Vanishing Girls

Chapter Fifty-Seven

“Last year,” he began and she cut him off with a high-pitched, “Last year?”

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

“I’m sorry. Go on.”

He took another tack. “You know after things went down between us, I was a little out of control, right?”

She could feel his discomfort in the tensed muscles of his body. Revulsion churned her stomach. “That didn’t happen after we broke up. You were out of control long before that, and you know it.”

“Jo, you know I’m sorry. I don’t know how many times I can say it.”

She didn’t say anything because it was old territory. They’d been over it a thousand times. Ray remembered nothing from the night that had essentially ended their marriage, even before Misty came along.

“Jo, you know I didn’t mean it—”

“Don’t,” she snapped at him. “Just tell me what happened.”

He sighed. “Well, last year, me and Dusty and a bunch of the guys were out drinking. We were really tying one on, you know?”

“Yes, I do know.”

“Jo.”

“Just tell me.”

“I was upset. I was upset about losing you. I knew… I knew things would never be the same. I saw it your eyes every time you looked at me.”

She shook in his arms, half with rage and half with the remembered trauma of that night. “You told Dusty to stay,” she said.

“Dusty always stayed over.”

“You got so drunk, you told him he could fuck me if he wanted—and he tried, Ray.”

She remembered waking from a deep sleep to hands roaming all over her body, thinking it was Ray, and then as she floated closer to consciousness realizing that nothing about the person touching her felt like Ray.

“Dusty was drunk too, Jo.”

“Not as drunk as you, and that doesn’t excuse him. It doesn’t excuse any of it. I was asleep.”

She had sprung out of the bed, hitting and kicking Dusty so furiously that his cries brought Ray up the stairs. He had pulled Dusty away from Josie and, in that moment, she had been relieved. But then she saw his face. His blank eyes. Like he was looking at her but not seeing her at all. They flashed with anger. He had gone after her, calling her a bitch and a whore and accusing her of cheating on him with Dusty. It was at that point that Dusty, standing naked on the other side of the room, had said, “Dude, chill. You told me I could fuck her.”

“Jo, you know I never would have said that if I wasn’t drunk.”

“But you were that drunk, Ray. Drunk, angry, jealous, out of control. Just like your father was with your mother.”

She felt him tense but he said nothing. She was angry with him for what happened, but she hated him because he didn’t remember. He had flown into an explosive rage then, punching Dusty hard enough in the mouth to draw blood. When she told them both to get out, Ray had turned and punched her too. Just like that. He’d hit her so hard she hit the floor.

“You promised you’d never hurt me,” she whispered into the darkness.

“Jo, I’m sorry. I don’t even remember telling Dusty he could… I don’t remember fighting with either of you. I don’t remember any of it.”

“But you remember Dusty telling you about this place?”

“He didn’t tell me, really.”

“Then what happened?”

“The guys were trying to get my mind off you—our problems and all—and they asked Dusty if he had ever taken me to see Ramona. Dusty got real weird, like he didn’t want to talk about it. You know Dusty and I—we’ve been friends a long time. We don’t have many secrets from each other. So I asked him, who’s Ramona. He got real uncomfortable. Like, I could tell he really didn’t want to tell me. But the other guys, it was like they smelled blood, you know? So they really egged him on, but he wouldn’t talk. Then one of the other guys says, ‘Fuck it, let’s take him to see her’, and they… they brought me here.”

He paused for breath. She could feel his muscles twitch beneath her. He went on, “Well, not here, like back here, but to the Gosnells’ house. It was late, and I didn’t know whose house it was at first. Like, I had met Nick a couple of times. He fixed the john at the station house once, and I met him at Dusty’s parents’ house before when he was doing some plumbing there. But I didn’t really know the guy. Anyway, the guys get me out of the car, and we knock on the door to the house and Sherri Gosnell answers. They said they were here to see Ramona.”

“Sherri Gosnell is Ramona?”

Again she felt him shake his head. “No, Ramona is like a code word. Like, you come to the house and ask for her and they bring you here.” She felt him lift one hand to indicate where they were.

She thought of Ginger’s words and shivered. “To a black box like this?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t go through with it. Sherri told us to wait and she would get Nick. Then he came out, and he was smiling like he was all happy and it reminded me of that guy at the body shop when we were kids. Remember him? He used to offer girls rides to the mall. Like, why is a grown man with no kids giving thirteen-year-olds rides to the mall, you know? Like, he was a perv.”

Josie swallowed the acid that rose in the back of her throat. “I remember him.”

“Well, that’s exactly how Nick looked. So he says come on back and leads us out into the woods. In the dark. He had one of those battery-operated lanterns. So we’re following him, and I ask Dusty what the hell are we doing, and he says Nick’s got girls. I said what do you mean and he just says, you know, Nick keeps girls back here, and if you know the code word and you’re willing to pay for it, you can come and do whatever you want with them. I asked where does he get the girls and Dusty got all mad at me and told me to shut up and stop being such a pussy.”

“Never mind that you’re all cops,” she muttered. “So, what happened next?”

“Well we get down to the bunker. I can see there’s a door, but before we go inside Dusty gives me this whole thing about how once I go in, there’s no turning back. He kept calling it a brotherhood, like, you can’t rat people out. He said if I said something to the wrong person, it could get me killed. Or you. He kept asking me, are you sure you want to do this, or maybe you should just ask out the stripper at the club.”

“You chose Misty.”

“No. Yes. No, no. I mean, it wasn’t about Misty. The truth is…”

He trailed off and she felt him raise his chin and blow out a long stream of air. “I was scared, okay? I had a bad feeling. Why did he need to threaten me? And there was no light coming from the place or anything. It was just weird. It was weird that you needed a code word. I didn’t really want to know what was on the other side of the door, ’cause if I knew then I would have to do something about it, and—”

“You’re a pussy?” she said pointedly.

“Jo, come on.”

“It’s true, Ray. You knew something was wrong from the moment they took you there, but you chose to do nothing. Don’t act like you’re some big martyr. Walking away without doing anything makes you every bit as bad as those other guys who came in here and… and…” She couldn’t say it.

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Really? What was it like, Ray?”

“I didn’t really know how bad it was. All I really knew was that this guy was running a brothel out of his backyard bunker that a lot of cops had visited. No one wanted to get busted.”

“Sure,” she said sarcastically.

He was silent for several moments. She tried to wait him out, but she couldn’t take it any longer. She said, “What did you do?”

Ray sighed, “I said I wasn’t ready for it, and I walked back to the car. I waited for them there. Then they took me home. We never talked about it again.”

“You and Dusty?”

“No. We never discussed it. Well, until Isabelle Coleman went missing.”

“You thought Gosnell took her?”

“I didn’t know. After a week or so and no sign of her, I had to ask him.”

She kicked out in frustration. She wanted to push away from him, but his arms were the only thing keeping her from being sucked into the abyss. “Ray, if you thought Gosnell had her, why didn’t you just come up here and bust her out of here? If you thought Gosnell was holding women against their will, why didn’t you do anything?”

“Because… Because you don’t understand how deep this goes. It wasn’t that simple. If she was really here, and he had taken her, and all the guys on the force knew about it, do you know what that would mean?”

“Do all the guys on the force know about this place?”

“I don’t know. A lot do. A whole lot. And it’s not just here. It’s not just police either. I think… I think Gosnell’s been at it for a long time.”

Disgust rose in her. “His wife knew. She helped him. How could she do it? All those women.” Suddenly June’s vicious fork attack seemed too good a death for Sherri Gosnell. It all made sense.

“Yeah,” Ray agreed. “I think she lured them. Sometimes, anyway.”

“So you just asked Dusty outright?”

“Well, yeah, basically. I asked him if he thought Gosnell had anything to do with Isabelle Coleman going missing. He told me to shut my mouth and stop asking stupid questions.”

“But when we talked on the phone you made it sound like you knew she wasn’t here. Like she was but she wasn’t anymore. What the hell, Ray?”

“Dusty came to me. A few days ago. He said Gosnell told him that he had her but that she got away.”

Every muscle in her body tensed, a slight quickening. If she got away, she might still be alive.

“That was when everyone went crazy, like looking for her around the clock. We started getting all these tips, sightings of her walking along roads or in the woods. It was different than when she first went missing, you know? Like all these guys were freaked out that they would get busted so it was more important to find her than before.”

She shuddered. “What were they going to do when they found her?”

She felt him shrug. “I have no idea.”

Josie had some ideas. “And the chief, is he—?”

“I don’t know.”

“He hasn’t said anything?”

“No one says anything, Jo. I mean, Dusty said something to me but that’s it. It’s not something anyone talks about.”

“Ray.”

“Yeah?”

“What happens to the girls when Gosnell is done with them?”