“Then tell me the truth so I can help you.”
Lara gave her another appraising glance and her pinched expression told Josie that she didn’t like what she saw. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure yet. First, I need to know what I’m dealing with. Tell me what you know.”
Lara twisted the cap off one of her iced teas and gulped down half the bottle. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hoodie sleeve, she narrowed her eyes. “I need cigarettes.”
“You can’t get cigarettes in a hospital.”
“No, but you can get them down the road with that credit card.”
“I’m not buying you cigarettes, Lara.”
She chugged down the rest of the iced tea and went to work on the taco bowl, now eating with a prim slowness that made Josie want to scream. She could see why Dirk had fought so hard to get June out of her sphere of control. Josie waited patiently until she had finished and gulped down another half bottle of iced tea. She watched the WYEP coverage of Luke’s shooting play again, followed by a story about Sherri Gosnell. The headline read: “Local Murder Victim Laid to Rest.” The screen cut to the outside of the large Episcopal church on Denton’s west side where people gathered in knots. Six men emerged from its red double doors, faces drawn, wearing suits and carrying Sherri’s coffin. Next the screen cut to the graveside service, zooming in on the man Josie assumed was Sherri’s husband, Nick Gosnell. He was barrel-chested and slightly overweight. Average height, with light-brown hair peppered with gray and parted down the middle. His goatee was also graying. From what she could see, one of his eyes was swollen and badly bruised, as though someone had given him a black eye. Had he gotten into a fight? Gotten drunk, fallen and hit his face? People did crazy things when they were grieving. Remembering the sight of Sherri’s body, Josie was betting he’d gotten drunk and fallen down. His good eye brimmed with tears as he watched his wife being lowered into the ground. Josie felt a wave of sadness engulf her and pushed it away. She needed to focus.
She turned back to Lara. “Six years ago, a woman named Ginger Blackwell was abducted, held for three weeks, and raped by multiple assailants. She was drugged and dumped on the side of the road. The police made a half-assed attempt at investigating the whole thing before they declared it a hoax. I’ve looked at the file; it wasn’t a hoax. Ginger didn’t do it to herself. Today I talked to her and she told me that the last thing she remembers before being taken is talking to one, possibly two women on the side of the road. One was a woman whose car broke down. She looked like a chemo patient. She thinks there was another woman there as well, a younger woman who said her name was Ramona.”
Lara sat back in her seat, folding her arms across her thin chest. The corners of her mouth turned down in a skeptical frown.
“Do you know what the last thing Dirk said to me was? When he was bleeding out in that SUV crashed into the side of a building?”
Lara didn’t move, but Josie caught a flicker of interest in her eyes.
“He said one word: Ramona.”
Lara said nothing.
“And your daughter? After she killed that nurse, she wrote something on the wall in blood. Do you know what she wrote?”
Lara’s face darkened, her shoulders jerking just a fraction. This had not been released to the press, so Josie was sure that it was the first time June’s mother was hearing about what actually happened at the crime scene. Still, she didn’t ask. She merely stared at Josie.
“Ramona.”
“So?” Lara said finally.
“Who is Ramona?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know no Ramona.”
“Dirk and June know a Ramona, obviously. Ginger Blackwell believes that she met a Ramona before she was kidnapped.”
Lara reached out and untwisted the cap on her final iced tea, but didn’t open it. “I don’t know who Ramona is, and I don’t know why they know her name. Dirk didn’t tell me everything. Said it was for my own good.”
“What do you mean?”
She clammed up again, hugging herself and looking down at the table. “I already said too much. I’m done.”
“Lara.”
A piece of lettuce from the remains of her taco bowl suddenly distracted Lara. Thin fingers reached out and picked up her fork, using it to pick at the lettuce.
“Did June have a pink tongue barbell that said ‘Princess’?”
Lara continued to push the lettuce around on her tray, but she shook her head slowly back and forth. “No,” she mumbled. Then she made a huffing sound. “June wouldn’t be caught dead wearing something pink, much less something that said Princess.”
“There’s a girl missing right now,” Josie said. “Her name is Isabelle Coleman.”
As though her words had conjured Isabelle Coleman, the teenager’s face flashed across the television screen above Lara’s head. It was one of the many Facebook photos they’d pulled from her page. In this one she stood on the sidelines of Denton East’s football field. It was night, but the stadium lighting lit the field. In the background glowed the scoreboard, showing Denton up by seven points. Isabelle wore a light-green jacket and smiled brightly, almost as if someone had caught her in mid-laugh. She was breathtaking. Beneath her photo the words read: “Search for Missing PA Girl in Second Week.” The camera cut to a reporter standing beside a large video screen with Isabelle’s photo on it. But it wasn’t Trinity Payne. It was a man. A very familiar man.
“So what?” Lara said.
For a moment, Josie couldn’t figure out what was going on. Where was Trinity Payne? Why was this world-renowned news anchor reporting for WYEP? Why would WYEP call Isabelle a “missing PA girl” when the entire viewing audience already knew exactly what state they were in?
Without taking her eyes from the screen, Josie said, “So I think that the Coleman case might be related to the Blackwell case, and as of my conversation with Ginger Blackwell this morning, I also think it’s related to June.”
But the man on the television screen wasn’t reporting for WYEP. He was the news anchor for the national network morning show. That’s why he was so familiar. WYEP was just an affiliate. In fact, the WYEP newscast had ended. Now the network morning show was playing. Trinity Payne had done it. She’d gotten the Coleman case national coverage.
“I told you I don’t know no Ramona,” Lara said.
“Yes, but you know something. You might not know that you do, but you know something. I need to know why your brother was in that car. After he was brought here no one could find you. You’ve obviously been hiding. Why? What did he tell you? What was he planning to do?”
The anchor stopped talking and the screen cut to a montage of images and short videos: Isabelle in various photos, vehicles crowded around the Coleman home, searchers picking through woods around Denton.
With a sigh of resignation, Lara said, “I don’t know what he was planning to do, that’s the thing. He didn’t tell me anything. He said that he couldn’t tell me anything because it was too dangerous.”
“What was too dangerous?”
Lara tossed her fork back onto the tray. “He didn’t think June ran away. He was obsessed over it. She ran away from me before, but whatever. He thought something was wrong. I told him to do what he needed to do, but I just figured, you know, one day she’d show up. Anyway, one weekend he comes down to see me, and he says he thinks he knows where she is and what happened to her, but he wouldn’t tell me. All he would say was it was a very dangerous situation. He thought he needed help.”