First Girl Gone(73)
She hugged the hoodie Zoe had let her borrow tighter around herself. Hours had passed since she’d first discovered the girl’s body on the beach, the bureaucratic machine of the Salem County Sheriff’s Department working at the speed of a glacier, and still Charlie couldn’t seem to get warm. Even after forcing down a cup of coffee and a stale donut from the station’s break room, she remained chilled to the bone.
She turned to Zoe, her mouth etched into a frown.
“So your tech guy wasn’t able to trace the source of the email at all?” Charlie asked.
“Nope.” Zoe shrugged. “He said it isn’t even that hard, sending an anonymous email like that.”
The sheriff’s department had been all too eager to see the mystery email that led Charlie to Amber Spadafore’s body, and she’d hoped they’d have the resources to figure out who sent it. Apparently not. Another dead end.
Charlie balled her hands into fists at her sides, her mind tumbling the same thought around over and over: only Amber’s killer could have told Charlie where to find the body. He was taunting her.
Zoe leaned in, her voice low.
“You need anything? A bottle of water or another coffee, maybe?”
Charlie shook her head.
“I’m fine.”
It was starting to drive Charlie crazy the way Zoe kept fussing over her. Zoe wasn’t the mother hen type, but every time she thought Charlie wasn’t looking, she gawked at her with a nervous expression on her face. All the worrying made Charlie feel like a helpless child.
She stepped closer to the glass, her focus on Leroy Gibbs. He squirmed in his seat, seemingly unable to get comfortable, still waiting for his lawyer to arrive. He looked older than when she’d last laid eyes on him. Grayer. Face and torso starting to go gaunt. Something sallow in his complexion that hadn’t been there before.
Had he done it? Killed Amber, then sent her that email?
She saw Amber again, unbidden. White sand against whiter skin. Flecks of dirt dotting her cheeks like freckles. Everything mottled and ashy in the dawn light.
Charlie dug her fingernails into the flesh of her palms as she pushed the ghostly vision away. She needed to concentrate on Gibbs. He was what mattered now.
Gazing through the window, Charlie tried to get a read on him. Above all, he seemed a blank figure to her—expressionless face, monotone voice. He rarely even made eye contact with anyone. During the whole preamble to the interview—the reading of his rights, the testing of the mic and camera—Gibbs just seemed disengaged. Aloof.
He was like a specimen of some kind, she thought. A test subject kept under glass. Observed and experimented on in his little cage.
Earlier Charlie had overheard one of the detectives suggest in a hushed tone that this was all an act, that Gibbs’ behavior was a calculated effort, the first step in making a play at an insanity plea. Watching him with her own two eyes, she didn’t think so.
A murmur spread through the observation room, traveling faster as it went like a cresting wave building up momentum. Finally, the accused’s lawyer had arrived, the whispers reported. He was on his way into the interrogation room now.
The door jerked open on the other side of the glass, and a tall man wearing a suit moved across the screen, slapping his briefcase on the table as he took a seat next to Gibbs. Charlie recognized him straight away, but it took three full seconds of staring at his face for it to register, and when it finally did hit, it came with a shudder.
Will. The lawyer representing Gibbs was Will Crawford.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Charlie’s chest tightened. Her face felt flushed and hot.
Will was representing Gibbs. How did that make any kind of sense? Why would he do it?
She needed out of the crowded observation room. Needed somewhere she could breathe and think. Fumbling with the door handle, she escaped into the hallway.
Fluorescent bulbs buzzed overhead. She blinked against the sudden brightness, but the air out here felt better. Cooler. Less stuffy.
She shuffled toward the drinking fountain down the corridor as her thoughts tumbled. Of course, she knew Will was a lawyer, that he represented people from all walks of life, but Gibbs? Leroy Gibbs? The man most people presumed had killed Allie for all these years?
She stooped and thumbed the button on the fountain. Took a sip of water.
Just then a door opened behind her. She turned.
Will poked his head out of the interrogation room, his eyes locked on a deputy standing just outside the door.
“Can I get a Pepsi for my client?” Will said, his voice low. Then his eyes shifted up. Met Charlie’s. He flinched. “Charlie.”
He stepped out into the hall as the deputy went off for the beverage, and the two of them were suddenly alone.
“Charlie. I was hoping I’d get a chance to talk to you. To explain.”
“Explain what?” she asked, her tone bitter.
“OK, look. I know you’re probably upset, and believe me, I wish I wasn’t in this position, but—”
“Oh, you mean the position where you’re representing the guy who killed my sister? That position?”
He reached for her, but she dodged his grasp.
“Come on, Charlie. He didn’t kill Allie. And he didn’t do this.”
“How do you know?” Charlie asked, crossing her arms.