“Oh boy,” said Gretchen.
Mettner nodded. “Yeah. So then I was like, are you calling my mom an idiot? It turned into this whole ugly thing. I said I would go without her, but she didn’t want me anywhere near Toland, she said. So I told her, ‘This is my family and it’s not going to be easy for me to get us both out of this. It’s the only thing my mom asked for.’ Then Amber basically wanted me to choose between her and my family. I told her she was acting crazy and that he was just some televangelist. Then I said some ugly things I’m not proud of. She cried. I tried to apologize, but it was too late. She picked up the book and read some stupid passage to me, and then she said all this shit, like, ‘What do you think he’s talking about, Finn? Think about it.’ I said I had no idea what he was talking about and then she said, ‘We have nothing to say to one another now.’ She took the book and left. That was it.”
Josie stared at him intently. “The book at her house was yours?”
“My mom’s.”
Noah said, “What was the passage?”
Mettner shrugged. “I don’t know. I never even read the book!”
Josie fished the copy Devon Rafferty had given her from under a stack of files on her desk and tossed it to Mettner. “Find it,” she told him.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes,” said Josie.
“But I never read the book.”
“Then read it now.”
He shook his head as he stared at Toland’s face on the cover. “Why was this guy at Amber’s house? Did they know one another?”
Gretchen leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers beneath her chin. “It sure sounds like it, doesn’t it? You don’t have that strong a reaction to a celebrity you’ve never met. At least, that’s my take.”
“Shit,” said Mettner. “I’m so stupid. I didn’t even catch on. What’s wrong with me? Plus, you said he talked to her sister, too? Before she died?”
“We believe he did,” said Noah. “But we can’t prove it.”
Mettner tapped his fingers against the book cover. “What did he do? What did he do to Amber?”
“I don’t know,” said Josie. “But Mettner, he keeps coming up, just like Russell Haven Dam does. There’s something there, we just don’t know what yet.”
“Eden told her best friend that the old guy she met with in the coffee shop was an old neighbor,” Gretchen said. “There’s a good chance she just said that to get Karishma off her back, but it could be true.”
Noah said, “We don’t even know all the places the Watts kids lived growing up.”
“Unless they were the houses that both Eden and Amber looked up before Eden died and Amber disappeared,” Josie said.
“I can search our databases for former addresses of Thatcher Toland, Hugo Watts, and Lydia Norris and then cross-reference to see if any of them match up,” Noah suggested. “Maybe Amber and Eden lived in a certain town at the same time as Thatcher Toland did.”
“He had a small church,” Josie pointed out. “That’s where he started. Maybe they went there.”
Mettner stood up. “I’m going to go get you guys some coffee, and then I’ll see if I can find the passage in his book Amber was talking about.”
Thirty-Nine
They worked until midnight, filing reports, going over the evidence again and again, talking the case out while Mettner read as much of the Toland book as he could without falling asleep. The patrol officer Gretchen had posted outside of Toland’s church returned to the station to tell them that Paul had finally arrived at the megachurch at eleven thirty to check that all the doors to the building were locked, and told him that both the Thatchers had gone to New York City for press until the grand opening of the megachurch.
The Chief showed up at midnight to send them all home. The search for Gabriel Watts had been suspended until the morning. Everything was at a standstill. The last thing Josie wanted to do was go home. It felt like defeat, like abandoning Amber. What if she was still alive? What if she was out there somewhere, being held, waiting and hoping they’d find her? On the ride home, the image of the Post-it note Amber had affixed to her childhood diary with Josie’s name on it kept flashing through her mind. Had Amber meant for Josie to find that diary with those numbers inside? But what was Josie supposed to make of them? The Chief hadn’t even been able to decipher them, and he had decades of experience as an investigator. What had Amber hoped to accomplish by leaving the diary behind? Had she suspected something might happen to her? Was that why she had put it there? Hidden it at work instead of home? Or was she planning on giving it to Josie one day? Were the numbers something she was going to ask for Josie’s help with?
“Stop,” Noah said from the driver’s seat as he pulled into their driveway.
“Stop what?” Josie asked.
“Working in your head. You need rest, Josie. We both do.”
She knew he was right. Inside the house, Trout’s excitement and wet, doggy kisses were a welcome salve to her soul after the day they’d had. They took him for a quick walk, fed him, and spent some time playing with him before they went to bed. Happily, he tucked himself between them, his back pressed into Josie’s side and his feet pushing into Noah’s hip. For a small dog, he took up a lot of bed. Josie lay on her back staring at the dark ceiling and listening to Trout and Noah’s dueling snores. She was thoroughly exhausted and yet, sleep would not come. Every time she closed her eyes and started to drift off, the sensory memory of Eden Watts’ fingers grasping her wrist came rushing back, startling her awake again. After three times, Josie gave up trying to sleep.
Quietly, she opened the drawer of her nightstand and felt around until her fingers touched a set of beads. In the glow of the clock display, she could see the smooth green beads of the rosary bracelet that her Chief had given her when her grandmother lay dying in the hospital. Josie cupped them in her hand and closed her eyes. For months she had carried them around with her until one day she forgot to put them in her pocket. Since then, they lived in her nightstand. Sometimes, when she felt like her insides might break or spill out of her, as though her psyche was a flimsy bit of tissue paper, she reached for them. She wasn’t Catholic. She wasn’t even particularly religious, but that wasn’t why the Chief had given them to her. They were for comfort. She still remembered with perfect clarity the day he’d given them to her.
“What’s this?”
“Rosary bracelet,” he said.
“I’m not Catholic, sir,” Josie said.
“Neither am I.”
She stared at the bracelet. There was a medal with a woman in flowing garb on it. Around her were the words: “Our Lady Untier of Knots.”