The Bones She Buried

Forty-One

“Brave,” Josie said for the fifth time in the car on the way back to the station. “Colette was brave.”

“She was extremely brave. She must have been what? Thirteen?” Mettner said.

“I think she was incredibly brave,” Josie said. “It’s consistent with the woman Noah knew his mother to be and the woman I knew. A good person. Not a serial killer. Not someone who kept terrible secrets.”

“That’s true,” Mettner said.

“Do you think someone who would do something like that for a friend—even a childhood friend—would have multiple extra-marital affairs?” Josie asked.

“Hard to say,” Mettner responded. “People change.”

“Not that much,” Josie said. “I think we’re missing something. She refused to keep the secret when Ivan was being hurt by a priest—even at her own peril, and her mother’s. Her mother could have lost her job from the way it sounded.”

“She was a whistleblower.”

“Right. So why was she keeping secrets about the Pratt brothers?” Josie asked. “She somehow came into possession of something that Samuel Pratt would have had on his person the day he was killed, and the flash drive—well, it’s possible Drew had that on him when he went missing.”

“So you think she definitely knew what happened to them,” Mettner said.

“I don’t know. I’m guessing. My point is that she was keeping secrets. Big secrets. Why keep those secrets when she was so willing before to call out a Catholic priest during a time when that was simply not done?”

“She grew up,” Mettner said. “You’re not so brave after you grow up.”

Josie gave a humorless laugh. “True. But she did get Ivan a job. She cared enough about him to go to her boss and outright ask him to hire the guy.”

Mettner said, “So she had a strong connection to this Ivan person. With the Pratts—you think she was blowing the whistle on something? Or she just knew what really happened to them?”

“I don’t know,” Josie muttered, feeling more frustrated than ever. Exhaustion was catching up with her. She pressed her fingers into her eyelids. “I keep thinking about what Mason Pratt said about Beth—how she believed the simplest and most obvious explanation was the right one.”

“So we’re back to the extra-marital affairs,” Mettner said. “Samuel Pratt, possibly this Ivan.”

Josie slapped both hands on her thighs. “And that doesn’t seem right. I can’t see Colette repeatedly cheating on her husband. But I also can’t see her as some kind of serial killer—or accomplice to one.”

“Maybe Ivan can shed some light on the situation.”

“If we can find him.”

Mettner pulled into the municipal lot behind the police station. “How many German surnames can there be in the state that begin with a U? We’ll find him. Don’t worry about that.”

As soon as they sat down at their desks to brief Gretchen, Chitwood’s door flew open and his voice rolled loudly across the room. “Mettner! Palmer! Quinn! Briefing in my office, now!”

Josie and Gretchen sighed heavily in unison and trudged into Chitwood’s office with Mettner in tow. The Chief sat behind his desk and waited for them to take their seats. Josie and Gretchen sat while Mettner remained standing between their chairs. Then Chitwood pointed at Mettner and said, “Go.”

He scrolled through the notes on his phone as he filled him in on everything they had discovered in the last couple of days as well as the leads they had yet to follow. Chitwood listened intently, chewing the inside of his cheek as Mettner spoke. When he was finished, he said, “So Palmer and I are gonna look for this Ivan guy, and Quinn’s gonna run up to Sullivan County to see this Wolicki guy.”

They nodded. Chitwood leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “So far we’ve managed to keep the press out of this, although I had a couple of people from the TV station calling about the Pratt fire. I’m gonna have to tell them something soon, so get your asses in gear and get me some real answers. Also, we got some stuff back from the Pratt scene.”

“Beth or Mason?” Josie asked.

“Mason.”

“What is it?” Mettner asked.

“A shoe print. Size eleven. It was in the dirt in Mason’s backyard. Scuff marks and mud on the fence. We think the attacker jumped the fence there. Hummel casted it, measured it. Treads didn’t match Mason or any of our staff. The tread looks like it came from a boot manufactured by a company called Coyote Run. They make different kinds of boots. They distribute all over the country, though mostly at hunting and sporting goods retailers.”

Mettner started scrolling through his notes, but Josie was ahead of him. “Are you sure? The shoe size found at Colette’s murder scene was a size ten.”

Mettner stopped scrolling and pointed to his phone screen. “Right. Size ten.”

Chitwood stared at Josie with a raised brow. “It’s your team that processed the scene. You think they got one of these shoe print measurements wrong?”

Josie bristled. She knew damn well her Evidence Response Team wouldn’t screw something like that up. She had thought perhaps Chitwood had misunderstood either the ERT officer or their report, but she didn’t say that. “So we may be talking about two suspects.”

“Shit,” Gretchen said. “This changes everything.”

“No,” Josie said firmly. “Not really. We still work the leads. This started with Colette Fraley so we stay on her—find this Ivan person, try to find the owner of the belt buckle. We work the same leads. Just now we know we’re looking for two different people. What each one of them did specifically is something we can figure out once we’ve caught them. We should have someone visit hunting and sporting goods retailers in the county and see if they can get a list of customers who bought this type of boot in the last year or so and work from there. Most of those places have rewards cards that get scanned every time the customer makes a purchase, so even if our guy paid cash, the retailers might be able to track the purchase by his reward card.”

Mettner said, “I’ll write up a warrant.”

Gretchen added, “And I’ll try to find Ivan.”