First Girl Gone(64)

“But what about Kara and Amber? Is Demetrio tied up in all of that?”

Zoe gestured at the man in the next room.

“He already admitted that Kara Dawkins worked there.”

“But no one from the club remembers seeing Amber?”

“None of the girls who work there now,” Zoe said. “Amber’s been away at school for a couple years. So maybe she used to work there.”

“Maybe.”

“I mean, you found that matchbook for the club in her room, right?”

“Yeah.”

Zoe spread her hands as if to indicate that this was proof of a solid connection between Amber and the club.

“Before you said that was—and I quote—‘extremely weak sauce.’”

“Yeah, well… that was before we knew how scummy the place was.”

The door to the observation room swung open, and Detective Peterson poked his head in.

“Demetrio’s lawyer just got here, but I thought you might want to see this,” he said and handed Zoe a printout of Robbie Turner’s criminal record.

They scanned the first page. Robert Turner, Jr., was a twenty-two-year-old Caucasian male with a history of arrests going back to his teen years for shoplifting, possession, retail fraud, drunk and disorderly conduct. The list went on.

“Looks like we have ourselves a budding small-time criminal,” Zoe said. “He gets around, too. He’s got busts spread over several counties. Salem, Washtenaw, Kalamazoo.”

Zoe tilted the page and squinted at the grainy driver’s license photo.

“Yeah, you know, I think I kinda know this guy.”

“Really?” Charlie asked, intrigued.

“I mean, just a vague familiarity. We see so many run-of-the-mill delinquents like this, they all kind of bleed together. But he’s got kind of a squirrelly look to him that makes me think I’ve seen him come through a few times. I think maybe his hair is different now.”

Zoe flipped the page, revealing a section with the heading “SMT,” which stood for scars, marks, and tattoos. It noted a scar on the left hand and a tattoo on the left forearm. A black-and-white photo of the inked arm showed a skull and dagger, with a banner wrapping around both that read, “Death Before Dishonor.”

“Holy shit,” Charlie said, staring at the photo, remembering now. She could see the blurred shape in her mind’s eye. The undulating shadows on the wall. A chase through the snow.

She pointed at the page in Zoe’s hands.

“That’s the dude who’s nailing Sharon Ritter.”





Chapter Fifty-One





Back in Zoe’s car, they zoomed toward the east side of town. It was time to pay Robbie Turner a visit.

As they drove, a discussion with Will from a couple days earlier suddenly sprang to Charlie’s mind.

“Did you hit Will in the face with a rock when you were kids?”

Zoe adjusted her glasses, eyes on the ceiling.

“I thought he’d duck.”

“What?”

“When I threw the rock,” Zoe said. “I faked him out a few times, and he kept ducking. So when I actually threw it, I thought he’d do the same. Instead he just stood there like an idiot and got hit in the face.”

“I see. So it’s his fault the rock hit him.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Zoe insisted, her cheeks flushing. “I felt horrible about it, by the way. It was a big rock and it hit him—BAM!—right below his left eye. But you don’t know what it was like growing up next door to him. He was like Bart Simpson. One time, he melted a hole in one of my Barbie dolls with a magnifying glass. And do you remember that summer they had to close down all the beaches because of high bacteria levels?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“I was seven. Will convinced me the bacteria story was a lie to cover up the real reason they’d closed the beaches. A shark was loose in Lake St. Clair and several kids had gone missing.”

Charlie chuckled.

“I didn’t dip a toe in the lake that summer. I was terrified.”

They reached the address on Robbie Turner’s driver registration, and Zoe parked across the street from the crumbling old apartment building.

“So we can tie Robbie Turner to Kara Dawkins, since he was the one who brought her in to the Red Velvet Lounge,” Zoe said.

“Correct.”

“And we can tie him to Amber Spadafore through her mother, whom he is—as you so eloquently put it—nailing.”

“Also correct.”

“But what about Amber herself? You think he’s nailing her, too?”

“Ugh,” Charlie said, grimacing at the thought. “I hope not.”

Zoe unbuckled her seatbelt and opened her door.

“Ready?”

Charlie shadowed her down the snowy sidewalk, eyeballing the brick building Robbie Turner called home. The whole place looked like it might cave in on itself in a strong wind.

Zoe held the front door aside, and Charlie entered a dank foyer ahead of her. In its prime, the building had probably once been quite lovely, with cove ceilings and arched doorways, but now it was in a state of decay. Cracked plaster. Peeling paint.

At the end of a dim passage that smelled of stale cigarette smoke and wet dog, Zoe paused before a door. A brass plaque marked this apartment as 1F.