Vanishing Girls (Detective Josie Quinn #1)(55)

Lara didn’t move, but Josie caught a flicker of interest in her eyes.

“He said one word: Ramona.”

Lara said nothing.

“And your daughter? After she killed that nurse, she wrote something on the wall in blood. Do you know what she wrote?”

Lara’s face darkened, her shoulders jerking just a fraction. This had not been released to the press, so Josie was sure that it was the first time June’s mother was hearing about what actually happened at the crime scene. Still, she didn’t ask. She merely stared at Josie.

“Ramona.”

“So?” Lara said finally.

“Who is Ramona?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know no Ramona.”

“Dirk and June know a Ramona, obviously. Ginger Blackwell believes that she met a Ramona before she was kidnapped.”

Lara reached out and untwisted the cap on her final iced tea, but didn’t open it. “I don’t know who Ramona is, and I don’t know why they know her name. Dirk didn’t tell me everything. Said it was for my own good.”

“What do you mean?”

She clammed up again, hugging herself and looking down at the table. “I already said too much. I’m done.”

“Lara.”

A piece of lettuce from the remains of her taco bowl suddenly distracted Lara. Thin fingers reached out and picked up her fork, using it to pick at the lettuce.

“Did June have a pink tongue barbell that said ‘Princess’?”

Lara continued to push the lettuce around on her tray, but she shook her head slowly back and forth. “No,” she mumbled. Then she made a huffing sound. “June wouldn’t be caught dead wearing something pink, much less something that said Princess.”

“There’s a girl missing right now,” Josie said. “Her name is Isabelle Coleman.”

As though her words had conjured Isabelle Coleman, the teenager’s face flashed across the television screen above Lara’s head. It was one of the many Facebook photos they’d pulled from her page. In this one she stood on the sidelines of Denton East’s football field. It was night, but the stadium lighting lit the field. In the background glowed the scoreboard, showing Denton up by seven points. Isabelle wore a light-green jacket and smiled brightly, almost as if someone had caught her in mid-laugh. She was breathtaking. Beneath her photo the words read: “Search for Missing PA Girl in Second Week.” The camera cut to a reporter standing beside a large video screen with Isabelle’s photo on it. But it wasn’t Trinity Payne. It was a man. A very familiar man.

“So what?” Lara said.

For a moment, Josie couldn’t figure out what was going on. Where was Trinity Payne? Why was this world-renowned news anchor reporting for WYEP? Why would WYEP call Isabelle a “missing PA girl” when the entire viewing audience already knew exactly what state they were in?

Without taking her eyes from the screen, Josie said, “So I think that the Coleman case might be related to the Blackwell case, and as of my conversation with Ginger Blackwell this morning, I also think it’s related to June.”

But the man on the television screen wasn’t reporting for WYEP. He was the news anchor for the national network morning show. That’s why he was so familiar. WYEP was just an affiliate. In fact, the WYEP newscast had ended. Now the network morning show was playing. Trinity Payne had done it. She’d gotten the Coleman case national coverage.

“I told you I don’t know no Ramona,” Lara said.

“Yes, but you know something. You might not know that you do, but you know something. I need to know why your brother was in that car. After he was brought here no one could find you. You’ve obviously been hiding. Why? What did he tell you? What was he planning to do?”

The anchor stopped talking and the screen cut to a montage of images and short videos: Isabelle in various photos, vehicles crowded around the Coleman home, searchers picking through woods around Denton.

With a sigh of resignation, Lara said, “I don’t know what he was planning to do, that’s the thing. He didn’t tell me anything. He said that he couldn’t tell me anything because it was too dangerous.”

“What was too dangerous?”

Lara tossed her fork back onto the tray. “He didn’t think June ran away. He was obsessed over it. She ran away from me before, but whatever. He thought something was wrong. I told him to do what he needed to do, but I just figured, you know, one day she’d show up. Anyway, one weekend he comes down to see me, and he says he thinks he knows where she is and what happened to her, but he wouldn’t tell me. All he would say was it was a very dangerous situation. He thought he needed help.”

“Like the kind a gang can offer?”

“Dirk went to school with this Hispanic kid—Esteban Aguilar. He’s in charge of this gang now around my neighborhood. I didn’t even know Dirk still talked to the guy or knew where to find him. I told him don’t mess with no gangs. It’s not a good idea. I said, call the police. Just call the police. He said he couldn’t. So he goes to see Esteban. I don’t know what they talked about. I just know that a few weeks later he calls me up and tells me that Esteban is going to send some guys to help him get June.”

Another set of words appeared at the bottom of the television screen, beneath another photo of Isabelle grinning: “New Cell Phone Footage from the Day of Abduction Released.” Next came a video of Isabelle and another teenage girl in what looked like a bedroom. Josie recognized the other teen as Isabelle’s best friend. She’d talked on camera to Trinity many times since Isabelle’s abduction. Josie knew that the girl had stayed overnight at Isabelle’s house the night before Isabelle went missing. She’d left that morning while Isabelle’s parents were still home. The camera was tight on the girls’ faces, blocking out much of the background. They were giggling and talking and making faces at the camera.