Vanishing Girls (Detective Josie Quinn #1)(22)
Josie had been so young, the actual grief of losing her father hadn’t hit her as hard. There were good memories, but they were few and hard to bring into focus. What hurt the most was that he had left Josie alone with her mother, a monster who would hold Josie’s palm over an open flame of the stove just to hear her beg. And when she grew tired of seeing her, then came the closet—sometimes for days at a time.
At the tender age of nine, when she and Ray had first become friends, he had handed her a small navy blue backpack containing a flashlight, extra batteries, a dog-eared copy of the first Harry Potter book, his beloved Stretch Armstrong doll and a couple of granola bars. “Hide this in the closet,” he said, “then when she puts you in there, it will be there waiting for you, and you don’t have to be scared anymore.” It was the next best thing to having him there with her during those dark, desolate hours.
Lisette had fought for custody from the day Josie’s father died, and lost each time they went to court. It wasn’t until Josie was fourteen and her mother left in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again, that she was finally able to escape and live with Lisette full time. Life got better after that; Josie was fed, had routine, a bedroom of her own. She even went to the movies and on vacations. Ray never left her side. Little by little, her home life started to mirror those of her classmates and she took the memories of those dark years and packed them away deep in her mind.
Lisette sniffed, drawing Josie’s attention back to the present. “I’m sorry,” she said, tucking her balled-up tissue back into her sweater sleeve. She picked up a new card from the draw pile and immediately set it down opposite the first corner she had started: a king of hearts. Josie laid a queen of clubs on top of it.
The sound of a raised female voice cut through the quiet of the dining room. Josie and Lisette turned toward the doorway. From the nurses’ station they caught the words, “… can’t keep her here. We can’t take her.”
A blast of cold air shot across the floor of the room, tickling at Josie’s jean-clad legs. The double doors to the lobby whooshed open and let in the sound of metal clanging and rubber wheels squeaking. A new resident was arriving. An unwanted resident. The next thing she heard was Ray’s voice. “We’ve got nowhere else to take her.”
Josie jumped up and made her way to the hall where she spotted Ray standing at the nurses’ station, one hand on the high counter and one hand motioning to the gurney. Two paramedics flanked the patient. The girl’s face wasn’t gaunt or drawn as Josie would have expected, but it was pale to the point of being translucent. All of the eyebrow and nose rings Josie remembered from her missing persons flier were gone. Her eyes stared sightlessly and unblinking at the ceiling. Her dark hair was long and matted. If Josie didn’t know better, she might have mistaken her for a corpse.
But she wasn’t a corpse. Josie knew this because June Spencer had been found alive.
Chapter Seventeen
“Jo,” Ray looked shocked. “What are you doing here?”
Josie put a hand on her hip. She wondered fleetingly if he had been drinking. “That may be the dumbest thing you’ve ever asked me.”
He shook his head quickly. He looked even more exhausted than he had two days earlier, his cheeks sunken, with hefty bags beneath his eyes. He was tired, she realized, not drunk. She wondered when he had last slept. “Sorry. How’s Lisette?”
“She’s fine. You can go in and say hello before you leave. What’s going on?”
He spoke to Josie but was looking at the nurse behind the counter, a woman not much older than Josie, dressed in maroon-colored scrubs, her dark hair swept up off her neck in a loose bun and bright red lipstick smothering her lips. “As you know, Miss Spencer’s next of kin is her mother, who we cannot locate. That leaves her uncle Dirk Spencer, who is in intensive care at Geisinger for multiple gunshot wounds in a medically induced coma. She was just rescued from a year in captivity, and she is in a catatonic state. We can’t just leave her alone at Mr. Spencer’s house. She needs to be looked after.”
“Then the hospital should keep her,” the nurse said.
“There’s a norovirus outbreak at the college. Half the damn student body is at the hospital right now. Believe me, they don’t have the beds.” Ray gave the nurse a pleading look. “Come on. She has nowhere to go. It would only be for a day or two until we can make other arrangements. She needs to be monitored, and we need to know where to find her if she comes around and can start telling us what happened to her.”
“This is a nursing home.”
“It’s also a rehab facility,” Josie interjected.
“Do you mind?” the nurse said, shooting her a dirty look.
Josie was sure she was the only one who saw the smile fighting to stay hidden on Ray’s lips. “Actually, Detective Quinn is my superior,” he told the nurse. “And she’s right. This is also a rehab facility.”
The nurse’s shoulders slumped. She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, for people who have knee replacements and hip fractures. Not… this.”
Josie advanced on the woman and, in spite of the high counter between them, the nurse backed up a few steps. Josie leveled her index finger at the woman like the barrel of a gun. “This girl was abducted by a known sexual predator and held prisoner in a single room for a year. A year. What she needs right now—what she deserves right now—is our empathy and compassion. Anything short of that is inhumane and, quite frankly, a disgrace. You’ve got a private room three doors down from Mrs. Matson. It hasn’t been filled since Mr. Wallis died. This isn’t forever. This is for a few days until more suitable arrangements can be made. It’s quiet here, and you’ve got trained medical personnel on staff. This place is much more comfortable than the hospital. So, you’ve got two choices. You can admit this young lady and do everything you can to care for her while she is here, or you can call your administrator—use her cell because she bowls on Saturdays—and make her come in and talk to me about this situation. What’s it gonna be?”