The Bones She Buried

Nineteen

Back at the station house, Bob Chitwood waited for them, standing behind Gretchen, who was seated at her desk with a phone receiver pressed to one ear. His arms were crossed over his narrow chest. His natural crimson flush had returned, making his scattered white facial hair stand out against his skin. “Quinn,” he shouted as they approached. “Are you kidding me?”

“Sir?” Josie said, tossing her keys onto her desk. She gave Gretchen a small wave.

Chitwood pointed a finger at her. “You and Mett just caught Beth Pratt’s murder? Beth damn Pratt? Do you understand how high-profile this case is gonna be? The press is still talking about her father’s disappearance twelve years later. This is gonna be a real shitstorm, you know that?”

Josie put her hands on her hips. “Yep.”

“That’s it? Yep? You better be ready for this, Quinn. I don’t know what the hell is going on around here, but you better get to the bottom of it like your job depends on it, because it just might. I’m gonna try to keep this out of the press as long as possible.”

Ignoring his tirade, she said, “Sir, this might be a good time to reinstate Detective Palmer. Put her back in the field.”

“Don’t even try it, Quinn.”

“Sir,” Josie protested.

Chitwood’s shout stilled every sound in the room. “Dammit, Quinn, I said no. Palmer is on the damn desk, and that is my final word on the matter.”

Mettner cleared his throat from behind Josie. “Sir,” he interjected. “We’ve got someone downstairs we need to interview. Hummel brought him in and put him in the conference room.”

“I heard,” Chitwood said. “Mason Pratt. You think he’s a suspect?”

“No,” Mettner replied. “Not at this time.”

With one last glare, Chitwood retreated to his office muttering something about people dropping like flies and the damn Pratt family.

Mettner looked relieved, but Josie and Gretchen suppressed their smiles. “Let’s go talk to Mason Pratt,” Josie told Mettner.

“I’ll be here at my desk,” Gretchen said with a sigh.

Mettner said, “Can you see if the Evidence Response Team turned up anything on the footprint found at Colette Fraley’s house?”

Gretchen nodded and picked up her phone. “Great idea,” she told him. “I’m on it.”

Josie gathered the Colette Fraley file and a couple of notepads and pens and walked downstairs to the conference room where Mason Pratt sat before an untouched cup of coffee, his sandy hair covered with a ballcap and his eyes red-rimmed from crying. Hummel had told them that he had picked Mason up where he worked at a local tractor and feed supply store. Mason’s boss confirmed he’d been there since six that morning. He wore a dark green hoodie and beneath the table, Josie could see he had jeans and boots on. He stood when they walked in and shook both their hands. Both Mettner and Josie offered their condolences.

“Thank you,” Mason said. “I just can’t believe this is happening.”

“Has anyone notified your mother?” Mettner asked. “Have you had a chance to tell her?”

“I haven’t had a chance to get over to see her. I just found out when your officer came to get me. My mom lives at Rockview,” Mason said. “The nursing home?”

“I know it,” Josie said. “My grandmother lives there too.”

“Were you and Beth close?” Mettner asked.

Mason took off his ballcap and pushed a hand through his hair. “Yeah, pretty close, I guess. I mean first my dad and then hers. That kind of thing—not many people can relate to it, you know? But Beth and I—” he broke off, his gaze dropping to his lap. “Jesus, I’m starting to think my family is cursed.”

“This is a lot to take in,” Josie said. “And you’ve been through a lot. We hate to have to do this, especially now that you’ve had such a shock, but we need to ask you some questions about Beth, your Uncle Drew and your dad. Would that be okay?”

He nodded. “What do you want to know?”

Mettner began, “Do you know of anyone who would have any reason to hurt Beth?”

Mason shook his head. “No. I can’t think of anyone. I mean, she was stubborn and strong-willed like Uncle Drew, but she didn’t have any enemies. Not that I know of. She worked at the college. Did you know that?”

“Yes,” Mettner said. “When Detective Palmer called her to set up today’s meeting she mentioned that. She worked in the registrar’s office, is that right?”

“Yeah. She loved her job. Loved her co-workers. I can’t imagine anyone up there having any reason to kill her. Did you talk to her girlfriend—I’m sorry—ex-girlfriend?”

“Our team is tracking her down now,” Josie said. “When’s the last time you spoke to Beth?”

“About a week ago maybe? I’ve been calling to check on her since the big break-up. She was taking it kind of hard.”

Josie pulled out a photo of Colette Fraley she had copied from the Fraley family photos and showed it to Mason. “Do you recognize this woman?”

A blank look came over his face. “No,” he said. “I’ve never seen her before. Who is she?”

Josie said, “She was murdered about a week before Beth. We’re just exploring the possibility that the deaths are connected.”

“Maybe my mom might know her?” he suggested.

Josie put the photo away. “We’ll check.” She took out her phone and brought up some of the photos she had snapped pictures of at Beth Pratt’s residence. She swiped through them for Mason’s benefit and pointed to what looked like an arrowhead in the last one. “Can you tell us what your dad is holding in these photos?”

A small smile played on Mason’s lips. “Yeah,” he said. “It was this dumb arrowhead. You know what those are, right?”

“Yes,” Mettner and Josie answered in unison.

Josie asked, “Did the one in these photos have some kind of special meaning for him?”

“Well, yeah,” Mason said. “You know my dad was an archaeologist, right?”

“No,” Josie said. “We weren’t aware.”

“Yeah, he was a professor at Denton University. Anyway, archaeology was his passion. Before I was born, he traveled all over the world on digs.”

Mettner asked, “Is that where he got the arrowhead? On a dig?”

“No. He got it here in Pennsylvania. When he was growing up he used to go out into the woods to play, and he would pretend to be some world-famous archaeologist. Well, one time he actually found this arrowhead. It wasn’t worth anything, but it meant a lot to him. When he went off on digs he would carry it with him to remind him of home. To keep him ‘grounded’ he used to say. Later, when he settled here and started teaching, he carried it around in his pocket and when he started to feel anxious or nervous he’d take it out and run his fingers over its edges.”

Josie’s heart did a little double tap as she thought of the smoothed edges of the arrowhead they’d found in Colette’s sewing machine. “How old was your dad when he died?” she asked Mason.

“Fifty-nine.”

“He had this arrowhead since he was a child?”

“Yes. Maybe since he was nine or ten.”

That was roughly fifty years of rubbing the hard edges of the arrowhead’s surface. Plenty of time to smooth it down.

“Do you know what happened to it?” Mettner asked.

“Nah,” Mason said. “I mean my mom and I assumed it was in his pocket when he went into the river, and it went down with him. He never went anywhere without it, and it wasn’t in his car.”

Josie said, “Can you tell us about the day your dad went into the river?”

Nineteen years had passed since the trauma of losing his father, and Mason’s words were matter-of-fact, almost emotionless, like it was a story he had told hundreds of times. Josie guessed he had. “I was still in high school. Back then we lived between here and Bellewood—outside of Bowersville. He went to work that morning and taught his nine o’clock class. He walked over to the cafeteria to get a coffee after that, just like he did every day. He was on camera there. Then he walked out and no one saw him for two days. My mom reported him missing that night when he didn’t come home for dinner, but the police wouldn’t start looking for him until twenty-four hours had passed. The next day the state police found his car on the bank of the Susquehanna River down in Bellewood. It was locked. His keys, phone, wallet, everything was still in the car. Except for him.”

“Had he been depressed?” Josie asked.

“My dad was always depressed. Well, I mean, he struggled his whole life. He was bipolar. So he was either on top of the world or he was ready to check out, but none of us ever thought he actually would.”

“He never expressed any suicidal ideations?” Mettner asked.

“Not in a way that made us think he would ever really hurt himself. When he was in one of his down cycles, he would just be very sad and morose, sleep a lot. Sometimes he’d say something like, ‘I’d be better off dead,’ but he never seemed like he was planning to kill himself. He had a therapist and he saw a shrink for meds. My mom was really on top of him about it because she said if he wasn’t vigilant then he could spiral out of control. Even after his body washed up, she didn’t believe he killed himself. But there was no proof that he didn’t.”

“What did you believe?” Josie asked.

“I don’t know. I used to think my mom was right but as I got older, I wasn’t so sure. Now, I don’t know what to think. I mean, don’t they say that people who are going to kill themselves don’t talk about it beforehand, one day they just up and do it? I’ve read a lot of stuff on the topic of suicide since then. Maybe he just decided to do it. The police said he didn’t have any marks on his body—well, there was some bruising on his back, shoulders and arms, but they said it likely came from his body smashing against rocks and tree branches in the river and near the shore. They couldn’t prove that he had been in a struggle.”

“Was he a good swimmer?” Mettner asked.

“Passable.”

“What did your uncle think?” Josie asked.

“That he went there to meet someone and that person either killed him and dumped his body in the river or held him down and drowned him.”

“The cause of death was drowning, wasn’t it?” Mettner asked.

“Yeah.”

“Who did your uncle think he was going to meet?” Josie asked.

“Don’t know. We never could figure that out. My mom and Uncle Drew checked his emails at work and at home, his offices at work and at home, talked to his assistant, his colleagues, his students, looked through his phone. From what I remember, they didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. I mean, if they did, they didn’t tell me. What I always wondered was, like, if he was going to meet someone, wouldn’t there be some record of it? A phone call? An email? Something?”

“You would think,” Josie said.

She thought of the mystery woman Drew Pratt had met with at the craft fair on the day he disappeared. There hadn’t been any indication that Drew had meant to meet up with anyone either. Had he known the mystery woman before he went to the craft fair? Had he gone there with the intention of meeting her or had he just run into her? Regardless, it was doubtful that the mystery woman had killed Drew Pratt. Both the Pratt brothers were over six foot. It would have taken someone either very strong, very skilled, or both to overpower them. Even if she had found a way of killing them that didn’t involve the need for brute strength, like poisoning them, she would have needed help disposing of their bodies.

The rustle of a paper evidence bag brought Josie’s attention back to the table. Mettner snapped on gloves and reached inside, bringing out the plastic bag they’d found in Colette’s sewing machine, minus the flash drive, which had been sent off to be tested for fingerprints after the contents were downloaded. Mettner held it out for Mason to see, instructing him not to touch it, and smoothing the plastic so he could get a better look at it. “Does this look like your dad’s arrowhead, by any chance?”

Mason squinted at it, standing up and leaning over to get a closer look. “Where did you get this?”

“We recently found it at the scene of a crime,” Josie said. “We can’t get prints from it because of its uneven surface. Even though it’s pretty smooth, it’s got enough edges to make it nearly impossible to lift from. We’re trying to figure out its significance.”

Mason pointed to the bag. “Can you turn that over?”

Mettner turned the bag over in his hands and held it out for him to see. Mason pointed to the bottom edge. “Right there,” he said, his voice a gasp. Josie leaned in and saw a faint black mark along the bottom of the edge of the arrowhead that she hadn’t noticed before. Mason repeated, “Where did you find this? What crime scene?”

“Is this your father’s?” Mettner said.

Tears welled in Mason’s eyes. “Yes, I think it is. He was painting the outside of our house one summer—I was just a kid, maybe ten or eleven—and he had left it sitting on the table on the porch. I thought I’d help him by painting the siding out there, but I ended up spilling this dark blue paint on his beloved arrowhead. I thought he was going to kill me. He was so upset. He got most of it off. All except that one little fleck. It always bothered him.”

Josie and Mettner looked at one another, eyes wide. Colette Fraley had been in possession of two personal items belonging to two men—one dead, the other missing for twelve years. The words went unspoken between them, but Josie knew Mettner was thinking the same thing she was: what the hell was Colette involved in?