Cold Heart Creek: A nail-biting and gripping mystery suspense thriller (Detective Josie Quinn Book 7)

by Lisa Regan

  Moore scratched his chin, his expression pinched. “I guess I could make a call.”

  But he made no move to take out his phone.

  Noah said, “Yeah, you could make a call now.”

  Moore pointed to the ceiling. “You don’t hear that? Rain’s comin’ down awful hard. Thunder and lightning, too. My boss isn’t sending units out in this weather.”

  Josie said, “But he could have people on standby for when the weather clears.”

  Moore remained silent and unmoving. Josie saw a vein throbbing in Noah’s neck. “Maybe we’ll just call in the state police,” she said, feigning a casual tone and returning to the file in front of her.

  With a huff, Moore took out his phone and left the room.

  “What an ass,” Noah complained. “What’s up with him? He doesn’t even care that a woman is in danger right now.”

  “He’s a jerk,” Josie said. “We should go over his head. Have the Chief call his Chief.”

  “Cause that will go over well,” Noah remarked.

  Before Josie could answer, Moore stomped back into the room. “My boss is putting a search team on standby,” he said. “You happy?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” Josie said.

  Moore glared at her. She returned to the file while Noah gave Moore the rundown on what Bestler had told them.

  Moore shook his head slowly. “I thought for sure Garrett Romney killed this woman and hid her body.” He pointed to the file in front of Josie. “You’ll see in that file our case was airtight.”

  Had the case really been airtight, Garrett Romney would be rotting in prison at that second, but Josie didn’t mention this to Moore. His trip to Denton Memorial with the file was just his way of making sure they knew that his team had done everything they could to resolve the case. Someone in Lenore County didn’t want to be blamed for zeroing in solely on Garrett and not looking any further. If Maya or her family could prove that the Lenore County sheriff’s office had dropped the ball, they would have a pretty massive lawsuit on their hands.

  “Well,” Noah said. “I think it’s safe to say that Romney is exonerated. We just have to figure out who did take her.”

  “I thought she told you who took her,” Moore said.

  Josie looked up from the file. “She says it was some guy living in underground caverns in the woods. Listen, I think someone definitely took her and kept her for the last two years. She’s clearly traumatized. She’s got scars on her wrists and hearing loss from untreated ear infections. I’m just not sure…” She searched for the right phrasing.

  Before she could finish, Noah said, “We obviously have to investigate based on what she’s told us, but we’re concerned that it’s a little far-fetched.”

  Josie said, “She went missing in Lenore County and came out only a few miles north of the county line, in our jurisdiction. We’re talking state gameland, private property with hunting cabins and rural homes. While it’s a large area to search by foot, it doesn’t seem large enough for a man to be living out there for years on end without anyone reporting him—especially if he was as unkempt as she says he was. She described him as a monster.”

  Moore’s face twisted in a grimace. He scratched his temple.

  “What is it?” Josie asked.

  Moore looked from Josie to Noah and back again. “Well, the thing is that we actually do have something like that in Lenore County.”

  “Something like a monster in the woods who kidnaps women and keeps them in underground caverns?” Noah asked.

  Moore nodded and gave a little laugh. “Not the way you describe it, but there are some caverns in Lenore County.”

  “There are a lot of caverns in Pennsylvania,” Josie pointed out. “Crystal Cave, Indian Echo Caverns, Lost River Caverns.”

  “Those are tourist attractions,” Moore said. “I’m talking about caverns on state gameland property that aren’t maintained or managed by anyone. The entrance is pretty difficult to find, if I’m remembering correctly, so wildlife management doesn’t worry about them too much.”

  “Is there a man living in them?” Noah asked.

  Moore said, “Well, five minutes ago, I would have said no, but now that I’ve heard this, I’m thinking maybe there is. We’ve got this guy down in Lenore County. Everyone calls him ‘the hermit’. I’ve never seen him, but some people have.”

  “The hermit?” Josie asked.

  “Yeah, it’s a guy who lives in the woods. He doesn’t bother anyone. Like I said, hardly anyone has even seen him.”

  “Then how do you know it’s not some kind of urban legend?” Noah asked.

  “Because enough people have seen him over the years that we know he’s real. But like I said, he never bothers anyone. He’s never caused any trouble with hunters or hikers or anyone else that we know of. He probably takes shelter in the caverns. That would make sense— especially in the winter time— and would explain how he’s been able to keep largely out of sight most of the time.”

  “How old is he?” Josie asked.

  Moore shrugged. “Not sure. Some people think maybe in his fifties.”

  Noah asked, “How long has he been living in the woods?”

  “We think twenty years, maybe more. The lore around the county is that he’s a widower. The story goes that after his wife died, he walked into the woods and never came back out.”

  “Who is he?” Josie asked. “What’s his name?”

  “Don’t know. Nobody does.”

  “Then how do you know his wife died?” Noah asked incredulously.

  “We don’t. Like I said, it’s county lore. Rumor.”

  “Can you find those caverns?” Josie asked. “Take us to them?”

  “Probably, yeah. You sure this is a Lenore County case?”

  “She came out of the woods on our side of the county line,” Noah said. “So it might be our jurisdiction.”

  “But he took her, kept her, and assaulted her in Lenore County,” Josie pointed out.

  “I can get you a map, probably.”

  “Or you could do your damn job,” Noah said, unable to keep his composure a moment longer. Quickly, Josie stood and stepped between the men, facing Moore who glared, red-faced, over her shoulder at Noah.

  She snapped her fingers in his face, and he looked at her.

  “If this is a Lenore County case, your team is going to need to prepare the case for trial. Your district attorney is going to have to prosecute.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “So?”

  Noah’s chest bumped against Josie’s back. “So stop trying to get out of doing work.”

  Josie held up her hand, silencing Noah. To Moore she said, “So we need to work together. In case you forgot, we now have a killer and a missing woman out in the woods somewhere. You tell me there’s some guy living in the woods, and a woman reporting being kidnapped by someone who sounds a lot like him? It’s not that big a stretch to worry that these cases could be connected. We need to find your hermit and make sure he’s not the one who murdered the Yates couple and took their friend. I do not want another homicide on my hands and trust me, my friend, neither do you.”

  “I’m not your friend,” Moore said.

  “Fine with me,” Josie said. “We don’t need to have beers after work. I just need you to lead us to the caverns.”

  There was a brief knock at the door and then a nurse stuck her head in. “Officers,” she said. “There are a couple of people here. They said they’re looking for Maya Bestler.”

  “We’ll be right there,” Moore said.

  Eighteen

  The Bestlers stood several feet apart from one another between the nurses’ station and the elevators. Gus Bestler, as Moore introduced him, was tall and wiry, thin all over, with gray hair. He wore khaki shorts and a short-sleeved, button-down collared shirt and paced about in a pattern. Three steps toward the elevators, hands in his pockets, hands out of his pockets, three steps back to the desktop of the nurses’ station
. Josie didn’t see a wedding ring. Mrs. Bestler didn’t wear one either, Josie noted. She wondered if they’d been divorced a long time or if Maya’s disappearance had destroyed their marriage.

  Sandy Bestler stood still, but Josie could sense she was just as nervous as Gus. When Moore introduced her, she shook Josie’s hand with a slick, sweaty palm. She kept looking inside the large purse slung over her shoulder, coming up empty, and then reaching up to straighten her bangs with her fingers. Her hair was cut in a short but chic style, all the ends of her hair brushed toward her thin face, softening her pointy chin. She couldn’t decide which of them Maya looked most like but ultimately decided that she was a pretty even mix of them both.

  After introductions, Moore spoke softly to them, relating the basics of what Maya had told Josie and Noah about her ordeal, including the birth of their grandson. Gus looked stricken but Sandy’s face remained impassive. The only sign of her distress was the white of her knuckles around the black strap of her purse. “Is it really her?” Sandy asked.

  Moore glanced at Josie who stood just behind him. “Detective Quinn was able to make a comparison with her driver’s license photo. We believe it is Maya.”

  Gus’s voice trembled when he asked, “Where is she? Can we see her?”

  “Of course,” Moore said.

  Josie stepped forward and explained about her injuries, notably, her hearing loss. “You’ll have to look directly at her when you speak to her. Make sure she can see you talking.”

  “Fine, fine,” Gus said, bouncing from his heels to the balls of his feet.

  Josie and Noah led them into the room. Maya looked as though she hadn’t moved from when they had spoken with her earlier, although someone had taken the time to brush the tangles out of her hair. Her eyes widened as the five of them filed into the room. Before anyone could say anything, Gus pushed past all of them and ran to the bed. “Maya!” he cried, gathering her up into his arms. As the monitor above Maya’s head protested, her heart rate and respirations increasing rapidly, Gus sobbed, squeezing his daughter tightly. Slowly, Maya’s arms wrapped around her father’s neck, and her eyes drifted closed.

  Josie, Noah, and Moore waited near the door. Sandy hung back, standing near the foot of the bed, watching the scene unfold. She shifted her purse from one shoulder to the other and then back again. After a moment, she looked back toward the door, almost as though she wanted to leave. When she saw the three detectives lined up against the wall, she quickly turned back to her daughter.

  Gus released Maya long enough to stare into her face. He cupped her cheeks with his palms and studied her for a long moment. “It’s her,” he said. He looked over and smiled at Moore. “It’s really her.” Then he kissed her forehead and tucked her head into the hollow of his shoulder.

  With hesitant steps, Sandy walked around to the other side of the bed and took her daughter’s hand.

  “Let’s wait outside,” Josie said. “We can talk to Mr. and Mrs. Bestler after they’ve had a chance to speak to Maya.”

  Sandy emerged first, twenty minutes later, looking no less nervous, her fingers pushing her hair to and fro on her scalp. She didn’t smile when she saw them, but she walked over anyway and said, “My… my grandson?”

  “He’s fine,” Noah said.

  “I’d like to see him.”

  Noah motioned toward the elevators. “I’ll take you.”

  Moore waited until they were gone before he spoke, his ire from earlier replaced with confusion. “Why doesn’t this feel like a happy ending? It should be a happy ending.”

  Josie sighed. “There’s no such thing as a happy ending in this job.”

  “That’s pretty cynical coming from you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve seen you on Dateline.”

  Josie groaned. In her tenure with the Denton Police Department she’d caught some of the state’s most scandalous cases—some of them so shocking they’d snagged the attention of the entire nation. She’d had her reasons for participating in the press coverage, which were mostly to do with the fact that her twin sister was an anchor on one of the nation’s most famous morning magazine shows. Trinity rarely took no for an answer and had managed to wear Josie down three times already with her requests that Josie do Dateline specials. It was still difficult to get used to her notoriety.

  “Which one did you see?” Josie asked.

  Moore blinked. “Which one?”

  “There are three.”

  “Wow. I didn’t realize. I only saw the one about you being reunited with your real family. That’s why I said you sound cynical. You were separated from them at three weeks old. They think you’re dead for thirty years. Then you find one another. That’s a happy ending.”

  Josie gave him a pained smile. It was a happy ending, she supposed, and certainly not a day went by that she didn’t feel grateful to have been reunited with her real family, but what Moore didn’t understand was that they’d lost thirty years; three decades of holidays, birthdays, family vacations, memories, inside jokes. Thirty years of developing relationships. There was no getting that back. Josie and her biological parents and siblings tried hard, spending as much time as possible together, but nothing would give them that time back. Nothing would heal the wound that those thirty years had left. Even though Josie knew that her family’s pain from having lost her ran deep, her own pain felt deeper and infinitely more complicated. The woman who had stolen Josie from her family and raised her had abused her horribly and nearly destroyed her. Josie still struggled with the emotional scars that Lila Jensen had inflicted on her. She would carry those her entire life. No happy ending would fix that. Nothing would fix it. Nothing would eliminate the nightmares. She thought of the calls from Muncy prison. They didn’t matter, she decided. Nothing would fix her.

  Josie pointed to the closed door of Maya’s room. “This is a happy ending, but Maya will live with the trauma of what happened to her until the day she dies. Plus, she has a child to raise now whether she wants to or not, a constant reminder of what was done to her. That’s why this doesn’t feel like a happy ending.”

  She felt a small niggling at the back of her mind, something telling her that wasn’t the only reason, that they were missing some important piece of Maya’s story, but she couldn’t think what that might be.

  Maya’s door opened again and Gus emerged, face streaked with tears, but his smile as wide as a proud father the first time he gets to hold his child. “Thank you,” he told them, shaking both their hands and then pulling them both into hard, awkward hugs. “Thank you so much.”

  “We’re just doing our jobs, Mr. Bestler,” Moore told him.

  Gus shook his head. “I just can’t believe it. I really thought Garrett had killed her. In my heart, I believed that. We knew that he had hit her before. She wouldn’t leave him. It wasn’t a stretch to think he had done something to her. He was the only one there with her. His story was so lame. I can’t believe this. I mean, I’m glad—thrilled—that he didn’t kill her. It’s just so unbelievable. It’s a miracle, that’s what it is, a miracle.”

  He paused to suck in several deep breaths. Then he looked around. “Where’s Sandy?”

  Josie said, “She went downstairs with Lieutenant Fraley to the NICU to see your grandson.”

  His smile widened. “A grandson! I can’t believe it. I wish it wasn’t under these circumstances, but we’ll love that little baby just as much as we love Maya.”

  Josie thought of the tension that had been radiating from Sandy’s frame from the moment she’d arrived and wasn’t sure Sandy would love the baby the same way that Gus would, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she smiled and touched his arm. “I’m happy that Maya and her baby are safe and with you again, Mr. Bestler.”

  “I’m going to stay with her tonight. That’s okay, right? I can stay?”

  Moore said, “As long as it’s okay with the medical staff, of course you can stay. We’ll let you have some quiet
time. If we need to ask Maya or you folks any other questions, we’ll come by, how’s that?”

  “Yes,” Gus said. “Thank you.”

  “Well, actually, I just have one question I need to ask her,” Josie interrupted. “Then we’ll leave you in peace.”

  “Of course,” Gus said.

  Josie left Moore in the hall with Maya’s father and went inside to show Maya a photo of the black walnut necklace. She asked Maya if she’d ever seen anything like it; if the man who had taken her had ever had or made anything like it; but Maya said no.

  Nineteen

  It was well past the end of their shift by the time Josie and Noah returned to the station house, but she knew they weren’t going home any time soon. There were more leads she wanted to look into, and the paperwork they’d need to prepare after the day they’d had would take hours. Gretchen arrived a few minutes after they did for her shift, drops of water rolling off her raincoat and onto the floor as she deposited Styrofoam containers of takeout from Josie’s favorite restaurant onto both Josie’s and Noah’s desks. “I was just downstairs talking to Sergeant Lamay. He brought me up to speed—including the news about the creepy necklace. Sounds like you two had a whopper of a day,” she said.

  Josie opened the container to see creamy, delicious pasta with chunks of lobster and shrimp mixed in and swallowed the pool of saliva her mouth immediately produced.

  From his desk nearby, Mettner said, “Hey, what about me? I had a whopper of a day too!”

  Noah laughed. “Did you leave this building at all today?”

  Mettner feigned a wounded look. “I did a lot of work today.”

  “Did you deliver a baby?” Josie asked, around a mouthful of fettucine noodles.

  Mettner looked down at his desk. “Well, no, but I’ve been coordinating the search for your missing camper.”