Vanishing Girls

by Lisa Regan

  “Detective Quinn?” he said in a worried, questioning tone.

  She glanced quickly to her left and saw that all the cells were empty, save one. June was curled in a fetal position beneath the cot in one of the single cells. Like a dog. Someone had put a pair of sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt on her.

  Noah stood as Josie drew closer. “Josie,” he said, trying a different tack.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them,” she instructed.

  “What are you doing?”

  She motioned toward June’s cell with her chin, keeping the gun steady on him. “I’m taking her with me.”

  He started to laugh, but then thought better of it. His face flamed red. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Are you involved?” she asked. “Are you with them?”

  He looked genuinely puzzled, but she held fast to her resolve not to trust anyone, not even Noah. “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “Never mind. Just get your keys. Let her out.”

  “You can’t… why are you… what the hell is going on here?”

  “I know what’s going on. I know about Ginger Blackwell. I know about June. I know about Isabelle Coleman.”

  By degrees, his face became more and more pinched. “You know what? Josie, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I know about Ramona,” she hissed.

  No flicker of recognition.

  She said, “It doesn’t matter anyway. Maybe you really don’t know what’s happening in this town or maybe you’re an excellent liar just like my husband. Either way, I’m taking June. Open the cell.”

  He took a few cautious steps around the desk toward her. From inside the cell, June stirred, creature-like, her beady eyes locking onto Josie. She reminded Josie of the animals at the zoo—a wild predator trapped in a cage. She hoped she wasn’t endangering herself. She didn’t want to end up like Sherri Gosnell.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Noah said. “Look, why don’t you take a moment? Go home. Sleep on this. I can meet you tomorrow. We’ll talk about whatever is going on. Let me help you.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” she shouted.

  June moved like a snake, slithering out from beneath the cot and over toward the cell bars. Noah stood between the desk and the cell. The keys to the cells were there on the desk, to his left. His gun hung on his right hip.

  “Just let me help you… sort things out. We can go somewhere else and talk about things.”

  He thought she was crazy. He was trying to de-escalate the situation. He was treating her like a woman about to jump off a bridge.

  “I’m not fucking crazy, Noah. You want to know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy. Isabelle Coleman went missing twelve days ago. There are men on this police force who know where she is, or at least where she was, and yet she’s still missing. What’s crazy is that I found one of her acrylic nails by her mailbox that day you let me into the crime scene—a crime scene in the middle of the damn woods, a good quarter mile from that mailbox. What’s crazy is that June Spencer is wearing Isabelle Coleman’s tongue piercing, but June was missing for a year, which means that June was being held with Coleman at some point. Yet she was found in the home of Donald Drummond who’s not here to tell us what the fuck happened because the chief shot him dead.”

  Her voice escalated. “What’s crazy is that six years ago a woman named Ginger Blackwell was lured onto the side of the road and drugged by a woman calling herself Ramona and the police never even looked for her. What’s crazy is that in the face of indisputable physical evidence they labeled it a hoax. What’s crazy is that as soon as I found out about Ginger’s case, my fiancé was shot. What’s crazy is that his ex-girlfriend, who I was with yesterday, is being framed for the crime. What’s fucking crazy is that there is some fucked-up shit going on in this town, and I am the only person who gives a shit. Now let her out of that cell!”

  With each new nugget of information, Noah’s face grew one shade paler, and his right arm dropped a fraction of an inch lower, toward his gun. Noah had never pulled his weapon in the line of duty, and he would be slow on the draw. His fingers brushed the gun’s handle, but he hadn’t even unfastened his holster. He didn’t stand a chance.

  Josie placed a shot into his right shoulder, the sound of the rifle deafening in the tiny room. Guilt assailed her, but she pushed it aside. By the time he hit the floor, she was already standing over him, unfastening his holster and disarming him, tucking his weapon into the back of her waistband. He lay on the ground, holding his shoulder, turning his head, straining to get a look at the blood blooming on his blue shirt. “You… you shot me,” he gasped.

  “It won’t kill you,” she said. “It’s a .22 and I’m a good shot.”

  He didn’t respond, his eyes gaping at the wound in disbelief. She had a minute, tops, before the desk sergeant made it downstairs. If Noah wasn’t involved, then at least they wouldn’t think he had helped her. If he was involved, then she was glad she had shot him. Snatching up the keys, she stepped over him and unlocked June’s cell. The girl shuffled out, her eyes raking warily over Noah’s prone frame. Using one arm to keep her gun up and at the ready, Josie led June out by the upper arm. She didn’t put up a fight.

  Before they left, Josie took one last look at Noah lying on the floor, blood oozing from the wound in his shoulder. Biting back an apology she pushed June out into the dark, cold night.

  Chapter Fifty

  June sat in the front of Carrieann’s pickup truck, staring out the window as the lit-up buildings of Denton proper gave way to the inky blackness of rural roads. Josie kept glancing over at her. She didn’t know what she expected; the girl had viciously and violently killed a woman with a fork, and yet she was as meek and mute as an abandoned pup. A shiver ran through Josie’s body even though the heat in the old truck was on full blast.

  “I’m going to take you somewhere safe,” she told her.

  No response, and Josie had a sudden flash of how absurd that must sound to June. She’d been rescued from Donald Drummond by people who were every bit as evil as Drummond. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. No wonder she had snapped.

  “I mean it,” Josie told her. “This place is safe. It’s a woman I know. She won’t let anything happen to you. She’ll look after you until…”

  Until what? Until Dirk woke up from his coma? Until Lara could come out of hiding? Until they no longer had targets on their backs? When would June be safe? When would any of them be safe?

  “Until I get things sorted out,” she finished, limply.

  June’s dull eyes never left the window.

  They still had an hour in the car before they reached Carrieann. Josie doubted she would get anything out of her, but she had to try. “June, I need to know. Did Donald Drummond take you?”

  Silence.

  “Or was it Ramona?”

  June’s head swiveled slowly in Josie’s direction, her dark eyes flashing in the low lighting from Carrieann’s dashboard. She looked into Josie’s eyes just as she had in the nursing home.

  “It was, wasn’t it? A woman named Ramona. She picked you up or offered you a ride. Or maybe you met her before and she led you to believe she could help you get out of town. Maybe back to your mom or your friends in Philadelphia. Except she didn’t take you there, did she?”

  June continued to stare at Josie, unblinking, but her eyes were alive again. She was in there, somewhere.

  “You saw Isabelle Coleman, didn’t you?”

  Nothing, the stare slipping back into a vacant deadness.

  “No,” Josie said. Reaching over, she touched June’s forearm. “Don’t go. I know you’re in there. Please talk to me. I need to know what you saw. I need to know what you know.”

  But her head was turned back to the window, back to the nothingness flying past outside.

  With the miles stretched out before them, Josie kept talking, peppering June with questions and reassurances, desperate f
or her to understand that she was on her side. Until, at last, exhausted and out of things to say, she fell silent and they drove the rest of the way with only the blast of the heater filling the cold void between them. As she pulled up on a remote mountain road near the hospital where Carrieann was parked in her SUV, Josie shot one last glance at June, but the girl’s eyes were closed.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Josie unfastened her seat belt and turned her whole body toward June, lightly touching her forearm. “June, wake up. We’re here.”

  June opened her eyes and looked straight past Josie, watching Carrieann walk toward her door with the wariness of a cat.

  “That’s my friend, Carrieann,” Josie said. “June, I have to ask one last time: did you see Isabelle Coleman? Can you tell me anything about where you were held before you came to be with Donald Drummond?”

  Carrieann rattled Josie’s door. Josie wanted to keep trying to get more information from her, but it might take forever. Josie didn’t have forever. Especially after what she had just done. With a frustrated sigh, she opened her door and got out.

  “How’d it go?” Carrieann asked, glancing behind Josie. “That her?”

  “Yeah, that’s her. I shot someone.”

  Carrieann kept her eyes on June. “You kill him?”

  “No.”

  Carrieann shrugged. “No worries, then.”

  Josie was trying to decide whether she was joking or not when Carrieann stepped past her and climbed into the cab of the truck. “Name’s Carrieann,” she told June.

  The girl stared back, unblinking.

  “Where’s Lara?” Josie asked.

  “She wouldn’t come with me. I’m going to meet up with her now.”

  “Carrieann, thank you for doing this. You don’t have to—she could be dangerous,” Josie said, lowering her voice so June wouldn’t hear.

  “You said that earlier,” Carrieann reminded her, matching Josie’s voice with her own whisper. “At the hospital. And I told you I’d do whatever it takes to find out what really happened to my brother. I’m not afraid of that girl.”

  “Maybe you should be.”

  Carrieann raised a brow. “I can be vigilant without being afraid. You stop worrying now. I’ll handle this.”

  “Please be careful,” Josie implored. “Don’t let anyone see her.”

  “You got it.” Carrieann gave her one last meaningful look. “I’ll be back in the morning after I get these two stashed away on my farm. Don’t get killed while I’m gone.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  Josie watched Carrieann drive off with June until the taillights of her truck disappeared into the night.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  She had promised Carrieann that she wouldn’t return to the hospital, but Josie couldn’t leave without seeing Luke one more time. The nurse let her stay an extra ten minutes. It had only been a day, but he already looked thinner. She touched his cool skin and carefully avoided the mess of tubes and wires so she could lean in to kiss his cheek and whisper, “I’m sorry,” before a nurse ushered her out.

  Before leaving, she took a quick scan of the waiting room to make sure Lara wasn’t in there, only to find two troopers sleeping in chairs and a handful of worried relatives. Josie was about to turn away and leave when the sight of Trinity Payne on the television caught her eye. She stood outside the Denton police department, hair whipping in the wind, microphone in hand. Along the bottom of the screen scrolled the words: “Prisoner Taken.” Josie had to get close to the television to hear what she said.

  “… there was only one officer on duty in the holding area this evening when a masked gunman stormed the back door, shot Officer Noah Fraley and kidnapped June Spencer…”

  A masked gunman?

  Guilt was a sharp pain in her chest. Noah had lied. She shot him, and he lied for her. If ever there was a sign that he wasn’t involved, it was this one, perfect lie. But why had he reached for his gun, she wondered? Why hadn’t he tried to convince her that he was innocent, instead of trying to handle her?

  You wouldn’t have believed him, a voice in her head confessed.

  Then a horrible thought struck her. What if he had been reaching for his gun to surrender?

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” she muttered to herself.

  But it didn’t matter. At the time, she had no way of knowing if he was an enemy or not. She had done what she had to do and June was safe.

  Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She ducked out of the waiting room and down the hall as she pulled it out and looked at the display before answering.

  “Ray.”

  “Where is June Spencer?” he asked.

  “Last I heard she was in a holding cell in the basement of Denton’s police building,” Josie said.

  “Are you really going to do this?”

  “Do what?” she said, with a little more feigned innocence than she had intended.

  “Lie,” he growled, his voice growing louder.

  She laughed. “Are you really going to do this? Lecture me about lying? You?”

  There was a long silence. Probably while he catalogued the vast number of lies he had told in the last several years. Then, quietly, he said, “Are you fucking Noah Fraley?”

  She let out a short, uncontrolled burst of laughter. She couldn’t help it. The thought was so absurd. Then the implication of what he was asking sunk in. Was he really implying that she could not possibly accomplish anything unless she used sex to do it? “Maybe your little stripper girlfriend needs to use her vagina to get things done, but I do not.”

  “Jo,” he said, voice softening for a moment.

  “Why would you even go there?”

  “Noah erased the security footage. He left a goddamn trail of blood from holding to the CCTV room. He erased it all—from the outside and the inside.”

  Her heart leapt. “Security footage of what?”

  Again, he sighed. “You know goddamn well what.”

  “No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  She could hear that he was speaking through gritted teeth. “This is not a game, Josie. I can’t protect you if you take this much further. Tell me where June is. I’ll go get her and take her back. They’ll never have to know for sure that it was you.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that. It’s for your own good. Please, Jo. This is serious. I know you’re not good at backing off, but I’m telling you that your life depends on it.”

  A chill enveloped her entire body. The hand holding the phone to her ear trembled. “You think I can just forget about this? Stop asking questions and go back to my life like normal? What about the next time a teenage girl goes missing, Ray? I’m not backing away from this. I remembered where the Standing Man is, and I’m going there.”

  “Josie, don’t. Jesus. Don’t go there. You don’t understand. They’ll kill you.”

  She thought about the woman she elbowed for selling her four-year-old for drugs. She thought about Noah Fraley lying on the tile floor, blood blooming from his shoulder. About Luke in the hospital bed, and June curled up under her prison cot like a child. She had a sudden flash of memory of her mother, of all people. “You can’t always be all roses and sweetness,” she had always told Josie. “That don’t get shit done.”

  “Maybe,” she said to Ray. “Or maybe I’ll kill them.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  In the long, endless hours that followed she tried to move twice, but the pain in her chest was too great. She drifted in and out of a sleep filled with dreams of her sister; sneaking into her bed in the middle of the night, as she often did, snuggling and laughing all night until the daylight crept through the window. Each time she woke, she was devastated anew to find herself in this black nightmare, pain coursing through her body with every breath. She prayed for the boy. Surely the boy would find her and get help.

  The next time the door slid open, the dull gray light of either dawn or dusk leaked into the ch
amber. From where she lay, curled towards the wall, she heard two sets of footsteps draw closer. One set heavy, the other set light. The boy. She didn’t dare look over her shoulder as hope surged inside her again in the warm glow of the flashlight that shone down on her.

  “I—I don’t understand,” the boy whispered.

  The fear in his voice told her that he would not save her.

  “This one’s mine,” said the man. “One day, you’ll get your own.”

  Hot tears streaked her face and a large hand reached down and wiped one of them away. “Shhh, hush now,” he whispered. “Hush now, my sweet Ramona.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Back in her own vehicle, Josie drove for an hour and a half in darkness, staying off the interstate, using only the rural roads to get to the turn-off to her great-grandparents’ old house. They had owned twenty acres of land which they had sold to Alton Gosnell when Josie was five years old. Alton, and Alton’s father before him, had owned roughly ten acres abutting the twenty acres that Josie’s great-grandparents lived on. The property was near the top of one of the mountains on Denton’s outskirts. It was remote and about thirteen miles from the center of Denton, but still considered part of the city.

  Like the Colemans’ place, her great-grandparents’ old house was high off the road, at the end of a long, rutted driveway overgrown with grass and brush. She drove past the entrance to it three times before she found it. The Gosnells had erected two steel bars with a chain between them on which hung a “No Trespassing” sign. Once she saw it, she drove a half mile down the road to a wide area of shoulder. She pulled off the gravel and into the trees, her shocks protesting as she rode over a downed fence and a few small logs. She couldn’t risk being seen from the road. Once her vehicle was safely nestled behind a grove of trees, she turned off the engine and climbed into the backseat. She had an emergency kit that had a blanket inside it. She retrieved the blanket and stretched out beneath it, Carrieann’s Marlin in her hands.