Save Her Soul (Detective Josie Quinn #9)(28)

“Three,” Noah said.

“Do you remember Beverly?”

“No, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have been in Denton East when she was a junior.”

“Right,” Josie said.

“I remember you and Ray, though.”

Josie stared at him. Noah hadn’t been on her radar at all until he joined Denton’s police force only a few years after she and Ray had.

Noah sat beside her and took one of her hands. “I know you don’t remember me from high school,” he said. “I was a freshman when you two were seniors. I wouldn’t expect you to remember anyone in the freshman class.”

“But you remember me,” Josie said.

Color rose to his cheeks. “Josie, come on, you’ve always known that I had a crush on you.”

Her eyes widened. “I thought that started when you joined Denton PD.”

He shook his head. “No. I knew who you were in high school. You were very beautiful then, just as you are now, and smart and…”

“And what?”

He laughed. “And you never took shit from anyone.”

They sat in silence for a long moment. Josie said, “I didn’t know. You remember Ray?”

“Of course,” Noah answered. “I was jealous of him. I spent a lot of years being jealous of that guy.”

Misty called from downstairs, interrupting them. Noah patted Josie’s leg. “Listen, whatever you find out about Ray during this case, everything is going to be fine. Okay?”

Josie nodded, although somewhere deep in her core, she wasn’t sure that was true. Thoughts and memories from high school played in the back of her mind all through dinner. If Noah, Misty, or Harris found her to be distracted, they didn’t say anything. After dinner, she curled up on the couch with Trout snuggled against her and flipped through her yearbook while Noah chased a giggling Harris around the first floor, playing a game of tag.

Beverly hadn’t had many friends. It didn’t take long for Josie to find her two best friends in the yearbook: Kelly Ogden and Lana Rosetti. Both had been in Josie’s homeroom. Lana had had eighth period chemistry with Josie in junior year. They were Beverly’s crew—her “cronies” Josie’s grandmother, Lisette, had called them. Beverly was the leader, and like a three-headed snake, the trio wreaked havoc on the other girls in school. Kelly had been almost as mean as Beverly, never questioning orders, but Lana—if Josie remembered correctly—was kinder and more sensitive, often at odds with Beverly.

Josie remembered how once, at the beginning of junior year, Lana had been cast out for not agreeing to take part in a cruel joke. Beverly had wanted her to forge a note in the handwriting of the most popular, good-looking boy in their class and give it to a girl who was frequently made fun of for being overweight, asking her to homecoming. Luckily, because of Lana’s resistance, the plan hadn’t been carried out. The rest of the class had only found out about it after Beverly and Kelly had turned on Lana for not going through with it. They stopped talking to her and told everyone in the school that she had wet herself on a roller coaster ride at the beach over the summer. Humiliated, Lana sat alone and dejected in the cafeteria for two weeks. Then, as if by magic, she’d been taken back into the fold. Even then, Josie hadn’t understood how Lana continued to be friends with them when they spent their time coming up with ways to torture their most vulnerable classmates. Especially since whenever Lana didn’t go along with their schemes, they punished her.

Josie found her laptop on the coffee table beneath a pile of Harris’s toys and opened it, pulling up Facebook to search for the two women. Kelly Ogden’s profile picture showed a woman who looked much older than her early thirties, her brown hair pulled back into a tight ponytail and already graying at the roots. Her account was not private, but there weren’t many photos or posts. Josie was able to glean that she had a teenage daughter and worked at a local supermarket. Lana’s page had much stricter privacy settings, but her profile photo showed her, a man, and a small blond boy on a beach somewhere. All three were smiling. Lana looked like something out of a magazine, long blonde hair flowing in the wind, tanned skin, her blue eyes bright. Josie closed out Facebook and logged into one of the police databases, finding Kelly’s address in town immediately. Lana’s list of addresses was long, but her most current address was in Denton.

Josie didn’t relish having to talk with either woman. She was content to leave her memories of high school in the past, but there was little choice now. Someone had murdered her high school bully, and it was her job to find that person and put him or her away.

The sound of two cell phones ringing at once startled her. Noah and Harris paused in the foyer. Noah took his phone from his back jeans pocket. “It’s Mettner,” he said.

Josie picked hers up from the coffee table. “I’ve got the Chief,” she said.

Noah sighed. “This can’t be good.”

He swiped to answer the call and Josie did the same on her own phone. Chief Chitwood barked into her ear. “Quinn. I need someone down at the shopping district in South Denton. We got looters. Lots of ’em. Patrol rounded them up, but they need to be processed.”

“I thought South Denton was under two feet of water,” she said.

“Apparently, looters don’t mind all that,” Chitwood said.