Her Final Confession

Chapter Forty-One

The air around her seemed to freeze, a bubble of perfect stillness descending over Josie. “I’m sorry,” she said into the phone after clearing her throat. “What?”

Starkey said, “She didn’t tell you? Well, I guess she didn’t. She didn’t much want to talk about it when she recovered. In fact, she wouldn’t tell anyone anything.”

That sounded familiar. “How do you know it was the Devil’s Blade that took her?” Josie asked.

“They took her because of Billy. They found out he was an undercover agent. Gretchen was kidnapped not long after his death. We had a couple of informants who traveled in Devil’s Blade circles. We worked them hard to try to find out where she was being held. No one saw her, but they knew Linc had her.”

Josie couldn’t even imagine what had happened to Gretchen during that year. It was interesting that even after her mother had tortured her by convincing doctors to perform unnecessary medical procedures on her, Gretchen had still been open to love—falling for an older ATF agent and running all the way across the country with him. But from what Josie could tell, once Gretchen returned to Pennsylvania after the death of her husband and her ordeal with Devil’s Blade, she hadn’t had any lasting relationships. Even her partner in Philadelphia’s homicide department hadn’t known her sexual orientation—because she had no relationships. Was it the year in the clutches of the Devil’s Blade gang that had closed Gretchen off? Was that why she had booby-trapped her own windows? Were the Devil’s Blade members what she feared?

But if that was true, why had she taken Linc Shore’s murder so personally? Why had she helped get justice for Shore and Cole? Had she felt threatened by the gang in some way? But surely the type of justice the Devil’s Blade’s own members could have meted out would trump anything that Gretchen could do via the justice system. None of it was making sense.

“What did Gretchen say once she was found?” Josie asked.

“Nothing. Not a damn thing. She wouldn’t talk. I told her we’d protect her, but she kept saying, ‘No one can protect me.’ She spent some time in the hospital, and after she got out, she decided to move back East. I always told her if there was anything I could do, all she had to do was call. I guess it was five or six years later she called me and said she wanted to go into law enforcement. She asked if she could throw my name around if she needed to, and I told her sure.” He laughed. “I sure as shit didn’t think that little gal would become a police officer, but I guess she did.”

“She’s a great officer,” Josie said. “A fantastic detective.”

“I guess she is if she could put aside her personal feelings and put Linc Shore’s murderer away. That’s some heavy shit right there.”

“Do you have any idea why she would take the case?” Josie asked. “I’m trying to make sense of this. She could have passed it off to someone else easily.”

“Don’t know. I mean, what they did to her was horrible. A year. I don’t know how she survived it. Especially after—”

He stopped. Josie waited for him to go on, but the line remained silent.

“After what?” Josie prompted.

There was a moment of hesitation. Then Starkey said, “Billy was murdered.”

“I gathered that,” Josie said. “You said the Devil’s Blade found out he was an undercover ATF agent. I assume once they found that out, they weren’t too happy about it.”

“They didn’t find out until after he was murdered.”

“So the Devil’s Blade didn’t kill him?”

“No, wasn’t them.”

“Oh. Well, what happened?”

“Detective,” Starkey said, “there are some things I’d rather discuss in person, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t think my chief will pay for a flight to Seattle, Agent Starkey. This is pretty pressing. If there’s anything you can tell me about Gretchen’s past, I need to know sooner rather than later.”

“Well, Detective, I’m not in Seattle right now. I’m in New York City. If you can make your way up to me, I’ll be happy to tell you everything I know. But I can’t do it over the phone.”