Her mother didn’t hug her after their conversation about him. They lay for hours in awkward silence, each of them drifting in and out of sleep. At least now they had warm covers and something to eat and drink. She hated herself for being grateful to him. She had no idea what time it was when he threw the door open again. Both of them scrambled to sitting positions against the wall, watching warily as he descended the steps.
He stalked across the room, dragging something behind him.
Her mother bolted to her feet and pointed at it. “What is that?”
A sinister smile stretched across his face. “It’s exactly what it looks like. A wedding dress. Your wedding dress.”
It didn’t look like anything her mother would wear. It didn’t even look the right size. Where had he gotten his hands on a wedding dress on such short notice? Or had he been planning this for some time? The thought made bile rise in her throat.
“No.” Her mother’s hand flew to her mouth. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”
He was even more psychotic than she thought. Did he really think he could force her mother to marry him? He was sick. Delusional. How would that even work?
He didn’t seem very concerned about the logistics. The back of his hand connected with her mother’s face with a resoundingthwapthat she felt all the way down to her toes. Her mother crumpled, holding her cheek and scrambling away from him. Except that he didn’t stop. Tossing the dress aside, he kept going, yanking her mother by the hair and punching her until blood flowed from her mouth and nose.
She could barely hear her mother’s screams above her own. Her heart felt like it was going to explode out of her chest. There wasn’t enough air. Dizziness washed over her. She knew she should try to help but she was frozen.
Finally, he stopped, stepping back toward the stairs, his chest heaving from exertion. “Now, when I come back, you better be wearing that. If I have to make you, I’ll be giving you much worse than that.”
FORTY-ONE
Josie’s body jostled with every pothole they encountered as Gretchen maneuvered her vehicle through the Cahill Woodling Cemetery. It was located forty-five minutes northwest of Denton, near Selinsgrove. Most of the headstones looked quite old. The roads inside its black Gothic wrought-iron fencing were clearly not well-maintained, if they were maintained at all. Josie knew nothing about Turner’s upbringing other than the things he’d told her in the last few days, but if his mother was buried here, it stood to reason he’d grown up in this part of the state. She wondered if he’d applied for the job in Denton to be closer to his mother’s grave.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” asked Gretchen, wincing as another hole in the road sent her body flying right off her seat.
The only thing that kept either of them from hitting their heads were their seat belts. Josie found the grab handle on her side and clutched it tightly. “This is where he said he’d be. He’s been here before. It was on the GPS records from his phone.”
What she didn’t say was just how closely she’d looked at most things on Turner’s phone. Josie could call it due diligence, but the truth was that having a look into his life, and in a sense,his brain, via his cell phone was weirdly fascinating to her. Everything she believed about him up until she found out he had a daughter was so radically different than the parts of him she’d recently learned about. For example, she’d always thought the endless scrolling he did was on social media. He didn’t even have social media accounts. The apps weren’t even installed on his phone. She was pretty sure it was the dictionary he’d downloaded that kept his thumbs in constant motion.
What word would he have chosen today?
Byzantine?
No. Tenebrous.
Josie’s phone chirped with a text message. She’d left it in the console so she could access it easily if Noah called or messaged, but it was just the Chief telling them he was going to accompany Noah to the bed and breakfast. Their first order of business, if they wanted to move forward with any investigation into Griffin Holt, was to make sure they had a firm connection between him and Maxine. While Josie and Gretchen were on their way to ask Turner about whether he’d ever met or heard of the guy, Noah was putting together a photo lineup that he and the Chief would show Edward Greathouse to see if he could positively identify Griffin Holt as the man who had been meeting with Maxine at the bed and breakfast for almost a year.
They crested a hill, and near the bottom Turner’s Impala sat on the side of the road, nearly touching a row of headstones. The grave markers in this area looked a bit newer. He stood in front of a particularly large one, a bouquet of flowers at his feet. He was in a suit again and she was baffled that he didn’t get heatstroke just from standing around in that thing.
He turned at the sound of their approach, squinting against the sun, watching as they parked.
As Gretchen reached for her door handle, Josie said, “Go easy, okay?”
Gretchen sighed. “I’m not that big of a bitch.”
Josie hummed, waggling her hand in the air in a maybe, maybe not gesture.
Laughing, Gretchen lightly punched her arm and climbed out of the SUV. Turner eyed them as they picked their way through the markers. He gave a telltale tug of his beard before looking Gretchen up and down. “Parker.”
Josie groaned. He just couldn’t help himself, and she knew from experience that if anyone found it impossible not to stoop to his level, it was Gretchen.
“Jackass,” she responded, face impassive.
He looked down his nose at her. “Guess we’re even. Good thing, because I don’t have a dollar on me.”
Gretchen tipped her head to the side. “That’s too bad. Guess you’ll have to come up with some other way to thank me for this.”
Josie watched as her friend produced a slim can of Turner’s favorite energy drink from her back pocket and held it out to him. She hadn’t even seen Gretchen grab it from the car. She hadn’t seen it at all, actually.
