Page 64 of The Couple's Secret
“How did she seem?” Josie asked.
Clearing his throat, he glanced toward the back of the ambulance where Zane rested. “I don’t think she was drunk, if that’s what you’re asking. Well, I mean maybe she was a little. I don’t know.”
“How was she acting?”
“It wasn’t so much how she was acting,” Hollis said, “more like the way she looked. Pale. A little shaky. Maybe she was hungover? Or all the strain of the last week just made her sick? She just didn’t look well. I told her to eat something and go to bed. Get some rest.”
“What did she say to that?”
Hollis twisted the rag in his hands. “She said she would and that was it. I left.”
“Did you speak about anything else?”
“No.” The word was strangled. He lifted the rag to his face again, covering both his eyes with it. Sobs shook his large frame.
Josie gave him a few minutes to compose himself. “I’m sorry, Hollis. I just have a few more questions. Did you see Zane and Jackson this morning?”
“No. I figured they were still in bed. Both their cars were in the driveway. I didn’t talk to either of them until Zane called me. You were there.”
She thanked him and left him with instructions to stay in Denton and make sure Zane and Jackson didn’t pummel one another.
As she turned to head back toward the boat ramp, she spotted Gretchen across the road. Josie gave a faint shake of her head, signaling to Gretchen that they could cut Jackson loose since Zane wasn’t going to press charges. Moments later, Jackson unfolded himself from the police car. Officer Conlen cut the zip ties. He rubbed at his thick wrists as he strode toward Hollis and Zane. His eyes were dark with pain and fury. Josie stiffened, half expecting him to hop into the ambulance and attack his younger brother again, but he stopped in front of Hollis instead. The two men spoke for a moment, voices too low for anyone to overhear. Then Jackson let himself be enveloped into the older man’s arms and, like a dam breaking, he began to cry. His large body trembled. Irritation flared in Josie’s gut as she saw a half-dozen cameras swing in his direction. Luckily, one of the paramedics noticed and herded Hollis and Jackson into the ambulance with Zane.
Josie turned away. Right now, her only concern was Riley Stevens.
Gretchen joined her and they walked toward the crime scene tape that cordoned off the boat ramp. The ERT had set up a makeshift equipment station.
“What’s Jackson’s story?” Josie asked as she fished out a Tyvek suit.
Dr. Feist was already in full crime scene garb, waiting patiently next to Dougherty with her equipment bag.
“He woke up sometime after nine. From what he could tell, Riley hadn’t come to bed. She wasn’t anywhere in the house. Her car was gone. He tried calling her, but she’d left her phone on the kitchen table. After waiting an hour, he knocked on Zane’s door and woke him up to see if he knew where she went. Zane said he hadn’t seen her since the night before when they were watching TV on the couch. Jackson went looking for her. Their house, the coffee shop she likes, the liquor store.”
“Shit,” Josie murmured.
“Yeah. After a couple of hours, he called Zane back who then called Hollis.”
Josie tucked her black hair into a skull cap. “Did Jackson let you look at his phone?”
“Yeah. No arguments there.” Gretchen put booties on over her shoes. “Nothing unusual.”
“Did you ask him if Riley had any medical conditions?”
“None. What’d you get from Zane and Hollis?”
Josie filled her in as they zipped up their Tyvek suits and snapped on gloves. Dougherty logged their names onto the list of people who had entered the crime scene, and they slipped under the tape. The boat ramp was in poor condition. Its wide concrete slabs were cracked in several places. Weeds sprang from the fissures, reaching for the sky. Several potholes had formed. Trash collected inside them. Beer cans, food wrappers and cigarette butts. Trees and bushes crowded the edges of the area. A fishing bob had caught in one of the branches, the red and white standing out against the greenery. Riley’s red Subaru was pointed toward the river where the concrete dipped, forming a ramp from which boats could be launched. With the drought, the water had receded too far for anyone to use it, leaving only dried stones and cracked patches of mud.
There, between the car and the place where the ground sloped, was Riley.
She was sprawled on her back, eyes closed, lips parted. Blowflies crawled and flitted across her exposed skin, seeking entrance to her mouth, nostrils, ears, trying to access her eyes, looking for warm, moist places to lay their eggs. They were always the first insects to arrive postmortem, usually minutes after death. More buzzed in the air and darted over her clothes. There was no evidence that her body had been disturbed by animals and no scavenger birds hovered nearby, which confirmed she hadn’t been dead very long at all when she was found.
Long locks of her hair fell in disheveled piles around her head, the sun-kissed strawberry-blonde matching her mother’s oversized yellow sweater in a way Josie hadn’t noticed before. Her legs were straight, her arms at her sides, palms angled slightly upward. Likely the result of Dougherty having turned her over. Two bees buzzed lazily above a vodka bottle on its side a few feet from her body. It was big. Able to hold around twenty-five ounces if Josie had to guess. A small amount of clear liquid pooled inside, winking in the sunlight. There was a faint smell of alcohol, mingling with the first wisps of impending decay.
Josie stared at the bottle. Her chest felt tight. Mentally, she spun the gossamer around her heart into a more durable fabric, tightening, layering, weaving, keeping her emotions in check. She knew exactly what it was like to drown her pain in alcohol before ten in the morning. To need to do it. To have no other outlet for it, no way to contain it. No way to keep it from scratching the husk of your soul until it was raw and excoriated. Riley had been seeking numbness as a respite. Somewhere deep in the recesses of Josie’s mental vault, that too-full thermos full of hot emotion jolted in recognition.
Anya let out a long sigh before sliding her camera out of her messenger bag. Josie and Gretchen waited while she photographed the scene and Riley’s body. Once that task was complete, she knelt on the ground, batting at the persistent flies.
“She’s in full rigor,” Anya said, almost to herself.
