“We can’t connect him to Maxine Barnes though,” Josie pointed out.
Gretchen laughed as the SUV rolled forward at a pace that had to rival the time it took for grass to grow. “We can’t connect anything to anything. Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. What if the fact that Turner knew Maxine and Dani is just a big coincidence? What if there’s some other angle? It was Cassidy who saw this guy. Haven Barnes fought like hell when he came for her. What if he wanted to eliminate Maxine first so he could have more time with Haven?”
The thought made Josie want to retch even though her job had made her disturbingly familiar with all manner of sexual predators and the horrific damage they could inflict. All the sex offenders near the homes of Dani, Maxine, Turner, and near Dani and Maxine’s employers had been interviewed and alibied. Not that that eliminated the possibility of the crimes being sexually motivated.
“I understand what you’re saying,” Josie said. “I think if this was as simple as this guy having a thing for teenage girls, he would target just teenage girls. He clearly has a thing for mothers and teenage daughters.”
Gretchen put her turn signal on as they inched toward the next cross street. “It’s about the family. Think about it. Both Maxine and Dani were in toxic marriages.”
The words were out of Josie’s mouth before she could stop them. “Dani and Turner’s marriage wasn’t toxic.”
Why the hell was she trying to be fair to him?
“Before he cheated,” Gretchen said, slowing for yet another line of cars in front of them. Apparently a dozen other people had had the same idea of using this side street to get out of the festival traffic.
“He says he didn’t cheat,” Josie pointed out, despite the fact that she didn’t believe him.
Gretchen snorted. “And you just won a billion dollars in a lottery you’ve never heard of and didn’t enter, and I can give you the proceeds if you wire me your life savings.”
“Gretchen.”
“Turner cheated on his wife.”
An ache formed in Josie’s chest. She hated herself for wanting to defend the douchebag even though she agreed with Gretchen. Perhaps it wasn’t that she wanted to defend his character. Maybe her sense of protectiveness came from the fact that when she looked at him, she saw herself ten months earlier. The woman she’d been when Noah, the love of her life, had been abducted. Broken. Wrecked. Hanging on by a thread so thin that a soft breath would have severed it.
Gretchen tapped her fingers against the steering wheel. When she spoke, her voice was softer. “Josie, you know I don’t like Turner. Hell, everyone knows I can’t stand him. Even so, I have a great deal of sympathy for him. No one deserves to go through this. No one. I have even more sympathy for Dani and Cassidy, just like I would for anyone in their situation. I will do everything in my power to help find them. I don’t have to like Turner to do right by him.”
“I know,” said Josie.
“But he cheated.”
“He cheated,” Josie said on a long exhale.
“Which made their marriage toxic,” Gretchen said. “In Maxine’s case, we know there was abuse, even if it was only emotional, but bottom line? These women were unhappy. Theirdaughters were unhappy. Somehow the killer knew about it and targeted them because of it. If we could figure outhowhe knew their marriages were on the rocks, that would be helpful. The most likely thing is he saw them or met them both in or near their workplaces.”
“It’s certainly a connection between the two women besides Turner,” said Josie.
“Maybe he strikes up conversations with them and gets them to confide in him,” Gretchen continued. “Or maybe he’s the creepy wallflower guy in the corner of the café or the elevator that no one ever notices but who overhears everything.”
Josie could definitely see Dustin Emmer or someone like him as the invisible lurker eavesdropping on private conversations. “Okay, so he encounters women in bad relationships, and he wants to save them.”
“It’s about the fantasy,” Gretchen said.
Josie thought about Emmer and the fantasy he’d had Zara act out. It was clearly gratifying to him, perhaps for more than sexual reasons, but she wasn’t about to dive into that particular scenario just now. Was there another, more chilling fantasy he had hidden away?
“The killer is recreating the family,” she said.
“Seems like it, yeah.” Gretchen made the turn. Lucky for them the cross street had less traffic.
Josie leaned toward her friend so she could get a look at the speedometer, thrilled to see they were going a whopping fifteen miles an hour now. “We’re looking for someone who lost a mother and daughter, maybe. Or whose family left him.”
“Could be.”
Josie took out her phone and shot a text off to Annette Miller, asking what she knew about Dustin Emmer’s family history. It would be quicker than trying to do the research now, in the car.
“If he’s delusional enough to try to recreate this family unit with a woman and her teenage daughter,” Josie said, “then he’d be searching for the ideal pair.”
“But no woman, no family is going to live up to his ideal,” Gretchen said. “Because he’s crazy.”
