Her Final Confession

Chapter Sixty-Four

Boyd didn’t know the man or the woman’s name. He promised to do everything he could to find them out and get back to her as soon as possible. In the meantime, Josie went back to philly.com to read the articles about the murders and the trial that she had seen before, searching for any mention of Linc Shore’s wife or girlfriend or any other Devil’s Blade member. There was nothing. She called Jack Starkey to see if he or any of his ATF contacts knew Linc’s old lady or anyone else particularly close to Linc. As it turned out, Linc had had several old ladies and several close associates in the gang. Josie suggested narrowing the list down to anyone who would have had a significant enough presence in Linc’s life to travel to Philadelphia for his killer’s trial. Starkey said he’d get to work and get back to her.

The morning had slipped past while she and Noah made phone calls and tried to follow the Devil’s Blade lead to locate Ethan Robinson. It was close to noon when Chitwood appeared beside her desk. “Quinn,” he said. “We’re doing this press conference.”

“Chief,” she said, “please. Another day or two. I think we can locate Ethan Robinson. He’ll be able to positively ID O’Hara as the Strangler. He’s got the DNA evidence. We can issue a warrant.”

“I can’t give you any more time, Quinn,” Chitwood told her, his voice shockingly gentle. “We need to go after this guy. He killed three people in this city in the span of a few days. The longer he’s out there, the greater the odds he’ll kill again. We need his face on every television and website in this country. Someone will recognize him. By that time, we’ll have found the Robinson kid. We can’t wait on this.”

Across the desks, Noah gave her a nod. She would have liked to have Ethan Robinson in her custody before setting the media loose on Ed O’Hara, but she certainly felt better knowing they had viable leads for finding him. It was only a matter of time. The sad truth was that Ethan was probably safer under the protection of the outlaw motorcycle gang than police departments who might not have the resources to protect him long-term—or on his own.

“Okay,” Josie said.

Chitwood patted her shoulder. “We’ll pregame in an hour. Press will be here in two.”

Josie hadn’t been in front of cameras for months, and she didn’t miss it one bit. In the twenty-four hours since Chitwood had decided to call the press conference in the first place, he had managed to alert nearly the entire world that the double murder committed in central Pennsylvania a week earlier was connected to a cold serial case. By the time the press conference rolled around two hours later, they had to move it to the municipal parking lot to make room for all the reporters. Cameras and lights pointed at Josie as she stood behind a podium with the Denton PD crest on it. She’d tried to cover the cut on her face with makeup, but she knew it would still stand out.

Still, she did as Chitwood suggested. After she went over the Wilkins murder and the evidence that connected their case to the cold Seattle Soul Mate Strangler case, and identified Ed O’Hara as their person of interest, she pulled herself up straight and tall, looked directly into the sea of cameras as if she was looking into the killer’s face, and delivered a message meant for him. “Your time is up. This is the end of the road. We know your name. We know where you live. Your reign of terror is over. Make this easy on yourself and your victims: turn yourself in. Make no mistake, I will not stop until I’ve caught you and put the cuffs on your wrists.”

She didn’t take questions. As she walked back into the building, the lack of sleep from the night before caught up to her. By the time she got to her desk, she felt like she could put her head down and go right to sleep there for six hours. Lucky for her, Noah had a mug of coffee waiting. He set it down before her and she thanked him.

“You did great out there,” he said. “We’ll wait until the press clears out, and then we can grab a bite to eat and get out of here.”

“Sounds perfect,” Josie said, smiling.

“My place tonight?”

She realized he hadn’t gone home to change the entire day. “Absolutely.”