Find Her Alive (Detective Josie Quinn #8) - Lisa Regan Page 0,17

talked with the landlord. He hasn’t heard from Trinity since they signed the rental agreement. Her lease was up this week. He hasn’t been up here and hasn’t had any complaints. Four of the other properties are rented right now. I called in some extra units to go around and canvass those cabins, see if anyone heard or saw anything unusual.”

“Good call,” Noah said.

“Our family is on their way to the police station,” Josie said. “They’ll meet us there, but our mother, Shannon, already told me she hasn’t heard from Trinity in a few weeks.”

Mettner frowned. “I’m betting the rest of them won’t have heard from her either. Her phone is in the console of her car, as you know. She was getting ready to leave and someone showed up here. That’s what it looks like.”

“Or someone was here with her,” Noah suggested. “Regardless; someone took her. We’ll need her dental records. The doc also said the remains were brought here from some other location.”

“I’ll have Hummel print this place,” Mettner said. “Especially since the door was open. Although nothing in here looks disturbed.”

Josie looked around again, something pricking at the edges of her mind. “Her car too,” she said.

“You think someone touched the car?”

Josie walked over to the door and looked out into the driveway. “Her keys were in the ignition. She had already gotten into the car.”

“Unless whoever took her made it look that way,” Noah said.

“Why would someone do that?” Mettner asked.

Josie studied the red Fiat Spider. “She was already in the car,” Josie said. “Her phone is where she always put it. When she left our house last month, she positioned her suitcase and purse exactly like that, except for—”

She broke off and looked at Noah. As if reading her mind, he said, “The boxes.”

Mettner looked up from the note-taking app on his phone. “What boxes?”

“She had two boxes with her when she left our house,” Josie said. “Document boxes. She loaded them into the car when she left, put them on top of the suitcase, and put her purse inside one of the boxes.”

Mettner said, “There’re no boxes in the car or in this cabin.”

“Maybe the person who took Trinity took the boxes, too,” Noah said.

A sense of deep foreboding gathered in Josie’s stomach. “There’s a locked trash bin on the side of the cabin. Someone needs to check it.”

Mettner stepped out of the cabin momentarily to speak with a member of the ERT. Josie watched as he pointed to the side of the cabin where the trash bin was located. When he came back in, he asked, “What was in the boxes?”

“I’m not sure,” Josie said. “Documents, photos, what looked like personal effects. It looked like a cold case file of some kind.” She turned to Noah. “You said her room looked a mess. Did you get a look at anything she had hanging on the walls or scattered around?”

“I’m sorry, Josie. I didn’t see much more than you did. I just happened to walk past one day, and her door was cracked. I just glanced inside. I didn’t want to invade her privacy, so I didn’t go in. From what I could see, there were some photos of what looked like skeletal remains.”

“I saw that, too,” Josie said.

Mettner said, “Like the kind of remains we’ve got out back?”

“I’m not sure,” Noah answered. “All I saw was a photo of a torso, and it was just a quick glance.”

“So it could have been a close-up of the rib cage,” Mettner said. “With all the other bones arranged around it just like out back but not actually shown in the photo.”

Noah nodded. “It’s possible, yes.”

“I saw that photo as well,” Josie added. “I also saw a few others—leg bones, a pelvis, some smaller bones—but they were all close-up photos, and I only got a quick glance. I would remember if she had a photo showing something like what’s out back.”

Mettner said, “Where’d she get those boxes? Did she bring them with her from New York?”

“I’m not sure,” Josie said. “I think so.”

Noah said, “I’m pretty sure one of those boxes came from her assistant. Remember Trinity said she had her assistant mail stuff to the house. We should talk to her. She could tell us what was in at least one of the boxes.”

“Yes,” Josie said. “That’s a good idea.”

Hummel rapped on the cabin door, beckoning them. Josie stepped outside with Mettner and Noah in tow. “Chan checked the trash bin,” Hummel said. “Bunch of