Vanishing Girls

by Lisa Regan

  “Sherri Gosnell is Ramona?”

  Again she felt him shake his head. “No, Ramona is like a code word. Like, you come to the house and ask for her and they bring you here.” She felt him lift one hand to indicate where they were.

  She thought of Ginger’s words and shivered. “To a black box like this?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t go through with it. Sherri told us to wait and she would get Nick. Then he came out, and he was smiling like he was all happy and it reminded me of that guy at the body shop when we were kids. Remember him? He used to offer girls rides to the mall. Like, why is a grown man with no kids giving thirteen-year-olds rides to the mall, you know? Like, he was a perv.”

  Josie swallowed the acid that rose in the back of her throat. “I remember him.”

  “Well, that’s exactly how Nick looked. So he says come on back and leads us out into the woods. In the dark. He had one of those battery-operated lanterns. So we’re following him, and I ask Dusty what the hell are we doing, and he says Nick’s got girls. I said what do you mean and he just says, you know, Nick keeps girls back here, and if you know the code word and you’re willing to pay for it, you can come and do whatever you want with them. I asked where does he get the girls and Dusty got all mad at me and told me to shut up and stop being such a pussy.”

  “Never mind that you’re all cops,” she muttered. “So, what happened next?”

  “Well we get down to the bunker. I can see there’s a door, but before we go inside Dusty gives me this whole thing about how once I go in, there’s no turning back. He kept calling it a brotherhood, like, you can’t rat people out. He said if I said something to the wrong person, it could get me killed. Or you. He kept asking me, are you sure you want to do this, or maybe you should just ask out the stripper at the club.”

  “You chose Misty.”

  “No. Yes. No, no. I mean, it wasn’t about Misty. The truth is…”

  He trailed off and she felt him raise his chin and blow out a long stream of air. “I was scared, okay? I had a bad feeling. Why did he need to threaten me? And there was no light coming from the place or anything. It was just weird. It was weird that you needed a code word. I didn’t really want to know what was on the other side of the door, ’cause if I knew then I would have to do something about it, and—”

  “You’re a pussy?” she said pointedly.

  “Jo, come on.”

  “It’s true, Ray. You knew something was wrong from the moment they took you there, but you chose to do nothing. Don’t act like you’re some big martyr. Walking away without doing anything makes you every bit as bad as those other guys who came in here and… and…” She couldn’t say it.

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Really? What was it like, Ray?”

  “I didn’t really know how bad it was. All I really knew was that this guy was running a brothel out of his backyard bunker that a lot of cops had visited. No one wanted to get busted.”

  “Sure,” she said sarcastically.

  He was silent for several moments. She tried to wait him out, but she couldn’t take it any longer. She said, “What did you do?”

  Ray sighed, “I said I wasn’t ready for it, and I walked back to the car. I waited for them there. Then they took me home. We never talked about it again.”

  “You and Dusty?”

  “No. We never discussed it. Well, until Isabelle Coleman went missing.”

  “You thought Gosnell took her?”

  “I didn’t know. After a week or so and no sign of her, I had to ask him.”

  She kicked out in frustration. She wanted to push away from him, but his arms were the only thing keeping her from being sucked into the abyss. “Ray, if you thought Gosnell had her, why didn’t you just come up here and bust her out of here? If you thought Gosnell was holding women against their will, why didn’t you do anything?”

  “Because… Because you don’t understand how deep this goes. It wasn’t that simple. If she was really here, and he had taken her, and all the guys on the force knew about it, do you know what that would mean?”

  “Do all the guys on the force know about this place?”

  “I don’t know. A lot do. A whole lot. And it’s not just here. It’s not just police either. I think… I think Gosnell’s been at it for a long time.”

  Disgust rose in her. “His wife knew. She helped him. How could she do it? All those women.” Suddenly June’s vicious fork attack seemed too good a death for Sherri Gosnell. It all made sense.

  “Yeah,” Ray agreed. “I think she lured them. Sometimes, anyway.”

  “So you just asked Dusty outright?”

  “Well, yeah, basically. I asked him if he thought Gosnell had anything to do with Isabelle Coleman going missing. He told me to shut my mouth and stop asking stupid questions.”

  “But when we talked on the phone you made it sound like you knew she wasn’t here. Like she was but she wasn’t anymore. What the hell, Ray?”

  “Dusty came to me. A few days ago. He said Gosnell told him that he had her but that she got away.”

  Every muscle in her body tensed, a slight quickening. If she got away, she might still be alive.

  “That was when everyone went crazy, like looking for her around the clock. We started getting all these tips, sightings of her walking along roads or in the woods. It was different than when she first went missing, you know? Like all these guys were freaked out that they would get busted so it was more important to find her than before.”

  She shuddered. “What were they going to do when they found her?”

  She felt him shrug. “I have no idea.”

  Josie had some ideas. “And the chief, is he—?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He hasn’t said anything?”

  “No one says anything, Jo. I mean, Dusty said something to me but that’s it. It’s not something anyone talks about.”

  “Ray.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What happens to the girls when Gosnell is done with them?”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  It was impossible to tell how long they’d been there, but it seemed endless. Ray had felt his way around most of the tiny cell and found a toilet in one corner which they used to relieve themselves. They were both thirsty and starving. The only water was the toilet water, but they agreed they weren’t that desperate yet. Josie still had the granola bars in her jacket that she had bought at Geisinger. There were four in all. They each ate one and resolved to save the other two for later. They clung to one another and talked until they could no longer stay awake.

  Josie had no idea how long they slept, but she woke to Ray shivering uncontrollably. She had fallen asleep with her head in his lap, and now her skull bobbed as his legs shook. Her fingers searched his body, reaching up to his face. Cupping his cheeks in her palms, she got onto her knees and leaned in close. “Ray,” she said. “Ray!”

  He moaned.

  A surge of adrenaline shot through her like it had just been injected directly into her heart. Every sense sharpened. His ragged breath sounded deafening. Why was he shivering? He said he wasn’t badly injured.

  “Oh my God, Ray!”

  Of course he said that. He’d lied. He was trying to keep her calm. She felt for the zipper on his jacket and slipped her hands inside, walking her fingers over every inch of him until she found the wound. When her fingers pressed into the tender, torn skin, he cried out. It was on his left side, closer to his back than his front. She knew from her training there wasn’t all that much on the left side of your abdomen, which was why he was still alive. But he was going into shock. She couldn’t tell how much blood he had lost. Or how much time he had. Her T-shirt would work well as a bandage. She took her jacket off, tossed it to the side and pulled her T-shirt over her head. Shivering in just her bra and tank top, she balled the T-shirt up and pressed it against his wound.

  “Jesus, Ray.”

  By f
eel she switched places with him, leaning her back against the wall and lowering him down so that his head lay across her lap. She felt for the shirt, making sure it was firmly pressed against his torn flesh and then laid her jacket across his chest. One hand stroked his hair as hot tears rolled down her cheeks and landed on his face and neck. With her other hand she found them and gently wiped them away. He was burning up, his skin on fire. She wished she could see him, see his face. She cursed the darkness yet again, and she cursed Nick Gosnell for putting them here.

  “Ray,” she said loudly. “I need you to talk to me. I need you to stay with me. Ray!”

  He moaned again, uttered a few incoherent words. She said his name again and again, each time her tone more strident. His words became clearer. “Need to talk… you about… and Misty…”

  They were few, but his words hurt. She couldn’t bring herself to be cruel. “I know,” she croaked. “You want to marry her and live happily ever after. Ray, it’s fine. I’m okay with it. You have my blessing. Please stop worrying about that.”

  He relaxed a bit, although his body still trembled. She gathered him into her and held him as tightly as she could, trying to still him. “Stay with me,” she whispered to him. “Stay with me.”

  It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. But eventually Ray’s body went still. She felt his throat for a pulse and cried out in relief when she found one—thready, but there. It took a few moments to extricate herself from beneath him. She took her jacket back, balled it up and put it beneath his head and took a few minutes to feel her way around the cell. The walls seemed to be made of concrete—cinderblocks maybe. There was a slab of wood on hinges which was pressed against the wall, like one of those baby-changing tables that hung on the walls in women’s bathrooms, only this one was adult-sized. She considered trying to pull it out and get Ray onto it but decided it would be more work than it was worth in the dark. Plus, moving him could prove fatal at this point. Finally, she felt seams in the wall which could only be a door. There was no knob and what felt like rubber furring strips sealed the bottom of it. Still, she got down on her hands and knees and pressed her mouth against the bottom edge where she might be most likely to make herself heard.

  Then she screamed her head off.

  She screamed until her throat was raw and her voice hoarse. First she screamed for help, and when it didn’t come she called Gosnell every name in the book. A far-off groaning answered her. The breath froze in her lungs. There was another woman.

  “Oh my God, Ray,” Josie whispered over her shoulder. “There’s someone else here. He’s got someone else.”

  Not Isabelle Coleman. Who, then? Someone reported missing, perhaps, who remained missing because of the police department’s deliberately lackluster efforts to find these types of victims. Anger flared white-hot inside of her, and she began her onslaught anew.

  She screamed and beat against the door until she could barely move, taking breaks only to check on Ray, whose pulse was becoming more and more difficult to find. As she slumped against the door, chest heaving, sleep hovered around the edges of her consciousness. She fought against it, not even realizing that she had lost the battle until she was startled awake by the noise of something scraping across the floor outside her cell. She lifted her head from the ground and pressed her ear to the door. Footsteps. What sounded like furniture moving.

  “Ray,” she hissed over her shoulder. “Someone’s coming.”

  Her hands flailed in the darkness until she found some part of Ray’s body. A knee. She followed it to his throat, her fingers sinking into the flesh, searching for a pulse. Where his skin had been fiery earlier now it was cold.

  “Ray.”

  She felt the other side of his throat. There was nothing. She found his parted lips, her cheek hovering over them, hoping to feel a soft exhalation of air. Nothing.

  “No—Ray!”

  She could not keep the hysteria out of her voice. Oxygen pressed out of her lungs, escaping faster than she could take it in again. Dizziness swept over her. This could not be happening. This was a nightmare. She would wake up any second and she’d be in her big, beautiful bedroom. Luke would be in her kitchen cooking scrambled eggs, and Ray would be leaving angry messages on her phone, telling her to leave Misty alone. She would return to work with the men she had known for five years, and they would all be good men. Honest men who knew nothing of Gosnell’s bunker.

  Ray had hurt her. Wounded her deeply in that vulnerable place in her soul that she had never shared with anyone else—not even Luke, not really. But he was so much a part of her reality, it was hard to imagine living without him. He had always been there—only a phone call away. He was a liar, a cheater, a criminal and, she had to admit, a coward. But he had always been hers. He had been hers since they were kids. He was a part of her identity. Good or bad, she wasn’t ready for this.

  “Ray,” she gasped, cupping his face in her hands and pressing a kiss to his unyielding mouth. “Please don’t leave me. Not like this.”

  She laid her body over his, taking in his scent for the last time, willing him to wake up, wrap his arms around her one more time, tell her he would protect her, tell her he wouldn’t let Gosnell or anyone else hurt her. But she was alone in the dark. More alone than she had ever been in her life.

  How was she back here again? Alone in the closet, paralyzed by her own fear, terrified of what waited for her on the other side of the door. With her mother—drunk, hateful, spiteful—she knew what to expect. But what about Gosnell? She knew he was violent, that he had no problem hurting women. He’d killed Ray. She held on to that because it made her angry, and she needed her anger for when that door finally opened. She imagined herself as a fire, starting out slow and growing until she lit up the whole room. When he opened the door she would burst—an explosion of grief, hate, and anger. Her hands held on to Ray’s lifeless body as her mind held tightly to her rage. Now, she had to wait.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  When the door to her cell finally scraped open Josie lifted her head from Ray’s corpse, disoriented and blinded by the soft, hazy light that crept in, and scrambled to her feet, swaying on unsteady legs. One hand covered her eyes. She squinted and then blinked rapidly, trying to bring Gosnell’s looming figure into focus. He was just a black, man-shaped shadow filling up the doorway. His voice boomed inside the tiny space, “He dead yet?”

  She didn’t speak, trying to take in the room around her between the colored light spots that assaulted her eyes. The walls were cinderblock, as she had suspected, but painted red. The wooden fold-down slab was just as she had pictured it. The toilet was a grime-covered white. She purposely kept her gaze away from Ray’s prone form. She didn’t think she could bear it. If she saw him—what Gosnell had done to him—she would lose control and have nothing left to fight the man who stood before her.

  His shadowy hand beckoned. “Come on, then,” he said.

  “No.” Her voice sounded like a door creaking.

  Gosnell’s black form moved closer. “What did you say to me, girl?”

  She gathered what little saliva there was in her mouth, swallowed and said, “I said, NO.”

  His laughter was like a foul smell filling up the tiny space. “Girls don’t say no to me, honey.”

  He came at her then, faster and more agile than she anticipated. Or maybe she was just weaker and more dazed than she thought. She struck the soft flesh of his torso but it had no effect as he grabbed a handful of her hair and dragged her out of the cell. The wound at the back of her head threatened to pull open and tear her scalp apart. She screamed in spite of herself, her feet scrambling to keep up with him. Outside the tiny cell, he tossed her and she landed on something high and soft. A bed, she realized once she had a chance to take in her surroundings—a king-sized, four-poster bed.

  The room was large and oblong, with the bed taking up one corner of the rectangle. From it, Josie could see the entire length of the room. It was windowless and decora
ted like a living room; couches lined one wall with at least three small end tables, and small lamps sat on each, casting a soft, golden glow over the room. The floor was covered in an old brown shag carpet. Along the same wall as the bed, to her left, was a door slightly ajar, revealing a toilet and what looked like a shower curtain. A bathroom. The wall across from the couches held four doors, each one wallpapered in an outdated floral purple and white print to look as though it was part of the wall. Only the seams and the lever handles on each one gave them away. Mortise locks atop reinforced steel panels were affixed beside each door handle. Above them were sliding deadbolts.

  Four doors.

  Her heart stopped, beat twice, skipped and then kicked into overdrive. Four doors. That meant there could be four women there at any given time, possibly more if they were sharing cells. How many women had Gosnell kept over the years? How many women were here right now?

  She blinked, trying to get the soft blur of the room to come into sharper focus. Gosnell was on the other end of the room, leaning over a small refrigerator that she hadn’t noticed. Next to it was a heavy exterior panel door. That must be the exit. On the other side of the fridge was a white cabinet with glass doors holding what looked like vials of medication and unused needles. The sedatives.

  He turned and sauntered back to her, a beer can in his hand. He opened it with a snap that sounded oddly muted. There was a strange absence of sound in the place. As if every noise was instantly absorbed by the walls and the earth beyond it. No wonder her screams had been useless. As he came closer, into the circle of light cast by the bedside lamp, she saw just how dark and ugly his black eye was. It looked even worse than when she’d seen it on television.