Before Josie could respond, a car door slammed, and Ray jogged across the road. He smiled at Frisk. “Officer Lampson, is everything okay over here?”
Frisk studied him. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business, son.”
“Oh, sure,” Ray said. “I meant no disrespect, sir. In fact, we don’t mean to trouble you at all. We were just looking for our friend, Lana. Here she is. Thought we’d lost her. You saved us a lot of searching by pulling her over, actually. Right, Jo?”
He looked at Josie, his eyes imploring her to go along. All she could manage was a nod. Her mouth was full of saliva. Frisk stared at Ray, taking in his easy smile and then his jacket.
“Hey,” Frisk said. “You’re that pitcher, aren’t you? Denton East Blue Jays.”
Ray held out a hand for Frisk to shake. “Yes, sir, Ray Quinn.”
Frisk took his hand, holding onto it a moment longer than necessary. “You boys are gonna win the championship,” he said.
“Hope so,” Ray agreed as Frisk relinquished his hand. “Sir, if you wouldn’t mind, I really need to get these ladies home.”
There was a long, silent moment. Crickets chirped in the darkness beyond the vehicles. A moth fluttered in front of Frisk’s cruiser, causing a strange, momentary strobe effect. Frisk looked from Ray to Josie, then to Lana and back to Ray, as if he were trying to decide something. Finally, he said, “You ladies shouldn’t keep our star pitcher out so late.” He waved them toward Ray. “Get out of here, and go right home.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ray said, maneuvering himself between the two girls and Frisk.
Josie grasped Lana’s upper arm and dragged her toward her grandmother’s car. Opening the back door, Josie pushed her inside. “Get in.”
Ray got into the passenger’s seat. Josie’s hands shook as she put the car in drive. Ray said, “Go, go, go.”
Lana said, “My car.”
“I’ll bring you back for it tomorrow,” Ray told her. “Right now, we need to get out of here before that shithead changes his mind and decides to screw with all three of us.”
Once Frisk’s car receded from view and they were back in town, Josie let out a sigh of relief. From the backseat, Lana said, “Thank you.”
Ray said, “No problem.”
“How did you know?” Lana asked. “About him?”
Josie answered, “I have a list.”
Ray laughed.
“A list of what?” Lana asked.
“Pervy guys to avoid,” Ray supplied.
“Like Mr. Rand?” Lana asked.
“Eighth period chemistry?” Josie said. “Yeah. Exactly. Anyway, that guy back there? He’s on the list. We call him Frisk.”
In the rearview, Josie watched Lana’s eyes widen. “That’s Frisk? I’ve heard of him but didn’t know what he looked like.” She reached forward and tapped Ray’s shoulder. “Thanks for getting involved. You took a big risk.”
Josie glanced at Ray. “She’s right. You did. He could have taken you in for underage drinking. Really, he could have made up anything and taken you in. Bye-bye championship game. Hello criminal charges. You think your mom could afford a lawyer right now?”
Ray looked behind them but there were no flashing police lights pursuing them. “We got lucky.”
“Lucky you were there,” Lana said. “We’ll put you on the list of good guys.”
Six
A half hour later, after a shower, change of clothes, and a quick lunch, Josie pulled into the parking lot at police headquarters. The rain still poured down steadily, but that hadn’t stopped a handful of reporters from gathering at the entrance to the building. They wore raincoats and huddled beneath umbrellas. A lone cameraman sagged beneath the weight of a large camera wrapped in clear plastic. The last several days they’d been out and about in town, trying to capture footage of the destructive flooding and the water rescues. If they were waiting here in the rain, that meant they were still trying to get information about the body Josie had recovered on Hempstead. With a sigh, she reached across to the passenger’s seat and grabbed up her high school yearbook—which she had retrieved from her garage—as well as the basket of baked goods Misty had given her to distribute to her colleagues. She’d paged through the yearbook in her bedroom before taking a shower, but no one had caught her eye or jarred anything loose in her memory. She would have remembered if someone had gone missing from Denton East while she was a student there. Even if she hadn’t, all missing-persons cases in the county had been reopened and reevaluated five years ago during the vanishing girls case.
She emerged from her vehicle and hurried toward the door, keeping her gaze focused straight ahead as the reporters converged on her, shouting the same questions they’d lobbed at her at the command post. She barked out a few “no comments” and then she was safely inside. Trudging up the stairs to the second floor, Josie entered the great room. It was a large, open area filled with desks and filing cabinets. A television was affixed to one wall. Today it streamed coverage of the flooding. Josie ignored it and walked over to the four desks pushed together in the center of the room. They were reserved for the detectives on the force: herself, Detective Gretchen Palmer, Lieutenant Noah Fraley, and Detective Finn Mettner.
Josie and Noah had started their careers in Denton, moving up the ranks to the investigative team after several years on patrol. Gretchen had come to them from Philadelphia where she had worked for fifteen years on their homicide squad. In fact, Josie had been the one to hire her when Josie was serving as interim chief of police. Eventually, that position was filled by their current chief, Bob Chitwood. He had promoted Finn Mettner from patrol to detective from within the department. Mettner was the youngest of the four of them, but he was dedicated and thorough and had already worked as the lead on some major cases in his new position.
Josie set the basket in the center of the desks and looked around. The room was empty save for one patrol officer doing paperwork at one of the shared desks. Bob Chitwood’s voice boomed from behind his closed office door. Josie wasn’t surprised. As the detectives liked to joke, Chitwood had two volumes: loud and louder. Josie took a few steps toward his office, catching some of his words: “… I don’t give a rat’s ass if the Mayor lives in that development. Or you, Dutton. You’re just a candidate. That doesn’t mean anything to me. City council? I don’t care if you’re on the damn UN. I don’t care if the goddamn queen of England and the pope have houses in Quail Hollow. You can’t divert public resources away from areas that need them…”
Josie rolled her eyes. The “Quail Hollow Estates Scandal”, as a local reporter had dubbed it, had been the bane of the Chief’s existence since the flooding began. Quail Hollow was a section of the city where more wealthy residents lived, including the Mayor, Tara Charleston, and her surgeon husband as well as her mayoral opponent, Kurt Dutton, and his wife. In the last few years, Dutton had built the area up, adding more luxury homes for the city’s rich to flock to and a small creek around the development. The Quail Hollow Estates’ surrounding neighbors called it “the moat” even though Quail Hollow’s residents took great pride in it. It was lovely, Josie supposed, and its banks were beautifully landscaped. What the builders had not foreseen was the issue of flooding. One particular section of the moat had been badly affected by the recent rainstorms, spilling over into the yard of an unfinished luxury home at the back of the development. City engineers had deemed that the lot was too dangerous to continue work on in its present condition. There was also concern about a possible landslide, which would be catastrophic to the Quail Hollow residents not to mention the neighborhood adjacent to Quail Hollow.