by L. T. Vargus
“Pretty wild, right?”
As Charlie returned the phone, a burst of chatter erupted from Zoe’s radio.
Zoe frowned down at her radio and then up at Charlie.
“Did you catch that?”
Charlie shook her head. It had been too garbled. Too frantic.
Next came shouting from up on the road behind them. Zoe snapped her head that way, and they both stared up toward where all the cruisers were parked.
Blue and red lights lit the darkened area, each glowing orb spiraling in endless circles. It almost made it look like some kind of backwoods rave, Charlie thought.
Quiet followed the initial surge of voices, but then the babble started up again. Louder this time.
“Well, they sounded awfully excited about something,” Charlie said.
“Excited in a good way or a bad way,” Zoe said, not quite making it sound like a question.
They exchanged a quick glance and Charlie shrugged.
A dark figure rushed down the hill alongside the cliff. Charlie couldn’t see his face, but she could tell by the crew cut and the way the silhouette highlighted the cut of his uniform that he was another of the many officers buzzing around the scene. His broad shoulders bounced as he traversed the winding path.
He picked up speed as he hit the flat of the beach, rushed up to Zoe.
“Deputy Wyatt? We just got word that there’s another accident site. There’s a car wrapped around a tree a couple miles up the road. We’ve got eyes on it now, securing the scene.”
Zoe didn’t say anything, probably waiting for the same thing Charlie was waiting for.
The officer swallowed before he spit it out.
“It’s a bright red sports car.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
A fleet of law enforcement vehicles swarmed the area around the car wreck. The sound of tires crushing gravel into the sand was almost constant as cruiser after cruiser settled in, two lines of them huddling along this rural road.
Charlie finished changing into the dry clothes in the back of Zoe’s car, and she instantly felt warmer. The long sleeves even covered the bandages on the heels of her hands. After that, the two of them hustled to the crime scene on foot and ducked under the yellow police tape.
The busted vehicle came into view. Despite the dying light, Charlie could make out that it was a red sports car alright, and without a doubt the same one that had run her off the road.
The front end wrapped itself around a thick tree trunk, metal twisting and bending at impossible angles. Shards of steel, or possibly aluminum, jutting outward from the point of impact like the remnants of an exploded cigar.
Swirling flashlight beams surrounded them as they approached the wreck, swinging from the car to the ground, off into the woods, and back again. Zoe got out her flashlight and joined in.
“So we’ve got the driver, yeah?” someone asked.
A female officer replied.
“Negative. The responding officers cleared the vehicle. Empty. Any occupants fled the scene, probably on foot.”
When the first officer responded to this new information, most of the urgency had drained out of his voice.
“A bunch of us thought… I mean, a wreck like that? You don’t figure anybody’s walking away too quickly.”
The female officer shook her head.
“We ran the plates, though. Vehicle’s registered to Randolph Carmichael.”
Charlie perked up at this, though she realized after a moment she should have guessed that from the beginning. Her shoulders sagged.
On the way over, she’d hoped that identifying the owner of the car would be the key to discovering who’d killed Gloria. But any one of the Carmichael clan could have let themselves into Dutch’s garage and taken the car. And every single one of them had been at the house. Had probably presumed she was on her way to the police with the smoking gun.
Another crew came in, hauling equipment from the cargo door of a van. They jogged right up to within a few feet of the crash site and started setting up industrial rigs of lights.
“Almost looks like they’re prepping this thing for a magazine cover shoot,” Allie said.
Soon the spotlights clicked on, one set after another. Everything at the scene seemed to come to an abrupt halt, as though everyone held their breath to look upon the car wreck anew.
One by one, heads started turning toward Charlie. Finally someone asked the question they were all thinking.
“You sure this is the vehicle that you tangled with back there?”
Charlie nodded.
“That’s the car. I’m certain.” Probably the one that killed Gloria, too, but she couldn’t prove that yet, so she left it unsaid.
The crime scene techs moved in after that. Snapping photos. Processing and documenting the exterior of the car.
Zoe came trudging back through the undergrowth, flashlight aimed at the ground.
“What we’ve got here is a Hennessey Venom GT. Extremely, extremely rare. Wanna guess who this one is registered to?”
“Dutch Carmichael,” Charlie said.
Zoe rolled her eyes.
“You cheated.”
With the outside of the car processed, the crime scene techs popped open the doors and moved to working the interior. Zoe and Charlie stopped talking to focus on the action.
From Charlie’s angle, the car looked to be spotless inside. She doubted they’d find anything. This car had been crashed on purpose. After the damage it had sustained from driving her off the road, it was the only logical thing to do.
“Got nothing in the glove box,” one of the techs said. “I mean literally nothing. Not even a speck of dust.”
“Same with the center console,” another tech said. “Nothing. Whole thing looks wiped to me.”
“Got something!”
One of the techs retracted his arm from beneath the driver’s seat. He held up something in tiny tweezers. Charlie couldn’t see what it was, but it seemed to glitter in the spotlights, some tiny twinkling star clenched at the end of the tweezers.
The glowing expression on the tech’s face seemed to fade as he examined it closer. His smile turned down.
“Just some garbage,” he muttered.
He jammed the shiny bit into an evidence bag. Labeled it.
Charlie and Zoe moved closer to see.
“Can I see what you’ve got there?” Zoe asked.
“This?” The tech waggled the evidence bag then handed it over to Zoe. “All yours.”
Zoe turned the baggie over in her hands. Then she extended her arm to hold it up to the light. Charlie gasped when she saw what was inside.
The rest of the scene went quiet apart from the faint buzzing of the light bulbs.
Heads turned. All eyes latched onto Charlie. Waiting.
“What?” Zoe said, her voice small and clear in the silence.
A candy wrapper shone within the plastic sheath of the evidence bag. Clear cellophane with red edges and instantly recognizable printing across the center:
JOLLY rancher.
FIFTY-NINE
Charlie and Zoe ripped across Salem Island to Marjory’s house in Zoe’s cruiser. The thrum of the tires against the asphalt vibrated up through the floor to prickle in Charlie’s feet.
“You’re sure about this?” Zoe asked. “It’s a popular candy, you know.”
“Trust me. She sucks them down like they’re her only source of sustenance. I watched her eat about twenty of them earlier today.”
Charlie pressed Zoe’s phone to her ear, the ring chiming away, reaching out to Marjory’s cell phone and, so far, getting no answer. And Charlie could understand that. If she’d just run someone off the road, she’d probably screen calls, too.
Her jaw clenched and unclenched as she listened to the phone ring. And ring. And ring. Something urgent pattered in her pulse now, that hot surge of blood twitching in her neck, its pace quickening.
Frustration. Of the blend of emotions coursing through he
r, frustration was the strongest.
Because finding the candy wrapper in the sports car slash murder weapon sure seemed like a big reveal, right? It pointed an accusatory finger at Marjory, lit it up in flashing neon lights.
Except Marjory couldn’t have possibly been driving the car when it had hit Gloria. She had an airtight alibi for that window of time. She’d been on her way to her cabin with a friend. So what did any of this mean? And what did it have to do with the damning emails on Dutch’s computer, found and then lost almost as quickly? It was yet another strand in a tangled mess.
The ringing cut out. Marjory’s voicemail greeting took its place, and Charlie hung up.
“Still no answer,” she said, her voice flat, concealing her annoyance.
She clenched her jaw so hard that the muscles along it shook.
Her eyes closed. Squeezed tight. Pink splotches floated in the darkness invading her head.
“Talk to me,” Zoe said. “What are you thinking?”
Charlie looked over, and Zoe’s eyes met hers for a moment before shifting back to the road.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “But if I were Marjory, and I’d just done what we think she did—not to mention murdering Dutch and Gloria—I’d run.”
Full darkness had descended by the time they zipped closer to the house. Moonlight flitted through the trees as they sped down the road, but otherwise the blackness alongside the car was near total as they drove through this wooded stretch.
The cruiser’s headlights pierced the murk. Lit the way forward. Glowed bright where the reflective paint made a dotted yellow line down the center of the asphalt.
“Here we go,” Zoe muttered.
Charlie followed her gaze to Marjory’s mansion in the distance. No lights shone in the windows.
They pulled into the driveway and followed the serpentine blacktop strip up toward the house. Zoe killed the engine, and then they were out, rushing to the front door.
“Wait,” Zoe said, stopping dead in her tracks some six paces shy of the stoop.
Charlie bumped into Zoe’s shoulder then stopped as well. Her eyes snapped to Zoe’s face, found her brows creased, her lips pressed into a tight line.
“What is it?” Charlie said.
Zoe drew her weapon from her holster. Kept it pointed at the ground. She spoke in a whisper.
“Front door’s open, and all the lights are off.”
Charlie wheeled her head that way. Scanned for confirmation.
The front door lay open a few inches, something sinister about the shadowed gap.
Charlie blinked. Chills crawled over her back and shoulders as she peered into the crack, but she couldn’t look away.
Darkness spilled out of the chasm, a gaping blackness that felt very wrong.
SIXTY
Zoe pushed the door open, and a wedge of moonlight sliced into the foyer. The glow wasn’t strong enough for them to see much beyond the faint grid of the tile floor.
The deputy stepped through the doorway first, and Charlie followed. They milled around in the dark for a second, both of them fidgety, unsure of how to proceed.
Charlie fumbled her fingers along the wall, feeling for a light switch and failing to find one.
Zoe cupped a hand to her mouth and bellowed into the darkness.
“Sheriff’s Department. Anyone here?”
They both went still. Listened.
No response.
Charlie finally found a light switch and flipped it on. Recessed lights clicked on in the high ceiling, far overhead, and the foyer formed around them, as though congealing just now from the darkness.
Everything looked to be in perfect order. Spotless. Exactly the same as when Charlie had been here a couple of days ago.
Charlie licked her lips. With the front door hanging open, part of her had expected to find the place trashed or at least some signs of a struggle. It was somehow creepier to find the place so neat and still, ready and waiting to be the centerfold in next month’s Martha Stewart Living.
Zoe took a few steps forward, boots echoing off the tile.
She tensed, eyes narrowing. She raised her gun, extended it before her, arms shaking it a little.
There was a small yip and Marjory’s dog emerged from the shadows. Charlie knelt, scooping the tiny creature into her arms.
“Christ,” Zoe muttered.
She sighed and lowered her weapon again.
They crossed the living room, reaching the point where the house branched off in various directions. Again, Zoe cupped a hand to the side of her mouth.
“Salem’s County Sheriff’s Department! Answer me if you’re there.”
Still nothing.
Charlie set the tiny dog down in the kitchen with its food bowl and returned to the hallway.
Zoe gestured toward the dining room, indicating she would take the lead and clear the area, but something caught Charlie’s eye upstairs. From this angle, she could just make out a glint of light under one of the doorways of the second floor.
She grabbed Zoe’s shirtsleeve and pointed up at the glowing sliver. Zoe gazed up at the faint light and then at Charlie and nodded.
Charlie could feel her heartbeat in her neck as they tiptoed up the stairs. A steady glugging of blood gushing all through her.
No noise at all emitted from the lit room. No flitting shadows or other signs of movement disturbed that narrow bar of light under the door.
At the top of the stairs, they turned left, closing the last six paces to the door. Zoe raised her weapon again and gave a little hand signal for Charlie to whip it open and get out of the way.
Charlie’s hand drifted to the knob. Grasped it. Twisted.
Locked.
Zoe held up a hand. Nodded. She pointed a finger to the center of her chest and then pantomimed that she would kick it in. Charlie nodded and stepped aside.
Zoe took a breath, shoulders heaving up and then down. She counted down with her lips. Charlie held her breath.
Three.
Two.
One.
Zoe took two steps forward, building momentum. Then she lifted her right leg and cracked it into the door just beneath the knob.
The jamb splintered around the latch and burst out of the way, flung like a piece of balsa wood. It rebounded off the doorstop, shivering out a brittle tone.
“Salem County Sheriff’s Department!” Zoe yelled, her gun once again raised in front of her.
Apart from the trembling door, nothing in the room moved. Charlie took it in one piece at a time.
It was a bathroom. All white tile accented with pastel pink here and there. The bank of lights over the vanity were blinding, made Charlie’s eyes sting where they gleamed off all that porcelain.
Charlie and Zoe exchanged another glance before filing into the room, with Zoe leading the way. Three steps in, the rest of the room came into view.
The first thing Charlie saw was the blood. Thick red clouds of it fluttered in the bathwater.
A straight razor rested on the side of the tub, folded into an acute angle but not quite closed. Gummy red droplets clung to the blade.
Marjory lay motionless in the water, chin slumped against her sternum. Her skin looked gray against all the white in here. Ashen. Drained.
Red slits gashed the length of each forearm, presumably where she’d used the razor to open herself up. To watch her life spill into the bathwater, little shudders of it pulsing out until they stopped.
Charlie and Zoe stood motionless for a moment. Silent. Stunned.
A single drop of water gathered at the tip of the faucet and dripped. Plopped into the water in the tub, the wet sound loud in the quiet.
Concentric circles rippled outward from the point of impact. The tendrils of red undulated along with the water’s movement, billowing around the utterly still body of Marjory Carmichael.
And then Zoe lurched forward, reaching for the figure in the tub.
“She’s still breathing.”
SIXTY-ONE
When the paramedics finished locking the gurney into place, Charlie climbed into the back of the ambulance and buckled herself into one of the seats. In the few seconds it took one of the EMTs to occupy the driver’s seat, the other had started an IV on Marjory and set up a drip on one of the stands in back.
Within moments, the ambulance was tearing down the road. Juddering over potholes. Siren screaming every time they passed through an intersection.
Charlie swayed with each bump along the way, her face angled to watch the figure sprawled on the gurney.
Something about the slackness in Marjory’s cheeks looked utterly lifeless, not unlike a body in a casket, though the shaky rise and fall of her chest betrayed this vision. The gray undertone to her skin only looked darker in this lighting. Charlie couldn’t get over her complexion, no matter how long she stared at it. She didn’t look pallid, sickly, or peaked so much as straight-up gray.
Between the color and the grim expression unconsciousness had etched onto Marjory’s face, Charlie found her nearly unrecognizable. She pressed her lips together as guilt crept into her belly.
Should she feel guilty, though? She wasn’t sure.
She’d rushed to Marjory’s place to accuse her of… what? Eating candy in her father’s sports car? Did she have proof of anything beyond that? Not really.
Instead they’d found her nearly dead by her own hand. The whole scenario came with some whiplash effect, she supposed. A little guilt might make sense here and now.
Then again, maybe this suicide attempt was a kind of proof. Nothing definitive, of course, but it spoke to some dark possibilities, didn’t it?
Maybe. Maybe not.
The fact remained that Marjory had an alibi for the time when Gloria had been killed. Didn’t that make her an unlikely suspect to have run Charlie off the road in the same car?
Charlie watched the still figure on the gurney as her mind raced over these thoughts, the cadaverous face pointed up at the ceiling. Eyes closed.
Why did none of this make sense?
Charlie didn’t want to think about it just now. Didn’t want to ask herself a bunch of questions that couldn’t be answered.