“Not surprising,” Gretchen said. “Given where she was found.”
Dr. Feist stood up. From the back of her chair, she pulled an old nubby white sweater and put it on over her blue scrubs. She pointed to the large envelope beneath Josie’s arm. “What have you brought me?”
“Dental x-rays,” Josie answered. “We think we know the identity of the victim.”
She handed the envelope to Dr. Feist, and they followed the doctor into the large exam room. Josie’s eyes were immediately drawn to the nearest exam table, but it had been covered with a sheet. Dr. Feist strode across the room, taking the x-ray films out of the envelope and snapping one of them up onto the old, wall-mounted x-ray film viewer. “Can one of you grab my laptop?” she asked over her shoulder.
Gretchen picked it up from the counter near the exam table and brought it over. Dr. Feist opened it, the camera picking up on her face immediately and taking her to the home screen. She moved her elegant fingers across the mousepad, bringing up x-rays she’d taken during the autopsy. The two detectives stood behind her as she compared the two sets of images. A few moments later, she turned to them, open laptop in her hands and said, “This is a match.”
Gretchen and Josie looked at one another. Josie felt a weight settle on her shoulders. She and Beverly had been arch enemies at school, but Josie would never have wished death on the girl. Nothing that may have happened between Beverly and Ray would change that. No one deserved Beverly’s fate: murdered, buried, and forgotten.
Dr. Feist walked past them and back to the counter, setting her laptop down and regarding them. “What do we know?”
Josie said, “Her name is Beverly Urban. From what we can tell so far with the limited information we have, she was likely killed sixteen years ago. She had just finished her junior year at Denton East High School.”
Gretchen pulled out her notebook and paged through it. Putting her reading glasses on, she said, “She had just turned seventeen. We’ll have to investigate further, but based on what Detective Quinn has said, she did finish her junior year but did not return senior year, so it is possible that she was killed sometime during the summer of 2004.” Gretchen took out her phone and showed Dr. Feist the yearbook photo of Beverly.
“But we really need to talk to her friends and any relatives out there to confirm the last time anyone saw or spoke to her,” Josie added.
Dr. Feist said, “Well, I’ll leave the detective work to you. My findings on exam are consistent with a five-foot-six, seventeen-year-old Caucasian girl based on the shape of her skull and the cranial sutures that are still open, as well as the size of her mastoid process, the condition of her growth plates, and, of course, her pelvic bones. I won’t bore you with the scientific stuff which you two are already well acquainted with. You’ll have a copy of my report. What is probably of most interest to you right now is this.”
She turned back to her laptop and pulled up more digital x-rays. Clicking through them, she came to several x-rays of the skull. “Here, you can see, at the back of her head? It looks almost like a starburst, with the hole in the center and all these fractures webbing outward. It’s consistent with a bullet hole. I was able to retrieve the bullet from inside her cranium.”
She moved past them to another part of the counter where a small stainless-steel basin rested. Inside, Josie saw the partially flattened nub of a bullet, darkened with age. Josie took a pair of latex gloves from her jacket pocket. “May I?”
“Yes,” Dr. Feist said, holding the basin out to her. “I already checked with Hummel. He said he couldn’t get prints from this.”
Josie took the bullet and held it up. Gretchen leaned in closer, peering at it through her reading glasses. “Nine millimeter,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Josie said. “Definitely. A pistol. This has to go to the state police lab for ballistics analysis.”
“Of course,” Dr. Feist said.
Josie put the bullet back into the basin and snapped off her gloves, disposing of them in a nearby trash bin. A shiver ran down her spine. “Beverly was shot in the back of the head.”
“Yes,” Dr. Feist said with a frown. “Given the measurements I took from her body, and the appearance of the wound, I can extrapolate that the person who shot her was most likely around six feet tall, give or take a couple of inches. It’s difficult to say with any degree of accuracy just how close range the shot was—not without some ballistics testing—but I would say whoever shot her was standing within three feet of her.”
“You think she was standing up when she was shot,” Gretchen said.
“Yes. If she had been kneeling or sitting, I’d expect the shot to have been closer to the top of her head instead of the back. If she were kneeling or sitting, any shot taken at this angle would have been very awkward.”
“But still,” Josie said. “Shooting a seventeen-year-old girl in the back of the head—it’s like an execution.”
Dr. Feist nodded. “I don’t typically see these kinds of gunshot wounds unless they are the result of gang activity—or drug deals gone wrong.”
Gretchen turned to Josie. “Was Beverly into drugs?”
“I really didn’t know her that well,” Josie answered. “It’s hard to say, but it’s definitely an angle we can investigate.”
“That’s not all,” said Dr. Feist.
From the set of her shoulders, Josie could tell that whatever Dr. Feist was about to show them would not be good. She walked over to the exam table and gently peeled back the sheet to reveal Beverly’s remains. Dr. Feist stowed the sheet and moved to the bottom of the exam table. “Here,” she said softly, pointing. “I removed these remains from Beverly’s pelvic region. I imagine you’ll want to have them tested for any DNA that might still be there.”
Josie took a step closer, feeling her heart stutter. The bones were tiny and delicate, almost birdlike. She was amazed something so fragile had survived sixteen years buried beneath the earth. She, Gretchen, and Dr. Feist stood around the autopsy table, staring at the bones that Dr. Feist had removed from the larger body, and bowed their heads in an unspoken moment of silence for the life that had been cut short before it had even begun.
Gretchen cleared her throat. “How far along was she?”
Dr. Feist said, “I believe she was five months pregnant when she was killed.”
Josie said, “My God.”
Ten
2004
A bead of sweat rolled down Josie’s face. She shifted uncomfortably in her desk chair, not hearing a word her teacher was saying about chemistry. The air around her smelled of body odor, and the haze of perfume some of the other girls had used to mask said body odor. The air conditioning in Denton East High had broken on the hottest day of the year so far. Even the open windows offered no breeze. Glancing at the clock, Josie was relieved to see there were only five minutes until the final bell of the day. She needed a shower. Something hit her shoulder from behind. A square of paper landed beside her desk. Giggles erupted from behind her.
“Is there a problem?” asked Mr. Rand.