by Lisa Regan
“It’s going,” Hayes yelled. He made a circular motion in the air with one of his hands, and both boats began to move away from the house as it slid completely off its foundation. Sagging, it tumbled face down into the water and floated away. It moved strangely slowly, given the force of the current. Hayes looked down at Mrs. Bassett, who was drawn in on herself, arms wrapped around her knees. Josie thought she heard him say, “Sorry about your house, ma’am.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled from Mrs. Bassett’s diaphragm. Josie couldn’t hear it over all the noise around them, but she could tell by the woman’s face and the way her shoulders shook, dwarfed by the life vest. They all stared at her, but her laughter continued unabated. Josie recognized it as the kind of strange and inappropriate laughter that erupted occasionally after someone experienced a trauma. Josie had dealt with countless victims of traumatic events. In rare instances, people got so overwhelmed, they laughed instead of breaking down in tears. Finally, Mrs. Bassett stopped. It was difficult to tell if she was crying with the rain pouring from the sky, but she wiped at her eyes. Josie couldn’t hear what she said to Hayes.
The boats bobbed violently in the current, still fighting to get upstream. Everyone paused for a somber moment, watching nature’s breathtaking savagery all around them.
Where the house had been was now churning brown water swirling with debris, creating a momentary whirlpool as the water rushed into the gap created by the missing house. A large chunk of concrete popped up and floated away, followed by several smaller pieces. Josie spotted what looked like a washer or dryer and pieces of pipes rising from the water and being carried away by the current. As the floodwater rushed past where the house had been and dislodged more of the house’s foundation, something bright blue emerged. At first it just looked like a piece of fabric flapping in the current, held in place by something beneath the water. Then another large chunk of concrete sprang up and floated downstream, and the unseen part of the fabric bobbed to the water’s surface, revealing that the fabric was part of something larger. Much larger. Human-sized.
“What the hell is that?” Brownlow yelled as the object came into relief, the pounding current cleansing it.
“A body!” Josie and Gretchen both answered loudly.
The blue fabric was a large plastic tarp, wrapped tightly around its contents which Josie estimated to be no longer than six feet and no wider than two feet. Duct tape wound round the tarp in four separate places.
Josie got up onto her knees and met Gretchen’s eyes. Gretchen gave her a nod and turned to Brownlow. “Get over there!”
He raised a brow. “You crazy?”
Josie stood, bracing herself on the boat’s edge. “We have to get it. It’s going to come loose any second.”
“What are you doing?” Hayes hollered over the radio. “Let’s go!”
Brownlow spoke into his own radio, tucked safely in its waterproof pouch, “She’s going after it.”
“You can’t! It’s too dangerous. We have to go!”
Josie tugged on her tether and spoke into her own radio. “I’ll grab it and Gretchen can pull me in.”
“The kid is right,” Brownlow told her. “It’s too dangerous.”
From the other boat, Hayes watched them.
Brownlow added, “You don’t even know that’s a body. It’s just a tarp, for all you know.”
“That’s a body,” Josie said firmly. “I’m sure of it.”
“It could be anything.”
Josie thought of all the human remains she’d uncovered in her career. All the murder victims she’d seen, the makeshift graves she’d stood beside.
“No,” she said firmly. “It’s definitely a body.”
Hayes’ voice came over the radio again. “This is a rescue operation, not a recovery operation.”
“We can’t leave it behind,” Josie snapped back into her own radio.
She watched as the rolled tarp began to shift. It must have been buried beneath the foundation of the house. Normal people didn’t bury their dead in their basements. Whoever was wrapped in the tarp was a murder victim. Josie’s instincts rarely failed her. She knew that, given the speed of the current and the unpredictability of the flooding, it could take weeks to find the body if they let it wash away. Not only that, but what if someone besides first responders came upon it before it was found?
“I have to get it,” Josie said into her radio.
The tarp was knocked loose by a large branch shooting past it. Josie spread her feet wide to keep her balance. She put one foot on the edge of the boat’s side. More mayoral candidate signs rushed by, barely missing the rescue vessel’s puffy side.
Brownlow hollered, “Stay in this boat, Quinn!”
Pushing against the side of the boat with her foot, Josie jumped back into the water and began paddling toward the tarp, dimly aware of the shouting behind her and over the radio at her shoulder. The current churned around her, making it difficult for her to stay on course. The rotor wash of the helicopter pressed down again, slowing the current long enough for her to get closer. Every muscle in her body burned with the effort. Her life jacket kept her afloat, but its bulk made swimming more difficult. Finally, she got close enough to grab a handful of blue plastic material. She pulled it closer to her, wrapping both arms around it. A moment later, Hayes’ boat bumped against her shoulder, trapping her in place as Brownlow’s vessel got closer. Gretchen leaned over, pulling at Josie’s tether until only the rolled tarp was between them. Paddling in place, Josie handed it off to her. With great effort, Gretchen pulled it into the boat and came back to help Josie.
Once they were safely in the boat with the body between them, Josie looked around, but the other boat was long gone. Brownlow shook his head at her, and wordlessly, turned the boat and sped away.
Two
The flooding had forced the city’s emergency management department to set up a temporary command post in one of Denton University’s parking lots. The campus’s elevation and proximity to the hardest hit areas of the city made it the best place from which to dispatch all rescues and supplies. Pop-up tents had been erected and several ambulances and police cruisers filled one corner of the lot, waiting to be called on. The rest of the lot was filled with pickup trucks carrying or towing rescue boats of all shapes and sizes. Some were city-owned and others belonged to volunteers from neighboring towns who had come to aid in the flood response. A mile away was another staging area inside the city park where flood waters had partially submerged the softball field. Rescue crews drove their vessels to the park and launched them into the water from there. When Brownlow guided the boat onto the makeshift ramp, they were the only ones there. Only his truck sat on the other side of the field. Josie and Gretchen hopped out of the boat and helped him drag it onto dry ground. Josie’s neoprene boots squished in the mud as she walked.
“That’s good,” Brownlow told them when the boat was out of the water. “Now, before we go any further, Quinn, I want you to know what you did out there was reckless and irresponsible. You’re not getting on my boat again.”
Josie put her hands on her hips. “I had—”
He cut her off. “Don’t want to hear it. Don’t have time to hear it. Don’t care. I’ll pull my truck over and load her up. What’re you going to do with that?”
He pointed toward the rolled tarp and both Josie and Gretchen looked at it, nestled inside the bottom of the boat. Face flaming, Josie unhooked the chin strap of her helmet and took it off, shaking water from her hair. Not that it did any good. The rain continued to come down at a moderate rate. “We have to get it to the morgue,” she said. “The medical examiner will need to do an autopsy.”
“We’ll need the Evidence Response Team as well,” Gretchen added.
Brownlow raised a skeptical brow. “Evidence response? Your crime scene washed away.”
“Not for the scene,” Josie told him. “For the tarp and the tape and anything else that’s in there with the body.”
&nb
sp; “Contextual clues,” Gretchen told him.
He shook his head. “Hope you ladies are right about this being a body. Else you’re gonna feel real silly jumping into floodwaters for it on TV.”
They stared at him.
Gretchen said, “What else could it be?”
Brownlow shrugged. “Don’t know. A dog or something? Who says it’s human?”
Josie said, “I am one hundred percent sure this is human. But I hope we are wrong, and if we are, we’ll feel pretty damn good because it will mean we don’t have a murder victim on our hands.”
Gretchen reached down into the boat. “Let’s get this into the truck.”
Brownlow put up both hands. “You’re not putting that in my truck.”
Josie said, “Are you kidding me?”
He didn’t reply.
“Just help us get it to the command post. I can put it in my car to get it to the morgue,” she said.
“Sorry, ladies,” he said. “I told you not to jump in after that thing, and you did it anyway. It’s not going in my truck and neither are you two.”
As he walked away, Gretchen spat out a few colorful words under her breath.
Josie sighed. “Unbelievable. Help me get the remains out of the boat. You can stay here and guard them while I walk up and get my car.”
“Your new car?” Gretchen teased as they lifted the tarp out of the boat and found a place away from the water where Gretchen could sit and guard it.
Josie’s old vehicle, a Ford Escape, had been totaled in an accident the month before. She had just bought a new one. She sighed, thinking of the pristine gray interior and new car smell that still permeated it. “Yes, my new car.”
Gretchen sat on the grass beside the body and pulled her helmet off, running a hand through her short, spiked brown and gray hair. “Get one of the ambulances. They’ll take us to the morgue.”
“No,” Josie said as she stalked off toward the university parking lot. “We need them for the living. I’m not diverting resources right now. Not with these flash floods.”
“Good call,” Gretchen called after her.
Josie wiped more rain from her face as she passed Brownlow, who was hooking the rescue boat to the back of his pickup truck, and took the long walk to the parking lot where a bright orange sign marked the command post. Immediately she noticed the news vans crowding one of the triage tents. Reporters, garbed in ponchos and raincoats, gathered around Evelyn Bassett where she sat beneath a canopy tent on a gurney, an ice pack held to her head. They held out their phones and shouted questions. Behind them, cameramen pointed large, heavy, plastic-wrapped cameras at her. Next to her was Hayes. As Josie got closer, she saw that he, too, had taken off his helmet. His black hair was in disarray, sticking up everywhere. He looked to be about her age, mid-thirties, with dark stubble along his sharp jaw. He busied himself tucking a blanket around Mrs. Bassett’s shoulders.
A reporter said, “Mrs. Bassett, were you scared? Did you think you’d get swept away?”
“Course I was scared,” she replied. “I’m seventy-eight! Didn’t think I’d get swept away though. You guys know who saved me, right?”
“Detective Quinn,” another reporter shouted from the back.
Josie felt unease roil her stomach. Five years earlier, she’d cracked a scandalous missing girls’ case in Denton and since then, she’d been instrumental in solving several other high profile cases that had garnered national attention. She’d been on Dateline three times—thanks to her sister who was a world-famous television journalist—and had become something of a local hero. Being semi-famous in her hometown didn’t really suit her. The cases that had put her on people’s radars haunted her. She just wanted to do her job as best she could, but her unwanted celebrity was often unavoidable. Josie put a hand up to adjust her hair as she approached. Mrs. Bassett’s voice came again. “There she is! Detective Quinn! My hero. Jumped right in after me, she did.”
Josie froze in place. For a split second before the reporters turned and converged on her, she got a glimpse of the frown on Hayes’ face. Questions were shouted at her seemingly from every direction though none of them were about her rescue of Mrs. Bassett:
“Detective Quinn, what was inside the tarp?”
“Was that a body that you recovered in the water?”
“Detective, have you confirmed that a body was inside the tarp?”
“Were human remains found inside the tarp?”
Josie held up her hands, silencing the crowd. “I can’t comment on that at this time.”
More shouts followed, these more enthusiastic. Josie had to talk loudly to quiet them. “When we have more information, we will let you know. Right now, I’ve got work to do.” She leaned past them and caught Mrs. Bassett’s eye. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to Mrs. Bassett privately.”
Reluctantly, the reporters dispersed. Josie walked over to the tent, glad to be out of the rain for a few moments. She waited to make sure all the reporters were out of earshot before she addressed Mrs. Bassett. “How are you feeling?”
Mrs. Bassett winked at her. “Just fine, thanks to you. Now I just need to find a place to live.”
Hayes patted her shoulder. “I’ll find somewhere suitable. There are options.”
Josie said, “Did you have homeowners’ insurance? You may be able to rebuild.”
Mrs. Bassett shook her head. “That was a rental. It’s just the stuff inside I lost.”
“I’m sorry that you lost all of your possessions,” Josie told her. “We do have a couple of local businesses donating clothing and other things to people who’ve lost everything in the flooding. You’ll be able to get the basics.”
“I’ll make sure she gets what she needs,” Hayes said quickly.
Mrs. Bassett put the ice pack on her lap and grabbed Josie’s wrist. “I lost my husband in a fire fifteen years ago. I’d give up everything I ever owned in my lifetime to have him back. Things can be replaced.”
Josie was stunned by her optimistic attitude. The last week had been straight out of hell, watching members of her beloved community in dire straits. Some had lost their homes altogether and many others had lost most of their possessions. They’d been lucky so far that no one had died in the flooding, but still, people were displaced and devastated. Josie patted Mrs. Bassett’s hand. “I’m sorry about your husband. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”
Hayes said, “This isn’t really the time.”
Ignoring him, Josie said to Mrs. Bassett, “How long had you been living in that house?”
“Fifteen years. I moved in right after the fire. I had insurance money to rebuild, but I didn’t want to rebuild a home without my husband. But there was the matter of the land, which I still owned. I wasn’t sure what to do—I needed time to think. I was homeless—we never had children and I had overstayed my welcome with my sister-in-law—so I looked for a rental while I sorted things out. There was a local attorney looking to rent the house. He was nice enough. We went with a month-to-month lease.”
“But you never left,” Josie filled in.
Mrs. Bassett relinquished Josie’s hand and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Things move so fast, don’t they? I did sell the land our house had been on and put that money away. I just never got around to buying something else. My heart wasn’t in it, to tell the truth. It was easier to stay in the rental. Mr. Plummer—that’s the landlord—he always takes care of things. When something breaks, he has it fixed. When an appliance needs replacing, he has one delivered and installed. He takes care of everything, even landscaping and snow removal. He’s always been good to me. I just pay rent and utilities. If I bought my own place, who would I call for all those things?”
“Do you know Mr. Plummer’s first name?” Josie asked.
“Calvin. Calvin Plummer. His office is in South Denton.”
“You said he takes care of things. As long as you’ve been in the house, has he ever done any work
or had anyone do any work on the foundation of the house?”
“No, not that I recall.”
“Do you know anything about the item we recovered?”
“Me? No. I didn’t know it was there. Basement was concrete. You saw it break apart,” Mrs. Bassett answered.
“Speaking of the basement,” Josie went on. “Did you ever have any problems down there since you’ve lived in the house?”
“A burst pipe now and then but that was it. Mr. Plummer just had someone come out and fix everything up.”
“Have you lived there by yourself the last fifteen years?”
Mrs. Bassett nodded.
“No relatives stayed with you for any length of time? Roommates?”
“Just me, Detective Quinn.”
“Josie.”
Mrs. Bassett smiled, and Josie smiled back. “Do you know who lived there before you?”
“I don’t. You’d have to ask Mr. Plummer.”
“I will,” Josie told her. “I’d give you a business card, but I don’t have any on me. All my stuff is in the car. If you need anything, you can call the number for the police station and ask for me.”
Josie gave her shoulder a squeeze and walked off toward her car. Rain pelted down on her. Looking to the entrance of the parking lot, she saw reporters converging on Brownlow as he pulled into the lot. Then her view was obscured by the sight of Hayes striding toward her, his blue eyes penetrating. Josie stopped and squared up. Cutting him off at the pass, she said, “Is there a problem?”
“You know damn well there is,” he said as he reached her. “You went expressly against your boat operator’s orders and jumped out of the boat to retrieve… whatever the hell you retrieved.”
“What I retrieved was a dead body, likely a murder victim.”
“What you did was dangerous, irresponsible, and reckless. You endangered all of us out there today, recovering that tarp—”
