She knew he was there because she’d spoken with Annette that morning. She and Dani’s parents had arrived in Denton. They were staying at the Eudora Hotel, but they’d spent the night with Turner in his apartment. After they woke up, he’d been too agitated to sit around so he’d told them he was going back to Dani’s to do a bit more cleaning before they entered the house. Josie knew it was a lie. The house was tidied up. Turner just needed to be alone. She didn’t blame him, but she wasn’t going to give him what he needed today.
Josie found him in Cassidy’s room, sitting on the edge of the bed. He was in shorts and a T-shirt again but they were wrinkled like he’d spent the night in them. One side of his hair was flattened and matted from sleep.
“Turner,” Josie said from the doorway.
The house was hauntingly still, or maybe it just felt that way because she knew what had happened to its occupants. She realized that Turner was strangely still as well. His large hands rested in his lap, unmoving. His eyes were fixed straight ahead at Cassidy’s corkboard.
“Turner?”
Had he entered some kind of catatonic state? A fugue of some kind? She took a step inside and nearly jumped out of her skin when the air conditioning whirred to life, shooting cold air from a vent over her head.
“We need to talk,” Josie said.
It wasn’t until she was standing in front of him that Turner spoke. His voice was scratchy and hoarse. “Go away, Quinn.”
“I can’t.” She reached into her back pocket where a folded sheaf of papers stuck out. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Turner continued to stare straight ahead, eyes blank. “Haven’t you done enough? What’s next? Did you find someone to abduct my dog? Kill him and bury his body where no one will ever find it?”
There was no heat behind his words, but they hit their mark nevertheless. Josie’s shoulders fell, her limbs going slack under the guilt she’d taken on herself without any help from him. She opened her mouth to apologize, to say anything that might express how deeply sorry she was for having failed him, but she already knew he wasn’t going to accept anything of the sort from her. No; pouring all of his grief and anger on her was a coping mechanism and he was short on those to begin with.
She placed the documents next to him on the bed and turned, walking the short distance to Cassidy’s desk. “The GPS on Griffin Holt’s car and his phone show that in the months after Maxine broke up with him, he didn’t follow her. He was at her medical office building once but he didn’t drive past her house. Didn’tsit outside of it. Didn’t follow her back and forth from work. He didn’t drive past Haven’s school. He never even visited Maxine and Haven’s part of town.”
“Because he had turned his focus back to my family,” Turner said quietly.
Josie shook her head as she surveyed the sketches scattered across Cassidy’s desk. “I don’t think so. During that time, he drove past here once. Just like he said. He wasn’t following anyone.”
“So?”
Josie thumbed through some of the pages on the desk. “So he wasn’t the person stalking Maxine to the point that everyone who knew her thought she was on drugs.”
“Maybe she just thought he was stalking her,” Turner suggested, voice still flat.
Josie started pulling sketches out, making a pile to her left. Turner must have been more messed up than she thought, letting her touch Cassidy’s things.
“Or maybe it was her husband fucking with her,” he added.
“Nope. Charles checks out. We spoke with the woman he was seeing when he and Maxine separated. We took another look at his phone records. The GPS on his vehicle. There’s nothing to support the idea he was stalking his own wife.”
A rustle of fabric made Josie glance over her shoulder. Turner lifted the hem of his T-shirt and used it to wipe his face. The air conditioning was working just fine in here, which meant he was wiping away his tears. She did her best to ignore the hot spear of guilt that pierced her insides.
“Jesus, Quinn,” he said. “Who cares? Can’t you just—can’t you just leave, like I asked you to? Christ. You’re like fleas. Like lice. No, no. You’re like herpes. Can’t get rid of you.”
On any other day, under any other circumstances, that statement would have caused a fight between them. Today, she had more pressing things on her mind.
She snatched up the stack of sketches she’d gathered and turned, holding the first one up for him to see. “It’s you.”
With a groan, Turner pushed his hands into his hair and pulled at the roots. “Quinn, I swear to God. I can’t be held responsible?—”
“This is Dani.” She held up another one. Then another. “This is Spot.” Another. “This is Annette.”
Cassidy hadn’t just been skilled at drawing owls. Like Wren, she was extremely good with faces. Better than Wren. Composite-sketch good.
She showed him a sketch of an older woman. She already knew who it was because Cassidy had written “Grandmom Schwarbs” on the back, but she was making a point so she asked, “Who’s this?”
For a long moment, he refused to look at it, glaring at Josie with such hatred she nearly gave up and left the house with her tail between her legs. When she didn’t, his gaze flicked over the drawing. “That’s my mother-in-law. Cass’s grandma.”
“This?” Again, Cass had noted the identity of her subject on the back of the sketch.
