Vanishing Girls (Detective Josie Quinn #1)(52)

Ginger said, “Well, there’s just one more thing. You remember I said I had something to tell you?”

On the TV, the words “Top Story” appeared over a photo of Luke’s face. It was his police photo, so his face was stoic and serious, his jaw looking more square than it actually was beneath his large trooper’s hat with its sturdy chin strap. He looked handsome but so uncomfortable. Her heart skipped again, and she used a grease-stained napkin to pinch in the tears before they came. The screen changed to short video clips of law enforcement converging on the area around Luke’s barracks.

“Search for State Police Shooter Continues,” read the text.

They would never find the perpetrator. She wondered how the faceless contingent of men behind Ginger Blackwell’s abduction would keep the press off this. A few years earlier, in a barracks in northeastern Pennsylvania, two state troopers had been ambushed similarly in their barracks’ parking lot. The news coverage had been constant and exhaustive and stretched nationwide.

“Josie?”

“Yes,” she said, turning her mind back to Ginger. “I’m here. I’m sorry. You said you had something to tell me?”

Ginger said, “There might have been another woman that day. The day I was taken.”

“Wait, what?” Josie said, more loudly and forcefully than she had intended. A few people at neighboring tables turned her way and stared. She gave them a sheepish smile and lowered her voice. “Are you sure?”

“I think so. I had a dream last night, after you visited. My therapist said some of my memories might come back in dreams. I always have this dream where I’m talking to the elderly woman, and the next thing I know I’m in blackness. This time, though, there was another woman in the dream.”

“This was in your dream?” Josie said. “Not an actual memory?”

“Well yes, a dream, but it’s also a memory. Speaking with the elderly woman was the last lucid memory I have before I was taken. I think this dream was a continuation of that memory. Maybe talking to you about it jarred it loose.”

“Okay, so the woman in your dream, are you sure it wasn’t the owner of the hair salon?”

“I’m certain it wasn’t her. It was a different woman.”

“So you think there were two,” Josie said. “The elderly Chemo Lady you stopped for and the woman from your dream.”

“Yes. I believe there were two,” Ginger agreed.

“You’re sure this woman in your dream was real?”

Silence. Then Ginger made a noise of exasperation. “Well I don’t know for sure. Like I said, it was a dream. But it felt like a real memory to me.”

“You’ve never had a dream about her before? Or a memory?”

“No, I’m sorry. You don’t believe me, do you?”

Josie couldn’t stake an investigation on a dream that may or may not be a memory, but she didn’t tell Ginger that. Instead she asked, “What can you tell me about the new woman?”

“It’s hazy. Very hazy. In my dream she was in her fifties. Short hair. Brown going gray. I can’t… I can’t see what she was wearing. Her face is… you have to understand, the memories are distorted. But I think she said her name was Ramona.”

“Are you sure?”

There was a brief silence. “Well no, I’m not. I mean, the name Ramona has been swirling around in my head ever since you said it. But what makes me think maybe that was really her name, and that I was having a real memory, is that in the dream I talked to her and I said I never met anyone whose name was Ramona in real life. Then I started telling her about this series of books I read when I was a little girl. I loved those books, and the main character was named Ramona. I remember telling her how I tried to get my kids to read them but they had no interest. Too dated, maybe. She just kept smiling and nodding and I thought, she probably doesn’t care. That part seemed so concrete, made it feel real.”

Josie felt a prickle at the back of her neck. She got up from her table and, cradling the cell phone against her ear with her shoulder, gathered up her lunch tray and disposed of it. She kept her voice low as she made her way out to the elevators. She waited for an empty one and slipped inside, pressing the button that would take her back to the ICU. “But you said yourself that you’d been thinking about the name since you spoke with me. Then hearing it in a dream… the power of suggestion, maybe?”

“I suppose so, but I really think it was a memory. I really think she was there and that she called herself Ramona.”

“Maybe she lured you, then. That doesn’t account for what happened to the first woman—the sick one—but this Ramona would have been one of the last people to see you,” Josie said, almost to herself. “In your… flashes, do you remember seeing her again or seeing any other women?”

There was a long silence and another sigh, then Ginger said, “No, I’m sorry. I don’t. I remember blathering on about the name Ramona, and that’s when I woke up.”

“If this woman was real, do you think you’d recognize her if you saw her again? If you saw a photo?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“In this dream, did Chemo Lady leave while you were talking to Ramona?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know. I can’t remember.”