Her Final Confession

Chapter Thirty-Nine

They grabbed a bite to eat, and when they returned to their desks, they were greeted with James Omar’s phone records for the two weeks prior to his murder, and also a list of Margie Wilkins’s closest friends and coworkers, which had been sent over by Robyn Wilkins. Josie made phone calls to Wilkins’s friends, while Noah went down the list of incoming and outgoing phone numbers on Omar’s call log and traced the owner of each number. An hour later, Josie hung up from her last call.

“No one was stalking Margie Wilkins,” Josie told Noah. “At least, her friends don’t know of anyone who was giving her trouble. It’s a dead end.”

“There’s still the DNA,” Noah said. “We’ve got the killer’s DNA.”

“Yes, and I might be retired by the time we get those results back from the lab. You’re assuming they’ll match someone already in the system. We still need leads to run down, and I’ve got nothing.”

He beckoned her over to his desk. “Take a break then. Come see what I’ve got here.”

Josie rolled the chair around to sit beside Noah. Before him was a list of phone numbers from Spur Mobile, all marked up in Noah’s handwriting. Beside that was a stack of pages he had printed out with the names and other identifying information of various people. On top was a page with Ethan Robinson’s name and phone number in the page header.

Noah pointed to what Josie knew to be Ethan’s phone number, which Noah had highlighted dozens of times in pink highlighter. “These are all incoming and outgoing texts and phone calls between Omar and Ethan Robinson.”

Josie reached over and flipped through a few pages. “You couldn’t get the content of the text messages?”

“You know Spur Mobile. They make you jump through a lot of hoops to get that stuff if you don’t have the actual phone,” Noah answered. “But I’m waiting for the content. It will just take longer.”

Josie knew this was true. Different phone carriers offered varying levels of cooperation with law enforcement. Spur Mobile was the least cooperative and had the most red tape to go through. They could get the content of the text messages, but it would take a lot longer.

“What else have you got?” Josie said.

Noah went through the numbers. There were the three members of Omar’s immediate family—mom, dad, and sister. There was Dr. Larson. Some of the numbers were to restaurants he’d obviously ordered takeout from. Several were from other students at Drexel University, and Noah had been able to find most of their Facebook accounts. He handed her the printouts of each person’s profile page, and Josie went through them quickly. Then there were the calls to Gretchen.

“There’s one call here to a volunteer ambulance company in Norristown—that’s outside of Philadelphia.”

Josie frowned. “That’s odd.” She ran her finger across the page until she found the date. “Omar called there two weeks before he was killed. It’s a one-off.”

“Wrong number?” Noah asked.

“Probably,” Josie said. “What’s this?”

There were three calls to the same number in the two weeks of records they had, including a call to the number on the morning that Omar was killed.

“It’s a burner,” Noah said.

“Did you try to call it?”

“Of course. It’s out of service. Pre-paid. Whoever was using it didn’t keep up the payments.”

“Can we try to triangulate its signal? Where it was last?”

Noah nodded. “Probably. I’ll write up a warrant.”

“What about this call to Ethan Robinson? Is this after Omar was murdered?”

Noah looked at the time and then checked his notebook. “Either it was made after his murder or right before it. We can pin down his death to within an hour window based on when Gretchen left here and when patrol first showed up, but not much more precise than that.”

“But this call was made between the time that Gretchen left and patrol found Omar in her driveway.”

“Yeah, but closer to the time patrol showed up. I would guess it wasn’t Omar who made the call.”

Josie’s desk phone rang. She wheeled her chair back around and answered, “Detective Quinn.”

“Hi, this is Jack Starkey returning your call.”