“Yeah. That’s right. Dirk hated those things, but her mom let her do whatever she wanted.”
A memory floated to the surface of Josie’s mind. The mention of the fliers brought it back. She had seen June’s face before: older and with more face jewelry than in the photos on Dirk’s fridge, but definitely the same girl. Josie had asked her chief why they weren’t aiding in the search, and he had told her they’d already expended as many resources as they could to look for the girl, but that in his estimation the most likely scenario was that she’d simply gone back to Philadelphia and taken up with people there. Philadelphia was out of their jurisdiction. Josie hadn’t questioned it at the time. She had no reason to question it and no reason to seek out more details about the case. They did get runaways in Denton: troubled kids, kids with terrible home lives, kids who were addicted to drugs. Most of the time, the families’ efforts to bring their troubled souls back into the fold were half-hearted at best. By the time those kids ran away, it came as a relief. It was sad, but Josie had seen it again and again on the job.
But something about June Spencer’s disappearance didn’t sit well with her now that she knew the details. The only reason that June had been deemed a runaway was her tortured history. Josie had just been out to Dirk Spencer’s house—in the boonies, as they liked to say in Denton—and there was no way that June had just walked off. She would have been miles from anything. She had to have gone somewhere, with someone. Perhaps she had intended to run away, had been walking along the lonely mountain road and been picked up by someone, but there was no way she had run away from Dirk’s house alone, on foot. She may have gotten a lift, but whether she made it to her destination was another story. Josie could see why Dirk had insisted on searching.
“Does Dirk go to Philadelphia often?” Josie asked.
“Hardly ever. He hates it there.”
“Does he keep in touch with anyone from there?”
“Other than his sister? No.”
“No old friends who might be members of a gang?”
Solange’s eyes widened. She pointed to the television. “Oh, right. They’re saying on TV that the men in the car were in a gang, right? What kind of gang?”
“The 23,” Josie told her. “Latino.”
Solange looked even more nonplussed than she had earlier. “I never knew Dirk to have any friends from Philadelphia, much less friends who were in a gang. You’ve, um, seen him, right?”
She nodded; she knew what she meant.
“He’s kind of like, a nerd, you know? I mean, he’s not like, a tough guy or anything. He’s into books and theater and art history.”
Josie thought about the bookshelves lining Dirk’s living room walls. “Yeah, I got that.”
“I don’t think he ever even shot a gun.”
He hadn’t had a gun that morning when Josie had seen him. In fact, he’d been the only person in the vehicle dutifully wearing his seat belt. He didn’t fit. They’d come to pick him up at his home. He’d gotten into the SUV willingly. But he didn’t fit.
Nothing that Josie had heard so far that day fit.
Chapter Ten
The girl woke to total darkness. She lay very still, panic rising in her chest as she blinked several times to make sure her eyes were really open. They were. Around her there was only blackness. Could it have all been a dream? The man in the woods. His hand over her mouth. Him dragging her deeper and deeper into the forest. Then she remembered her very real fear as his hand squeezed more tightly over her mouth and her nose, cutting off her air until her lungs burned and her vision grayed.
Now this. A blackness so complete that she couldn’t even see her own body. This was no nightmare. She had been taken.
Beneath her was what felt like a bed of dirt, rocks, and twigs. The soil slid through her fingers as she felt for something—anything—familiar. The air was moist and fetid. She wondered if she’d been buried alive. No, she told herself as she stood on wobbly legs. The space she was in was too large; she could move around it, and she should. Her hands reached desperately for the walls and a way out, but found nothing except cold, wet stone. The sound of her own sobbing bounced back at her every which way she turned. She used the hem of her shirt to wipe her nose and kept moving, frantically chasing the sides of the chamber, her hands running up and down the brickwork until she was certain there was no way out. “Hello?” she screamed into the thick, muting darkness. Not even an echo returned.
She forced herself to slow down, taking long slow breaths to calm her racing heart as she moved her hands methodically around her, feeling every inch of her cell until, at last, her fingers found something wooden. A door. She pushed against it with all her might but it was thick and immovable. She swept along the edges of it, digging her fingers into the seams, searching for light. There was not one crack, no handle, no lock. Her small fists pounded against the wood until her bones filled with fire and all she could do was scream and scream until her throat was raw and the sound broken.
No one came.
She collapsed, curling into a tiny ball as the chamber grew colder and colder around her. She folded her legs up and inside her skirt to cover them completely, tucked her arms inside her shirt and held her trembling body close.
“Please,” she whispered, rocking back and forth. “I want to go home.”
Chapter Eleven
Josie resisted the urge to have more shots before she left Sandman’s. All the talk about June’s horrific childhood had agitated some of Josie’s own demons—black, amorphous ghosts that lay dormant until disturbed and then threatened to suffocate her. Too much had happened that day, too much had been said. They’d been summoned, and now she felt them swirling around her, pulling her under like a rip current, carrying her off to a dark, fathomless sea. Her limbs dragged as she walked back to her vehicle.
Luke would be working into the night on the interstate shootout, which meant she would be alone. Alone with the stirred-up memories of her past. Luke didn’t know about any of it. She didn’t want him to. She preferred him to see her as she was now—capable, confident, fearless, and whole. Only Ray knew about her past, and he was her past now too. Josie didn’t have many friends who weren’t on the force, which meant everyone was working. There was her grandmother, Lisette—probably her best friend, above all—but she lived in an assisted living facility on the outskirts of town. There really was no one she could call.
Everything had been fine when she was on the job; she worked more than she didn’t, and she loved it. When she wasn’t working, she was with Luke. Tonight she had only her ghosts, her suspicions, a head full of questions and nothing to distract her. She doubled back as she drove past the liquor store; maybe Jim Beam would be a good friend to her tonight.
She was browsing the aisles slowly when she saw a woman from the corner of her eye. At first, Josie nearly didn’t recognize her. She was standing in front of the boxed wine, wearing more clothes than she had probably ever worn in her life. Her long blond hair was pulled back into a pony tail and she wore no make-up or body glitter, just a pair of jeans and a thin blue T-shirt under a brown denim jacket. The transformation was quite amazing, actually. Looking at her in regular clothes, browsing the shelves, Josie would never peg her for the scantily clad, notoriously promiscuous dancer at the local strip club.
Misty must have felt Josie’s heated gaze bearing down on her because she looked up, her eyes widening, cartoon-like, as she saw Josie at the other end of the aisle. Josie noticed she was carrying both a wallet and a cell phone in her hands. No pockets, Josie guessed, as she bit back a joke about there being plenty of room in her panties.