by Regan, Lisa
She opened it, gasping and nearly dropping the box when she saw what was inside. “Jesus, Patrick, where did you get this?”
Noah took the box and stared at the bone-colored, French style hair comb inside of it.
Patrick grinned. “It’s not real, you guys, but from your reaction, I can tell you thought it was. Sorry, I know I should have told you first, but I had to see your authentic reaction. If you guys thought it was real in person, then the Bone Artist will think it’s real on television.”
Noah passed the box around and they each took a look inside.
Shannon’s hand shook as she handed the box off to Drake. “Pat, where did you get that thing?”
“I made it,” he said proudly.
Josie thought she might be sick. “You… made that?”
When he realized the entire room was looking at him in horror, Patrick threw his hands up in the air. “I made it with a 3D printer!” he exclaimed. “Here, I’ll show you.” He took out his phone and brought up a video he had made. Josie could see that he had edited it to show them the highlights. It showed him at his computer, using some kind of software to virtually design the comb. “The software I used for design is called Maya,” he explained. “There are a few other steps to get it to go to the printer, but you can see here, the printer uses plastic filament to create my design.”
On the screen, a time lapse showed a machine printing the comb in layers. It started with just a few lines of filament and slowly filled in and built up until the comb appeared. “That’s why I’m late,” Patrick explained. “It takes hours for the printer to actually print it out. Then I had to get a buddy of mine to paint it so it would look real and not like plastic. Then it had to dry.”
At the end of the video, another college student appeared with the plastic comb in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. Another time lapse video showed him using various brushes and paints to make the comb look like real bone.
Josie threw her arms around him. “Patrick, this is brilliant!”
She released him and took the box back from Mettner, who now held it, taking the comb out and admiring it. “I’ll use it on my right side to hold my hair back. My scar will be visible that way. It’s another way of mirroring this guy.”
She looked up to see Christian staring at his son in what could only be described as awe. In a husky voice, he said, “Good job, son.”
A teary-eyed Shannon took Patrick in her arms. Gretchen helped Josie fix the comb in her hair so that her scar was visible. At three p.m. sharp, they all shuffled outside, assembling behind the podium just as Mettner and Josie had directed, all lined up, a wall of support for Trinity. A handful of uniformed officers followed them and flanked them, adding to the display. Family, colleagues, and law enforcement. Only Monica Webb and Bobbi Ingram were out of place, but Monica’s presence would soon be explained, and Bobbi, in her tasteful coffee-colored pants suit, merely looked like a producer from the network. They had placed her beside Hayden for that reason. She could also pass as a public relations liaison for one of the branches of law enforcement or even some kind of intern. Josie was quite certain that no one in the press was going to care all that much about who stood behind Josie. Not once they heard what she had to say. A national network news anchor abducted by a serial killer? It didn’t get more ratings-worthy than that.
Josie stepped up to the thin podium and leaned into the bank of microphones the various members of the press had set up. Immediately, she began to sweat under the glare of the camera lights. Reporters shouted questions before she even began, but she cleared her throat and waited for complete silence.
“My name is Detective Josie Quinn,” she announced. “I’m a member of the Denton Police Department. Earlier this week, the remains of forty-five-year-old Keller Hollow schoolteacher, Nicci Webb were found in Denton. Specifically, they were found near a cabin which my twin sister, Trinity Payne—who most of you know as the co-host of a major network morning show and a colleague—was renting. At or around the time that Mrs. Webb’s remains were found, my sister was discovered to have disappeared. As was reported initially, her vehicle, purse, and phone were found abandoned at the cabin she had been renting. There were some personal effects missing. We’re prepared to disclose to you now that those personal effects consisted of personal notes and files Trinity had amassed while she worked on a story about the Bone Artist.
“For those of you who don’t remember or are not aware, the Bone Artist is a serial killer based here in Pennsylvania who was active between 2008 and 2014. He has been inactive, as far as we know, for the last six years. It is our belief that Trinity’s work on the piece she was preparing on the Bone Artist brought her into contact with the killer.”
A gasp rippled through the crowd. Josie kept her eyes up and straight ahead, looking into the cameras. “It is also our belief that the remains of Mrs. Webb were left at Trinity’s cabin by the Bone Artist. We believe he is responsible for her murder. Our investigation has also revealed that Trinity Payne was abducted by the Bone Artist. Here is what we know: we are looking for a Caucasian male between the ages of thirty and forty, about six feet tall with brown hair, brown eyes, and a red scar running down the left side of his face.”
Slowly, Josie traced her own face, beginning at her forehead and running her finger down her nose and to the left, over her cheek and to her mouth. “He may be driving a white Chevy pickup with front-end damage. We believe that he is holding Trinity somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania. We are actively working with the FBI to locate and apprehend him.”
Josie turned and beckoned Drake forward. She introduced him and he said a few words about the case before giving the microphone back to Josie. She stepped back to the podium and leaned into the microphones, staring out at the eyes of the cameras, her face fixed in a grim look of determination. “To the Bone Artist, I would like to say that if it takes me the rest of my life, I’m going to find you and get my sister back. I will not rest until you are caught. I will not stop. This is my life now, do you understand? I will get Trinity back. I will put you away.” She paused for dramatic effect. She could practically hear the collective silence of the reporters holding their breath. Leaning in a little closer to ensure that her words were heard loud and clear, she said, “Let the games begin.”
Then she turned on her heel and strode back into the police station, the rest of the team moving in a somber but proud procession behind her as the press shouted questions at their backs.
Fifty
Josie felt wiped out from the press conference. At home, she swallowed three ibuprofen and curled up on her couch with Trout. She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of her family moving through the house. Lisette, Shannon, Christian, Patrick, and Noah. Trinity’s face flashed through her mind. Please be alive, Josie thought. Please still be alive. I’m going to bring you home.
“Josie,” Noah said. She opened her eyes and he sat beside her on the couch, using the remote to turn on the television. “Hayden Keating is on all the networks being interviewed. He’s doing exactly what we told him to do.”
As the television flickered to life, Hayden Keating’s face filled the screen. He wore his most morose expression as he discussed that the police had many leads they could not divulge but that he believed they were very close to solving the Bone Artist case. His CL pin sparkled as he went on to highlight the high-profile cases that Josie had solved in her career, touting her as the best person for the job. Josie hated seeing his face, hated hearing Trinity’s name come out of his mouth, especially after his betrayal, but she understood that he served a valuable purpose in their manipulation of the Bone Artist. He was a means to an end, she reminded herself, and that end was getting her sister back.
A CNN reporter asked Hayden, “Does the FBI have any concerns that Detective Quinn’s personal involvement in this case could be a liability?”
“While it’s true that normally a law enforcement officer would not be allowed to assist on a case this person
al to them, the FBI believes that Detective Quinn’s unique insight into her sister and her experience solving some of Pennsylvania’s highest profile cases outweigh any negative impact her emotional connection may have to the case.”
It was complete bullshit, but Hayden sold it well.
“Do the police believe that Ms. Payne is still alive?” the reporter asked.
“That was not discussed,” Hayden answered. “But we all hope and pray that she is. Regardless, you heard Detective Quinn. She will not rest until this killer is in custody.”
The coverage went on. Noah flipped channels only to find that Hayden was on most of them. “How many interviews do you think he’s given in the last couple of hours?” Josie asked.
“At least a dozen. At least he’s towing the line. You think this will work?”
“I don’t know, but it’s our best chance.”
Trout’s head popped up when Lisette came shuffling into the room, pushing her walker. He jumped down and ran over to her, sniffing her feet excitedly. She gave him some attention and settled herself onto the couch on the other side of Josie. From the pocket slung over the front of her walker, she pulled the shorthand dictionary that Shannon and Christian had taken out of the library. Yellow Post-it notes stuck out of its pages. “I think I figured out what you were trying to draw, dear,” Lisette said.
She opened the book in her lap and flipped to the Fs, paging through until she came to page eighty-three. The first word in the first column was ‘formaldehyde’. Lisette ran a finger across to the third column and down to the word ‘free’. “Here,” she said. “Maybe she was trying to write some variation of the word ‘free’? ‘Freedom’? ‘Free her’?”
Josie studied the shorthand, studying each word in the column. “No,” she said. “Not ‘free’.”
“Are you sure?” Lisette asked. “What you drew looks like the word ‘freedom’.”
Josie studied it. Indeed it did, but she’d only seen the symbol for a second and then been concussed in a car accident and nearly abducted by a serial killer. Her brain had been understandably clouded when she’d tried to recreate the word. Besides that, why would Trinity write the word ‘freedom’? She would have known that Josie would come after her and try to free her. There was no need to telegraph that to Josie. Trinity must have had only seconds to trace that one symbol onto the passenger’s side door of the truck. How she had done it was easy to figure out. All she would have had to do was feign falling and trying to claw her way back up when the killer dragged her out of the truck. Why she did it at all still baffled Josie. How could she have known that Josie would see it?
Because she knew he was coming after Josie. She knew about the mirror killings. She knew more about the Bone Artist than any other person ever had. Josie had no idea if Trinity was still alive, but she knew her sister would have used everything she knew about the killer to convince him not to kill her. She would have talked to him—at him—relentlessly. She would have done everything possible to draw him out, engage him, get him talking.
“She knew he was coming for me,” Josie said. “Whether it was because I was her mirror or whether it was because he told her he was going to come for me, she knew. Either he moved her from one location to another and gave her an opportunity to draw this symbol on the truck or she talked him into getting her back into the truck for some reason.”
“What she wrote was a warning, then?” Lisette asked.
“I don’t know,” Josie said.
Noah looked over and pointed to the next word below the variations of ‘free’. “Freight?” he asked. “Bobbi said she was held in a shipping container. Maybe that’s what she was trying to tell you? To look for a freight container?”
Josie shook her head. “No, that’s not it.”
The next three words were ‘frequent’, ‘frequency’, and ‘frequently’.
Josie’s heart thundered against her sternum as the meaning sunk in. “Oh my God,” she said. “That’s it.”
She jumped up from the couch. “Shannon,” she yelled.
Lisette and Noah stared at her. “Josie?” Lisette said.
Josie ran to the foyer. “Mom!” she hollered. “Dad!”
Shannon came sprinting from the kitchen and Christian came running down the steps. He said, “Josie, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“I know where the diary is,” she said. “We need to go back to your house. Back to Callowhill. I need to get into the attic.”
“Right now?” Shannon said. “It’s five o’clock. I was going to make everyone dinner.”
“We’ll get a pizza on the way or something,” Josie said. “Right now we need to get to Callowhill.”
Fifty-One
Two hours later, Josie, Noah, Shannon, and Christian were deep inside the Paynes’ attic in Callowhill tearing through the boxes that Shannon had so painstakingly put back together only days earlier.
Noah used his forearm to wipe the sweat from his brow. Then he opened a new box. “What are we looking for again?”
“It’s a movie,” Josie said. “Called Frequency. You’re looking for the collection of VHS tapes that Trinity had—it will be with those.”
“I don’t understand why we have to find this movie,” Christian said from behind a pile of old clothes and purses. “Can’t you just watch it? I’m sure you can stream it by now.”
“That’s not it,” Josie said. “It has the diary. I’m sure of it.”
“How could a VHS tape have a diary?” Christian asked, a tinge of frustration in his voice.
“Just look for the damn tape,” Shannon snapped.
“Don’t snap at me,” Christian shot back. “I’m just going to say what no one else will: this is absurd. This is a wild goose chase.”
Shannon stood up straight from where she’d been leaning over a box, riffling through it. She glared at her husband. “Shut up, Christian. Just shut up. Just do what we ask.”
He froze, a cosmetic bag in hand, and shot a dirty look right back at her. “Shan, this is ridiculous. No offense, Josie, but I think this is going nowhere.”
Josie had never seen Christian this way—frustrated to the point of lashing out—but now she could see where the tension between him and Patrick stemmed from. She could also see where both she and Trinity got their punchier sides. She said, “I don’t need you to think it’s going somewhere. I just need you to help me look.”
Shannon pressed a hand to her chest. “I trust our children, Christian. If Josie says she needs that tape, she needs it.”
Wordlessly, he bowed his head and resumed searching. Five minutes later, Noah yelled, “Got it!”
He held the tape in the air. Josie jumped up and ran across the attic, leaping over the mess of items her parents had left all over the floor. She tore the tape from Noah’s hands and turned it over so she could see the base where the tape slid out. The black plastic piece was there, just like all the other VHS tapes had, except when she tried to slide the tape out, it wouldn’t budge. She ran a nail inside the edge of the cardboard and dislodged the plastic. It flipped out—not attached to a tape, just taped to the inside of the box. Josie pulled the piece off and shook out a small brown book.
“Holy shit,” Noah said.
Josie opened the cover and it nearly fell off in her hand. Inside, the lined pages were filled with Trinity’s shorthand, scrawled in black ink. Josie thumbed through them. “Wow,” she said.
Noah said, “That’s going to take forever to get through.”
Christian walked over and picked up the discarded cover, reading the back of it. He looked up at Josie. “How did you know?”
Josie clutched the diary to her chest. “If you had a chance to go back in time and change something, would you?”
Tears welled in Christian’s eyes. He put out a hand and Shannon stepped up to his side to take it. “You know what we’d change, Josie. You would have stayed with us. We never would have been separated.”
Just like that, Josie knew the wors
t thing that had ever happened to her sister. Cradling the diary, she said, “I need to get this to my grandmother.”
* * *
They drove back to Denton. Lisette had the coffee ready and the kitchen table cleared. She and Josie sat side by side, Josie with a blank notepad and Lisette poring over the diary. Occasionally she had to look something up in the dictionary. Slowly, she began to read the pages out loud.
Vanessa:
Mom and Dad made me see this stupid therapist. They think I’m all crazy and psychotic because I told a couple of the girls at school that you were real. I mean, you were real. You’re just dead now, like Nana. But it’s not like you were never here. I like to think you’re out there somewhere, looking over me, the same way Nana promised she would be. Maybe you two are together now. Anyway, the dumb old therapist made me write these letters to you except that she wanted to read them. Holy invasion of privacy. I wrote them but I didn’t write what I was really thinking or what I really want to say to you. If you were here with me, I’d tell you everything. We’d stay up late at night and talk about everything. We’d always be together. Things would be better. That’s the thing Mom and Dad and Dr. Who Cares What Her Name Is don’t understand. I know they think I’m really messed up. They say I have an unhealthy fixation on you. But am I really supposed to pretend that my life would have been this shitty if you were still alive? I don’t believe that. If you were here, I’d at least have one friend. Sometimes I need to imagine that you’re here or that maybe you still exist in spirit or in some other dimension or whatever. Sometimes I need to think you can hear me or else I’ll go crazy for real. No one knows what it’s like for me. What it’s really like. Being alone all the time. Picked on, teased constantly.
“Stop,” Josie choked out. A sob rose in her throat. I was here the whole time, she wanted to tell her fourteen-year-old sister.