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

by L. T. Vargus

  Todd nodded.

  “What did you do with Amber?”

  “Initially I had her in the trunk, but then I figured the police would check the GPS on her car once they found it. It was important to go straight from the house to the commuter lot. So I moved her to my car instead. When I got back from dumping her vehicle, I took her to one of my warehouses so I could give myself time to come up with a plan.”

  “How is it that none of that—either you coming back from dumping Amber’s car or leaving in your car—is on the doorbell camera?”

  “I erased it. I kept just the video of me returning from the warehouse that night, so it would look like I didn’t arrive home until after Amber had already left. I’m sure all the deleted videos are stored on the cloud or something somewhere, but I only needed it to hold up long enough for you to have another suspect in custody.”

  Again, Todd seemed on the verge of smiling as he recounted this part of the tale. Amused with his bit of trickery.

  The observation room went frigid, cavernous. The coldness gripping Charlie intensified. She wanted to look away, wanted to walk out of the observation room, but she couldn’t. Her eyes remained fixed on Todd. Unblinking.

  The detective lifted his chin and blinked across the table.

  “Tell me about Kara Dawkins.”

  Todd closed his eyes for a moment. Licked his lips.

  “I knew if it was just Amber missing, that I would be one of the first suspects. But if there was another… well, that would complicate things, wouldn’t it? Suddenly the police would have to look at her family, at the possibility of a stranger abducting random girls from the street. It helped that Kara’s disappearance came out first, before Amber’s, but that was just sheer luck.”

  The Adam’s apple in the center of Todd’s throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed.

  “Did you choose her at random, or…?” The detective let his question trail off.

  “No, I’d seen her before with… with the man my wife was seeing. I followed him once, after, well… Anyway, I’d learned a little about him. About the drugs. I realized if Kara went missing, he would be a logical suspect. It was a simple matter of convenience.”

  Charlie wondered at the way he said it, almost apologetically. Like he worried they might think him petty or vindictive, of all things.

  “I sent the email to the private detective about the White Rabbit,” he continued. “I thought that would bring an end to all of it. But then you ruled Robbie Turner out as a suspect. So I had to change it up again.”

  “Think on your feet, so to speak?” the detective said.

  Todd just glared at him for a long moment before he went on, and Charlie saw a vivid flash of the other version of the man, the aggressive version that lurked somewhere beneath the facade.

  “I had to change the narrative. And there was one other person in town who seemed like an obvious fit for the abduction and murder of a pair of teenage girls. Someone who had already done it once and gotten away with it, depending on who you ask.”

  “Leroy Gibbs,” the detective said, not bothering to frame it as a question.

  Todd gave the briefest of nods before he went on.

  “It meant further unpleasantness for me, of course. Had to take a hacksaw to my stepdaughter’s feet. So I wrapped all of her in a vinyl tarp. Just her feet sticking out. Then maybe it wouldn’t seem so much like her, I thought. The girl I knew. They were just feet. And it worked, to some degree. Still, my hands shook the whole time. Felt like a, what do you call it… an out-of-body experience. But it had to be done. I knew the police would take the bait. Salem Island’s ghost coming back to haunt them after all these years? With all that history, there was no way this place would allow a man to get away with something like that twice. No way.”

  “So what went wrong with the plan?” the detective asked. “Why attack and abduct Miss Winters?”

  Ritter smiled a wolfish smile. Shook his head.

  “I’d been watching her. Keeping tabs. It was helpful early on, to be able to know where she was in the investigation. Reassuring to watch her scurry after the breadcrumbs I’d left her. But even after the feet, even after Gibbs was arrested, she kept going. Still scrambling around like there was something else to find. She was the loose end, you know? Couldn’t have that.”

  Charlie’s hands and cheeks were numb now. She held her breath, afraid that if she exhaled, it’d come out as a visible mist. Still, she couldn’t look away.

  “I followed her to the park,” Todd was saying. “Saw her getting into some kind of altercation with the lawyer. That was my chance to close the loop once and for all. Figured I’d take them both out, stage it to look like a murder–suicide. Pin everything on him. No loose ends. But it all spiraled away from me. Got out of control. And now it’s all out in the light…”

  The detective pursed his lips.

  “Let’s go back for a moment. When you abducted Kara Dawkins, did you plan what you would do with her?”

  Todd’s lawyer sat forward, tugging on his arm, whispering in his ear. After listening to him a moment, Todd answered.

  “I planned to take her to one of my warehouses, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But after that,” the detective said, “what then? Were you going to kill her? Keep her for a while and let her go?”

  The tip of Todd’s tongue flicked out to wet his lips.

  “Because a moment ago, when you were talking about setting up Leroy Gibbs, you said he was an obvious fit for someone who’d abduct and murder a pair of girls.”

  Todd’s mouth opened, hanging agape for a second before he spoke.

  “Yes. I had initially planned to kill her. But I couldn’t do it.”

  His lawyer threw his hands up in disgust.

  Todd shrugged, smiling again.

  “It was something else with Amber. Something that happened to me as much as her. Some animal part of my brain taking over. I hadn’t planned it. Hadn’t looked at her and thought about how I was about to squeeze the life out of her. It just happened. I couldn’t recreate it with Kara, even if I wanted to. Needed to.”

  Charlie thought back to the times she’d interacted with Todd before it had all come undone. How he’d thanked her in her office that day, or when he’d invited her to join the family for his “famous chicken parm.”

  She had to admit that she’d never suspected him, not even a little. And it wasn’t only because he’d seemed to have an airtight alibi.

  She’d never considered him because he’d been so… ordinary. So polite and meek. Somehow, listening to him now, that chilled her all the more.

  Because what did it mean if someone like him could commit such heinous deeds?

  He had done indisputably evil things, and still in most ways he looked and seemed just like anyone else. Her mailman. Her dentist. The guy who made her coffee or changed the tires on her car.

  She shuddered at the thought.

  And Charlie realized then that the creeping chill that had built throughout Todd’s confession went back to Allie. For the first time, she was forced to consider that whoever killed Allie was probably every bit as ordinary as Todd Ritter.

  Maybe it was easier to believe that all murderers were monsters. Somehow marked. That society could just weed them out and be rid of them, but reality was not so simple. The ones we call evil? The ones we label as monsters? Before that, they were our friends, our siblings, our co-workers. Husbands. Fathers.

  They walk among us.

  Lost in her thoughts, it was several moments before Charlie was aware that Todd was still talking in the other room.

  “Before it got out, it didn’t feel real. Felt like a dream, you know? Something that only existed in my head. But hey, everybody dies in the end. One way or another, that’s how the story ends, so…”

  The touch of emotion that had built in his voice over the course of the interview drained again as he said these last words. He drifted back to that weird half-amused tone, staring
at nothing. Silent. Motionless.

  The room held the quiet for a long time, not even the detective daring to break the spell. All eyes watched the subdued figure, perhaps all wondering the same thing, Charlie thought.

  What was going through Todd Ritter’s brain right now? Would it even mean anything to know?

  When he spoke again, it was just louder than a whisper.

  “This isn’t who I was. Before, I mean. It isn’t who I was, but it is now. Can’t undo it, so what the hell?”

  Charlie’s phone buzzed, and feeling that the interrogation was winding down, she stepped into the hallway to take the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Charlotte Winters?” The voice was male with the slightest lilt of an accent.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Dr. Anagonye from McLaren Hospital. I’m calling in regard to your uncle.”

  Charlie readied herself for bad news about Frank. She reached out, bracing herself against the wall.

  “He’s awake.”

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  Charlie looked in on Frank through the glass of the small window in the hallway. His eyes were closed, and for a moment, she worried he’d slipped away again in the time it had taken her to get to the hospital. But when she stepped through the open doorway and into the room, Frank’s eyelids fluttered open.

  Charlie’s nose stung and then tears welled in her eyes as she moved closer and took her uncle’s hand in hers.

  Frank smiled.

  “Hey, turkey.”

  Opening her mouth to respond, Charlie realized that if she tried to say anything right now, it would come out as a sob. She squeezed Frank’s hand, taking a few moments to pull herself together. Finally, swallowing against the lump in her throat, she trusted herself to speak.

  “Please don’t ever do that again,” she said.

  Frank croaked out a laugh.

  “I’ll try not to.”

  Beside him, an IV pump softly whirred and clicked.

  “So you found her? Your missing girl?”

  “One of them. The other…” Charlie sighed, reliving the moment she found Amber’s body on the beach. “She’s gone. Was from the beginning. She never really had a chance.”

  Frank nodded, as if confirming something he already knew.

  “Wait. How did you know?”

  “Allie told me.”

  His tone was nonchalant, blasé even, but Charlie froze.

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry. I haven’t lost my marbles,” he said, chuckling. “I dreamed when I was under. Not the whole time, I don’t think. It’s hard to say. It’s all foggy. I don’t even remember falling down in my house. The last memory I have is of you eating a brownie. And then…”

  He shook his head.

  “Anyway, what I can remember is all murky. Like I was surrounded by some kind of dark cloud. I could hear things, but they sounded garbled and far away, like when you’re underwater. But there was one moment when the light pierced the haze. It was sunny and bright, and I could hear perfectly well. And Allie was there. She told me everything was going to be OK. That you’d solved the case. Found the girl.”

  Charlie stared at him, wondering how much of this could simply be explained away as a fever dream. The hallucinations of a very ill man on a cocktail of drugs, each one with its own jumble of bizarre side effects.

  “You want to know the weirdest part?” Frank asked.

  “What?”

  “The thing that stands out to me most was that when she reached out to hold my hand, her fingers were all sticky, like she’d been eating an ice cream or something.”

  All the hairs on Charlie’s arms stood on end, and her spine quivered. She suddenly flashed on the vision she’d had when she was knocked unconscious, of her and Allie eating popsicles.

  Before she could say anything, a dark-haired woman in blue scrubs bustled in with a phlebotomy cart.

  “Knock-knock,” the woman said.

  “Who’s there?” Frank responded, looking far too pleased with himself.

  Without missing a beat, the woman said, “Ivan.”

  “Ivan who?”

  Affecting a Dracula-esque accent, the woman said, “I vant to steal your blood!”

  Frank and Charlie laughed.

  “Seriously though,” the woman said. “My name is Marta, and I’m here for a blood draw.”

  Charlie made room at the bedside for the woman and her cart.

  “Hey, turkey,” Frank said. “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Well, let’s start the celebration early. I got a hankering for some fried chicken. Extra crispy. A breast, a thigh, and two wings. Maybe some mashed potatoes and gravy. All the fixins.”

  Charlie couldn’t help but smile.

  “Seriously?”

  “Deadly. You wouldn’t believe what passes as food in this joint.”

  “I heard that,” Marta teased.

  “OK,” Charlie said. “As long as you promise to behave yourself while I’m gone.”

  “Me?” Frank asked with mock innocence. “I promise to stick to knock-knock jokes. Just good, clean fun.”

  “Yeah, don’t pretend like you don’t know half a dozen dirty ones.” Charlie swiveled to face the phlebotomist. “If he tries to tell you one about ‘Anita,’ give him a good slap upside the head.”

  “Don’t worry,” Marta said, snapping on a glove. “I’ll keep him in line.”

  Charlie exited the room and retraced her steps back to the elevators. As she passed by the waiting room, someone called her name.

  She halted, turning to watch a tall form rise from one of the chairs.

  Will.

  He had two black eyes now and a small line of stitches that ran from just over his right temple and disappeared into his hairline.

  “Two shiners,” she said. “Does that make you doubly irresistible?”

  “You tell me,” he said, a half-smile touching one corner of his mouth.

  Charlie’s eyes went down to the polished floor.

  “You spied on me, Will. Do you expect me to just forget about that?”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. I just wanted the truth. Needed the truth. I thought maybe you could understand that, of all people,” he said. “Haven’t you crossed a few lines on behalf of your clients?”

  “Get a load of this guy. He violates your privacy and then tries to spin your question like a politician or something,” Allie said, suddenly interjecting.

  Charlie considered it and came to the conclusion that maybe they were both right. Maybe she was one of the few people who could appreciate what Will had done, in the name of pursuing justice. But he had broken her trust, something she had in short supply as it was. This wasn’t something that could be repaired so quickly.

  Charlie raised her eyes, meeting Will’s gaze.

  “You did what you thought you had to do to prove your client’s innocence,” she said. “On a certain level, I can respect it.”

  He pulled back, his expression softening.

  “You and I both know, doing what we do, that no one can really be trusted. Not truly,” Charlie continued. “So why would either of us be surprised by this type of thing? Why should it hurt us?”

  His eyes went wide. Blinking.

  “Charlie, you can trust me.”

  She shook her head.

  “Can I? Because once I knew you were the one who’d installed that keylogger on my computer, it threw everything into question. I actually believed that you’d kidnapped Kara and killed Amber. I believed you killed Allie.”

  “Allie?” Will’s eyelids stretched farther open still. “But you have to know I didn’t—”

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “On some level, I do. But sometimes you think things you can’t unthink. Not all the way. Some things you can’t take back, maybe.”

  Will’s shoulders sagged then, and she thought it was finally sinking in for him. Whatever there might have been betwe
en them was gone. Erased.

  “Anyway, I forgive you,” Charlie said, shrugging. “If that’s what you want to hear.”

  She turned away, heading for the elevators. Inside, she jabbed a button with her finger, and the doors eased closed, sealing her away from the lawyer in the hallway.

  “Damn. That was ice-cold, Charles,” Allie said. “I kind of love it, but… ouch.”

  Epilogue

  Two weeks after Todd Ritter entered his guilty plea, the snow that had blanketed Salem Island melted all at once. An unseasonably summery day descended upon eastern Michigan. It seemed to thaw the land itself.

  The clouds parted, and the sun erupted in full force. The local weatherman, jubilant and almost breathless, made sure to use the graphic of the little sun cartoon character smiling beneath a pair of black sunglasses in every single one of his segments that day.

  The first two days after the melt were a soggy mess. Every yard looked more like a swamp—brown grass swimming in a muddy soup. Standing water along most of the curbs, pools of it collecting atop the clogged storm drains.

  But the sun remained. Persisted. Did its work. And on the third warm day, the ground dried out. The grass even started its journey back toward green.

  When Charlie went for a walk that day, it felt like everyone in town was out and about. Enjoying the strangely pleasant run of weather. Most went without coats. The bravest of the lot even sported shorts.

  “Actual sunshine on a January day?” Allie said. “What demonry is this?”

  Charlie sniffed more than she laughed at the comment. Allie sometimes repeated jokes too often. She’d really run the “demonry” thing into the ground recently, slowly draining it of any comedic power.

  Charlie fell in with the teeming masses out for a stroll. She walked down to the park, as did much of the crowd, it seemed. Usually the bustle might kill the joy in a walk, but not today. Today it felt good to be out here no matter what. Maybe it even felt good to be with other people, instead of cooped up in a building by herself. Not apart from everyone like she so often was. Not alone.