The Girl With No Name

Chapter Sixty-Eight

At Denton Memorial’s ER, Josie pulled the Good Samaritan’s jacket around her shoulders and paced outside of a glass-walled room while a doctor and three nurses checked out Victor Derossi. His screams pierced the air, making passersby pause in front of the room and stare inside. One nurse smiled at Josie as she passed and said, “That sounds like a hungry cry.” What it sounded like was that someone was torturing the poor infant, but Josie realized the nurse was probably right. They had no idea when he last ate.

“Boss.” Noah appeared beside her, soaked and covered in mud and leaves.

Without thinking, Josie grabbed him in a tight hug. She released him in time to see a flush color his cheeks. “Did you get him? Did you find Luke?”

He smiled. “I got him. He’s fine. They’re working on him now down the hall. He’s in bad shape but he’s alive.”

Josie sagged against him and he slid an arm around her waist, guiding her down the hall a few paces to a chair. She tried to hold back her tears but a couple of them leaked out. Noah walked away and reappeared seconds later with a wad of tissues in his hand. Josie took them, mumbling a thank-you, and concentrated on pulling herself together. Both Luke and Victor Derossi were alive and safe. She took a few deep breaths and dabbed at her eyes.

Noah asked, “How is the baby?”

“Pissed.”

Noah walked up to the glass and peeked inside. Josie followed, looking over his shoulder. Mercifully, one of the nurses was shaking a bottle full of formula. The other nurse swaddled the baby and scooped him off the stretcher, holding him expertly in the crook of one arm. She took the bottle from her colleague and rubbed the nipple across Victor’s lips. He took it into his mouth greedily, quieting finally. Glorious silence descended on the ER. The doctor emerged from the room. “He’s fine,” he told Josie. “Remarkably. There don’t appear to be any injuries, no signs of illness or even dehydration. No hypothermia. No fever. He’s… perfect. Whoever had him took good care of him. No ill effects from his swim.”

Josie’s shoulders slumped with relief. “Thank you,” she said.

“We’ll keep him overnight just to monitor him. Does he have a parent or guardian who can come stay with him or do we need to call child services?”

“No,” Josie said quickly. “You don’t need to call child services. We’ll find a family member.” Once the doctor left, she told Noah, “See if Misty’s friend can come. If she can’t do it, I’ll call Ray’s mom.”

“Ray’s mom? Boss, you don’t even know for sure if that’s Ray’s baby.”

Josie stared at the bundle in the nurse’s arms. They had put a little blue hat on his head. Josie could just make out the pink of his forehead from where she stood. “That’s Ray’s son alright,” she said. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. Confronted with him, she thought she would feel sad or betrayed in some way. Misty had a piece of Ray that Josie would never know. She had done something that Josie had never been willing to do—that Ray had never wanted her to do. Josie was certain she’d feel somehow inadequate seeing Ray’s son, but all she felt was a sense of protectiveness and relief like she had never known. She had no idea what kind of mother Misty would make, and still she questioned the wisdom of bringing a child into the world whose father was both already dead and a social pariah, but none of that mattered. Not just then. What mattered was that she had found the baby, and he was alive.

She waited for Noah to argue with her about possibly calling Ray’s mother. Instead he made a phone call to Brittney. Josie could hear her squeals of joy from five feet away. “I guess she can come stay with him,” Josie said when they hung up.

Noah smiled.

“Did you get Muir?” Josie asked.

He nodded. “Sheriff picked her up. She started talking as soon as she found out Rowland and Nance were dead. Apparently, Nance put a pretty good scare into her. Told her he’d kill her and everyone she knew if the police found the baby. That’s why she ran when she saw all the police vehicles outside.”

“And Luke followed her. Tell me, did she say if she jumped off the overpass?”

“Nah, she went down the embankment. I think Luke jumped because it was faster.”

“He was right. So Muir was taking care of the baby and Luke.”

“She’s a retired nurse from Brooklyn. Rowland paid her quite a large sum of money to look after a baby for a couple of days. They actually were at Rowland’s house until a few days ago. She says a man named Leo came and took some kind of cheek swab from the baby. Then Leo came and took the baby, dumped her at the Patio Motel, and later brought Luke. She felt bad for Luke so she gave him some of her pain meds that she gets for chronic back pain from a car accident. She says she didn’t know who the baby or Luke were.”

“Bullshit,” Josie said. “I’m sure she had a television in the motel room.”

“Well, we’ll let the DA deal with her,” Noah said. “Gretchen’s over there overseeing everything while the evidence response team processes the motel scene.”

“How’s Kim?”

“She has some fractures and a bruised sternum. She had pretty good lacerations to her scalp and leg, lost a lot of blood. Concussion.”

“She survived.” As little as Josie cared for Kim Conway, she was glad that Conway had survived the accident. “Do we know what caused the accident?”

Noah took out his phone. “Yeah. Kim and Rowland were arguing when they went over the embankment. Things got heated. I had the Sheriff’s Office email me the segment from the comms from inside the car, after Rowland pulled away. It’s best if you just listen.”

They had no headphones so they found a unisex bathroom and locked themselves inside. They stood nearly forehead to forehead with the phone between them as Noah queued up an audio file. It started out as dead air. Then they heard Kim’s voice. “All of those things you promised me back there—you could make those arrangements through an attorney. I mean you’re rich, right?”

Rowland replied, “Quite rich, yes, and I could certainly make all the arrangements to legitimize you as my heir without ever seeing you in person.”

“So you could have sent me back to the prison with Chief Quinn.”

“Indeed. I should have sent you back with her. This is going to cause a bit of trouble for her, I’m afraid.”

Kim said, “Then why am I here? It’s a little late for you to swoop in and play daddy dearest.”

Rowland laughed. “Oh, Kimberly, I’m not interested in being your father.”

Kim’s voice sounded slightly anxious. “What do you mean?”

“Did you really believe all that nonsense back there about you and Polly being pure because you were products of love?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I lied, my dear. You’re quite familiar with the practice.”

“Wh-what about Polly? Your other daughter?”

Rowland made a hmmph sound. “Polly was a born psychopath. From a very early age she was incorrigible. My wife refused to see it. Even after she pushed one of her schoolmates down a flight of steps. That girl will never walk again thanks to my Polly. I know she did it on purpose. She told me so. Took millions to keep that quiet. She had no remorse, and her mother stood by her.”

“Did you—did you kill them? Polly and her mother?”

“The driver who hit them had some very serious gambling debts. The kind that were causing his family members to be killed. I paid off his debts, sent him off to tie enough of a load on to be over the legal limit, and then told him which corner to be on and when. He’s been well compensated. He’ll be out of prison in a few years with good behavior and have quite the tidy sum set aside to live out the rest of his life. His family is safe, and he can’t rack up gambling debts while he’s incarcerated.”

“My God.”

“And you—you think I don’t know what kind of person you are? I went to your mother again when you were twelve. This was before I married my wife. I wanted to give it a chance. She told me all about the lying and the stealing.”

“But I—”

“Save it. Please. I know you spent a year in juvenile detention.”

“You knew about me my whole life. Why am I the last one?” Kim asked.

“It wasn’t until I found out about Aaron King that I realized the scope of what I’d done—what I had allowed to be brought into the world. It was only after he was caught, and I knew he was my son, that I knew I needed to rid the world of my bad seed. I saved you and Eric for last. You were always visible, easy to find. The others were harder to track down. I wanted to lock down the casino contracts before I got rid of Eric, but Leonard screwed that up. He killed Eric too soon. But I had him keeping watch over you and Eric long enough to find out that you had pretty much whored your way through every male in Eric’s organization. Chief Quinn believes you killed Denny Twitch and Leonard, which makes you a murdering whore.”

Kim’s voice shook. “I was Eric’s prisoner. I did what I had to do to stay alive. No, I’m not proud of every choice I made, but I’m still here.”

Rowland laughed again. “Not for long, my dear.”

“What will you tell the chief? What about Trinity Payne?”

“I need only make arrangements to silence them.”

“You’re going to kill them?” Kim asked.

“Only if they do not accept my very generous offers.”

“You mean bribes.”

“Call it what you will. I don’t like slaughter, but I’ll do what I have to do to protect myself.”

“You don’t like slaughter? How many people have you killed?”

“None,” Rowland said.

“Oh right, you don’t get your hands dirty. ’Cause you’re such a good person, right?”

“I saved Trooper Creighton, didn’t I? I could have left him to die at that church, but he was innocent in all this, and Victor Derossi—he’ll be returned to his mother eventually.”

“Eventually?” Kim asked. “They’re not where you said they were, are they? You lied. You’re a liar and a killer, and you think I’m a bad person? You think all your children were terrible people? Did you ever wonder where they got it from?”

Rowland’s voice was raw with either anger or passion, Josie wasn’t sure. “I am taking responsibility for what I’ve created! Unlike any of you little assholes, I am trying to make the world a better place.”

“Well, this is a pretty fucked-up way of doing that, Dad,” Kim snapped. “I don’t think you give a shit about the world. I think you only care that none of us get our grubby hands on your empire. I think you care about your own legacy more than you care about anything.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think,” Rowland said. “No one will ever suffer at the hands of one of my children again, and if my legacy remains intact, it’s an added bonus.”

There was silence. Josie watched the seconds on the audio file tick off. Thirty seconds, forty seconds, forty-three seconds. Then came the sound of rustling, what sounded like slapping and some grunts. “Stop!” Rowland shouted. “What are you doing? Stop that!”

More sounds of a struggle. Rowland yelled, “Let go! Let go of the wheel! You’ll kill us both. Goddamn—”

The recording went dead. Josie and Noah looked at one another for a long moment.

Josie said, “Make sure the DA gets this, okay?”

“Sure thing.”

“You know where to find me,” Josie told him, and left him in the bathroom to call Carrieann.