The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller(3)

Colette was on her stomach, her upper body in the flower bed, her protruding feet the only thing visible at a distance. Up close, Josie immediately noticed the gardening gloves on her hands and a small handheld shovel in the dirt a few inches away.

“Mom!” Noah cried, panic ringing in his voice. He dropped to his knees, and Josie fell to hers beside him. Together, they rolled Colette onto her back. Her eyes were closed and dirt smudged her cheeks and clothes. Cold seeped from Colette’s body into Josie’s hands as her fingers searched Colette’s neck for a pulse, but found nothing.

Noah was already leaning into her chest, one hand on top of the other, fingers laced, giving her compressions. As he counted out thirty presses, Josie angled Colette’s chin so that her mouth was open, and pinched her nostrils closed.

“Now!” Noah urged her as he stopped pumping.

Josie’s mouth closed over Colette’s and she exhaled into her, trying to inflate Colette’s lungs. Something fetid and granular stuck to Josie’s lips, and the air wasn’t moving through to Colette’s chest like it should. Coughing, she sat back up and wiped her mouth.

“What are you doing? Jesus, Josie. Keep going. We have to save her,” Noah cried.

He pushed her out of the way and sealed his lips over Colette’s, but after one breath, he also pulled away, coughing and spitting onto the ground.

“It’s soil,” Josie said. “Jesus, Noah, it’s soil.”

She nudged him aside and hooked a finger inside Colette’s mouth, scooping out a small clump of wet brown earth. She repeated the action three or four times but still, the airway wasn’t cleared. Her heart seized in her chest. Beside her, Noah had gone perfectly still, his mouth stretched open in horror. “Help me,” Josie cried. “Help me get her on her side!”

As if he was moving in slow motion, Noah reached forward, grasping his mother’s shoulder and pushing as Josie turned her onto her side, her fingers still scrabbling inside Colette’s mouth, trying to clear it of the hard-packed dirt. When she thought she had most of it out, she turned Colette onto her back again and tried to blow air into her chest. Colette’s airway was completely blocked.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Josie knew that Colette was gone but she couldn’t bear the look of pure terror on Noah’s face, so she kept working. “Call 911,” she barked at him as she moved back to Colette’s chest and restarted the compressions. He didn’t move, his eyes locked on his mother’s face.

Sweat poured from Josie’s forehead as she pumped, dripping off the end of her nose and onto Colette’s lifeless body. “Now, Noah. Go! Call 911!”

Josie worked until her shoulders and arms ached, until her face was streaked with the remains of dirt still packed into Colette’s mouth, until her entire body was soaked with sweat, until the paramedics arrived and pulled her gently away. As if from very far away, she heard them shouting information to one another, taking over for her, and after several minutes she heard one of them call the time of death.

Then she heard a wail—low, guttural and heart-wrenching—tear from Noah’s throat.





Two





Josie sat beside Noah on his mother’s couch, one hand on his back as he curled into himself, elbows on knees, face in his hands, intermittently sobbing and rocking back and forth. As her Evidence Response Team moved in and out of the house, Josie tried to wrap her mind around what had just happened. She had the sensation of watching herself from afar. It didn’t seem real. This had to be happening to someone else, surely. Not them.

“Boss?” Officer Finn Mettner said. She looked up to find him staring down at them. How long had he been there?

“Yes,” she said, voice shaky. Her fingers wiped at her mouth, brushing away the dirt that felt like it would never leave her skin.

Mettner gestured toward the door. “This is a crime scene. If you wouldn’t mind—”

She stood abruptly. “Of course, of course. Noah?”

He didn’t respond. Josie hooked a hand under one of his arms and gently guided him to standing, outside and into the passenger side of his vehicle. “I’ll be right back,” she told him.

Near the front door, one of the other ERT officers, Hummel, had cordoned the stoop off with yellow crime scene tape. He stood at the door with his clipboard, ready to log in each person who passed by him. In the driveway, the trunk of his cruiser stood open. Josie went to it and pulled out a Tyvek suit, slowly pulling it on, together with booties and a skull cap.

She heard footsteps behind her as Mettner appeared next to the trunk. “Hey, boss, we’re all really sorry. This is… hard to believe.” He glanced toward Noah’s car. “How’s Noah?”

Josie followed Mettner’s gaze to where Noah sat staring straight ahead with blank, red-rimmed eyes. “I think he’s in shock. Is Gretchen—I mean, Detective Palmer coming?”Gretchen Palmer was another detective on Denton’s police force. Her calm presence had a way of reassuring Josie and quieting her pounding heart during difficult times. A woman of pure integrity and one of the best investigators Josie had ever known, Gretchen had recently been placed on administrative leave following her involvement in a horrific murder that had happened on her own doorstep and brought secrets of her past into the harsh light of the present. Josie knew that after what had happened, it would take nothing short of a miracle for Gretchen to keep her job. But she also knew that Gretchen had done what she needed to do to protect the people she loved most, so Josie had used all the influence and good will she had in Denton to make sure Gretchen returned to the force in some capacity. Facing resistance from both the Chief and the Mayor of Denton on more than one occasion, Josie had used her press connections to garner support from the public, putting enough pressure on the Chief that he had agreed to bring Gretchen back for a probationary period which had started a week ago.