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

by L. T. Vargus

“Your eye looks terrible,” she said.

  He smiled again, gesturing at the side of his face.

  “This? Ah, but chicks think this kind of thing is cool, Charlie. They see a guy walk in with an eye swollen and purple like a ripe plum, and they’re all like, ‘Who’s this guy?’” He gave one of his characteristic shrugs. “Anyway, it’s only my eye. I have another one.”

  Charlie chuckled a little at that.

  “You should see the other guy, too,” Will said. “After the police beat the shit out of him, I mean. I’ve seen up close the damage they can do with those nightsticks, and I imagine they don’t care too much for the Muscle Beach types. It ain’t going to be pretty.”

  His eyes went wide then, and Charlie followed his gaze back to the front doors of the club.

  Word must have spread quickly about the police being on the scene, as a bunch of patrons spilled out through the doors now, a trickle and then a steady flow. A couple of opportunistic types had taken care to loot a few bottles of expensive booze during the riot, hugging them in their arms like precious treasure, but Charlie knew that they were really getting the cheapest of cheap swill dressed up in fancy bottles.

  The stream of people kept coming, so many that Charlie began to wonder if the cops had opted to primarily clear the place out and only arrest the most egregious offenders. That didn’t bode well for the guy who’d smashed a Belvedere bottle over a bouncer’s head, but it was probably the most efficient way to end this mess—more like clearing out a keg party than anything.

  Additional police vehicles arrived in the minutes that followed: three black Salem County sheriff cruisers, a dark blue Michigan state police truck which matched the first three cruisers on the scene, and a couple of smaller white cruisers belonging to the nearest police department in Port Blanc, a tiny rural town that probably barely even needed their own department, truth be told. Maybe the Red Velvet Lounge kept them busy, though.

  Charlie spotted Zoe among the cluster of law enforcement officers and waved from across the parking lot, but Zoe was too focused on doing her job to notice.

  By the time the last pair of officers entered the building, the trickle of foot traffic coming out had all but stopped, and the building had gone strangely still. The anticipation built. Charlie felt goosebumps plump along her forearms.

  The door burst open as though kicked, and out walked one of the muscle-bound leviathans, his arms pinned behind his back. He scowled, bottom teeth bared, swiveling his head as though expecting a crowd and finding none. A state trooper filed along behind him, looking strangely small and old behind the big brute.

  “Finally,” Will said. “I thought they were going to let everyone off with a warning or something dumb like that.”

  Charlie puffed something of a laugh from her nostrils.

  “Weren’t you the one railing on about how local law enforcement is out of control the other day? Story changes pretty quickly, doesn’t it?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Now hold on. That was different.” Will aimed a finger at her. “None of the cops punched me in the face or put their hands on you. These juiced-up apes deserve whatever they got coming to ’em.”

  The stream of perp walks continued, building up some speed now—a parade of bouncers with black eyes and bloody noses, each of them sporting cuffs. The loudmouth from the front door detail came out looking like he’d had a nose job performed by way of fists, his schnoz all dented and crooked and swollen. Charlie started to slow clap the way he’d done the first time she’d gotten caught snooping around, adding in a thumbs up when he scowled in her direction.

  After the bouncers, a pair of polo-shirted guys exited. Charlie figured they must be the managers or owners. While they lacked the musculature of the security guys, they still looked imposing in their own way, a strange and dangerous energy in their eyes.

  Charlie watched Zoe file out of the building and load one of the meatheads into a cruiser. With her cargo secured in the backseat, she rounded the rear of the car and headed to where Charlie and Will stood observing the scene.

  Zoe held something in her hands awkwardly, and as she got closer, Charlie realized it was her purse.

  “Should have known you’d be all mixed up in this,” Zoe said, handing the bag over. “Thought you might want this back.”

  “Thanks,” Charlie said, peeking quickly inside to check that everything was there.

  Zoe’s gaze fell on Will and his eye, which was now partially swollen shut.

  “Yikes. Nice shiner.”

  Will grinned.

  “Pretty cool, huh?”

  Satisfied that the bouncers hadn’t pilfered anything important from her bag, Charlie slung the handle over her arm and focused on Zoe again.

  “Did you search the office yet?”

  “We did. Found the drugs just where you said they’d be. Port Blanc PD is gonna wanna throw a parade in your honor. They’ve been trying to find dirt on these guys for years, and you just served it up on a silver platter.”

  “And what about the girls? At least one of them recognized Kara Dawkins, and said she’d been around up until a few weeks ago.”

  “We’ll get official statements from them before they’re released,” Zoe assured her.

  “Kara’s only seventeen, you know,” Charlie reminded Zoe. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the others are underage.”

  “It’ll be handled. Trust me.” Zoe snapped her fingers. “Oh hey, I forgot to tell you. We solved the Jason Spadafore mystery.”

  “Mystery?”

  “You know… how he bashed that guy over the head for what seemed like no reason?”

  “Oh, right. So there was a reason?”

  “Yeah. Turns out Jason and his girlfriend split up recently. I guess he was holding out hope for a reconciliation, but she has moved on to greener pastures.”

  Charlie could see where this was headed.

  “And Jason decided to wallop the ‘greener pastures’ in the skull with a pool cue?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Zoe’s head bobbed up and down. “That’s about the long and short of it.”

  Charlie remembered Jason’s angry phone call and the one snippet she’d been able to make out: “a lying bitch.” Well, that certainly fit. She wasn’t sure she’d ever considered Jason a true suspect, certainly not after what she’d found in the club tonight. Still, she hated unanswered questions, and now she had one less on her plate.

  Glancing back at the building, Zoe tucked her thumbs in her belt. “I better head back inside. The ladies started getting antsy once they saw their bosses being led out in handcuffs.”

  “You’ll let me know what you find out?”

  Already trudging toward the front doors of the Red Velvet Lounge, Zoe spun around and walked backward a few paces.

  “Yeah. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “You’re the best,” Charlie called out.

  Zoe gave a dismissive wave.

  “The way I see it, you owe me like a dozen apple fritters at this point.”

  Zoe disappeared through the open front doors. At the sound of the police truck’s engine roaring to life, Will turned to Charlie, pushing himself to his feet.

  “Well, that was eventful.” Will spun his keys around his index finger. “Should we call it a night?”

  “I guess so,” Charlie said. “Only I think I should drive.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have two good eyes and didn’t just take a blow to the head.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, tossing his keys over to her. “My head is starting to throb a bit. Is it just me or was that guy’s fist the size of a honey-baked ham?”

  Will said little on the drive back to Salem Island, and by the time they reached the parking lot outside Charlie’s apartment, she could tell by the grimace on his face that the pain was starting to get to him.

  “Why don’t you come up and get some Tylenol? I probably have something we can put on your eye, too.”

  She expected some kind
of quip from him, but he only nodded, looking miserable. Their feet drummed against the metal steps as they climbed up to the apartment. Will paused inside the door.

  “I forgot to ask before,” he said, his gaze lingering on the blank walls, meager furniture, and a stack of yet-to-be-unpacked cardboard boxes against one wall, “but who did your decorating?”

  Charlie pointed at the mattress, secretly glad that he was making jokes again. She’d started to worry there for a minute.

  “Sit.”

  Will obeyed, lowering himself to perch on one corner of the bed. In the kitchen, Charlie snatched a bottle of acetaminophen from a drawer and then filled a glass of water at the sink. When Will lifted his arm to down two of the tablets, her attention was suddenly drawn to a dark red spatter on his sleeve.

  “There’s blood all over your shirt.”

  Will tilted his arm to see.

  “Huh,” he said, totally nonchalant. “I don’t think it’s mine.”

  “I might be able to rinse it out if it hasn’t set. Gimme,” she said, waiting while he unbuttoned and removed the shirt.

  She filled the sink with water to wash Will’s shirt, then dug out a bag of frozen peas from her freezer and handed it over.

  “Lie back and put this on your eye,” she said.

  Sprawling out on the bed, Will rested his head on one of the pillows and let out a sigh of satisfaction. He squinted over at her through his good eye.

  “You know, if this was a thinly veiled attempt to get me into your bed, it worked.”

  Charlie scoffed and rolled her eyes.

  “Oh yeah… every time I look at that puffy saddlebag of an eye you’ve got, I get the strongest urge to just tear off my panties.”

  “I don’t know,” Will said, yawning. “You might have to take a number. Did you notice Zoe checking me out?”

  “She’s gay.”

  “I know. But that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. This black eye magic is no joke. No woman is immune to its powers.”

  Charlie shook her head, dousing the stains on Will’s shirt with dish soap.

  “This is it, Charles,” Allie said. “You’ve got him right where you want him.”

  “Don’t start up with this again.”

  “Oh, please. Don’t tell me you brought him all the way up here, and now you’re going to chicken out. You’ve been fantasizing about this since you were sixteen.”

  “I have not. You were the boy-crazy one, not me.”

  When Charlie glanced over her shoulder at Will, his eyes were closed. She took the opportunity to study him openly. His face. His lean chest. His long arms folded over his bare stomach. OK, she probably had fantasized about a Will scene like this a time or two—maybe without the pack of frozen peas draped over half of his face.

  “Ha! I knew it,” Allie said.

  Charlie swallowed. She left the shirt to soak and took a step closer to where Will lay. She knelt next to the bed, watching his chest rise and fall. Slowly. Rhythmically.

  “Will?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Oh, come on,” Allie moaned. “He fell asleep?!”

  Smiling to herself, Charlie carefully removed the bag of peas from Will’s face and returned them to the freezer. Then she climbed in beside him and closed her eyes, waiting for sleep to overtake her.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Charlie awoke the next morning to a knock at the apartment door. The clock on her phone said 8:12 a.m. She slid on a pair of sweatpants as she stumbled to the door.

  The lock rattled as her sleep-stupid fingers struggled to unlatch the deadbolt. Finally, she opened the door.

  “Gooooooood morning,” Zoe said, mysteriously full of energy at this unholy hour.

  Charlie pawed at the corner of her eye with a knuckle.

  “Can I help you, officer?”

  “They’re interviewing the owner of the Red Velvet Lounge in a bit. Sheriff said it’d be OK if you came down to observe the interrogation.”

  That got Charlie’s attention.

  “For real?”

  “Wouldn’t be much of a prank, would it?” Zoe crossed her arms. “Everyone’s so darn pleased with the bust that I guess they’re feeling mighty generous. Also, your good friend Zoe Wyatt might have put in a good word for you. Reminded them all that it was you who called it in.”

  “This is gonna cost me, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yeah.” Zoe nodded. “You owe me big time.”

  The hinges on the door squeaked as Charlie threw it wide and stepped back, waving her friend inside.

  “Come on in. It’ll only take me a minute to get dressed.”

  Zoe’s eyes swept the apartment, and she raised her left eyebrow.

  “I love what you’ve done with the place.” When her gaze fell on the bed, her right eyebrow joined the first. A devilish smile spread over her lips. “Hello, Will.”

  A shirtless Will sat half-propped against a pillow in Charlie’s bed, blinking groggily. He raised a hand in Zoe’s direction.

  “Morning, Zo.”

  “What have you two kids been up to?” Zoe asked, and Charlie could hear a ridiculous level of glee in her voice.

  Charlie swiped a key from the bedside table and tossed it into Will’s lap. He picked it up and examined it as if it were some mysterious artifact he’d never seen before.

  “Spare key,” Charlie explained. “So you can lock up when you leave.”

  Will closed his fist around the key and shook it, a child’s look of awe still occupying his features.

  “With great power comes great responsibility,” he said, staring into the middle distance. “I will guard it with my life.”

  Zoe tittered. She seemed to be highly amused by the whole scenario, standing in the doorway with that Cheshire Cat grin on her face. Charlie nudged her out the door.

  Zoe waggled her fingers at Will.

  “Goodbye, Will.”

  Charlie pulled the door shut behind her. The metal stairs down to the parking lot sounded like a steel drum under their collective footsteps. Zoe beamed all the way down to her car, shooting Charlie periodic glances.

  “After all that business where you tried to deny totally having the hots for him in school,” Zoe said. “How full of shit are you?”

  “Nothing happened, if you must know.”

  “Uh-huh. Riiight.”

  Charlie grumbled something unintelligible and climbed into the car. They rode a while in silence before Zoe started in again.

  “Hey, man, I’m happy for you. You’re cute together.”

  Allie made a disgusted, gagging sound at the same moment that Charlie said, “Oh, barf.”

  “What?” Zoe asked, taking a right.

  Charlie gestured to the Salem County jail, which had come into view on the road ahead.

  “Can we maybe put this on hold until later? I’d rather not walk in here looking like a total amateur.”

  Zoe pointed at Charlie’s legs.

  “That why you wore sweatpants?”

  Charlie glanced down at herself. In her haste to leave, she’d forgotten to change.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Zoe shrugged.

  “I thought it would be funny?”

  Allie cackled.

  Charlie crossed her arms over her chest and glared out the window.

  “I hate you.”

  Chapter Fifty

  The owner of the Red Velvet Lounge was Silas Demetrio, a swarthy little man with thick eyebrows and a permanent sneer. Acne scars pocked his cheeks, evenly divoting his skin like hammered metal. Despite the circumstances, the guy didn’t look frightened in the slightest.

  Charlie watched from the observation room as he mostly declined to talk, deferring questions and waiting for his attorney to arrive.

  “Robbie Turner. That’s all I’m saying. He’s the one that brought the girl around, OK? Said he was her… manager, I think he called it. That’s about all I know. Want to know more? Talk to him.”
<
br />   A detective named Peterson wiped at the corner of his mouth.

  “By manager, you mean to imply he was Kara Dawkins’ pimp, correct? On your property?”

  Two lines formed between Demetrio’s brows as his scowl deepened.

  “No. We don’t allow nothing like that.” He held up his hand like a crossing guard halting traffic. “No way. She wanted to dance? Fine. But that was the end of it. We run a pretty tight ship, I think.”

  A slight smile formed on Peterson’s face.

  “A tight ship, eh?” he repeated. “So the fact that she was underage, that would be representative of this ‘tight ship’ that you run?”

  Demetrio’s thin lips practically disappeared as he pressed his mouth into a tight line.

  “All I would have known was the ID she showed me, OK? The ID says eighteen and up, then as far as I’m concerned, it’s all above board. Not like I’m running deep background checks on every girl who shows up looking for a job. Someone shows me convincing forged documents, how am I responsible?”

  Still smiling, Peterson nodded.

  “Yeah, well, the court will have their say.”

  “Perfect. In the meantime, you can direct all questions to my attorney when he gets here. I’m done talking.”

  “No need to get testy,” the detective said, backing off the pressure. “We’re just talking here.”

  Demetrio just shook his head. When he spoke again, he did it through a predatory smile.

  “Lawyer.”

  Detective Peterson gathered his papers, tucked them in a folder. He pushed his chair out from the small table and stood.

  “Robbie Turner, eh?” he said.

  “That’s right. Robbie. Turner. Other than that?” Demetrio leaned back in his seat. “Lawyer.”

  Charlie and Zoe studied the club owner through the two-way glass.

  “What do you think?” Charlie asked.

  On the other side of the window, Silas Demetrio drummed his fingers on the table, tapping out a random beat.

  “He seems remarkably calm for a guy who’s got a one-way ticket to prison,” Zoe said, crossing her arms. “We’ve confirmed that at least two of the other girls from the club are underage. Combined with the drugs we found in the office, they’ll get shut down for sure. He can blame this Robbie Turner all he wants. The fact is, he’s the captain of this ship, and it’s going down.”