by L. T. Vargus
The Escalade pitched into a hard-right turn and launched off the road. There was a terrible crunch as it slammed into a tree. The vehicle halted with sickening abruptness, its front end wrapped around the trunk.
It sat motionless for a split second. Still. And then black smoke fluttered up from the wounded front end, visible in the wedge of night still lit by the crooked headlights.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Charlie slammed on the brakes, skidding just past the wreck. In the rearview mirror, everything behind her car glowed red from the brake lights.
She held still for a second, craned her neck to get a better look. The world seemed impossibly quiet now, impossibly calm after all that rushing momentum. It made her skin crawl.
Nothing moved in the shadowy place behind the vehicle’s windows. In fact, she could see nothing at all there—the glass looked utterly black just now. Inky like the bottom of the sea.
She swallowed. Felt the lump shift in her throat.
“Go on,” Allie said just above a whisper.
Charlie threw the car into reverse and backed up, pulling off to the side of the road just behind the half-smashed vehicle.
Again, she hesitated. Waited. Watched. Still no movement.
Finally, she scooped her phone out of the cup holder, never breaking her stare from the Escalade, eyes opened wide. She’d call it in. Then she’d take a look for herself.
She gave the 911 dispatcher the closest crossroad that she remembered, mind never fully straying into the reality of the phone call, instead staying in the moment with the SUV. The dispatcher asked her to stay on the line, but she hung up without really thinking about it. Couldn’t handle the distraction any longer.
She licked her lips. Tried to see anything at all beyond the thick black occupying the windows.
Her hand fumbled under the wheel and flipped the brights on, lighting up the inside of the SUV at last. The silhouette of the man inside was motionless, stark black against the white of the inflated airbag. His head cocked funny against the headrest, lolling off to one side. Probably knocked out, she thought.
She rubbed her thumb against her fingers. Thinking.
The police would be here soon, and he’d probably still be out. Was that a reason to stay put? Wait for backup? Or was it an even better excuse to get a look?
She should wait. She knew she should wait.
But no. She couldn’t do that.
“Don’t you want to see who he is?” Allie said, then cleared her throat theatrically. “I mean, uh, he could be hurt, right? Isn’t it our duty to check? I’m just worried about the guy’s health. That’s all.”
“Nice try.”
“What?”
“Covering your curiosity under the guise of some good Samaritan crap.”
There was a long pause before Allie replied.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Charlie took a breath. Cracked open the car door and slid into the night.
“Here goes, I guess,” she said under her breath.
She’d grabbed her stun gun from her bag, just in case. Clasped it in her right hand. Then she withdrew the Maglite from her jacket.
Charlie swept her light over the vehicle as she inched forward, walking in slow motion. Listening. Watching.
And then a muffled sound erupted. Pattering of some kind. Gone almost as fast as it had arrived.
Charlie stopped. Glared. Aimed her light at the driver’s side window. She saw no motion in the SUV, though at this angle she couldn’t really differentiate his silhouette from that of the headrest.
Had the sound been from the vehicle? Or from the woods?
She raised the stun gun and the flashlight. Confused. Scanned the light over the perimeter of woods surrounding her. Nothing stared back but the trees.
Pins and needles climbed her spine now, and her pulse rippled in her ears. She wished she could turn the volume of it down. Needed to listen more than ever.
Silence.
Nothing.
She lowered the stun gun. Took a few deep breaths and moved one step closer to the door. She squinted, trying to see through the tinted glass.
“Hurry up, already,” Allie whispered, a clear giddiness in her voice.
Charlie tucked the flashlight under her opposite arm and reached out for the handle.
There was a soft clunk and the door lurched at her, hard steel slamming into her ribs and knocking her off-balance.
She staggered backward, feet tangling in the underbrush as the driver burst out of the car.
“Hey!” Charlie shouted, but it did nothing to slow him.
He was out and off and running all in one motion, bounding into the pitch-black woods.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Charlie ran without thought, her flashlight cutting a narrow path in the darkness.
She hurdled some deadfall. Tried to keep eyes on him as she ran.
He flitted in and out of the foliage, disappearing and reappearing in her spotlight over and over. Part of her wondered if her light was helping him as much as her, lighting the way ahead for him, allowing him to find the openings in the dense growth.
At best he’d be woozy, though, she thought. Odds were high he’d make it less than a hundred yards before he bashed into another tree.
He was fast, though. Long strides.
“Dude runs like a gazelle,” Allie said.
He was pulling away from her. Pressing into the darkness. She was starting to lose sight of him more and more of the time.
The woods seemed to be thickening around her. Trees clustering more tightly. Brush and deadfall packing more and more of the ground with obstacles. And yet his pace didn’t slow.
She came down on a low spot and felt her right knee buckle. Staggering forward, unwilling to break her stride, she somehow managed to keep herself upright. But it didn’t matter. She could hear his footsteps crashing ahead at the same breakneck pace.
Finally, Charlie gave up. Stopped. She shined the light after him one more second, watched him disappear into the gloom and leaves one more time, and then she circled back the way she’d come.
“Quitters never win,” Allie said.
Winded, Charlie answered between breaths.
“I’m just calculating our odds here.”
Breath.
“We’ll never catch him out here. He’s too fast. And the snow back here is mostly melted, so we can’t even follow his footprints.”
Breath.
“Better to take our golden opportunity to search his vehicle before the police get here, don’t you think?”
“OK. Fine.” Allie clucked out a little mouth noise. “That’s smart.”
Charlie hustled back through the foliage, more confident on the now familiar ground. When she reached the edge of the woods, she scrabbled up the shoulder, the dark bulk of the SUV taking shape there on the side of the road.
The driver’s side door still hung open, and she aimed her light inside, illuminating the cracked dashboard and the spider-webbed windshield. The airbags were still deflating—two off-white puffs going saggy before her eyes, fabric puckering. Considering the damage the vehicle had taken, it was a wonder this guy was up and about, let alone sprinting away from the scene.
Charlie shined her light over the seats, front and back. Apart from bits of glass and crumpled fast-food wrappers, she found nothing.
She crept closer, tucking her hand in her sleeve to avoid leaving prints. OK. She needed to be quick about this.
She leaned over the driver’s seat and reached out for the center console. Her sleeved hand found the latch and lifted the lid. Shit. Nothing but Kleenex and a small box of Luden’s throat drops inside.
She squatted to look under the seat, skimmed her light at the shadows there. At first, she couldn’t quite tell what she was looking at, the flashlight’s glow somehow strange in the cramped space. She gave the sweeping of the light three passes before she saw it: a bundle tucked up against the metal runner for adjusting t
he depth of the seat.
“Looks like we got us a little goodie bag,” Allie said.
It was a plastic brick of something, wrapped in shiny tape— clouded, partially translucent but not enough to see what was inside.
She jogged back to her car and fished a pair of nitrile gloves from the trunk. Gripping her flashlight between her teeth, she pulled them on, struggling some out of excitement. One of the gloves folded up on the heel of her hand, and she had to work it free to get it the rest of the way on.
Finally, she snaked her hand into that tiny cavern beneath the driver’s seat. Grabbed the bundle. Pulled it free.
And now she turned it over in her hands. She thought she knew what was inside, but… better to know now.
She peeled one corner open. Saw it for herself.
Pills. Circular white tablets with some kind of indecipherable design on them. She was pretty sure it was ecstasy.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“So that’s when the, uh, subject took off sprinting into the woods?”
Charlie stood in a semicircle of law enforcement officers, Salem County’s finest, not far from the SUV with its front end wrapped around a maple tree. She fielded rapid-fire questions from the uniformed officers, all of them standing in various poses that involved hooking their hands or thumbs into their gun belts. Another set of police donned nitrile gloves and searched the vehicle, a process Charlie watched out of the corner of her eye.
“Yeah. I tried to follow, but it’s dark. Thought I might snap my ankle or something. End up with my face looking like the front of his SUV.”
The officers exchanged glances. The bright flash of photography caught Charlie’s attention over by the vehicle, blinding white light.
“He could know the area,” one of the deputies said. “I mean, it could be just a straight-up panic type of situation, fight or flight or whatever, but if he knows the area, maybe knows someone who lives near here, he could have taken off with a game plan.”
Another deputy nodded.
“Entering the woods right here? On foot? At night? It’d get pretty hairy out there if you didn’t know the lay of the land.”
Charlie pictured the driver running away again. The long strides. Darting movements to elude trees. He certainly ran with confidence, which could arise from either knowing the land or some kind of narcotic courage. She considered chiming in, but the conversation shifted topics too quickly for that.
“Oh yeah. That’s ecstasy alright,” the deputy searching the vehicle said. He jogged over to them, wiggling the plastic bundle, a giant grin on his face. “Quite a bit of it. This has gotta be our biggest drug confiscation in years.”
The deputies murmured agreement, all of their voices tangling over each other for a second.
“Do you get a lot of that these days?” Charlie said. “Ecstasy, I mean.”
All their heads whipped around, as though they’d momentarily forgotten she was there. The oldest of the deputies grimaced, disgusted. He adjusted his thumbs in his belt.
“Don’t see a lot of it around here, no,” he said. “A bit more lately, though. Some of the city stuff is starting to creep into Salem Island, just like pollution seeping into the water supply. These drugs, though, that culture finally arriving in our little town? Makes me sick to my stomach. Threatens our way of life here. This younger generation. Christ almighty. Don’t even get me started about these millennials. No respect, for themselves or anyone else.”
Charlie spotted Zoe’s car parked in the distance and wandered over to find her. The old man’s rant just kept rolling on, even with no one listening.
“I used to think the bums back in the seventies were bad. The patchouli people, you know. Peace and love and copious amounts of reefer and all. But the hippies were nothing compared to these young kids today. If the hippies were looking to expand their minds and live in a perpetual state of peace and love, the kids today want to get too fucked up to move. Just want to escape reality, I think. Detach all the freakin’ way. Gonna be the death of this country, too. Makes me want to puke.”
She found Zoe standing along the edge of the woods, shining her flashlight out into the murk. She wore sweatpants, and a long T-shirt spilled out from under her jacket—her pajamas, Charlie presumed.
“Took me a second to recognize you, all dressed up like this,” Charlie said as she approached.
Zoe’s eyebrow crinkled for a second, and then she looked down at herself.
“Oh. Right. I was just getting into bed when I got the call.”
She swung her light around, and they both watched it in silence a moment. The glowing circle moved over the woods like a spotlight sweeping across a stage, flitting over tree trunks and glittering off the layer of frost and crusty snow adhered to some of the leaves.
No movement out there, of course. Just a bunch of trees with their arms perpetually outstretched.
At last, Zoe shrugged and clicked off her flashlight.
“So what do you think of all of this?” Charlie asked.
“Probably a small-time drug dealer. You said he seemed young, and this whole chase, running from a civilian vehicle like this… It just strikes me as… someone who lacks experience, I guess.”
Charlie nodded, hesitated a moment before asking the question she really wanted to ask.
“You think this has anything to do with the Kara Dawkins case?”
Zoe frowned at that.
“It could, but I really hope not. At this point, it’s better for everyone if Kara ran away, you know? That’s the best-case scenario, I guess you could say. If that’s the truth, I figure we’ll hear that she’s turned up within the next day or two. If not…”
They went quiet and stared into the darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Five
By the time Charlie got back to her apartment that night, she was exhausted. And frustrated. There’d been the epic fail at the club, and then she’d let the mystery driver of the stolen black SUV get away. She’d been close to something tonight. Close to finally untangling some of this Kara Dawkins mess. But it had slipped through her fingers.
She brushed her teeth and washed her face, then climbed into bed. Despite how tired she felt, she lay awake for some time, staring up at the ceiling.
A long crack in the plaster ran from the light fixture in the center of the room to one corner. It reminded her of her childhood bedroom. A patched spot scarred the wall across from their beds, and Allie always claimed it looked like Homer Simpson. Charlie couldn’t see it.
So one day, Allie took a permanent marker and filled in the details. The eyes, the nose and mouth, the squiggle of hair. Allie had been right. It did look like Homer Simpson. Their mother had been decidedly less impressed with Allie’s artistic vision.
When sleep finally came, Charlie dreamed she was back in the woods. Allie ran alongside her this time, her pale face glowing against the darkness like a crescent moon. The woods rolled on and on, an endless black sprawl.
A strange burbling sound bled into the dream. Rhythmic. Like the sound of music from underwater.
Not music, though.
A ringtone.
Her phone.
Charlie shook herself awake, blinking up at the cracked white plaster. It was lighter in the room now, the morning sun beginning to filter in through the blinds. If anyone was calling this early, it’d be Zoe. Had they identified the driver already?
Squeezing her eyes shut against the light, she answered the phone with a voice command.
“Hello?”
“Is this Charlotte Winters?”
The voice was female, but it wasn’t Zoe.
Charlie sat up and grappled for the phone. The number on the screen wasn’t one she recognized.
“It is.”
“Of A1 Investigations?”
“Yes.” She propped herself up on one elbow, wondering what this was all about.
“You put these fliers up all over town?”
She heard the distinct rustle of paper ove
r the line. The Kara fliers. Charlie sat up fully.
“Yeah, that’s me. You have information? About Kara Dawkins?”
“Who? I… no. No, I don’t. I’m calling about my daughter.”
Charlie blinked and rubbed at the corner of her eyelid. It was too early for her to try to make sense of this on her own.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
After a pause, the woman said, “My daughter… she’s missing, too.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The second missing girl’s name was Amber Spadafore. She was twenty, a Salem Island native who was now a nursing major at Michigan State.
Charlie headed to the office early to meet with the family. While she waited, she prowled through Amber’s various online profiles, the same way she’d done with Kara’s that first day.
There was a sudden commotion outside, a woman’s sharp voice. Charlie looked up from the computer screen to find a cluster of people standing just outside the front door of the office. She couldn’t hear what the woman was saying, but it was clear by her tone that she was upset. She spun around and grasped for the door, yanking it open.
The woman’s face went from scowl to phony smile in the blink of an eye as she came through the door, followed by three men.
“Does she travel with an entourage? Or is this her harem?” Allie asked.
“Are you Charlotte? The one I spoke with on the phone?”
“That’s me,” Charlie said. “You’re Amber’s mother?”
“I am.” The woman put her hand out. “Sharon Ritter.”
Charlie took her hand and shook it briefly. She was the kind of woman who made Charlie feel like she was a grubby little kid and not an actual adult. Perfectly manicured nails. Makeup applied to complement her natural features. Hair styled but not overly so. She wore a gold necklace with an ornate key-shaped pendant studded with diamonds.
Pausing to take in her surroundings, the woman’s eyes searched the room. Charlie couldn’t help but imagining she was silently judging all of it: the shabby carpet, the ancient second-hand office furniture.
