Find Her Alive (Detective Josie Quinn #8) - Lisa Regan Page 0,81
them. There’s plenty of room for them to get away from him. It’s his face. Look at the way they’re staring at him.”
“What are you talking about?” Drake asked.
“Rewind it so you can see what happens when he lifts the brim of his hat and they get their first good look at his face. It startles them.”
Noah said, “Because there’s something wrong with his face. He’s disfigured.”
Josie glanced up at him. “Yes, I think so.”
Drake rewound the video and they all watched it again.
“I see it,” Gretchen said.
Drake said, “Disfigured like the guy who ran you off the road? You think this guy is the Bone Artist?”
Josie held his gaze. “Yes, I think this might be him. I think that he contacted Codie along with Hayden Keating. She didn’t report it because she knew the network and the FBI wouldn’t do anything with it. She thought she could play a game with this guy and save some lives. We know she didn’t save anyone’s life because Robert Ingram’s remains were found right before this happened. Probably because the Bone Artist didn’t get the press coverage he wanted. He didn’t want the game to stay between the two of them. He wants the whole world to know that he’s smart—smarter than the press and smarter than the police.”
On the screen, the couple remained still, their arms locked together, their postures stiff. Codie’s husband looked up slowly and stared at the other man’s face. Then Codie began gesticulating angrily, pointing a finger at his chest as she spoke. The assailant stepped back a little. “What is she saying to him?” Mettner asked.
This time, Josie rewound the tape. “Noah?” she asked. He leaned in and she played it again. Noah said, “Looks like, ‘you’re a… psycho… psychopath and’… play it again.” After three more attempts, Noah said, “She calls him a psychopath and a liar.”
Drake reached across their bodies and set the video back, watching it once more. “How the hell can you tell that?”
“My ex-girlfriend was deaf. She read lips. I learned to do it as well.”
“He’s pretty good at it,” Josie said.
Gretchen asked, “No one on the NYPD had this tape analyzed? Brought in a lip reader? This was a high profile case.”
“Hold on,” Drake said. As he walked off, he took out his phone, punched at it and pressed it to his ear.
“Let’s see the rest,” Mettner said, pressing play.
They let the rest of the video play. The assailant appeared to be speaking, based on the rapt attention Codie gave him. Her face fell. She said something else to him which Josie couldn’t make out. “Is she saying ‘robbery? Rob me? Why are you trying to rob me?’”
Noah played that part several more times before pausing it. “No,” he said. “I think she’s saying, ‘Bobby? What do you mean, Bobby?’”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Mettner said.
“It does if she knew this guy,” Gretchen put in. “She called him a liar which means she must know who he is.”
“But if she knows who he is,” Noah said. “Why is she so shocked by his face?”
“Because she’s never met him in person,” Josie said. “He’s the Bone Artist. I’m telling you. He confronted them, they backed away, he showed his face, they were shocked. Then he started talking, and from whatever he was saying, she knew he was the Bone Artist. Robert Ingram’s remains had just been found. She calls him a liar because he said he’d let a victim go if she played his game, and he didn’t.”
Mettner said, “So Bobby is Robert Ingram, then?”
“Seems that way,” Gretchen said. She pressed play and they watched Codie sag against the security gate behind her. She said something else that was clear to all of them: “Oh my God.” One of her hands reached to her forehead, her thumb and index finger rubbing either side of it.
Then everything went to hell.
Codie’s husband ripped his arm from his wife’s and lunged for the Bone Artist, wrapping both hands around the man’s throat. Their bodies fused in a whirling dervish of limbs until they were on the ground, rolling around, each one fighting to be on top. Nearby, Codie screamed, and that, too, was very clear. “No!” She made some attempts to pull at one or the other of them, but their struggling bodies knocked her to the ground. Then one of the men went limp and the other man stood up. Josie saw that the man left standing was the attacker.