Find Her Alive (Detective Josie Quinn #8) - Lisa Regan Page 0,80

Josie said. “It was in Trinity’s search history.”

“Right but I made some calls and got a hold of the entire video—even the parts that weren’t released to the press.”

“But we’re following Trinity’s trail,” Josie said. “I’m looking at things that she saw and trying to figure out how she got from knowing nothing about the case to making contact with this guy.”

Drake smiled. “What makes you think she didn’t see the entire video?”

Josie smiled back. “Who in the NYPD did she convince to let her see it?”

“I can’t say,” Drake replied. “I wouldn’t want to get the poor guy in trouble. Anyway, she never got a copy of it. She just watched it under his supervision. Your sister can be… persuasive.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of dogged,” Josie said.

“I was going to say persistent,” Gretchen chimed in.

“A pain in the ass,” Noah said.

Josie and Drake both nodded. Josie said, “All of those are true. She must have had something over this NYPD guy to get access to this.”

“She did,” Drake admitted. “An affair that he doesn’t want made public.”

“How did you find out?” Gretchen asked.

Drake looked around at them. “She might have her ways, but I also have mine.”

As Noah, Gretchen, and Mettner gathered around, Drake put the laptop in front of Josie and opened it, pulling up a black and white video of the attack. It was taken at an angle from slightly overhead across a small street. Streetlights illuminated the sidewalk. Codie Lash came walking down the street, arm in arm with her husband. Her skirt swished around her. She wore high-heeled boots. Her husband wore a trench coat over what looked like suit pants. They were in front of some sort of closed-down business with a security gate covering its entrance when a man came from the other direction. At first, neither Codie nor her husband looked at him. They were speaking to one another, her head tilted up and to the right toward his and him smiling down at her. The man who approached them was dressed in jeans, boots, and a dark-colored hoodie over a baseball cap. The cap was pulled low over his face and the hood kept his profile from being visible. He lifted a hand and then he must have said something because they stopped.

Josie counted off the seconds ticking by on the upper left-hand side of the video. Four seconds passed before anyone moved again. She wondered if they were speaking to one another. The man must have spoken to them. But from the angle of the video it was difficult to see any of their faces. Finally, the man stepped closer to the couple. Codie’s husband stepped forward and held up both of his hands. Josie could tell by the way he gesticulated and the way his head bobbed that he was saying something to the man. Josie couldn’t tell if the man was speaking back because his hat was pulled so low and his hood was swathed so tightly to his head. Codie’s husband gently pushed her behind him, but she held on to one of his arms. Then the assailant reached out both hands toward the couple. Codie’s husband turned and put his back against the security gate, pulling Codie along with him. They pressed themselves against the gate but still made no move to run. Codie’s husband held his hands up as if in surrender. This was the entirety of the video that had been released to the public, Josie remembered, having watched it the other day.

For the benefit of the rest of the team, Drake said, “Now this is what the public hasn’t seen.”

The assailant’s back was to the camera, but they could see him lift the brim of his hat. Codie looked into his face, and suddenly recoiled, wrenching away from her husband, but with nowhere to go, she merely pressed her back further into the security gate until it bowed a little. Her husband’s eyes bulged and then he looked away, down toward the ground. Josie guessed the assailant was speaking to them because Codie continued to stare at him, transfixed, her mouth stretching back in a look of horror.

“I don’t see a weapon,” Mettner said. “What the hell is going on? Why don’t they run?”

“They’re too shocked,” Josie said.

Gretchen said, “Well yeah, a lot of people freeze up in situations like these.”

“It’s not that,” Josie said. “He’s not a threat yet. No weapon. There’s only one of him against two of