by Lisa Regan
Gretchen slid her reading glasses on and leaned in closer. Josie moved her chair out of the way a bit to make room for her. “This can’t be right,” Gretchen mumbled.
Josie reached over and clicked through a few more tabs in the database. “She was born in 1962. Here we’ve got high school graduation from Denton West in 1980. No criminal record. A couple of speeding tickets. She was arrested once for a bad check but not charged. Here are utilities at various addresses including Hempstead but that’s it.”
“Pull up her driver’s license,” Gretchen said. “She would have to have kept that up to date.”
Josie looked it up, but the last license on file was sixteen years old as well. A sinking feeling began in her stomach. Gretchen nudged Josie out of the way and went through all the searches and information that Josie had just been through. She said, “Vera Urban stopped existing after 2004. She could be the body we found.”
Josie said, “It’s possible, but why would she be wearing a high school jacket?” Why would she be wearing Ray’s high school jacket, she added silently. Vera would have been old enough to be his mother.
“I don’t know,” Gretchen said. “We’ll know more about the age of the body after Dr. Feist’s autopsy.”
“Wait a minute,” Josie said. She sprung up from her chair and went around to Gretchen’s desk to get her yearbook. Paging through it, she found the photos of students in their junior year. In high school, her last name had been Matson. She found her own photo easily, cringing at her lank hair and acne. Then came Ray Quinn, looking less attractive in his school photo than Josie’s memories of him dictated. In her mind, he would always have the glow of feverish, passionate first love. But in his photo, he looked kind of dorky; his blond hair combed to one side and stiff with gel, his smile toothy. He hadn’t yet grown into his looks. She flipped a few more pages, toward the end of the alphabet.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
“What is it?” asked Gretchen.
Josie came around and showed her the photo. “Beverly Urban,” she said. “She was in mine and Ray’s class. I think she was Vera’s daughter.”
Josie set the yearbook down and searched the database, looking for anyone associated with Vera Urban. Sure enough, Beverly’s name was listed under “close relative.” Wanting more confirmation of their relationship, Josie looked through Plummer’s records again until she found the lease originally signed by Vera. There was a section where she had to disclose the name, age, and relationship of everyone who intended to live with her on Hempstead. She had written Beverly’s name there, along with her age, and under the “relationship” question, she had written: “daughter.”
Josie tapped a finger against the yearbook page. “I was right. She’s Vera’s daughter. Well, she was Vera’s daughter.”
Josie studied the photo. Beverly had been taller and curvier than Josie. Among the girls in their class, she’d been the first to get breasts, the first to get her period, and, rumor had it, the first to have sex. Whereas Josie didn’t fully fill out until the end of junior year, Beverly had arrived on the first day of eighth grade looking like a college-aged woman. Josie remembered how gangly and unattractive she and many of the other girls in their class had felt when Beverly seemed to go through puberty overnight. She remembered how the boys leered at her and vied for her attention.
“She’s pretty,” Gretchen said.
The yearbook photo only showed her from the shoulders up, but Gretchen was right. Beverly had a wide smile; clear, pale skin; and long, curly brown hair. Her brown eyes held just a hint of mischievousness. If you didn’t know her, you might find it intriguing. But Josie knew that the look hid her malicious side.
“She is very pretty,” Josie said. “But she wasn’t very nice.”
Gretchen looked up. “Why do you say that?”
Josie laughed. “She was the school bully.”
Gretchen raised a brow. “Somehow, boss, I can’t imagine you getting bullied by anyone, even in high school.”
Josie leaned a hip against her desk. “I wasn’t bullied. But that didn’t stop Beverly from trying.”
Gretchen took her phone out and snapped a picture of Beverly’s yearbook photo. “What kinds of things are we talking about?”
Josie sighed. “Everything from spreading rumors about other kids to getting into fist fights. She could be very domineering. You know how when you’re a kid they tell you that some people make other people feel badly so they feel better about themselves? I think that was Beverly.”
“Did she ever spread rumors about you?”
“Sometimes, but she was mostly fixated on Ray.”
The memory came back fast and hard, like a stone landing on her chest. For a few seconds, it felt difficult to breathe.
“Boss?” Gretchen coaxed.
“She had a crush on Ray,” Josie said. “Or at least, I think so. I’m not sure if it was that she had a crush on him or that she hated me, but she started spreading rumors in our junior year that Ray was cheating on me with her.”
“You didn’t believe them?”
“Of course not. Ray and I—” Josie broke off. How could she explain it? The bond she and Ray had formed, especially in those early years, had been sacred. They’d both been abused by the people who were supposed to love and protect them. They both bore the deep scars of shame. As children, and then teenagers, they’d only had one another. The trust between them had been unbreakable. Josie had believed that in her soul. At the time, rumors of Ray sleeping with Beverly had been laughable. She would have bet her life on them being untrue. But now, sixteen years had passed. They’d broken up before college, gotten back together, gotten married, separated, and then Ray had betrayed her, not just in their marriage, but because he had turned out not to be the man she knew at all. Was it possible that the rumors had been true?
A sick feeling rolled in her stomach. She pulled her chair over and sunk into it.
Gretchen set the yearbook aside and logged into another database. “What about Beverly’s father?”
“Not in the picture,” Josie said. “I never knew that much about her family situation, but everyone knew that it was just her and her mom.” She handed Gretchen the lease between Vera and Plummer. “Vera didn’t list any other occupants besides herself and Beverly.”
Gretchen studied it and then set it aside, returning to her computer. With a few clicks, she pulled up Beverly Urban’s birth certificate. “No father listed here,” she noted. “Born in 1987 at Geisinger. That’s about an hour from here, right?”
“Yeah,” Josie said. “It must have been a difficult birth if they sent Vera to Geisinger to deliver. They have much more specialized services there.”
Gretchen said, “What happened to Beverly?”
Josie said, “I don’t know, but now I’m beginning to wonder if someone killed her and buried her under the house on Hempstead.”
“She didn’t graduate with you?”
Josie shook her head. “No. There were rumors toward the end of junior year that she was going to have to move because her mom couldn’t afford their house. Summer came and then senior year started, and she wasn’t there. Everyone just assumed she and her mom had moved away.”
“Obviously they didn’t,” Gretchen said. “According to public records, Vera disappeared off the face of the earth and it’s safe to assume Beverly did as well. I think you’re correct in assuming that the body we found yesterday belongs to one of them.”
“Check the TLO database,” Josie told her. “See if there’s any evidence of Beverly existing after 2004. Renewed driver’s licenses, utilities, credit cards, loans, home purchase, anything.”
Gretchen turned her attention back to the computer. Josie watched as each search Gretchen attempted came up empty. The database didn’t provide much information on minors. It relied on information pulled from cell phone data, utility companies, and the like. Beverly would have had to reach adulthood to begin engaging the kinds of services that would
leave a record. If Beverly had gone on to graduate high school and live her life as normal people did, there would be some record of her activities even if it was just utilities in her name. But there was nothing.
“Okay,” Gretchen said. “Looks like they both disappeared off the face of the earth in 2004. I didn’t see any other bodies when the house washed away, did you?”
“No,” Josie said.
“Who do you think we recovered from the flood today?”
“Beverly,” Josie said. “Because of the jacket.”
“You think Ray gave it to her? Maybe she stole it from him? If she had a crush on him, she might have. Or if she wanted to get at you, she might have stolen it to make it look like he gave it to her.”
“I don’t know,” Josie admitted. She thought back to what Misty had said and what she knew about Ray. “I think he gave it to her, but I don’t know why.”
“You don’t think—”
Josie squeezed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “Oh my God,” she said. “That Ray really was having a relationship with her? That he gave her the jacket? That he… killed her? I realize that one of the first people we look at in murder cases are the deceased’s significant others, but Ray wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t have killed someone, especially a woman.”
“Boss, I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but I think your judgment might be clouded in this instance.”
Josie opened her mouth to protest, but then the memory of the night her marriage with Ray had ended came flying back at her in all its horror. Ray had gotten blackout drunk and hit her. It was a sin she could not forgive. If he had been capable of hitting Josie, his childhood best friend, his high school sweetheart, his wife, then surely it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that he could have killed someone else. Could he have killed Beverly to cover up the relationship?
“But if the body is Beverly’s and he killed her, what happened to Vera?”
“I don’t know,” Gretchen said. “But before we speculate anymore, we really need to confirm that the body belongs to Beverly Urban.”
Josie said, “Let’s start calling around to see if any local dentists have her records. DNA could take weeks or months.”
Gretchen moved around to her desk. “I’m also wondering how the body ended up under the concrete floor of the basement.”
“We should see if Plummer has records of work done on the home,” Josie agreed. “And check with the City Codes office to see what kinds of permits they’ve got on record for the place.”
They spent the next half hour calling local dentists until they found the one that had treated Beverly Urban in high school. Josie held her breath while the receptionist checked to make sure they had records that far back. Luckily, they did.
“They’re films though,” the woman told Josie. “That was before we went digital.”
“If I come there with a warrant in the next hour, can I pick them up?”
“Sure,” said the woman. “But hurry because I think we’re about to be evacuated. The creeks are overflowing.”
“I know,” Josie said. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
She hung up, ready to relay the news to Gretchen, but her desk phone rang. It was Dr. Feist. “The autopsy is finished,” she told Josie. “Meet me in the morgue, would you? You’ll want to see this.”
Nine
Dr. Feist was at her desk, typing away at her desktop computer, when Josie and Gretchen entered her office. It was a far cry from the sterile exam room next door where she carried out countless examinations of dead and decomposed bodies. The walls were painted blue cinderblock, and Dr. Feist had done her best to make the room feel cheery and warm. Lamps gave off softer lighting than the typical overhead fluorescent glare in the rest of the hospital. Abstract paintings in soothing pastel tones hung from the walls. Since Josie had last been there, she had added a large potted plant beside her desk.
“Detectives,” she greeted them with a grim smile. “You’ve got a homicide victim on your hands.”
“Not surprising,” Gretchen said. “Given where she was found.”
Dr. Feist stood up. From the back of her chair, she pulled an old nubby white sweater and put it on over her blue scrubs. She pointed to the large envelope beneath Josie’s arm. “What have you brought me?”
“Dental x-rays,” Josie answered. “We think we know the identity of the victim.”
She handed the envelope to Dr. Feist, and they followed the doctor into the large exam room. Josie’s eyes were immediately drawn to the nearest exam table, but it had been covered with a sheet. Dr. Feist strode across the room, taking the x-ray films out of the envelope and snapping one of them up onto the old, wall-mounted x-ray film viewer. “Can one of you grab my laptop?” she asked over her shoulder.
Gretchen picked it up from the counter near the exam table and brought it over. Dr. Feist opened it, the camera picking up on her face immediately and taking her to the home screen. She moved her elegant fingers across the mousepad, bringing up x-rays she’d taken during the autopsy. The two detectives stood behind her as she compared the two sets of images. A few moments later, she turned to them, open laptop in her hands and said, “This is a match.”
Gretchen and Josie looked at one another. Josie felt a weight settle on her shoulders. She and Beverly had been arch enemies at school, but Josie would never have wished death on the girl. Nothing that may have happened between Beverly and Ray would change that. No one deserved Beverly’s fate: murdered, buried, and forgotten.
Dr. Feist walked past them and back to the counter, setting her laptop down and regarding them. “What do we know?”
Josie said, “Her name is Beverly Urban. From what we can tell so far with the limited information we have, she was likely killed sixteen years ago. She had just finished her junior year at Denton East High School.”
Gretchen pulled out her notebook and paged through it. Putting her reading glasses on, she said, “She had just turned seventeen. We’ll have to investigate further, but based on what Detective Quinn has said, she did finish her junior year but did not return senior year, so it is possible that she was killed sometime during the summer of 2004.” Gretchen took out her phone and showed Dr. Feist the yearbook photo of Beverly.
“But we really need to talk to her friends and any relatives out there to confirm the last time anyone saw or spoke to her,” Josie added.
Dr. Feist said, “Well, I’ll leave the detective work to you. My findings on exam are consistent with a five-foot-six, seventeen-year-old Caucasian girl based on the shape of her skull and the cranial sutures that are still open, as well as the size of her mastoid process, the condition of her growth plates, and, of course, her pelvic bones. I won’t bore you with the scientific stuff which you two are already well acquainted with. You’ll have a copy of my report. What is probably of most interest to you right now is this.”
She turned back to her laptop and pulled up more digital x-rays. Clicking through them, she came to several x-rays of the skull. “Here, you can see, at the back of her head? It looks almost like a starburst, with the hole in the center and all these fractures webbing outward. It’s consistent with a bullet hole. I was able to retrieve the bullet from inside her cranium.”
She moved past them to another part of the counter where a small stainless-steel basin rested. Inside, Josie saw the partially flattened nub of a bullet, darkened with age. Josie took a pair of latex gloves from her jacket pocket. “May I?”
“Yes,” Dr. Feist said, holding the basin out to her. “I already checked with Hummel. He said he couldn’t get prints from this.”
Josie took the bullet and held it up. Gretchen leaned in closer, peering at it through her reading glasses. “Nine millimeter,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Josie said. “Definitely. A pistol. This has to go to the state police lab for ballistics analysis.”
“Of course,” Dr. Feist said.
Josie put th
e bullet back into the basin and snapped off her gloves, disposing of them in a nearby trash bin. A shiver ran down her spine. “Beverly was shot in the back of the head.”
“Yes,” Dr. Feist said with a frown. “Given the measurements I took from her body, and the appearance of the wound, I can extrapolate that the person who shot her was most likely around six feet tall, give or take a couple of inches. It’s difficult to say with any degree of accuracy just how close range the shot was—not without some ballistics testing—but I would say whoever shot her was standing within three feet of her.”
“You think she was standing up when she was shot,” Gretchen said.
“Yes. If she had been kneeling or sitting, I’d expect the shot to have been closer to the top of her head instead of the back. If she were kneeling or sitting, any shot taken at this angle would have been very awkward.”
“But still,” Josie said. “Shooting a seventeen-year-old girl in the back of the head—it’s like an execution.”
Dr. Feist nodded. “I don’t typically see these kinds of gunshot wounds unless they are the result of gang activity—or drug deals gone wrong.”
Gretchen turned to Josie. “Was Beverly into drugs?”
“I really didn’t know her that well,” Josie answered. “It’s hard to say, but it’s definitely an angle we can investigate.”
“That’s not all,” said Dr. Feist.
From the set of her shoulders, Josie could tell that whatever Dr. Feist was about to show them would not be good. She walked over to the exam table and gently peeled back the sheet to reveal Beverly’s remains. Dr. Feist stowed the sheet and moved to the bottom of the exam table. “Here,” she said softly, pointing. “I removed these remains from Beverly’s pelvic region. I imagine you’ll want to have them tested for any DNA that might still be there.”
Josie took a step closer, feeling her heart stutter. The bones were tiny and delicate, almost birdlike. She was amazed something so fragile had survived sixteen years buried beneath the earth. She, Gretchen, and Dr. Feist stood around the autopsy table, staring at the bones that Dr. Feist had removed from the larger body, and bowed their heads in an unspoken moment of silence for the life that had been cut short before it had even begun.
