“I’m on suspension!” Josie blurted in a last-ditch effort to keep the woman at the cracked door.
The eye stared at her warily, waiting as Josie plunged ahead. “Please. Just hear me out. I’m not here in my capacity as a police officer. I’m a private citizen. Some things have come to my attention lately, and I am just trying to figure them out. I—I read about you on the internet. You were abducted before I was a police officer. Trinity Payne—the reporter—she gave me your address. She told me you had changed your name, and she was very clear about the need to protect your privacy. She is the only one who knows I am here. I will never give anyone your address. I promise you, I will not disclose your new name or this place.”
The door cracked open another inch and Josie could see the pale, lightly freckled skin of Ginger’s cheek. Tiny lines extended from the corner of her eye. “Why were you suspended?” she asked.
Josie swallowed. She felt nervous, the way she had when she had to testify in court the first time. The assistant district attorney had fired off questions at her while the jury stared. She had felt like a bug trapped inside a glass. “It was a noise disturbance. Out by the old textile mill in Denton. You know, by the river, those houses that get flooded every year?”
“I remember,” said Ginger.
“I’d been called to investigate a robbery nearby, so I was the closest. Otherwise patrol would have responded. So, I show up there—it’s like one in the morning. One of the neighbors says he keeps hearing a kid crying, people fighting, that sort of thing. He knows none of his neighbors has kids. Tells me he has a bad feeling. So, I find the house that’s the source of all the noise. It’s a bunch of guys, maybe mid-twenties, mid-thirties—partying. They were pretty accommodating when I asked them to keep it down. I said I wanted to have a look around. I get out to the back, you know, near where the river bank is—a few people from the party were out there—and there’s this woman. Obviously a habitual drug user. She’s got—she’s got her daughter—”
Josie broke off. She still had trouble talking about it. The only way to even get the words out was to remember what the woman’s face felt like against her elbow, the loud, satisfying crack of her teeth breaking. “The little girl was four. She was sick. Very sick. Burning up. Screaming and holding her left ear—an infection, they told me later—and her mother was offering her to every man at the party. Offering a ‘good time’ with her if she could get some drugs, or money for drugs.”
“My God.”
“I don’t know what happened, but I lost it. I snapped. I—I hit her. Elbowed her, actually. She went right down.”
A moment of silence stretched out between them. Josie noticed the door had opened further. Now she could see Ginger’s face and her auburn hair. It was cut short and brushed forward in a chic, sophisticated look. Her face had thinned from the photos of six years earlier. She looked her age now. Her gaze was penetrating. “The girl?” she asked.
Josie closed her eyes, feeling the same flood of relief she felt that morning when she went to see the little girl in the hospital, and the pediatrician on call told her she was fine. She said, “Nothing more than an ear infection. She’s placed with her aunt now, forever hopefully.”
The door creaked as Ginger opened it wide enough for Josie to see inside. Beside the woman, its head well above waist level, stood the biggest dog Josie had ever seen. It took several seconds for her brain to process what her eyes were seeing. It stared at her silently with large, mournful brown eyes. Ginger’s hand rested on the back of its neck. Even with the door between them, Josie felt a sense of primal fear so intense that her bowels loosened.
“He’s a mastiff,” Ginger said.
Josie couldn’t take her eyes off the beast, and tried to make a joke: “What do you feed him? People?”
Ginger laughed, the sound genuine, and unlocked the door and pushed it open. “He won’t hurt you. Come in.”
Josie hesitated. The dog didn’t move. Ginger’s hand left his neck so she could hold the door open with one hand and beckon Josie in with the other. Instinctively, Josie’s body backed away. She liked dogs, but the size of this one was intimidating to say the least. Her body screamed for her to get away even as her mind told her there was no threat at all.
Ginger’s hand patted her shoulder. “Oh, honey, everyone reacts this way to Marlowe, but I’m telling you, he won’t hurt a hair on your head. Unless I tell him to.”
Chapter Thirty
“My memory of that time is so… disjointed,” Ginger said. “It’s hard to tell what was real and what was just a nightmare. Sometimes I can see why it was so easy for the police to say it was all a hoax.”
They sat in Ginger’s well-lit living room. The furniture was rustic: stained cedar chairs and a couch with upholstered cushions the color of a blood orange. The floors were all hard wood, polished to a gleeful shine and covered with area rugs. There were potted plants and flowers everywhere. Josie felt like she was in a garden. Ginger’s husband was at work, her daughters at school. She listened as Josie recounted what she knew about the Isabelle Coleman case. She didn’t go into detail about June murdering Sherri Gosnell. Instead she only said that June had been recently recovered and that Josie believed she may have come into contact with Coleman at some point. She didn’t mention the tongue piercing. Ginger listened intently and then promised Josie one hour, but no more than that.
Ginger sat straight-backed in one of the chairs. Marlowe sat beside her, and she absently stroked the back of his head as she spoke. He kept his eyes on Josie, an almost bored expression on his face. Occasionally, Ginger’s fingers would knead the area just behind his ears, and he would close his eyes in pure ecstasy.
“I hate to ask you to relive it,” Josie said. “Believe me. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on and if there are any connections between your case and the Coleman and Spencer cases.”
“Where should I start?” Ginger asked.
“Let’s start with what you do remember. Like that morning. Take me through your day.”
Ginger’s eyes drifted to a point over Josie’s shoulder, like she was watching the memory play out on a screen behind Josie. “I got up. Had coffee with Ed before he left for work. He always left early, usually before the girls were even up. Our middle daughter had been invited to a sleepover. She hadn’t slept out of the house before, and we were trying to decide whether to let her or not. I said yes because I knew the family pretty well, but Ed said no because he never trusts anyone.”
At this, Ginger gave a pained smile. The mastiff turned and looked at her, perhaps sensing the change in mood. She gave the dog a sweet smile, and he huffed and turned his gaze back to Josie. Ginger went on, “My husband has good instincts—never trusting anyone with his girls. Anyway, we said we’d talk about it again later. I got the girls up and ready for school. I remember my youngest had buttoned her sweater herself that morning, and we were all exclaiming over what a great job she did. Then my oldest had to point out that she’d started on the wrong button so the whole thing was crooked.”
She sighed and let out a small laugh. “Kids. Anyway, I took them to school, came home, straightened up a bit. Then I headed off to the grocery store. I took the long drive to Denton; the store there just has a bigger selection. I was going to make fried cauliflower that night for dinner. The kids love that.”
Josie smiled. “It sounds delicious. While you were at the grocery store, did anything unusual happen? Did you notice anyone perhaps following you or lingering too close? Did anyone start a conversation with you—like, a stranger?”
This time, Ginger’s eyes floated toward the ceiling. Josie could tell she was cycling through her memory of the trip to the grocery store, examining it anew for anything out of the ordinary. “No, no. Nothing. It was all very… normal.”