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

by Lisa Regan

  Josie took out her GPS unit. “We’re on the Denton side,” she told him. “I’ll call our guys.”

  Noah walked over. “There’s a bunch of stuff in that upper chamber. We should have Hummel and his team come out and see if they can find Maya’s prints or anything else connecting her to this guy and these caverns. That will strengthen the case against him. Plus, if there’s anything in there to indicate he had something to do with Emilia Gresham’s disappearance, the ERT will find it.”

  Josie pulled her phone out. No bars. She climbed over two tree trunks, moving away from the hidden entrance to the caverns toward the stream, checking her screen periodically until she reached a place where she had service. A thrill of excitement ran through her when she saw two bars on her phone. She punched in Hummel’s cell phone number and, after a long discussion and comparison of GPS coordinates, they agreed to meet on the nearest road. Josie and her team would walk the hermit out to waiting patrol cars and then one of them would walk Hummel, his team, and their equipment back out to the caverns.

  Hanging up, she turned back toward the caverns to see Noah standing there. For a moment, in his tactical gear, with his tousled brown hair blowing in the breeze, and his face steeped in concern for her, he took her breath away. He took a step toward her, reached up and brushed her hair out of her face. He touched two fingertips to her forehead.

  “Ow,” Josie said, backing away.

  “You’ve got quite a bruise there,” he told her. “In the shape of your headlamp.”

  “He got me pretty good,” Josie replied.

  “He jumped from the upper chamber. Saw us, took a few running steps and jumped right into the darkness.”

  “I know. He landed on my back.”

  He looked her up and down. “You okay?”

  “What do you think?”

  He gave her a wry smile. “I know what your answer will always be, but I’m asking you as your live-in boyfriend right now: are you okay?”

  She looked up at the canopy of trees, heard the wind rushing through them, saw birds flitting about, looking for cover from the rain, and breathed in humid air. “Yeah,” she said. “I think I am.”

  They walked back to where Moore and Nash were maneuvering the hermit over the rocks and fallen tree trunks. He struggled against them, demanding to know where they were taking him.

  “You’re under arrest,” Josie said. “For the abduction and assault of Maya Bestler.”

  He froze completely for a moment. Something explosive passed over him like a shadow. Rage flashed in his eyes. A vein in his forehead pulsed. Then he was still again, his face impassive.

  Josie recited his Miranda rights.

  “I want a lawyer,” said the hermit.

  Silence. Josie and Noah exchanged a curious look. They hadn’t even gotten him to the station yet, and he was already requesting an attorney. They weren’t going to get anywhere with this guy.

  “What’s your name, sir?” Moore asked him.

  “I want a lawyer,” he repeated.

  Noah sighed and said, “Let’s just go.”

  Moore and his colleague began hauling him along through the forest with Josie guiding them using her GPS unit.

  “I want a lawyer,” the hermit said once more, in response to nothing.

  Twenty-Seven

  Two hours later, Josie leaned back in her desk chair and pressed an ice pack to her forehead. She closed her eyes, listening to her colleagues move around the room. She could still feel the cool air of the caverns, the sense of dizziness and panic at looking up at the ceiling and seeing nothing but blackness. The man falling on her back, knocking her to the ground. Her eyes snapped open again, focusing on her present surroundings. The other desks were empty. Gretchen and Mettner were out working the Yates/Gresham case.

  Noah appeared beside her and placed a cold bottle of water and a steaming mug of coffee on her desk. “You need to stay hydrated,” he explained. “But I know you need coffee.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re awesome.”

  He grinned at her as he plopped into his own desk chair across from her. “Awesome enough to be able to keep my toaster oven?”

  Josie laughed, the movement hurting her forehead. She put the ice pack on her desk. “Don’t push it. We’ll talk about that later.”

  Noah said, “The hermit has been printed. We’ve asked the State Police to expedite running his prints through AFIS.”

  “Which will only tell us who he is if he’s already in the system,” Josie said.

  Noah shrugged. “It’s worth a try. I called the public defender’s office. They’ve got a local lawyer taking cases pro bono. They’ll get in touch with him and send him over as soon as they can.”

  “Which could be hours,” Josie said. She sniffed the air. “I think I can still smell him.”

  “You can,” Noah said. “The entire floor downstairs smells like him.”

  “The whole building is going to stink, at least until his lawyer gets here and we can get him booked and moved to Bellewood for processing. Fabulous.”

  “We’ve got time,” Noah said. “You could go home and get a shower.”

  “And come back here only to get the smell stuck to me again? No thanks. I’ll work on the reports.”

  Her cell phone danced on the desk. She pulled it toward her and saw the words SCI Muncy flash across the screen. Stomach turning, she sent it to voicemail.

  “Everything okay?” Noah asked.

  She nodded.

  “Who was that?”

  “Wrong number,” she mumbled, pulling her chair closer to the desk and straightening her posture, ready to peck away at her keyboard.

  Noah opened his mouth to speak again but Josie’s desk phone rang. She snatched up the receiver. “Quinn.”

  Hummel’s voice came over the line. “Boss, we got everything we could get from the caves. I’ve got some stuff you’ll want to see. I’m down in the conference room.”

  “Meet you there,” Josie said and hung up.

  Noah followed her to the first floor, where the overpowering stench of the hermit was even stronger. “Glad we didn’t eat yet,” Josie muttered as they filed into the conference room and closed the door.

  Hummel stood at the head of the long table, presiding over several paper evidence bags which he had spread out on the table’s surface. He slid the largest bag toward him and, with gloved hands, took out a purple backpack. He set it on the table and turned it so that Josie and Noah could see the straps. Along one of them, in black magic marker, Josie read: E. Gresham.

  Her heart did a double tap.

  “Jesus,” Noah said.

  Hummel unzipped the bag and took out the items inside: a few T-shirts, bras, pairs of shorts, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, tampons, hairbrush, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a phone.

  “We have to go back,” Josie said. “She could be in those caves.”

  “She’s not,” Hummel said. “We searched. She’s not there. We also didn’t find any blood. I used the luminol in there. Nothing. We also checked in and around the caverns for any possible recent graves. Nothing.”

  “He could have strangled her. She might still be there. We need dogs,” Josie said.

  Noah said, “The Alcott County sheriff’s K-9 unit is supposed to meet Gretchen out near the campsite today if the rain stops. We’ve still got a couple of hours of daylight. They’re not taking the dogs out in these storms. We shouldn’t even have been out there.”

  Hummel packed the backpack up again and placed it into the evidence bag. One by one, he pulled the other items out of the various evidence bags. Water bottles, pots, pans, lighters, men’s T-shirts, a small soft cooler, first aid kits, folding knives, a compass, several coils of nylon rope, lanterns, flashlights, even a camping chair. None of it was marked the way the backpack was. Based on the book and backpack, Emilia Gresham was someone who routinely marked her possessions with her first initial and last name.

  “You’ll need to print that stuff,�
� Josie said. “See if you can get Maya Bestler’s prints from anything so we can link her to the cave.”

  “We have her statement,” Hummel said. “Her map of the caverns. Hell, we even have her baby.”

  Josie touched Hummel’s arm. “This guy lawyered up before we even got him to the car. He’s going to mount a defense. We need to have every base covered. It makes the district attorney’s job easier, so please, just do it.”

  Hummel sighed and gave a half-hearted shrug as he gathered his evidence bags back up. “Fine,” he said. “Whatever you say, boss.”

  “Hummel,” Josie said before he left. “Check any rope you found for DNA. Maya had ligature scars on her wrists.”

  He nodded.

  “Also, did you find any black walnuts in the caverns?”

  “Nope,” he said. “None.”

  Josie and Noah walked back up to their desks. “What do you think?” Noah asked. “The hermit crept through the woods, poisoned the campers, murdered them, ransacked the site, and made off with Emilia?”

  “I just don’t know,” Josie said. “The caverns are almost ten miles from the campsite where Emilia Gresham went missing, although I suppose he could have traveled by boat up and down Cold Heart Creek.”

  “Maybe,” Noah said. “But he’d have to drag that boat to the main creek. The tributary near his caverns wasn’t full enough for that boat.”

  “True,” Josie agreed. “I just thought we’d find Emilia Gresham, or some significant signs of her presence… more than a backpack.”

  “He took her somewhere else then.” Noah suggested.

  “We need to send units down there to search around the caverns,” she said. “The moment the rain stops or even slows.”

  Noah made a few calls while Josie thought about the big picture. When he hung up, she said, “Why did he take Emilia’s backpack but not Valerie’s? They had virtually the same things in them.”

  “Maybe she brought it with her,” Noah suggested. “He poisoned the Yates couple, killed them, threatened Emilia, forced her to come with him, and she brought her backpack with her. She had a phone. Maybe she thought she could make a call at some point.”

  “But he worked so hard to conceal Maya Bestler and keep her captive. Why would he risk letting Emilia bring a phone with her to the caverns?” Josie asked.

  “Well, I would think that kidnapping a grown woman is a little stressful. Maybe he wasn’t thinking that clearly and just took the backpack away from her once they reached the caverns,” Noah argued.

  “So then why didn’t he keep her in the caverns?”

  They both knew the answer to that but neither of them said it. Josie’s desk phone rang again. This time it was their desk sergeant letting them know that the hermit’s lawyer had arrived. Josie and Noah trudged back down the steps to the first floor. When they turned down the hallway toward the interrogation room, Josie froze in place. Noah bumped against her back. “What is it?” he asked. Then he looked toward the end of the hall where Denton’s premier criminal attorney, Andrew Bowen, stood wearing a sharp suit and carrying a briefcase.

  “Shit,” Noah said.

  Josie turned to him. “What are you worried about? You’re not the one who sent his mother to prison for life.”

  “No,” Noah said. “But I’m dating the person who did.”

  Lila Jensen was suddenly creeping into every facet of Josie’s life. First the calls, then the nightmares, followed by the dark enclosure of the caverns reminding her of how Lila had kept her in a closet, and now the return of Andrew Bowen. A year and a half earlier, Lila Jensen had come back into Josie’s life after a prolonged and blessed absence, digging up a decades-old murder case which Josie had solved, sending both Lila and her accomplice—Andrew Bowen’s mother—to prison. The case had also unearthed some pretty ugly secrets relating to Andrew’s family’s past, none of which he had been happy to find out about. He was a criminal defense attorney, so he was at the police station often, but he always reserved his nastiest glares and most cutting remarks for Josie.

  Today was no different.

  As Josie and Noah reached him, he sneered. “I should have known. You. What kinds of outlandish crimes are you trying to pin on the innocent now?”

  Josie crossed her arms over her chest and glared right back at him. She stated only the facts, nothing more, running through all they had learned in the last twenty-four hours about Maya Bestler and now Emilia Gresham.

  Andrew Bowen’s mouth was a thin straight line as he listened to her recount everything. Then he said, “Who has talked to him?”

  “No one,” Noah said. “He asked for an attorney right away.”

  Looking skeptical, Bowen said, “None of you have talked to him yet?”

  “Other than to read him his Miranda rights, no,” Josie said.

  “You don’t even know his name. How can you charge him?”

  Josie said, “If you can point us to another man living in underground caverns in Denton who kept Maya Bestler prisoner and impregnated her, we’ll be happy to direct our investigation to him instead.”

  Bowen’s face flamed red. He pointed a finger at her face. “Don’t think for one second I’m going to let you get away with your usual bullshit.”

  Josie felt Noah move behind her to step toward Bowen, but she put up a hand to hold him in place. To Bowen she said, “What bullshit is that? Doing my job?”

  Bowen’s finger jabbed the air in front of Josie. “You’re not pinning every single thing going on in this town at this moment on my client. That’s what I’m telling you.”

  Before Josie could respond, Noah growled, “Don’t come into our station house thinking you’re going to bully us. The evidence is what it is. You worry about your job and we’ll worry about ours.”

  Bowen lowered his arm and then smoothed down the front of his suit jacket. “You’re on notice,” he muttered.

  Noah started to speak again, but Josie elbowed him lightly to silence him. She could feel the anger radiating off his body. There was no point in antagonizing Bowen any further.

  Bowen said, “I’d like to talk to my client.”

  “Of course,” Josie said.

  “Right this way,” Noah said, walking past him to lead the way to the room holding the hermit.

  As they reached the door, Bowen looked around the hall, wrinkled his nose and asked, “What is that smell?”

  Noah smiled. “That’s your client.”

  Twenty-Eight

  While Bowen went to meet with the hermit, Josie and Noah headed to the hospital, dropping in on Baby Bestler in his tiny bassinet, swaddled in a white hospital blanket with a blue knit cap on his little head. He slept peacefully. They watched him for several minutes before one of the nurses came out to speak with them. Noah flashed his credentials. “How’s he doing?”

  The nurse smiled. “He’s doing great. No issues.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Noah said, his gaze returning to the baby.

  Josie asked, “Has his mother been to see him or asked for him?”

  The nurse nodded. “She was here this morning to see him. Her parents too.”

  “Did she hold him?”

  “Oh, yes. But she seemed very tentative. Like she was afraid she was going to hurt him. Her parents were trying to reassure her. It was very sweet, actually.”

  “Has she picked out a name?” Noah asked.

  “No, not yet. Not that she’s told us,” the nurse responded. For a long moment, the nurse watched Noah gaze at the baby. Then she and Josie spoke simultaneously. The nurse asked, “Would you like to hold him?”

  Josie said, “We should get upstairs and talk to Maya.”

  Noah answered the nurse as though Josie wasn’t even there. “I’d love to,” he said.

  Josie wasn’t sure that this was protocol, but she didn’t say anything. Noah disappeared into the nursery with the nurse, leaving Josie standing there, open-mouthed. She gathered her composure and turned away from the window. She wasn’t sur
e she could bear to watch Noah cuddle Baby Bestler. Her fingers punched the elevator’s up button vigorously until it dinged, sending a wave of relief through her. She went up to the fourth floor to see Maya Bestler. The room was dim again. Maya rested in her bed, looking much better than she had the day before. She had obviously showered. Her brown hair was clean, dry, and combed. Her cheeks were rosy pink, and she now wore a pair of pajamas of which Josie could only see an oversized black T-shirt that said Let Me Sleep in white letters. Her father snoozed next to her in one of the visitor’s chairs. No sign of her mother, Sandy.

  Maya saw Josie peeking her head around the doorway and beckoned her inside. Josie walked up to the side of the bed opposite Gus Bestler and made sure to talk directly into Maya’s line of sight. “How are you?”

  Maya smiled. “Better.” She looked down at her shirt. “My dad brought me some pajamas.”

  Josie smiled. “Those are way better than the hospital gowns.”

  Maya nodded. She pointed to Josie’s forehead. “What happened?”

  Josie touched the circular bruise which still ached. “I fell while wearing a flashlight on my head. I’m fine. I heard you saw your baby today.”

  Maya’s smile widened. “He is beautiful. Thank you again for bringing him into the world safely.”

  “Just doing my job,” Josie said. “Speaking of which, I have some news.”

  Maya stiffened. Her blue eyes grew wide. “What news?”

  Josie motioned toward Gus. “I think your dad might want to hear this as well.” She waited while Maya nudged her father awake. Josie reintroduced herself. When he was fully alert and standing beside his daughter, her hand in his, Josie looked into Maya’s face and told her they had arrested the man they believed had abducted and held her.

  A visible shudder worked its way through Maya’s body. Gus reached up with his free hand and stroked her hair. “It’s okay, Maya,” he said, although Josie didn’t think she could hear him. “You’re safe now.” He turned toward Josie. “Who is he? What’s his name?”

  Josie jammed her hands into her pants pockets. “We don’t know yet. He won’t talk. He immediately asked for an attorney. But we’re certain he’ll disclose his identity to his attorney. We did take fingerprints in the event that he is in the system.”