by Lisa Regan
She stilled, but Josie could feel every muscle in her tensed. The moment Josie let go, she would bolt.
“I think I’m in danger too. My fiancé tried to help me find out why women are going missing around Denton, and he got shot for it. He’s in the ICU, same as your brother. I think I’m next. Please.”
Lara’s muscles relaxed slightly. “Have you… have you seen June?”
“I saw them both, Lara. The car Dirk was in almost ran me over when it crashed. I was the last one to talk to him before he went into a coma. I saw June right after she killed that woman in the nursing home. I need to talk to you. I won’t tell anyone you’re here, or that you’re you.”
She relaxed a little more, and Josie slowly loosened her grip until she had released Lara completely, staying close though in case she made a run for it. Lara turned and straightened her clothes. Up close, Josie could see how thin she really was, a different woman from the one in the photo of her, June and Dirk that Josie had found on Dirk’s fridge. The scrubs and hoodie hung on her. Her cheeks looked sunken in. Tattoos climbed up her neck almost to her chin. She said, “No one knows who I am anyway. I got fake ID.”
“Oh. Well that’s good, then.”
Lara looked Josie up and down, assessing. “You got any money? I sure am hungry.”
“Actually, I don’t. I just spent my last five dollars in the cafeteria.”
“You got any credit cards? They take those.”
She hadn’t wanted to use her card for a meal that only cost a few dollars, but then she remembered the baskets and shelves in front of each food station. She should probably get some snacks for later. She could leave them in her car. “Okay,” she told Lara. “Let’s go.”
The cafeteria was now packed and Josie was grateful. No one paid them any mind at all as Lara greedily loaded up a tray with food: cheeseburger and fries, taco bowl, chef salad, yogurt and three bottles of iced tea. Josie bit back a protest as the cashier rang it all up and she reluctantly handed over her credit card.
Lara ate hungrily, her hood pulled low over her head, shoving food into her mouth like she was in some kind of eating contest.
“Put your hood back down,” Josie hissed. “Having it up draws attention. When’s the last time you ate?”
Hastily, Lara pushed her hoodie down and kept on shoveling food into her mouth. “Few days ago,” she said around a mouthful of food.
Josie waited for Lara to slow down, surprised by how much the skinny woman could put away. Her eyes drifted back to the television on the wall. More news. It would go on for a few hours, refreshing every half hour until the afternoon when the daytime soap operas came on.
“How’s Dirk?” she asked.
Lara shrugged. “He’s shot up. Got a big tube down his throat. Machine breathes for him. How do you think?”
“I’m sorry.”
Another shrug, as if to say, “Whatever.”
If June had been anything like her mother, Josie could see why Solange had found her to be such a challenge. “Lara,” she said. “What was Dirk doing in an SUV full of gang members from Philadelphia?”
“How do you know they were gang members?”
“Tattoos.”
“Oh. I don’t know.”
“Lara. Be straight with me. This is serious. Your brother is fighting for his life.”
Lara looked up at Josie, eyes flashing. “You think I don’t know that? He’s all I got. Him and June.” She tapped a finger against her temple. “And I heard June ain’t really there no more.”
“Then tell me the truth so I can help you.”
Lara gave her another appraising glance and her pinched expression told Josie that she didn’t like what she saw. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure yet. First, I need to know what I’m dealing with. Tell me what you know.”
Lara twisted the cap off one of her iced teas and gulped down half the bottle. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hoodie sleeve, she narrowed her eyes. “I need cigarettes.”
“You can’t get cigarettes in a hospital.”
“No, but you can get them down the road with that credit card.”
“I’m not buying you cigarettes, Lara.”
She chugged down the rest of the iced tea and went to work on the taco bowl, now eating with a prim slowness that made Josie want to scream. She could see why Dirk had fought so hard to get June out of her sphere of control. Josie waited patiently until she had finished and gulped down another half bottle of iced tea. She watched the WYEP coverage of Luke’s shooting play again, followed by a story about Sherri Gosnell. The headline read: “Local Murder Victim Laid to Rest.” The screen cut to the outside of the large Episcopal church on Denton’s west side where people gathered in knots. Six men emerged from its red double doors, faces drawn, wearing suits and carrying Sherri’s coffin. Next the screen cut to the graveside service, zooming in on the man Josie assumed was Sherri’s husband, Nick Gosnell. He was barrel-chested and slightly overweight. Average height, with light-brown hair peppered with gray and parted down the middle. His goatee was also graying. From what she could see, one of his eyes was swollen and badly bruised, as though someone had given him a black eye. Had he gotten into a fight? Gotten drunk, fallen and hit his face? People did crazy things when they were grieving. Remembering the sight of Sherri’s body, Josie was betting he’d gotten drunk and fallen down. His good eye brimmed with tears as he watched his wife being lowered into the ground. Josie felt a wave of sadness engulf her and pushed it away. She needed to focus.
She turned back to Lara. “Six years ago, a woman named Ginger Blackwell was abducted, held for three weeks, and raped by multiple assailants. She was drugged and dumped on the side of the road. The police made a half-assed attempt at investigating the whole thing before they declared it a hoax. I’ve looked at the file; it wasn’t a hoax. Ginger didn’t do it to herself. Today I talked to her and she told me that the last thing she remembers before being taken is talking to one, possibly two women on the side of the road. One was a woman whose car broke down. She looked like a chemo patient. She thinks there was another woman there as well, a younger woman who said her name was Ramona.”
Lara sat back in her seat, folding her arms across her thin chest. The corners of her mouth turned down in a skeptical frown.
“Do you know what the last thing Dirk said to me was? When he was bleeding out in that SUV crashed into the side of a building?”
Lara didn’t move, but Josie caught a flicker of interest in her eyes.
“He said one word: Ramona.”
Lara said nothing.
“And your daughter? After she killed that nurse, she wrote something on the wall in blood. Do you know what she wrote?”
Lara’s face darkened, her shoulders jerking just a fraction. This had not been released to the press, so Josie was sure that it was the first time June’s mother was hearing about what actually happened at the crime scene. Still, she didn’t ask. She merely stared at Josie.
“Ramona.”
“So?” Lara said finally.
“Who is Ramona?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know no Ramona.”
“Dirk and June know a Ramona, obviously. Ginger Blackwell believes that she met a Ramona before she was kidnapped.”
Lara reached out and untwisted the cap on her final iced tea, but didn’t open it. “I don’t know who Ramona is, and I don’t know why they know her name. Dirk didn’t tell me everything. Said it was for my own good.”
“What do you mean?”
She clammed up again, hugging herself and looking down at the table. “I already said too much. I’m done.”
“Lara.”
A piece of lettuce from the remains of her taco bowl suddenly distracted Lara. Thin fingers reached out and picked up her fork, using it to pick at the lettuce.
“Did June have a pink tongue barbell that said ‘Princess’?”
Lara continued to push the lettuce around on her tray, but s
he shook her head slowly back and forth. “No,” she mumbled. Then she made a huffing sound. “June wouldn’t be caught dead wearing something pink, much less something that said Princess.”
“There’s a girl missing right now,” Josie said. “Her name is Isabelle Coleman.”
As though her words had conjured Isabelle Coleman, the teenager’s face flashed across the television screen above Lara’s head. It was one of the many Facebook photos they’d pulled from her page. In this one she stood on the sidelines of Denton East’s football field. It was night, but the stadium lighting lit the field. In the background glowed the scoreboard, showing Denton up by seven points. Isabelle wore a light-green jacket and smiled brightly, almost as if someone had caught her in mid-laugh. She was breathtaking. Beneath her photo the words read: “Search for Missing PA Girl in Second Week.” The camera cut to a reporter standing beside a large video screen with Isabelle’s photo on it. But it wasn’t Trinity Payne. It was a man. A very familiar man.
“So what?” Lara said.
For a moment, Josie couldn’t figure out what was going on. Where was Trinity Payne? Why was this world-renowned news anchor reporting for WYEP? Why would WYEP call Isabelle a “missing PA girl” when the entire viewing audience already knew exactly what state they were in?
Without taking her eyes from the screen, Josie said, “So I think that the Coleman case might be related to the Blackwell case, and as of my conversation with Ginger Blackwell this morning, I also think it’s related to June.”
But the man on the television screen wasn’t reporting for WYEP. He was the news anchor for the national network morning show. That’s why he was so familiar. WYEP was just an affiliate. In fact, the WYEP newscast had ended. Now the network morning show was playing. Trinity Payne had done it. She’d gotten the Coleman case national coverage.
“I told you I don’t know no Ramona,” Lara said.
“Yes, but you know something. You might not know that you do, but you know something. I need to know why your brother was in that car. After he was brought here no one could find you. You’ve obviously been hiding. Why? What did he tell you? What was he planning to do?”
The anchor stopped talking and the screen cut to a montage of images and short videos: Isabelle in various photos, vehicles crowded around the Coleman home, searchers picking through woods around Denton.
With a sigh of resignation, Lara said, “I don’t know what he was planning to do, that’s the thing. He didn’t tell me anything. He said that he couldn’t tell me anything because it was too dangerous.”
“What was too dangerous?”
Lara tossed her fork back onto the tray. “He didn’t think June ran away. He was obsessed over it. She ran away from me before, but whatever. He thought something was wrong. I told him to do what he needed to do, but I just figured, you know, one day she’d show up. Anyway, one weekend he comes down to see me, and he says he thinks he knows where she is and what happened to her, but he wouldn’t tell me. All he would say was it was a very dangerous situation. He thought he needed help.”
“Like the kind a gang can offer?”
“Dirk went to school with this Hispanic kid—Esteban Aguilar. He’s in charge of this gang now around my neighborhood. I didn’t even know Dirk still talked to the guy or knew where to find him. I told him don’t mess with no gangs. It’s not a good idea. I said, call the police. Just call the police. He said he couldn’t. So he goes to see Esteban. I don’t know what they talked about. I just know that a few weeks later he calls me up and tells me that Esteban is going to send some guys to help him get June.”
Another set of words appeared at the bottom of the television screen, beneath another photo of Isabelle grinning: “New Cell Phone Footage from the Day of Abduction Released.” Next came a video of Isabelle and another teenage girl in what looked like a bedroom. Josie recognized the other teen as Isabelle’s best friend. She’d talked on camera to Trinity many times since Isabelle’s abduction. Josie knew that the girl had stayed overnight at Isabelle’s house the night before Isabelle went missing. She’d left that morning while Isabelle’s parents were still home. The camera was tight on the girls’ faces, blocking out much of the background. They were giggling and talking and making faces at the camera.
“I said, get her from where,” Lara went on. “He said he couldn’t tell me. He said he couldn’t tell me anything. He just said that I would know if something went wrong because it would be on the news. He said if something went wrong, I should hide, and then he said ‘under no circumstances’ was I to call the police. He said the police were crooked.”
Josie was listening to Lara’s words, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the television screen. In the video, as she mugged for the camera, Isabelle made a face like she smelled something rotten. She lifted her hand to wave it back and forth in front of her nose. Her nails were long—acrylic nails like the kind you got in a nail salon. They were pink with yellow stripes. Suddenly Josie couldn’t breathe.
Lara said, “He said the police were mixed up in it.”
Chapter Forty-Five
The stall door clanged open and Josie rushed toward the toilet, falling to her knees and vomiting up everything that her precious five dollars had bought her. Her body rebelled against her. Once everything was up, she dry-heaved until her abdomen contracted painfully. A woman who had been in the restroom two stalls over stood anxiously behind her. Josie could see her white sneakers beneath her dark blue scrubs.
“Honey, are you okay?” she asked.
Josie had no idea where Lara had gone; hopefully she was still at the table. She nodded her forehead against the toilet seat. “Something I ate,” she breathed. “I’m fine.”
The woman’s feet left and returned again, closer this time. A paper towel appeared next to Josie’s face. “Take this.”
Josie thanked her and stumbled to her feet. The woman was young and blond and smiling sympathetically at Josie. Maybe it was the blond hair or her perfect skin, but she fleetingly reminded Josie of Misty.
“I’m sorry,” she told the nurse. “I’m going to be sick again.”
She turned back toward the toilet, leaning over it while her body convulsed, wishing she was alone to process what she had just seen and heard.
Ray. The man she had known and loved her entire life. He had lied about the acrylic nail. Why? There was no way he was involved in Isabelle Coleman’s abduction, but was he covering for someone? Dusty? The chief? Were they all covering for someone, or multiple someones? How far did it go? Her head spun.
The nurse laid a palm on Josie’s back, between her shoulder blades. “Do you need me to call someone, hon?”
The FBI, Josie thought.
“No, no,” she told the nurse. “I’m fine, really.”
She straightened, turned and headed for the sink where she splashed water on her face. In the mirror she could see the nurse hovering, still looking concerned. Josie forced a tight smile. “Really, I’m okay now. You don’t have to stay with me.”
The nurse pulled a cell phone from one of her scrubs pockets and looked at the display. “I really have to get back to work,” she said.
“Go ahead,” Josie told her. “I just need a few moments to compose myself. I’m fine now. Thank you.”
With one last anxious glance in Josie’s direction, she left the restroom. Josie splashed cold water on her face a few more times, rinsed her mouth with water from the faucet, and smoothed her hair down. The door swung open and Josie tensed, watching the mirror. But it was just Lara.
“What the hell was that?” she asked. She held out the granola and protein bars that Josie had bought with her credit card. “You sick or something?”
Josie took the bars from her and stuffed them into her jacket pockets. “Or something,” she said ruefully. “Listen, do you have somewhere safe you can go, for today? Can you stay out of sight?”
Lara leaned against the sink next to Josie, her fingers fidgeting with the zipper on her hoodie. �
��Sure,” she said. “What are you going to do now?”
Josie tore a paper towel from the dispenser beside the sinks and dried her hands. “I’m going to talk to my husband.”
Chapter Forty-Six
She found an area outside near the entrance, but far enough away from it that no one would overhear her. Immediately after Luke’s shooting, the press had descended on the hospital, hungry for news of his condition, but now only two news vans sat across from the hospital’s entrance, their occupants nowhere to be found.
Pacing back and forth, she dialed Ray. The call went to voicemail and she hung up without leaving a message. From the other side of the entrance, Lara stared at her. Josie had no idea where she’d found a cigarette, but she lifted one to her lips and inhaled. Josie waited three long, tortuous minutes and dialed again. This time, he picked up on the fourth ring.
“Jo?”
The moment she heard his voice—so familiar, a voice that had been a source of comfort to her since she was nine years old—a sob rose in the back of her throat. She tried to keep it down, but her voice cracked when she said his name.
Ray’s voice was filled with concern and a tinge of urgency. “Jo?” he said again. “Are you okay? What’s going on? Where are you?”
She took in a long, shuddering breath. “I’m with Luke,” she said, her voice shaking. “But I guess you know that, don’t you?”
He completely missed the accusatory note in her voice. “I’m sorry, Jo,” he said. “I saw it on the news. How is he?”
So he was going to act stupid, normal, like he hadn’t lied to her face. “He’s clinging to his life, you asshole.”
He sounded genuinely confused. “What?”
“You and your… cronies know exactly how he’s doing. Tell me, Ray. Did the shooter mean to kill him or just to wound him? Who did you send? Because whoever it was—they’re not a very good shot.”