Her Final Confession

Chapter Twenty-One

Josie didn’t go directly home. She checked out of her hotel in Philadelphia, fought the afternoon traffic, and drove instead to Gretchen’s house while she still had a bit of waning daylight left. She parked on the street and walked up to the house, ducking under the crime-scene tape still pulled tight across the driveway and porch. Failing rays of sunlight bounced off the windows at the side of the house. Josie stood on her tiptoes and gently touched the spikes along one of the windowsills. Knowing what she did from Steven Boyd, Josie understood Gretchen’s fierce paranoia about making sure no one got into her house—at least not without injuring themselves first. Had she been worried that the Dirty Aces would come after her for putting away two of their members? Had the gang tracked her down in Denton and taken their revenge after all? But if so, where did James Omar fit in? He couldn’t be a random passer-by in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not if he’d rented a car and driven from Philadelphia.

Josie circled the house and came back to the front door. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was missing something. But no new detail announced itself. At least not outside. She slipped under the yellow tape across the porch and tested the front door. It was unlocked and creaked as she pushed it open and went inside. Dust motes floated lazily through the shafts of sunlight peeking through Gretchen’s gauzy curtains. The only thing different this time around was that Josie could see traces of fine dark powder where her evidence response team had dusted for prints. Again, she studied the dust-free circular imprint on Gretchen’s living room end table. She knew that Noah had found it significant, but she wasn’t certain that it meant anything. That was the problem with crime scenes. It was hard to know what was meaningful, so you had to treat all the clues as if they were—at least at first blush.

She moved through the house again, slowly, eyes searching for something that she had missed the first time around. But the only thing she noticed this time that she hadn’t on her first pass was that all of Gretchen’s dinnerware was made from plastic. Josie stood in front of the open kitchen cabinets, cataloguing each item. Four bowls, four dinner plates, four large cups—all plastic. Her coffee mugs were all plastic travel mugs. Eccentric for sure, but did it really mean anything? Josie could practically hear Noah’s voice in her head: “Maybe she’s clumsy.” But she didn’t drop things at work and had no issue using ceramic mugs at the station house.

Josie’s cell phone chirped in her jacket pocket, startling her. She fished it out and glanced at the screen. Dr. Larson had texted her Doug Robinson’s name and phone number. She texted him back a thank you, turned off all the lights in Gretchen’s house, and walked back to her car. She didn’t start it right away, instead dialing Doug Robinson’s cell phone number. It rang four times before a man answered.

“Mr. Robinson?” Josie said. “Doug Robinson? My name is Detective Josie Quinn. I’m with the Denton Police Department. We’re in Pennsylvania—”

“Oh, hey,” he said, interrupting her speech. “Yeah, uh, that professor Larson called me. Hey, I’m real sorry to hear about James. What a shocker. That’s… that’s real terrible.”

Josie was glad that Dr. Larson had saved her the trouble of breaking the news. “Did you know James?”

“Oh, I met him a couple times. Ethan had him out here last year on spring break, took him on a tour of Portland. Good kid. Real serious.”

“Mr. Robinson, when is the last time you heard from your son?”

There was a mumbling like he was calculating. Then he said, “Oh, maybe three weeks?”

“No calls? No texts? Is that unusual?”

Robinson laughed. “For Ethan? No, not at all. He’s funny that way. Not real social. Never was, really. Didn’t have a ton of friends at school. Always had his head in a book or glued to a computer. Great student, but hard to draw out, you know? My wife—his mom—she was real good at getting him out of his shell, but she passed away when he was in high school.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Josie said.

“Thanks. Yeah, he took it hard. He’s been doing good since he went to college though.”

“I understand he’s a graduate student. Where did he do his undergrad work?” she asked.

“Oh, right there at University of Pennsylvania.” He laughed. “Right down the street from Drexel, and just as expensive. But I’m not complaining. He’ll get a good start.”

Josie brought the conversation back to his contact with Ethan. “So your son often goes long stretches without contacting you? What’s the longest he’s ever gone?”

“Maybe six weeks? Look, Detective, Ethan’s a big boy, you know? Got his own life out there. I’m here for him—he knows that—but I don’t bug him. Except when he’s late on his rent and Larson gets on me.”

Josie didn’t know how to feel about how unconcerned the man seemed. Did he not worry about his son, or was Ethan that unpredictable and prone to going off the radar? She wondered if there was something he wasn’t telling her, if there had been some kind of falling out between Ethan and his father. She knew not every family maintained close bonds, but she found Doug Robinson’s cavalier attitude toward his son strange, especially given the fact that his roommate had just been murdered. “Well, if I could just ask you a favor,” Josie said. “Could you try to get in touch with Ethan for me? In light of James’s death, I’d really like to know he is safe and accounted for. Also, if I could have his phone number as well, that would be great. Although, if he’s as private as you say, he probably won’t answer a number he doesn’t know.”

“Sure thing,” Doug said.

“Also, I didn’t see his name on James’s list of Facebook friends. Does he have social media accounts?”

“Nah,” Doug replied. “Not that I know of—thinks he’s being rebellious that way.”

“One more thing,” Josie said. She told him that a photo of a boy had been found at the crime scene; they weren’t sure if it was important or not, but they were trying to identify the boy. Robinson readily agreed to have a look, but only seconds after receiving it, he told her he’d never seen the kid before.

Now she had more dead ends and missing persons than she knew what to do with.