Her Silent Cry

Twenty-Nine

Wendy Kaplan lived on the top of a mountain in a development called Briar Lane. The small collection of modular homes could only be reached by one of the long, narrow rural roads that snaked from Denton proper out into the thick forests surrounding it. Even if Josie hadn’t been familiar with it, she would only have had to follow the long line of news vehicles to find Kaplan’s house, which was now surrounded by police and emergency vehicles. Josie parked outside the police perimeter and walked a half block to Kaplan’s address.

Like most of the newer developments in Denton, all the houses in Briar Lane looked the same. They came in three colors: tan, gray and white. Some of the residents had added a little character with landscaping and lawn ornaments. She passed a gray house on her right that she knew quite well. It gave her a shiver to think that this missing girl case had now come back almost to the very place that the famous missing girls’ case had started for Josie three years earlier. She knew they weren’t related in any way, obviously, but she couldn’t stop the sense of foreboding that overcame her.

Kaplan’s house was a few doors down, tan-colored with a beautifully landscaped garden in the front yard. An FBI agent stood in the driveway in front of a small red sports car. He nodded at Josie and said, “They’re around back.”

Josie walked between the houses, noticing that Wendy Kaplan had had a tall white privacy fence installed around her backyard. Another agent stood there with Mettner, guarding the entrance.

Josie felt an uptick in her heartbeat. “Mett,” she said. “Why does this look like you’re standing outside of a murder scene?”

He grimaced. “Sorry to tell you, boss, but Wendy Kaplan is dead.”

Josie found the FBI Evidence Response van and suited up appropriately. When she returned to the backyard gate, she found that Mettner had gone off to walk the outer perimeter to see if there were any clues to be found. Josie signed in with the FBI agent and stepped into Wendy Kaplan’s backyard. Like the front, it was beautifully landscaped, leaving little actual yard, its centerpiece a beautiful stone fountain. The water at its base was filled with koi. Between the fountain in the middle of the yard and the sliding glass doors at the back of the house, Josie spotted a woman’s prone body. She was face down. Judging from her stretchy black yoga pants and pink tank top, she had been either returning from or getting ready to go to a yoga class. Her greying hair was long and fanned out over her shoulders, the tips of it turned red from the ever-widening pool of blood in the grass around her torso. One arm was trapped under her body. The other was flung outward to her side, fingertips covered in blood. She hadn’t been dead very long. Oaks stood over her, two other agents at his side, all of them dressed in white Tyvek suits. Josie hung back while he gave out directions.

When he had finished, Oaks walked over to where Josie stood just inside the gate while his agents photographed the body and began processing the scene. “We haven’t turned her over yet,” he said. “But I’m guessing another stab wound.”

“Jesus,” Josie said. She turned and looked up and around but couldn’t see any of the neighbors’ upstairs windows. No one would have been able to see anything happening in Wendy’s backyard.

“Looks like she put up quite the fight,” Oaks said. “The house is a mess. Phone is in the kitchen on the counter. There’s blood on it, so we think he killed her first and then returned to the house and used it to call Amy.” He motioned toward the sliding glass doors. “I’d like you to have a look, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Josie said.

They stepped gingerly through the glass doors. Debris crunched beneath their feet the moment they hit the tile of the kitchen floor. Not glass from the doors, but from the shattered remains of dinner and glassware that had been broken in Wendy Kaplan’s struggle against the killer. The draining board was on the floor. Pieces of thick ceramic plates and mugs lay all over the place. The wooden kitchen table was on its side, one of its legs snapped off. Every appliance that Wendy owned was in a broken heap on the kitchen floor. Her refrigerator door had a large dent in it.

Josie felt a swell of respect for the woman. It seemed wrong that she should die after putting up such a fight. “I hope she hurt him,” she said, eyes searching the detritus.

“Me too,” Oaks answered. He stood in one corner, arms crossed.

Josie stopped her search momentarily and looked over at him. “Is this a test?”

He laughed. “No, not a test. I’m just interested in what you see. Your impressions.”

Josie edged around the debris to the door that led to the front of the house. She walked carefully through the dining and living rooms to the front door. Nothing looked disturbed—not even the locking mechanism on the entry door. She walked back to the kitchen.

“She let him in,” Josie said.

“There was no forced entry,” Oaks agreed. “My agents and your guy had a look around. No broken windows, no interruption in the privacy fence, no disturbance of the sliding glass doors.”

“But then they got to the kitchen and at some point, she realized he was a threat. What do we know about Wendy Kaplan?”

Oaks pulled out his phone and scrolled through some notes. “As you know, my team checked out everyone considered close to Amy and Colin Ross. Kaplan was near the top of the list with the nanny. Here we go—she was older than Amy, in her late fifties. Divorced, no children. No boyfriends. Worked in the publishing industry in New York City for many years. Now she does some freelance work from home. Bought this house about three years ago. No record. No red flags. Alibi for the exact time Lucy disappeared—she was on a Skype conference call with several colleagues who confirmed her presence on the call, as did her actual phone and computer records.”

“So she lived alone?”

“Yes.”

“A woman from a large city living alone would not let a stranger into her house just like that,” Josie said.

“Maybe he threatened her,” Oaks said. “Pulled the knife or even a gun and demanded she let him in.”

“You get anything from the neighbors?” Josie asked. “Directly across the street?”

“My agents are still canvassing but first thing we did was go to the house across the street. No one home. It is a weekday, remember? Most people are at work.”

“But he would have needed a vehicle to get up here,” Josie said.

“Yes,” Oaks agreed. “That’s why I’ve got agents out canvassing the rest of the development to see if anyone who was home saw an unusual vehicle.”

Josie looked around the kitchen once more. “If he had threatened her at the door, she would have fought then. She never would have let him in in the first place.”

“How can you be sure?”

Josie motioned to the destruction all around them. “I know this kind of fight,” she said. “I’ve fought this kind of fight. The kind of person who fights this hard—the single woman living alone who fights this hard— doesn’t let a strange man into her home.”

“How scientific,” Oaks said. At first, Josie thought he was being sarcastic but when she saw his smile, she knew he was joking. Mostly. It was true. It wasn’t a good argument. Not based on facts or science, just on Josie’s gut. But her gut rarely failed her.

Oaks continued, “How does he get her to let him in then?”

Josie shrugged. “Manipulation. I’d check to see if Wendy had any home repairs or anything like that scheduled for today. Maybe he was impersonating someone else. Either that or he told her a story, lied to her and told her something that was intriguing enough to her to get her to let him in. Then they get to the kitchen and at some point, she realizes he’s going to hurt her or kill her, and she tries to fight him off.”

Josie went back into the other rooms and took a more careful look around. The living room was sparsely furnished with a single couch, coffee table and a large screen television on the wall. It was a room for one, but it gave off a relaxing, joyful vibe with bright contemporary artwork hanging from the walls and a small sculpture of a happy Buddha in the center of the coffee table. The dining room was more of a home office with a desk and several bookshelves. An open laptop sat in the center of the desk. To the left of it was a pile of typed pages. It was a manuscript, Josie realized. Its title was The Mistaken but the name of the author had been torn off. Perhaps she had used it for scrap paper? Behind it was a coffee mug with a pile of books on it beneath the words: Drink Coffee. Read Books. Be happy. Kaplan had been using the mug as a pen-holder. Perhaps she had been on the phone, needed to write something down quickly, snatched a pen from her cup, and scribbled on the first thing available, the title page of the manuscript.

To the right of the laptop was a wireless mouse. With her gloved hand, Josie nudged it and the screen lit up. She leaned in to see that Wendy had been reading her email the last time she sat here. All of it appeared to have to do with a trip she was planning to New York City in the next few weeks. The desk chair was several feet away from the desk. Had she been sitting there, planning a trip when the killer knocked on the door?

Josie tried to recreate it in her mind. Wendy, sitting at her desk, making plans to visit old friends in New York City. Answers the door to a man she doesn’t know. Something he tells her or says to her compels her to invite him inside.

“Has anyone checked upstairs?” Josie asked.

Oaks poked his head out of the kitchen. “We cleared it, obviously but we haven’t processed it yet as it looks like the struggle took place right in here.”

Josie went upstairs and had a careful look around but Oaks was right, nothing looked disturbed. She doubted the killer would have had any reason to go upstairs. Back downstairs she waited near the front door while the evidence processing team descended on the kitchen. Her eyes went once more to the living room and then to the dining room/home office, eyes locking on the desk chair. It didn’t have wheels, which made sense. The room was carpeted. Wheels wouldn’t have traveled easily on the carpet unless Kaplan had had one of those plastic desk mats.

Oaks walked up beside her. “What’s on your mind?”

Josie pointed to the chair. “That’s bothering me.”

“The office?”

“The chair. If she stood up and pushed her chair back, it wouldn’t be that far across the room.” Josie stepped back into the room, positioning herself between the chair and the desk. Oaks followed.

“You would only need this much room if you were trying to get under the desk.”

“Maybe she dropped something,” Oaks suggested.

Josie dropped to her hands and knees and peered beneath the desk. There, all the way in the back, against the wall, was a small mass of white paper. Josie wrestled her phone from inside her Tyvek suit and turned on her flashlight app, shining it onto the crumpled paper.

Oaks squatted and looked in over her shoulder. “See,” he said. “She dropped a piece of paper.”

Josie studied it a moment more, realizing quickly where she’d seen something like this before. “It’s not a piece of paper,” she said. “It’s a chrysalis.”

“What?” Oaks asked.

“A cocoon,” Josie said. “It looks exactly like the one I saw inside Lucy Ross’s desk at school. Oaks, she was here. Lucy was here. The killer brought her with him. That’s why Wendy Kaplan let him in. She put Lucy in here while she and this guy talked in the kitchen.”

“That means Lucy could have seen the struggle, the murder,” Oaks said.

“Or maybe she just heard it and so she hid under here. When he was done, he came in here looking for her.”

“He tossed the chair back,” Oaks said. “Dragged her out from under there.”

“But she left this,” Josie said.

“You think a seven-year-old is smart enough to leave us a clue that she’s alive?” Oaks asked.

“I think that this gave her something to focus on besides what was happening in the other room. She’s doing whatever she can to mentally distance herself from whatever she’s seeing and experiencing,” Josie answered. “But if she’s still alive, we’ve got a chance of bringing her home.”