my favorite. Frequency. Do you remember it?”

  “I think so,” Shannon said.

  “It was about a police detective who is able to communicate with his late father over a HAM radio during the aurora borealis. Somehow, they could talk to one another thirty years apart and change both their futures. I loved it because my dad—”

  The rest of the sentence died in her throat, choked by a sob.

  Shannon took the movie from her and placed it on the pile on the floor. She stroked Josie’s hair. “Because your dad died when you were six and you wished you could change that?”

  Josie couldn’t speak so she merely nodded. The woman who had taken her from the Paynes when she was only three weeks old had been seeing Lisette Matson’s son, Eli, on and off at the time. She returned to him after a long break-up and told him that Josie was his daughter. He had raised Josie until the age of six when he was killed. Eli had been a wonderful father—the only father Josie had ever known—and Josie had missed him terribly her entire life. It wasn’t until decades after Eli’s death that Josie found out Christian Payne was her real father. Even knowing the truth, it was difficult to think of Eli as anything but her dad.

  Shannon pointed to another VHS tape. “Erin Brockovich was Trinity’s favorite.”

  A small laugh escaped Josie’s mouth. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Josie,” Shannon said. “It’s almost eight a.m. You haven’t slept. Noah called me.”

  “He wants me to rest.”

  Shannon smiled. “And eat something.”

  “That sounds about right.” Josie knew he hadn’t bothered calling her to urge her to rest and eat because he knew she wouldn’t listen to him.

  “I’ll make you breakfast and then you can sleep. Did you find what you were looking for?”

  Josie looked at the detritus all around her. It was like a mall from the early 2000s had exploded in Shannon and Christian’s hallway. “No,” she croaked. “I don’t think it’s here.”

  She stared at the mess a beat longer before Shannon took her elbow. “Leave it,” she said. “Come down to the kitchen.”

  Thirty-Four

  Josie sat at the island countertop watching Shannon cook up an omelet. Christian sat across from Josie, laptop open, Googling the Bone Artist, his face taking on a greenish hue as he read. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea… Dad,” Josie said.

  He looked up at her, his entire face suddenly alight. As with calling Shannon “Mom”, she’d only tried out “Dad” with him once or twice before. The euphoric joy and desperate hope that washed over both their faces whenever Josie called them Mom and Dad always made her uncomfortable. It wouldn’t undo the past, nor would it fill the void her thirty-year absence had left. Josie knew this. Her entire life had been a parade of harsh truths and a nonstop roller coaster ride of even harsher realities. She just wasn’t sure the Paynes knew it. She didn’t want to be a disappointment to them.

  As if sensing her discomfort, Christian looked away and when he looked back, his expression had sobered. “I know,” he agreed. “But I have to know. I can’t help myself. More information is always better. I mean, it’s not—not for my mental state—but usually the more information I have on any particular subject, the better I feel.”

&nb
sp; “I’m kind of like that, too,” Josie said. In fact, her need to know things, to unravel mysteries and put puzzles together often put her in peril.

  “Trinity was the same,” Shannon remarked over her shoulder. “When her grandmother was sick, she researched everything there was to find about lung cancer. We didn’t think it was healthy, but there was no stopping her.”

  Christian gave a sad little laugh. “Remember, she thought you could develop a drug that would save her?” he said to his wife.

  Shannon turned the heat off on the stove. She wiped a tear from her eye. “Oh yes. That was a low point for me as a parent—her realizing that even though I was a chemist with a major pharmaceutical company, I couldn’t save her grandmother.”

  “Her realizing that her parents couldn’t save the day was the devastating part,” Christian said.

  “At least you were there,” Josie said. “A safe place for her to fall, comfort when she was heartbroken.”

  “I’m not sure we were any help to her at all,” Shannon said with a sigh. She used the spatula to transfer the omelet from the pan to a plate and set it in front of Josie. She hadn’t eaten since the night before, and still had no appetite, but she took the fork Shannon offered and dug in. She needed all the fuel she could get to continue searching for her sister.

  “Those years after Mom died were brutal,” Christian agreed.

  “So you said,” Josie said. “But she turned out just fine.”

  “Did she?” Shannon asked. “She has no friends. This past couple of months has been the roughest—even worse than early on in her career when that source fed her bad information on a story and got her kicked off the morning network show. She’s got no one but us. We thought she’d got past all the bullying and relational issues in middle and high school but maybe she didn’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Christian said. “What matters is getting her back alive.”