“And we figured you’d be starving,” Dr. Feist added. “So here we are.”
Somehow, Josie didn’t feel hungry at all, but she took a slice of pizza anyway. “Thank you,” she said. “What can you tell us about Vera Urban?”
The doctor opened her laptop, clicked a few times, and then began to read off some of her findings. “I estimate her age to be between fifty and sixty.”
“That tracks,” Josie said. “She was fifty-eight.”
Dr. Feist nodded. “The cause of death was the gunshot wound to her abdomen. Her lungs weighed more than expected and when I opened her up, they were somewhat overinflated, indicating that she had taken in some water before she died, but based on the damage in her abdominal cavity, I believe she died before she had a chance to drown.”
Josie put her half-finished pizza back into the box and leaned back into the couch. Trout jumped up and crawled into her lap, whining. Absently, she stroked the back of his neck. Gretchen said, “We did everything we could, boss.”
“Did we?” Josie asked. “We should have brought some kind of backup. Going there alone was stupid.”
Gretchen said, “To meet one person with information about a sixteen-year-old murder? There was nothing to indicate we needed to bring in an army to meet with Vera Urban. We didn’t even know it was her when we went there. We only knew we were meeting a woman named Alice.”
“She told us—she told me—that it wasn’t safe, and I didn’t take her seriously enough. She was right, and now she’s dead.”
“That’s not your fault,” Gretchen told her.
Dr. Feist said, “Josie, if it helps, I don’t believe she would have survived long enough to make it to the hospital. Even if you had been able to move her to safety and wait for an ambulance, she would have died before she made it to the ER, and Denton Memorial is not a trauma center.”
Josie shook her head, fighting tears. “I should never have put any of us in a position where someone was shooting at us—she was shot because of me.”
“She was shot because she’s mixed up in something she shouldn’t be,” Gretchen argued. “She knew her daughter was murdered, and she hid that for sixteen years, boss. If she didn’t get shot before our eyes, she might have been killed some other way at some other time by whoever was after her.”
Silence descended over the room as the full weight of the violence of Vera Urban’s death and the gravity of what she’d been hiding from set in. Then Dr. Feist cleared her throat and said, “There were some other incidental findings you might be interested in: her liver was extremely diseased, either from long-term alcohol use or some other underlying condition.”
“Opiates,” Josie supplied. “We believe she was addicted to opiates.”
Dr. Feist nodded. “That would certainly do it. Also, in her lower back I found evidence of an old lumbar surgery. A tri-level lumbar fusion.”
“Yes,” Gretchen said. “Several people who knew her reported she had had back surgery.”
“Lastly, she had a bicornuate uterus.”
Gretchen’s pizza slice froze halfway to her mouth.
Josie said, “What is that?”
“Vera Urban’s uterus was heart-shaped. Bicornuate uterus is a congenital defect. I’ll spare you the scientific details. Basically, the uterus forms with two separate cavities. A deep indentation forms at the top of the uterus, essentially splitting it in the middle. It can be surgically corrected these days—and perhaps even when Vera Urban was a young woman—but hers was not corrected. It doesn’t affect fertility, but it makes it very difficult to carry a baby to term.”
“But we know she had a baby,” Josie said. “Was there dorsal pitting on her pubic bone?”
Dr. Feist said, “No, but not every woman develops scarring in her pubic bone after childbirth. I’ve seen plenty of women who have given birth without parturition scarring on autopsy. I usually only use that as an indicator that a woman has given birth.”
Josie said, “Meaning if it’s there, then she likely had a baby.”
“Right. But its absence is not an indicator that the woman never gave birth. As I said, Vera’s condition wouldn’t have prevented her from having a baby; it just made the odds of a successful pregnancy much lower. She was very lucky to have carried Beverly to term.”
Gretchen said, “That might explain why she was on bedrest for so long and why she had to deliver at Geisinger and not here in Denton.”
The weight of the Urban women’s tragedy hung heavy on Josie’s shoulders. Poor Vera. According to her former boss, she’d badly wanted a baby and had been thrilled when Beverly came along even though the father wasn’t in the picture. But somewhere along the line, things had gone wrong. Beverly had developed behavioral issues. Josie knew firsthand how Beverly’s penchant for acting out could cause not just emotional drama but physical harm. What had Beverly and Vera gotten themselves into that was so dangerous it had ended up with Beverly pregnant and murdered at seventeen years old and Vera forced into hiding for almost two decades? What had Vera been hiding from? Where had she been all these years? Who had killed her and why?
Josie said, “She was worried that someone had followed us when we went to meet her—not that someone was following her. In fact, the whole reason that she wanted to meet in private in an out-of-the-way place was because she didn’t think the police station was safe.”
“Who is left in the Denton PD that would have been involved in Beverly’s murder sixteen years ago?” Dr. Feist asked. “I thought you cleaned house five years ago after the missing girls’ case.”
Gretchen said, “Amber Watts.”
For Dr. Feist’s benefit, Josie shared her suspicions about their new press liaison.
“How old is this woman?” Dr. Feist asked.
Gretchen said, “Young. She would have been in elementary school when Beverly was murdered.”
“Not necessarily her,” Josie said. “Mayor Charleston. Amber knew we were going to meet the mysterious Alice this morning, but she didn’t know where. She could have told the Mayor.”
“So you think she is a spy?” Gretchen asked.
“I don’t know. But someone knew we were going to meet Vera Urban. Someone wanted her dead. Someone shot her so she couldn’t tell us what she knew.”
“I know Mayor Charleston is well versed in lying and covering things up,” Dr. Feist said. “She’s not that well liked here anymore, with this Quail Hollow thing—although Kurt Dutton is involved in that, too, I believe—but I’m not sure she’s capable of murder.”
“Me either,” Josie conceded. “But maybe she’s not directly involved in whatever is going on here. I’m just saying that it’s a pretty odd coincidence that Amber gets hired by the Mayor this week, and shows up right after we recover a body from beneath the house on Hempstead. She’s been at all the briefings, and knew we were going to meet someone who knew what happened to Beverly, and suddenly we’re getting shot at and Vera Urban is dead. Maybe I’m reading too much into things, but what’s the alternative?”
“That someone’s been following Vera Urban this whole time—since she returned to Denton from wherever she’s been—and she just didn’t realize it,” Gretchen said.