“Do you know Mr. Plummer’s first name?” Josie asked.
“Calvin. Calvin Plummer. His office is in South Denton.”
“You said he takes care of things. As long as you’ve been in the house, has he ever done any work or had anyone do any work on the foundation of the house?”
“No, not that I recall.”
“Do you know anything about the item we recovered?”
“Me? No. I didn’t know it was there. Basement was concrete. You saw it break apart,” Mrs. Bassett answered.
“Speaking of the basement,” Josie went on. “Did you ever have any problems down there since you’ve lived in the house?”
“A burst pipe now and then but that was it. Mr. Plummer just had someone come out and fix everything up.”
“Have you lived there by yourself the last fifteen years?”
Mrs. Bassett nodded.
“No relatives stayed with you for any length of time? Roommates?”
“Just me, Detective Quinn.”
“Josie.”
Mrs. Bassett smiled, and Josie smiled back. “Do you know who lived there before you?”
“I don’t. You’d have to ask Mr. Plummer.”
“I will,” Josie told her. “I’d give you a business card, but I don’t have any on me. All my stuff is in the car. If you need anything, you can call the number for the police station and ask for me.”
Josie gave her shoulder a squeeze and walked off toward her car. Rain pelted down on her. Looking to the entrance of the parking lot, she saw reporters converging on Brownlow as he pulled into the lot. Then her view was obscured by the sight of Hayes striding toward her, his blue eyes penetrating. Josie stopped and squared up. Cutting him off at the pass, she said, “Is there a problem?”
“You know damn well there is,” he said as he reached her. “You went expressly against your boat operator’s orders and jumped out of the boat to retrieve… whatever the hell you retrieved.”
“What I retrieved was a dead body, likely a murder victim.”
“What you did was dangerous, irresponsible, and reckless. You endangered all of us out there today, recovering that tarp—”
“Body.”
He gave a frustrated sigh. “Tarp,” he emphasized. “You don’t actually know that it’s a body. My point is that you put yourself in a position where we might have had to rescue you, which would have put the rest of us at risk. The city’s resources are already stretched thin.”
Josie narrowed her eyes at him. “You don’t have to tell me how bad things are, Hayes. When’s the last time the emergency department used city detectives to do water rescues?”
He didn’t answer.
“Listen, Hayes,” she said. “You’re an EMS guy, right?”
He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m a paramedic. I’m also certified in swiftwater rescue.”
She lifted her chin toward the patch on his dry suit. “You work for Dalrymple Township, is that right?”
He said nothing, glowering at her.
“Dalrymple Township isn’t even a part of the city of Denton. You’re volunteering here, which we appreciate. But I work for the city police department,” she added. “As you know.”
“I know exactly who you are,” he spat, droplets of rain cascading down his face. “Don’t think that your celebrity is going to get you out of this.”
Josie took a step toward him and he backed away. “Out of what?”
“You endangered lives today by going after that tarp.”
She poked his chest. “Take it up with my Chief, but know this: I don’t leave people behind. Dead or alive. Whoever is in that tarp was someone’s child. Maybe someone’s sibling or parent. Would you want someone you loved wrapped in a tarp and buried under a house?”
Again, he remained silent. His eyes bore down on her, and he pressed his lips into a thin line.
“I didn’t think so,” Josie said. “Your job is rescuing people, mine is handling dead bodies. How about you stick to your job and let me do mine? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get to the morgue.”
Three
“What an asshole,” Josie groused as she and Gretchen drove to the city morgue, the tarp-covered remains in the back hatch of Josie’s new Ford Escape. The odor of damp earth filled the car, overpowering the new car smell Josie had enjoyed for the past week. On top of that, her seatback was becoming increasingly soaked with every minute that passed. She and Gretchen had changed out of their dry suits at the park and stowed their gear on the backseat floor. Josie had done her best to dry her hair before getting into the vehicle, but she’d only found one small towel in the backseat. Normally, she used it to wipe the mud from her Boston Terrier, Trout’s paws after taking him for a hike in the woods.
“Boss,” Gretchen said as she scrolled through her phone. “That guy had a point.”
“What?” Josie said.
Gretchen tapped against her phone screen. “I’m going to text Hummel and tell him to get Officer Chan and meet us at the morgue with some equipment. I’ll have him call the morgue and make sure Dr. Feist is waiting for us.”
Josie stopped for a red light and stared at her colleague. “Gretchen,” she said.
Gretchen looked up.
“What do you mean, he had a point?”
Gretchen sighed and put her phone into her pocket. “Don’t take this the wrong way—”
Josie cut her off. “Whenever someone says ‘don’t take this the wrong way,’ I know I’m going to take it the ‘wrong’ way.”
Gretchen laughed. “Listen, since last month, since your sister’s case, you’ve been a little off.”
Josie felt anger bubble up inside immediately. Defensiveness. She bit back a sharp reply, waiting for Gretchen to elaborate. The light changed and Josie punched the gas, heading up the long hill that was home to Denton Memorial Hospital.
Gretchen said, “You’ve been a little brash. Quicker to anger. A little more…”
She drifted off and with a sinking feeling, Josie knew the word she was avoiding. “Emotional,” she supplied.
Gretchen said nothing.
“I haven’t been—” Josie began but stopped herself. Gretchen was right. A month earlier her twin sister, Trinity Payne, had been abducted, and Josie had taken point on the case. It had been especially complicated because of Josie and Trinity’s relationship. They hadn’t even known they were sisters until a few years earlier. For Trinity, being reunited was a happy occasion, but for Josie, it came with the realization that her entire life had been a lie, and that the trauma she had endured as a child could have been avoided. Trinity’s kidnapping had stirred up old feelings of grief, loss, and rage for Josie. She’d thought that after they found Trinity alive, those feelings would go away, but they hadn’t. It had helped to have Trinity near, but two weeks earlier she had had to return to New York City to try and salvage her journalism career. Josie missed her terribly. All of it was causing a swell of confusing, difficult emotions. She thought she’d just been tamping them down the way she always did. Apparently not very well.