protect them. They both bore the deep scars of shame. As children, and then teenagers, they’d only had one another. The trust between them had been unbreakable. Josie had believed that in her soul. At the time, rumors of Ray sleeping with Beverly had been laughable. She would have bet her life on them being untrue. But now, sixteen years had passed. They’d broken up before college, gotten back together, gotten married, separated, and then Ray had betrayed her, not just in their marriage, but because he had turned out not to be the man she knew at all. Was it possible that the rumors had been true?
A sick feeling rolled in her stomach. She pulled her chair over and sunk into it.
Gretchen set the yearbook aside and logged into another database. “What about Beverly’s father?”
“Not in the picture,” Josie said. “I never knew that much about her family situation, but everyone knew that it was just her and her mom.” She handed Gretchen the lease between Vera and Plummer. “Vera didn’t list any other occupants besides herself and Beverly.”
Gretchen studied it and then set it aside, returning to her computer. With a few clicks, she pulled up Beverly Urban’s birth certificate. “No father listed here,” she noted. “Born in 1987 at Geisinger. That’s about an hour from here, right?”
“Yeah,” Josie said. “It must have been a difficult birth if they sent Vera to Geisinger to deliver. They have much more specialized services there.”
Gretchen said, “What happened to Beverly?”
Josie said, “I don’t know, but now I’m beginning to wonder if someone killed her and buried her under the house on Hempstead.”
“She didn’t graduate with you?”
Josie shook her head. “No. There were rumors toward the end of junior year that she was going to have to move because her mom couldn’t afford their house. Summer came and then senior year started, and she wasn’t there. Everyone just assumed she and her mom had moved away.”
“Obviously they didn’t,” Gretchen said. “According to public records, Vera disappeared off the face of the earth and it’s safe to assume Beverly did as well. I think you’re correct in assuming that the body we found yesterday belongs to one of them.”
“Check the TLO database,” Josie told her. “See if there’s any evidence of Beverly existing after 2004. Renewed driver’s licenses, utilities, credit cards, loans, home purchase, anything.”
Gretchen turned her attention back to the computer. Josie watched as each search Gretchen attempted came up empty. The database didn’t provide much information on minors. It relied on information pulled from cell phone data, utility companies, and the like. Beverly would have had to reach adulthood to begin engaging the kinds of services that would leave a record. If Beverly had gone on to graduate high school and live her life as normal people did, there would be some record of her activities even if it was just utilities in her name. But there was nothing.
“Okay,” Gretchen said. “Looks like they both disappeared off the face of the earth in 2004. I didn’t see any other bodies when the house washed away, did you?”
“No,” Josie said.
“Who do you think we recovered from the flood today?”
“Beverly,” Josie said. “Because of the jacket.”
“You think Ray gave it to her? Maybe she stole it from him? If she had a crush on him, she might have. Or if she wanted to get at you, she might have stolen it to make it look like he gave it to her.”
“I don’t know,” Josie admitted. She thought back to what Misty had said and what she knew about Ray. “I think he gave it to her, but I don’t know why.”
“You don’t think—”
Josie squeezed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “Oh my God,” she said. “That Ray really was having a relationship with her? That he gave her the jacket? That he… killed her? I realize that one of the first people we look at in murder cases are the deceased’s significant others, but Ray wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t have killed someone, especially a woman.”
“Boss, I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but I think your judgment might be clouded in this instance.”
Josie opened her mouth to protest, but then the memory of the night her marriage with Ray had ended came flying back at her in all its horror. Ray had gotten blackout drunk and hit her. It was a sin she could not forgive. If he had been capable of hitting Josie, his childhood best friend, his