First Girl Gone(107)

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?”