Mettner arrived at the same time as she did, parking next to her in the municipal lot at the rear of the building. Together, they trudged through the back door and walked up two flights of stairs to the great room where the detectives’ permanent desks sat all pushed together in the middle of the room. Surrounding them were other desks used by various patrol officers needing to complete paperwork. There was now a new permanent desk for their press liaison, Amber Watts, to the right of the collective desks. Amber had decorated it in a teal and white theme—matching penholder, pens, stapler, and scissors. She had also put up a teal and white framed cork board on the wall beside her desk. It looked very un-corporate and cheery. It was a little out of place in the police station, but Amber’s ever-present exuberance and her need to coordinate everything was growing on Josie.
Amber looked up from her laptop and pushed a long lock of her auburn hair off her shoulder. She grinned at Mettner, and Josie detected two rosy pink circles in his cheeks as he said, “Miss Watts, nice to see you.”
Amber nodded, flashing Mettner a megawatt smile, and stabbed her teal and white striped pen in the air. “The desk sergeant said to call him when you got here. He has something for you.”
Josie went to her desk and dialed the front lobby where Sergeant Dan Lamay had been stationed now for almost five years. Dan had been with Denton PD longer than anyone currently on the force. He’d survived scandals and multiple chiefs. He was past retirement age, but when Josie was interim chief, she’d made him desk sergeant so he could continue to serve on the force. His family needed his income and his benefits. She’d been rewarded with his friendship, which had saved her hide on more than one occasion. “You’re here,” he said when he answered. “I’ll be right up.”
Josie was going to tell him that she would come to him, but he’d already hung up. Dan had bad arthritis in one of his knees that seemed to get worse each year. A minute later, he came huffing through the stairwell door, a paper evidence bag in his hands. Dan lumbered over to Josie’s desk and handed it to her. “Hummel left that phone and charger. He said it’s ready for you to examine. He already dusted it for prints. He said there was only one set, belonging to the owner of the phone.”
“Did he say anything about a baggie?” Josie asked him. “I asked him to get prints from that, too.”
Dan scratched his chin. “He said same prints on the baggie as on the phone. He’ll have a report for you by the end of the day, but he wanted you to know that right away. Oh, and Gretchen called and got permission from the parents for you to examine Nysa Somers’ phone.”
“Where is Gretchen?” Mettner asked.
“She went over to Hollister Way to help Lieutenant Fraley canvass,” Dan said. “She also told me about your shirts, boss. I ordered some for you. They’ll be here in two days.”
“Dan,” Josie said. “You’re a godsend. Thank you.”
He waved a hand in a gesture that said it was no big deal. Turning to head back downstairs, he said over his shoulder, “This way you can spend your time on more important things.”
Josie opened the bag and took the phone out. She pressed the power button. The screen said: enter passcode.
“Shit,” Josie said.
Dan stopped. “What’s wrong?”
“It needs a passcode.”
Dan frowned. “Oh yeah. Gretchen said that she asked the parents if they knew her passcode, but they didn’t.”
“Thanks, Dan,” Mettner said as the older man shuffled out of the room and back down the stairs. To Josie, he said, “I’ll call Christine Trostle and see if she knows.”
Christine didn’t know the passcode but made several suggestions, none of which granted them access to the phone. Josie plopped into her chair with a sigh, put the phone on her desk and glared at it. From the corner of the room, Amber spoke up. “You said she was a swimmer, right? You should try something swimming-related. What was her event? The race she did the best at?”
Mettner flashed Amber a smile.
Josie sat forward and tapped away at her keyboard. “Great idea,” she said. Pulling up the latest WYEP story on the Denton University swim team, Josie, Mettner, and Amber watched the short video, which focused almost entirely on Nysa. Hudson had been included, as per his mother’s wishes, but his contribution had been pared down to short sound bites praising Nysa. The sight of her alive, well, and thriving was painful. Josie could still feel Nysa’s cold, lifeless form beneath her hands as she tried to pump life back into her.
Mettner said, “Sounds like her best race was the hundred-meter butterfly.”
Amber said, “I bet you her personal best time is her passcode.”
Josie clicked off the WYEP story and did a Google search. It only took a few minutes to find it. “Amber! You’re brilliant.” She picked up the phone and typed in 5786. Immediately, the phone unlocked.
“Yes!” Josie said, drawing laughs from Mettner and Amber.
They crowded in behind her as she navigated through the phone. The home screen was a photo of the white dog that Josie had seen in a frame on Nysa’s dresser. There were several unread texts, most of which were from Christine. Some were from other students who obviously shared classes with Nysa, wondering where she’d been that morning. There was one which Josie believed was from her mother, sent at nine that morning, asking how the paper was going. Josie swallowed over a lump in her throat. Clearly, Nysa had been very close to her family.
Josie had to find out what happened to this girl.
“There are no texts from last night except for the ones between her and Christine,” she complained. “Whoever the ‘friend’ was that she met up with, they didn’t text her. Unless she deleted the texts.”
“Check the call log,” said Mettner.
Josie did but there was nothing aside from Christine’s calls, all of them missed. “There’s nothing.”
“There has to be something,” Mettner said. “Let me see.”
He took the phone from her hands, scrolling and swiping. Josie said, “Check her email and social media. There has to be some evidence of this mystery friend. You checked all the library footage, right?”
“Yeah,” Mettner mumbled. “She went inside, went to the fourth floor, talked with the librarian and then worked at a computer station until the library closed. She didn’t talk to anyone.”
“Then she must have met up with the mystery person on her way out of the cut-through,” Josie said. “I was down there today. She could have seen someone on the path or even walking back to her house. Also, people park there and walk up to campus. Someone could have even been waiting for her when she stepped off the path.”
Mettner looked up from the phone. “So this is worthless.”
Amber said, “Could I take a look?”
Mettner handed the phone off to Amber. To Josie, he said, “Didn’t you say that the roommate thought Nysa was seeing someone secretly?”
“She implied it,” Josie said. “Yeah.”
“Maybe they met there and spent the night together. Maybe that’s a place they routinely meet up—at the cut-through. If so, there would be no need for them to call or text one another.”