The Girl With No Name

Chapter Three

She hadn’t realized just how tightly knotted the muscles in her shoulder blades were until she was a mile away from home and her body finally started to relax. She knew she shouldn’t hide behind her work, but it was the only place she felt in control. But her relief quickly dissipated as she arrived at the address Noah had rattled off and suddenly realized why it had seemed so familiar to her.

Noah stood outside of the large Victorian, a grim, fixed look on his face and a Denton PD patrol officer with a clipboard guarding the front door by his side. “We’ve got a crime scene?” Josie asked.

Noah nodded.

“Have you set up a perimeter?”

“Yes. I’ve got someone on the back door as well. All points of entry are covered.”

“Is she—is she dead?”

Josie honestly didn’t know how she would feel if Noah told her that Misty Derossi was dead. It was no secret that Josie detested her; ever since she caught her late husband, Ray, sleeping with the notoriously promiscuous stripper, she’d found it difficult, but after Ray confessed he’d fallen in love with her, well, that changed everything.

“No,” Noah said. “At least, not yet. EMTs already rushed her to the hospital. I’ve got a man following to report on her condition. A neighbor found her unconscious. An older woman who lives next door hadn’t seen Misty coming or going for a few days and came to check on her. She knocked and got no answer, so she went around to the back and said she found the back door partially open. She came inside and that’s when she found Misty unconscious on the living room floor. Then she called 911. Misty was beaten pretty badly. Most of the house is undisturbed but the living room is a mess. You’ll see.”

Josie stilled her mind for a moment, resetting herself to put her personal feelings aside and treat this like any other case. She stepped past Noah and he followed her as she nodded to the patrol officer and watched him record her name onto the crime scene log. Just inside the front door, one of their crime scene officers had set up a small supply area.

The city of Denton was roughly twenty-five square miles, many of those miles spanning the untamed mountains of central Pennsylvania with their one-lane winding roads, dense woods and rural residences spread far and wide. With a population edging over thirty thousand, it wasn’t big enough to have a crime scene unit, but they did have a small contingent of officers who were specially trained in evidence collection and scene preservation—an Evidence Response Team, or ERT.

At the supply station, Josie and Noah donned Tyvek suits with booties, skull caps, and latex gloves. “Have you got someone canvassing the neighbors?” Josie asked. “To see if anyone saw anything?”

“Yeah,” Noah replied. “I’ve got two officers out now.”

As she followed Noah deeper into Misty’s home, she saw that he was right—the exquisitely furnished and carefully arranged rooms looked untouched. Josie and Noah had walked through this house once before, almost two years earlier, when Misty had gone missing after Ray’s death. The place was filled with ornate antique furniture that looked as uncomfortable as it did fancy. Apparently dancing at the local strip club was extremely lucrative.

“Like I said, almost everything is in its place,” Noah said as they moved down the first-floor hall.

“You said the neighbor found the back door ajar,” Josie said. “Any signs of forced entry?”

Noah shook his head. “Nope. Either Misty left her back door unlocked or she let her attacker inside.”

“Broken windows?”

“None.”

“Misty’s car?”

“Parked around the back of the house in her garage.”

Noah stopped at the entrance to a sitting room near the back of the house. He waved a hand, indicating she should enter first. “You ready? Watch your step.”

Josie swallowed a gasp as she entered the room. The once pristine living room looked as though a tornado had torn through it; the hardwood floor was covered in glass, wood splinters and maimed pieces of furniture; the light-blue floral pattern of the area rug was splattered in blood; a few feet away, a small wooden coffee table lay splintered in half with a clump of blond hair hanging from the jaws of the broken wood. Josie counted three large lamps on their sides around her, shards of their hand-painted glass scattered around the room. One whole area of cream-colored wall to Josie’s left was caved in where someone had been thrown against it so violently the drywall had buckled. Josie took a few more careful steps into the room, a small white object next to one of the evidence markers drawing her attention. She knelt and pointed to it.

“My God,” she said. “Is that a tooth?”

She heard Noah take a breath. “Yeah,” he said. “Paramedics said Misty was missing one of her top front teeth.”

She tore her eyes away to survey the rest of the room and counted three of her officers at work. One dusted the walls and furniture for prints while another vacuumed fibers from the round area carpet in the center of the room. The third officer followed the yellow plastic evidence markers that had been placed throughout the room, taking photographs of every detail. Clad in their white suits, just like Josie and Noah, all of them took slow and careful steps, as though walking across thin ice. They glanced up at her when they felt her watching.

“Boss,” said the officer with the small, handheld vacuum.

She nodded at him and he moved from the area rug to a thick, white fleece blanket discarded on the floor. He pointed to it and the photographer picked her way over and snapped several pictures of it. Then the blanket was flattened and vacuumed for any hairs or fibers remaining on it. A bloody handprint marred its clean white surface—Misty’s handprint, judging by the size of it.

Then something else caught Josie’s gaze and she pointed to the item beside the couch.

“Noah, what the hell is that?”