Cool air greeted Josie as she stepped through the back door of the Schwarber home. The air conditioning was on. She wondered how long it had been escaping through the back door. Hours? Days? Josie scanned the room as Gretchen followed her inside. It was average size, enough to accommodate the table, counters and cabinets along the walls, and the necessities: an oven and a fridge that sounded like a horde of angry bees. The whole room was dated, reminding Josie of a kitchen from a 1980s sitcom. Honey oak cabinets, laminate countertops, yellowed wallpaper border near the ceiling that featured endless rows of wicker baskets filled with apples. The snarky wooden kitchen signs were a contrast. Josie assumed they’d arrived with the now-missing tenants. On the windowsill over the sink, one of them read:I’m feeling a little dirty. Will you do me? Love, The Dishes. Beside the coffeemaker was another:Pour Some Sugar On Me. Love, Coffee. Across the room, two decorative shelves held small plants and a sign that said,If cauliflower can become a pizza, you can do anything. Under different circumstances, Josie would have laughed. She would have acknowledged that she and Dani Schwarber shared the same sense of humor. Butnow the thought just intensified the sense of foreboding that tightened her chest.
She studied the papers affixed to the fridge with magnets, searching for photos of mother and daughter. Although, who printed photos anymore? On the way back from securing the search warrant, Gretchen confessed that she, too, had wondered if, somehow, Cassidy Schwarber was Turner’s daughter. They’d debated calling or texting Turner to ask if his Cassidy lived at this address with her mother and used her mother’s last name but decided to wait until they had more information.
Dani’s driver’s license had come right up in their database. She was forty-four. In her photo, brown eyes stared at the camera, emotionless. Her sandy hair framed her face in a pixie cut. Sixteen-year-old Cassidy Schwarber didn’t have a driver’s license or even a state ID, though she wasn’t required to have one at her age. Out of curiosity, Josie had searched for Cassidy Turner, but nothing came up. She hadn’t found anything on social media though usernames didn’t always match people’s actual names.
There were no photos on the fridge. Only a few takeout menus, a brochure for a nearby yoga place, a flyer about the Balloons and Tunes Festival and another for Denton East High’s annual art show that had taken place in June before school ended. Was Cassidy in the art program there? Did Wren know her? Was Wren’s work featured in the art show? The thought that it had been, and Wren hadn’t told her and Noah chafed, but Josie had no time to consider it.
“This is at least two days old,” Gretchen said, peering into a pot on the stove. “Maybe longer.”
Josie peered over her shoulder to see what she assumed was some kind of soup. The fat in the broth had risen to the top and congealed into a gelatinous blob. A ladle was discarded on the counter nearby. On the table, as Craig had said, were two emptyceramic soup bowls. Pristine spoons lay on folded napkins next to each one. In the middle of the table was a large salad bowl with wilted lettuce and other spoiled vegetables. Several flies had made their way into the kitchen through the open door. Josie was used to seeing them and other insects at crime scenes, but they were usually there to feast on the human remains. These flies buzzed lazily over the salad, occasionally landing on a limp piece of lettuce or a slimy cucumber slice long enough to perform their vile little regurgitation ritual.
Near the edge of the countertop, two cell phones had been placed side by side. They were lined up too neatly. Who dropped their phones on the kitchen counter in perfect alignment?
“Let’s check out the living room,” Gretchen said, moving past her.
The next room was large, easily three times as big as the kitchen, almost as if the homeowner had combined two rooms into one. Bookshelves lined every wall. A large couch, two puffy recliners and a beanbag chair surrounded the coffee table Earl Craig had mentioned. It was a light birch, matching the hardwood floors that peeked out from beneath the cream-colored area rug. One sharp corner had dried blood on it. It was a small amount, no more than a blotch. A half-dozen drops had dried in the threads of the carpet where they’d faded to a rust color. More evidence that Dani and Cassidy Schwarber had been gone for two or more days.
“Over here,” said Gretchen.
Josie joined her near the front door. Just as Conlen had told them, several black-red, white-edged camellias lay on the carpet to the right of the door. They were crumpled, the stems broken.
A mother and her teenage daughter.
The same type of mysterious flowers left behind.
It couldn’t be a coincidence, but what did it mean that Maxine and Haven Barnes had been smothered in their beds, and Dani and Cassidy Schwarber were missing?
Josie looked up to see that Gretchen had already moved on, walking slowly as she studied the crammed bookshelves. She stopped suddenly, putting on her reading glasses and leaning in until her chin almost touched the shelf.
“Well, this isn’t good,” said Gretchen, beckoning to Josie.
One glimpse of the framed photograph Gretchen was peering at and the tightness in her chest multiplied. The photo was likely a year or two old but there was no mistaking that the teenage girl standing next to Dani Schwarber in front of Niagara Falls was the same girl who’d shown up at the stationhouse a month ago and demanded to know where to find her father.
Kyle Turner’s daughter.
SEVENTEEN
“I’ve got something,” Gretchen announced.
Josie stood up, her lower back protesting, and hurried around the cluster of desks to look over Gretchen’s shoulder. Cued up on the computer screen was footage from the home surveillance camera next to Dani Schwarber’s front door. It had been hours since they’d left the ERT to process the house. They’d prepared a dizzying number of warrants since then, working as quickly as they could. Every second counted in cases like these. After powering up Dani and Cassidy’s phones, they’d hooked them up to their GrayKey machine. It was a device that allowed them to crack phones and other electronic devices and view their contents. They’d gotten lucky and been able to access Dani’s phone fairly quickly.
“This is from Monday,” Gretchen said as she hit play.
The timestamp was 7:07p.m. Turner had been on shift at that time, running down some of the leads in the Barnes case. In the camera’s periphery, the glider could be seen swinging, a woman’s feet dangling over the discarded flip-flops. They swung back and forth, setting off the motion recording. The door creaked open and the side of Cassidy’s head came into view.
“Mom,” she said. “I need help.”
“With pasta?” Dani’s voice teased.
I feel your pain, Cassidy, Josie thought.
She could practically hear the girl’s eye-roll. “Yes. With pasta. Are you gonna help me or not? I don’t know when it’s done.”
“Throw it at the wall. If it sticks, it’s done.”
There was a long silence. The idea of Cassidy considering the suggestion as if it might be a real one would have struck Josie as funny except that knowing how the Barnes women had died and that Dani and Cassidy might have already met the same fate made her chest feel impossibly tight.
Finally, Cassidy said, “For real, Mom. Come on.”
