Vanishing Girls (Detective Josie Quinn #1)(79)

“You can’t—”

“I can and I will. Don’t test me. Maybe it won’t hold up in court, but that’s not really my problem, now is it? That would be your attorney’s problem.”

Josie motioned toward the hallway behind the woman and stared her down, daring her to stand her ground. After a long, tense moment, the director stepped aside, wordlessly. At Josie’s back, she called, “He’s in room—”

“I know where he is,” Josie snapped without looking back at the woman.

Alton Gosnell was propped up in his bed, wearing a faded blue pajama top. The few strands of white hair left on his head floated upright. His skin flamed red. When he breathed, his stoma whistled. The sound of fluid in his lungs sounded like a coffee pot percolating. The room smelled of stale urine and sweat. His dark eyes followed Josie and Noah as they entered the room. Noah stood on one side of the bed, Josie on the other. Noah went through the motions of introducing them and reading him his rights. When Noah asked if he understood the rights as he had read them, Alton’s right hand lifted and pressed the artificial larynx to his throat. “You arresting me?” the robotic voice asked.

“We’re just here to talk, Mr. Gosnell,” Noah said. He waved a copy of the Miranda warning in the air. “I just have to read this before I talk to people about crimes.”

Alton nodded sagely. They had agreed beforehand that Noah would do most of the talking, since a misogynist like Alton would be more likely to talk to a man than a woman. That, and Josie wasn’t quite sure if she could trust herself to be professional.

“Mr. Gosnell, I’m sorry about the death of your son,” Noah began. Neither of them was sorry, but they had agreed that it was a place to start.

Alton shrugged. “He was weak. Stupid.”

Noah and Josie exchanged a look. Noah dove in. “Stupid? It seems he was running quite a successful business up there on your property. From what we can tell, he was doing it for decades.”

The gnarled hand pressed the larynx into his throat. “Got caught though, didn’t he?” Alton eyed Josie. She refused to feel uncomfortable beneath his leering gaze, almost identical to his son’s. He was old and infirm. He couldn’t even walk. He could leer all he wanted, but he couldn’t hurt her. “They never caught me.”

“Your son implicated you in his crimes,” Josie said.

The man laughed silently. Then he pressed his device against his throat again. “You can’t arrest me now. I’m too old, too sick.”

Josie didn’t care if the guy disintegrated when they slapped the cuffs on him, he was going down. She opened her mouth to say so, but Noah jumped in. “What was the difference? Between you and Nick. Why didn’t you ever get caught?”

Gosnell’s eyes traveled back toward Noah. “I didn’t bring nobody else up there. It was just me. I didn’t sell ’em, and I sure as shit didn’t keep ’em around. When I was done with ’em, I put ’em down.”

“Put them down?” Noah prompted.

Alton said nothing. Noah tried a different tack. “What did you do with them after you put them down?”

“Plenty of land up there,” Alton said. “Especially after I bought the property behind us.”

“Where did you take them from? Why didn’t people notice?”

Alton shook his head. “Never took one from the same place twice. Drove as far as I could, picked one I didn’t think would be missed, waited till no one was around and I took her. Back then we didn’t have cell phones and goddamn cameras everywhere. It was easier back then, and I sure as shit never took as many as my boy.”

“How many do you think are out there?” Noah asked.

“Don’t know. Never counted ’em.”

“Do you remember the first time you, uh, put one of them down?” Noah asked.

Alton stared straight ahead. If his breathing wasn’t so labored, Josie might have thought he was dead. Noah said, “Mr. Gosnell?”

Perhaps he was remembering. His eyes glazed over, and a look that could only be described as euphoric came over his crimson face. Josie felt sick. He was, she realized, a genuine serial killer. He had operated for decades unchecked, unfettered, with enough private land to hide his crimes for all that time. Not only was he completely without remorse, but he had enjoyed his crimes. Josie knew from the resurrected town lore about the Gosnell family that Alton’s wife had supposedly run off when her son was only nine, which meant that Nick had been raised almost solely by his father, who had shaped him in his image. Two generations of serial killers. Like father, like son.

Lisette’s voice, fierce and tremulous, sounded from the door. “You tell them the truth, Alton.”

Startled, Noah and Josie looked at her. She stood leaning on her walker, her tiny frame seeming to fill up the entire doorway. Her eyes were aflame, and they were trained on Alton Gosnell with a savage intensity. Josie had never seen that look on her grandmother’s face before. Her sweet, loving grandmother.

“Gram?” Josie said.

Lisette thrust her walker into the room, wielding it like a weapon. She banged into Gosnell’s bed, jarring it. Gosnell’s euphoric reverie gave way to annoyance. He flicked her a dirty look. Pressing his artificial larynx into his throat again, he said, “Shut up, Lisette.”