“Do you have his old things?” Gretchen asked.
“Some of them. His mother also took some and Misty has some stuff too.”
Misty was the woman Ray had been seeing after his and Josie’s marriage fell apart.
Gretchen took out her phone and started typing in a text. “The fastest way to verify if that jacket belongs to Ray would just be to have Hummel turn the sleeve inside out and check for the tear you mentioned, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Josie said. “But I already know that jacket belonged to Ray.”
Gretchen hit send on her text to Hummel and said, “Then we just have to figure out who that girl is and how she got Ray’s jacket. Maybe that will help us find out what happened to her. We can check yearbooks and also look into the history of owners and renters of the house she was under. But first, we both need a shower and change of clothes.”
The Denton Police headquarters was a three-story stone building with ornate molding over its many double-casement arched windows and a bell tower on one end. Thus far, it had narrowly avoided the flooding. As the water level had risen over the last few days, emergency workers and volunteers had packed sandbags and built a wall of them near the front entrance of the building, holding the water back. A portable tube barrier, which required far less work to set up, had been allocated for the front of the police building but when members of the Emergency Services Department went into their supply building to get it, they found it was missing.
The sandbags worked well enough, but no one could get in or out through the front lobby. Luckily, the water hadn’t yet reached the ground floor of the building where their holding cells were. Josie pulled into the municipal parking lot at the rear of the building and let Gretchen out, promising to return with her high school yearbook.
Josie counted herself lucky that her house, where she lived with her boyfriend and colleague, Lieutenant Noah Fraley, was in one of the neighborhoods outside of the flood zone. She knew Noah wasn’t home as he had been dispatched to South Denton to work with emergency crews there. Misty Derossi’s vehicle, however, was parked in the driveway. Misty owned a large, beautiful Victorian home in the historic district of the city which had been under water for days. Josie had invited Misty, her four-year-old son, Harris, and their chi-weiner dog, Pepper, to stay with her and Noah until the flooding passed. As Josie turned her key in the door, she heard the click of dog paws on her foyer floor and then Pepper’s high-pitched bark mingled with Trout’s deeper bark. As she opened the door, both dogs jumped on her legs. Their tongues lolled as they huffed, trying to get her attention. Trout, who was normally very friendly toward Pepper, snapped at her as she tried to get Josie’s attention. Josie scolded him and knelt to pet both of them, rubbing their sides and reminding them both that they were good dogs.
“JoJo!” Little Harris Quinn came barreling toward her from the kitchen, his arms open.
The dogs made way as he leapt into her arms. She laughed and stood up, twirling him around and planting a kiss on his blond scalp. “What’s going on?”
“Your hair is all messed up,” he observed.
“I’m in here!” Misty called from the kitchen.
Harris gave Josie a serious look. “Mommy is stress-baking.”
Josie laughed as she carried him into the kitchen. The dogs followed. “Stress-baking?”
Misty turned away from the open oven and smiled at Josie, then gave a little eye-roll. “His grandmother said it and now he won’t stop telling everyone that’s what I’m doing.”
Josie looked around the kitchen. Two pies cooled on the counter. On the kitchen table were two loaves of bread swaddled in dish towels. From the oven, Misty pulled a tray of cookies. She deposited it onto the only open space on the kitchen counter and pulled off her oven mitts.
Josie raised a brow. “Well, it is just the four of us here. I’m not sure we’ll finish all this.”
Misty shook her head. “Don’t be silly. This is for the first responders. I’m going to make baskets and drop them off at the command post.”
Both dogs sniffed the kitchen floor from one end of the room to the other, looking for any scraps Misty might have dropped. But Misty was one of the cleanest, neatest people Josie had ever known. It wasn’t the first time she and Harris had stayed with Josie. They’d formed an unusual friendship over the years. After Josie and Ray separated, Ray had begun frequenting the local strip club with his buddies where Misty was a dancer. They started dating. Josie had despised her at first, letting petty jealousy get the best of her and projecting blame for the disintegration of her marriage onto Misty. Over time, she realized that Misty had had nothing at all to do with the end of their marriage. She’d grown to accept that Ray had fallen in love with Misty before his death. After he died, Misty gave birth to Ray’s son. Josie had thought it would be difficult to even lay eyes on Ray’s child. When she and Ray were married, they had made a conscious decision not to have children of their own. Their childhoods had been so traumatic that they were terrified of bringing a child into the world together. They couldn’t escape the fear that they might make terrible parents. But the moment she saw Harris and held him in her arms, she felt a surge of love and protectiveness she had never experienced before. She had known in that moment that she would take a bullet for this child, and she’d vowed to do whatever she could to help Misty raise and care for him. Misty had moved on from dancing to working as an intake counselor at the local women’s center. She worked long hours and had no family nearby. Along with Ray’s mother, Josie was one of Harris’s primary babysitters.
“Why is your hair all yucky?” Harris asked, pulling at one of her stringy locks. “You didn’t brush it today?”
Josie set him on the floor. “I got soaked in the rain,” she told him. “I didn’t have a chance to comb it out yet.”
Harris, apparently accepting her answer, asked his mother if he could play a game on her tablet. Misty said, “For a half hour but that’s it. Go ahead; I left it in the living room.” Once he was out of the room, Misty said, “I saw you on the news. That scared the hell out of me. I thought you were going to stop doing crazy dangerous stuff.”
Josie laughed. “I never said that.”
Misty’s face turned serious. “Was it a body?”
Josie nodded.
“I’m sorry,” Misty said. “That’s terrible.”
“Misty,” Josie said. “When Ray was alive—”
She saw Misty’s shoulders tense. Even after all these years, the topic of Ray was difficult for Misty. Josie understood why. For Josie, Ray had been her best friend, high school sweetheart, and then her husband. He had been her lifeline. Misty hadn’t known him nearly as long as Josie, but she’d fallen hard for him. Before his death, Ray had done some morally questionable things, and Josie knew that Misty struggled just as much as she did reconciling the love she had felt for him with the man he’d turned out to be. Any discussion of him always stirred up those conflicting feelings.
Misty leaned her narrow hip against the counter and folded her arms over her chest. “It’s okay,” she said. “Ask me.”
Josie pushed a mess of tangled hair behind one of her ears. “When Ray was alive, did he ever talk about high school?”