Her Final Confession

Chapter Sixty

Two hours later, Josie stood in front of Chitwood’s desk, a sheaf of papers clutched to her chest. Noah was on his way back from the hospital. Beneath his desk, the tap-tap-tap of Chitwood’s loafer on the tile filled the room. Pointedly, he looked at the clock above Josie’s head. “I don’t have all day, Quinn,” he reminded her.

“Noah will be here any second,” she said. “Just another minute.”

Before Chitwood could add anything else, Noah jogged through the door, slightly out of breath. He plopped into a chair and looked expectantly from Josie to Chitwood.

“Good of you to join us,” Chitwood told him.

Noah ignored the barb and turned to Josie. “What’ve you got?”

“The Soul Mate Strangler is not in law enforcement,” Josie told them. She handed them a collection of pages. “Today when we stopped for that domestic call, I overheard Owen telling the victim the location of the women’s shelter.”

Chitwood said, “Who the hell is Owen?”

“He’s a paramedic,” Noah said. “He works more shifts than anyone in his whole department.”

“So?” Chitwood said. “Some local paramedic knows where the domestics go. What’s that got to do with the Soul Mate Strangler?”

Josie said, “The Soul Mate Strangler was an EMS worker.”

Both men stared at her, Chitwood with his typical skepticism, which Josie was beginning to think was just his normal face, and Noah with dawning realization.

Noah said, “They’re at almost all crime scenes. Even if there’s no living victims to treat, they take the bodies to the morgue.”

“They talk to the police,” Josie said. “And we tell them things. They’re part of our team. They know almost as much as we do about violent crimes that go on in the city. I know that here in Denton, we have a great rapport with the paramedics that respond to all the scenes. It wouldn’t be hard for one of them to eavesdrop on our conversations or even to get friendly with an officer and casually ask some questions.”

“That’s how he found Gretchen every time,” Noah said, following her line of thinking. “All he would need to do is casually bring up the one living Strangler victim to his Seattle PD buddies at a scene, act concerned, ask some innocent questions.”

Josie said, “The FBI profile said he is likely very manipulative. Envision it. He’s at some random scene. Everyone’s milling around. He gets to talking about the Strangler case. Maybe he even says, ‘Man, I’m so glad this wasn’t a Strangler call, that guy has the whole city on edge. I can’t believe that last lady even survived,’ and it goes from there.”

“He’d start talking about how he was so glad she made it, and how was she doing, and his PD buddies probably thought nothing of it,” Noah added. “I can see it. I mean we’re supposed to keep things confidential, but lines get blurred in those situations. I mean, we need emergency medical services workers. It’s impossible to keep everything from them.”

Chitwood folded his arms across his chest. For once, his voice was at a normal volume. “I’m buying,” he said. “The Strangler is a paramedic. You get a list of paramedics who responded to Strangler scenes in Seattle in 1993 and 1994?”

“Better than that,” Josie said. “I found him.” She gestured to the packets in their hands. “Two weeks before his murder, James Omar made a single call to a volunteer ambulance company in Norristown, which is just outside of Philadelphia. I thought it was a wrong number. Why would a grad student from Philadelphia be calling a volunteer ambulance company? I called his mentor, Professor Larson, and his dad, and asked them if he had been in any kind of recent accident or had any recent hospitalizations—any reason he might have needed to have contact with this ambulance company. There was nothing. So I looked them up, found the name of the supervisor, and called him.”

“You sure the supervisor wasn’t the Strangler?” Chitwood asked.

Josie shook her head. “I researched him. He’s lived in Montgomery County in Pennsylvania his entire life, and he’s too young to be the Strangler. He was very helpful. Didn’t even demand a warrant—after I told him what was going on. He has one sixty-three-year-old paramedic who joined the company five years ago.”

“Sixty-three,” Noah said. “And he’s doing that kind of work?”

“Supervisor says he mostly does the driving—he said he did a lot of training to learn the layout of the area. Not a lot of heavy lifting, although the supervisor says he is pretty fit. It’s volunteer. Apparently, he retired early from Seattle and moved out here. He’s an avid hunter.”

“That was also on the FBI profile,” Noah noted.

“Yes. He fits the bill.” She pulled out a copy of his driver’s license, which showed a white man with thinning white hair and a sharp-featured face. Piercing brown eyes stared defiantly at the camera. It looked more like a mug shot than a driver’s license photo. Or maybe he only seemed chilling because Josie knew all the havoc he had wreaked on innocent people. “Ed O’Hara. I called Seattle PD and talked to someone who worked the case when the Neals were murdered in 2004. He didn’t remember O’Hara, but a couple of the older guys did. They said he was always around, worked a lot. He got married in 1998 and had a daughter, but there were a lot of domestic issues, and eventually the wife took the daughter and left him.”

“You mean domestic calls,” Noah said. “He beat her.”

“Yes.”

“She’s lucky she got away,” Chitwood remarked.

Josie nodded. “The supervisor in Norristown says he hasn’t been around for almost two weeks. They called him a few times to take some shifts, but he doesn’t answer his phone. No one has seen him for days. Norristown PD has been alerted. They’re going to go to his house. I also let Philadelphia PD know since this is all connected to Ethan Robinson’s disappearance.”

“Did you draw up a warrant?” Noah asked.

She shook her head. “Not yet. Right now, he’s just a person of interest. We need a DNA sample from him to be sure.”

“Or for someone to positively identify him,” Noah pointed out, but they both knew that wouldn’t happen.

“All right,” Chitwood said, his voice still at a reasonable volume. Three horizontal lines creased his forehead. “This is going to be delicate. Let’s see what Norristown PD turns up. Get his vehicle information out to every department in the state, make sure everyone’s aware we’re looking for him. But if we can’t sneak up on this guy, I’m going balls to the wall. We’re going to draw this guy out. Make it impossible for him to hide.”

“Get under his skin?” Noah asked.

“Yeah,” Chitwood said. “We’ll put Quinn here in front of the cameras. Have her challenge him. Call him out for the little pissant he is, and then when he pokes his nasty little head out of the sand, we nail him.”

Noah frowned. “Are you talking about using Quinn as bait?”

“No, I’m saying—”

“That’s what you’re saying,” Josie said. “You want to dangle me out there, make him turn all his anger toward me, and then wait for him to come after me.”

“No, no,” Chitwood said. “I’m saying he won’t be able to help himself. He’ll feel the need to do something to reassert his dominance, to prove how superior he is, and as soon as he does that, he’ll expose himself.”

Chitwood must have been able to tell by the looks on their faces that they didn’t believe him. He sighed with frustration. “Don’t you remember that guy in Kansas? The police publicly challenged him, and so he sent them some computer disc that they were then able to trace back to his location.”

Josie thought of Margie Wilkins’s sightless eyes. “This guy isn’t the type to send flash drives. If he gets riled enough, he’s going to kill. We can’t protect every person in this city.”

“I thought you liked the aggressive approach,” Chitwood said.

Josie gave him a wry smile. “I’ve learned over the years that the smart approach works better.”

“Well, I think the smart approach is to challenge this guy. Draw him out. If you’re worried about retaliation, I’ll put a unit on you. Or you can stay with Fraley, and I’ll put units on both your houses. You’ve got twenty-four hours to see if Norristown or Philly PD turns him up. Tighten everything up. Get your ducks in a row. Tomorrow, Quinn gives a press conference, and we go after this animal.”