“They’ll find her on the mountain, I’m sure,” Josie said quietly, not wanting to upset her grandmother further by sharing what Nick had told her about his mother.
She heard what sounded like a sob and quickly added, “I’m coming to question him, Gram. The moment we’re done with these videos. Nick implicated him and I am not letting him get away with anything.”
Josie heard sniffling. Then Lisette said, “Good. I’m glad. He shouldn’t get away with a damn thing.” She lowered her voice. “He’s very sick though. Some kind of infection, they said.”
“That doesn’t concern me,” Josie said coolly.
There was silence. Then, “That’s my girl.”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Josie couldn’t stand Special Agent Holcomb. She had been relieved to see him at the Gosnell property and she was happy for the FBI presence, but Holcomb’s personality left much to be desired. It was about as colorful as his short, drab hair. Maybe he had seen too much in his long career, especially working for the FBI’s Civil Rights Division which investigated police corruption and human trafficking, but he didn’t seem angry or impassioned enough for her.
“Maybe that’s what we need. Someone who will be clinical. Detached,” Noah had tried persuading her after a day in Holcomb’s company, the three of them trawling through videos from Gosnell’s bunker, trying to identify all the men in the videos. They would ID the men first so they could arrest them quickly. Later, the FBI team would work on identifying all the women and then matching them to the remains that were already being recovered. There were nearly two decades’ worth of videos, and they only got through about five years’ worth that first day. Holcomb fast-forwarded through all of them. He was only interested in catching stills of the men’s faces at that point. Later, for the sake of prosecution, someone would have to go through each and every video thoroughly. He stopped the video every few seconds, demanding to know if Josie or Noah could put a name to the face, and grew impatient when they hesitated.
Even on fast-forward, the videos were horrific. Both Josie and Noah had to take several breaks, escaping outside into the fresh air, letting the rain wash the horror away if only for a few seconds. Holcomb had only gotten up twice. Once to eat and once to retrieve a cup of coffee—for himself, none for them. Then he had wordlessly recorded each name they gave him on a legal pad with the same expression Josie imagined he employed when making his grocery list. It irked her.
By the end of the third day they had a solid working list, and Holcomb left them to put together warrants and teams to execute them. “This has to be done quickly,” he told them. “We’ll want to pick them all up in a short span of time. We don’t want them tipping each other off. I want every last one of these scumbags.”
It was the first thing Holcomb had said that Josie could get on board with.
The moment he left, Josie turned to Noah. “How many people are searching for Isabelle Coleman right now?”
“I have a dozen people out right now.”
“Then let’s go talk to Alton Gosnell.”
Noah frowned and looked at his watch. He was one of the few men that Josie knew who still wore a watch instead of relying on his phone for the time. “Right now? Don’t you want to rest? It’s been a long three days.”
“No. I don’t want to rest. Let’s go.”
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Alton Gosnell was so ill that the nursing staff did not want to let Josie anywhere near him. She was not to be deterred. “I don’t care if he’s in the middle of a goddamn heart transplant. I want to talk to him,” she told the director of nursing at Rockview.
“Miss Quinn—”
Noah, who stood behind Josie, said, “It’s Chief Quinn. As in the chief of police.”
The director forced a weary smile. “Chief Quinn, Mr. Gosnell has an extremely high fever. His heart rate is up, and his blood pressure is down. As you are probably aware, he has a stoma and speaks using an artificial larynx. In his condition, any type of… interview would be extremely stressful. I simply cannot allow it.”
Josie put a hand on her hip. “I’ll be sure to pass along your recommendation to the families of the women he raped and killed. It’s not an interview. It’s an interrogation. If he’s about to die, then it’s especially urgent that I speak with him. There is still a girl missing in this town, and I’m damn well going to find her.”
“You can’t just walk in here and start making demands. You may be the chief of police, but you can’t just do whatever you want.”
Josie’s voice was low and tense, a wire pulled taut to its breaking point. “I’ve had just about all I can take of people getting in my way. This man left a mass grave on his property. Do you understand that? They’re unearthing the bodies of young women—ten so far—and they’re still going. Ground-penetrating radar shows there could be as many as sixty more buried up there. Mr. Gosnell may speak using an artificial larynx, but he can still speak. Those women don’t have that luxury anymore. I’m their voice now, and I have a lot of fucking questions. Now, you can get out of my way, or I can have you arrested and charged with obstruction of justice.”
“You can’t—”
“I can and I will. Don’t test me. Maybe it won’t hold up in court, but that’s not really my problem, now is it? That would be your attorney’s problem.”
Josie motioned toward the hallway behind the woman and stared her down, daring her to stand her ground. After a long, tense moment, the director stepped aside, wordlessly. At Josie’s back, she called, “He’s in room—”
“I know where he is,” Josie snapped without looking back at the woman.
Alton Gosnell was propped up in his bed, wearing a faded blue pajama top. The few strands of white hair left on his head floated upright. His skin flamed red. When he breathed, his stoma whistled. The sound of fluid in his lungs sounded like a coffee pot percolating. The room smelled of stale urine and sweat. His dark eyes followed Josie and Noah as they entered the room. Noah stood on one side of the bed, Josie on the other. Noah went through the motions of introducing them and reading him his rights. When Noah asked if he understood the rights as he had read them, Alton’s right hand lifted and pressed the artificial larynx to his throat. “You arresting me?” the robotic voice asked.
“We’re just here to talk, Mr. Gosnell,” Noah said. He waved a copy of the Miranda warning in the air. “I just have to read this before I talk to people about crimes.”
Alton nodded sagely. They had agreed beforehand that Noah would do most of the talking, since a misogynist like Alton would be more likely to talk to a man than a woman. That, and Josie wasn’t quite sure if she could trust herself to be professional.
“Mr. Gosnell, I’m sorry about the death of your son,” Noah began. Neither of them was sorry, but they had agreed that it was a place to start.
Alton shrugged. “He was weak. Stupid.”
Noah and Josie exchanged a look. Noah dove in. “Stupid? It seems he was running quite a successful business up there on your property. From what we can tell, he was doing it for decades.”
The gnarled hand pressed the larynx into his throat. “Got caught though, didn’t he?” Alton eyed Josie. She refused to feel uncomfortable beneath his leering gaze, almost identical to his son’s. He was old and infirm. He couldn’t even walk. He could leer all he wanted, but he couldn’t hurt her. “They never caught me.”
“Your son implicated you in his crimes,” Josie said.
The man laughed silently. Then he pressed his device against his throat again. “You can’t arrest me now. I’m too old, too sick.”
Josie didn’t care if the guy disintegrated when they slapped the cuffs on him, he was going down. She opened her mouth to say so, but Noah jumped in. “What was the difference? Between you and Nick. Why didn’t you ever get caught?”
Gosnell’s eyes traveled back toward Noah. “I didn’t bring nobody else up there. It was just me. I didn’t sell ’em, and I sure as shit didn’t keep ’em around. When I was done with ’em, I put ’em down.”