Her Final Confession

Chapter Sixty-Three

The stationhouse was relatively quiet as they entered through the lobby with coffees from Komorrah’s in hand and made their way up to their desks.

“I need those phone records again,” she said.

“Gretchen’s or Omar’s?” Noah asked, setting his coffee down on his desk and starting to thumb through the piles on his desk.

“Omar’s,” Josie said, searching her own desk for a copy.

“Got it,” Noah said. He plucked the packet from his desk and brought it around to where Josie stood.

She flipped through until she found the call. It was the last call, made from Omar’s phone to Ethan’s phone in that undefined length of time between Gretchen leaving the station to meet Omar at her home and the first patrol car arriving at her home to find Omar dead in the driveway. “This was Gretchen,” she told Noah, pointing to the call. “Not O’Hara. Somehow, she was able to get alone or at least out of earshot of O’Hara, gain access to Omar’s phone, and call Ethan. Look, the call is four minutes long.”

“How long does it take to disable the MDT?” Noah asked.

“I don’t know, but if O’Hara was the one who did it, it would have taken at least that long.”

“So Gretchen’s alone in the car with the phones while O’Hara’s prying the external antenna off and tossing the whole thing into the river,” Noah said.

“Right,” Josie agreed.

“What does she tell Ethan?” he asked. “She’s got four minutes. What does she say?”

“She tells him to do what she did when she was his age. When she was young and stupid and needed protection from this guy. She tells him to go to Devil’s Blade.”

Noah stared at her for a long moment. When he didn’t say anything, Josie said, “Think about it. It’s the most failproof plan she could possibly come up with. She knows Devil’s Blade will hide him. That’s why she needs more time. O’Hara is so arrogant, he thinks he’s getting over on her. He’s probably out there looking for Ethan right now so he can kill him. As soon as she knows Ethan is safe, she’ll come clean.”

She watched her words sink in. His brow furrowed. “What do we do?” he asked. “We just call up the Seattle chapter of the Devil’s Blade and say, ‘Hey, we’re looking for this kid’?”

Josie laughed. “No. I have a better idea. Ethan’s way in with Devil’s Blade must surely be through the man and woman who gave Gretchen the jacket. I’ve got to call Steve Boyd with Philly Homicide and see if he knows their names, or if he doesn’t, see if he can get them. Linc’s people were at the trial every day, he said. Then we find them.”