Her Final Confession

Chapter Forty-Five

New York City was far easier to navigate on foot, even with the throngs of people filling every square inch of sidewalk and the men in polo shirts on every corner trying to sell tourist bus rides. As Trinity had instructed, Josie had asked Starkey to meet her at a restaurant not far from the apartment. It was a small pub on the ground floor of a narrow brick building sandwiched between two other tall structures. Josie found a small table in the back near the restrooms. Everything inside was shiny wood beneath hazy yellow lights. Josie checked her phone. Starkey was late. When the waitress asked if she would like a drink, she ordered a whisky sour and then immediately canceled it, ordering a Coke instead. If the waitress thought her indecisiveness was strange, she didn’t show it.

Josie played with her straw wrapper and had downed nearly all of her first Coke by the time Jack Starkey finally showed up. The first thing she thought when he slid into the seat across from hers, his rotund stomach pressing against the table’s edge, was that he was Santa Claus. His thick white hair was brushed back away from his face, flowing down to his shoulders. A robust white beard and moustache framed a jovial smile beneath a bulbous nose and twinkling blue eyes.

“You Quinn?” he asked.

Josie nodded, her eyes traveling down to the leather jacket he wore over a torn black T-shirt. The smell of tobacco and sweet-smelling alcohol drifted toward her. He didn’t look like any kind of federal agent that Josie had ever met. But if his team routinely worked undercover with outlaw motorcycle gangs, then he looked just right.

“Agent Starkey,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

He waved the waitress over and ordered a beer. “Just Starkey. Sorry to make you go through all this,” he said. “A long time ago, Gretchen made me promise…”

He drifted off, his eyes glazing over just a bit, as if a sudden memory had taken him right out of the room. Josie cleared her throat to get his attention. “Gretchen made you promise what?”

“Maybe I should start at the beginning. You mind if I see your credentials?”

Josie raised a brow but replied, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

Starkey chuckled and took a worn wallet out of his back pocket. He tossed it over to her. The leather was warm in Josie’s hands as she opened it to see his federal ID. He was considerably more kempt in his photo.

He studied hers a beat longer than she had studied his. “You were on TV,” he said.

“Yes,” Josie said. “Twins separated at birth. Trinity Payne is my sister. I’d really prefer not to discuss it, if you don’t mind.”

One of Starkey’s bushy eyebrows kinked. “Twins? Nah. This was a couple years ago. All those missing girls found up there on that mountain.”

The missing girls case had turned Josie’s world upside down and nearly destroyed the city of Denton. “Yes,” she answered. “That was me.”

“Well,” he said, “I can see why Gretchen would want to work with you. That’s a nice gash you’ve got on your face there. What happened?”

Josie smiled tightly. Her fingers itched to touch the cut, but she kept them on Starkey’s ID. “I fell,” she lied, not wanting to get into the truth behind it. As they returned each other’s credentials, Josie changed the subject. “Starkey, if you could tell me what you asked me here to tell me, I’d really appreciate it. Every moment I don’t figure out what really happened with this shooting is another moment that Gretchen is in trouble.”

The waitress arrived with Starkey’s beer, and he gulped down half of it in one long swig. Golden droplets of liquid sparkled in his beard. He dropped the thick glass onto the table with a firm thud and said, “I’m gonna need more drinks and more information.”

With a sigh, Josie replied, “What kind of information?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Who’d you work with in the FBI? When you caught that missing girls case.”

“Why do you ask? What does this have to do with Gretchen?”

“I need someone to vouch for you,” he told her.

Josie raised a brow at him. “Call my chief then.”

As the waitress brought another beer, Starkey said, “No. Someone not in your department.”

“My chief is new,” Josie said. “I only met him six months ago. He might as well be not in my department.”

Starkey slugged down half his beer. “Nah, I’d feel better if I talked to a federal agent. That missing girls case—there was a big police-corruption scandal, wasn’t there? Seems to me if the FBI got called in, they’d send someone from the Civil Rights Division. Those guys get paid to make sure everyone’s aboveboard.”

“You’re questioning my integrity?” Josie asked, defensiveness making her skin prickle.

“I have to,” he said. “It’s for Gretchen’s own good.”

“Fine,” Josie snapped. “Special Agent Marcus Holcomb. You want his number too?”

Starkey grinned. He took out his phone and stood up. “No need. I’ll get in touch with him.”

She watched him walk away from the table to the far end of the bar, punching numbers into the keypad on his phone. Josie clenched her fists beneath the table. She didn’t know whether she should tell him off or just leave. She wanted to do both, but she couldn’t shake the suspicion that this man had information that could help her sort out the mess Gretchen had gotten herself into.

After twenty minutes on his phone, Starkey sauntered back to the table, smiling. He plopped down in front of her and slurped down the rest of the beer he’d abandoned. “Talked to Holcomb,” he said. “You checked out.”

Through gritted teeth, Josie said, “I don’t have time for games, Agent Starkey. Are you going to talk to me about Gretchen? Because if you’re not, I’d just as soon get back to Denton and back to my investigation.”

Starkey signaled the waitress for yet another beer. “Fair enough,” he told her. “You ever heard of the Soul Mate Strangler?”