Vanishing Girls (Detective Josie Quinn #1)(23)

While Josie spoke, the woman’s haughty posture slowly deflated. She looked over the counter at June and sighed, “Fine, she can stay.”





Chapter Eighteen





June Spencer’s eyes were open. She lay on her back in the center of the bed, her long hair fanned out on the pillow, arms at her sides, and eyes fixed upward and unmoving. Like a corpse on display at a funeral. Almost the moment Ray left, and expressly against his instructions, Josie snuck into June’s room to speak to her. She still wore a hospital gown, and Josie resolved to bring some clothes for the girl from home the next day. She was annoyed that no one had thought of this; hospital gowns were flimsy and undignified, and the last thing a sexual assault victim would want is the risk of further exposure. But of course, no one on Denton PD had thought of this. They were all men. All men, except Josie. The chief had hired two female patrol officers the year before, but one was out on maternity leave and the other had quit to go to law school.

Josie stood at June’s bedside, her hand floating over the girl’s forearm. She wouldn’t touch her, not until she had the girl’s consent, but it was difficult to know how to get her attention. Was it even possible? Instead, she talked in a low tone, so as not to be overhead from the hallway, where nurses, nursing aides, and other residents flitted past, craning their necks to see the catatonic girl inside the room.

“June, my name is Detective Josie Quinn,” she said. “I am so glad you’re with us. I know you’ve been through a lot. I’m not sure how much they told you, but the man who hurt you is dead. You’re safe now. Soon we’ll find your mom, and she’ll come and be with you. As soon as your uncle Dirk is able, he’ll come too. I don’t know if you can hear me or not, but I’ll be close by if you need anything. My grandmother lives here. Tomorrow I’ll bring you some regular clothes to wear. That might make you more comfortable.”

June blinked.

Josie stood frozen for a long moment, waiting to see if she would blink again. She said, “Can you hear me, June?”

Blink.

Josie was leaning in closer, looking for answers, when a scratchy voice from the doorway said, “Don’t get too excited, hon. Even zombies blink sometimes. It’s a purely physical thing.”

Josie looked up to see Sherri Gosnell, a chunky nurse in her sixties—the alleged larynx thief—pushing a medicine cart through the door. The computer screen atop it glowed, and Josie could see that June’s electronic chart was open. There was no information in it other than her name and date of birth. Lisette had once told Josie that Sherri had worked at Rockview since she was a teenager—as a nurse assistant while she finished nursing school and eventually securing a spot on the staff as an RN. Josie was hard-pressed to remember a time she’d visited her grandmother and not seen Sherri there. She wondered if Sherri ever took any days off.

“Gotta do her admission,” she said as she drew closer to the bed. Looking June over, the woman shook her head. “Don’t know what we’ll do with this one.”

An alarm blared from down the hall. By this time, Josie recognized the various alarms that the staff affixed to the chairs, beds, and sometimes even the clothing of residents considered fall risks to alert the staff to when they were getting up without assistance. “That sounds like Mrs. Sole,” she said to Sherri.

The nurse rolled her eyes. “All day long she’s trying to get out of that chair.” With a glance back at June she added, “I’ll have the girls sit this one up in the chair and get her a dinner tray. I can do the admission after I deal with Mrs. Sole.”

With that, she was gone. Josie glanced down at June. The girl’s eyes blinked rapidly for several seconds. Then they stopped, and she floated back off to wherever it was she had found to hide inside her head.





Chapter Nineteen





Josie found excuses to walk past June Spencer’s room two more times after that—retrieving a blanket for Lisette’s lap from her room and then going back again for the butterscotch candies she kept in her nightstand. Each time she passed, she slowed and peered inside. The nursing aides had, as instructed, moved June from her bed to the guest chair next to it. She sat unmoving with her hands on the armrests. Her pale legs—hairy from a year of not having shaved them—peeked out from beneath the hospital gown. Someone had put those awful brown non-skid socks on her feet. Pushed up in front of her was the rolling tray table and dinner: turkey breast with gravy, apple sauce, jello, a tiny can of ginger ale and a hot tea. All of it was untouched, the silverware perfectly lined up beside her plate, which meant no one had tried to feed her. Josie wondered if she would eat. Perhaps, if she was hungry enough? She remembered Ray saying she was healthy. Perhaps the act of eating was an automatic thing for her.

“Come now,” Lisette called from the cafeteria, and Josie tore herself from June’s doorway to return to the dining room with the candy.

“There’s nothing more you can do for her right now. Leave her,” she said, as Josie dealt a new hand of kings in the corner. They played in silence, finishing two games before Lisette suggested rummy. “Since you obviously have no plans to go home.” She winked at Josie and started shuffling the cards again as they heard Sherri push her cart past the dining room entrance, heading back in the direction of June’s room. “I’ve got to do this admission,” she called to someone at the nurses’ station.