The Bones She Buried

Thirty

“I thought Colette Fraley and Samuel Pratt didn’t know each other,” Mettner said.

The two of them had cleaned up the unit, put all the storage bins back in place and taken the box marked “Sam” with them after calling Mason for his permission. Now Mettner drove back to the police station while Josie sat in the passenger’s seat with the box balanced on her knees.

“Who else would C.F. be?” Josie countered. “Drew Pratt spent years trying to figure out what or who those initials belonged to. Maybe he never got it because he had no idea who Colette was. I mean, we haven’t been able to find a connection between her and either Pratt brother.”

Mettner frowned. “So we might be talking about an affair. You know that, right? Nineteen years ago, Noah would have been in middle school. When did you say his parents got divorced?”

Josie said, “When he was eighteen. In April of 1999, he would have been about thirteen years old. So yeah, Colette would have been married.”

“An affair might explain why Sam drove all the way to Bellewood. I mean they both lived here in Denton, and yet Samuel Pratt’s car was found forty miles from here,” Mettner said.

Josie felt her heart sink, a cold stone descending into the pool of her stomach. “Back in 1999 probably neither one of them would have had a cell phone. Even email wasn’t that prevalent back then.”

“They wouldn’t have subpoenaed his home or office phone records if it looked like suicide,” Mettner added. “There is a possibility that he and Colette could have been in touch for some time and no one ever found out.”

Josie flipped the box open and took the planner back out. She combed over the entries between January 1st and April 14th. There was only one other entry with the initials C.F. and that was about three weeks prior to the April 14th entry. “I don’t think it was ongoing,” Josie said. “Or at least, it didn’t go on very long. There’s only one other entry here, a few weeks before Samuel Pratt ended up in the river. But if it was an affair, what happened?”

Mettner said, “What do you mean?”

Josie closed the planner and put it back in the box. “One day she meets him at the river and she convinces him to drown himself? Have you seen photos of Samuel Pratt? He was huge. No way someone Colette’s size held him under water till he drowned.”

“Maybe she broke things off with him, he didn’t take it well, and killed himself.”

“That’s a possibility,” Josie agreed. “Especially with his mental health issues.”

“Or maybe Colette had a jealous lover—someone else—or maybe her husband found out, lost it, and killed him.”

Josie hadn’t known Colette Fraley for long, and she hadn’t known the woman that well, but she had a difficult time imagining her as a young temptress carrying on multiple extra-marital affairs. “But then what about Drew Pratt?”

“What about him?”

“Colette had his flash drive, which means she was very likely the mystery woman from the craft fair. How else would she have gotten it? She hid it together with Sam’s arrowhead. There was a connection there. Did she start an affair with Drew as well?”

“Hmmm,” Mettner said. “That seems unlikely. Although even if seven years after Samuel drowned, she met with his brother and they did have an affair, she was divorced by then. Drew Pratt was single. So we can probably rule out the husband as a jealous killer. There would have been no reason for secrecy either. But I don’t think she was having an affair with Drew.”

“Right. I don’t think so either. Maybe you’re right, she dumped Sam and he killed himself, and she felt guilty about it. Or she knew who killed Sam, and she was trying to come clean to Drew, although why would she just tell him everything after all those years? It makes no sense,” Josie said.

“Not necessarily,” Mettner said. “Maybe she couldn’t live with the guilt of having driven Sam to suicide any longer and needed to make amends with his family. Or let’s say she had another lover who got jealous and killed Sam. Maybe Colette either knew or at least suspected that her jealous lover was behind his death. Maybe she couldn’t live with the guilt any longer, and she decided to approach Drew. He was a prosecutor. Maybe she thought he could help her—although it doesn’t account for what she was doing with his flash drive.”

“True. Maybe that’s why Drew Pratt was distraught in the weeks leading to his death—not because of anything to do with the Kickbacks scandal, but because he had finally found out what happened to his brother,” Josie theorized. “Then she ended up luring Drew to his death, just like Sam; perhaps not intentionally, but it happened just the same. And yet like you said, why did she have Drew Pratt’s flash drive? Why did she have personal effects from each of them? Why keep them? And who does the belt buckle belong to?”

Josie could see Mettner’s frown, even in profile. “It is disturbing, isn’t it? I mean usually only serial killers keep trophies, right?”

“Right. I can’t see Colette as some kind of killer, but anything is possible, I guess.” She sighed. “Noah’s not going to like this line of questioning one bit.”

“We’re going to have to have a more in-depth conversation with Noah’s dad,” Mettner said.

“Noah’s not going to like that either.”

“I’m sure he won’t,” Mettner said. “But there’s a killer on the loose, and he’s escalating.”

Josie swore she could still smell the smoke in her hair from the fire at Beth Pratt’s house the night before, even though she had washed it twice. She said, “I know.”