“My father-in-law. Her grandpa.”
Josie kept going, letting Turner identify each person despite Cassidy’s notes. She discarded each one onto the desk as they went. “This?”
“Her art teacher from her old school? Quinn, is there some reason why you’re doing this? Or have I actually descended to some new level of hell?”
“Just a few more,” she said.
“Then you’ll leave?”
“Then I’ll leave.”
Every drawing seemed to sap his energy more until his body slid from the edge of the bed onto the floor and stayed there, unmoving.
Cassidy had drawn a few of her friends and two other teachers from Alden. She’d drawn her new friend in Denton, Toni, and their new neighbor, Earl Craig. Turner knew them all. There were about four sketches left when Josie came to someone Turner couldn’t identify. The man on the page was older and balding. His face hard and wizened. Patchy stubble dotted his cheeks. The detail Cassidy had given the others wasn’t there in this one, which made Josie think she didn’t know him as well or she’d only seen him from a distance, too far to gather the kinds of particulars she would have noted up close. And yet, she’d captured a predatory gleam to his eyes that had Josie’s perv-o-meter going haywire.
It was what was on the back of the sketch, though that made Josie’s heart stutter.
“I’ve never seen that guy before,” said Turner. “I don’t know who he is. Maybe someone Dani knows. Fuck. Knew. Knows. I don’t know. She’s fucking gone, so I guess I have to talk about her in the past tense now.”
Josie would have had more sympathy for him if it didn’t feel like her chest was about to explode. Because she needed to be sure, she took him through the remaining four sketches, all of which he was able to identify. Hanging onto the John Doe sketch, she walked over until the toes of her boots almost touched the toes of his sneakers. Squatting down, she flipped the page so the back of the drawing faced him.
“Read it.”
Again, he gave her a mutinous look that would have put a lesser woman in her grave before he finally glanced at Cassidy’s handwritten note. She watched the change in Turner’s face, his pallor deepening, eyes bulging, mouth dropping open.
Softly, she told him, “She didn’t want to tell you or Dani because she thought it would cause drama. Didn’t want you two to fight more than you already were. She told Toni she could handle him on her own but then he disappeared.”
Turner’s mouth closed, opened, closed again.
“She drew him, though,” Josie continued. “Because her dad’s law enforcement and she’s heard enough horror stories to know to document it somehow. In case something happened.”
Turner took the page from her gently, riveted to his daughter’s words. “How did you know this was here?”
“I didn’t. It was a hunch. I came to talk to you about it. To get your permission to look through Cassidy’s stuff. Wren’s always drawing. We haven’t officially seen anything, but I know she draws everyone she sees. I remembered seeing a lot of portraits the last time we were here. It was a long shot.”
“This could be nothing,” he said hoarsely.
“Or it could be something.”
He traced his fingers over his daughter’s words. The smallest smile tugged at the corners of his lips, unbearably sad. Shaking his head, he muttered, “This kid.”
“Yeah,” Josie agreed, voice cracking.
Then he made a strangled noise halfway between a sob and a bitter laugh before he read the words out loud: “Dirty Lurker.”
FIFTY-TWO
Josie clenched her jaw to stop herself from yelling back at Chief Chitwood. She’d been at her desk for twenty minutes, Turner’s defeated words running through her head like a chyron the entire time. Handing her back the sketch, he’d said, “Nice try, Quinn, but it’s too little, too late. Now, please leave.” Fifteen of those twenty minutes had been spent enduring one of the Chief’s legendary tirades. He was flying up the Chitwood Anger Scale so fast that Josie felt his spit like a fine mist over her face.
“This is some self-sabotaging horseshit if I ever heard it, Quinn. Are you trying to get fired, because I will kick your ass to the curb and I won’t lose a single blink of sleep over it. Do you even hear yourself? Asecondstalker? Asecondkidnapper? What do you think this is? An episode ofTheTwilight Zone?”
“I think it’sBlack Mirrorfor today’s generation,” Gretchen said helpfully from her desk.
Chitwood pointed a finger in her direction. “You shut it right now, Palmer, or so help me God. I’m not in the mood for your crap either.”
“So just Josie’s then?” Gretchen said.
Josie flinched. Chitwood’s face turned the color of a boiled lobster. Pointing at Gretchen again, he bellowed, “Get out! Get the hell out of my stationhouse!”
