Back inside, Josie made apologies, told everyone she had to help Mett with a work thing, went upstairs to get changed, and left the impromptu watch party. “You drive,” she told Mettner. “My car is blocked in.”
Once inside his Jeep Grand Cherokee, he cranked up the heat. Josie rubbed her gloved hands together and put them against the vents as they pulled away. Christmas was only days away and holiday lights blazed from the homes of most Denton residents. On any other night she might enjoy the festive decorations. But tonight Mettner was giving off a nervous energy that Josie didn’t like at all.
He weaved his way through the streets of Denton, out of Josie’s neighborhood, across the center of town and into Northeast Denton. The city took up roughly 25 square miles in the mountains of Central Pennsylvania. The main business district was located in the center of a valley along a branch of the Susquehanna River. The rest of the city sprawled outward like the legs of a spider, reaching deep into the surrounding mountains.
“This is her street,” Mettner said as he turned down a wide street with detached single-level homes lining either side of it. Each one sat on what Josie estimated was a half-acre of land. Most of the houses were red brick. She knew this area of Denton was older than most of the other neighborhoods. The crime rate here was low to moderate, Josie knew from her work on the police force. Many of the homes were rentals, occupied by young professionals without children who wanted more elbow room and privacy than they might find in an apartment complex. Josie counted only two houses with holiday lights up as Mettner rolled down the block. He pulled over behind a light blue sedan which Josie recognized as Amber’s Toyota. It sat in front of a small house. The windows glowed brightly. The front lawn was bisected by a concrete walkway. Mettner got out of his car and stepped onto the sidewalk. A flashlight appeared in his hand. Josie followed behind him as the beam of light bobbed up and down, side to side. A single step led to the front stoop. Over it was a small red awning. A light was affixed to the left side of the doorway, but it wasn’t on. Mettner shone the flashlight onto a small security camera to the right of the door. Josie recognized it as one of the more inexpensive kinds that operated from batteries rather than being hardwired into your home and worked wirelessly via an app on your phone. No lights came on to indicate it had picked up their presence.
“The batteries are gone,” Mett said.
Josie leaned in and took a closer look at the rectangular camera. It was seated perfectly in its mount. The discomfort she had felt earlier at her house returned. “How do you know that, Mett?”
“I checked,” he said. “Plus, there’s an app on her phone that shows any activity the camera picks up. Amber left my house on Friday afternoon and there’s footage of her getting home. Then Sunday night—last night—it looks like someone came up from the side, out of range of the camera, and took it out of its seat. Then the screen goes blank, and the app shows that the battery is out. But there are no batteries in it, so someone took them.”
“Could Amber have reached out and removed the batteries without her person being picked up on camera?” Josie asked.
“Well, yeah, I guess. But why would she take the batteries out of her own surveillance camera? Just come on.”
He pulled open the storm door and put his free hand on the heavy knob of the front door. “Mettner,” Josie said. “Do you have permission to enter Amber’s house?”
He froze. “I, uh, yeah, she leaves the door unlocked for me sometimes.”
“But you said she wasn’t home. Was the door unlocked?”
He said nothing.
Josie sighed. “Mettner, how did you get into her house?”
His hand slipped from the doorknob. Turning back to her, she could see his dark eyes flash with fear as the flashlight beam bobbed between them. “I thought she was in trouble.”
Josie put a hand on her hip. “How did you get in?”
He pointed the flashlight at his feet. “I got in through the back door.”
“You broke in.”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t. I just—”
“Jesus, Mett. You’re a police officer. Is this why you brought me here? Because you think I’m going to cover for you for breaking and entering?”
“I only broke one pane of glass so I could reach in and unlock the door, and I cleaned it up and put cardboard in the window,” he insisted. “I thought she was in trouble. I thought maybe she was laying in there injured or dead. For Chrissake, it’s Monday night now and no one has heard from her!”
“You mean you haven’t heard from her—”
“She didn’t show up for work and didn’t call. It was reasonable to think she might be inside injured or dead.”
“But she’s not, which means you can’t just go traipsing into her private residence, and you can’t bring me here either unless you think a crime has been committed, and if you think a crime has been committed, then you should have called Noah and Gretchen who are on shift right now. What the hell is going on here, Mett?”
She snatched the flashlight from his hand and directed it straight upward so they could see one another’s faces. His jaw was set. When he didn’t answer her, she turned away and said, “Let’s go back to the car.”
She heard his heavy footsteps behind her as she returned to his Jeep. Under the dull glow of the streetlight, she snapped the flashlight off and looked at him expectantly.
“We had a fight, okay?” he said. “On Friday. She walked out of my place. I tried calling and texting her and got no response. Then she didn’t show up for work. I was worried.”
“Mettner,” Josie said.
He held up both palms. “I didn’t want to call Noah or Gretchen because I know how it looks. We get into a fight. She vanishes. I break into her house.”
“Yeah,” Josie agreed. “It looks pretty damn bad.”
“I swear to you I didn’t do anything to her. I don’t know where she is or what happened to her, and I’m worried.”
“If you’re worried, you call the police, Mett. You ask for a welfare check. Like a normal person.”
“What I did was a welfare check!”
“It was until you broke in! What’s really going on here? Think carefully about how you answer because you’re already in deep shit. I need to know everything.”