First Girl Gone(35)

She leaned over the driver’s seat and reached out for the center console. Her sleeved hand found the latch and lifted the lid. Shit. Nothing but Kleenex and a small box of Luden’s throat drops inside.

She squatted to look under the seat, skimmed her light at the shadows there. At first, she couldn’t quite tell what she was looking at, the flashlight’s glow somehow strange in the cramped space. She gave the sweeping of the light three passes before she saw it: a bundle tucked up against the metal runner for adjusting the depth of the seat.

“Looks like we got us a little goodie bag,” Allie said.

It was a plastic brick of something, wrapped in shiny tape— clouded, partially translucent but not enough to see what was inside.

She jogged back to her car and fished a pair of nitrile gloves from the trunk. Gripping her flashlight between her teeth, she pulled them on, struggling some out of excitement. One of the gloves folded up on the heel of her hand, and she had to work it free to get it the rest of the way on.

Finally, she snaked her hand into that tiny cavern beneath the driver’s seat. Grabbed the bundle. Pulled it free.

And now she turned it over in her hands. She thought she knew what was inside, but… better to know now.

She peeled one corner open. Saw it for herself.

Pills. Circular white tablets with some kind of indecipherable design on them. She was pretty sure it was ecstasy.





Chapter Twenty-Four





“So that’s when the, uh, subject took off sprinting into the woods?”

Charlie stood in a semicircle of law enforcement officers, Salem County’s finest, not far from the SUV with its front end wrapped around a maple tree. She fielded rapid-fire questions from the uniformed officers, all of them standing in various poses that involved hooking their hands or thumbs into their gun belts. Another set of police donned nitrile gloves and searched the vehicle, a process Charlie watched out of the corner of her eye.

“Yeah. I tried to follow, but it’s dark. Thought I might snap my ankle or something. End up with my face looking like the front of his SUV.”

The officers exchanged glances. The bright flash of photography caught Charlie’s attention over by the vehicle, blinding white light.

“He could know the area,” one of the deputies said. “I mean, it could be just a straight-up panic type of situation, fight or flight or whatever, but if he knows the area, maybe knows someone who lives near here, he could have taken off with a game plan.”

Another deputy nodded.

“Entering the woods right here? On foot? At night? It’d get pretty hairy out there if you didn’t know the lay of the land.”

Charlie pictured the driver running away again. The long strides. Darting movements to elude trees. He certainly ran with confidence, which could arise from either knowing the land or some kind of narcotic courage. She considered chiming in, but the conversation shifted topics too quickly for that.

“Oh yeah. That’s ecstasy alright,” the deputy searching the vehicle said. He jogged over to them, wiggling the plastic bundle, a giant grin on his face. “Quite a bit of it. This has gotta be our biggest drug confiscation in years.”

The deputies murmured agreement, all of their voices tangling over each other for a second.

“Do you get a lot of that these days?” Charlie said. “Ecstasy, I mean.”

All their heads whipped around, as though they’d momentarily forgotten she was there. The oldest of the deputies grimaced, disgusted. He adjusted his thumbs in his belt.

“Don’t see a lot of it around here, no,” he said. “A bit more lately, though. Some of the city stuff is starting to creep into Salem Island, just like pollution seeping into the water supply. These drugs, though, that culture finally arriving in our little town? Makes me sick to my stomach. Threatens our way of life here. This younger generation. Christ almighty. Don’t even get me started about these millennials. No respect, for themselves or anyone else.”

Charlie spotted Zoe’s car parked in the distance and wandered over to find her. The old man’s rant just kept rolling on, even with no one listening.

“I used to think the bums back in the seventies were bad. The patchouli people, you know. Peace and love and copious amounts of reefer and all. But the hippies were nothing compared to these young kids today. If the hippies were looking to expand their minds and live in a perpetual state of peace and love, the kids today want to get too fucked up to move. Just want to escape reality, I think. Detach all the freakin’ way. Gonna be the death of this country, too. Makes me want to puke.”

She found Zoe standing along the edge of the woods, shining her flashlight out into the murk. She wore sweatpants, and a long T-shirt spilled out from under her jacket—her pajamas, Charlie presumed.

“Took me a second to recognize you, all dressed up like this,” Charlie said as she approached.

Zoe’s eyebrow crinkled for a second, and then she looked down at herself.

“Oh. Right. I was just getting into bed when I got the call.”

She swung her light around, and they both watched it in silence a moment. The glowing circle moved over the woods like a spotlight sweeping across a stage, flitting over tree trunks and glittering off the layer of frost and crusty snow adhered to some of the leaves.

No movement out there, of course. Just a bunch of trees with their arms perpetually outstretched.