First Girl Gone(31)

And then rough hands grabbed the backs of her arms. Squeezed. Lifted her off her feet.

“Busted!” Allie said, an annoying level of delight in her voice.

Charlie looked over her shoulder to see another muscle-bound hulk of a bouncer staring back at her. The human side of beef grunted, annoyed. He hefted her back toward the fire door like she was nothing.

The wad of muscles tossed her back out the way she had come, giving her a good shove that sent her stumbling over the asphalt.

“You must be the snooping bitch Rocky was telling us about. Well, consider this strike two. You try to get in here again, we’ll call the cops. Trespassing.”

He slammed the door before she could think of a witty retort. And then she heard the lock clank into place.





Chapter Eighteen





Charlie trudged back to her car, gliding along the edge of the building toward the bright glow where the parking lot lay. Her jaw clenched in little pulses, falling in and out of time with her steps. Frustrated.

She rubbed at the sore spots on her arms where the meathead had grabbed her. She’d have bruises for sure.

It wasn’t the pain that bothered her, though. It was being manhandled by some juiced-up moron who thought he had some God-given right to push people around.

“If it makes you feel any better, he probably has a tiny sack,” Allie said. “You know, from all the ’roids.”

Charlie didn’t respond. No need to encourage her now.

“Someone’s crabby,” Allie said in a sing-song voice.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, tried to let the aggressive feelings go. This long, useless night was over. At least that was something.

Might as well head home. Get some sleep. She could look at the case with fresh eyes tomorrow. The club had been a bust for now, but there were other angles to work yet.

At last she reached the parking lot and veered to take a diagonal path toward her car. Almost there. Almost done.

A slow series of slaps caught her ear. She swiveled her head to find the bouncer out front standing, giving her a mocking golf clap as she left. He smirked and gave her a nod before going back to perching on his tiny stool, eyes going back to the stupid clipboard as always.

Now Charlie’s jaw quivered from clenching as hard as she could, gritty sounds coming from her teeth.

“Careful with those choppers,” Allie said. “I seem to recall the dentist giving you a stern talk about not grinding your molars.”

Charlie put her head down and walked faster, finally reaching her car.

There. It was over.

Just as she put her hand on the door handle, though, she saw it: a black Cadillac Escalade with a “No Fat Chix” decal in bright yellow letters over the rear window. This was the vehicle Zoe had told her about—the one that had been driving recklessly around the park the day Kara disappeared.

Maybe her night wasn’t over just yet.





Chapter Nineteen





Charlie sat in her car, eyes locked on the SUV. The driver hadn’t come out of the club yet, but he would. Eventually.

She poured coffee out of a thermos and took a drink. Bitter, but it was still mostly warm, which she was thankful for.

Snippets of the bouncer’s loud talking came to her still. She didn’t understand how anyone could talk so loud. He seemed to be making numerous calls, but from what Charlie could tell, it was always him talking. Whoever was on the other end of these calls didn’t seem to chime in much.

“Almost seems like he doesn’t need the phone,” Allie said. “Surely these people can hear him wherever they are, anyway.”

Just now he was going on about a documentary he’d watched about prisoners in solitary confinement.

“These guys are in the hole for weeks, sometimes months at a time. They start to go a little mental, right? And the only way they can rebel against the guards is to get naked and throw their food at the walls and stuff. Or take a shit on the floor and then shove it under the door.”

There was a pause in the conversation, as though shoving shit under a door was finally something the other party deemed worthy of comment.

“Yeah, man. They pick up their own dook with their bare hands and cram it under the door like it’s Play-Doh or something. All mushed up. Like a fine paste pushed under that tiny crack into the hallway. By the time they get to that stage, they look psycho, man. Wide eyes, pupils all huge and shit.”

Charlie sipped her coffee again and tried not to picture human feces being finger-forced under a door. Harder than it might seem.

Her eyes swiveled back to the black SUV, the jagged letters of the ridiculous decal glowing bright under the sickly yellow street lamps. She’d called Zoe earlier and left a message with the license plate number. It was late, especially by Salem Island standards, so she didn’t figure she’d get any kind of response until tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, she’d wait and watch. The driver had to come out eventually. The club was only open another hour or so. She could wait him out.

It occurred to her, not for the first time, that so much of the private detective business came down to patience. Discipline. Waiting for the right opportunity. Whatever obstacle a case presented you, whatever mystery you were trying to solve, it could generally be defeated with the sheer brute force of time and effort. Whoever got in her way, Charlie could outwork them, outwait them, or outlast them. She was confident in that. And in that sense, this driver was just another in a long line of foes for her to dispatch.