Her Silent Cry

Sixty-Nine

Gideon leaned forward in his seat, his cuffed hands extended across the table toward her. The smile that spread across his face made Josie’s skin crawl. “Guess,” he said.

Josie said, “You know you’re in a lot of trouble, right? If there is even a chance that Lucy is still alive, now is not the time for you to play games. Give us Lucy, and I’ll talk to the district attorney about some sort of deal—like keeping the death penalty off the table.”

The smile died on his lips.

“Oh,” Josie said. “You didn’t account for that, did you? New York doesn’t have the death penalty anymore, does it? Well, here in Pennsylvania, we do.”

He said nothing, his face hardening. Josie caught a glimpse of what he must have looked like to his victims, up close and personal. Terrifying. She said, “Your one and only chance of avoiding the death penalty is delivering Lucy. What did you do with her?”

A long moment stretched out between them. Josie made sure not to break eye contact first. Finally, she sighed as if she were bored and stood to leave. Her palm was on the door handle when Gideon said, “If you were me, what would you have done with her?”

Again, the sick feeling overcame Josie. She tried not to sway on her feet. Looking back at him, she kept her voice calm, unemotional. “Where’s her body?”

A flush crept into his cheeks. He banged his hands against the table. “Fuck you,” he said. “You think I’d kill a kid?”

Josie walked back to the table, placed both hands on its surface and leaned in toward him. “Yes,” she said. “I do. You are your father’s son.”

He leaped up from his chair, lunging toward her, but Josie held her ground, despite the fact that her heart hammered so hard in her chest, she felt like it was going to crash through her breastbone. His face was inches from hers. She smelled cigarettes and something foul on his breath.

“I am not like him.”

“If you didn’t kill her, then where is she?”

“Don’t try to trick me,” he spat.

Josie shook her head. “You think I have time for tricks? Games? I have one job, Gideon. One. Finding Lucy Ross. That’s it. That’s all. So if you’re not going to help me—and maybe save your own life in the process—then I don’t have time for you.”

She turned away from him. He shouted after her. “Oh, so you’re going to walk away. Just like her. You bitches are all the same. You want to know where that little brat is? Figure it out. What would you do with her if you were me? If you really give a shit about Lucy Ross, you’ll know. Hey, hey bitch, don’t you walk away from me. Don’t you—”

The door closed behind her.

She walked down the hall and let herself into the viewing room. Chitwood, Noah, Gretchen, Mettner and Oaks stared at her. Chitwood said, “Well, that went well.”

“He wasn’t going to tell me,” Josie said. “He’s a sad, pathetic little man. This is what he’s got. This control. This game. He’ll never give that up. He’s got nothing to lose now.”

Gretchen said, “Do you think he killed her?”

“I don’t know.”

Noah said, “So we need to figure out the riddle. If we’re him, what do we do with Lucy Ross when the rest of the plan has gone to shit?”

Oaks said, “Well, he wouldn’t return her. I don’t think that was ever his intention.”

Josie said, “He wouldn’t return her because he would want Amy to wait and wonder, just like he did as a small child. He waited for her to come back. He wondered if and when she would return.”

“It was torture for him, I’m sure,” Gretchen put in.

“If he kills Lucy and we recover her body, that puts a stop to the uncertainty,” Noah said.

Chitwood said, “If he kills her and hides her body well enough, the uncertainty lasts forever.”

Josie could not disagree, but she also couldn’t give up on the possibility that Lucy was alive. If she was still alive, she was somewhere out there alone and terrified. Time was running out. Josie said, “Let’s assume for a minute that he means what he says, that he wouldn’t kill a child.”

“If she’s alive, he left her somewhere,” Gretchen said. “Where?”

“Somewhere she won’t be found,” Noah said.

“Which means she’s as good as dead,” Oaks said.

“She wouldn’t be found in the woods,” Gretchen said.

Noah let out a lengthy groan. “That’s everywhere. Literally every place outside of this city.”

“Why would he leave her in the woods?” Chitwood asked.

“Because of what he went through,” Josie said. “When he was a child, Amy left him alone in the figurative wilderness. She left him with an abusive father. He had to fend for himself.”

“But he made it out,” Noah said. “So if the game is to recreate that scenario—a child left alone to fend for herself in a harsh environment—there has to be a chance that she could get out, that she could survive.”

Gretchen said, “People can survive in the woods, even a child.”

“Not a seven-year-old,” Josie said.

“He’s got no concept of age,” Oaks remarked. “He didn’t have a normal childhood. He had to learn a lot more survival skills at seven than Lucy Ross. He’s not thinking of what it’s like for her being seven years old. He’s thinking of how it was for him.”

“So we’re back to the woods,” Chitwood said.

“Let’s get a map,” said Josie.

A few minutes later they were all gathered around Noah who had pulled up a satellite view map of the county on Google Earth.

“My God,” Oaks said. “This really is like looking for a needle in a haystack. How do you find a seven-year-old girl in miles and miles of forest?”

Josie stared at the map. “He would have thought this out. He wouldn’t have just left her anywhere. He would have wanted to put her where she wouldn’t wander into a residential area on her first foray. Here,” she pointed to southern Denton where Alcott County ended, and Lenore County started. “State gameland, maybe? It’s remote.”

“Too many people,” Noah said. “It’s for public use. You’ve got hikers, fishers, hunters. The chances of someone running into her are a lot greater in state gameland.”

“You think so?” Mettner said. “I mean, some of those areas aren’t used for months by anyone. There are plenty of wild animals out there—if I’m this sick bastard and I’m playing his demented game of trying to see if a seven-year-old girl can get out of the woods alive or not, I might choose the state gameland.”

“Well,” Oaks said. “It has to be close by. From the time of the drop to the time Quinn caught him in the Ross house, it was only about twenty-four hours. He would have had to go to wherever they stashed her, gotten her, driven her to wherever he was going to leave her and driven back to the Ross household.”

Josie said, “Twenty-four hours could put her anywhere in the state. It doesn’t seem like a lot of time to us, but you could easily drive six hours from here, spend a couple of hours and drive back.”

“Jesus,” Chitwood said. “We’ll never find her. Someone should go back in there and try to get him to tell us.”

“Too bad we can’t beat it out of him,” Noah said.

There were nods all around the table. “I’m going to dream about beating that bastard for the rest of my life,” Oaks muttered. “But that’s not an option.”

“He’s not from here,” Josie said. “Neither was Natalie Oliver.”

“So?” Chitwood said. “I’m not from here. Neither is Palmer. What’s your point?”

“How did he know about Lover’s Cave? That’s a local thing. Not on any map,” Josie said.

Mettner said, “They did recon for months.”

“Still,” Josie said. “Chief, you’ve been here at least a year. Had you ever heard of it before this case?”

“No,” he said. “But I’m not looking for abandoned places to squat.”

“He found out about Lover’s Cave from somewhere. Only locals would know about that.”

Gretchen said, “Kommorah’s Koffee, down the street, they’ve got photos of all the local landmarks and rock formations. I had heard of it because of that wall they have displaying local artists’ and photographers’ work.”

Josie knew the wall. An entire section had been devoted to photographs taken by a local photographer who'd gone on to be quite successful and now traveled the world, freelancing for magazines and websites like National Geographic and the Smithsonian. The pictures were of places that only residents intimate with the city’s geography would know, like the rock formations found in the forests surrounding the city. She knew them well: Broken Heart, the Stacks, Turtle, Lover’s Cave, and the Overlook.

“Mett,” she said. “Run down to Komorrah’s and take a photograph of the wall, would you?”

Wordlessly, Mettner jogged from the room. Chitwood said, “Are you serious, Quinn? You’re going to look for this kid based on some pictures hanging in a coffee shop? You do understand that Lucy could get killed out there while you’re playing these games with this monster, don’t you?”

“He’s been in the area for months. Back before they’d taken Lucy, before anyone was looking for them, they could have gone to Kommorah’s many times.”

“It’s very popular,” Noah pointed out.

Chitwood shot him a dirty look.

Josie went on, “Maybe they were there one day, waiting for their order, and they happened to look at the wall. Maybe he got the bright idea to use one of those places as a drop location.”

“I think you’re talking out of your ass, Quinn.”

Oaks said, “You have any better ideas for narrowing our search area, Chief?”

Chitwood didn’t answer. He turned away from them and started pacing the room. Josie’s phone chirped. She opened Mettner’s text message and pulled up the photograph. “I see the Stacks. It wouldn’t be there. They’re right behind the high school where Oliver was killed. Broken Heart—that’s also near Denton East. Near enough for her to find her way out of the woods pretty quickly. Turtle…”

Noah said, “That’s behind a residential area. That area of woods isn’t very big.”

“You’re right,” Josie agreed. “It’s not very big. It’s right behind the trailer park where I grew up.”

“What else is on there?” Noah asked.

“The Overlook,” Josie said.

“Is that like a lovers’ lane?” Gretchen asked.

Josie and Noah laughed. Josie said, “No, the name is a joke. It’s this huge rock that sits smack in the middle of the woods. It stands almost straight up but it’s angled so you can actually walk to the top of it.”

“And you can slide back down,” Noah said. “It’s really like a giant slide.”

Josie said, “It’s huge, about the height of a tree. Flat on the top.”

“It doesn’t really overlook anything,” Noah said. “It just takes you to the treetops. It just looks really cool. Plus, it’s just weird. Sitting there in the middle of the forest.”

Gretchen said, “Can you find it on this map?”

She reached over to the laptop and zoomed out of the game lands they had been looking at. Pointing to various locations to orient them, she said, “Here’s west Denton—the city park, the elementary school, the Ross household. Here’s the middle of the city where we are now. Here’s Denton East High school, then the Stacks and behind that the abandoned textile mill. Where is the Overlook?”

Noah said, “It’s north.”

Josie pointed to a rural road snaking up and out of Denton proper toward the top of the screen. “If you take that route north, it would be on the left. There are some hiking trails. You might even be able to see it on satellite.” She clicked, moving the area into the center of the screen and zooming in until a misshapen gray shape poking through the treetops came into view. “There,” Josie said.

“Do we still have dogs?” Gretchen asked.

Noah said, “The sheriff’s K-9 unit is on standby and Luke Creighton is still in town with his dog.”

Oaks said, “Let’s go. I don’t want to waste one more second.”