Find Her Alive (Detective Josie Quinn #8) - Lisa Regan Page 0,82

his hand?” Gretchen asked.

Noah paused the footage and zoomed in. “Yeah, I think it is. A small one, but lethal nonetheless.”

He pressed play again, and they watched as the attacker walked over to Codie. On her back, she tried to scurry away from him, but he was too fast. Josie counted seven stabs, all delivered rapidly and efficiently, and then it was over. The assailant ran off, but the video continued. Sixteen seconds later, they saw why. He returned, patted down the husband’s pockets and then reached into one to pull out a wallet. Then he tore Codie’s small purse from her body and ran off again.

“That was not a mugging,” Mettner said. “He came back and took their things so it would look like a mugging.”

“This is why he stopped,” Gretchen said. “He was caught on camera. Part of this footage was released right after Codie died. It was all over the news.”

“Yes,” Josie agreed. “He’d never been caught on camera before this. It was a point of pride with him.”

“This shook him,” Noah said. “Big time. But we can’t even see him. The most you can get out of this video—at least the part that was released to the public—is maybe his estimated height and weight. There’s nothing identifying about him.”

“That’s not the point,” Josie said. “This is his first mistake, and it’s not in keeping with—” She broke off, the very thought of it making her stomach turn.

“It’s not in keeping with what?” Mettner coaxed.

“His work,” she choked out. “He thinks of himself as an artist. He probably doesn’t even consider himself a killer.”

“Clearly not,” Gretchen agreed. “If he specifically wrote to the press and told them he was the Bone Artist instead of the Boneyard Killer.”

“He didn’t and doesn’t want to be associated with this,” Josie said. “This is a mess. This is not up to his standards. I think he just lost it here. He lost control. Especially when the husband went for him.”

They watched the video one more time without pausing it while they waited for Drake to return. A few minutes later, he did, holding a notebook in his hand. He read from his scrawled notes. “NYPD did get a lip reader. They said they believe that Codie called him a sycophant and a liar and that she also called him Bobby. They believed that this person knew the Lash couple. They checked out every person Mr. and Mrs. Lash knew. There were about five Roberts, but all of them had alibis for this particular evening. They didn’t have DNA or prints from the crime scene so that’s all they had to go on.”

“Not a sycophant,” Josie corrected. “A psychopath. She wasn’t calling him Bobby. She was talking about someone named Bobby.”

“Robert Ingram,” Mettner said.

“The only context the NYPD had at that time was this video,” Josie said. “It makes sense they looked for someone they knew by that name. That’s exactly what I would have done. But now, knowing what we know about Codie Lash’s contact with the Bone Artist, we have to view this in a different context.”

Drake scratched his scalp. “All right, let’s go with your theory. Codie Lash engaged this killer and she got killed. Trinity figured this all out. That’s why she asked for Codie Lash’s personal effects because she was looking for more of a connection.”

“Which she found,” Josie said. “With the comb. She used that to draw him out. She wore it during a segment and the next thing she knew, he delivered a second comb to her.”

Noah asked, “How the hell did she draw him out in the first place, though? I mean, this guy hasn’t been active for six years. It’s not like he contacted her and told her to give him a signal of some kind. How did she get his attention to begin with? She had to have had his attention before she wore Codie Lash’s comb, don’t you think? She only did one report with that in her hair. What are the odds that he just happened to be watching that report on that channel at that particular time?”

Josie said, “She had his attention months ago. The network did. Remember, Drake said that they were doing stories on cold serial cases by geographical region? At some point, assuming this guy watches network morning television—and I think we can safely assume he does given that he contacted the network morning anchors for the three major networks in 2014—he would have come across