Vanishing Girls (Detective Josie Quinn #1)(4)

“Get back,” she told the crowd.

Two women looked on, faces pale. One covered her mouth with her hands. The other pressed her hands to her chest, which heaved in time with the sound of the car alarm going off inside the Escalade. The twenty-somethings were there too, clinging to one another. Near the pumps an older woman leaned against her car, sobbing.

The driver slumped forward, his forehead on the steering wheel. His window had been shot out. Blood trickled from his ear. His thick black hair was wet with what Josie was sure was more blood. Josie stepped closer to the car and reached gingerly into the driver’s side window, pressing two fingers to the side of the driver’s neck. No pulse. Her fingers came away red.

The sound of someone retching drew her attention. She raced to the other side of the Escalade. The Stop and Go owner was feet away from the rear passenger’s side, leaned over and vomiting, a shotgun in one hand.

Josie said, “Give me that.”

He didn’t protest when she took the gun. Turning back, she saw what had made him sick. Another man hung from the rear passenger’s side window, his neck twisted at an awkward angle.

She hefted the shotgun up and fitted the stock into her shoulder, keeping the barrel low but at the ready as she prowled toward the front passenger’s seat, cataloging everything she knew so far. Pennsylvania plates. Four occupants, three definitely dead. All three appeared to be of Latino descent, mid to late twenties, and were pretty heavily inked. The two guys in the back had shiny bald heads, and the matching tattoos on the backs of their necks told her they were probably members of a gang. The driver and the man seated behind him had been killed by gunfire, no doubt. The other backseat passenger was more likely killed by the impact of the crash. It looked like a bullet had grazed the side of his head at some point in the gun battle, but she didn’t see any obvious gunshot wounds anywhere else.

The sound of the front passenger coughing sent her arms flying upward, the barrel of the gun pointed toward the open window. Cautiously, she approached. Behind her, the owner of the Stop and Go called out, “Detective!” His voice was high-pitched with concern.

Inside the vehicle, the man’s body bucked and shook. As she got closer she saw that, unlike the other occupants, he was white and middle-aged with short dark hair and glasses. He had his seat belt on. Where the other men wore T-shirts, this man had on a plaid button-down shirt with a tie. Blood oozed from a bullet hole in his chest. His face was pinched with pain and smeared with blood. Thin, rice-sized pieces of glass sparkled all over his skin, like someone had sprayed him with glitter.

His head swiveled toward her and his hazel eyes took her in. Shock coursed through her. She lowered the shotgun. “Mr. Spencer?” she said.

She drew closer, leaning in toward him. With great effort, he reached a hand through the window. His fingers searched for something to grab onto and found the sleeve of her jacket. Josie locked eyes with him, the look of panic in his face like a sudden splash of cold water down her back. His mouth worked to speak. Blood spilled from his lips. He whispered hoarsely but with a desperation in his tone that went right through her. He said only one word. A name.

“Ramona.”





Chapter Three





Josie sat in the back of an ambulance, an unused ice pack in her hand. Too many places on her body hurt. She needed a body pillow filled with ice, not just a pack. Someone had called 911, and they had responded immediately. She counted three Denton cruisers and two state police cars. Evidently, the shootout had started on the interstate and ended when the Escalade had left the highway and crashed at the Stop and Go. The staties had scoured the interstate for miles in each direction, scouting out each exit as they went, but there was no sign of any other bullet-riddled vehicle. No one could say who the men in the Escalade were exchanging gunfire with.

Josie watched her colleagues process the scene. Two of the men she knew, but not well. The third man, Dusty Branson, had been Ray’s best friend since elementary school. He had been Josie’s friend as well until her marriage collapsed. Now she found it difficult to be in the same space as him. As expected, the Denton officers looked exhausted and bewildered, but moved with purpose and determination: taking witness statements, erecting tarps around the SUV, taking photographs and marking the evidence scattered throughout the scene.

“Don’t come over. Don’t come over,” Josie muttered under her breath as she watched Dusty saunter from the back of the Escalade toward her.

As he came closer, he pulled a notebook from his pocket and flipped it to a blank page. He met her eyes only briefly. She was happy when he looked away. She had never liked his dark, beady eyes, like two pieces of glittering coal. He pushed a hand through his oily brown hair and she felt a small surge of joy to see the premature gray strands at his roots. He wasn’t even thirty yet.

“So, you saw this?” he said.

“Yeah,” she replied.

His pen poised over the blank page. She concentrated on a small stain on the left side of his uniform shirt, just below his rib cage. It looked like coffee. He scribbled as she spoke, his pen freezing just as she told him about Dirk Spencer’s final word before he slipped into unconsciousness.

“You should write that down,” she said pointedly. “It’s important.”

He looked up at her. The smirk he gave her caused a swell in her stomach. “You don’t know that it’s important,” he told her.