by Lisa Regan
Her back slammed into the next nearest tree trunk and then her body was crushed by Vera’s weight. It nearly knocked the wind out of her, but luck was with them finally. Even as the current tried to slide them around the side of the trunk and back downriver, the tree branches extended down and stopped the water’s progress. Josie reached her free hand up and grabbed onto the thickest branch she could find, holding the two of them in place. She squeezed her eyes shut and held on, feeling a small bit of relief.
When she heard screaming, her eyes snapped open. Hurtling toward them was Gretchen, inflated pants under her arms. She was either going to hit the tree trunk or fly right past them. Keeping hold of Vera, Josie shifted her position, trying to get closer to the trunk. With one arm looped around Vera and the other around the tree trunk, she extended her legs, letting them bob in the current. “Grab on!” she shouted to Gretchen.
As she neared, Gretchen reached out both hands toward Josie. They latched onto one of Josie’s thighs and slid down.
“No!” Josie screamed.
Gretchen’s grip tightened around Josie’s ankle. For a second, Josie waited for her hands to loosen, for her to be swept past them, but Gretchen held so tightly that Josie could feel her skin bruising. With agonizing slowness, Gretchen used Josie’s leg to pull herself closer to the trunk until she could wrap her arms around its girth. Josie’s arms felt jelly-like. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold on—to Vera and to the tree. Once she was sure that Gretchen wasn’t going anywhere, she shifted Vera’s weight and drew closer to Gretchen. “We have to climb,” she said. “Up into the tree. There are some branches above that will hold us, at least until rescue comes. Help me with Vera. I’ve got to get her up there.”
Gretchen’s face was paler than Josie had ever seen it. Her lips were nearly blue. The air was warm, but the water was cool, and they’d been in it… how long? Josie had no idea. It seemed like an eternity. Days. Weeks. Gretchen took one arm from the trunk and turned Vera’s face toward her own. Her fingers pressed into Vera’s neck. “Boss,” Gretchen said. “She’s gone.”
“No,” Josie said.
Beneath the water, something banged against her legs. Debris. God knew what was in this water. Josie hated to think about it. She reached up to check Vera’s pulse for herself, but she couldn’t find it. Slapping Vera’s cheek, she yelled, “Vera! Vera! Wake up!”
“She’s gone,” Gretchen repeated.
“No!” Josie insisted. More slaps. “Vera! Come on! Wake up!” Frantically, she looked around. She couldn’t do CPR out here. There was no way to do compressions. She could try to inflate Vera’s lungs, but there was no way to position her head and neck properly so that the air actually reached her lungs. “No,” Josie sputtered. “No.”
Gretchen reached across Vera and shook Josie’s shoulder. “Boss, she’s gone. There’s nothing we can do for her now.”
“Then what?” Josie shouted, spittle and rain and river water flying from her lips. “What now? We can’t just—what do we do? Just let her go? Let her wash away? No!”
Gretchen’s fingers dug into the muscles above Josie’s shoulder blades. “We can tie her—tie her here to the tree using our pants. We climb up, wait for help. She might hold here long enough for rescue to come.”
Josie looked at Vera’s ashen face, felt her lifeless body against her side. Gretchen held tight to Josie, watching her with wide eyes, waiting. Beyond her, the river roared on. The peaked roof of a house came into view, someone’s home—someone’s life—floating past with glacial slowness that seemed at odds with the power of the water all around them. Something broke inside Josie. She felt it. Like the railroad levee. A dam bursting open. What was beyond it was unstoppable. Silent sobs wracked her body. The emotion flowed out of her so fast and so hard, like it was pummeling every soft place inside her on its way up and out, that she couldn’t speak. Tears blurred her vision until Gretchen and Vera were hardly visible.
She wanted to tell Gretchen that she agreed they should tie Vera’s body to the tree so they wouldn’t lose her, but her throat wouldn’t cooperate. All that came was the raging mass of emotions. A lifetime’s worth, it seemed. Josie nodded through her tears. Up and down, up and down until she heard Gretchen say, “Okay, okay. You just hold onto her while I tie our pants together, okay? That’s the only way they’ll fit around the trunk and Vera.”
More nodding. More sobbing. The world was a tear-soaked kaleidoscope of murky brown and death. A few minutes later, she heard Gretchen’s voice again. “Boss, you’re a stronger climber than me. I need you to go first. You find a spot and help pull me up.”
Josie nodded.
“Boss? Josie? I need you to go. Climb.”
Gretchen’s hand wrapped around her wrist and placed her palm against the trunk of the tree. “Josie,” she shouted. “Climb! I need you to climb.” Gretchen shook her again and Josie’s arms reached upward, finding two small branches to help pull herself upward. Gretchen said, “Climb, Jo, climb!”
Her body went onto automatic pilot. She was ten years old again, in the woods behind her trailer, hiding from her abusive mother. Lila never looked in the trees. Beneath her, Ray whisper-shouted, “Climb, Jo! Climb!”
She scrambled up into the tree, legs wrapping around the trunk and propelling her upward until she found a branch strong enough to hold both hers and Gretchen’s weight for some time. Blinking the tears and rain out of her eyes, she looked down to see Gretchen struggling to inch up toward Josie. When she got close enough, Josie extended a hand and Gretchen took it, muscling her way up to where Josie perched. Breathless, they clung to one another and the tree. Below, Vera’s body wrapped around the tree. Debris gathered at her back, hitting against her and then dislodging to be carried downriver. Josie watched as a tangled mass of mayoral candidate signs floated past.
Twenty-Seven
In a twist of irony that Josie cared not to examine too closely, Sawyer Hayes was in one of the rescue boats that finally located them. The other boat, piloted and tended by city swiftwater rescue crew members Josie didn’t know by name, collected Vera and carried her off—to the morgue, Josie assumed. Sawyer helped Gretchen and then Josie down into the other boat. He averted his eyes from their naked legs but once they were fitted with life vests and tethered to the inside of the vessel, he flipped open a pouch in his vest and took out a small silver package with a blue wrapper. Josie recognized it immediately as an emergency Mylar blanket. It seemed like hours ago that her mind had disconnected from her body. Around the time her teeth started chattering. In reality, she had no idea how long they’d been in the tree. Sawyer took the blanket out and unfolded it, using two hands to shake it loose. As the boat operator steered them away from the trees and back to safety, Sawyer covered them with it, tucking its edges beneath them with care.
“Thank you,” Gretchen said.
Sawyer gave them a thumbs-up. Josie tried to smile. She wasn’t sure if her face worked or not, but he smiled back at her. She closed her eyes and let her head fall onto Gretchen’s shoulder.
The next hour was a blur. The rest of the city park had been swallowed up by the additional flooding, so a new boat ramp had been built closer to the command post. They were herded from the boat launch directly into the back of an ambulance where they were seated along the soft vinyl bench inside and wrapped in more blankets. At the hospital, they were put in the same curtained area, each assigned to a gurney. A nurse handed Josie a hospital gown and then dug one out of the linen cart for Gretchen. “You gals put these on. I’ll be right back.”
“I’m fine,” Josie said. “I just need pants… and a ride home.”
The nurse laughed. Gretchen was already dropping her wet jacket and shirt onto the nearby tray table and slipping into the gown. “Honey,” the nurse said to Josie, “your lips are blue, you’re soaked to the bone, and you’ve got a nasty laceration on your leg there.”
Josie looked down at her legs, for the first time noticing the large gash on the
outside of her right thigh. “Shit,” she muttered.
The nurse patted the gurney. “How about some warm blankets? How’s that sound?”
Josie couldn’t argue with that.
Gretchen said, “Hell, yes.”
Two hours later, Josie dozed beneath three heated blankets. There were eight stitches in her thigh, and her hair was finally dry. Beside her, Gretchen slept deeply, her breath long and even, and her eyelids twitching periodically. Josie didn’t know how she could sleep so soundly. Every time Josie closed her eyes, she saw Vera’s lifeless body in the river.
The Chief’s voice startled them both fully awake. From somewhere on the other side of the curtain, he said, “Where are my detectives?”
A second later, the curtain scraped back and the Chief, Noah, and Mettner rushed in. Noah came straight to Josie’s side, touching her face, her hair, her arms, and finally taking one of her hands. He leaned in close, studying her eyes. “You okay?”
She wasn’t. She was as far from okay as she could remember being in a very long time. She nodded anyway.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he said softly. “I thought you were gone.”
She gave his hand a light squeeze. “I’m sorry.”
“I just—I—” He broke off and Josie thought she saw tears in his eyes. He let go of her hand, straightened and turned away from her for a moment. He was trying to maintain his composure, she realized.
“I really am sorry, Noah,” she croaked.
Turning back, he swooped in to kiss her. “Don’t be. I’m just glad you’re here.”
Chief said, “Quinn and Palmer, you two are to stay out of the water until further notice. Jesus. What a day. You get shot at and swept away. What do you think this is? Some kind of action movie?”
Mettner, who stood between their gurneys, frowned at the Chief. “It’s not their fault, you know.”
The Chief pointed a finger at Mett. “Don’t tell me what I know, son. I almost lost my two best detectives today.”
Mettner chuckled. “Gee, thanks.”
“Shut up, Mett.”
Noah perched on the side of Josie’s bed and from the side of his mouth, mumbled, “I guess this is what it’s like when he’s genuinely upset.”
Gretchen pulled her blankets up to just under her chin and said, “Did you get the shooter?”
Mettner shook his head. “No. Sorry. By the time we got there, no one else was around. We did find shell casings next to the bowling alley. Nine millimeter. But we didn’t see anyone driving away when we arrived.”
Noah said, “We pulled security footage from the Stop-N-Go and the bank across the street to see if we could see any vehicles coming up from that direction, but neither camera views reached the street.”
“Of course,” Josie said.
The Chief said, “Hummel collected the shells. We’ll see if he can pull prints.”
“Speaking of prints,” Mettner said. “We did confirm that the woman you met with was Vera Urban. Dr. Feist is working on the autopsy now.”
Noah asked, “Did she tell you anything before…”
“Someone started shooting at us?” Gretchen filled in. “No. We recognized her right away and she got skittish. The next thing we knew, she was bleeding out from a gunshot wound to the stomach and then the river took us. Good thinking, using our pants as flotation devices, boss.”
Josie nodded, afraid to speak as emotion welled inside her again. She thought she’d gotten it all out or, at the very least, that she would be too spent to muster more but there it was, causing a lump in her throat and a tremble in her lower lip she hoped no one noticed.
“That’s why you two are pant-less?” Chitwood said.
“How did you know we were pant-less?” Gretchen asked.
Noah said, “When we called to make sure you were both here safely, the nurse told us to bring pants.”
Josie found her voice. “Yet I don’t see any pants.”
Noah, Mettner, and the Chief looked at one another. The Chief said, “Where the hell would I get pants from?”
Noah laughed, breaking the tension in the room. “I’ll take care of it.”
Gretchen said, “Before you go, I think we need to talk about the fact that Vera Urban has been alive for the last sixteen years.”
“Not only that,” Josie added, “but she knew that her daughter had been murdered, and she knew how it happened. I think she knew who did it. I think that’s why she wanted to meet. To tell us.”
“But why come forward now?” Mettner asked.
Noah said, “Because now the rest of the world knows that Beverly was murdered. Now the police are looking for the murderer.”
Mettner said, “What the hell has she been doing for sixteen years?”
Gretchen said, “Hiding, obviously. She hasn’t had a utility in her name, she hasn’t filed a tax return; there hasn’t even been a cell phone in her name. Who doesn’t have a cell phone these days?”
Josie said, “She had to have assumed some other identity. Alice. Unless that was just a name she gave us.”
Noah said, “The landlord told you two that all of hers and Beverly’s personal things were gone from the house on Hempstead, right? She had to have taken them with her. She wanted it to look like they simply moved away. She’s known all along who killed her daughter. The question now is, who has she been hiding from?”
Gretchen snaked a hand out from under her blanket and pushed it through her spiked hair. “The same person who killed Vera this morning.”
The Chief said, “Who would want to kill Beverly? What would make Vera go into hiding instead of reporting her own daughter’s murder?”
An image of Vera’s face flashed across Josie’s mind—her mouth trying to make words as she bled out behind the concrete barrier on the empty interstate—begging Josie to save her. She’d been trying to say the word “please.” Josie hadn’t been able to save her. Hadn’t even been able to help her. What was she hiding? What did she know? Who would kill her to keep it a secret?
“I don’t know,” Josie said. “But I think the first thing we should do is try and track Vera’s movements.”
“How do we do that?” Mettner asked.
“She had to come from somewhere,” Josie said. “No one has seen her for sixteen years. Beverly’s body is found and a couple of days later, she’s here in town?”
Noah said, “Right. She wouldn’t have been living in Denton for the past sixteen years.
But she’s been off the grid, for lack of a better expression, for all this time. Or rather, living under an assumed identity: Alice. Somehow, Alice got here, and she obviously spent the night here, based on her calls to Josie.”
Gretchen nodded. “If she was trying to keep a low profile, she wouldn’t want a hotel with security cameras.”
Josie said, “Maybe she was staying at the Patio Motel. It’s the seediest place in town and it happens to be between the two places she chose to meet us—the Stop-N-Go and the abandoned bowling alley.”
Mettner said, “I’ll have someone go by the parking lot and run all the plates there.”
Josie said, “I want to talk to the manager. She must have left some things in her room.”
The Chief raised a brow. “You almost got killed today, Quinn. Twice. You’re taking the day off.”
“Chief—” Josie protested but he held up a hand to silence her.
“We’ll get a warrant written up for you to take to the Patio first thing in the morning. I’ve already got two patrol cars sitting out there, ’cause the flooding is damn near in the Patio’s parking lot now. It’ll keep. I can’t spare Fraley or Mettner right now anyway. I need all bodies over at the command post.”
Relieved, Josie let her head sink into the pillow. Noah gave her hand a warm squeeze.
The Chief added, “Fraley, get these two some damn pants so they can go home and rest.”
Twenty-Eight
Rest didn’t come easy. Each time Josie moved, her leg thro
bbed. Whenever she began to drift off, she saw Vera’s face—her last attempt at words—and heard the gunshots, then the wail of the emergency siren. The only other thought in her head as she lay on her couch and tried to sleep, was of Wild Turkey. She thirsted for it in a way she hadn’t in a very long time. She could practically taste it, feel it burn its way down her gullet into her stomach where it would sit all warm and tingly and help blot out her heart-sick thoughts for a while.
Except she didn’t have Wild Turkey in her home anymore. They had no alcohol. Only coffee, some green tea concoction that Misty made, and apple juice for Harris. She wished Misty and Harris were there, but Misty was at work and Harris was with Ray’s mom for the day. Noah was at work. She thought about calling her sister, Trinity, in New York City, but her phone had been destroyed. She’d need a new one. Beside her, Trout whined, as if sensing her inner turmoil. Pepper sat across the room on the armchair, unperturbed. Josie stood and looked out front where her vehicle sat in the driveway. Someone on the team had retrieved it from Lockwood for her. The keys were on a table in the foyer. She could just run over to the nearest liquor store. It was late afternoon, the store would still be open. Plus, it wasn’t in the flood zone.
Without even realizing it, she picked up the keys. But she didn’t have her ID. Her wallet and credentials had been soaked in the river. Noah had laid everything on the kitchen table to dry out. Josie turned away from the front door to go get her ID, but the doorbell rang. Trout and Pepper jumped up from their spots and ran to the door, barking furiously until Josie opened the door and saw Gretchen and Dr. Feist standing on her doorstep. Gretchen was freshly showered and dry in a pair of jeans and a white tank top under a light sweater. Dr. Feist wore khakis and a blue button-down blouse, her silver-blonde hair loose around her shoulders. A small laptop was tucked beneath her arm. Gretchen thrust a box of pizza into Josie’s hands. “I was going to call,” she said. “But we’ve got no phones.”
