She glanced at the empty doorway, and when she looked back at June the girl was staring at her again, the lucidity in her light-brown eyes so stark and startling that Josie’s breath caught. Panic welled inside her.
The girl leaned forward and Josie instinctively flinched, throwing a hand up—but no attack came. Craning her neck, June brought her face within inches of Josie’s, opened her mouth, and stuck her tongue out as far as she could. In the center of it was a small pink ball with a word written on it. Lizard-like, June retracted her tongue before Josie’s brain could properly process the word. Tiny, white letters. Barely readable. Princess.
“Where did you—where did you get that, June?” Josie asked.
But the moment was over. The girl retreated back into herself, her eyes as blank and empty as polished stones, her scarlet palm massaging Sherri Gosnell’s blood into the final letter.
Chapter Twenty-One
Josie sat in a chair next to Noah Fraley’s desk, staring down at her sneakers and waiting to talk with the chief while Noah made awkward attempts at conversation. “Did you know Mrs. Gosnell’s father-in-law is a patient at Rockview?”
She had tried like hell to stay away from Sherri’s blood, but there it was—a browning crust around her soles. There was no avoiding it. Not in that room. Not after the way June had killed her. “They’re called residents,” she told Noah, absently.
“What?”
She was trying to focus on Noah, but kept seeing June’s tongue extended toward her. Princess. What was Isabelle Coleman’s tongue barbell doing in June Spencer’s mouth? Noah stared at her expectantly. She said, “In nursing homes, they’re not called patients. They’re called residents. They live there.”
Noah’s face flushed. “Oh.”
She hadn’t meant to embarrass him. Quickly, she said, “I knew that Sherri’s father-in-law is a resident there. I see him there sometimes when I visit my grandmother. Saw him today, actually. He’s the one with the artificial larynx, always accusing Sherri of stealing it. Must be a family joke. Sherri’s husband is—was—the plumber, right?”
Josie couldn’t remember his first name, but knew he was a Gosnell. She knew this because over a year ago, when their hot water heater burst, Ray had categorically refused to call the man—or any plumber—insisting on installing the new one himself, even though he had no plumbing experience whatsoever. The fight that ensued between Josie and Ray had been a big one. It was almost as though letting another man fix something in his house was a violation. As if letting a plumber install a hot water heater was the equivalent of letting a stranger have a go at your wife. The irony was not lost on Josie.
“Nick,” Noah supplied. “Nick Gosnell. They told him about an hour ago. He was out on an emergency call. Dusty tracked him down. Poor guy. Can you imagine? I heard they were high school sweethearts.”
Josie frowned. “That’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
She expected more blushing from Noah, perhaps a muttered apology or a palm to his forehead in a gesture of embarrassment. But all he said was, “I guess not.”
She followed his gaze to where Ray stood, just outside the chief’s door, talking with another officer. Slowly he walked toward her, and she had the strange sensation of being one of those military wives who saw the soldiers in their shiny dress uniforms coming up the driveway, knowing it only meant bad news. When he got closer, she stood up and wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans.
The phone rang on Noah’s desk and he answered it with a brisk, “Fraley.”
Ray said, “You okay?”
No. She felt shaken by what had happened with June. She’d given a brief statement to Ray when he arrived at the nursing home with a small group of other officers, but she hadn’t told him about the tongue piercing.
“Jo?”
She said, “Yeah, I’m fine. Where’s June?”
“Downstairs in holding.”
Josie kept picturing June being led away from the home by two Denton PD officers, her pale wrists locked in handcuffs behind her back, her eyes looking straight ahead but not seeing anything. She hadn’t put up a fight. It broke Josie’s heart to watch the girl chained up after having spent a year in captivity. She felt sad and horrified by Sherri’s barbaric murder, and her heart went out to the nurse’s family. But she couldn’t get June’s face out of her head.
“Are you listening to me?” Ray waved a hand in front of her face.
She focused on him. A five o’clock shadow stubbled his jaw line. They were now standing outside the chief’s office. They’d crossed the room without her even realizing it. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
“I said I checked out the acrylic nail. It belongs to one of the searchers.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“The chief wants to see you. Don’t wind him up, okay?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
From across his desk, Chief Wayland Harris eyed Josie like he’d caught her shoplifting. In fact, the look he gave her over the top of his reading glasses was worse than the one he had given her when he asked her to turn in her gun and badge and put her on paid suspension. Then he had looked at her with disappointment, but today it was almost as if she were someone else—a stranger dragged into his office for questioning. She didn’t get it. Back then, she’d done something wrong. She knew that. She’d never say it out loud because she loved her job too much to jeopardize it, but she knew it was true. This time, she had merely been a bystander. She’d even disarmed June Spencer. Sort of.
“Quinn,” he said. The fact that didn’t call her by her rank bothered her, but she kept her composure. “Why is it that every time there is a catastrophe in this town, you’re right in the middle of it? Did I not make myself clear when I told you to stay home? Do you not understand the meaning of a suspension?”
“Sir,” Josie said. “I was just visiting my grandmother.”
“And you were just getting gas when that SUV crashed into the Stop and Go, is that right?”
“It is. Wrong place, wrong time—or the right place at the right time, depending on how you look at it.”
He hunched forward, leaning his elbows on his desk. He was a large man. Some of the officers had nicknamed him Grizzly, or Grizz for short, because of his large, barrel-shaped frame. That, and the hair protruding from his bulbous nose. “The way I look at it is that I suspended you three weeks ago and yet you’ve shown up at every major crime in this city since then. Are you trying to get fired?”
Her face flushed. Not from embarrassment, but from frustration. “Sir, I promise you, none of this was on purpose.”
His ice-blue eyes flicked toward the door quickly, then back to her. “Why did you go into that room tonight?”
“What?”
“Why did you go into the room with June Spencer tonight? That girl could have killed you. You weren’t armed. You’re not a cop right now. What she did to Sherri Gosnell…” He shook his head. “Let me ask you this: are you trying to get killed?”
“No, I just—”
“I told you to keep your head down, Quinn. You’re like a damn feral cat. Into every damn thing.”
“Chief,” she said, “I think June Spencer was with Isabelle Coleman.”
“What?”
Her words tumbled over one another as she told him about the strange encounter with June. “I saw a Facebook photo of Isabelle Coleman with that same tongue barbell. It was taken a few months before she was abducted.”
As she spoke, he stared at her, his expression carefully blank. It was his specialty. Good or bad, his face was unreadable. When she finished, he let out a lengthy sigh. “Quinn, I hate to break it to you, but nowadays all these teenage girls have piercings. Hell, my oldest got one last year. I wanted to kill her.”