Save Her Soul (Detective Josie Quinn #9)(56)

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.”