“A long time,” he said. “Since I was a teenager. I wanted to do more things, but that came later with the others. I kept the name alive for my son. That first perfect kill. I told him he needed to find his own Ramona, and he did, but then he perverted the whole thing. Couldn’t keep his mouth shut. I told you he was stupid.”
So that’s where it had come from. Nick had simply appropriated the name for his little business venture even though it disappointed Alton. Perverted was an interesting choice of word. Josie tried to imagine Alton as a young man, nursing abduction and rape fantasies for at least a decade. What a thrill it must have been for him just to take the girl. To finally take a step toward making his sick fantasies a reality. That he had gotten away with it likely opened the floodgates for more of his twisted urges to come alive. Then he had killed his wife and started teaching his son how to rape and murder women and dispose of their bodies.
“Where is she?” Lisette asked. “Where is my daughter?”
“She’s up there,” Alton said. “She’s up there on the mountain with the rest of them.”
Chapter Seventy
“Gram, how come you never told me about your daughter?”
They sat side by side on Lisette’s bed. They held hands but stared straight ahead at the open door where staff and other residents walked up and down the hall, not sparing a glance into Lisette’s room. The hustle and bustle of Rockview went on just as normal. The emotional earthquake Josie had just experienced in Alton Gosnell’s room belonged only to them. She and her grandmother. The last surviving members of their family.
“It was ancient history,” Lisette said. Her voice sounded heavy and exhausted.
“Now, I know that’s not true,” Josie said. “She wouldn’t have been ancient history for you.”
A few seconds passed by. Lisette squeezed Josie’s hand. “It was so long ago, and my parents worked so hard to put it in the past and keep it there. You have to understand how it was back then. You couldn’t get pregnant out of wedlock. There weren’t single mothers. My mother wanted to send me away. There was a home for unwed mothers in Philadelphia. I was supposed to go there to give birth. Ramona would have been adopted—hopefully. Maybe she would have lived if I had done what they wanted. But I couldn’t give her up. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it. I wore them down. They came up with the idea of passing Ramona off as theirs. But they never really accepted her.
“For a time after she disappeared, I actually wondered if they’d taken her away. But they missed her when she was gone. Then I knew that it wasn’t them. Still, when we found her clothes, they were eager to lay her to rest. They wanted to go on as if she’d never been there. She wasn’t talked about. I think my mother was relieved.”
“Gram, I’m so sorry.”
“Eventually I accepted that I would never know exactly what happened to her. I understood that she was dead, although I used to have fantasies about her being alive, coming to find me one day. Those passed with time. I even accepted that I would never lay her body to rest. But I have never accepted the loss.”
“I don’t know how you could.”
Lisette turned and looked at Josie. She smiled—the smile of a woman in excruciating pain but trying to remain upbeat. “Then there was you. A little girl. I was so happy.”
Josie smiled back. She moved closer to Lisette and fit her head into the crook of her shoulder. Somehow, it still fit as perfectly at twenty-eight as it had at eight. “Did Dad know about her?”
“No. No one knew but me and my parents. I never told anyone.”
“What happened to the father?”
“I don’t know. I never heard from him after that. I heard he was deployed overseas to fight in Korea. I always imagined he died in the war. It was easier that way.”
“June Spencer wrote her name in Sherri Gosnell’s blood,” Josie said. “That’s why you were so upset, why you wouldn’t return any of my calls. Did you know? Did you suspect Alton?”
Lisette shook her head. “Not right away. I didn’t make the connection. It was simply the mention of her name. It brought it all back like it was yesterday. I’m sorry I couldn’t face you. I knew you were dealing with a lot and I didn’t want to burden you with this.”
“Oh, Gram, you could never burden me—not with anything.”
Lisette squeezed her hand. “But then when you came the other day and told me what you’d been through and what you found. Then I knew.”
“I’m going to put Alton Gosnell in prison.”
She had already arrested him after his confession. Unfortunately, he was in such bad shape he would have to be moved to the hospital instead of the county jail. Even though it was pointless, and she didn’t actually have the manpower, she planned to have him moved and then put an officer outside of his hospital room. If for no other reason than to remind him that he had finally been caught.
“He’ll never make it to prison,” Lisette said. “He’s too sick. But now I know. I know what happened to my sweet Ramona.”
Josie felt useless and powerless in the face of her grandmother’s grief. She felt even more helpless than she had in Nick Gosnell’s dark cell. She was a doer. She thrived on action. But she knew from her own grief over Ray and the chief’s deaths that there was nothing to be done. There was no way to mitigate or ameliorate her grandmother’s grief. It existed like an entity, and it would be with Lisette until she took her last breath. Still, she asked, “Is there anything I can do, Gram?”
“After you find the Coleman girl, you go back to that mountain and you find my Ramona. Find her for me, Josie.”
Chapter Seventy-One
Josie stood at the window in the chief’s office—her office now—and stared down at the street below, littered with news vans, reporters, giant mobile satellite dishes, and onlookers. Holcomb’s teams had carried out their raids the day before—the day after she, Noah, and Lisette had gotten a confession from Alton Gosnell—and the news had broken wide open about what had really been going on at the Gosnell property. Noah had hired some local teenagers to erect temporary barricades to keep them a safe distance from the station house. Someone had even installed a Porta Potti on the sidewalk. The press was there to stay, that was for sure. For once Josie didn’t feel uncomfortable with them there. They were pushy and intrusive, but they were also the watchful eyes she needed while the FBI and what was left of her staff sorted out this unholy mess.
Josie watched as a woman in a tight black dress and blue bolero sweater broke through the press barricade and sauntered toward the front doors, her four-inch heels clacking on the asphalt. Trinity was showing off. Josie had made it clear that she was to have access to Josie and Noah at all times and that she was authorized to enter the building through the employee entrance on the other side of the building. Now she was just rubbing her elevated status in the faces of all her colleagues.
Josie turned away from the window and picked up the phone on her desk. She checked her temporary cell phone but there was no more news from Carrieann, no change in Luke’s condition. Hopefully, tomorrow would bring better news. She sighed. At least Denise Poole had been released from custody, the charges against her dropped. Josie dialed Rockview and waited on hold while they went to find the director of nursing. After a few minutes, she picked up, sounding out of breath and harried. Without preamble she said, “No, Mr. Gosnell hasn’t been moved yet. The hospital doesn’t have any beds. Believe me, I’m doing what I can. Hopefully we can get him over there tomorrow.”
She hated the idea that her grandmother would have to spend one more second under the same roof as that monster. She knew Alton couldn’t hurt a fly in his present condition, but that wasn’t really the point. She had implored Lisette to come and stay with her until things settled down, but Lisette was not to be deterred. “I’m staying put,” she had told Josie. “I want to watch that son of a bitch die.”
Apparently, Lisette had been deadly serious. “We keep finding your grandmother outside of Mr. Gosnell’s room,” the director of nursing added.