First Girl Gone: An absolutely addictive crime thriller with a twist (Detective Charlotte Winters Book 1)

by L. T. Vargus

  He was talking too fast, rambling. He’d dropped the knife, but his pupils were huge, which meant he was probably on something. Charlie needed to redirect him, but her instincts told her to be delicate about it. Gentle and soothing. She didn’t want to spook him.

  “I understand, and I promise you that I only want the truth. Why don’t you try starting at the beginning?”

  He gulped, his Adam’s apple rising and falling at the front of his neck. A quirk played at his mouth, and Charlie thought he was about to talk again, perhaps finding a calmer tone than before, starting from the beginning like she’d said. Instead his bottom lip broke into a full-on tremble.

  Robbie burst into tears, sobs racking his torso, throttling him with rough hands. The sounds torn from his throat were not the soft whimpers of a child. They were the anguished, awful sobs of a full-grown man.

  “Kara,” he said, unable to go on for a moment. Snot dripped down from his nose.

  Charlie thought about saying something but decided it was better to wait. Let this play out on his terms. No need to rush him.

  He finally broke his hands-up pose to smear his thumb and index finger at his eyes, the sobs receding and then cutting off. Removing his hand, he blinked a few times, tears gleaming in his eyelashes like crystals.

  “I guess you could say we had an on and off thing, me and Kara. Probably doesn’t sound like much, I guess, but I care about her. Shit, I’m worried sick about her. I’d never hurt her. Nothing like that.”

  “And you had her dancing at the Red Velvet Lounge?”

  For a second, a hard look flashed across his face, but his eyes went soft again just as quickly.

  “That was her idea, I swear. She thought she could make a fortune up there, and she was right. I just helped her make it happen.”

  “It’s funny,” Allie said. “He didn’t seem so broken up the night he was getting it on with Sharon Ritter.”

  “You said you and Kara were on and off,” Charlie said, choosing her words carefully. “Were you two seeing other people?”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Yeah, I figure you know plenty more than you’re lettin’ on, so let’s just get it out there. I been fu— uh, seein’ Sharon Ritter on the side as of late. And I get how bad that looks. Tyin’ me to both girls, but… that one is just a physical thing. Not like with Kara, I mean.”

  He blinked a few more times, staring off at nothing.

  “Wouldn’t you know Amber Spadafore from school as well?”

  “No. I mean, yeah, I knew who she was and all that. Small town. But we didn’t cross paths much. She always ran with a different crew. No. More than that. Like, she lived in a different world from me. Bunch of achievers with their advanced algebra and extracurriculars. Only math I know intimately is to do with, like, the number of grams in an eighth, you know? Anyhow, I always thought she was stuck up. Maybe that wasn’t fair. I guess I know how people judge people and all now, don’t I? Now… Shit. I guess now White Rabbit’s about to ruin my life, so what the fuck difference does it make, right? Just another small-town loser going off to do time.”

  Charlie flinched.

  “Wait. Back up. You said White Rabbit is ruining your life? What does that mean?”

  “The pills. You’re the one that found ’em in the Escalade, right? Even if I clear my name on this kidnapping shit, avoid getting railroaded and snuffed by some ambitious deputy or something, I’ll still get six to eight years for the pills. Intent to distribute or some garbage. Plus there’s the stolen SUV.” He groaned. “Maybe I can get out early for good behavior or some shit. I don’t know.”

  Charlie remained quiet. Follow the ecstasy. That was what the anonymous email had been trying to tell her. Well, she had followed it, and it led her to Robbie. So now what?

  “So the ecstasy. That’s White Rabbit?”

  “Yeah. They got all different names for the different production runs or some shit. Had some Green Nintendo a while back. Orange Pineapple. Blue Dolphin. Shit like that. Mostly named after the color of the tablet, I guess. Sometimes the shape, too. The little pineapples were cool. Or, like, funny, you know? More funny than cool maybe, but yeah.”

  “OK,” Charlie said. “One more question. How is it that you know Sharon Ritter in the first place?”

  Robbie ran a hand through his hair, looking uncomfortable. “She… wanted to buy some stuff.”

  “Sharon Ritter bought ecstasy from you?”

  He nodded and flung himself backward in his seat. “I know how this looks, OK? But here’s the thing: I got an alibi. When Amber went missing, I was locked up over in Livingston County for two days. Public intoxication and assault. Spent the first night in the drunk tank.” Robbie sat forward again, clinging to the headrest of Charlie’s seat. “Look that shit up, and you’ll see. I couldn’ta done it. It’s, like… what do you call it? Airtight.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  To Charlie’s surprise, Robbie agreed to turn himself in to the authorities, but only if she’d come with him to the sheriff’s department to speak on his behalf.

  “You gotta be my advocate,” he kept saying, latching onto a word she’d used. “You have the words to do it, to make ’em listen. They’d never listen to me. Buncha cops? No way.”

  She drove slowly and carefully as though any jolt might spook him into bolting. Even as they pulled into a parking space in the lot, she half-expected him to run for it. Instead, he blubbered softly in the backseat with his head down—a broken thing. Once the levee broke and he let those tears flow freely, he was done for. Charlie had seen it happen before, even to hardened criminals, let alone a kid mixed up in trouble bigger than himself.

  They climbed out of the car, her and then him. She started toward the glass door, but he didn’t follow. He stood next to the car, frozen in place. When she turned back, the look in his eye reminded her of a startled rabbit. She decided she better buoy her efforts to reassure him, just to be safe.

  “You’re doing the right thing,” she said, trying to match her reassuring words to the most recent worry he’d expressed. “I have friends here. I’ll make sure this all gets straightened out. You’ll have a chance to tell your side of the story.”

  He followed after a second, walking slowly. They pushed through the door and in.

  The deputy behind the desk gave them a look, lips pursed, eyebrows shooting straight up—but Charlie shook her head discreetly, and the mustached officer picked up her meaning. His face went blank.

  “I’ll get Deputy Wyatt for you, then. You can wait here.”

  As he disappeared around a corner, Charlie aimed a reassuring smile at Robbie. He could only stare at her, dazed.

  “I think I’m gonna throw up,” he said a moment later.

  Charlie took his arm and steered him toward a row of chairs along one wall of the waiting area. There were beads of sweat on his upper lip, and his face looked pale.

  “Sit here. You’re going to be OK.”

  When Zoe came out, Charlie darted forward to intercept her.

  Zoe hissed, “Where’d you find him?”

  “He found me, is more like it. Look, can we put him in an interview room for a minute so we can talk?”

  Zoe nodded, her mouth hanging open slightly.

  “Yeah, sure. Is he gonna come willingly? He looks pretty cagey.”

  Charlie glanced over at him.

  “He’ll come. He’s just scared.” She bent down next to where he was sitting and spoke softly. “Robbie? This is my friend, Deputy Wyatt.”

  His eyes flicked from Charlie over to Zoe then back to Charlie.

  “We’re going to take you back to an interview room, where you can give a statement. Is that alright?”

  She watched his chest rise and fall once, twice, three times before he answered with a nod.

  “Follow me, then,” Zoe said.

  With Robbie deposited securely in an interview room, Charlie had a chance to bring Zoe up to speed on everything he’d told her. When sh
e finished, Zoe crossed her arms.

  “You’re not buying his sob story, are you? I mean, come on. He admits to having a relationship with Kara Dawkins and Amber Spadafore’s mother, not to mention the drugs.”

  “Depends on whether or not his alibi checks out,” Charlie said, looking through the window at the slumped figure in the interview room. “Do you still have that printout of his criminal history from this morning?”

  “Well, if the arrest was that recent, it probably isn’t on there.” Zoe squinted, thinking. “But I can pull up the arrest record manually if you know which department.”

  “Livingston County, he said, but I don’t know if it was sheriff, local, or state police.”

  “Let’s go do some digging, then,” Zoe said, leading Charlie down the hall to her office.

  Zoe slid into her chair and brought up a database for the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department on her computer. She typed in Robbie’s name and birthdate.

  “Nothing for the sheriff’s department,” she said. “Let’s try the state boys.”

  The keyboard clattered as her fingers struck the keys.

  “There it is. December twelfth. Citation for public intoxication and assault.” Zoe stared at the screen for a moment. “Can’t believe he was telling the truth.”

  “We can’t rule out his involvement in Kara’s disappearance,” Charlie said. “But it doesn’t feel right to me.”

  “If I’m being totally honest, I have to agree with you.” Zoe swiveled from side to side in her chair, lips pursed. “Robbie doesn’t seem like our guy.”

  “And unfortunately, that means we’re back at square one.”

  “Yeah,” Zoe said. “It also means someone has to tell the families that we found our so-called prime suspect and then cleared him.”

  Charlie straightened in her chair.

  “You told the families?”

  “It was the sheriff’s call. He wanted them to know we were making progress.”

  “Well, don’t look at me,” Charlie said, scoffing. “I’m the one who brought Robbie in. I’m not delivering the bad news for you, too.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” Sighing, Zoe pushed herself to her feet. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some very awkward calls to make.”

  When Charlie got back to the office, she went straight to her laptop to update her master file with what she’d learned. She’d now confirmed that Kara had indeed been sneaking out those nights to go to the Red Velvet Lounge. She’d also learned that both Kara and Sharon Ritter were in some kind of relationship with Robbie Turner. Those facts alone made Robbie the ideal suspect. He was a criminal connected to both victims. And yet he had a rock-solid alibi for the night of Amber Spadafore’s disappearance.

  Charlie had pasted photos of both Kara and Amber into the file, and she stared at the faces of the two missing girls now. How long did they have left? Charlie felt the pressure rising, a tightness in her gut as the clock ticked down.

  She turned away from the screen, closing her eyes. Ruling Robbie out as a suspect felt like starting over, but it wasn’t. Not really. She just needed to incorporate the new information with what she already had and go over everything with fresh eyes.

  Taking a deep breath, she swiveled back to the computer and started at the beginning.

  She pored over the notes for hours, trying to find something she might have missed. A pattern. A dangling thread. Anything. At one point, she was startled to glance up from her computer and find herself sitting in the dark. Night had fallen without her even noticing. She reached for the switch on the desk lamp and turned it on, illuminating the desk but not much else. A small island of light in the pitch-black around her.

  She got back to work on her current task—she’d started sifting back through all of Kara’s and Amber’s social media posts, trying to find some connection there. A shared friend. A day they might have crossed paths somehow. So far, she’d found nothing.

  Charlie kept scrolling, certain there was a connection between the girls somewhere, if she could only find it. She came across a photo from Halloween on Amber’s Instagram feed: Amber wearing a long red wig, purple seashell bra, and a green sequin skirt. Beside her, there was a girl dressed as a Playboy Bunny—black satin bodysuit and matching rabbit ears. And that was when she remembered the White Rabbit email.

  She knew what it meant now that Robbie had told her White Rabbit was a nickname for the ecstasy he’d been peddling. The problem was, following the White Rabbit had led to Robbie, and Robbie had an alibi.

  Charlie frowned. And then it hit her: when she’d asked how Robbie met Sharon Ritter, he said she’d bought ecstasy from him.

  White Rabbit.

  Her connection to Amber was obvious. But she could also be tied to Kara. They were both seeing Robbie Turner. Could Sharon have found out about Kara and Robbie and wanted to rid herself of the competition?

  Charlie’s heart began to race. She fumbled back through her notes, trying to find Sharon’s alibi for the days the girls went missing. She said she’d been at a conference somewhere, but what was it called? There. Charlie’s finger landed on the letters scrawled in her own handwriting: the Southeast Michigan Real Estate Conference and Expo.

  Had Sharon lied about going to the conference?

  Charlie searched the conference name plus Sharon’s name. The Facebook page for Sharon’s real estate business came up. Charlie clicked on it, her eyes flicking rapidly across the screen. Her gaze froze on the top post. There was Sharon Ritter in front of a podium, leading a session about online marketing techniques. Further down the page she found photo after photo of Sharon at the conference—handing out promotional tote bags from her booth, seated onstage for a panel, clinking champagne glasses with another woman at the closing night party.

  Shoulders slumped, Charlie flipped the laptop shut. The defeat she’d felt earlier in the day rushed back at her tenfold. She didn’t know why she’d even considered Sharon Ritter as a suspect, now that she thought about it. There may have been a motive for abducting Kara, but why kidnap her own daughter?

  After a few moments of sitting in the silence of the office, Charlie stood, tucking the computer under her arm, and turned out the light.

  “You’re giving up?” Allie asked. “Just like that?”

  “No, but I’m running in circles at this point. I need sleep.”

  On the walk up to the apartment, Charlie could only hope tomorrow would be more fruitful.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Charlie woke before dawn, some remnant of a dream still twitching in her skull. A gasp parted her lips. It was the sound that woke her, she thought. The hiss and the harried breath that followed.

  Her eyes snapped open. Shadows blanketed the apartment, the predawn gloom still ruling this space.

  Her heart punched in her chest. Flexing. Squeezing.

  Everything seemed in order, but the warning signal going off in her head remained even after the waking world had vanquished the dream threat, whatever it might have been. She must have had a nightmare—that seemed obvious enough—but she couldn’t remember.

  Her mind groped after any small detail, but it had fled her mind. In any case, she found herself awake now. No use fighting it, even if the clock showed an absurd pre-7 a.m. hour.

  She sat up, swinging her legs out from under the covers. The cold wood planks of the floor assaulted her feet, the chill swarming over her flesh. She slid on a pair of slippers to block it out.

  Then she shuffled over to the kitchen area, the soles of the slippers scuffing along. Sleep still possessed her legs to some extent, kept her wobbly atop them.

  By the dim glow of her laptop screen at the end of the counter, she put on a pot of coffee. Some kind of autopilot kicked in, moving her arms and feet as necessary to grind the beans, fill the machine with water, turn it on.

  Her eyes only half-watched what she was doing, her thoughts roaming elsewhere. First she tried to remember the dream one more time. Then, giving
that up as a lost cause, she played back some of the recent discoveries in her case: Kara working at the Red Velvet Lounge. Robbie Turner peddling White Rabbit ecstasy.

  The coffee machine gurgled, hollow sounds stuttering out now and again. She couldn’t see the stream of brown fluid cascading down into the carafe in the half-light, but she could watch the rising tide as the pot filled.

  The aroma of fresh coffee slowly permeated the room and made Charlie’s mouth water. Made her feel a little warmer out of sheer anticipation. She pictured the black fluid swirling down into the cup, sloshing and tilting toward the rim as she leaned in to drink it.

  She couldn’t wait for that first sip, then that first cup, and then the second. And, hey, perhaps the third. Why not? It was early as hell, right? That made for as good an excuse as any, as far as she was concerned.

  Her phone rumbled, rattling hard against the nightstand across the room. The sudden noise in the quiet made her jump.

  She reached it just as the screen went dark again. Waking the screen and squinting against the bright glare, she saw the notification was for a new email and opened it.

  All caps. Choppy fragments. And again, it appeared as if Charlie had sent the email to herself.

  PACKAGE FOR YOU.

  HARBOR BEACH.

  BENCH ON THE BLUFFS.

  YOU KNOW THE PLACE.

  A cold feeling snaked around her, her skin pulling itself tight.

  Her eyes locked on that string of capital letters, scanning the words over and over, backward and forward.

  She did know the place. She knew it too well. Still dreamed about it often. The exact spot on the beach where Allie’s foot had washed up all those years ago.

  And part of her wondered, with a lump swelling in her throat, if that was what she’d dreamed last night. The park bench along the water’s edge. Was it possible?