He pushed a hand through his hair. “I thought I’d let things cool off for a day. On Sunday I tried texting her, but she didn’t respond. Then today I called and texted her but again, I got no response. I called the station, but she wasn’t there either. I came here. Knocked on the door, rang the doorbell. Nothing. I could see through the window in the back that her phone, purse, and keys were on the kitchen table and her coat was hanging on the back of one of the chairs. Her car was right here. The lights inside the house were on. I knocked on the back door. Tried to peek in the windows around the front and side of the house. Couldn’t see much. One of the blinds in the bedroom window wasn’t entirely closed so I could see that the room was empty, and her bed wasn’t made, but that was it. I couldn’t see anything else. Then I came back out here and that’s when I saw her windshield.”
“Her windshield? Why wouldn’t you lead with that?” Before he could answer, Josie stalked off, letting the flashlight lead the way to the front of Amber’s sedan. Josie expected to see shattered glass but instead was greeted with a frost-covered windshield. It took her a moment to realize something had been traced into the frost. Ghostly letters, most likely made by a fingertip, stared back at her as she moved the flashlight beam across the glass.
Russell Haven 5A
“I don’t understand,” Josie said.
“Me either,” Mettner said. “She never mentioned anyone by that name. I looked it up in the TLO database but didn’t find anything. Not here in Pennsylvania, anyway. I thought maybe the 5A was like an apartment number or something. Why would someone write this on her windshield? It’s weird, right? I couldn’t tell how long it had been there. I knocked again, front and back. Nothing. I know I shouldn’t have but I was really worried, so I went in.”
“You know damn well that’s not the point,” Josie said. “You entered the premises without her permission. Nothing you saw from the outside would lead you to believe that a crime had been committed or that she was in immediate danger. Amber is a grown woman. If she wants to drop off the face of the planet, she’s allowed to do it.”
“But Josie, she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t just leave everything behind and walk away from her life.”
“You don’t actually know that,” Josie pointed out. “How well do you really know her? You’ve dated for little more than a year!”
“Something’s wrong. She’s not there. Her bedroom is a mess, which is unlike her but other than that, it’s like she just got up and left without her phone, purse, coat, ID, or car, which she would not do. We were planning a future together!”
She stared at him. She wanted to tell him the one thing he hadn’t learned on the job yet: sometimes even the people you loved and trusted most lied and let you down; sometimes the people you loved and trusted most were not at all who they claimed to be. Josie had no idea what kind of person Amber was—she only knew her to be good and efficient at her job and loyal to the investigative team. Mettner knew her better, but that didn’t mean much in Josie’s opinion. She had known her first husband, Ray, since they were nine years old and, as it turned out, she didn’t know him at all. But Josie didn’t have time to explain all this to Mettner. Besides, it was a lesson he’d have to learn on his own one day—whether it was via Amber or someone else. She glanced back at the words on the windshield, mentally reconstructing Mettner’s actions in the last two days.
“You think Russell Haven is a person,” said Josie. “You didn’t want to be embarrassed if she’d simply gone off to meet another guy.”
Sheepishly, his gaze dropped to his feet.
Josie sighed. “Jesus, Mett.”
“If she’s seeing someone else, I’m going to look like a real jackass,” he conceded. “And a stalker, probably, too.”
“But if she’s in trouble, you’re going to look involved. Dammit, Mett. I’m calling Noah and Gretchen. Also, Russell Haven isn’t a person.”
He looked up, the whites of his eyes aglow in the night. “He’s not? It’s not?”
Josie handed him the flashlight and took out her phone. She pulled her gloves off. Her fingers flew across the screen as she tapped out a message to Noah and Gretchen. “I thought you grew up here,” she muttered.
“I did.”
“Russell Haven used to be a development, Mett, and I mean that in the loosest sense of the word. It was a cluster of about a dozen houses on the river at the edge of South Denton. About fifty years ago it got washed away in a flood. It was horrible. Tragic. Most of the families died. The ones who survived lost everything. The city built a dam there after that.”
“What? How the hell do you know all this?”
Josie pocketed her phone and looked at him again. “Well, for one thing, I live here, and for another, I pay attention to the local news. Construction to convert the old dam into a new hydroelectric power station was completed at the Russell Haven site about three years ago.”
“Shit. Why would someone write the name of a dam on Amber’s windshield?”
“No idea,” Josie said. “But I am pretty sure that 5A isn’t an apartment number. It’s a time. Five a.m.”
Mettner shone the flashlight back onto the glass, the beam focused in on the five and the letter A. “Someone wanted her to meet them at the old Russell Haven site at five,” he mumbled, almost to himself. “Shit.”
“Today or yesterday, yeah,” Josie said. “That would be my guess. Mett, there’s a cryptic message written in the frost on her windshield; the batteries in her home security camera are missing; all of her things are still here; and her lights were still on. I think the next logical move is to head over to the Russell Haven site and see if we find anything there. Any indication that she was there in the last forty-eight hours. I’ll tell Noah and Gretchen to meet us there.”
“How would she get there?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Josie. “First, let’s see if there is any indication that she was at the dam, and we’ll go from there.”
“What about the house?”
“We can’t go into the house,” Josie told him. Her fingertips were already freezing. She pulled her gloves back on. “You know that. Even if it’s a rental—which I assume it is—Amber has an expectation of privacy which means the landlord can’t give us permission to enter.”
“We could get a warrant,” he said.
“No. We can’t. No judge will grant one. There’s no evidence that a crime has been committed here, except for you breaking and entering. Since Amber’s not here to press charges—and I hope when we do find her, she decides not to—you should be okay on that front for now, but I’ve got to tell the Chief about this.”
“Josie,” Mettner pleaded.
“Did you come to me because you wanted me to cover for you? Did you think I would?”
“No, I—I wanted you to… I don’t know. Look, I just want to find Amber and know that she’s okay. That’s it. I thought you would know what to do.”
Josie’s tone softened. “It’s different when it’s someone we care about, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
She held out her hand. “I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you what I’m going to do, which is meet Noah and Gretchen at the Russell Haven site. You have to stay out of the way, though. Give me your keys. I’m driving.”
Four