The Girl With No Name

Chapter Fifty-Four

Josie and Noah waited for two other officers to relieve them at Rowland’s and headed out to where Gretchen waited. A rutted dirt road led to the abandoned grain silo that stood a mile behind Luke’s house. In Josie’s Escape, she and Noah jerked from side to side as she maneuvered along the road. All around them weeds and overgrown grass encroached, as if reaching for Josie’s vehicle. In the field to Josie’s left, an old combine sat rusted out, its roof sagging. An air of desolation hung over the unused farmland and was heightened as they pulled up behind Gretchen’s Chevy Cruze and glimpsed the crime scene beyond. Dr. Feist’s truck sat beside Gretchen’s car. Josie parked the Escape and she and Noah hopped out. Next to the silo, cordoned off with crime scene tape, was a black Ford Fusion. A four-door sedan, just as Kim Conway had described.

Gretchen appeared beside them, a roll of yellow tape in her hands. Dr. Feist circled the sedan, peering inside the passenger’s side window.

“We’re waiting for the evidence response team,” Gretchen explained.

Josie took a few steps toward the vehicle and saw blood spatter on the driver’s side window. She felt a tightening in her chest. “Another body.”

Gretchen nodded. Dr. Feist trotted over. “Looks just like your other guy. Gunshot wound to the front temporal lobe. Pistol left on the seat next to him.”

Noah said, “Did he shoot himself?”

Feist shook her head. “I doubt it. Most people who shoot themselves put the gun into their mouths or under their chins. It would be pretty awkward to hold the barrel to the side of your head like that. I’ll swab his hands for gunpowder residue when we get him to the morgue.”

“Shit,” Josie said.

Gretchen said, “The car is registered to Leonard Nance of Queens, New York. Once the scene is photographed and processed we’ll see if he has any identification on him, but I think we can safely say that this is the Leo that Kim Conway was supposed to meet here.”

Josie said, “We should have swabbed her hands for gunpowder residue. That’s why she was in the shower at Luke’s. Noah, call someone to come get you and head over to Luke’s to look for her clothes. If she shot this guy at close range in a vehicle, she would have gotten blood on her.”

He nodded and pulled out his phone, walking a few steps away to make the call.

“Gretchen,” Josie said. “You’ll stay here, wait for the ERT team, and call me if you find anything of interest. I’m going to go back to the station and run Nance’s name. See what I can turn up. Queens isn’t that far from Manhattan. I want to see if I can find a connection between him and Peter Rowland.”

An hour later, Josie sat behind her desk, massaging the skin at her temples. Leonard Nance was a ghost; she’d been able to turn up his address in Queens and a date of birth that put him at fifty-four years old, but nothing else. No criminal record, no school or work history, no relatives—she couldn’t even find any previous addresses for him. The one and only thing she was able to find was that he had served in the army for eight years as a young man. Other than that, he had no digital footprint whatsoever. Even after Gretchen texted her a photo of his driver’s license, Josie turned up nothing useful. Nor did she find any connection between Nance and Peter Rowland. But she was convinced Nance had worked for Rowland.

Thinking of how she’d figured out Kim Conway’s connection to Eric Dunn, she pulled up Google and typed in Peter Rowland’s name. She clicked on Images and started scrolling through. There were thousands of photos of the man. Noah had been right—he gave very generously to many, many different charities. Most of the photos of him had been taken at charity benefits. In many he stood on a red carpet in a sharp suit, smiling for the cameras. In several of them, his wife and daughter stood beside him, smiling and radiant. His wife looked as though she had been a supermodel with her high, thin cheekbones and glossy blond hair. His daughter, Polly was almost a carbon copy of her mother except for her nose, which she had clearly gotten from Peter with its tell-tale hook. Josie scrolled through thousands of photos of Rowland before she found what she was looking for on page twenty-eight of her Google search. It was a candid shot of Peter Rowland strolling through Central Park. He wore khaki pants, a yellow polo shirt and loafers. Locks of his hair stood in the wind. Sunglasses obscured his eyes which were focused on his cell phone. Next to him, far enough away that it looked like they weren’t walking together, was Leonard Nance. Dressed all in black, eyes focused straight ahead, the camera had caught him in mid-stride.

“Jackpot,” Josie mumbled.

Noah poked his head into the door.

“Hey,” Josie said, beckoning him inside. The sight of him seemed to reduce the pounding in her head. “Did you find anything?”

He frowned as he sat across from her. “Clothes in the washer.”

“Oh my God,” Josie said.

“Boss, don’t blame yourself.”

“We weren’t thorough enough,” she said.

“People shower,” Noah pointed out. “Kim Conway was a domestic violence victim. We thought she was in trouble. We didn’t even know Leonard Nance existed until after we picked her up. I already called Gretchen. She’s going to send the ERT over to Luke’s house after they’re done at the silo to process the house again. We’ll gather everything and leave it to the district attorney to sort out.”

“The DA won’t want to prosecute. She’s already admitted to being in his car and going to the silo, so even if her prints are all over the car, that’s no smoking gun. She can easily claim self-defense, and it probably was self-defense. I think Leonard was a mercenary, someone paid to do the dirty work for someone richer and more powerful—like Peter Rowland. God knows what he intended to do with her.”

“You found a connection between Leonard Nance and Peter Rowland?” Noah asked.

She motioned for him to come around the desk so he could see the photo she had found.

“That’s it?” he said.

“That and they both live in New York City.”

“Boss, I don’t know…”

“Noah, this is all we’ve got right now. The baby and Luke are still missing. I’ve got to follow every lead.”

He went back over to the chair in front of her desk and sat down. “I can see the connection between Rowland and the baby, but why would Rowland send someone after Kim?”

“Kim said Leo asked her about the building collapse,” Josie said. “He wanted the videos she had.”

“Why would Rowland be after incriminating evidence against Dunn? He was trying to cut a deal with him to put his security and surveillance systems into Dunn’s hotels and casinos. Even if he wanted those videos to blackmail Dunn—to what end? Rowland didn’t need to blackmail Dunn. Even if Rowland had a good reason for wanting those videos, a reason we’re not aware of, what does any of that have to do with Luke?”

She didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to think it, but she already had, many times in the last few hours. “Probably nothing. I think it’s more likely that Dunn had Luke killed.” She couldn’t keep her voice from cracking. She rubbed her eyes.

“Josie,” Noah said softly.

She waved a hand, composing herself. “I’m fine. Listen, the chances of us finding that baby are still damn good, especially if Dunn never had him and Rowland thought Victor was his son. Can we try to focus on that?”

“Okay,” Noah said. “But you should know that I haven’t given up on finding Luke.”

She gave him a wan smile. She hadn’t given up either; she just understood that they were now looking for a dead body.

From the other side of her office door came the sounds of an argument. She stood but Noah was already at the door. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

Outside, two of her officers were in a heated dispute over the remote control to the communal television. “She’ll be pissed if she sees this on again. Turn it off,” said one of them.

“They’re showing an interview King did after he was first arrested. It’s never-before-seen footage!” the other officer said, holding the remote control out of reach of his colleague.

On the television beyond them played more coverage of the Interstate Killer trial with Trinity Payne reporting from the Alcott County Courthouse. The text beneath her read: “Juror Faints. Trial adjourned for afternoon.” “Today jurors were shown graphic crime scene photos of Aaron King’s last known victim,” Trinity reported. “The images were so grisly that one of the jurors, a man in his sixties, fainted, causing a commotion in the courtroom.”

Feeling like a mother breaking up a fight between siblings, Josie walked over to them and held her hand out. “I am pissed. I have told you on more than one occasion to turn this shit off. You can stream this later, on your own time.”

The officer with the remote handed it over immediately. “Sorry, boss,” he mumbled.

“As promised,” Trinity continued after describing the scene in the courtroom, “one of our affiliates has uncovered this interview King gave immediately after being charged with the interstate murders.”

Josie held the remote up to turn off the television. The screen cut to a young man in an orange jumpsuit with short, neatly combed brown hair. His face was clean-shaven, and his eyes as penetrating as ever. He was being led in handcuffs from a sheriff’s van into the Alcott County Courthouse. Reporters shouted questions at him. When he smiled, Josie felt a cold shock go through her. For a moment, she was so disoriented by what she was seeing, she couldn’t speak. Clean-shaven, with his hair in perfect order, King didn’t look like himself at all.

Noah and the two officers stared at her. Her arm ached from holding the remote aloft. She heard nothing King said. She was too busy looking at his face.

“Boss?” Noah said.

She handed him the remote. “Pick up Rowland. Now. I want you to do it. Take a uniformed officer with you.”

She walked back to her office.

“Where are you going?” he called after her.

“I have to talk to Trinity.”

She closed the door behind her. It took three tries to get Trinity on the phone. “What do you want? I was in the middle of a live spot,” she said petulantly. “Not that I should help you. You didn’t even call me when Eric Dunn died. Is it true you were there?”

Josie rolled her eyes. “Yes, I was there. Yes, I’ll give you an interview if you want. I don’t care. Right now, I need information from you.”

“An on-camera interview,” Trinity demanded. “An exclusive.”

“Fine, whatever. Will you help me?”

A sigh. “This better be good. Is it good? Is it big?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Fine. What do you want to know?”

“How much do you know about the Interstate Killer?”

Laughter. “Everything. I know everything.”