“Could be, but Christine was expecting her to come home when the library closed. If the GPS is enabled on her phone, we might be able to find out where she was last night,” Josie suggested.
“Her phone was in her backpack, which was tossed into the woods,” Mettner said. “It was probably there all night.”
“True,” Josie said. “But it’s worth checking.”
“There’s something in her calendar,” Amber said. She held up the phone so that both Mettner and Josie could see the screen. Sure enough, the tiny square for that morning was filled with something. Josie took the phone from Amber and tapped to enlarge it. Her heartbeat sped up a fraction. “You’re right,” she said. “There was a calendar reminder set for five fifty-five a.m. today. It says: ‘Time to be a mermaid.’”
“What does that mean?” Mettner asked. “Is that what she calls herself because she’s a swimmer? A mermaid? Is that supposed to be some kind of joke? Like instead of ‘time for a swim,’ ‘time to be a mermaid?’”
Josie scrolled through the calendar going back months, but the “Time to be a mermaid” alert was the only entry in it. “I don’t think she used this calendar.”
“She used it this morning,” said Amber.
“Right. But there’s nothing else on here going back a year, at least. Why would she suddenly put a reminder into her calendar app for a time she didn’t normally even go swimming? Why would she stay out all night on a Sunday night with some mystery friend and then go to the pool with no suit and without her swim bag? Where was she between the time she left the library and when she came back out of the cut-through this morning? Who was she with?”
Mettner stared at her. “Should I be writing this down?”
Josie laughed drily. “No. I’m thinking out loud.”
Mettner held out a hand and Josie gave him the phone. He tapped and scrolled. He frowned. “The GPS isn’t enabled. Even if she had it with her all night, there’s no way to find out where she went.”
“Draw up a warrant,” Josie said. “Send it to her provider so we can find out where the phone pinged last night.”
“That’s only going to get us to within one to three miles of where she was,” Mettner pointed out. “And it could take a week to get it, depending on her provider.”
“Still worth a try,” Josie said.
The stairwell door swung open and Noah stepped into the room, looking tired. Behind him, Detective Gretchen Palmer shuffled in, a rolled-up polo shirt tucked beneath one of her arms. She handed it to Josie before lowering herself into her desk chair.
“Thanks,” said Josie. “Dan ordered me some new shirts. I’ll give it back as soon as they come in. Did you guys get anything?”
Noah, too, sat down. He took out his notebook and tossed it onto his desk. “No,” he said.
“Not a damn thing,” Gretchen added.
“You’re kidding,” Mettner said.
“I wish we were,” said Gretchen. “But no one remembers seeing Nysa Somers last night or this morning. Or if they did, they won’t admit it.”
Noah said, “Sunday is one of the quieter nights, apparently. First classes on Monday don’t start till eight. Nysa came out of the cut-through around six. There wouldn’t have been many people out at that time on a Monday morning. We checked with Hudson Tinning’s roommate. He says Hudson was home all day Sunday. His mom brought his clean wash over with some dinner. They all had dinner together around six thirty, then the mom left. The roommate says both of them were there the whole night. He went to bed around one in the morning, and Hudson was in their living room playing Xbox.”
“Oh,” Josie said. “I expect he scored high on that chem test then.”
Mettner laughed.
Noah said, “Where do we go from here?”
“I’d like to talk to her parents,” Josie said.
“Not today,” Gretchen said. “They asked if we could give them the rest of the day. Their other daughter is driving up tonight to be with them. She goes to Temple University in Philadelphia. Freshman year.”
Noah looked at his phone. “It’s almost five. We need to get home. We’ve got dinner.”
Josie smiled in spite of the terrible mood the Nysa Somers case had put her in. “Oh yes, I can’t wait. Let’s get home then. I could use a shower. I just want to call Dr. Feist and see if she’s had a chance to do the autopsy.”
Josie dialed Dr. Feist’s cell phone. After seven rings, the doctor answered, sounding out of breath. “Detective Quinn, what can I do for you?”
“We were just wondering if you’d had a chance to complete Nysa Somers’ autopsy?”
She blew out a breath. “Best-laid plans. I had my assistant start the preliminary preparations, and then the emergency room got slammed. Three cases of seizures and two of acute heart failure, all in a row. They asked me to come up and help out. It’s an ‘all hands on deck’ situation over here.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Josie said. “Don’t let me keep you.”
“Tomorrow, Detective,” Dr. Feist said. “I promise.”
At home, Josie took their Boston terrier, Trout, for a walk while Noah started dinner. Of the two of them, he was the only one who could cook a whole dinner without setting off smoke alarms. Misty and Harris showed up a half hour later. Much to Josie’s relief, Harris had had a wonderful day at Pre-K and couldn’t wait to return the next morning. He spent all of dinner regaling them with tales of the animals in the small petting zoo.
In spite of the pleasant dinner and the weight off her shoulders knowing that Harris had had a great—and safe—first day at Pre-K, Josie couldn’t sleep. Thoughts of Nysa Somers, the potentially laced brownies, the creepy sticker, and the missing hours before her strange death whirled in her head. When she checked the clock for the third time that night, it read 4:57 a.m. This time last night Nysa had been… where? Josie wondered. Where had she gone for eight hours? Who had she been with?
Trout whined at her feet and jumped down from the bed, finding a place on the bedroom carpet as he sometimes did when Josie tossed and turned too much for his liking. Josie reached out for Noah, but his side of the bed was cold and empty. She got up and padded downstairs with Trout at her feet. Noah was nowhere to be found. Back upstairs, she saw that his phone and wallet weren’t on the dresser where he normally left them. She called him. After six rings, he picked up.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Got a call,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the station later.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” she asked.
“You were out cold. I thought you needed the rest. You can get the next one. Listen, I have to go.”
Josie opened her mouth to say something: Come home. I wish you were here. She wasn’t good at communicating those types of things. Things that uncloaked her vulnerability. She knew she was supposed to try. Everyone in her life had been pushing her to go to therapy for the past year. So far she had resisted. Reliving her vast and varied childhood trauma seemed like the least helpful thing to do. She preferred to push it down or out or into a compartment in her mind where she didn’t have to remember any of it. Sometimes certain cases caused her demons to swirl. It was always better if Noah was there with her, especially since she’d given up drinking. But he had a job to do, just the same as her. She knew he couldn’t come home, even if he wanted to.