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

by L. T. Vargus

  When she finally reached the farthest wall from the steps, she stopped. Turned back. Looked over all that she’d made her way through.

  It seemed obvious enough, even doing a cursory search. There was nothing here. The worst she could say about it was that it was messy and smelled like radishes.

  She started back through the basement, returning the way she’d come, twisting sideways at times to squeeze through the sliver of an opening. Nausea creeping its way into her middle.

  She paused a moment at the bottom of the steps, one hand resting on the rail. She reached up and pulled the string again, the room going full dark around her. And for just a second she didn’t turn on her flashlight. She just stared into the abyss, into the vast black nothingness that seemed to fill all of the universe around her.

  If she didn’t find anything here, then she really was headed into the abyss, wasn’t she? Nothing left to guide her. A cannonball plunge into the endless deep.

  But no. She shouldn’t think like that. She had to keep looking.

  She clicked on her light again, shined it up the incline of the steps. Again she wished that Allie would speak. Would say something to reassure her or crack a joke to break the tension. Before she reached the top of the stairs, however, another thought occurred to her. What if Allie was gone for good?

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  After poking through Leroy Gibbs’ random junk collections one more time and finding only more garbage, Charlie went outside. She tromped through the snow toward the back of the property. The beam of her flashlight bounced along in front of her, following the up and down movement of her steps.

  She thought about saying something to Allie, attempting to engage her or spur some conversation out of her, but she dared not risk it. What if her sister said nothing back? The notion of confirming this mounting fear, that Allie wasn’t here with her now, was too much to bear.

  The cold gripped her again within those first few steps out of the house. Harsh and dry. It numbed her face right away, reaching right through the acrylic fabric of the ski mask. For this moment she was glad for the chill, for the numbness, for all of it. In some way, the physical anesthetic slowly taking over her body kept the emotions at a distance along with the rest. She needed that now, a dulling of her feelings, because of all the possible outcomes of this search, the idea of finding nothing had never really occurred to her.

  A structure took shape at the back edge of what was once the yard: a steel-sided barn crouching in a snarl of overgrown sumacs. The building stood out as blacker than the rest in this black-on-black night. As she trudged closer, she could see that it was a ramshackle thing, just like the house—rusted siding, peeling paint, and what looked like a pretty good-sized hole in the roof where the weather had invaded, peeling back the shingles and slowly but surely softening the wood to mush.

  She had the hammer with her, expecting to find some kind of padlock out here, but the door was unlocked, already open a crack, in fact. The barn door groaned as she slid it a few more inches to the right, just enough to sidle through the opening.

  At first, she could only see the bare dirt floor decorated with small clumps of straw. The beam of her flashlight illuminated yet more clutter here. An old claw-foot bathtub. A tangled heap of rusty bicycles. Pitchforks, shovels, rakes. A pyramid of paint cans.

  Swinging her light to the right, though, she found something more interesting. A bulky form bungeed under a blue tarp. Lumpy in some places. Smooth in others. It wasn’t the body she was half-expecting to find, however. It was a boat.

  She swept the flashlight over the vessel, examining the exposed hull. It was made of wood with metallic-looking paint the color of copper. A motorboat, she realized. Old and dirty. It looked like it’d been trapped in this barn, swaddled beneath this very tarp, since about 1957.

  She walked around the vessel, shining her light into the stalls on the other side. Empty. Nothing but more bare dirt and clumps of straw.

  The nausea lurched in Charlie’s gut. She lowered her light. Tried to think.

  No girl. No evidence. Just the signs of a hermit, perhaps a mentally ill one at that. The reality that she couldn’t prove Gibbs was the guy had started to seep in along the way, and the aftereffect was settling over her now, seeming more and more undeniable.

  She swallowed. Not ready yet to face what these conclusions meant. Not ready… for what? Not ready to give up on Allie.

  She swung her light up onto the boat again. The entire tarp was covered in a fine layer of dust, except for one spot. She could almost see where someone’s hand had smeared the grit away. Loosening a few of the bungee cords, Charlie peeled back one side of the tarp and clambered up the wooden side.

  She spotted more places where the dust had been disturbed on the deck, and she followed the trail to a small compartment near the motor. This place had been almost completely cleared of the grime that covered the rest of the boat.

  She knelt. A seating pad covered the compartment, attached to the lid, and she slid her gloved fingers into the seams to remove it. The hinged lid popped as she pulled it free.

  The smell hit her first. Like the time they’d lost power for a week in July when she was a kid, and fifty pounds of ground beef in their chest freezer had spoiled.

  Her breath ceased as she gazed down into the chamber, the hollow place under the bench seat glowing under the glare of her flashlight. The package was irregularly shaped. Neatly wrapped in black plastic. Red-and-white baker’s twine crisscrossed the bundle, looping into a precise bow on top.

  Charlie’s hand trembled as she reached for one loose end of the knotted twine, already certain she knew what was inside.

  She tugged at the knot. With the bindings loosened, the wrapping opened and fell away like a flower blooming and withering in fast motion.

  Nestled in the wrinkled sheet of black plastic, she found a pair of severed feet.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Charlie jerked backward, gagging.

  She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Swirls danced along the edges of her vision, and a woozy feeling came over her, made her certain she was about to faint.

  She closed her eyes. Forced a big breath into her lungs. Held it, then let it out. She repeated this three times and felt the dizziness recede, even if her body still trembled.

  Her eyelids fluttered open, and she stared down at the grisly bundle again. The cuts were neat. Precise. Much more surgical than what she remembered from Allie’s case all those years ago.

  And the nausea reeled in her belly again. Sickness. Anxiety. Dread.

  She sat back from the gory package shoved down in the storage compartment and stared hard at nothing. Eyes going out of focus. Blinking in fast motion. She thought back over her search of the house. The filthy bathrooms, the junk piled everywhere, the dust that puffed up from the carpet with each step she took. The barn was no different. Messy and dirty and disorganized. Every corner filled with clutter.

  And yet the feet had been wrapped so carefully. Neat and precise. Like a Christmas present from a department store. Even the grime around the area had been cleared away, as if the person who’d planted the feet here couldn’t resist tidying up along the way.

  Charlie froze.

  Planted. The word had bubbled up from her subconscious all on its own, answering the question for her. Because that was what was wrong with the scene, wasn’t it? It felt fake. Staged.

  Someone was putting on a show.

  She refocused on the reality before her. Leaned forward and placed the lid back over the compartment.

  She stood. Moved to the edge of the boat. All these thoughts spiraled in her head. Overwhelming.

  It was a staged scene, and Charlie knew what that meant. Someone, Amber’s real killer, was trying to pin everything on Gibbs.

  The implications grew so heavy that she buckled at the knees just as she was trying to climb out of the boat. She tumbled to the dirt floor of the barn. The straw and dirt seemed to leap up to sla
m into her, a heavy thud as her core connected with the hard, frozen ground. It knocked the wind out of her.

  She lay there, prone, for a time. Staring at the dirt close up. Waiting for her breathing to come back to her.

  At last the thought broke through to her conscious mind, the one she’d been trying to block out: if Amber Spadafore’s murder and Kara Dawkins’ abduction had nothing to do with Allie’s disappearance, she would never solve her sister’s case.

  She would never find Allie now. She would never dig up her bones.

  It occurred to Charlie that she was utterly at the whim of a cruel world. A killing, raping, awful world. She was useless. Powerless. She couldn’t save Allie. She couldn’t save Amber. Couldn’t save any of them.

  She whispered into the ground, her voice small.

  “Allie. Are you there?”

  She held her breath as she waited. Listened for that familiar voice, her heart thudding in her ears.

  No response.

  She spoke louder this time. Full volume.

  “Allie. Please say something.”

  Nothing.

  Allie wasn’t there. Not anymore.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Charlie picked herself up off the barn floor. She batted at the dust and flecks of straw now clinging to the front of her coat. Little gray puffs rose from where her hands made contact. Her arms felt heavy, the cold sinking deeper into the flesh of her, leaving her numb.

  And a movie opened in her head as she stood there halfheartedly dusting herself off.

  She saw Misty Dawkins sitting across from her desk. The girl she’d known from school had grown older, a little thicker, and now she was crying. A Kleenex clenched in a fist in front of her face. Muffled sobs leaking out. Strained. Like she was trying with all of her might to hold it all in but couldn’t do it. Couldn’t contain the way she felt inside. It’d built up and up until it all came pouring out.

  Charlie remembered snippets of what Misty had talked about. Little things about Kara being gone, about how she’d taken off before but this time she was scared, truly scared, for the first time she could remember. That sometimes moms just know this kind of thing.

  And then Charlie remembered a picture of Kara, her younger brother wrapped around her piggyback-style, the two of them holding their hands up and giving the camera a peace sign.

  Kara Dawkins. Kara was still out there.

  That was why she couldn’t give up.

  Maybe Allie would never have justice, never have closure, but that only showed how much people needed it, how much people like Misty Dawkins and Amber’s family needed it even still.

  Charlie fled the barn, not bothering to close the door behind her. She swam back through the snow, disoriented at seeing everything from the opposite angle. She followed her tracks back until she could see the house, and then she picked up speed. Hurrying.

  Her brain seemed to pick up momentum along with her feet. She ran back over the details, seeking out the missing pieces to this story. If it wasn’t Gibbs, someone was deceiving her and everyone else. She had been missing something. Overlooking some piece to the case that hadn’t fit the Gibbs angle but might point to Amber’s real killer.

  Her mind snapped to it as she neared the car: the emails. The emails didn’t fit.

  The first email had told her to follow the White Rabbit, which was pointing to Robbie and the ecstasy. Once Robbie had been ruled out as a suspect, the email had pivoted. It had directed her to the beach where the body was found. Whoever sent the email knew the severed feet would steer the investigation to Gibbs and the planted feet in his boat. These were both methods of throwing her off a trail—the real trail.

  She ripped open the car door. Flung herself into the driver’s seat. Started it. The car groaned like it always did in the cold.

  The headlights shined on the dilapidated farmhouse, once again lighting those rotted pieces of wood where the paint had peeled away. Her thoughts were going so fast now that for a moment she just stared at the house, trying to untangle at least one of the strands in her head.

  Charlie needed to… needed to… She put her hands on the wheel. Needed to think.

  Zoe. She needed to call Zoe. But she needed to get off of Gibbs’ property first.

  She backed out of the driveway, tires squealing as the car swerved onto the road. A few miles from the house, she veered onto the shoulder.

  She tore off her gloves and patted her coat pockets until she felt her phone’s bulk. Nothing happened when she tried to wake it. Because she’d turned it off, she remembered suddenly. When it was finally powered up and ready to use, she struggled to get to the contact list with numb fingers.

  By the time the phone was ringing against her ear, she had to remind herself what she was even going to say. The feet. She’d found the feet, but they were almost definitely planted. And not almost. Just definitely.

  “Charlie, thank God,” Zoe answered. “I called you like eight times. Where the hell are you?”

  “Zoe, I’m… I just left Gibbs’ house, and—”

  “Charlie. Listen to me. It’s Frank. Something’s happened.”

  “Wait,” Charlie said, her mind struggling to catch up. “What?”

  “Your uncle. The paramedics are rushing him to McLaren Hospital, but I don’t know anything more than that.”

  “But…” Charlie searched for the words. “Is he going to be OK?”

  Zoe was quiet for what felt like a long time.

  “I talked to the neighbor who found him. Mrs. Humphrey? She said it looked bad.”

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Frank lay in his hospital bed. Eyes closed. Motionless save for the inflating and deflating of his chest.

  Wires and tubes circuited from machines to his hand and wrist. A monitor over the bed displayed Frank’s vitals, green for heart rate, red for blood pressure, and on and on.

  Charlie watched him through a pane of glass with chicken wire strung through it—the observation window, the nurse had called it. Visiting hours wouldn’t resume until morning, but the small woman in pale purple scrubs had said it was OK for her to look in on him for the moment, at least until they turned out the lights in this hall. Then she went to fetch Frank’s doctor.

  Frank’s fingers twitched, just once. Charlie leaned forward, waiting for some other sign of life, but Frank lay still again. His existence reduced to breathing. Nothing more.

  Charlie hated seeing him like this. Hated that he was in this place with the strange, jittery energy echoing down the halls and the harsh fluorescent reflections sheening off tile and quartz veneer. Shiny and neat and orderly and utterly fake.

  Death surrounded everything in a hospital, but it was always tucked somewhere behind closed doors. Out of sight. Out of mind.

  Scrubbed. Sanitized.

  A doctor in a white lab coat approached, followed closely by the same nurse from before. The pair paused in front of her, waiting for Charlie to turn her gaze away from the window looking in on Frank’s room.

  “You’re the niece?” the doctor asked, putting out a hand for her to shake. “I’m Dr. Anagonye.”

  “You’re not his normal doctor,” Charlie said. “His oncologist, I mean.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m an internist here in the ICU, but I have been in touch with Dr. Silva. She’s being kept abreast of Frank’s condition.”

  “So is it the cancer?” Charlie gripped a fistful of her coat, as if holding onto herself for dear life. “Has it spread?”

  The doctor looked confused for a moment before shaking his head.

  “No, no. Your uncle was brought in with bacterial meningitis.”

  Charlie, who’d been expecting the worst, didn’t know what to make of that.

  “But he was fine. He’s been fine.”

  “No neck pain or headaches?” the doctor asked.

  Charlie remembered then how Frank had rubbed at his neck and commented about sleeping wrong.

  “Yes, but—”

  “It ca
n come on incredibly fast. And it’s not uncommon with chemotherapy patients. The fact that their immune system is weakened puts them at higher risk for infections like this.”

  Staring through the window at her uncle, Charlie felt a surge of hope. This whole time she’d been expecting them to tell her the cancer had progressed, that his diagnosis was no longer treatable. But it was only an infection. They’d pump him full of antibiotics, and he’d be back on his feet in no time.

  “When will he wake up?”

  Charlie didn’t like the way the doctor glanced over at the nurse, his jaw tensed.

  “I can’t say for sure. Meningitis patients that present with a minimal score on the Glasgow Coma Scale have a significantly higher rate of morbidity and mortality,” he said.

  Charlie only understood about half of the doctor’s words, but she was pretty sure she knew what “morbidity and mortality” meant in this context. Her eyelids blinked open and shut slowly. It was several seconds before she realized the doctor was still talking and had asked her a question.

  “What?”

  “Do you know if your uncle has an advance directive?”

  Charlie shook her head.

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “A living will? It would specify what medical action your uncle would want taken in the event he was unable to make those decisions himself.”

  The pause after that stretched out, emptiness swelling to fill the space in the stark hallway. Like those vast black seas of space out there. Nothingness that stretched out eternally, infinitely. When Charlie said nothing, the doctor continued.

  “If there’s no living will, as his next of kin, it would fall on you to make the… final decisions.”

  Final decisions. Meaning Charlie would have to be the one to decide when to “pull the plug,” so to speak.

  The doctor said more, but Charlie couldn’t seem to get her brain to focus on the words. Instead, she found herself staring at a small food stain on the doctor’s lab coat, a smear just left of his sternum. Spaghetti sauce? Maybe chili.