Trinity rolled her eyes. “That’s public relations bullshit. Don’t you want your side of the story told?”
Josie didn’t. She had no desire to hash the whole thing out in any type of public forum. What she really wanted was to move on with her life. Get back to work and find Isabelle Coleman, or find out why Dirk Spencer had been shot. She said, “It doesn’t matter what I want. I can’t discuss it.”
Trinity placed a well-manicured hand on her hip. “What about this morning? You were a witness. Surely you can talk about that?”
“If I talk to you about this morning, will you back off?”
Trinity bit her lower lip briefly. “Until the investigation into your excessive force charge is complete. I can’t promise you anything once that happens. Our viewers will want to know what happened.”
“I’m not going on camera.”
“Then I’m not backing off.”
“Giving you an on-camera interview isn’t necessarily a decision I can make on my own. I have superiors to answer to, you know that.”
Trinity said, “I have superiors too. They’re going to want an interview. So, what’s it going to be? Am I calling your chief right now or are we going to have a conversation about this morning?”
Josie was furious with herself for getting caught at Dirk Spencer’s house. There was no explanation that would satisfy her chief, so she lied. “Fine. I’ll give you an exclusive on the excessive force thing once the investigation is over. But I do not go on camera today. I’ll talk to you about this morning, but you never saw me here.”
Josie thought she saw the tiniest flicker of satisfaction pass over Trinity’s face. “You have a deal.”
Chapter Seven
Josie kept it brief, discussing only the basic facts of what she had seen that morning and nothing else. She figured she couldn’t possibly get herself in trouble by merely describing what a half dozen other Stop and Go patrons had also seen. She left Trinity pouting and drove down the mountain, still cursing herself for having gotten snagged in Trinity’s web. She was going to be furious when she realized that Josie had no intention of giving her an exclusive interview about the investigation involving the allegation against her, or anything else for that matter.
She slowed the car as she came to the turn-off to the Colemans’ home and made the left into the driveway. Halfway to the house she found a Denton police cruiser. In it, his head lolling, eyes closed, sat patrol officer Noah Fraley. Josie pulled up behind him and got out, her lower back protesting and her leg throbbing as she put weight on it again. As she approached, she could hear Noah snoring.
Leaning into the car window, the flutter of yellow crime scene tape in the tree line caught her eye. So, he was there to guard the scene. Gently, Josie nudged his shoulder and he jolted awake, confusion blanketing his face momentarily. As he registered her presence, a crimson flush stained his cheeks. “Jos— Detective Quinn,” he stammered. “What’re you doing here?”
Flustered by having been caught sleeping on the job, his words came out fast, piling on top of one another. When she smiled at him, the color in his cheeks deepened. He had always had a crush on her. Noah wasn’t bad-looking, but it was impossible to see him that way. He had no swagger. You had to have some degree of confidence to be a cop. Even if it was fake. Noah’s decided lack of self-assurance was exactly the reason he kept getting assignments like this—sitting in a car all day making sure no one went into the woods.
“Is that the crime scene?” she asked him.
He glanced over at the crime scene tape tied across the trees on the shoulder of the road and then back at her. She could see the hesitation in his face. “Uh, yeah, it’s through the woods there.”
The trees were thick and the woodland dense; there was no path that Josie could see. “Through the woods? How far from the road?”
Noah shrugged. “I don’t know. You have to go back a ways.”
She rested her forearms on the window’s edge and leaned closer. “Do you mind if I take a look?”
“I—uh, I can’t, you know, I’m not supposed to, I really shouldn’t—”
“Noah,” she said, her tone conspiratorial. “I’m an experienced investigator. You know I won’t disturb the scene.”
“But the chief said no one except—”
“It’s already been processed, hasn’t it?”
“Well, yeah, but I still have to keep a log of everyone who comes in and out,” he said.
“You don’t even have to put me on the log. It will be like I was never here.”
“But the point of the log is so we know who was on the scene and when.”
She tried another tack. “Officer Fraley, am I or am I not your superior?”
He shifted uncomfortably, looking away from her. “But you’re not, you’re—you’re on suspension.”
“You don’t think the chief will call me back soon? I know you guys are running on empty. He’s got everyone on around the clock, doesn’t he?”
Noah nodded. He let out a long breath. “It’s been awful,” he admitted.
“And now with this shooting…” she added.
He met her eyes again. “I, uh, heard you were there. Glad you’re okay, by the way.”
“Me too,” she said. She was close enough to smell the stale scent of old sweat. He probably hadn’t been home to shower or change for a good three days. “Noah,” she tried again. “The chief is going to call me back any minute now. Ray told me so. When he does I’m going to need to be up to speed. You don’t have to tell anyone I was here, and I don’t have to tell anyone that you fell asleep at your post.”
He closed his eyes, resignation and shame warring for dominance on his face. “Please, just be quick, okay?”
She patted his shoulder and half-ran, half-hobbled off toward the woods before he could change his mind.
“Don’t leave your car here!” he shouted after her.
He was right. If someone from the department came while she was in the woods, there was no way he could explain away her vehicle. Of course, there weren’t many places she could leave her car without giving away the fact that she was nosing around the Coleman scene. She couldn’t park up near the house, so the best she could do was park along the shoulder of the main road about a half mile back. Anyone coming from town to the Coleman home would not pass her vehicle. If someone showed up while she was at the abduction scene, she could always find her way back to her car through the woods and take off with no one the wiser. She just had to hope no one on the force decided to pass the Coleman home and head toward Dirk Spencer’s development while she was at the scene.
By the time she got to the Colemans’ mailbox she was sweating pretty heavily, and the left side of her body had gone from a dull ache to an angry throb. She took off her jacket and tied it around her waist. As she passed the mailbox, she saw something bright and pink in the grass a few feet from it. A closer inspection revealed an acrylic nail: hot pink with yellow stripes. She snapped a few pictures of it with her phone before picking it up with a tissue and putting it in her pocket.