Free Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors by Ann Rule Page B

interest,” to use the more obscure term police use currently to identify those under suspicion for a crime.
    Josh Powell seemed nervous, but some members of the general public felt that any husband would be if his wife had disappeared. They were unaware at this point of his disinterest in her fate as he talked to detectives. Josh speculated to reporters that Susan might have gone off with another man, leaving him and the boys behind. No one who knew Susan Powell believed that.
    Moreover, Susan had left her purse and cell phone behind. Josh pointed out the message he’d left on her cell phone, trying to sound convincing that he had believed she had gone to work on Monday. It was there on his outgoing voice mail, saying “I’ll pick you up after work.”
    He would only have had to call from one cell phone in his Chrysler to another. Where he and the boys were at that point cannot be proven, although he claimed to be in West Valley City.
    It was undoubtedly the women of the Salt Lake City area who doubted Josh in the beginning. They knew that very few women run off with other men, leaving their purses, keys, credit cards, makeup, and cell phones—not to mention their beloved children—behind.
    Mothers don’t do that. Men leave—but mothers stay, except for the minuscule number of women who seem to have been born with no maternal instinct. And Susan Powell was not one of those.
    The Utah investigators felt the same way, although they didn’t reveal what lab tests had shown. They were fully aware that they were probably searching for a badly injured victim . . . or a body. The stains on the couch and floor of the Powells’ house had been analyzed and tested for DNA. Although the couch had been washed, criminalists discovered that the discoloration was human blood, and the DNA inherent in it was Susan Powell’s.
    Susan had bled on that couch, although it was difficult to pinpoint just when that had occurred. The fact that the sofa had been shampooed on the date she vanished suggested that she might very well have been injured in the house before she was forced—or carried—out.
    From the neighbor’s description of someone arguing in the night, Susan was probably alive when she left her home.

Chapter Seven
    Susan had been missing for only seven days when Josh called his day-care provider to let her know that Charlie and Braden wouldn’t be coming back. “You’ll probably never see them again,” he added.
    He also contacted Susan’s chiropractor and asked that all her future appointments be canceled.
    Three days later, on December 17, Josh used his power of attorney to withdraw Susan’s IRA accounts from the Wells Fargo bank.
    On December 19, Josh, with Charlie and Braden in tow, drove to Puyallup, Washington, through winter storms. He didn’t contact his in-laws, but Chuck and Judy Cox, along with their friends and relatives, were startled to see Josh during a vigil for Susan on December 20. Josh had Charlie with him, and they stood in the pouring rain as people lit votive candles in plastic cups.
    Josh let Charlie play with the cups, apparently unconcerned that he could be burned. Josh set himself apart from the Cox family, and they found it eerie to see him standing in the rain with an enigmatic expression on his face. The vigil honored Susan and the hope that she might be alive somewhere, but it also added to the agony to know that she wasn’t there.
    It was an odd, sad Christmas. The Coxes had short visits from Charlie and Braden, but only after one of Josh’s old friends talked him into it. He brought the boys to their grandparents for a few hours on Christmas Eve and delivered them again for Christmas Day dinner.
    Chuck and Judy wondered how Josh could have left the home he’d shared with Susan at Christmas. Wouldn’t it be more natural that he would stay there, waiting for her to come home or to at least have some word of her?
    And then it was a New Year: 2010. Josh let their grandparents see