The Girl With No Name

Chapter Five

Out on Misty’s wrap-around porch, a woman in her mid-twenties paced, hugging herself tightly. She was dressed in dark-blue jeans that were rolled at the bottom and cuffed neatly above a pair of strappy sandals. On top, she wore a black sweater over a white T-shirt. Her skin had the deep orange hue of a spray-on tan, clashing with the jet-black hair which flowed down her back in waves. When she saw Josie and Noah she raced over to them, opening her arms as though she were about to embrace one or both of them, then pulled up short, wrapping her arms back around herself again instead.

“Can I help you?” Noah asked, pulling off his disposable head covering.

For a moment, the woman’s eyes were drawn to Noah’s thick brown locks. Josie had to admit, they looked even more expertly tousled after the removal of the cap than they had before he put it on.

“Ma’am?” Josie said.

She smiled uncertainly, her eyes darting briefly toward Josie. “My name is Brittney. Lieutenant Fraley called me. I’m Misty’s best friend. Is she… is she okay?”

Noah pulled off his latex gloves and extended a hand, which Brittney shook. “That’s me,” he said. “Miss Derossi is alive but badly injured. She’s at the hospital now. We don’t have word on her condition yet, but a neighbor found her unconscious.”

One of Brittney’s hands flew to her mouth. “Oh my God. Is the baby okay?”

Noah looked at Josie. “Brittney,” Josie said. “The baby is missing.”

Brittney gasped. “What? What do you mean missing? She had the baby?”

“Do you know if Misty was going to have a boy or a girl?” Josie asked.

“A boy. Oh my God, where is he?”

Josie ignored the question, asking her own instead. “When is the last time you spoke to or saw Misty?”

Brittney touched a hand to her chest. “I don’t know. Maybe four, five days ago? I travel for work, so I’ve been out of town. I told her I’d be back for her due date. I texted her a couple of times yesterday and the day before, but she didn’t respond. I didn’t think anything of it. Sometimes if she is tired or feeling really shitty, she’ll take forever to return a text.”

“When was her due date?” Josie asked.

“Tomorrow. I just got back today.”

“What do you do?” Noah asked.

“I’m a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company. Wait—so, when did she have the baby?”

“Sometime in the last twenty-four to forty-eight hours by the look of her bathroom.”

The color drained from Brittney’s face. “Her bathroom?”

“She gave birth at home,” Josie said. “Brittney, do you know—did she have a midwife lined up?”

Brittney resumed pacing before them. “No. No, she didn’t. She was going to go to the hospital. I don’t understand. She didn’t call me. Who was here?”

“We were hoping you could help us with that,” Noah said.

“Brittney,” Josie said. “Did Misty tell you who the baby’s father is?”

“No, it was a big secret. She wouldn’t even tell me. No one knew. She said maybe she would tell me after the baby was born.”

“Why would she keep it a secret?”

Brittney shrugged. “I don’t know. I told her whoever it was, it wasn’t a big deal—I mean, not to me. She was super sensitive about the whole thing. You know, she had an ectopic pregnancy when she was, like, twenty and it almost destroyed her insides. I was surprised she could even get pregnant, ’cause the doctors had told her she couldn’t. When it happened it was like this big miracle. So, I was joking with her that I really wanted to know what man finally knocked her up, but she wouldn’t say. She just said that there were some things she needed to get in order before she started telling people.”

“Like what?” Josie asked.

“I don’t know. It was weird, you know? She wouldn’t even tell me. We’ve been friends since kindergarten. I pushed her a lot at first, but then it got to the point where every time I brought it up she’d get really upset, so I stopped.”

Josie frowned. “Is it possible that her pregnancy was a result of a non-consensual encounter?”

Brittney stopped pacing and stared at Josie. “What? You mean like, rape?”

“Yes. Would she have told you?”

“I don’t know. I mean she had some problems now and then with customers where she worked—you know she worked at Foxy Tails, right?”

“Yes,” Noah said.

“Well, the guys there always got totally obsessed with her. I mean she was really good at her job. These dudes would come in night after night to watch her dance. She had a lot of regulars who would pay extra for private dances.”

“She had relationships with several of those men, didn’t she?” Josie asked pointedly, ignoring the look Noah shot her.

Brittney nodded. “Misty liked to play the field. I mean, there was one guy she was really serious about. Ray Quinn. He was a cop. Oh—” Brittney broke off and smiled awkwardly at them. “I guess you already knew that.”

It occurred to Josie that Brittney had no idea who she was. The two had never met, but Josie had been on television a lot in the last eighteen months in her capacity as chief of police. Just one of the things she loathed about her new position. Of course, with Josie’s long dark hair beneath the cap she’d donned before entering the crime scene, Brittney probably didn’t recognize her.

Josie said, “We knew Ray.”

She felt Noah’s eyes burning a hole through her profile but didn’t look at him.

Brittney said, “Yeah, well she was pretty serious about him. They were going to get married. She really wanted to settle down and always used to say that he was the kind of guy you would want to start a family with. He was like, the love of her life. The one, you know?”

Josie felt a tiny stab just under her diaphragm. For a split second, the air was trapped in her throat and she couldn’t get it out. She did know. She knew exactly because Ray had been the love of Josie’s life. Her “one”. Misty had been a blip on his romantic radar. They’d only dated for about a year after Josie and Ray’s marriage broke up and Ray had never signed the divorce papers. Had refused to sign them, in fact. Not only that, but Josie knew by Misty’s own admission that she had also been sleeping with Ray’s best friend during that time.

Before Josie could point out that fact, Noah said, “Did she date anyone after Ray’s death?”

Brittney shook her head. “Not that I know of—I mean, not seriously.”

Josie put a hand on her hip. “We need to know who she was sleeping with after Ray passed.”

Brittney stared at Josie, two circles of pink rising in her orange cheeks. “Oh, well, I can tell you a few of them…”

“A few of them?” Noah said, not quietly enough.

“Well, yeah, she… there were… Misty didn’t have a serious boyfriend besides Ray, but she always had men, you know?”

“What do you mean, she had men?” Josie said.

Brittney shrugged. “Well, there were a lot of men interested in her. She likes the attention. Some of them she kind of felt bad for so, you know, she would have her flings. A lot of guys got obsessed with her, but she was never serious about them. You have to understand that Misty didn’t consider a relationship to be monogamous unless she was married. That’s why she planned to stop working and seeing everyone else after she married Ray.”

“But she slept with married men,” Josie said. “Is there a possibility that the father of the baby is married and that’s why she thought people would judge her?”

Another shrug. “Well, I guess so, but I think she still would have told me. I mean I knew about most of the married guys she slept with so it’s not like it would have been a big surprise if one of them was the father. She probably still would have told me.”

Noah looked upward and Josie could see he was making calculations in his head. “She would have gotten pregnant sometime in December—probably the first week or two—can you think back to then? Do you remember her ever acting strangely? Or being upset, or withdrawn?”

Brittney touched her chin thoughtfully. “No. If anything, she seemed happy during that time. I remember thinking it was weird, you know, because it was near the holidays. The first Christmas without Ray and all? I thought she would be really depressed. I mean, I didn’t really see her because I was away training for my job, but we texted and talked on the phone. I remember feeling relieved that she wasn’t, like, suicidal. I mean I remember in high school she was ra—”

Brittney stopped abruptly.

“She was assaulted when you were in high school?” Josie coaxed.

Brittney’s gaze dropped to the ground. “I shouldn’t say anything. It’s not my place to—she never wanted to talk about it. She told me, but that was it. She was a mess though. For months after that.”

“Did she report it?” Josie asked.

“No, no. It was a guy she was seeing, and she said that it would be his word against hers. She just didn’t think anyone would take her seriously. She stopped seeing him after that, obviously. But she was messed up for a long time after. She didn’t seem that way when she got pregnant. She was really happy about it.”

“But she wouldn’t talk about the father,” Noah said. It wasn’t a question.

Brittney shrugged. “I think she would have eventually, once she sorted out whatever needed sorting.”

“We’ll need those names,” Josie told her. “Of the men she was seeing—everyone she saw since Ray’s death, even guys she was seeing before Ray died.”

Noah pulled out a notebook and wrote down the names as Brittney rattled them off. Some of them, Josie recognized. “Get somebody to run down all of their alibis for the last forty-eight hours,” Josie told Noah.

He nodded and looked back at Brittney. “Anyone else? Anything else you can think of that might be important? You mentioned the customers at Foxy Tails. Could one of them have been fixated enough on Misty to attack her?”

“I don’t know. Anything’s possible. I mean she’s had some stalkers over the years for sure. None that have ever gotten violent though. You should talk to her boss, Butch. He would know better than me.”

“Of course,” Noah said.

“One last thing,” Josie said. “You said Misty knew she was having a boy. Did she have a name picked out?”

Brittney smiled. “Yeah. Victor Raymond. Cute, right?”