Where the Blame Lies

“I’m sorry. About your aunt.” He rubbed at the back of his neck and then nodded to the house. “You plan on running it as a bed and breakfast again?”

Again. So he knew it’d been closed for a while. He worked for the Cincinnati Police Department. He probably knew a whole lot about her. Why this man was here and not one of the detectives she’d become familiar with, she didn’t know. She let out a slow breath. “That’s the plan.” If I can figure out how to fix about seventeen things on my tier-one list with a couple thousand bucks in the bank. “Detective, what can I help you with?” She braced herself. She had to figure this man—for whatever reason they’d sent him, a detective who looked more like a Hollywood movie star than someone who worked with dead bodies—was here to tell her the case of her missing baby was being closed, or filed as a cold case or however that sort of thing worked. It’s fine, she told herself. They can close it if they want. I never will.

Detective Copeland leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. His dark eyes appeared black in the shade of her porch, his lashes long and lush, curled upward. His shoulders were broad, his white dress shirt pulled tight over his biceps in the position he was in. This man exuded masculinity. He was nothing like Cedric Murphy, the pot-bellied detective with the kind smile and the heavy-lidded eyes, the detective she still had a soft spot for, though she hadn’t spoken to him in . . . over a year. And even before that, it’d always been so brief. Detective Copeland seemed to be measuring her, choosing the words he was about to say carefully, the way people did who were familiar with her abduction. As if, even though almost a decade had passed, she might shatter if it was mentioned. As if she might have forgotten for a while and having it brought up would remind her. If only. “A few days ago, we found the body of a woman chained up in the basement of an abandoned house in Clifton.”

She froze. She hadn’t expected that. “A . . . body? Chained?” The last word emerged croaky and she cleared her throat.

Detective Copeland leaned back, nodding, his eyes fixed on her face. “Yes. Steel rings had been drilled into the concrete walls to hold the chain.”

She felt cold suddenly. “I . . . see. And the girl, how had she died?”

“She starved to death.”

Josie let out a small choked sound, sliding down slightly in her chair. “My God,” she said, shaking her head, looking off behind him for a moment. “But, Detective, if you’re here because you think it’s the same man who—”

Detective Copeland held up his hand. “I know. The man who abducted you died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Your case was closed. I read the file. All of it.”

“So then you know it can’t be related to my case. It’s just one similarity—the chains.” That couldn’t be completely unique. She had no earthly idea how often a crime like hers was committed, but chains, they . . . must be used sometimes . . . to imprison a victim . . . they . . . She shook her head, attempting to shake loose her meandering thoughts, her spiraling anxiety.

“There’s mor

e.” He paused for a moment. “Words were carved into this woman’s thigh. The knife went so deep, they were evident on her bone.”

“Oh,” emerged as half breath, half word, and Josie unconsciously brought her fingers to the place where she wore the scar of what Marshall Landish had done to her. Casus belli. She still carried the blame he’d assigned to her. She always would. In her flesh . . . in her soul. When she realized where her hand had gone, she removed it, her fingers fluttering slightly before she laced her hands and set them in her lap. She met the detective’s eyes. Shrewd, measuring, but . . . kind. His eyes were tight at the corners, his full lips set in a pinched line. He was worried about how she was processing this news. She sat up straight, bolstered by his empathy. “I don’t understand,” she murmured.

“We think it’s a copycat,” the detective said. “All elements that appear similar to your case were documented in the news. Someone could have read about them and sought to recreate the crime. We just don’t know why. Is there anything you can think of that might shed some light on this girl’s death?”

Josie shook her head slowly. “No, I . . . Do you know anything about her yet?”

He paused for a heartbeat as though he were deciding whether to answer her question. “We haven’t informed her family, but we believe she’s a local woman who worked in a restaurant in Hyde Park. She didn’t come home from work one night.”

She scraped her top teeth over her bottom lip, looking down. “It has to be a stranger. Just using the information available from my case, for whatever reason.” Josie swallowed. “Was she . . . raped?”

The detective nodded solemnly. “Yes. But in this girl’s case, he used a condom. We haven’t discovered any DNA evidence on the unknown suspect as of yet, though testing is still being done.”

Josie stared at him, her heart thumping, the heavy feeling of grief descending over her. Finally she nodded. What could she say? “Would you, ah, like a glass of iced tea, Detective?” She figured he had a few more questions, and she could use a moment to gather herself. And the day was warming, the sun high in the sky.

“That’d be great.”

Josie stood, picked up the laundry basket, and scurried inside. At the window that looked out to the side of the house, she took a moment to breathe deeply, the apron of the porcelain farmhouse sink cool beneath her palms, grounding her. A dead girl. Chained. Raped. Starved. Branded. She closed her eyes. This was the last thing she’d expected today. The last thing she’d expected . . . ever.

**********

Zach looked up as Josie emerged from the house, a tray with a pitcher and two glasses held in her hands. She set it down on the round wicker table and handed him a cold glass, beaded with sweat. Their fingers brushed and her eyes snapped to his and then away. He took a long sip, the liquid cold and sweet. “This is great. Thank you.”

She nodded, taking her seat again as she picked up her own glass. He noticed pale pink marks on her wrist and knew immediately what they were: the faded scars from the shackles she’d once worn. God. He watched her as she took a sip, a strange feeling overtaking him. He felt like he knew this woman, and yet he didn’t. There was a surreal feeling about sitting and talking to her, because when he’d seen her through hospital windows briefly and so long ago, and in crime scene photographs, he’d only seen an utterly distraught version of herself. He couldn’t seem to stop watching her, marveling at her. Josie Stratton had been barely twenty years old when she’d escaped that warehouse, and she was twenty-eight now. Beautiful. Poised. Seemingly well adjusted. That was apparent, despite how shaken she was by the information he’d just given her. And despite the scars she still wore. What had he expected? A broken shadow of a person? Maybe he had. Maybe that’s why the real woman, up close and three-dimensional, was throwing him for such a loop. Something about her pulled at him. Strongly. It was almost a physical sensation.

As she glanced at him over the rim of her glass and their eyes met, realization hit him: he’d thought the memory of her eyes had come to him now and again over the years. But he’d been wrong. Josie Stratton’s eyes had never left him at all. They’d lingered inside him all these years, holding him captive.

That damn hero complex his sister accused him of having. Maybe Betsy wasn’t so far off. And maybe that’s what Josie Stratton brought out in him—made surge to the forefront—a need to protect. Exact justice. Somehow right an appalling wrong.

“Where did you live before you moved to Oxford? Before your aunt’s death?”

Josie took another drink. She gave him a look that he read as her wondering what these questions had to do with a copycat murderer. He wasn’t sure they did, but it couldn’t hurt to know who she associated with, what her life was like, if someone who she’d come across at some point in time had decided to recreate the crime she’d been a victim of. But he also couldn’t deny that he wanted to know about this woman he was so mesmerized by. “I rented an apartment in Mount Adams. Worked from there too.” She looked off behind him as though seeing into the past. “One of my case workers got me a job transcribing for a lawyer she knew. It was work I could do from home.” She looked down, fiddling with her hands. “After the crime, I didn’t go out a lot. I was . . . doing what I could to look into my son’s disappearance.” She cleared her throat. “I got some referrals, enough work to pay my rent, eat . . .”

“So you never finished school?”

“No. I never went back. Anyway,” she said after a moment, and there was more life in her voice. She’d gathered herself, moved away from those memories of the dark days following her escape, the trauma she must have been suffering. “I did that for seven years. My aunt fell ill five years ago, and she couldn’t visit me anymore. It motivated me to buy a car.” She pointed to the driveway where a white beat-up compact car that looked as if it was on its last leg—or wheel as the case may be—was parked in front of his city-issued sedan. “And I began driving to Oxford to visit her in the facility she’d been put into.” Her lips curved upward and the sweetness of her smile made Zach’s lungs feel overly full. “I moved into this house last year. She’d closed the bed and breakfast years before. I think her illness had begun long before she let anyone know, and it was just too much for her. When she first got sick, we talked about how when she got better, we’d open the bed and breakfast again, run it together.” Her smile faltered. “She never recovered, but she left it to me, and now I’m doing what I can to get it up and running. I’ll need to if I’m going to remain living here.”