Where the Lost Girls Go

by R. J. Noonan

  ALSO AVAILABLE BY AUTHOR:

  Domestic Secrets

  Take Another Look

  And Then She Was Gone

  Sinister

  All She Ever Wanted

  The Daughter She Used to Be

  In a Heartbeat

  One September Morning

  WHERE THE LOST GIRLS GO

  A LAURA MORI MYSTERY

  R. J. Noonan

  NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by R. J. Noonan.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.

  ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-62953-773-3

  ISBN (paperback): 978-1-62953-805-1

  ISBN (ePub): 978-1-62953-806-8

  ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-62953-807-5

  ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-62953-808-2

  Cover design by Melanie Sun.

  www.crookedlanebooks.com

  Crooked Lane Books

  34 West 27th St., 10th Floor

  New York, NY 10001

  First Edition: February 2017

  For my friends and colleagues from

  the magnificent mystery machine that was Mega-Books of New York,

  thanks for loading my toolbox

  with red herrings, MacGuffins, and cliff-

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Blossom’s chin lolled toward her sternum as she looked down to switch the little car into third gear. Ease on, ease off. Damn but her head was heavy. She forced herself to lift that bowling ball and look up at the road. The horizon teetered back and forth as the car was tossed through the water, listing and rolling on the stormy sea.

  Sea? She squinted through the windshield as something rose up from her belly and lodged in her throat. Where was the ocean?

  No. No water. Only trees, hundreds of trees surrounding her as she squeezed the steering wheel and tried to focus on the black road that seemed to shrink in front of her.

  What was wrong with her? What the fuck? She’d had some close brushes before, and the adrenaline kick had always, always gotten her through. But tonight was different. Something cold and wobbly penetrated the zip of energy and fear; nausea and dizziness rippled through her with the speed of electricity. She hadn’t felt this sick since she’d had the flu back in junior high. Like she needed the flu on top of everything else.

  Oh, my God. She tried to say the words, but they came out garbled and distant, as if someone was talking to her from outside a fishbowl. A metal fishbowl with a skeleton steering wheel and round dials on the dashboard that didn’t mean much of anything to her right now. But she knew this little bucket. She had learned to drive in this car, pumping the gear stick and coordinating her feet on the clutch and brake. Ease on, ease off. Weird that she remembered her driving lessons from so long ago when the details of this day were thin and elastic, like dough stretching until it snapped away into nothing.

  A stand of fat trees reared up in front of the car, calling to her.

  Come to us. Rest here. Close your eyes and just let go.

  Alarm tingled down her spine as she jerked the wheel left and then right again to stay on the road. What the hell was wrong with her, thinking that trees were talking to her? It was like she was drunk or high or something, but she was totally sober. He had offered her a drink—men always wanted her to drink with them, as if it would forge a bond between them, but she always refused. Her life was effed up enough without that shit. The Prince always laughed when she said that, but it was true. So she had insisted on drinking Pepsi while he drank whiskey, and he had seemed okay with that.

  She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut and stop the world from spinning around her, but how could she stay on the road if she couldn’t see it? Besides, she knew you couldn’t will the twirling motion to stop when you were sick. The spinning bed knew no mercy. She’d learned that when she had been a kid, sick as a dog after she had swiped a bottle of screw-cap wine from Mama’s stash and gulped the sweet liquid down in the dim clutter of the bedroom closet. In the three days it took her to recover, she had wished she could die—just go to sleep and end the nightmare visions and vomiting and spinning world.

  The Prince’s warning came back to her. “You’re out of control. Totally.”

  “I’m always in control,” she had insisted, assuring him that she could handle things. She could take care of herself. She knew what she was doing.

  Only now . . . now she was afraid the Prince had been right.

  I can do this! The voice inside her boomed. I’m in control.

  The contents of her stomach surged up into her throat with a Pepsi burp. She coughed and swallowed hard to keep it all down. The sudden sickness had come out of the blue, slurring her words, jumbling her thoughts, and making her mind swim in confusion. Right now she knew she had to get away . . . get away fast . . . and then she could figure things out from a safe distance.

  His smoky eyes appeared in the fogging windshield.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he always said, and she had gotten used to hearing it, a firefly glimmer of approval.

  Just as he’d said it tonight.

  “You’re so beautiful. Come here, you.” She had gone to him. Easing her skirt up, teasing him, she had enjoyed the look on his face when he saw that she wasn’t wearing underwear.

  “Nice,” he said. “Show me more?”

  She teased the skirt up until he couldn’t bear it anymore, and he pulled her onto his lap.

  But something had gone wrong.

  When? How?

  It started when the woman walked in on them in the heat of the moment.

  The woman who thought she owned him.

  What had happened after that?

  Angry words. Claws out, mud slung.

  Blossom wasn’t proud of herself, but it wasn’t all her fault. Or was it? Already the details were getting soft and wobbly, and the car was going way too fast for this twisting, narrow road.

  The brakes. Moving her foot to the pedal, she pressed down hard and the car slowed slightly.

  Slow down, slow down! her mind screamed as she steered clear of a tree and pumped the brake pedal. Why couldn’t she get the car to stop? Something was wrong with the brakes. Or maybe she wasn’t pressing hard enough. Or maybe the old car was giv
ing out. Panic stabbed at her brain, shrieking in alarm, Wake up! Drive the damn car. You’re a survivor, girl. Get your shit together.

  A wave of dizzy, sweaty sickness came over her as the car veered left and her head slid against the window. It was an effort to sit up; it was torture to collect her soggy thoughts and focus. Focus! She had to stay on the road, get away . . . as fast and as far as possible. Wasn’t that what the woman had said as she’d pushed the keys toward Blossom?

  “If I were you, I’d get the hell out of here.”

  Blossom saw the answer in her escape. He would come running after her—she knew he would. And that one, that other woman, well, she could just eat their dust.

  The brakes worked well enough to keep the car from skidding as it sped out of Stafford Woods and shot through the intersection. Thank God there were no other cars, no lights, no deer. Just the little sports car carrying Blossom away, far away from here.

  1

  The fireball lit the night, its glow illuminating the skyline and summoning us like a beacon. My heart thrummed, persistent as a buzzing cell phone, but I forced myself to slow the patrol car as we approached the red light at Stafford Road. Two vehicles bathed in blue waves of light from our unit stayed put as I crept through the intersection. Time: 19:53.

  “Come on, Mori,” Cranston muttered from the passenger seat. “Give it some gas. Christ almighty, you drive like a girl.”

  “I drive with caution.” Seeing that the road ahead was clear, I hit the gas to pick up speed on the hill. “And we won’t be able to help anyone at the scene if we don’t get there in one piece.” I was repeating the advice of one of my excellent training officers at the Oregon Police Academy. The academy teachers had taught me more in the first day of training than Cranston had covered in two months in the field.

  “Yeah, but we need to get there today.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe they’re turning you loose after this shift, but the higher-ups think you’re ready. They don’t know that you’re a bundle of nerves.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Once I shake you loose, said the half of me that was pure American girl. It was always at odds with the polite, mannered Japanese girl people saw before them.

  Although there were safety advantages to having two cops in one car, I was looking forward to shedding the mulish, old-school Cranston—my field training officer—and doing the job on my own. Cranston’s constant ribbing had made it clear that he didn’t like women on the job, and he felt particular disdain for quiet, laid-back women like me. “Wimpy chicks,” I’d heard him complain to another cop when he thought I was out of hearing range in the station headquarters. “They’re ruining the job.”

  While I realized that Cranston was a walking HR complaint, I had held my ground and forged ahead in the hopes that I would eventually win him over with my actions. He was not the first man to judge me based on appearance. My slight build, blue-black hair, and pale, serene face were more representative of an ad for my father’s Japanese restaurant than a police department recruitment poster, but I was determined to make my mark as a cop with equal parts strength and compassion. A twenty-four-year-old wimpy chick with the sinewy strength of a willow tree.

  “I would extend your training if I wasn’t going on vacation,” Cranston said. “But I’m heading off to Hawaii. Aloha. Do you know any of those Hawaiian dances, Mori?”

  “I’m Japanese.” It wasn’t the first time I had shared this information with Cranston, a slow learner. I decided to divert his attention in the way you would distract a small child. “Look at how it lights the sky.”

  “Must be some fire,” he said. “What did dispatch say?”

  “A crash involving one car.”

  After months of training, I was steering our vehicle toward the real deal. A critical incident, which was rare in Sunrise Lake. Someone needed help, and more assistance than reporting a fender-bender or chasing skateboarders away from the 7-Eleven parking lot.

  The radio crackled again. “Fire and rescue on the scene now,” the dispatcher reported.

  “Ten-four,” Cranston barked into the device on his collar, then sat back and scowled. “The real heroes beat us to it. Of course they did. They’re the saviors, and we’re the scumbags.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I said, though I’d heard this complaint before. Cops groused about how firefighters were held up as heroes, making dashing rescues, while cops were skewered as power-hungry authority figures. Gun crazy and abusive. From my perspective, there were good and bad apples in every barrel. One firefighter in Sunrise Lake was high on my scale of heroism, but rather than poke Cranston with a speech about the goodness of mankind, I kept my mouth shut and my attention on the road.

  The crash had happened on a ridge road that circled the small town of Sunrise Lake, and the slight elevation seemed to hold a torch to the night sky. Fortunately, this stretch of road was isolated from the nearby neighborhood. A golf course lined one side of the road. On the other, two soccer fields had been recently constructed on the edge of an orchard, which gave way to the wooded hills of a state park locally known as Stafford Forest. Following the glow in the sky, I clenched my jaw and pressed the accelerator. Cranston whistled through his teeth as we crested over the rise of the last hill and the scene was laid out before us. The road was a battlefield, man against fire. Even through the closed windows of the car, the acrid smoke hit my sinuses hard, stinging.

  The fire was a roaring ball of flames, obliterating the car. If there had been license plates on the vehicle, they were unrecognizable in the melting mass of metal. I swallowed against a bitter taste as the flames that engulfed the car licked at the old tree that had splintered but managed to remain upright. The frame of the car door hung open, a black silhouette against the orange fireball.

  The open door gave me hope. The firefighters had removed at least one crash victim and were loading a stretcher into the back of the ambulance.

  A handful of fire and rescue vehicles straddled the street at odd angles a good distance from the burning car. Spotlights from one of the trucks illuminated the scene like a movie set. A month ago, after the long, dry summer, the firefighters would have been scrambling to contain the fire and keep it from whooshing across dry brush. Now with two weeks of October rain, the fire wasn’t a huge threat. A few cars had pulled to the side of the road where the drivers huddled in the haze of smoke.

  “Gun it, Mori.” Cranston’s voice cut through. “Get us on the freakin’ scene.”

  “This is as close as we get.” I pulled up behind the firetrucks, choosing caution over dare. “Cars are combustibles on wheels. One spark in the wrong place and everything could go kablam.”

  With a grunt, Cranston hauled himself out the door as I pushed the gearshift to park. After radioing the dispatcher that we were on the scene, I followed him across the sparkling asphalt toward a cluster of firefighters.

  “What’ve we got here?” Cranston asked as we all stared in wonder at the ball of fire.

  “Single-car collision. Hot as Hades.” The tall, lanky man who responded was a former classmate from Sunrise High, Skip Werner. With googly, thick eyeglasses and a dopey, ever-present grin, Skip reminded me of Goofy playing with fire trucks. “One witness saw the car spin out of control and hit a tree. We just got the driver out of the vehicle. They’re transporting her to Legacy Hospital, but it’s kind of a formality. She’s DOA.”

  Something fell inside me as I glanced toward the ambulance, which was crawling away from the scene, no lights or sirens. No rush. The driver was dead.

  “Female Jane Doe,” Skip went on. “This one’s going to be tough to identify. The head and face are disfigured, severe burns, and we didn’t find any ID.”

  “Any other passengers in the car?” I asked.

  “Just the driver, we think. My guys will check the area for anyone that might have been thrown clear of the wreck as soon as we get this fire contained.”

  “All right, Skip.” The sense of purpose seemed to drain from C
ranston as he scowled at the burning car. “You do your thing, then we’ll do ours.”

  The fire chief tromped into the street and shouted some orders to his squad. One truck rumbled as it backed closer to the burning fire.

  I stared into the roiling flames, a funeral pyre.

  “As soon as they get the fire under control, we’ll need to tape off the scene,” Cranston said.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. The swell of emotion balling up in my throat was an embarrassment. Most male officers didn’t get misty-eyed at an accident scene. Still, I bet they felt a little sick inside to know that a life had ended abruptly.

  Cranston shifted from one foot to another as foam was sprayed onto the wrecked car. “So tell me what needs to be done,” he said, drilling me.

  “Secure the scene and maintain the integrity of evidence for forensics.” It was easier to speak when I was reciting procedure. “Because of the fatality, we need to notify the lieutenant on patrol, as well as Highway.” In this case, the Highway Patrol would do much of the forensic work, measuring tread and skid marks to estimate speed and angles of collision. Highway always came to the scene of a wreck that involved a person who was deceased or likely to die. “We need to search the scene and interview witnesses.”

  “Right. I’ll call Highway and Lt. Omak. You take care of the witnesses. Start with the people standing on the other side of that truck.”

  “Got it.” Splitting off from Cranston was always a good thing.

  “And, Mori, try to stay clear of the smoke. You never know what kind of toxic shit’s in there.”

  That may have been the kindest thing Cranston had ever said to me. Maybe I was getting through to him. I left Cranston to talk with Goofy Skip and another firefighter, Xavier Moore, who had killed it on our basketball team a few years ago. Tall and quiet, Xavier was another Sunrise graduate who hadn’t left the area. “When are you going to get out of the bubble?” my brother Alex frequently asked me, usually over the phone when he called to complain about how hard med school was or how much snow there was in Western Michigan. And I always responded that some of us didn’t need to travel thousands of miles to find fulfillment. Recently I had told Alex, “Some of us bloom where we’re planted.” He groaned, but he hasn’t brought up my “provincialism” again.