Vanishing Girls (Detective Josie Quinn #1)(26)

“Downstairs in holding.”

Josie kept picturing June being led away from the home by two Denton PD officers, her pale wrists locked in handcuffs behind her back, her eyes looking straight ahead but not seeing anything. She hadn’t put up a fight. It broke Josie’s heart to watch the girl chained up after having spent a year in captivity. She felt sad and horrified by Sherri’s barbaric murder, and her heart went out to the nurse’s family. But she couldn’t get June’s face out of her head.

“Are you listening to me?” Ray waved a hand in front of her face.

She focused on him. A five o’clock shadow stubbled his jaw line. They were now standing outside the chief’s office. They’d crossed the room without her even realizing it. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

“I said I checked out the acrylic nail. It belongs to one of the searchers.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“The chief wants to see you. Don’t wind him up, okay?”





Chapter Twenty-Two





From across his desk, Chief Wayland Harris eyed Josie like he’d caught her shoplifting. In fact, the look he gave her over the top of his reading glasses was worse than the one he had given her when he asked her to turn in her gun and badge and put her on paid suspension. Then he had looked at her with disappointment, but today it was almost as if she were someone else—a stranger dragged into his office for questioning. She didn’t get it. Back then, she’d done something wrong. She knew that. She’d never say it out loud because she loved her job too much to jeopardize it, but she knew it was true. This time, she had merely been a bystander. She’d even disarmed June Spencer. Sort of.

“Quinn,” he said. The fact that didn’t call her by her rank bothered her, but she kept her composure. “Why is it that every time there is a catastrophe in this town, you’re right in the middle of it? Did I not make myself clear when I told you to stay home? Do you not understand the meaning of a suspension?”

“Sir,” Josie said. “I was just visiting my grandmother.”

“And you were just getting gas when that SUV crashed into the Stop and Go, is that right?”

“It is. Wrong place, wrong time—or the right place at the right time, depending on how you look at it.”

He hunched forward, leaning his elbows on his desk. He was a large man. Some of the officers had nicknamed him Grizzly, or Grizz for short, because of his large, barrel-shaped frame. That, and the hair protruding from his bulbous nose. “The way I look at it is that I suspended you three weeks ago and yet you’ve shown up at every major crime in this city since then. Are you trying to get fired?”

Her face flushed. Not from embarrassment, but from frustration. “Sir, I promise you, none of this was on purpose.”

His ice-blue eyes flicked toward the door quickly, then back to her. “Why did you go into that room tonight?”

“What?”

“Why did you go into the room with June Spencer tonight? That girl could have killed you. You weren’t armed. You’re not a cop right now. What she did to Sherri Gosnell…” He shook his head. “Let me ask you this: are you trying to get killed?”

“No, I just—”

“I told you to keep your head down, Quinn. You’re like a damn feral cat. Into every damn thing.”

“Chief,” she said, “I think June Spencer was with Isabelle Coleman.”

“What?”

Her words tumbled over one another as she told him about the strange encounter with June. “I saw a Facebook photo of Isabelle Coleman with that same tongue barbell. It was taken a few months before she was abducted.”

As she spoke, he stared at her, his expression carefully blank. It was his specialty. Good or bad, his face was unreadable. When she finished, he let out a lengthy sigh. “Quinn, I hate to break it to you, but nowadays all these teenage girls have piercings. Hell, my oldest got one last year. I wanted to kill her.”

“But sir, June Spencer would not have a barbell that said Princess,” Josie said. “Hers would say Bitch or it would have a skull on it, or something. Listen to me, I don’t think that June was with Drummond for the last year. I think she was being held by the same person who took Isabelle Coleman. I think she saw Coleman sometime in the last week, and they swapped. It’s a message, don’t you see?”

The wiry hairs of the chief’s left eyebrow lifted skeptically. “Quinn, do you hear yourself? Sending messages with tongue piercings?”

“It’s too big a coincidence. Please, look at Coleman’s Facebook page. You’ll see.” Josie kept going. “What if Isabelle Coleman and June Spencer saw one another? Did you finish the search of Drummond’s property?”

“There’s nothing there. We took the whole place apart and dug up his entire yard—four feet down. You could drop a pool in there now. There’s nothing. No sign of Coleman.”

“So, she wasn’t with Drummond. They were both being held somewhere else and then they got separated. What if June saw Coleman after she was abducted, but before she ended up with Drummond? Have you checked Drummond’s known associates?”

“Drummond didn’t have any known associates. He doesn’t even have any friends. I tried calling his only known relative, an uncle in Colorado. The guy told me Drummond doesn’t deserve a funeral. City’s paying for it.”