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

by Lisa Regan

  Was it where Renee had seen Emilia? Had someone brought Emilia here? Or had she taken shelter here only to find herself in whatever hell Renee had caught herself up in?

  Josie didn’t have time to think about it. Outside the cabin, Sandoval and Rini were gone. Anxiety pricked at her. She sprinted in the direction they had set off, crashing through brush and thick vegetation until she could hear Sandoval’s voice, gently praising and encouraging her dog. Josie caught up with them just as they emerged into an open field. Ahead, they saw the Sanctuary house sitting on the crest of a small incline and beside it, the barn. Rini jogged across the field, occasionally zig-zagging. Sandoval was sure-footed behind the dog, but Josie slipped in the wet grass, falling forward onto her hands. She scrambled back up and ran after Sandoval and Rini. When they reached the house, several people stood around, staring at the dog. Some of them shrank back, away from Rini, but as Sandoval had said, the dog was in-scent. She was tracking Emilia Gresham’s scent and that was her one and only focus. Josie was one hundred percent sure that any one of the Sanctuary members could have dangled a steak in Rini’s face, and the dog would bypass it completely in search of her quarry.

  She sniffed around the house as Sandoval adjusted the lead. Then she veered off, crossing over to the barn. But then, after sniffing the door, Rini abandoned the barn and started off along the driveway, out toward the road. She weaved in and out of the parked cars along the way but didn’t stop. As they came around the front of the house, Josie saw Gretchen standing on the porch, speaking with Charlotte. The two paused in their conversation to watch Rini and Sandoval move along. Josie tried to keep pace with them while still avoiding the long leash that trailed behind dog and handler.

  Had Emilia passed right through the Sanctuary? Where the hell had she been heading? If she’d been in trouble, why wouldn’t she have stopped at the house or the barn to ask for help? Or had she known that she’d get no help here?

  Rini reached the road, where she stopped, pacing frantically and scenting the air. Finally, she stopped pacing and looked up at Sandoval. Josie knew that search and rescue dogs gave active indications when they found the person they were looking for. From her observations on previous cases, it was usually a bark. But Rini didn’t bark. Sandoval took out her puff bottle again and squeezed some baby powder into the breeze. She urged Rini in its direction, goading her down the road a bit, but Rini had none of the urgency she had had only moments ago.

  With a sinking heart, Josie already had a pretty good idea what Sandoval was going to tell her before she even opened her mouth.

  Josie said, “She got into a vehicle, didn’t she?”

  Sandoval frowned. “You know I can’t say that for certain. I can only tell you the scent stops here. Rini doesn’t lose a scent. At least, if she does, she usually regroups and finds it again. So what I can tell you is that it’s just not here.”

  Gretchen ambled over, picking up the end of their conversation. “Could all the rain we just had have washed it away?”

  Sandoval said, “I doubt it. I don’t think there’s enough run-off right here for it to have done that. Even so, Rini would still be able to pick up the scent, I’m sure.”

  Gretchen sighed and looked up and down the road. Josie turned back toward the house to see Charlotte watching, her face carefully blank. Softly, for only Gretchen to hear, Josie said, “We’re missing something.”

  “A connection to the hermit,” Gretchen said.

  “Right.”

  Emilia Gresham’s backpack had been found in Donovan’s cave and yet, Rini hadn’t even sniffed in the direction of the caverns. The dog would follow a person’s scent, not the scent of a backpack. As Deputy Maureen Sandoval had said, people carried their scent all around them like an aura, and the scent falls away from them everywhere they go. Emilia Gresham’s backpack would have her scent on it, but it would not constantly be shedding her scent as Michael Donovan carried it through the woods.

  Josie said, “Emilia Gresham went from the campsite, through the Sanctuary, out here to the road, and we are now theorizing that she got into a vehicle there. Either she was running from someone, came to the road, and flagged down a vehicle, or someone took her and brought her here and then put her in a vehicle.”

  “Maybe it was someone from the Sanctuary,” Gretchen suggested. “Someone who is no longer here. Everyone here’s been questioned more than once, but we haven’t accounted for anyone who might have left between the night the Yateses were murdered and now.”

  Josie sighed. “Right.” She looked back at the barn and driveway where several people stood staring at the three officers and Rini standing in the road. “They’ll all say that no one left or that they don’t keep careful enough track of who comes and goes to say who might have left recently. They’ll all lie.”

  Gretchen lowered her voice to match Josie’s. “You want to talk to Charlotte again?”

  Josie met Charlotte’s gaze and held it.

  “No,” Josie said. “Not yet. We need more information.”

  Thirty-Five

  Josie found Hummel in the first-floor break room. He sat at one of the tables, a takeout container open before him and a big hamburger in his hands. “Boss,” he greeted her around a mouthful of food.

  With a sigh, Josie sat down across from him. “Hummel, how many times do I have to tell you? It’s just Josie. I’m not the boss anymore, remember?”

  Hummel swallowed and grinned at her. “You’re my boss.”

  Josie raised an eyebrow. “No, Hummel, I’m not.”

  He pushed the takeout container over toward her and pointed to the French fries, indicating for her to have some. She hadn’t even realized how hungry she was until she looked at them. As if sensing how ravenous she was, Hummel said, “Have the rest.”

  He finished his burger while she polished off the fries. When they were done, he closed up the takeout container and pushed it to the edge of the table. Then he leaned in toward her. “I don’t care who’s in charge around here,” he said. “You’ll always be the boss to me.”

  Josie shook her head, but a smile spread across her face. “Thanks for the fries,” she told him.

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out the bag with the piece of rope in it. She explained where she had found it. Hummel looked inside the bag.

  Josie asked, “Do you think there’s enough there to do a presumptive blood test and have enough left over to get DNA?”

  Josie knew that a Kastle-Meyer test was a simple, quick way to figure out if the crusty substance on the rope was blood or not. All Hummel had to do was swab the stain with a cotton swab, moisten it with one or two drops of ethyl alcohol and then apply one to two drops of phenolphthalein followed by one or two drops of a hydrogen peroxide solution. If the substance on the swab turned bright pink within six seconds, they were dealing with blood. The problem was that the phenolphthalein used to do the test would destroy DNA so whenever they worked with a limited amount of a substance, they had to make sure there was enough to test for both blood and DNA. If there wasn’t enough for a presumptive blood test, she’d send the entire thing off to the state lab for a DNA test, which could take weeks or months, unless she could get it expedited, and even that was a challenge. But if there was enough to do both, and the substance was blood, she’d have something she could use to rattle Charlotte Fadden and perhaps get her to talk about whatever she was withholding from the police.

  Hummel looked up from the bag. “Let me see what I can do.”

  She opened her mouth to thank him, but Noah appeared in the doorway. “Got something for you,” he said.

  “Gresham?” she asked hopefully.

  “No,” he said. “Bestler.”

  She hefted herself up from the chair and followed him back upstairs to their desks. “What’ve you got for me?”

  Noah leaned across her and used her computer mouse to bring up a PDF document. Josie leaned forward and began to read. “Are you kidding me?” she asked.


  Noah went around to his own chair and sat, leaning back, fingers laced behind his head. “Nope. Our hermit, Michael Donovan, killed his wife thirty-three years ago. He beat her to death in their home and then served ten years in prison.”

  Josie scanned the details of the case. “He pleaded down to voluntary manslaughter. Only ten years? That’s terrible.”

  “It is,” Noah agreed.

  “This is an Allegheny County case. Pittsburgh area. So how did he get from there to Lenore County?”

  “He did his time just west of Lenore County. When they released him, he had nothing. No money, no home. Nothing to go back to. I guess he hung around for a while, told enough people a story about how his wife died, then walked off into the woods and didn’t come back. That’s where the lore comes from. He’s got a history of violence, so it’s not a stretch that he’d take Maya Bestler, or that he may have killed some or all of our recent victims.”

  “No, not a stretch.” She still wasn’t completely sold on Donovan as Renee Kelly’s killer. It seemed too coincidental that Renee was being abused, living in a state of terror on the Sanctuary, and then just happened to be killed by Donovan when she left. Still, she couldn’t deny the presence of the black walnut necklaces. Tyler and Valerie Yates and Renee Kelly had definitely been killed by the same person.

  “But this doesn’t help us find Emilia Gresham,” Josie said.

  “I know,” Noah conceded. “Speaking of that, where are Gretchen and Mett?”

  “Gretchen went home to take a quick shower. Mett’s not on shift yet, but he should be here soon.”

  Josie’s desk phone rang. She answered, had a brief conversation and hung up feeling a little better about the Gresham and Yates cases than she had minutes earlier.

  “What’s that look for?” Noah asked.

  “That was Dr. Feist,” Josie said. “She just met with Wesley Yates. He came to claim his son’s body. She told him we needed to speak with him. He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

  Thirty-Six

  Wesley Yates was a bear of a man, tall and broad with white hair tied back in a ponytail and a well-trimmed moustache and beard. He wore a plain black T-shirt and denim shorts. His arms were decorated with tattoos from wrist to shoulder. Many of them were old and faded but from what Josie could see, the theme was carnivorous animals. In spite of his size, he shuffled into the conference room where Josie, Noah and a freshly showered Gretchen waited, and when he looked up to greet them, Josie could see his brown eyes were red-rimmed from crying.

  She stood and took his large hand. “Mr. Yates, we’re deeply sorry for your loss.”

  He nodded, seeming numb while Josie, Noah, and Gretchen made introductions, offered him coffee, and waited until he was seated comfortably in one of the chairs across the table. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he muttered. “It doesn’t seem real.”

  Josie knew from personal experience just how surreal it was to lose someone you loved suddenly and unexpectedly. Her heart ached for this large man.

  “The doctor at the morgue said they were poisoned and then… strangled?”

  Gretchen said, “Yes, that’s correct. We believe whoever killed them poisoned them with hemlock found in the forest and then when they became ill, he strangled them both. I’m so sorry, Mr. Yates.”

  He swiped at a couple of rogue tears that slipped from his eyes. “I just can’t believe it. My son, he was no slouch. He could have protected Val. I don’t—I don’t understand. I guess if he was that sick… it’s just so hard to take in.”

  Noah said, “We understand. If you need a few minutes, we can come back.”

  Wes shook his head. “No, let’s get this over with.”

  Josie asked, “Did he and Valerie go camping a lot?”

  “No,” Wesley answered. “Maybe a couple of times a year. They were hoping to travel more, do more of it. Maybe go back to her country. She’s from Australia—was from Australia. Jesus.”

  He looked away from them, more tears spilling from his eyes. Josie got up and retrieved a box of tissues from the other end of the table, sliding them over to him.

  “Mr. Yates,” Gretchen said.

  “Wes,” he interrupted. “Call me Wes.”

  “Wes, we believe that someone else was camping with Tyler and Valerie. A woman. Do you have any idea who that might have been?”

  “Yeah, probably Emilia.”

  “Emilia Gresham?” Josie asked.

  “That’s right. She’s their best friend. Well, she was Valerie’s best friend since college. Emilia was married to a guy named Jack. The four of them used to do everything together. They were inseparable. Till Jack went off the deep end.”

  Josie and Noah exchanged a curious look. Gretchen stayed focused on Wes. “Off the deep end?” she coaxed.

  Wes folded his beefy hands in front of him on the table. “Yeah, he went a little coo-coo, if you know what I mean?”

  “In what way?” Noah said.

  “He wouldn’t leave the house for weeks on end. Emilia thought he was depressed. He wouldn’t do any of the usual things those four did together. Tyler said once he went over there and Jack was holed up in their spare bedroom. He hadn’t bathed for a long time. Tyler said the smell almost knocked him out.”

  “Sounds pretty depressed to me,” Gretchen said.

  Josie felt a cold shiver down her spine. She thought of how Jack Gresham had disappeared from Tyler’s photos. She hoped he hadn’t committed suicide.

  Gretchen said, “We were trying to locate Jack. So far we haven’t had any luck. We talked with one of Emilia’s sisters who had no idea that anything was wrong. She seemed to think he was working regularly and would be at their home.”

  “He’s not there,” Wes said. “He hasn’t lived there for a long time. He joined a cult, last I heard.”

  Josie sat up straighter in her chair while Gretchen leaned in closer to Wes. “Where was this cult located?”

  “I don’t know. Tyler never said.”

  “Did he mention what kind of cult?” Josie tried.

  “Nah. Are there different kinds of cults?” Wes said with a weak laugh. “They’re all bad news, aren’t they?”

  Gretchen smiled. “One could probably make that argument.”

  Josie tried a different tactic. “When did he join? Do you have any idea?”

  Wes scratched his forehead. “Oh, a while back. Couple of years ago? Could be longer. It was after he got fired from his new job.”

  “Fired for what?” Noah asked.

  “Don’t know exactly, but I know he was fired. Tyler told me.”

  Gretchen flipped open her notebook and turned back a few pages. Josie watched her run a finger down the lines of writing until she came to Jack’s employer. “This wasn’t at Cloudserv Technologies, was it?”

  Wes waved a hand in the air. “No, no. That’s the place he got laid off from. That’s what he told everyone. Never heard different. It was after the layoff he got real depressed. Then he worked at this other place a few months. After he got fired, he and Emilia had a big blowout. That’s when he left. About six months after that, he came home and told her he was leaving for good. Joining some cult—I mean, I’m sure he didn’t call it that. He probably said something else. That’s just how Tyler put it. Tyler told me that Emilia didn’t believe Jack at first but then after he was gone a few months, she went there to try to talk him into coming home. He wouldn’t hear of it. She went a few times, I guess, and couldn’t convince him. Tyler said he even went himself and joined up for a couple of weeks but as soon as it became clear he was only there to talk to Jack and try to get him to come home, they asked him to leave.”

  “Tyler went to this place and didn’t tell you where it was?” Gretchen asked.

  Wes shrugged. “Tyler’s a grown man. He—” He broke off and horror shaded his face anew as the realization hit him once more in its finality. “He was a grown man,” he added. “Oh Jesus.” He took several deep breaths, trying to compose himself.
Then he went on. “He didn’t tell me until after the fact. It was over and done with. I just figured that was it—they were going to let Jack be.”

  Noah said, “Did Tyler ever mention why Emilia didn’t tell anyone else what was going on?”

  “I guess she was embarrassed. Tyler told me what was going on, but he didn’t want me repeating it. Didn’t even want Emilia to know he’d told me. He said she was sure she could get Jack to come home and things would go back to normal, so she didn’t want anyone to know.”

  That would explain why she hadn’t told her parents or neighbors or anyone else they’d been in touch with during their search for Emilia.

  “What about Jack’s family?” Gretchen asked. “Have they been involved at all? Are they aware of the situation?”

  “Jack’s only got his mom. She was a single mother. After he was out of high school, she remarried and moved away with her new husband. They live in Georgia from what I remember. She never had much to do with him though. Came to his wedding and that was the last he heard from her.”

  Josie went back to the workplace issue. “What was the name of the place that Jack was fired from?”

  “Oh, it was Lantz Snack Factory. They make chips and stuff. He just worked in the loading docks, putting boxes onto their trucks.”

  Gretchen marked the name of the company down on her notepad.

  Noah asked, “Did Tyler and Valerie mention to you that they were going camping?”

  Wes shrugged. “Well I knew they had a vacation coming up. I hadn’t talked with them in a few weeks. I wasn’t sure what they’d decided to do. I know they were saving money to buy a house. They only live—lived—in an apartment. So they wanted to do stuff that was cheap. Camping would make sense. I never expected…”

  Again, words failed him. More tears streamed down his face. He snatched a tissue from the box and wiped his cheeks.

  Josie stood up and moved to the other side of the table. When she touched his shoulder, she could feel him shaking. Sadness gnawed at her. “Wes,” she told him. “You’ve been very helpful. We won’t take any more of your time.” She placed her business card on the table before him. “We’re going to do everything we can to find the person who killed your son and your daughter-in-law and bring them to justice. In the meantime, if you need anything, please don’t hesitate to call.”