Vanishing Girls

by Lisa Regan

  Something was coming, but they didn’t know what, or from where.

  Instinctively, her free hand reached to her waist for her service weapon, but it wasn’t there. Fear was a fist in her chest, squeezing her heart into her throat.

  Ray spoke into her silence, “Jo?”

  From around the corner, a black, bullet-riddled Escalade barreled toward the Stop and Go, jumped the curb and sailed directly toward Josie. Her feet were like cement blocks. Move, she told herself. Move. As the Escalade hurtled past her, the driver’s side mirror caught the corner of her jacket, spinning her around and sending her flying through the air. She hit the asphalt hard, landing on her left side, her body rolling away from the vehicle until her stomach hit one of the metal pillars that blocked the gas pumps.

  The Escalade smashed into the front of the Stop and Go, metal screeching and windows blowing out in a cacophonous boom. Even after the SUV lodged in the wall, the engine continued to rev and squeal. Plumes of dust from the crumbled cinderblock rose around the vehicle. People fled from the building. Josie’s lungs screamed for air that wouldn’t come.

  Chapter Two

  Trying to catch her breath, Josie rolled to her other side, causing a sharp pain to shoot through her left leg. A glance at her jeans revealed a large tear going up the side of her calf. Shredded, pink skin peeked out from underneath. She took a deep, full breath at last. Her entire torso felt like a bruise. But she was alive. Nothing appeared to be broken or missing, but her adrenaline pumped too hard to register the relief.

  Looking back toward the Escalade, she saw a smattering of people gathered around the back end of it, keeping a careful distance. As she staggered to her feet, Josie noticed a man, bent at the waist, hanging face down from the rear driver’s side window of the vehicle. Blood fanned across the back of his white T-shirt. What looked like a TEC-9 had landed in the parking lot about ten feet away from the car. Again, she reached for her service weapon and felt a sense of panic at its absence. She stumbled toward the vehicle, trying to right her posture. Pain prickled across her lower back.

  “Get back,” she told the crowd.

  Two women looked on, faces pale. One covered her mouth with her hands. The other pressed her hands to her chest, which heaved in time with the sound of the car alarm going off inside the Escalade. The twenty-somethings were there too, clinging to one another. Near the pumps an older woman leaned against her car, sobbing.

  The driver slumped forward, his forehead on the steering wheel. His window had been shot out. Blood trickled from his ear. His thick black hair was wet with what Josie was sure was more blood. Josie stepped closer to the car and reached gingerly into the driver’s side window, pressing two fingers to the side of the driver’s neck. No pulse. Her fingers came away red.

  The sound of someone retching drew her attention. She raced to the other side of the Escalade. The Stop and Go owner was feet away from the rear passenger’s side, leaned over and vomiting, a shotgun in one hand.

  Josie said, “Give me that.”

  He didn’t protest when she took the gun. Turning back, she saw what had made him sick. Another man hung from the rear passenger’s side window, his neck twisted at an awkward angle.

  She hefted the shotgun up and fitted the stock into her shoulder, keeping the barrel low but at the ready as she prowled toward the front passenger’s seat, cataloging everything she knew so far. Pennsylvania plates. Four occupants, three definitely dead. All three appeared to be of Latino descent, mid to late twenties, and were pretty heavily inked. The two guys in the back had shiny bald heads, and the matching tattoos on the backs of their necks told her they were probably members of a gang. The driver and the man seated behind him had been killed by gunfire, no doubt. The other backseat passenger was more likely killed by the impact of the crash. It looked like a bullet had grazed the side of his head at some point in the gun battle, but she didn’t see any obvious gunshot wounds anywhere else.

  The sound of the front passenger coughing sent her arms flying upward, the barrel of the gun pointed toward the open window. Cautiously, she approached. Behind her, the owner of the Stop and Go called out, “Detective!” His voice was high-pitched with concern.

  Inside the vehicle, the man’s body bucked and shook. As she got closer she saw that, unlike the other occupants, he was white and middle-aged with short dark hair and glasses. He had his seat belt on. Where the other men wore T-shirts, this man had on a plaid button-down shirt with a tie. Blood oozed from a bullet hole in his chest. His face was pinched with pain and smeared with blood. Thin, rice-sized pieces of glass sparkled all over his skin, like someone had sprayed him with glitter.

  His head swiveled toward her and his hazel eyes took her in. Shock coursed through her. She lowered the shotgun. “Mr. Spencer?” she said.

  She drew closer, leaning in toward him. With great effort, he reached a hand through the window. His fingers searched for something to grab onto and found the sleeve of her jacket. Josie locked eyes with him, the look of panic in his face like a sudden splash of cold water down her back. His mouth worked to speak. Blood spilled from his lips. He whispered hoarsely but with a desperation in his tone that went right through her. He said only one word. A name.

  “Ramona.”

  Chapter Three

  Josie sat in the back of an ambulance, an unused ice pack in her hand. Too many places on her body hurt. She needed a body pillow filled with ice, not just a pack. Someone had called 911, and they had responded immediately. She counted three Denton cruisers and two state police cars. Evidently, the shootout had started on the interstate and ended when the Escalade had left the highway and crashed at the Stop and Go. The staties had scoured the interstate for miles in each direction, scouting out each exit as they went, but there was no sign of any other bullet-riddled vehicle. No one could say who the men in the Escalade were exchanging gunfire with.

  Josie watched her colleagues process the scene. Two of the men she knew, but not well. The third man, Dusty Branson, had been Ray’s best friend since elementary school. He had been Josie’s friend as well until her marriage collapsed. Now she found it difficult to be in the same space as him. As expected, the Denton officers looked exhausted and bewildered, but moved with purpose and determination: taking witness statements, erecting tarps around the SUV, taking photographs and marking the evidence scattered throughout the scene.

  “Don’t come over. Don’t come over,” Josie muttered under her breath as she watched Dusty saunter from the back of the Escalade toward her.

  As he came closer, he pulled a notebook from his pocket and flipped it to a blank page. He met her eyes only briefly. She was happy when he looked away. She had never liked his dark, beady eyes, like two pieces of glittering coal. He pushed a hand through his oily brown hair and she felt a small surge of joy to see the premature gray strands at his roots. He wasn’t even thirty yet.

  “So, you saw this?” he said.

  “Yeah,” she replied.

  His pen poised over the blank page. She concentrated on a small stain on the left side of his uniform shirt, just below his rib cage. It looked like coffee. He scribbled as she spoke, his pen freezing just as she told him about Dirk Spencer’s final word before he slipped into unconsciousness.

  “You should write that down,” she said pointedly. “It’s important.”

  He looked up at her. The smirk he gave her caused a swell in her stomach. “You don’t know that it’s important,” he told her.

  “The guy was barely hanging on to life, Dusty. Why would he say the name if it wasn’t important? If this Ramona person wasn’t important?”

  He used the tip of the pen to scratch his temple. “So what? It’s probably just his wife or daughter’s name.”

  “Maybe,” she said, but the whisper of the name kept running loops in her head. She waited for Dusty to write the name down. “Just check it out, okay?”

  “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore,” he told her, closing his noteboo
k and pocketing it.

  She bit back her first response, her hands itching to shove him. But shoving him would involve actually touching him, and few things repulsed her more than making physical contact with Dusty Branson. Instead, she spat, “Yeah, but that doesn’t relieve you of your obligation to do your job, now does it?”

  She held his flinty gaze until he looked away. “I gotta work,” he said, and meandered away like he had nothing to do at all.

  Luckily, no one inside the Stop and Go had been seriously injured. One of the officers had turned the car’s engine off but its alarm continued in an angry, rhythmic series of honks that grated on her frayed nerves.

  “Jo. Jesus Christ.”

  It was Ray, in full uniform, except for his hat. He climbed into the ambulance with her and got close enough to pull her to him, but at the last minute decided to keep his distance. They hadn’t touched in almost a year. Part of her was relieved to see him and grateful that he had shown up to check on her, but the other part of her shivered at the thought. She never thought she’d feel that way; Ray had been a fixture in her life since middle school. They were friends long before they became high school sweethearts. He had always been good-looking in a sweet, boy-next-door kind of way with his thick, tousled blond hair, blue eyes and athletic body. She’d always been secretly pleased that he was hers. Women were drawn to him. They didn’t know he had issues.

  “You okay?” he asked, taking a seat on the bench across from her. His gaze raked over her, searching for injuries.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Just banged up.”

  He nodded toward her leg. “That looks pretty bad.”

  “It’s just a brush burn.”

  “Listen, Jo, about earlier. I’m sorry I snapped at you. This Coleman case has us all on edge. I didn’t mean—”

  A low voice boomed from the outside of the ambulance. “Josie, there you are!”

  Luke appeared, also in full uniform. This was going to be awkward.

  No matter how many times she saw him in his state police gray, Josie was always struck by how imposing he looked, and she knew Ray would be feeling it too as Luke pulled off his cap and bent to climb into the ambulance.

  He was the opposite of Ray in almost every way, which was why she enjoyed him so much, she supposed. As a statie, Luke had to keep his black hair high and tight, shaved close to his head on the sides with a short cap of hair on the top. His face, clean and shaven, was smooth against her cheek when he leaned in to kiss her. He ignored Ray as he folded himself down beside her and slung an arm across her back.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  She sensed Ray’s scowl before she even looked at him. An hour ago she’d been flaunting their engagement over the phone with Ray, and yet Luke’s display of affection in front of him made her uncomfortable. It shouldn’t—she hated that it did—but she wasn’t able to stop herself. He hated Luke. She knew that he made him feel inferior; he was taller, broader, in better shape. He was even hung better, although she had never told Ray. She was saving that one for a day when he really got under her skin.

  She patted Luke’s hand and, after assuring him once more that she was fine, said, “Can I have a minute alone with Ray?”

  A muscle in Luke’s jaw ticked, but he smiled, kissed her softly on the lips and said, “Sure.”

  He made sure to bump Ray’s shoulder on his way out of the ambulance. Ray watched him go, looking both satisfied and wary. “Are you really going to marry that guy?” he asked.

  She sighed and pressed the ice pack, now melted, against her left shoulder. “I’m not talking about this again.”

  “Then why did you want to be alone?”

  “Because I want to know why Isabelle Coleman’s history teacher was in the passenger seat of that Escalade out there.”

  Chapter Four

  Ray glanced toward the open ambulance doors as though he might be able to see Dirk, but he was already halfway to Geisinger Medical Center in critical condition. He had slipped into unconsciousness after saying that one word to Josie, and neither she nor the paramedics had been able to rouse him. He was the only living witness to the shootout, and he’d be lucky if he survived the next few hours.

  “How do you know he was Isabelle Coleman’s teacher?”

  Josie rolled her eyes. “He was on the news last night and again this morning talking about what a good student Isabelle is. Trinity Payne interviewed him. She interviewed everybody. I thought you were on this case.”

  “Yeah, well, the chief’s got me searching the woods out by the Coleman house. I don’t have time to watch the news.”

  “So, you found the phone?”

  His eyes flicked to his lap. “No, a searcher did. It was kind of embarrassing since our guys had already taken a pass in that area right after Coleman went missing. Anyway, this lady found it and called it in. Dusty and I took it into evidence.”

  “Well, a few minutes before the crash I saw Dirk Spencer on the news talking about what a great girl Isabelle is and how everyone just wants her to come home.”

  “You think this…” he motioned toward the crash, “has something to do with Isabelle Coleman’s disappearance?”

  “You mean abduction.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Josie told him about Dirk Spencer whispering the name Ramona before he lapsed into unconsciousness. Three horizontal lines appeared on Ray’s forehead. It was the same look he got when she asked him to pick up tampons at the store. Puzzled consternation. “So what?” he replied. “It’s probably his girlfriend.”

  She sighed. “Yeah, I guess. So what’s the chief holding back on the Coleman case?”

  He stared at her, one eyebrow lifting. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  Josie’s head throbbed. “You think I won’t find out eventually?”

  Exasperated, Ray said, “Why can’t you just follow the rules? Just one time? You’re asking me to put my own job in jeopardy, Jo.”

  She couldn’t contain her incredulous “Puh.” She laughed. “Your job? You’re kidding me, right? You really think the chief would fire you for sharing information with someone in the department? I am your superior,” she reminded him.

  It was a sore subject. He might have been promoted alongside her if the chief hadn’t kept finding empty whiskey bottles in the footwell of his patrol car. Turned out it wasn’t that easy to storm out of an ambulance. He stumbled and nearly fell to the asphalt outside. The last thing Josie heard was “Son of a bitch.”

  Luke slid in beside her with a fresh ice pack, and this time she held it to her temple. Her headache was getting worse by the moment. She needed some ibuprofen. Her adrenaline was fading, leaving her entire body aching.

  “What was that about?” he asked.

  “Just trying to find out what he knows about the Coleman case.”

  He put a hand on her knee. “Josie,” he began, but he didn’t lecture her. She liked that about him.

  “What’ve you got on this mess?” she asked.

  Luke sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Squat, that’s what we’ve got. All we know is that they came from the interstate. But it’s like they were shooting at an invisible car. We know there was another vehicle involved because of all the rounds shot into the Escalade, but all we’ve got are spent bullets.”

  “What kind?”

  “Nine millimeter, 30.06 and some 7.62 by 39s,” Luke said.

  Josie moved the ice pack to her left shoulder. “A handgun and a hunting rifle? Well, that narrows it down. Practically every male in the state has those. The 7.62s are a little less common around here.”

  “AK-47s take 7.62 by 39 rounds. Lots of inner-city gangs use those.”

  “So you think this was a gang thing?”

  “Vehicle is registered to one Carlos Garza of Philadelphia—the driver. He’s a known member of The 23, a Latino gang out of Philadelphia.”

  “That’s the number the ot
her two had tattooed on the backs of their necks. Whatever this was may have started on the interstate, but Philadelphia is two hours away.”

  “You know as well as I do the drug trade doesn’t respect borders,” Luke pointed out.

  “So this could all be over drugs?”

  “Sure looks that way.”

  “Then what was Denton East High’s twelfth-grade history teacher doing in the passenger’s seat, and who’s Ramona?”

  Luke shrugged. “Who knows? Hopefully Spencer will make it through and be able to tell us himself.”

  Chapter Five

  Josie hated not being on the job. She wanted to be out there working. If not on the Coleman case, then on the shooting. That made two extremely unusual crimes in Denton in the past week, and she didn’t get to be a part of solving either of them. She lingered around the Stop and Go for as long as she could but when Trinity Payne pulled up in her WYEP news van, Josie knew it was time to go.

  At home, she locked the door, stripped off her torn clothes and headed straight for the bathroom. She turned the faucet on to fill the tub and inspected herself in the full-length mirror; her entire left side was starting to turn a nasty plum color. She was lucky to have narrowly escaped the Escalade, inches away from being the fourth fatality. Goosebumps prickled her skin. She wished Luke was there. For once, she wished he had the kind of job where he could just call off and spend the rest of the day with her, quieting her anxiety.

  But she was alone for the rest of the day, and it was only noon. She sat on the edge of the tub and eased her lower left leg into it, hissing through gritted teeth as the open skin met the hot water like dipping it in hot lava. The wound wasn’t deep, but it was big. She cleaned it with anti-bacterial soap, patted it dry and, limping, she made her way into the bedroom and sprawled out on her bed. Tucking a pillow beneath her calf to elevate it, she found two ibuprofens in her nightstand and swallowed them dry.