Find Her Alive (Detective Josie Quinn #8) - Lisa Regan Page 0,116

pages that Trinity had typed up, he had often engaged in dialogues with her, but he didn’t remember all of the things that happened when Zandra was firmly in control.

Zandra said, “They both knew—about me, anyway. There are a couple of others they never met. We didn’t have many friends.”

“Why did you kill Nicci?” Josie asked.

“Because he took the reporter,” Zandra replied. “He didn’t want her for her bones, you know. He wanted her to tell his story. Like it’s some big epic story. He really thinks he’s the smartest thing ever, you know, and this art obsession of his—he’s even worse than our mother. She thought she was hot shit, too. Anyway, he was keeping the reporter so she’d tell his life story, but how could his story be complete with that nasty woman still out there, living a perfectly normal life? She had to go. I had to prove to him that I’m a more important part of his story than she ever was. She’s dead and I’m still here. Just like I told him I always would be.”

“What happened to the reporter?” Josie asked. She felt lightheaded waiting for the answer.

Zandra smiled. “Oh, you think I’m just going to tell you? I’m not him, dumbass! You have to ask him what he did with her.”

“I did,” Josie said. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

“You think I will?” Zandra shook her head. “No, that’s not how this works. You have to play his game, Detective.”

Sixty-Two

Josie felt as though she had run a marathon. Back in the great room, she sat at her desk while her team and Drake stood staring at her.

“I feel sick,” Drake said. “You know his attorney is having a field day right now. It’s like winning the lottery for her, and we’re no closer to finding Trinity.”

Noah said, “Hey, that’s enough. Let’s keep our focus on Trinity, okay? So we didn’t get her location from… Zandra or whoever the hell was talking in there. We need to keep trying other avenues.”

Mettner said, “Was that even real? What if it’s all an act?”

“It wasn’t an act,” Josie said.

“Boss is right,” Gretchen agreed. “I dealt with some criminals with DID back in Philadelphia. It’s a real thing. Complex and complicated. But that’s not our problem. That’s for the attorneys to hash out before trial. Right now, we need to get into the head of one person and that’s Alex Thornberg. He’s the Bone Artist.”

“This is his game,” Josie agreed. “Just like Zandra said.”

“Okay,” Noah said, beginning to pace. “Then what is he after? Every game has a winner and a loser. He wants to win. How does he do that?”

“Press coverage?” Mettner suggested. “He’s always wanted that, so people would know how smart he is—although he’s already going to get all the press he could possibly want now that he’s been caught.”

“It’s not just about him wanting people to know how smart he is,” Josie said. “This is about him trying to prove something.”

“Prove something to who?” Drake scoffed.

Josie rocked in her chair. “To the only person he left alive.”

“His dad?”

“Yeah, did you read any of the pages that Trinity typed?”

Drake grimaced. “Of course I did.”

“He thought Alex was stupid. Alex wanted to be an artist, like Hanna, but Frances squashed that.”

“So what? What does this have to do with Trinity?” Mettner asked.

“She’s his historian,” Gretchen said. “Zandra just told us that. His biographer. She knew everything there was to know about his case before he took her.”

Josie added, “Including the fact that for every victim he put on display for the world to see, there was one we never found. One no one even knew about. We still have to find those victims. He would have used their bones. He must have because they’re not anywhere on the properties. Wherever he took Trinity, it’s the site of his final piece.”

Drake raised a brow. “Piece of what?”

“Art!” Josie said. “Remember—he thinks of himself as an artist. Somewhere in this state is his final work of art. If we find that, we find Trinity.”

“Are you listening to yourself? Where in the hell could this guy put on a goddamn art installation made of bones and a famous reporter and not have the whole damn world freaking out?”

Josie looked around at all of them, working through everything she knew in her mind. She kept coming back to Alex’s relationship with Frances. She turned her chair around until she was facing Chief Chitwood’s office. His door was open. He had gone