by Lisa Regan
Inside the ladies’ room, Josie bent to look beneath the stalls. Miraculously, she was alone, but she didn’t know how long that would last. “I did. I have to tell you, Ginger, there’s a lot of stuff missing.”
“Missing? Like what?”
“Like the rape kit they took at the hospital. They took DNA from that. Do you remember?”
“Of course I do. It was horrible—very… invasive.”
Josie could feel her shudder through the phone. “I’m sorry. Let me ask you—do you know what it showed?”
Silence.
“Ginger?”
A rustling sound. Josie thought she could hear Marlowe whine in the background. “It showed—there was evidence. Corroborating my story.”
“So they told you what the results were?”
“They did. One of the officers told us that the analysis of the rape kit showed… I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“It’s okay,” Josie said. “I was just curious whether they told you.”
“That’s why we were so shocked when they started accusing me of orchestrating the whole thing. A few weeks earlier they had come to us and said the rape kit proved I was telling the truth… about the men.”
“The results weren’t in the file, but I did manage to find a copy of them. But I need to know how far this goes. I’d like to see what the medical records say, which I guess we’d have to get from the hospital. If they still exist.”
Ginger sounded relieved. “Oh well, my husband has the hospital records. He ordered a copy of them himself when the investigation started. Can I just email you the file?”
“Of course. That would be great.” As Josie rattled off her email address, she heard the squeak of the door opening and turned to see a tall state trooper in full uniform walking through the door. He froze when he saw her.
Josie said, “This is the ladies’ room.”
Ginger said, “What?”
The trooper took a step back so he could study the sign on the wall outside of the door. He gave her a sheepish smile. “Oh shit,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“The men’s room is across the hall,” Josie told him.
Ginger said, “Miss Quinn? What’s going on?”
Into the phone, in the steadiest voice she could manage, Josie said, “I have to go. I’ll call you back later.” But she could barely hear her own voice over her pounding heart.
Chapter Forty-One
The email came in while she was rooting through the mess of items under her passenger’s side seat, trying to find a charger for her phone. By the time her phone chirped, she had found several half-finished water bottles, two dollars and seventeen cents in change—which she pocketed because she needed it—three granola bar wrappers, and a shoelace. She sat back in the seat with a heavy sigh. Closing her eyes momentarily, she rested her head against the seatback. The sun had come up while she was in the restroom and now it flooded through the windows of the vehicle, chasing away the bitter cold that had invaded overnight and leaving behind a perfect, delicious coolness. For just a few seconds she pretended her life was normal again. She was still a detective with the Denton PD. Still on the payroll. Luke was still safe and unharmed. Any minute now he would call to tell her something random and flirty, and they’d agree to get together later that night. Then they’d drink wine and make love, sleep and do it over again.
But thoughts of reality came crashing through the door to her mind, making her feel queasy. Her eyes snapped open and she pulled up Ginger Blackwell’s email. There was no message. Only a PDF attachment. Josie downloaded it to her phone and pressed open when prompted. The records from Denton Memorial were voluminous. It took several minutes for the whole of the PDF to load. As she waited, she reached back down and fished beneath the passenger’s side seat. Her fingers brushed something that felt like paper. Anticipating a receipt, she pulled it out to look at it and whooped aloud when she discovered it was a five-dollar bill. At least she wouldn’t be subject to the humiliation of having to ask Carrieann for money to buy a meal. Although she supposed the hospital cafeteria would take her credit card.
Finally, the whole document was there. She wished she had her laptop. Some of the nurses’ notes were completely illegible. She scrolled through slowly and carefully as the sun rose higher in the sky, infusing more heat into the car until she had to roll her window down to breathe in the cool air. It was all there. Ginger’s version of events, disjointed though they were, shortened and abbreviated into clinical medical facts. “Pt reports memory loss secondary to sexual assault. Pt reports assault by multiple males. SANE contacted.” A SANE was a sexual assault nurse examiner, specially trained to collect evidence in a rape case and maintain a chain of custody. It was all there. Everything had been done by the book.
The police file was incomplete, but all of the evidence was there if you looked for it. Someone had made it difficult to find the complete file, but hadn’t tampered with the evidence or destroyed it. So if anyone ever cried foul, all the investigators involved could say nothing was amiss. No one would lose their jobs or go to jail over the file because they hadn’t done anything wrong.
She closed the PDF, tossed the phone onto the driver’s seat and spent five more minutes digging before she found her charger. She was just plugging it in so she could call Ginger back when she saw a couple of troopers weaving their way through the parking lot toward the hospital. They weren’t acting suspicious or threatening, but she thought of the man who had walked in on her in the ladies’ room that morning. Best not to be alone. Pocketing her phone, charger, and the five dollars she found, she headed back toward the hospital.
Chapter Forty-Two
Tears leaked from the sides of her eyes as she waited for his touch again, wondering if it was going to be rough, or unbearably gentle. But it didn’t come. Instead, the beam of the flashlight floated out of her eyes and to the ground as she heard him settle onto the floor. He stayed there so long that her eyes began to adjust to the dim light in the cell. The roof above them was stone, with tree roots snaking through the cracks. Condensation glistened in one corner. A large, black bug scuttled along one of the branches.
She turned her head. The man’s boots were visible a few feet away, his knees pulled to his chest, his big, hairy arms hanging over them. She could just make out the gleam of his eyes fixed on her, sad and uncertain. He didn’t know what to do.
Slowly, he crawled across the floor to her. His breath nearly made her gag as she willed her body to be still, and his hands slid around her throat. A wave of hysteria passed over her, her breath quickening. She lifted her arms to fight, but he was too strong.
The words choked in her throat. Please don’t.
Chapter Forty-Three
“I’ll be in the cafeteria,” Josie whispered to Carrieann as they passed one another in the corridor. It was just before the lunch rush and Josie’s stomach growled loudly, clenching at the scent of food. She hoped to God her five dollars would be enough to sustain her.
The cafeteria was starting to fill up with men and women in scrubs and weary-looking family members crowding in and out, so Josie took a table near the back of the large room, her vantage point allowing her to pan the entire place as she ate her plate of fries. No one could sneak up on her. It was also near an outlet where she could charge her phone. Several feet away, a television played the morning news from WYEP. The sound was on but she was too far away to hear it, so she followed the headlines that trawled across the bottom of the screen.
HEROIN OVERDOSES HIT NEW HIGH IN ALCOTT COUNTY
* * *
CORONER CALLED TO 3-VEHICLE CRASH IN BOWERSVILLE
* * *
ROAD GIVES WAY IN COLUMBIA COUNTY
Josie wiped her greasy, salt-tipped fingers and picked up her phone. It was at thirty-eight percent. She tried calling Lisette again but the call went to voicemail. She left another message as worry began to gnaw at her gut. She would have to get over to Rockview at her first opportunity, but it wouldn’t
be today. She scrolled until she found Ginger’s number and hit call. Ginger picked up on the third ring.
“Did you get the email?” she asked, not bothering with pleasantries.
“Yes,” Josie said. “Thank you.”
“Do you have everything you need?”
Everything she needed. What did she need? What was she going to do with the Blackwell file? Sure, she knew now that Blackwell hadn’t staged her own abduction, but that didn’t change anything. Knowing that Blackwell was telling the truth didn’t bring Josie any closer to finding Isabelle Coleman. What she really needed was to find the Standing Man—and even then she might be no closer to finding Isabelle Coleman. But Ginger couldn’t help her with that, so Josie simply said, “Yes, thank you.”
Ginger said, “Well, there’s just one more thing. You remember I said I had something to tell you?”
On the TV, the words “Top Story” appeared over a photo of Luke’s face. It was his police photo, so his face was stoic and serious, his jaw looking more square than it actually was beneath his large trooper’s hat with its sturdy chin strap. He looked handsome but so uncomfortable. Her heart skipped again, and she used a grease-stained napkin to pinch in the tears before they came. The screen changed to short video clips of law enforcement converging on the area around Luke’s barracks.
“Search for State Police Shooter Continues,” read the text.
They would never find the perpetrator. She wondered how the faceless contingent of men behind Ginger Blackwell’s abduction would keep the press off this. A few years earlier, in a barracks in northeastern Pennsylvania, two state troopers had been ambushed similarly in their barracks’ parking lot. The news coverage had been constant and exhaustive and stretched nationwide.
“Josie?”
“Yes,” she said, turning her mind back to Ginger. “I’m here. I’m sorry. You said you had something to tell me?”
Ginger said, “There might have been another woman that day. The day I was taken.”
“Wait, what?” Josie said, more loudly and forcefully than she had intended. A few people at neighboring tables turned her way and stared. She gave them a sheepish smile and lowered her voice. “Are you sure?”
“I think so. I had a dream last night, after you visited. My therapist said some of my memories might come back in dreams. I always have this dream where I’m talking to the elderly woman, and the next thing I know I’m in blackness. This time, though, there was another woman in the dream.”
“This was in your dream?” Josie said. “Not an actual memory?”
“Well yes, a dream, but it’s also a memory. Speaking with the elderly woman was the last lucid memory I have before I was taken. I think this dream was a continuation of that memory. Maybe talking to you about it jarred it loose.”
“Okay, so the woman in your dream, are you sure it wasn’t the owner of the hair salon?”
“I’m certain it wasn’t her. It was a different woman.”
“So you think there were two,” Josie said. “The elderly Chemo Lady you stopped for and the woman from your dream.”
“Yes. I believe there were two,” Ginger agreed.
“You’re sure this woman in your dream was real?”
Silence. Then Ginger made a noise of exasperation. “Well I don’t know for sure. Like I said, it was a dream. But it felt like a real memory to me.”
“You’ve never had a dream about her before? Or a memory?”
“No, I’m sorry. You don’t believe me, do you?”
Josie couldn’t stake an investigation on a dream that may or may not be a memory, but she didn’t tell Ginger that. Instead she asked, “What can you tell me about the new woman?”
“It’s hazy. Very hazy. In my dream she was in her fifties. Short hair. Brown going gray. I can’t… I can’t see what she was wearing. Her face is… you have to understand, the memories are distorted. But I think she said her name was Ramona.”
“Are you sure?”
There was a brief silence. “Well no, I’m not. I mean, the name Ramona has been swirling around in my head ever since you said it. But what makes me think maybe that was really her name, and that I was having a real memory, is that in the dream I talked to her and I said I never met anyone whose name was Ramona in real life. Then I started telling her about this series of books I read when I was a little girl. I loved those books, and the main character was named Ramona. I remember telling her how I tried to get my kids to read them but they had no interest. Too dated, maybe. She just kept smiling and nodding and I thought, she probably doesn’t care. That part seemed so concrete, made it feel real.”
Josie felt a prickle at the back of her neck. She got up from her table and, cradling the cell phone against her ear with her shoulder, gathered up her lunch tray and disposed of it. She kept her voice low as she made her way out to the elevators. She waited for an empty one and slipped inside, pressing the button that would take her back to the ICU. “But you said yourself that you’d been thinking about the name since you spoke with me. Then hearing it in a dream… the power of suggestion, maybe?”
“I suppose so, but I really think it was a memory. I really think she was there and that she called herself Ramona.”
“Maybe she lured you, then. That doesn’t account for what happened to the first woman—the sick one—but this Ramona would have been one of the last people to see you,” Josie said, almost to herself. “In your… flashes, do you remember seeing her again or seeing any other women?”
There was a long silence and another sigh, then Ginger said, “No, I’m sorry. I don’t. I remember blathering on about the name Ramona, and that’s when I woke up.”
“If this woman was real, do you think you’d recognize her if you saw her again? If you saw a photo?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
“In this dream, did Chemo Lady leave while you were talking to Ramona?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“Did they have a conversation?”
“I think so, but I can’t remember the particulars. I’m sorry. The whole thing was still quite hazy but I’m certain now there was another woman.”
She’d stopped to help a sick woman and had then been approached by a woman calling herself Ramona. She had been abducted, drugged and assaulted. Held for three weeks until the pressure of the national press coverage became too great and her captors chose to dump her. Alive. Again, Josie was struck by the care these people took to avoid committing some crimes while actively committing others. It was like the evidence in Ginger’s file, which had been scattered but not destroyed. Ginger had been abducted and assaulted but not killed. Instead of killing her, they’d dumped her and then took care to discredit her story. Why?
Because it was easier to discredit a stay-at-home mother of three than it was to beat a murder rap.
Still, they had taken a big chance in allowing Ginger to live and go free. Whoever they were.
“I’m sorry. You probably think I’m being ridiculous. Calling you about a dream,” Ginger said.
The elevator lurched to a stop and the doors opened. Josie took her time walking down the hall, not wanting to finish the conversation in the ICU waiting room where many of the state troopers had gathered. “You’re not being ridiculous,” Josie assured her. “I want to hear anything you can remember, even if it came in a dream. Thank you.”
“You’ll keep me posted?”
“Of cour—” Josie faltered as a passing woman bumped shoulders with her, sending her phone flying and muttering a sorry as she hurried on. Josie retrieved her phone, her eyes locked on the diminishing figure. She wore scrubs like all the staff, with a faded black hoodie on top. There was something familiar about her, but Josie couldn’t place her. Her hair was short: dirty blond with dark roots, and spiked. Josie could have sworn she’d seen tattoos peeking out from the collar of her top, but she had passed so quickly. There was something off about her though. Josie pressed the phon
e back to her ear. “Ginger, you there? Sorry, I dropped my phone. If you remember anything else then…”
“I’ll call.”
“Great.”
They hung up and Josie stared after the woman. Then it came to her: she was wearing boots. Old, beat-up combat boots. The nurses in the hospital all wore either sneakers or those rubberized clogs. No one working an eight- or twelve-hour shift would wear combat boots, no matter how worn in they were. Josie took off in a dead run after her.
Chapter Forty-Four
The woman turned her head at the sound of pounding feet and Josie saw the glint of a nose ring. When she saw Josie bearing down on her she set off in a sprint.
“Wait!” Josie hollered.
The woman zigzagged down the hallway, trying every door, looking for escape. Finally, she disappeared behind one. Josie caught up and pushed through the door to find stairs and the sound of the woman’s feet pounding downwards. She raced after her, jumping down three steps at a time. Two floors down she caught up, snagging a handful of the woman’s black hoodie and pulling hard. Within a few seconds she had the woman’s cheek pressed into the wall, her arms behind her back, legs spread wide. Josie held her there. “Keep still,” she said breathlessly.
“Let me go,” the woman spat. “I don’t even know you. Why are you harassing me? This is assault. I’ll call the police.”
“I am the police.”
The moment the words were out of Josie’s mouth her captive started struggling like her life depended on it. Josie held tight, bucking like she was on a mechanical bull in a dive bar.
“I know who you are,” Josie bellowed into her ear. “Lara Spencer. Now stop. I need to talk to you.”
Dirk Spencer’s sister didn’t give an inch. “I got nothing to say to you, bitch.”
“I can help you,” Josie said.