Save Her Soul (Detective Josie Quinn #9)(21)

“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.”