Her Final Confession

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Gretchen looked as though she had lost weight in just the few days she’d been in custody. Her skin was sallow, and large bags hung beneath her eyes. Josie wondered if she was being targeted by other prisoners because she was a police officer. Loughlin had asked that she be kept in solitary confinement for her own safety, but Josie knew that sometimes their requests weren’t honored. She sat at a table in an interview room at the county jail, looking defeated. Her teeth scraped across her bottom lip.

Neither the district attorney nor Andrew Bowen would agree to let Josie interview her without Detective Heather Loughlin present, which Josie knew was going to happen. At least she knew that Loughlin was a good and fair detective who would be able to follow Josie’s lead or take over the questioning depending on how things went. Bowen insisted on being present, and as they filed into the room, he sat beside Gretchen.

While Josie and Loughlin sat across from Gretchen, Bowen said, “I strongly recommended against this interview, but my client has insisted on it.”

“We’re not here to trick or intimidate her,” Loughlin told him. “We’re trying to solve a crime. Detective Quinn believes she can help your client.”

Bowen shot Josie a nasty glare. “Oh yes, she’s good at helping people, isn’t she?”

“I want to talk to Josie in private, please,” Gretchen said without looking up from the table.

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bowen said.

“Andrew, please,” Gretchen said.

“Gretchen—”

She looked over at him. “I’m the client. Please. Wait outside, would you?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw as he stood and stalked out of the room.

When the door closed behind him, Gretchen said, “Just Josie, please.”

Josie said, “Gretchen, you know how this works. Heather has to be here. It’s to protect you as much as it’s to protect the Denton PD. This is the best I could do.”

With a sigh, Gretchen sat back in her chair, looking up at the ceiling and blowing a breath out of her mouth. After a moment, she lowered her gaze to meet Josie’s eyes. “Whatever you think you know, you’re wrong,” she said.

Josie took a folded sheaf of papers from her inside jacket pocket, smoothed them out on the table, and pushed them across to Gretchen.

“I don’t have my reading glasses,” Gretchen said.

Loughlin took a pair from the top of her head and handed them to Gretchen. “I’m in the over-forty club too,” she joked lamely.

“Thank you,” Gretchen mumbled.

She put them on, adjusted them on the bridge of her nose, and started reading. After a few moments, she looked up at Josie. “What is this?”

“An autopsy report,” Josie answered.

“I don’t understand.”

Josie pointed to it. “That’s the autopsy report of the last serial killer who thought he could murder people in my town.”

“Well, Jesus,” Gretchen said with a small shudder.

“I know the Seattle Soul Mate Strangler is in Denton, Gretchen.”

What little color was left in her skin drained from her face. “No,” she croaked.

“I know he was there the day Omar was shot in your driveway,” Josie continued.

“No.”

“I’m going after him.”

“Oh God, no.”

“I can do it on my own, or you can help me.”

Something in Gretchen’s face closed off. Her eyes left Josie’s face, instead gazing at the wall behind Josie’s head. A vacant look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Gretchen, I know about Ethan. I know he’s your son.”

Her mouth twisted as she tried unsuccessfully to suppress her gasp. Still, she didn’t speak.

Josie said, “Tell me about Billy.”

A long moment passed in silence. Gretchen’s fingers folded and unfolded a corner of one of the pages in front of her. “Billy was my husband. We were very deeply in love, and then he died.”

“The Soul Mate Strangler killed him.”

Gretchen said nothing.

Josie tried going a different direction. “I know Billy didn’t get patched in to Devil’s Blade. Jack Starkey told me.”

The surprise that flashed across Gretchen’s face was so fleeting that Josie nearly missed it. Josie continued, “But he was close to getting patched in. He had some kind of relationship with Linc Shore, didn’t he?”

Josie waited, and when Gretchen didn’t answer, she said, “What happened between them?”

“How do you know there was something between them?” Gretchen asked, her voice so quiet, Josie strained to hear it.

“Because I know what Linc did for you, and he wouldn’t have done something like that unless he felt somehow beholden to Billy. So what happened?”

More silence. Gretchen looked at Loughlin, who put her hands up. “This is all news to me, and so far, doesn’t seem very relevant to the Omar shooting.”

Shifting in her chair, Gretchen turned back to Josie. “Billy saved his life. It was a long time before Billy died. He’d just been undercover for a few months, as a hang-around, trying to get someone in Devil’s Blade to sponsor him. He was outside a store and Linc pulled up. Some lady in the parking lot had a stroke while she was driving and nearly ran Linc down. Billy saved him.”

“That didn’t get him patched in?” Josie asked.

Gretchen shook her head. “No. Getting patched in isn’t that easy. But Linc never forgot it. He approved it when one of the other guys wanted to sponsor Billy, and every once in a while, he’d give Billy an easy assignment. He couldn’t show favoritism, but Billy swore he never forgot it.”

“Guess he didn’t,” Josie said. “After Billy’s murder, how did you find Linc?”

“He wasn’t hard to find. Those guys always hung around the same bar. Nearly got killed walking in there.”

“Did you tell him you were pregnant?”

It was slow to come, but Gretchen nodded.

“You knew the baby wasn’t Billy’s?”

“No, I didn’t know. I didn’t think it was Billy’s baby because Billy and I hadn’t used any birth control or protection for two years, and I never got pregnant. But then one night…” She drifted off, unable to complete the sentence.

“Did you tell Linc that you thought the baby was the Soul Mate Strangler’s?”

Gretchen nodded. “I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted protection. The police couldn’t do it, couldn’t keep him away from me. I thought he was one of them. I knew that Devil’s Blade could hide me. I heard the stories Billy told me. Serial killer or not, this guy wouldn’t get past them.”

“Whose idea was it to give the baby up for adoption?”

Gretchen licked her lips. “It was Linc’s idea. After the baby came, I knew I couldn’t stay with Devil’s Blade forever. A lot of their people were getting pretty upset with me still being around, even though I was under Linc’s protection. But I couldn’t take the baby back with me. What if he found us? What if he found out the baby was his? I was afraid he’d kill—I was not ready to be a mom. I would have done it, gladly, but I couldn’t be a mom and keep my baby safe from a serial killer. I had no resources, and I couldn’t rely on the kindness of others forever.”

“Why didn’t you just take him back to your grandparents?” Josie asked.

“I was afraid he’d still find us. It was one thing if he found me and he wanted to finish the job, but I knew my child would never be safe if that monster knew he existed. You don’t understand. You don’t know—I thought my mother was evil. He made her look like a saint.”

Josie thought of the Wilkins scene and of her own up-close-and-personal experience with a serial killer. “I think I can understand.”

“I was young,” Gretchen said. “Young and stupid. At the time, it didn’t seem like I had many options. My only goal, the only thing I wanted to do, was protect my child.”

“I believe you,” Josie said.

“That’s why we had to make it look like Devil’s Blade had tortured me and then dumped me off. Word of that would get back to everyone involved in the Strangler case, from the ATF to Seattle PD, and he would hear it too. He would never even know I was pregnant. No one knew. No one ever knew until—”

She stopped speaking. A tear slid down her cheek.

“Until Ethan Robinson and James Omar figured it out. You thought Seth Cole was your son until the day James Omar called you, didn’t you?”

Gretchen nodded, more tears streaming down her face.

“That’s why you took the Shore/Cole murders to heart. Linc had helped you in your time of need, and you believed that Cole was your son,” Josie said.

“I was so mad at Linc. He promised me that they—that my son would go to a normal home with a normal family. He had some court official in some other state on the take who owed him favors. He said she knew people who could help him push an adoption through for a couple who wanted a baby. Money changed hands. I never saw any of it. Was never involved. Didn’t know anything besides what Linc promised me. I didn’t want to know where he was, because I didn’t want that information to ever be able to be tortured out of me.”

“So when you caught the Shore/Cole murders, you found out during the investigation that Cole was adopted—”

“And I assumed he was mine. Why else would he be on the East Coast with Linc? I never had any proof, but I mourned my son, and I put his killers away.”

“And then James Omar called you.”

Gretchen didn’t respond.

“Gretchen, we’ve confirmed that the photo found pinned to Omar’s shirt came from a Soul Mate Strangler crime scene from 2004. We have his DNA. He left a hair in your car, and he killed a couple in Denton and left his DNA there as well.”

This was a bluff, as they still didn’t have the DNA results back, but Josie was confident they would both come back as a match for the Soul Mate Strangler.

Still, Gretchen did not speak.

“I couldn’t figure out what Omar had to do with anything, but we knew he had called you twice, and that the last time he called you, you left the station to go meet him. We knew that he and his roommate had planned something involving you, because their text messages suggested that. We wanted to talk to Omar’s roommate, but Ethan went AWOL right after the shooting. I kept wondering if whatever these kids were up to, was it completely unconnected to the Soul Mate Strangler? Did James Omar just show up at your house at the wrong time? Was it coincidence that he happened to be there at the very moment the Soul Mate Strangler finally tracked you down and came back to finish what he started in 1994?”

Gretchen remained silent.

Josie pushed ahead. “But even if that were true, why would you protect the Soul Mate Strangler? Why would you take the fall for this animal?”

“I’m responsible for James Omar’s death,” Gretchen said.

“You didn’t shoot that boy,” Josie said. “Why are you lying?”

“I’m responsible for his death.”

“The person who pulled the trigger is responsible. I’m trying to help you here, Gretchen.”

“Where’s Ethan?”

“We don’t know.”

Gretchen shut back down. Josie waited several minutes for her to say something, ask a question, anything, but that vacant look had returned.

“Here’s what I think happened,” Josie said. “Ethan found out he was adopted in high school. It’s bothered him ever since. In grad school, he meets James Omar, who is studying epigenetics. Maybe James said, ‘Hey, I can help you track your blood relatives.’ I think somehow, James and Ethan found you first. Not from DNA you submitted to any of these sites, but from DNA your cousins submitted—or some distant relatives. I think between the two of them, Ethan and James were able to find you by extrapolating the family tree of your relatives who have DNA profiles on one of these sites. I think Ethan realized you were a victim of the Soul Mate Strangler. You know, he was obsessed with serial killers even as a young teenager. He majored in criminology. He read books about serial cases. Did you know there is a book written about the Seattle Soul Mate Strangler?”

Gretchen didn’t answer.

“There is. I looked on a forum devoted to the Soul Mate Strangler case. There’s a thread about the book. I saw it when I went to Omar and Ethan’s apartment. I didn’t know what it was or that it was significant at the time, so last night I called their landlord and asked him to go over there and confirm it was there. So Ethan was already aware of the case. One of the other books in Ethan’s collection? It was about a case that was cold for forty years before police used a DNA ancestry site to track down the killer through his distant relatives. I think he somehow made the connection, and then the two of them started doing the same thing on the other side of his family. I think they found the Soul Mate Strangler, and instead of contacting authorities, they came up with some plan to get mom, dad, and son together like some happy family—or maybe Ethan thought he could give you the closure you needed by showing up with the killer, having you recognize him, and since you’re a police officer now, you could arrest him. You’d get to be your own hero. I’m not sure why Ethan wanted to get you two together, but it’s clear that Ethan knew they were dealing with a cold-blooded killer. He got scared. He and James came up with the idea to send James in Ethan’s place. This way if the guy went batshit crazy, James could say, ‘I’m not your son,’ and buy himself some time because this guy would want his real son.”

Gretchen’s lower lip trembled.

“Except something went wrong. Their plan backfired. Omar told you both he wasn’t really your son, that it was Ethan. The Strangler shot Omar and took you. I don’t know why he let you go. Maybe because he enjoys your terror—you always living in fear of him—maybe he likes to play games. But I think you made a deal with him. It’s the only thing that makes sense. You would plead guilty to Omar’s murder and pretend he wasn’t even there if he left Ethan alone. He’s holding Ethan over your head, and in the time it would take for you to find Ethan and get him into protective custody and then locate and arrest the Strangler, he could kill Ethan. Ethan knows his name, but Ethan’s never met him. Ethan wouldn’t know him if he walked right up to him, which makes this killer even more dangerous to your son. You think the only way to protect him is by keeping your end of this bargain you’ve made with him. You don’t think you have a choice.”

More tears streamed down Gretchen’s face.

“He doesn’t have Ethan,” Josie told her. “Ethan is in the wind. No one even knows where to look for him—not the police, not his friends at school, not his dad. No one. The Strangler isn’t going to find him.”

No relief spread across Gretchen’s face. She didn’t believe Josie. Or, she didn’t believe that Ethan was safe.

“I’m going after the Strangler, Gretchen. I can leave Omar out of it for now—until we get him, and Ethan is found safe—but he killed a couple in Denton, and he needs to go down for that.”

“Please don’t,” Gretchen whimpered.

Josie’s heart sank. “I will get him. No one else will be hurt.”

“How?” Gretchen asked. “How will you get him? He’s a ghost. I don’t even know who he is—I saw his face and I don’t know who he is.”

“Ethan knows who he is—Ethan and James located him.”

“You just said Ethan was missing,” Gretchen pointed out.

“Then we put Ethan’s photo out in the press and ask for help locating him. In the meantime, you’ll give us a composite,” Josie said.

“I can’t. I can’t do that. You can’t expose Ethan like that. The killer will always be one step ahead of us.” She leaned toward Josie, lowering her voice. “I think he’s one of us.”

“An officer?” Josie said. “Starkey told me that both of you thought that. But Gretchen, he’s not an officer on our payroll. You know that.”

“It’s too risky,” Gretchen said. “Please. Don’t put my son at risk.”

Josie held up a hand. “Okay, fine. Forget Ethan. You give us the composite. We’ll say a witness saw him near the Wilkins scene.”

Gretchen shook her head. “I can’t. He’ll know. He’ll know it was me. Please.”

Loughlin said, “If you don’t help us, you can be charged with obstruction of justice.”

Josie said, “Gretchen, we have to go after this guy. Do you really think he’s going to keep his end of this bargain? He’s a killer. Do you really think that he’s just going to stop killing?”

“Do not do this,” Gretchen said.

Josie stood up. “I have to do my job, Gretchen. Help. Don’t help. I’m going after him.”

She waited another tense moment, but Gretchen offered nothing. Finally, Loughlin sighed and stood, walking toward the door. Josie turned to follow. She heard the sound of Gretchen’s chair scraping the tile, but before she had a chance to turn back, Gretchen’s hands were on her shoulders. Josie barely had time to get her own hands up to protect her face as Gretchen slammed her into the wall. Josie pushed back, scrambling to try to get out of Gretchen’s grasp. She heard shouting behind them, and within seconds, Loughlin, Bowen, and a guard were dragging Gretchen off. But not before Gretchen spoke into Josie’s ear, her voice desperate and urgent.

She said, “I just need more time. Just a little more time.”