Her Silent Cry

Sixty-Two

Noah hobbled outside the entrance of the tent to meet her. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me you got shot? Jesus, Josie.”

Josie stopped in her tracks. She could tell by his tone that he was genuinely upset. “I’m sorry, Noah. I didn’t think it was that big a deal. I had a vest on.”

“So did Amy Ross, and now she’s fighting for her life. You know damn well those vests don’t make you invincible. You could have been killed.”

“Noah, I’m sorry.”

“I had to find out from a couple of Feds who carried you out of the woods. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Josie put a hand on her hip. “They didn’t carry me,” she said.

He pointed a finger at her. “Don’t change the subject.”

What could she say? She didn’t tell him because she had wanted to go home first and make sure she wasn’t pregnant before she got checked out at the hospital? Because, had she been pregnant, she wouldn’t have known exactly whose it was? What a mess she had made of things.

Noah said, “I just lost my mother, Josie. I can’t lose you, too.”

“You’re not going to lose me,” Josie said, softening her tone. “I promise.”

“You can’t make that promise,” he shot back. “Not in this line of work.”

“Neither can you,” she pointed out. “You’ll be back on full duty in no time and back in the field with me.”

He didn’t respond.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth,” Josie said. “But wait, did you say Amy Ross is alive? Did she make it through surgery?”

Noah looked away from her, and she could tell by the muscle twitching in his jaw that he was taking a moment to compose himself. He met her eyes once more. “Yes. She made it. She’s in recovery now. Heavily sedated. They had to take an ovary and one of her fallopian tubes. They were able to save her uterus though.”

“My God,” Josie murmured. A wave of sadness enveloped her. Almost of its own will, her hand went to her own bruised abdomen. Amy was forty and likely hadn’t had any plans for more children, but still, her injuries would deeply affect any decisions she made about having children going forward. Lucy was missing, the Ross family had one million dollars on the line, and now Amy’s body had been irreparably damaged. What more would this case take from the woman?

“Let’s go inside,” Noah said. “Oaks wants to do a briefing.”

Josie followed him into the tent where once more, dozens of agents as well as state police, sheriff’s deputies and many members of Denton PD—including Gretchen, Mettner, Chitwood, and Lamay—were gathered around Oaks, waiting for him to speak. He held up his hand, signaling for five more minutes and walked over to Josie. “You okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’m fine,” she said, feeling exactly the opposite.

“I’d like you to brief everyone on what happened at the football field.”

“Of course.”

Oaks called everyone to attention. Josie delivered an account of what had happened at the football field and behind it, in the woods beyond the Stacks. Gretchen stood and gave a report on Amy’s medical condition. Mettner briefed everyone on the drop at Lover’s Cave which had been uneventful and gone without incident except for the fact that the money Colin had left there was still there, untouched. Lamay spoke about the rescue of Violet Young. Then Oaks picked up with what Josie had found out from Violet.

“Sometime between the abduction of Mrs. Young from the school and the phone call that the kidnapper made to the Ross family to give the final instructions for the drop, these perpetrators did something with Lucy Ross. We don’t yet know what.”

“But,” Josie said. “They had Violet Young’s phone with them so I think we should start by searching the same two-mile radius where they dumped Violet Young.”

Mettner dragged a large foam board with a map tacked to it into the middle of the room. “Here is the radius,” he said, indicating an area of West Denton outlined in red. “Here is where Violet Young was found.”

Josie added, “It’s possible the kidnapper stashed Lucy somewhere in this radius before the drop and then went back and moved her, but this is a good place for us to start our search. We don’t know for certain that that’s where he left her so we should work outward from there. Any evidence that we find that indicates she may be elsewhere, we’ll need to pursue immediately.”

Someone from the back of the tent said, “Isn’t the kidnapper supposed to deliver Lucy to the carousel tomorrow?”

Josie said, “We have to consider the possibility that he has no intention of delivering Lucy. He hasn’t taken the money, and we believe he murdered his own accomplice, Natalie Oliver. We know from Violet Young that the two of them were fighting prior to the drop. We also know that both of them were at Denton East High, leaving the Lover’s Cave drop completely unattended. It’s not clear exactly what their intent was, but we know that the male suspect had deviated from the plan and that Natalie Oliver was not happy about it.”

She nodded to Oaks, who nodded back and addressed the crowd. “Natalie Oliver had gunshot residue on her hands. The round that doctors dug out of Amy Ross’s pelvis was a .308, which as you all know, came from a rifle.”

“A rifle powerful enough to have hit her when fired from the cave that Natalie Oliver was hiding in,” Josie added.

“The round that the medical examiner pulled from Natalie Oliver’s brain was a nine millimeter, and based on the degree of damage to her skull, we believe it came from a pistol,” Oaks said.

“Both could have come from guns that were stolen from the hunting cabin,” Gretchen said. She flipped a page in her notebook. “The Remington 700 takes a .308 round and the Glock 19 takes a nine millimeter round.”

Josie nodded and went on, “We believe that the male kidnapper was hiding in the Stacks near the football field. We believe that Natalie Oliver was supposed to be at the Lover’s Cave location, but for whatever reason, maybe because of the disagreement they’d had, she instead came to the Denton East location, where she remained hidden in the cave. We don’t believe that the male suspect knew she was there until she had already shot Amy Ross. Once the confrontation between the male suspect and the agents patrolling the ridge began, she took the opportunity to shoot Amy Ross. The male suspect located her in the cave, shot her in the head, and took her rifle.”

“So all bets are off,” Noah said. “He’s on the run now. No partner and no money.”

“Right,” Oaks said. “We don’t know what he’s going to do next: try to return to one of the drop sites and take the money, or go back to wherever he stashed Lucy to get her and try the whole thing again—assuming she is still alive.”

“Why would Natalie Oliver shoot Amy Ross?” Gretchen asked.

Josie sighed. “That’s anybody’s guess. Some type of jealousy? Maybe she felt the kidnapper’s personal need to torture Amy was interfering with the kidnapping plan. The ransom seemed secondary to him. Also, he asked for waterproof bags and then had the parents drop the money at sites where water wasn’t an issue. Maybe they thought it was going to rain or maybe they had originally planned the drop site near the river and then changed their plan. It’s possible that could have been part of their disagreement. It’s impossible to know what they were thinking or what went on between them, but at this point the more important issue is locating Lucy.”

“Or recovering her body,” Chitwood said.

Oaks added, “And finding this bastard before he kills again.”

Josie said, “Did your guys in New York get anything on Oliver in the last hour or so?”

Oaks nodded. He shuffled through the pages in his hands. “Natalie Oliver, twenty-four years old. A foster kid since she was a baby. Moved from home to home. Aged out of a group home at eighteen. Worked odd jobs: waitress, receptionist at a gym, made some money driving for Uber, worked at a mall. Did a few semesters at Erie Community College in Buffalo. She hit the New York lottery for a hundred thousand dollars two years ago. Quit her retail job, moved to a nicer apartment in West Seneca. Paid her rent for a year. Neither the landlord nor the neighbors have seen her in six months.”

“Vehicles?”

“Yes,” Oaks said. “She is the owner of a black Honda Accord registered to her address in West Seneca.”

“Can you check toll booth cameras? Does she have an E-Z pass account?”

Oaks checked his notes. “No E-Z pass account but we’ve got a team looking at cameras now and we’ve released the license plate number to the press in case the kidnapper is still in possession of the vehicle and driving it around.”

“How about her friends, associates?” Josie asked.

Oaks said, “We’re still running down those leads. As of right now, I’ve got units at Denton East and at Lover’s Cave watching the money. Colin is with Amy at Denton Memorial Hospital. I’ve got three agents there, one who is specifically monitoring both their phones. We’ve got units searching the two-mile radius that Detective Quinn has outlined here where Violet Young was found. The sheriff’s office has their K-9 unit on site, and they’ll be searching for Lucy all night. Obviously, there will be units outside, monitoring the carousel in the very unlikely event that the kidnapper delivers Lucy.”

Josie added, “I’d like units on standby in case there are any developments at either of the drop locations or in the search for Lucy. Everyone available should join the search.”

As everyone dispersed, Oaks said to Josie, “You should go home. Get a couple of hours of sleep.”

“I can’t,” Josie said, even though every cell in her body yearned for sleep or just to lie down in her comfy bed.

Gretchen said, “He’s right, boss. We’ve all been at this all day. We can rotate like we did last time. You and Noah go get a couple of hours and then you’ll relieve us.”

Chitwood said, “If anything develops, you’ll be the first to know, Quinn.”

All four of the Denton detectives stared at him. It was the least abrasive and abusive thing he had ever said to her. “Chief?” Josie said.

Chitwood rolled his eyes. “You do your best work when you’re clear-headed. If I’m not mistaken, you carried a dying woman off a football field today, climbed a mountain, got shot, fell down that mountain, and now you’re still here. Did you even eat anything today?”

“N-no,” Josie stammered. “I—there was no time.”

“Well that seals it,” Chitwood said. “Take Fraley. Eat and straight to bed. We’ll see you back here in three hours to relieve Gretchen and Mettner.”

Josie looked around at all of them. Lamay stood up. “Boss,” he said. “I’ll stay here. If anything happens—anything at all—I’ll call you myself.”

Noah lurched to his feet and put his crutches under his arms. “Let’s go,” he said. “The clock is ticking.”