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

by Lisa Regan

  Josie looked from Lila’s ravaged face back to Shannon and Lisette again. Lisette’s gnarled hands drew Shannon’s face to hers. They pressed their foreheads together. Tears glistened on both their cheeks. They spoke softly to one another and then they both laughed quietly. Not the kind of laughter that came from finding something funny but the kind that had to come out just to break unbearable tension. The kind that came from trying hard just to breathe beneath the weight of something heavy and horrible, if only for a few precious seconds. The kind that came when nothing was funny—not even a little bit—and because nothing was funny. It was humanity clawing its way out of hell, demanding optimism that didn’t yet exist.

  Josie felt a yearning break open inside her, tugging at her like the earth’s gravity. Away from Lila, back toward the people who loved her. Back toward the light. Josie had seen what happened when a person embraced their darkness. She’d been on the receiving end of it for years. She didn’t need more darkness. She wanted to stay in the light, where she could help people. Charlotte was wrong, Josie realized. Her power came not from killing Lila but from helping put people like Lila behind bars where they couldn’t hurt others ever again. She could hold onto her light and her power, and Lila couldn’t take that away from her—in life or in death.

  With her free hand, she reached down and smoothed the hair away from Lila’s forehead. “M-mom,” she choked out.

  A smile spread across Lila’s face. She pulled Josie down closer and said, “You’re a good kid, JoJo.” Then she released Josie’s arm and drew her last breath.

  Fifty-Nine

  A week later, Josie returned to her desk at the station house only to find it piled high with paperwork. She fished through it as Chief Chitwood passed by her desk. “That’s the Bestler crap,” he said. “Put it in some order so we can get rid of it. It’s a closed case.”

  She wanted to tell him that he could have done that himself, but he was already in his office with the door slamming shut behind him. Gretchen appeared beside her with a coffee and a cheese Danish.

  “You’re the best,” Josie said with a smile.

  “I’ll help you,” Gretchen told her.

  They began thumbing through reports and photos, maps and statements, organizing everything. “Did the DNA come back on Bestler’s baby?” Josie asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Gretchen said. “But it wasn’t a match to Michael Donovan.”

  Josie looked up. “The hermit wasn’t the father?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did they figure out who?”

  Gretchen said, “Nope. They ran it through the database. Didn’t get a hit.”

  Josie shook her head. It didn’t matter now. They no longer needed to solve the mystery of the baby’s paternity. There was no case. The baby was safe and being raised by Maya’s parents. Of course, Josie had her suspicions but thus far, she hadn’t been able to prove a damn thing.

  “Do you have the section of the file with the photos?” Gretchen asked. “I need to put these photos in there with the rest of them.”

  Josie riffled through the folders in her hands. “Yes, right here.”

  She took the stack of photographs Gretchen held out to her. They were of Maya Bestler when she was examined at the hospital and had been taken to document her injuries. Josie went through them, grimacing at the lacerations on her feet. She stopped at the photos of the scars on Maya’s wrists. Josie had had similar marks on her own wrists after a few days in Jack and Charlotte’s custody, although she’d been told by the doctor they wouldn’t leave permanent scars. She kept going until she came to a photo of a bruise on Maya’s right hip. The skin next to it, where her abdomen began, was stretched and loose from her pregnancy. Josie was about to put it back into the pile when a small line of scar tissue caught her eye.

  “Gretchen,” she said.

  “Yeah?” She walked over and put her reading glasses on, looking at the photo over Josie’s shoulder.

  Josie pointed to the lines of thick, lumpy skin that stood out from the depressions of the stretch marks surrounding it. “What does that look like to you?”

  Gretchen studied it for a long moment. “Well, the skin is really stretched out but I think it looks like a C and a backwards C.”

  Josie shot out of her chair, heart pounding. “I need that list of properties still in Charlotte Fadden’s mother-in-law’s name.”

  “You got it, boss,” Gretchen said, moving around to her own desk and shuffling papers around.

  “And call the lab, would you? See if they got any results on that piece of rope I found in the Sanctuary cabin. Also, have them run Baby Bestler’s DNA through CODIS again. This time, they should get a hit.”

  Sixty

  “I want to go in alone,” Josie said.

  “Absolutely not,” Noah protested.

  The team, which consisted of Josie, Noah, Mettner, Gretchen, and Lenore deputies Moore and Nash, stood at the foot of a long, paved driveway in lower Lenore County. It was a half-mile long, by Josie’s estimate, and the house at the end of it, a squat rancher with tan siding, was almost entirely obscured by tall evergreen bushes. The property was well-kept, and Josie knew from the records it consisted of six acres. Most of those acres were in the woods behind the house.

  “She’s almost completely deaf, remember?” Josie said.

  “You don’t know who else might be in there,” Noah pointed out.

  “I’ll have my radio on.”

  “No,” Noah said.

  “We’ll move the perimeter closer to the house,” Moore suggested.

  “Right outside the house,” Noah said. “That’s the only way you’re going in alone, Josie.”

  Josie rolled her eyes. “Fine, but stay out of sight. She’s not going to tell me anything if she sees what looks like a damn SWAT team waiting outside for her.”

  Gretchen held out a bullet-proof vest to Josie. “Let’s do this.”

  They crept up toward the house, moving in columns on either side of the driveway. Once past the bushes, they fanned out, staying low and running until they reached the sides of the house. No vehicles were visible although there was a detached garage with its doors closed. Josie, gun holstered, walked casually up to the door and knocked. She waited several minutes and knocked again. Then she jiggled the doorknob.

  “Josie,” Noah hissed. “You can’t just go in there.”

  “I can if I think someone is in danger,” she said.

  The knob twisted in her hand and the door swung open. “Hello?” Josie called.

  There was no answer but Josie heard the sound of a woman crying.

  Josie signaled to the team to move in behind her but quietly. She walked into a sparsely furnished living room with plain white walls. A brown couch with a standing lamp beside it sat along one wall. A purple fleece blanket was crumpled on one end of the couch. The place looked unlived-in and impersonal. Josie kept walking. Next was a dining room with an old wooden oval-shaped table and six matching chairs pushed beneath it. Again, there was no evidence that the room had been used recently.

  Beyond that was the kitchen, decorated in cheery yellow colors with gray tile. Maya Bestler stood in front of an island countertop. She wore a form-fitting black cotton top and khaki shorts. Her hair was in disarray; her face pale; eyes wide. Both her hands were fisted and pressed up under her chin. She looked up as Josie came closer. Her face filled with shock or relief, Josie couldn’t tell which.

  “Maya,” Josie said, taking care to look right into Maya’s face. “Are you here alone?”

  Maya turned her body and jerked her head toward the area behind the island countertop. Josie’s heartbeat picked up. She noted the bowls and utensils on the counter as she moved slowly past it. One bowl was overturned, its soupy liquid congealing on the countertop. A spoon lay a few inches away. The next thing she saw were a pair of feet on the floor. Her eyes moved from the bare feet to the man’s face. His eyes bulged over a pale face and blue lips. Froth and vomit leaked from his mouth, d
own his neck and onto the floor beneath him.

  Josie knelt and pressed two fingers to the hermit’s throat.

  “He’s dead,” Maya said.

  She was right. Josie could tell from his glassy, vacant stare, but the first responder in her had to check for a pulse. As she stood, she saw Noah, Gretchen, and the rest of the team crowding in the doorway, silent. She gave a little shake of her head, willing them to stay there for a moment. She stood back up and looked at Maya. “What did you give him?”

  Maya’s voice was a barely audible squeak. “Foxglove.”

  Josie nodded. “This was the first time you gave him foxglove, wasn’t it? He didn’t take you, did he?”

  Maya shook her head.

  “Want to tell me who did?”

  “You already know, don’t you? Or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I do,” Josie said. “Tell me, did Jack take you by force or did you go willingly?”

  Maya didn’t answer.

  Josie moved closer and pointed to the scars on Maya’s wrists. “You made a pact with Jack, didn’t you? You helped him.”

  A little bit of air seemed to go out of her. “Yes,” she breathed.

  “You met at the charity benefit,” Josie said. “Jack became fixated on you.”

  “He talked to me. Began stopping by where I worked for lunch every day. We had a connection.”

  “Then he started talking to you about the Sanctuary.”

  “Yes. He wanted me to come with him, and I wanted to go but I knew Garrett would kill me. I told him that. I told him I’d tried to leave Garrett many times, but I couldn’t. He really would kill me. Jack came up with this idea.”

  “You staged your kidnapping,” Josie said.

  “No, Jack staged it. It was all his idea. I didn’t actually think he would go through with it. But he did. Then I was at the Sanctuary. It was wonderful. I kept waiting for the police to show up or for Garrett to come after me, but they didn’t. I felt so at peace there for the first time ever. When Charlotte asked me to make the commitment, it was a no-brainer.”

  “You didn’t worry about your family? They thought you’d been murdered,” Josie said.

  A tear rolled down Maya’s cheek. “I felt bad about my dad. For sure. I thought about him every day. But I didn’t feel bad at all for my judgmental bitch of a mom. She was probably glad to be rid of me.”

  Josie thought Maya had misread Sandy Bestler, but she didn’t bother to correct her. “If it was so wonderful, why leave?”

  “Because of Jack. Sort of. The Sanctuary is all about balancing your inner self. Light against dark. Dark against light. Well, really it’s about finding your dark side, I guess.”

  “Because you’re all victims?” Josie said, unable to keep the note of sarcasm out of her voice.

  “But we were all victims,” Maya said earnestly. She pointed at her own chest. “Especially me, and when I got there and started helping Jack, I realized I was just being victimized all over again. He just wanted to act out his sick fantasies on me.” She held up her wrists. “And it was okay because I consented to it.”

  “But it wasn’t okay,” Josie said.

  “I didn’t like it,” Maya admitted. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t what I signed up for. I went along with it because I was kind of in love with him, but he changed. He became harder, colder, and me? I never got to find my own darkness. It was all about him and his impulses and him finding his power.”

  “I found a piece of rope in one of the cabins,” Josie said. “DNA showed that it was your blood on it.”

  “Yes, that’s where he would take me to act out his… scenarios. He tried to give me this necklace he made—a leather band with a walnut on it. A black walnut. He liked it because it was kind of heart-shaped when you split it open and looked inside. Also, he said there was something about the roots of the tree it came from. Something they gave off. It was toxic, like him, he said. But his love for me balanced it out. Some weird stuff like that.” She gave a nervous laugh. “He wanted me to wear it while we… did things. It was a gift, he said. Like tying me up and having sex while he strangled me half to death was so romantic. I don’t think it was ever love for him. I think it was some twisted desire. ’Cause I know that eventually he started acting his fantasies out with some other girl there too. He always said he didn’t really like her, but it didn’t stop him from being with her. Anyway, things with him could get rough sometimes.”

  “I know,” Josie said. “That girl’s name was Renee Kelly. After you left, he murdered her. The medical examiner pulled a black walnut necklace out of her throat.”

  Maya’s eyes widened. A hand flew to her chest. “Oh Jesus.”

  “When things got bad with Jack, why didn’t you just leave?” Josie asked.

  “Because I had made a mess of things, hadn’t I? I couldn’t just waltz back into the world and tell everyone I faked them out. But I did try to leave a few times. I mean I got so far and then I chickened out.”

  “The break in the fence,” Josie said. “Did you do that?”

  “No. A tree fell there, but I used it to get on and off the property without anyone realizing it. Well, until I met Michael.”

  She glanced past Josie to where the hermit’s body lay on the tile.

  Josie caught her eye again. “He didn’t force you back to his cave, did he?”

  “No,” Maya said softly. “I didn’t even go there at first. We just started to meet up sometimes in the woods. He was so… fascinating.”

  Josie thought about how little Michael Donovan had said even after saving her and Emilia. How he wouldn’t answer any questions. Under other circumstances, perhaps his mysteriousness would have held some allure. Maybe not to Josie but to someone like Maya, trapped and looking for a way out that didn’t involve her returning to civilization.

  Josie couldn’t believe the words were coming out of her mouth, but she said, “You had an affair.”

  Maya nodded.

  “But you were already pregnant with Jack’s child.”

  “How did you know that?”

  Josie pursed her lips and then said, “DNA. Michael Donovan was already in the system because he killed his wife many years ago. Jack wasn’t in the system until he was arrested for murder and for kidnapping me and Emilia. I had the lab run your baby’s DNA through the database again, and he came up as a familial hit.”

  “Michael wasn’t happy. He figured out very quickly that I was pregnant and when he did the math it was pretty obvious it wasn’t his.”

  “But you had told him he was the only one you were sleeping with?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “He became violent with you, didn’t he?”

  Another nod. More tears. “I stopped seeing him after that. Went back to the Sanctuary. I told Jack he couldn’t do those things to me anymore because I was pregnant. Charlotte wanted me to make arrangements to leave. She said no children on the property.”

  “But then you were about to give birth, and Jack killed two people and took Emilia.”

  “Yes.”

  “And when you take the commitment, you promise to be loyal to the Sanctuary and do whatever it takes to protect it.”

  “Right,” Maya said.

  “Whose idea was it to frame Michael for your abduction and Emilia’s disappearance?”

  “Jack’s,” she said, and Josie suspected this was a lie. If it had been Jack’s idea, he would have made sure that the Yateses’ and Emilia’s things were in Michael’s cave before Maya stumbled out of the woods. Instead, it was Maya, at nine months pregnant, who had gone.

  Josie said, “You went to the campsite first, but Michael had already taken enough from there to make himself look guilty.”

  “Yes,” Maya said.

  “And when you got to his cavern, you knew the things were there.”

  “Yeah. I went in to check. He was off trapping or foraging or whatever.”

  “So you framed him and once he was released, he went looking for y
ou. He checked all of Charlotte’s properties.”

  Maya said nothing. Josie went back to Michael’s body and looked from it back to Maya. “Where is the mark?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Michael made the commitment. Where is his mark? The back of his neck? His hip?”

  Maya’s body began to tremble. “How do you know that?”

  “Charlotte was holding me and Emilia at one of her other properties. The one north of Denton. When Emilia and I escaped, we ran into him. He helped us get away from Jack. I kept asking him what he was doing there, and he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. He was miles and miles from his caverns. He was looking for you, and the only way he would have known about Charlotte’s other properties is if he’d been a member of the Sanctuary. A long-time member. After he had served his sentence for killing his wife, he didn’t walk off into the woods. He joined the Sanctuary. But he was too violent, too volatile. Charlotte made him leave, didn’t she?”

  Maya nodded. She walked over, edging around Michael’s body. She reached down and lifted his shirt until Josie saw the symbol of the Sanctuary just below his left rib cage. “He found me here. He wanted to teach me a lesson after I framed him. It was bad at first. He was very angry.”

  She pulled at the hems of her shorts, revealing deep black bruises on her inner thighs. “Eventually he calmed down. But I knew I couldn’t get rid of him or outrun him. We’re still in the middle of damn nowhere out here.”

  “The game was up,” Josie said.

  Maya stared down at her ex-lover, her ex-abuser. “Yes,” she said softly.

  Josie motioned for the rest of her team to come closer. “Maya,” she said. “Deputy Moore is here. This is his jurisdiction.”

  Maya watched, expressionless, as everyone filed in and Deputy Moore stepped forward. He read her Miranda rights and when he pulled out his cuffs, she offered up her wrists. In that motion, Josie thought she saw a degree of relief. So much running, so much deceit. Now it was over.