by Regan, Lisa
Josie counted off the seconds ticking by on the upper left-hand side of the video. Four seconds passed before anyone moved again. She wondered if they were speaking to one another. The man must have spoken to them. But from the angle of the video it was difficult to see any of their faces. Finally, the man stepped closer to the couple. Codie’s husband stepped forward and held up both of his hands. Josie could tell by the way he gesticulated and the way his head bobbed that he was saying something to the man. Josie couldn’t tell if the man was speaking back because his hat was pulled so low and his hood was swathed so tightly to his head. Codie’s husband gently pushed her behind him, but she held on to one of his arms. Then the assailant reached out both hands toward the couple. Codie’s husband turned and put his back against the security gate, pulling Codie along with him. They pressed themselves against the gate but still made no move to run. Codie’s husband held his hands up as if in surrender. This was the entirety of the video that had been released to the public, Josie remembered, having watched it the other day.
For the benefit of the rest of the team, Drake said, “Now this is what the public hasn’t seen.”
The assailant’s back was to the camera, but they could see him lift the brim of his hat. Codie looked into his face, and suddenly recoiled, wrenching away from her husband, but with nowhere to go, she merely pressed her back further into the security gate until it bowed a little. Her husband’s eyes bulged and then he looked away, down toward the ground. Josie guessed the assailant was speaking to them because Codie continued to stare at him, transfixed, her mouth stretching back in a look of horror.
“I don’t see a weapon,” Mettner said. “What the hell is going on? Why don’t they run?”
“They’re too shocked,” Josie said.
Gretchen said, “Well yeah, a lot of people freeze up in situations like these.”
“It’s not that,” Josie said. “He’s not a threat yet. No weapon. There’s only one of him against two of them. There’s plenty of room for them to get away from him. It’s his face. Look at the way they’re staring at him.”
“What are you talking about?” Drake asked.
“Rewind it so you can see what happens when he lifts the brim of his hat and they get their first good look at his face. It startles them.”
Noah said, “Because there’s something wrong with his face. He’s disfigured.”
Josie glanced up at him. “Yes, I think so.”
Drake rewound the video and they all watched it again.
“I see it,” Gretchen said.
Drake said, “Disfigured like the guy who ran you off the road? You think this guy is the Bone Artist?”
Josie held his gaze. “Yes, I think this might be him. I think that he contacted Codie along with Hayden Keating. She didn’t report it because she knew the network and the FBI wouldn’t do anything with it. She thought she could play a game with this guy and save some lives. We know she didn’t save anyone’s life because Robert Ingram’s remains were found right before this happened. Probably because the Bone Artist didn’t get the press coverage he wanted. He didn’t want the game to stay between the two of them. He wants the whole world to know that he’s smart—smarter than the press and smarter than the police.”
On the screen, the couple remained still, their arms locked together, their postures stiff. Codie’s husband looked up slowly and stared at the other man’s face. Then Codie began gesticulating angrily, pointing a finger at his chest as she spoke. The assailant stepped back a little. “What is she saying to him?” Mettner asked.
This time, Josie rewound the tape. “Noah?” she asked. He leaned in and she played it again. Noah said, “Looks like, ‘you’re a… psycho… psychopath and’… play it again.” After three more attempts, Noah said, “She calls him a psychopath and a liar.”
Drake reached across their bodies and set the video back, watching it once more. “How the hell can you tell that?”
“My ex-girlfriend was deaf. She read lips. I learned to do it as well.”
“He’s pretty good at it,” Josie said.
Gretchen asked, “No one on the NYPD had this tape analyzed? Brought in a lip reader? This was a high profile case.”
“Hold on,” Drake said. As he walked off, he took out his phone, punched at it and pressed it to his ear.
“Let’s see the rest,” Mettner said, pressing play.
They let the rest of the video play. The assailant appeared to be speaking, based on the rapt attention Codie gave him. Her face fell. She said something else to him which Josie couldn’t make out. “Is she saying ‘robbery? Rob me? Why are you trying to rob me?’”
Noah played that part several more times before pausing it. “No,” he said. “I think she’s saying, ‘Bobby? What do you mean, Bobby?’”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Mettner said.
“It does if she knew this guy,” Gretchen put in. “She called him a liar which means she must know who he is.”
“But if she knows who he is,” Noah said. “Why is she so shocked by his face?”
“Because she’s never met him in person,” Josie said. “He’s the Bone Artist. I’m telling you. He confronted them, they backed away, he showed his face, they were shocked. Then he started talking, and from whatever he was saying, she knew he was the Bone Artist. Robert Ingram’s remains had just been found. She calls him a liar because he said he’d let a victim go if she played his game, and he didn’t.”
Mettner said, “So Bobby is Robert Ingram, then?”
“Seems that way,” Gretchen said. She pressed play and they watched Codie sag against the security gate behind her. She said something else that was clear to all of them: “Oh my God.” One of her hands reached to her forehead, her thumb and index finger rubbing either side of it.
Then everything went to hell.
Codie’s husband ripped his arm from his wife’s and lunged for the Bone Artist, wrapping both hands around the man’s throat. Their bodies fused in a whirling dervish of limbs until they were on the ground, rolling around, each one fighting to be on top. Nearby, Codie screamed, and that, too, was very clear. “No!” She made some attempts to pull at one or the other of them, but their struggling bodies knocked her to the ground. Then one of the men went limp and the other man stood up. Josie saw that the man left standing was the attacker.
“Is that a knife in his hand?” Gretchen asked.
Noah paused the footage and zoomed in. “Yeah, I think it is. A small one, but lethal nonetheless.”
He pressed play again, and they watched as the attacker walked over to Codie. On her back, she tried to scurry away from him, but he was too fast. Josie counted seven stabs, all delivered rapidly and efficiently, and then it was over. The assailant ran off, but the video continued. Sixteen seconds later, they saw why. He returned, patted down the husband’s pockets and then reached into one to pull out a wallet. Then he tore Codie’s small purse from her body and ran off again.
“That was not a mugging,” Mettner said. “He came back and took their things so it would look like a mugging.”
“This is why he stopped,” Gretchen said. “He was caught on camera. Part of this footage was released right after Codie died. It was all over the news.”
“Yes,” Josie agreed. “He’d never been caught on camera before this. It was a point of pride with him.”
“This shook him,” Noah said. “Big time. But we can’t even see him. The most you can get out of this video—at least the part that was released to the public—is maybe his estimated height and weight. There’s nothing identifying about him.”
“That’s not the point,” Josie said. “This is his first mistake, and it’s not in keeping with—” She broke off, the very thought of it making her stomach turn.
“It’s not in keeping with what?” Mettner coaxed.
“His work,” she choked out. “He thinks of himself as an artist. He probably doesn’t even consider himself a killer.”
“
Clearly not,” Gretchen agreed. “If he specifically wrote to the press and told them he was the Bone Artist instead of the Boneyard Killer.”
“He didn’t and doesn’t want to be associated with this,” Josie said. “This is a mess. This is not up to his standards. I think he just lost it here. He lost control. Especially when the husband went for him.”
They watched the video one more time without pausing it while they waited for Drake to return. A few minutes later, he did, holding a notebook in his hand. He read from his scrawled notes. “NYPD did get a lip reader. They said they believe that Codie called him a sycophant and a liar and that she also called him Bobby. They believed that this person knew the Lash couple. They checked out every person Mr. and Mrs. Lash knew. There were about five Roberts, but all of them had alibis for this particular evening. They didn’t have DNA or prints from the crime scene so that’s all they had to go on.”
“Not a sycophant,” Josie corrected. “A psychopath. She wasn’t calling him Bobby. She was talking about someone named Bobby.”
“Robert Ingram,” Mettner said.
“The only context the NYPD had at that time was this video,” Josie said. “It makes sense they looked for someone they knew by that name. That’s exactly what I would have done. But now, knowing what we know about Codie Lash’s contact with the Bone Artist, we have to view this in a different context.”
Drake scratched his scalp. “All right, let’s go with your theory. Codie Lash engaged this killer and she got killed. Trinity figured this all out. That’s why she asked for Codie Lash’s personal effects because she was looking for more of a connection.”
“Which she found,” Josie said. “With the comb. She used that to draw him out. She wore it during a segment and the next thing she knew, he delivered a second comb to her.”
Noah asked, “How the hell did she draw him out in the first place, though? I mean, this guy hasn’t been active for six years. It’s not like he contacted her and told her to give him a signal of some kind. How did she get his attention to begin with? She had to have had his attention before she wore Codie Lash’s comb, don’t you think? She only did one report with that in her hair. What are the odds that he just happened to be watching that report on that channel at that particular time?”
Josie said, “She had his attention months ago. The network did. Remember, Drake said that they were doing stories on cold serial cases by geographical region? At some point, assuming this guy watches network morning television—and I think we can safely assume he does given that he contacted the network morning anchors for the three major networks in 2014—he would have come across this ongoing segment. He would have watched every week because he’d be hoping to make one of the lists. He would have been insulted if he didn’t get on the list of cold northeast serial cases.”
“I agree,” Drake said. “That fits with the profile, with his thirst for attention, his desire to be admired and esteemed for his intelligence in evading capture all this time. Trinity walked right into it when she got into the argument with the correspondent. She actually used the word ‘smart’ in her argument. That would have caught his eye immediately.”
“He would be fixated on her at that point,” Josie said. “Then shortly after that she gets obsessed with the case, follows a convoluted path to Codie Lash and her hair comb.”
Noah said, “She wore that comb on the air right after she arrived here. She probably hoped it would get his attention, but then a week went by and there was nothing. Remember, she had lunch with Patrick and told him that she thought she was onto a big story and it didn’t pan out?”
“But then it did,” Josie said. “Because a matching comb was delivered to our house for her.”
Drake said, “So she figures out that Codie Lash was a part of this whole thing, gets lucky that Codie left her creepy serial killer comb in her office and someone packed it up and put it in storage, wears the creepy comb and gets herself abducted. In the process, this guy abducts some random woman from Central Pennsylvania, kills her, and leaves her in the place he took Trinity from.”
Josie said, “He had to leave a display so we would know it was him.”
Drake nodded. “I’ll buy that.”
“But why did he go off-pattern?” Mettner asked. “Nicci Webb was missing for only seventeen days before her remains were found behind Trinity’s cabin. Why didn’t he wait the full thirty days?”
Josie said, “Because Trinity’s lease for the month was almost up. She rented the cabin for thirty days. She stayed for seven. There were only twenty-one days before the landlord or the next tenant would have shown up and found her abandoned car.”
Noah said, “But he didn’t want someone to find just Trinity’s abandoned car. He wanted the whole world to know that the Bone Artist had been there.”
“Yes,” Josie said. “The staging of the remains was his signal that he was alive and well and still killing.”
“He was announcing himself,” Drake agreed.
“Right,” Josie said. “But he took Nicci Webb after he took Trinity. Had he waited the full thirty days from Nicci Webb’s abduction to staging her remains, he would have gone past the date that Trinity’s lease was up. He would have missed his window for someone to find his sick display when they found Trinity’s vehicle.”
“But the Bone Artist wouldn’t know that the cabin was a rental, much less how long the lease was,” Gretchen pointed out.
“True,” Josie said. “But it wouldn’t take much effort or research for him to find out those details. He likely researched Trinity extensively before approaching her. He knew enough about her to know that her family lives in Callowhill. I’m sure he knew she has a residence in New York City. He prides himself on being smart, remember? He’s a planner. He’s careful. He had to have done some reconnaissance before going to the cabin. It would be easy enough to check property records—or even the internet—and find out that the Whispering Oaks cabins are rentals.”
Noah said, “So he somehow figures out she’s rented the cabin. He does enough recon to know she’ll be alone there. He takes her from there. He’s either found out ahead of time that her lease was only a month long or he finds out from her after he’s taken her.”
“Right,” Josie said. “He had to plant Nicci Webb’s remains early because he didn’t have a full thirty days.”
Drake nodded. “I’ll buy that as well. Okay, we know what happened now and why it happened but how the hell does that help us find her or this killer?”
Gretchen said, “And why did Trinity write Vanessa in her car?”
Mettner said, “Why does she want you to read her diary? Presumably a diary she kept in high school if you’re right about this trail of clues you’ve been following.”
Josie closed Drake’s laptop and put her head in her hands. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just don’t know.”
Forty-Four
Hanna sat beside Alex in the courtroom. Beneath the table where they waited with his attorney, she reached over and found his hand. She squeezed it. The attorney went to the judge’s bench to discuss finalizing the plea agreement. In Alex’s ear, Hanna whispered, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
He nodded.
“You’ll have to do community service. I don’t know what that will be. The attorney said they would try to find something that would be a good fit. Maybe something outdoors.”
“I understand,” he muttered.
The attorney returned to the table with a document in hand. He told Alex to stand. The judge addressed him from across the room. “Son, this is a very serious matter.”
“Yes, sir,” Alex said.
“Your father is gravely injured and will need care for the rest of his life. I understand he has lost most of his faculties due to the head injury you gave him.”
“Yes, sir,” Alex repeated.
“But you’re only sixteen. There’s a chance that you could turn things around. Once you turn eighteen, your record will be
expunged. You’ll have a clean slate. I understand that things in your household have been less than ideal.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m also told that you are a very devoted son.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have anything to say before I rule on whether or not to approve this plea deal your attorney has worked out with the district attorney?”
Alex remembered the words he and Hanna had come up with the week before. He recited them from memory. “I didn’t want to hurt my dad.”
They had decided that Alex should call him ‘my dad’, not ‘my father.’ It made it sound like Alex had had some affection for Frances. He had, once, a very long time ago. Before he knew what Frances really was.
“He was abusive,” Alex explained.
The judge frowned. “Yes,” he said. “Your mother has scars that bear this out.”
“My mom tried to stop him. I thought he would hurt her. I love my mom very much. I was afraid for her life, so I intervened. I only meant to keep her safe, not to hurt my dad. If I could do it over again, I would have just called 911. But it was a very stressful moment. It happened so fast. I didn’t make a good choice, and I am very sorry.”
He felt Hanna squeeze his arm. The judge studied him for a long moment. Then, with a sigh, he said, “Very well. I’ll approve the plea bargain. You’ll have to perform one hundred twenty hours of community service. Rather than making you spend time in juvenile detention, I’m going to place you on probation and send you home to help your mother care for your father. She’ll need your help now more than ever.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Forty-Five
They were at a standstill. Josie’s body ached for rest even though it was the last thing she wanted to do. When she could no longer stand the dizziness and pain throbbing in her head, she asked Noah to take her home. She took a hot bath and crawled into bed. Trout climbed up next to her and snuggled up against her side. Stroking his silky back, she fell into a deep sleep, not waking until the sunlight was streaming brightly through her bedroom windows the next day. She stirred. Beside her, Trout snored, deep in the sleep of total abandon. Josie thought about getting up, but she wasn’t ready yet. Instead, she closed her eyes once more and let her mind circle all the things her team knew about the case, trying to connect the disparate elements, trying to see what Trinity had seen. She had followed Trinity’s path so far, from her becoming obsessed with a case that her lover was lead investigator on to the Codie Lash connection to… what? What was Josie missing?