The Girl With No Name

Chapter Thirty-Two

They took the back roads, driving in silence over the top of a mountain and down into the small valley where the town sat, just a smattering of houses, churches, and one lonely strip mall. It was amazing to Josie that the town survived at all and that there were enough people in it to fill up the four churches that survived every natural and financial disaster that threatened to annihilate the town itself. Bowersville was so sleepy that before Brady Conway murdered his wife and killed himself, the town hadn’t had a homicide in over half a century.

Josie pulled into the Conway driveway. Trees and brush separated the house from the neighbors on either side. It was possible that their visit would go unnoticed, particularly in the middle of the day, but Josie was certain tongues were already wagging after the Bowersville PD had been out twice to check the house.

They took a slow walk around the perimeter. It had been months since the shooting, but the Conway house still had shredded pieces of police crime scene tape fluttering in the wind from where it had been tied to the front porch posts. Noah tried the front door, but it was locked.

“Let’s try the back,” Josie said.

They took a second walk to the back of the house. Sure enough, the back door was unlocked. This didn’t surprise Josie. People in Bowersville didn’t typically lock their doors at all. They didn’t need to. The house smelled musty with the faint scent of blood and bleach. The back door opened into the kitchen where the cabinets stood open and empty. Cardboard boxes labeled “KITCHEN” were stacked on top of the table and counters.

“It’s been months,” Noah said. “Most people would have this cleaned out and sold already.”

“Luke said the two families were fighting. Brady’s mother hired a service to come clean and pack up the house. Eva’s family was supposed to come by and take whatever they wanted, but there was some kind of disagreement, and everything stopped until they could get things ironed out.”

Noah tapped one of the boxes. “Doesn’t look like anything got ironed out.”

“Apparently, Eva’s family thought they were entitled to both the contents of the house and any profit from the sale of it and still expected Brady’s mother to pay for the cleaning and packing, but Brady’s mother wanted to split everything fifty-fifty.”

“I imagine they’ll be fighting for some time over that,” Noah said.

Josie moved into the living room and Noah followed. She could see the places where someone had tried, unsuccessfully, to clean the bloodstains. A couch and two recliners had been pushed against one wall, the glass-topped coffee table flipped and placed on top of the couch. The television sat on the floor between the recliners and the entertainment center had been moved to that side of the room, its cubbyholes filled with boxes whose labels said: “LIVING ROOM”.

Noah said, “Whoever cleaned up sure didn’t know much about getting bloodstains out of hardwood floors—or walls.”

Josie nodded her agreement, staring at two puddle-shaped marks that dominated the center of the floor, only a few feet apart from one another where Brady and Eva must have fallen after being shot. About a foot away from the puddle stain closest to the kitchen were a series of faint reddish-brown streaks. “Look at this,” she said. Noah came over and stood next to her, staring at the marks. “Jesus,” he said.

Josie knelt down and ran her hand over two thick lines of faded blood side by side. “Do these look like drag marks to you?”

Noah squinted at the area she had indicated. “I don’t know,” he answered. “They could be. Or maybe just streaks from when the cleaning service tried to get rid of them?”

Josie stood and stepped into the center of the room, studying the puddles again. She moved into the middle of the one closest to her, imagining that it was where Brady had stood, pointing a gun at his wife’s face. “Over here,” she said. “Stand in the other spot.”

Noah walked over and stood in the second puddle. “Am I Brady, or Eva?”

“I don’t know,” Josie said. “Let’s say you’re Eva. I’m shooting from here.” She extended a hand, her index finger pointed straight like the barrel of a gun. Her eyes searched out the faded blood spatter stains on the walls and ceiling.

“I didn’t see the scene,” she said. “But Luke said that Eva was shot in the face and that the back of Brady’s head was missing.”

“So, he shot his wife and then put the gun into his mouth and fired,” Noah said. He leaned a little to his left to look around Josie at the wall behind her. Then he turned and looked at the wall behind him. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Josie lowered her arm. “If Brady shot Eva in the face at close range, the spatter would have come forward—toward him—not backward toward the wall behind Eva. Brady’s self-inflicted gunshot should have been the only one that caused back spatter.”

“So why were there two wall spatters?”

“Good question.”

“This is why you wanted to see the house,” Noah said. It wasn’t a question. “You knew something was wrong.”

Josie said nothing, turning instead to study the streaks on the floor again. She remembered how soaked in blood Luke had been when she retrieved him from the hospital. He had admitted to trying to revive his friend. But that wouldn’t account for drag marks. Again, her frustration with the Bowersville police department rose up like acid reflux.

Had the scene been processed and analyzed properly, they would have realized that something didn’t fit. Hell, even a cursory look and a couple of brain cells should have told them that something wasn’t right. But it cost money to bring in an evidence response team. There were lab costs, the expense of borrowing equipment and supplies, not to mention the overtime involved in the process. Josie knew all this because she was a chief now and spent more time agonizing over her budget than she did her cases. Bowersville didn’t have that kind of money. Tragic though it was, it was faster, easier, and cheaper to call the Conway shooting a murder-suicide, file it under domestic violence, and close the case quickly.

“What do you think happened?” Noah asked.

Josie didn’t need to see anything more in the living room. She had a pretty good idea of what had happened there and why Luke had lied to her. It felt like a stab in her rib cage. She said, “I’m not sure, but I think both Kavolis and Kim Conway were here that night.”

“You think one of those spatters belongs to Kavolis?” Noah asked.

Josie beckoned him to follow her through the rest of the house. “Well, if I’m right and Kavolis was here, then yeah, the spatter would have to be his.”

“Who shot him?”

She climbed the stairs to the second floor, Noah padding along behind her. “I don’t know,” she answered. Could Luke have shot and killed a man and lived with it for all those months? There was only one reason Kavolis would have been there that night—to get Kim and take her back to Eric Dunn.

“What kind of gun did Brady use?” Noah asked.

The air was even more cloying in the upstairs hallway. Josie felt sweat bead along her upper lip. “His service weapon,” she answered. “That was in news reports.”

“So, a different gun was used to shoot Mickey Kavolis, then,” Noah reasoned. “Kavolis was shot with a .45 cal but Luke doesn’t own a .45 cal, right?”

“Right. Brady might have, but if there were any guns in this house I’m sure that Bowersville PD removed them.”

Noah scoffed. “Yeah, ’cause they’re clearly pros at evidence collection. I think Kavolis brought the .45 with him and someone shot him with his own gun. You think he came after the murder-suicide, like Luke did?”

Josie had a chilling thought. “Or maybe it wasn’t a murder-suicide at all. If I’m right, only two people know the truth, and they’re both missing.”

They passed the bathroom and master bedroom. Both had been packed up in similar fashion to the downstairs. There were two other bedrooms which had not been packed up. One was a home office with a treadmill in it, and the other had a twin bed made up neatly with a gray blanket. A stack of books sat on the bedside table.

Noah searched the closet while Josie picked up one of the books. What to Expect When You’re Expecting. The book beneath it was The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy. The other three books were also pregnancy-related.

“Nothing in here but women’s shoes,” Noah said, emerging from the closet.

Josie handed Noah the first book in the stack. “Well,” he said. “This is interesting.”

“Luke told me a long time ago that Brady and Eva decided not to have children. He said they wanted to travel the world instead.”

Noah stared at the book, then his gaze drifted to the other books in the pile. “Maybe they changed their minds. Maybe they were trying.”

“These are in the guest bedroom, not the master bedroom.”

“So, maybe the moving and packing people moved them.”

“Or maybe they were Kim’s,” Josie suggested.

“You think Kim is pregnant?” Noah asked.

“I think she was pregnant. They did a pregnancy test at the hospital as part of her full workup. I’m sure that would have come up if it was positive.”

Noah’s brow furrowed. “But if she was pregnant when she was here four months ago, what the hell happened to the baby?”

Josie was about to answer when her phone rang. She looked at the screen. “It’s Gretchen,” she told Noah. To Gretchen she said, “What’ve you got?”

“We’re closing in on Dunn.”

“You found a connection between him and Twitch?”

“Denny Twitch used to be on his security detail. About three months ago he was let go.”

“Let go?” Josie said. “That’s rich.”

“I know. Even more interesting though is that one of the unidentified set of prints we lifted from Misty Derossi’s house belongs to Denny Twitch.”

Josie’s fingers tightened around the phone as she made her way back down the steps. Noah followed, craning his neck to try to overhear what Gretchen was telling Josie. “What?” she said. “How the hell did you get Twitch’s prints run so fast?”

“Same way Noah did earlier. I ran it over to the state police barracks. They put it right through since it was related to Luke’s case. There wasn’t a hit before because Twitch doesn’t have a record.”

“Where are we with Twitch’s phone?”

“I should have something back soon—at least a list of numbers.”

“Well, even without the phone, I think we have enough now to pay Eric Dunn a visit. Can we find any connections between Misty and Dunn? Any chance he is the father of her baby?” Josie asked.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Gretchen said haltingly.

Josie and Noah left the Conway house through the back door. The fresh air was a relief from the stale, musty scent of the closed-up house. “Why do you say that?”

“I just met with the locksmith at Misty’s house. He got her desk open. There’s something I think you should see.”