Vanishing Girls (Detective Josie Quinn #1)(29)

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I kind of wanted to do it myself.”

He looked half-disappointed and half-confused. She had to change the subject, and fast. She hated to do it, but it was the first thing that came to mind. “How did you know about Rockview?” she asked, picking the knife back up as casually as she could.

“Oh, I called to see if anyone had claimed any of the bodies from the shootout—no one has yet—and Noah told me. Hard to believe.”

Josie turned to get something from her fridge and knocked a mess of cooking utensils onto the floor. Luke jumped up to help her retrieve them.

“Just throw them into the sink,” Josie said with a heavy sigh. “I’ll wash them later.”

“What is that, exactly?” he asked, pointing to the mess on her counter: chicken, pasta and some creamy concoction. She had lost track of what she’d put into that particular bowl.

“Creamy chicken lasagna,” she told him. She scrolled through her phone until she found the recipe and handed it to him.

His brow furrowed as he looked back and forth from the recipe to Josie’s countertop. Before Luke had arrived, she’d had the bright idea that cooking would take her mind off the work that she wasn’t able to do and all the questions firing around in her head. Cooking hadn’t helped at all. The truth was she hated cooking. It was boring and frustrating. She had been living on bagels, microwave dinners and salads since she left Ray.

“Do you mind?” Luke asked, pointing to the cooked chicken breast piled on a plate on the counter.

Her heart just wasn’t in it, especially now. “Sure,” she said. “Have at it.”

First, he rearranged all the plates and bowls on her counter. Then he searched her cabinets for more supplies: measuring cups, basil, salt and a large knife and cutting board. He started dicing the chicken. Josie pulled a chair up to her kitchen table and sat down, tucking her feet beneath her. “You think you can save it?” she asked. There he was again, fixing things.

“Guess we’ll find out,” he said as his hands worked quickly and deftly, chopping the chicken in half the time it would have taken her. “Tell me about today.”

Relieved to be off the subject of the closet door, she took him through the whole episode at Rockview, from June’s arrival to finding Sherri murdered on the floor of her room. She told him about everything but the Princess tongue barbell. She already regretted telling the chief; maybe he was right, maybe she did sound crazy. Maybe she shouldn’t be taking it so seriously or trying so hard to connect June to Coleman. Luke listened intently as he moved on to the creamy concoction, tasting it with a spoon then adding ingredients, stirring, tasting, adding, stirring some more.

“No missing persons named Ramona?” he asked.

“The chief said there aren’t any. There aren’t any Ramonas at all in Denton.”

“But obviously the Spencers know someone named Ramona.”

“Except Dirk Spencer’s ex-girlfriend says they didn’t.”

He waved a wooden spoon in the air. “Wait, why were you talking to Dirk Spencer’s ex-girlfriend?”

“That’s not important,” Josie said.

Luke’s grin told her he wasn’t going to make an issue of this, and for that she loved him. He filled a large pot with water and put it on the stove to boil, adding in a few dashes of salt and a capful of olive oil. “Maybe Ramona isn’t a person,” he said. “Maybe it’s a place.”

“No, I think it’s a person,” Josie said. “Maybe not a missing person. Just a person.”

The scene with June played out in Josie’s mind again from beginning to end but brought her no closer to figuring out the mystery of Ramona.

And what about Drummond? Where did he fit in? The chief had said they’d found no trace of Coleman or any other girl at his property. Where was Coleman, and how had she and June come into contact with one another?

Josie retrieved her phone from the countertop and pulled up a search screen. She wouldn’t have access to the police databases now that she was suspended, but she would have access to the Megan’s Law list in Pennsylvania which would tell her what Drummond had been in prison for.

A few minutes of searching was all it took to find him. He’d been convicted ten years earlier of forcible rape and unlawful restraint. He’d served seven years. His photo showed a wide-faced man with features that seemed better suited to a giant. He looked easily ten years older than his stated age of thirty-three and stared at the camera with a flat affect—almost the same expression June had had when they brought her into Rockview. Physically there, but not mentally.

Drummond was in his early twenties when he committed the crime that landed him on the registry, likely to have been his first. It looked as though he’d been on his best behavior once he got out, under the watchful eye of his mother.

Josie searched for her and found her obituary. She had died a few months before June went missing. In theory, with his mother gone, Drummond could have held June for a year and no one would have been the wiser. It was possible that June had packed up her messenger bag and walked away from her uncle’s house, then been picked up by Drummond.

Josie wondered if June’s messenger bag had been recovered at Drummond’s house. She fired off a quick text to Ray, asking him. She could sense his eye roll across the city of Denton. His response came back within minutes: No. No bag. Now stay out of it before the chief fires you.