Save Her Soul (Detective Josie Quinn #9)(4)

“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.”