Because she was found on the interstate, the state police had jurisdiction, but because she was found in Denton, Chief Harris fought to keep her case. Ultimately, the Alcott County district attorney appointed a special investigator to conduct an independent investigation. It was an unusual move, but Josie understood the amount of pressure all of law enforcement and the DA’s office would have been under to solve the case given the amount of national press coverage.
Ginger’s case was quickly labeled a hoax. Josie scrolled through at least twenty articles outlining why police believed that her abduction had been faked. In each one Ginger’s husband was quoted, perhaps to cast doubt on the hoax theory. He said, “My wife did not stage her own kidnapping. This was no hoax. She went through hell. Tell me, if she did all this herself, then how did she tie herself up and dump herself on the side of the highway?”
How indeed.
Studying the photos of Ginger, it was hard to believe the woman had been thirty-two. She looked like a teenager. She was thin with long, lustrous auburn hair and eyes the blue of tropical waters. Her pale skin glowed in every picture. In some, she held squirming toddlers in her lap; in others, she stood in front of a monument or landmark. All taken before her abduction. All showing her radiant and impossibly happy. Josie wondered if she had gotten that smile back in the years after her recovery.
A hand brushing through the back of her hair made her jump. “Jesus,” Luke said. “What are you doing? Did you sleep at all last night?”
Her heart thudded against her sternum as she looked around the kitchen and noticed the muted gray daylight flooding in through the windows. She had been awake the entire night. “I—I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
He yawned. “You must be exhausted.”
But she wasn’t. She felt more keenly awake than ever before. Luke sat beside her at the table, still bare-chested, wearing only the low-slung sweatpants that he kept in the top left-hand drawer of her dresser. “What are you doing?” he asked, squinting at her computer screen, which displayed her search for Ginger Blackwell. “You really need to give Google a break,” he added, jokingly.
Josie clicked on one of the news stories, and a photo of Ginger Blackwell with her wide, infectious smile filled the screen. Below that, a video of the ninety-second news piece began to play. “Do you remember this case?” she asked. “She was kidnapped and then dumped on I-80 three weeks later. Ginger Blackwell?”
Luke pushed a hand through his hair and studied Blackwell’s photo. In the video, Trinity Payne appeared next to a large-screen television showing a slideshow of photos of Blackwell and began reciting the scant facts of the woman’s disappearance. The sight of Trinity sent a jolt through Josie. Trinity had been a correspondent for one of the major networks at the time of Blackwell’s abduction. Perhaps she had gotten the story because of her ties to the area.
“I remember the case,” Luke said. “But only because it was on the news. I was stationed near Greensburg back then. I thought the whole thing was a hoax.”
Sighing, Josie snapped her laptop shut. “That seems to be the consensus,” she replied, but she wasn’t so sure. She wished she could see the Blackwell file and decide for herself. It wasn’t that far out of the realm of possibility; hoaxes had been known to happen before, but usually the culprit was then charged, or at least fined, for the unnecessary use of police resources. It cost money to put on a search as large as the one mounted for Ginger Blackwell. Money a county like Alcott just didn’t have. Josie knew for a fact that Denton had probably blown its annual budget within three days of Isabelle Coleman’s disappearance. If Blackwell had staged her abduction, why hadn’t she been punished for it? Something was missing; something was in the Blackwell file that hadn’t made it onto the news. She knew it.
Josie watched Luke as he stood and made his way to her counter, scooped coffee grounds into the coffeemaker, poured water into it and turned it on. She wondered if she could trust him. Really trust him. She had learned at the tender age of eleven that not all men were trustworthy, possibly before that when, at six, her father had chosen a bullet over her.
The only man she had ever really trusted was Ray, but he was a boy when she met him. And look how that turned out. He had grown into a man and destroyed the most sacred period of their life together—their marriage—proving to her, once and for all, definitively, that men could not be trusted.
Yet she wore Luke’s engagement ring on her finger. She had said yes. Without hesitation. Which implied some trust on her part, didn’t it? Could she talk to him about the Princess barbell? About her theory that Blackwell, Coleman and June Spencer were all connected? Would he dismiss her as easily as the chief had? Would he think she was crazy?
She thought of the incident that had landed her in the unholy mess she was in now, suspended and at loose ends. After it happened, Ray had called her exactly that. Crazy. Then he had said, “You can’t do shit like that. You can’t just hit people.” Of course she couldn’t. She knew that. But nearly every officer on the Denton PD shared Ray’s opinion: she had gone crazy. She may have lost control but she knew she wasn’t crazy.
Quite honestly, she had expected more support from her colleagues. Like none of them had ever lost his temper in the heat of the moment, been driven to do something regrettable, something stupid or maybe, yes, a little crazy. Sometimes it happened. What they dealt with day after day was the worst humanity had to offer. If it didn’t get to you now and then, you weren’t human. Only Noah had given any indication that he understood. He had quietly said to her, as she left the station house in disgrace, gunless and badgeless, “She had it coming.”
Josie took the steaming cup of coffee Luke offered her, fixed just the way she liked it—two sugars and lots of half-and-half. “Luke,” she said, as he sat down next to her. “Remember the incident with that woman, you know, the one I got suspended for?”
He laughed. “Hard to forget it.”
“Do you think I did the right thing? Hitting her like that? Or do you think I was… I don’t know… crazy?”
His face turned serious. “No,” he said, not a hint of laughter in his tone. “I don’t think you were crazy at all. I would have shot her.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
They went out to breakfast, and in a hushed tone she told him what June had shown her after Sherri Gosnell’s murder, following up with her theory that the Princess tongue barbell in June’s mouth actually belonged to Isabelle Coleman. He didn’t tell her she was crazy. He didn’t question her competence. He didn’t tell her she had too much time on her hands, or that she should give it a rest. Instead, he raised an eyebrow, chewed his toast thoughtfully, swallowed and asked, “Did you check June Spencer’s Facebook page to see if there are any photos of her with this tongue piercing?”
Her fork paused, floating over her plate. “I did. There wasn’t anything useful. Wait—you think I’m right?”
Luke shrugged. “Don’t know. I can see what the chief is saying. It’s not a definitive piece of evidence that points to Coleman, but given everything you’ve told me, I can also see where you’re coming from.”
“You think there is something bigger at work here? Like Drummond was involved with someone else? Maybe more than one person?”
He finished off his toast. “I don’t know. Anything’s possible.”