“My wife didn’t have an affair.” His voice was so low, she had to step toward him to hear his words.
“Maybe not.” Spot nudged Josie’s hand and she pet the top of his head absently. “I don’t have any proof. It’s just a theory.”
His eyes shifted to hers, ablaze with anger. “It’s wrong.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I hope it is but there’s a pattern of behavior?—”
“A pattern of behavior,” he roared. “That’s what you’ve got? Do you understand my fucking kid’s life is on the line here? All you’ve got is a pattern of behavior? How is it that the great Josie Quinn can solve every damn case, find every missing person, hunt down every depraved killer who sets foot in this godforsaken city, but when it comes to my kid, you’ve gotnothing but a theory and a goddamn pattern of behavior? Tell me.”
Next to Josie, Spot let out a low whine which was muffled by his octopus. She watched Turner, unflinching, as he advanced on her, jabbing a finger in the air near her face. “Tell me, Quinn. Tell me!”
“Are you done?” she asked.
His hand dropped and he stepped back, stumbling a bit until his back hit the countertop. He pushed his hands through his curls as he sank to the floor.
“Quinn,” he said brokenly, his tone a complete contrast to the one he’d used on her just seconds ago. “I know what you think of me. What everyone thinks of me. It’s fine. I don’t care. But my daughter. My daughter doesn’t deserve this.”
Spot bypassed his food bowl and went to Turner, dropping the octopus next to him before trying to lick his beard. Turner’s palm dropped onto the dog’s back, stroking his coarse hair. “This asshole will probably die if she doesn’t come back.”
Josie knew that Spot wasn’t the asshole Turner was talking about.
“I know.” She closed the distance between them and lowered herself to the floor until she was sitting cross-legged in front of him. His pain was so palpable, she felt like she might suffocate under it.
Spot pushed his upper body against Turner’s chest. Turner scratched up and down his spine. “Come on, buddy. If you don’t eat, she’s gonna be real mad. Don’t get me in trouble, okay? Go eat.”
The dog wasn’t interested in his dinner. Instead, he continued to nudge and prod Turner, arching into any pets his owner bestowed.
“Go eat,” Turner told him again and again.
Spot’s response was to thoroughly lick Turner’s beard. After a long moment, Turner pushed him gently toward his bowl. He threw the octopus in the same direction. Apparently, the octopus took precedent over Turner because Spot turned and went after it.
Turner touched his beard and grimaced. Without shifting position, he reached a long arm up and over his head for a towel crumpled atop the counter. As he did, the tattoo Josie had seen peeking from the sleeve of his T-shirt the other day became fully visible.
“Turner,” she gasped involuntarily.
Ignoring her, he used the towel to wipe the moisture from his beard.
“Your tattoo,” Josie said even though this, too, was none of her business.
He let the towel fall into his lap and lifted his arm, pulling the sleeve up and contorting his neck to get a look at it. “Yeah. Cassidy drew this owl a long time ago but man, she loved the idea that I’d tattoo it on my skin.”
“No.” Josie swallowed. “Not that.”
He ran two long fingers over the owl’s eyes. The skin was punched out and the kind of silvery white that matched the scar that ran from behind her right ear down her jawline to beneath her chin.
Josie remembered working with him on one of their earliest cases together. It had involved a victim of intimate partner abuse. Turner had told her he understood how difficult it was for women to leave their abusers.I watched my mom go through it with my dad, he’d said.
“Your dad?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He pulled his sleeve back down. “Used to put cigarettes out on my mom. Until I got old enough to put myself between them. I was a skinny little twerp, though. Eleven yearsold. Didn’t fill out till I was about seventeen. Small enough for him to hold me down. Hurts more on the soft skin inside the arm. Easier to hide.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, like he was telling her about modifications he’d used on an old recipe to make it better. Josie understood this. The way the trauma lived in your marrow, in the cells of your body, and yet, you could talk about it emotionlessly. Disconnect from it mentally. She did it herself whenever she talked about the things Lila Jensen had done to her.
“Did you tell her?” Josie asked. “Cassidy, I mean? What you were covering?”
“Nah, not at first. When I got it, I told her they were scars from infected spider bites. Of course when she got older, she kind of figured it out.”
Across the room, Spot set the octopus down beside his bowl and nosed around in it. Turner threw the towel on the floor. “My wife wasn’t having an affair, Quinn.”
