Her Silent Cry

Nineteen

Oaks rushed from the room. Amy sank to the floor, sobbing. Colin dropped to his knees and gathered his wife into his arms. He held her tightly, whispering into her ear. It took a moment for Josie to realize what he was saying. “It’s okay. You did great. We can still get her back.”

“I lost her,” Amy cried. “I lost her again.”

“No,” Colin told her. “You didn’t lose her. You asked him what he wanted. That’s what they told us to do, remember? Ask him what he wanted. You did exactly what you were supposed to do.”

“He doesn’t want anything,” Amy said.

“It’s a game,” Josie said. “He’s playing some kind of sick game. He’ll call back.”

She walked over to the agent that Oaks and Mettner had been speaking with, whose screen showed the address of a small apartment complex near the university. She pointed to the screen. “I’m going there.”

The man nodded. “We’ve already got several teams en route. I’ll radio in and let them know you’ll be joining them.”

Outside, Josie jogged through a throng of reporters to get to her car. She sped off in the direction of Jaclyn Underwood’s apartment. Amy and Colin were so upset and so focused on getting Lucy back, that it hadn’t yet occurred to either of them to wonder why the kidnapper was calling from Jaclyn’s cell phone. Jaclyn—who had already been vetted by the FBI and who had only returned to Denton hours ago, if that.

Josie’s heart gave a wobbly beat as she pulled down Jaclyn’s street. Emergency vehicles clogged the area in front of the complex, a two-story blocky building with twelve units on each floor. Every unit had its own small patio—with the upstairs units boasting balconies. There was a main entrance in the front, center of the building. FBI agents jogged back and forth from this entrance to their vehicles. The Evidence Response van was already there. Josie’s eyes tracked the lower units until she found Mettner standing outside one of the patios on the end unit.

“Mett,” she called as she approached him.

He turned to look at her, and she could tell by the pallor of his skin that what she’d suspected when she left the Ross home was true.

“The nanny’s dead,” Mettner said. “He must have just left here. We’ve got local units out searching the streets while the FBI processes the scene here.”

“Where’s Oaks?”

“Inside. Go around the front.”

Josie showed her credentials to the agent at the front door, noting the overhead camera at the entryway. Inside, she went down a short hallway and then turned left. At the end of the hall was another agent with a clipboard. Beside him was a female agent doling out protective equipment. Josie donned a Tyvek suit, skull cap, booties and gloves and stepped through the door. She counted three agents processing the scene—taking photos, vacuuming for fibers and dusting for prints. The apartment was small, it’s living area only big enough for a loveseat across from a small table with a television on top of it. Behind the television, gauzy curtains swayed. Beyond them, Josie could see Mettner standing outside. She stepped closer and saw that the sliding glass doors had been left partially open. Next to that was the kitchen which was barely large enough for the table and chairs crammed into it. She turned away from the kitchen and walked down a small hallway. There was the bathroom on her left and a bedroom with a desk and several bookshelves in it across from that. At the end of the hall Oaks stood in what Josie assumed was the doorway to Jaclyn’s bedroom. He turned when he heard her approaching. “How did you know?” he asked.

“Know what?”

“That it would be the kidnapper calling?”

“I didn’t,” Josie said. “I was just going by what the note said. Right before the call came in, Amy told me she felt badly for not having talked with Jaclyn. She told me about the college courses, by the way.”

“That’s good,” Oaks said. “She trusts you.”

He turned his body in the doorway so Josie could slip past. She stayed on the edge of the room. One of the FBI agents was photographing Jaclyn Underwood’s body which lay face-up on her bed, a stab wound roughly two-inches long near her solar plexus. From what Josie could see, she had been a striking young woman with deep olive skin and long, dark hair. Her face was frozen in an expression of surprise, her brown eyes wide and glassy. Blood darkened the form-fitting, yellow cotton shirt she’d been wearing and the purple bedspread below her. Next to her body was a discarded cell phone.

“He came here and used her phone to call the parents,” Oaks said. “Then he killed her.”

“He called Amy,” Josie said. “He wanted to torture her. Now in addition to taking Lucy, he’s killed someone she was close to—Amy cared for this girl a great deal.”

Oaks shook his head. “Amy Ross barely has a life outside of her home. We couldn’t find any evidence that anyone would want to harm her. No evidence that she’s feuding with anyone. We went through her phone records and emails. We talked with her neighbors and other parents at school. They say she’s distant, but no one has anything bad to say. She would have to socialize to develop enough of a personal relationship with someone that they’d want to hurt her this badly.”

“Then we’re missing something,” Josie said.

Oaks said, “Maybe we need to take a closer look at the husband. Maybe this person is trying to hurt her and Lucy to get to him.”

“He seems a more likely target,” Josie said. “He’s built up some wealth working for Quarmark and there have been lots of death threats against him. This could be related to the drug pricing. Think about it—family members have to stand by and watch their loved ones suffer and die because they can’t afford the treatment they need.”

“And this guy is torturing Colin by making him watch his wife suffer, by making him wonder if his daughter is okay or not. He has to watch the slow death of his family.”

Josie nodded. “Did you find the murder weapon?”

“No,” Oaks said. “We believe he took it with him.”

“He came in through the sliding glass doors?” Josie asked.

“Looks that way,” Oaks said. “There are some droplets of blood on the floor inside and out the glass doors, so we know he went out that way.”

“There’s a camera at the main entrance. We should check the footage.”

“There’s a rear entrance, too,” Oaks said.

“I can go talk to the building manager, get whatever footage they have,” Josie offered.

“That would be great. I’m going to have a couple of agents canvass the other tenants and the neighbors.”

Josie took a last look around the room. On the floor beside the bed, Jaclyn’s suitcase lay thrown open. On top of the folded clothes was a hair dryer and an open cosmetics bag. Josie could see cream concealer and powder foundation, mascara and lipstick. “She must have been unpacking,” she said. “He snuck in and surprised her. He didn’t spend much time. He came here with the intention of killing her and using her phone and that was it.”

“We’re dealing with a ruthless individual,” Oaks agreed.

Josie went back out into the hallway. She took another peek inside the bedroom Jaclyn used as a home office. The books on her shelves were a mix of contemporary novels and textbooks, most of which had to do with architecture. Sadness washed over Josie. Jaclyn Underwood wouldn’t be designing any buildings. She would never graduate from college after working so hard to get this far. She would never get married or have her own children. All that life unlived. Young victims almost always pierced her veil of professionalism—not that she ever showed it. Jaclyn Underwood, like so many before her, would visit Josie in her nightmares for years to come. The thought that she would likely be the one to have to tell Amy about Jaclyn’s murder made her heart even heavier. She was about to turn and leave the room when the edge of an object poking out from beneath Jaclyn’s desk caught her eye.

Josie dropped to her hands and knees and peered beneath the desk. It was a compact, similar to the one Jaclyn had in her suitcase except it was a much more expensive brand, and the color was Ivory Nude. Josie stood and took a more careful look around the room. She opened the closet which was packed with exercise equipment—a yoga mat, a portable elliptical machine, exercise bands and small dumbbells. Dresses hung from the rod. On the shelf above the rod were some shoeboxes and a pillow. Josie stood on her tiptoes to confirm that the pillowcase had the same pattern as Jaclyn’s bedclothes. She left everything as it was so it could be photographed and went across the hall into the bathroom. The toothbrush holder sat to the right of the bathroom sink, a shiny chrome cup with four holes in the top. All of them were empty which made sense since Jaclyn had been in Colorado for the weekend. She hadn’t had a chance to remove her toiletries or cosmetics from her suitcase. Josie studied the empty toothbrush holes, seeing exactly what she had expected to see.

“Oaks,” she called. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

Oaks crowded into the bathroom with her.

Josie pointed to the toothbrush holder. “What do you see?”

Oaks raised a brow but studied it. “I see a college kid who hasn’t cleaned her toothbrush holder in months, probably.”

He was right. It took time to build up the whitish-green crust that rimmed the toothbrush hole.

“But there’s two,” he added.

“Exactly,” Josie said.

One of the toothbrush holes was deep in crud while the other had only a thin layer but enough to indicate that someone else had been storing their toothbrush there for a shorter amount of time. Josie said, “In the spare room, under the desk is a compact.”

“Compact?”

“Foundation,” Josie said. “Women’s make-up. You know, it’s a little circular thing that opens. Mirror on one side, skin-colored powder on the other?”

Oaks laughed. “Okay, yeah. I got you. So what?”

“It’s not Jaclyn’s.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Jaclyn’s is in her suitcase.”

“Maybe she had two,” Oaks said. “How many do you have?”

Josie smiled. “I do have two but mine come in the same color and brand. Come with me.”

Oaks let her pass and followed her back into the bedroom. She knelt down over the open suitcase. “Was this photographed?” she asked.

“Yes,” answered the FBI agent on the other side of the room, dusting for prints.

Gingerly, Josie lifted the compact just enough so she could read off the brand and shade from the bottom. “Revlon ColorStay. Medium Deep. This runs maybe ten dollars at your local drug store. Look at Jaclyn’s skin. It’s not fair. It’s olive.”

“I’m listening,” Oaks said.

She led him back to the spare room and pointed to the floor beneath the desk. “You can look but I already read it. It’s Estée Lauder. Ivory Nude. Goes for about forty dollars and is sold at higher end department stores. Jaclyn is a college student. College students don’t spend forty dollars on foundation at Macy’s. They go to the local CVS.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Because I’ve bought make-up—and when I was in college, ten dollars on make-up was a lot. And no matter where you buy your make-up or how much you spend on it, you don’t get the wrong shade. Google it. Ivory Nude is nowhere near the shade Medium Deep. This is someone else’s compact. I think it fell and got kicked under here accidentally or something. Whoever it belongs to probably didn’t even realize she left it.”

“Jaclyn has friends, you know. It could be one of theirs.”

Josie nodded. “It could be. All of this could be perfectly innocent.” She walked over to the closet and tugged the door open again, pointing to the pillow on the shelf. “This pillow is from her bed. There are three pillows on her bed now. All with the same matching pillowcases. Just like this one. Why is this one in here?”

Oaks said, “Someone was staying here with her.”

“Yes,” Josie said. “Maybe not for long, but long enough to have kept her toothbrush in the bathroom, which tells me it wasn’t just a friend crashing here for a night or even a weekend.”

“She told my team she had no roommates or recent visitors.”

“Did you ask her how recent?”

Oaks sighed. “Let me make a phone call.”