The Girl Who Cried Murder Page 2

  None of them were really bad people, not even the two in jail. But none of them understood Charlie and her dreams. Never had, never would.

  And they sure as hell wouldn’t understand why she had suddenly decided to dig up decade-old bones.

  And as for friends? Well, she’d turned self-imposed isolation into an art form.

  She attached the revised ordnance disposal protocols to an email and sent it off to her supervisor, then checked her email for any other assignments that might have come through while she was working on the changes. The inbox was empty of anything besides unsolicited advertisements. She dumped those messages into the trash folder.

  Then she opened her word processor program and took a deep breath.

  It was now or never. If she was going to give up on the quest, this was the time. Before she made another trip to Campbell Cove Security Services and spent another dime on listening to Mr. Big Buff Badass lecture her on the importance of looking both ways before she crossed the street.

  Pinching her lower lip between her teeth, she opened a new file, the cursor blinking on the blank page.

  Settling her trembling hands on the keyboard, she began to type.

  Two days before Christmas, nearly ten years ago, my friend Alice Bearden died. The police said it was an accident. Her parents believe the same. She had been drinking that night, cocktails aptly named Trouble Makers. Strawberries and cucumbers muddled and shaken with vodka, a French aperitif called Bonal, lime juice and simple syrup. I looked up the recipe on the internet later.

  I drank light beer. Just the one, as far as I remember. And that’s the problem. For a long time, those three sips of beer were all I remembered about the night Alice died.

  Then, a few weeks ago, the nightmares started.

  I tried to ignore them. I tried to tell myself that they were just symptoms of the stress I’ve been under working this new job.

  But that doesn’t explain some of the images I see in my head when I close my eyes to sleep. It doesn’t explain why I hear Alice whispering in my ear while the world is black around me.

  “I’m sorry, Charlie,” she whispers. “But I have to do the rest of this by myself.”

  What did she mean? What was she doing?

  It was supposed to be a girls’ night out, a chance to let down our hair before our last semester of high school sent us on a headlong hurdle toward college and responsibility. She was Ivy League bound. I’d earned a scholarship to James Mercer College, ten minutes from home.

  I guess, in a way, it was also supposed to be the beginning of our big goodbye. We swore we’d keep in touch. But we all know how best intentions go.

  I should have known Alice was up to something. She always was. She’d lived a charmed life—beautiful, sweet, the apple of her very wealthy daddy’s eye. She was heading for Harvard, had her life planned out. Harvard for undergrad, Yale Law, then an exciting career in the FBI.

  She wanted to be a detective. And for a golden girl like Alice Bearden, the local police force would never do.

  She had been full of anticipation that night. Almost jittery with it. We’d chosen a place where nobody knew who we were. We tried out the fake IDs Alice had procured from somewhere—“Don’t ask, Charlie,” she’d said with that infectious grin that could make me lose my head and follow her into all sorts of scrapes.

  For a brief, exciting moment, I felt as if my life was finally going to start.

  And then, nothing. No thoughts. Almost no memories. Just that whisper of Alice’s voice in my ear, and the haunting sensation that there was something I knew about that night that I just couldn’t remember.

  I tried to talk to Mr. Bearden a few days ago. I called his office, left my name, told him it was about Alice.

  He never called me back.

  But the very next day, I had a strong sensation of being watched.

  * * *

  MIKE WRAPPED UP his third training session of the day, this time an internal refresher course for new recruits to the agency, around five that afternoon. He headed for the showers, washed off the day’s sweat and changed into jeans and a long-sleeved polo. Civvies, he thought with a quirk of his lips that wasn’t quite a smile. Because the thought of being a civilian again wasn’t exactly a cause for rejoicing.

  He’d planned on a career in the Marine Corps. Put in thirty or forty years or more, climbing the ranks, then retire while he was still young enough to enjoy it.

  Things hadn’t gone the way he planned.

  There was a message light on his office phone. Maddox Heller’s deep drawl on his voice mail. “Stop by my office on your way out. I may have something for you.”

  He crossed the breezeway between the gym and the main office building, shivering as the frigid wind bit at every exposed inch of his skin. He’d experienced much colder temperatures, but there was something about the damp mountain air that chilled a man to the bone.

  Heller was on the phone when Mike stuck his head into the office. Heller waved him in, gesturing toward one of the two chairs that sat in front of his desk.

  Mike sat, enjoying the comforting warmth of the place. And not just the heat pouring through the vents. There was a personal warmth in the space, despite its masculine simplicity. A scattering of photos that took up most of the empty surfaces in the office, from Heller’s broad walnut desk to the low credenza against the wall. Family photos of Heller’s pretty wife, Iris, and his two ridiculously cute kids, Daisy and Jacob.

  Even leathernecks could be tamed, it seemed.

  Maddox hung up the phone and shot Mike a look of apology. “Sorry. Daisy won a spelling bee today and had to spell all the words for me.”

  Mike smiled. “How far the mighty warrior has fallen.”

  Heller just grinned as he picked up a folder lying in front of him. “One day it’ll be you, and then you’ll figure it out yourself.”

  “Figure out what?” he asked, taking the folder Heller handed him.

  “That family just makes you stronger.” Heller nodded at the folder. “Take a look at what our background check division came up with.”

  “That was quick.” Mike opened the folder. Staring up at him was an eight-by-ten glossy photo of a dark-haired young woman. Teenager, he amended after a closer look. Sophisticated looking, but definitely young. She didn’t look familiar. “This isn’t the woman from my class.”

  “I know. Her name was Alice Bearden.”

  Mike looked up sharply. “Was?”

  “She died about ten years ago. Two days before Christmas in a hit-and-run accident. The driver was never found.”

  Mike grimaced. So young. And so close to Christmas. “Bearden,” he said. “Any relation to that Bearden guy whose face is plastered on every other billboard from here to Paducah?”

  “Craig Bearden. Candidate for US Senate.” Heller nodded toward the folder in Mike’s lap. “Keep reading.”

  Mike flipped through the rest of the documents in the file. They were mostly printouts of online newspaper articles about the accident and a few stories about Craig Bearden’s run for the Senate. “Bearden turned his daughter’s death into a political platform. Charming.”

  “His eighteen-year-old daughter obtained a fake ID so she could purchase alcohol in a bar. The bartender may have been fooled by the fake ID, but that doesn’t excuse him from serving so much alcohol she was apparently too drunk to walk straight. And maybe her inebriation was what led her to wander into the street in front of a moving vehicle, but whoever hit her didn’t stop to call for help.”

  “And he’s now crusading against what exactly?”

  “All of the above? The bartender was never charged, and the bar apparently still exists today, so I guess if he sued, he lost. Maybe this is his way of feeling he got some sort of justice for his daughter.”

  Mike lo
oked at the photo of Alice Bearden again. A tragedy that her life was snuffed out, certainly. But he hadn’t asked Heller to look into Alice Bearden’s background.

  “What does this have to do with Charlie Winters?” he asked.

  “Read the final page.”

  Mike scanned the last page. It was earliest of the articles on the accident, he realized. The dateline was December 26, three days after the accident. He scanned the article, stopping short at the fourth paragraph.

  Miss Bearden was last seen at the Headhunter Bar on Middleburg Road close to midnight,

  accompanied by another teenager, Charlotte Winters of Bagwell.

  “Charlie Winters was with Alice when she died?”

  “That seems to be the big question,” Heller answered. “Nobody seems to know what happened between the time they left the bar and when Alice’s body was found in the middle of the road a couple of hours later.”

  Mike’s gaze narrowed. “Charlie refused to talk?”

  “Worse,” Heller answered. “I talked to the lead investigator interviewed in the article. He’s still with the county sheriff’s department and remembers the case well. According to him, Charlotte Winters claims to have no memory of leaving the bar at all. As far as she’s concerned, almost the whole night is one big blank.”

  “And what does he think?”

  “He thinks Charlie Winters might have gotten away with murder.”

  Chapter Two

  Making four copies was overkill, wasn’t it?

  Charlie looked at the flash drive buried at the bottom of the gym bag’s inner pocket. Were four copies a sign of paranoia?

  “I wonder if Mike is married.” The voice was female, conspiratorial and close by.

  Charlie looked up to find one of her fellow students applying lipstick using a small compact mirror. Midthirties, decent shape, softly pretty. Kim, Charlie thought, matching the name from Monday’s roll call to the face. She’d tried to memorize all the names and faces from the class. Partly as a game to relieve her boredom, but partly because the knowledge might come in handy someday.

  Like during the zombie apocalypse?

  Oh man. She was paranoid, wasn’t she?

  “I didn’t expect him to be so hot,” Kim said, punctuating the statement with the snap of her compact closing. “I didn’t see a ring.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t like to wear it when he’s engaging in self-defense activities.” Charlie grimaced at her lame response. Kim was clearly trying to be friendly, seeking to engage Charlie with a topic they might both find intriguing. And her response was to cut her off at the knees?

  “Maybe.” Kim’s smile faded. “Probably. A guy that good-looking is either married by this age or gay.”

  “Or commitment-phobic,” Charlie added.

  “Honey, that can sometimes be a feature, not a bug.” Kim finger-combed her honey-blond hair and smiled. “You ready?”

  “Sure.” Charlie walked with Kim out of the locker room into the gymnasium, where about half the number of their Monday classmates were already waiting. Today, the gymnasium floor was covered nearly wall-to-wall with padded floor mats. Apparently they were going to do more than just take notes today.

  Thank goodness.

  Mike Strong stood against the front wall, flipping through papers secured on a clipboard, his brow furrowed with concentration. The light slanting in from the east-facing windows bathed him in golden warmth.

  Beside Charlie, Kim released a gusty sigh. “Lord have mercy.”

  Mike put the clipboard on the floor beside him and looked up at the students gathering in front of him. His gaze settled on Charlie for a moment, and he smiled at her. To her surprise, her stomach turned an unexpected flip.

  “Oh, wow,” Kim murmured. “Probably not gay, then.”

  “This is crazy,” Charlie muttered, as much to herself as to Kim.

  Mike checked his watch, the movement flexing his biceps and sending her stomach on another tumble. “It’s time to get started. Everybody remember the stretches?”

  Charlie’s heart was beating far more quickly than her exertion level warranted. She forced herself to keep her gaze averted from Mike Strong’s lean body and focused instead on maximizing the flex of her muscles.

  But when she looked up again, Mike was walking slowly through the small clump of students, observing their efforts. He stopped in front of her and crouched, his voice lowering to a rumble. “You’ve done this before.”

  “High school gym,” she answered, trying not to meet his gaze.

  “Not college?”

  Her gaze flicked up despite her intentions. “College, too. Core requirement.”

  His lips curved. “So I hear.”

  “You didn’t have phys ed classes in college?”

  “I went straight from high school to Parris Island,” he said with a smile. “Lots and lots of phys ed, you could say.”

  She dropped her gaze again, but it was too late. Now she was picturing him in fatigues, out in the hot South Carolina sun, sweat gleaming on his sculpted muscles and darkening the front of his olive drab T-shirt...

  When she risked another peek, he’d moved on, walking from student to student, offering suggestions to improve their stretches. She let go of her breath, realizing her exhalation sounded suspiciously like the gusty sigh Kim had released earlier as they entered the gym.

  “All right,” Mike said a few minutes later, “I’m going to pair you up and we’re going to talk about some of the basic escape moves. This really shouldn’t be the first thing we do, but I can tell by the low attendance today that maybe you want a little less talk and a lot more action.”

  A few laughs greeted Mike’s words, along with a few murmurs of agreement. Then everybody fell silent, watching with interest as Mike paired them up.

  He left Charlie for last. There was nobody left to pair up with, she realized with a flutter of dismay. It was fifth-grade kickball all over again.

  “You’re with me,” Mike said bluntly, nodding toward the front of the pack. She followed him with reluctance, revising her earlier thought. It wasn’t kickball. It was Public Speaking 101, and it was Charlie’s turn at the front of the class.

  Heat flooded her cheeks, no doubt turning her pale skin bright red. Her hands trembled so hard she shoved them in the pockets of her sweatpants and tried not to meet the gaze of anyone else in the gym.

  “If you’ve read any books or watched any movies or TV shows, you’ve probably heard of the vulnerable spots on an assailant and some of the ways to target them. Knee to the groin. Foot to the instep or the knee. Fingers to the eyes or heel of the hand to the cartilage of the nose.” There were soft groans at the images those words invoked. “Those are all vulnerable targets on an attacker, true. But how easy is it for a small person to do damage to a larger person, even targeting those areas? That’s what we’re going to experiment with today.”

  Charlie realized he’d paired people up by size, small with large. At the moment, most of the larger people in the pairings were looking around with alarm.

  Mike nodded toward the side of the room, where a man stood in the doorway next to what looked like a large laundry bin. “This is Eric Brannon. He’s a doctor. I thought y’all might want him to stick around for this.”

  Eric grinned. Charlie’s classmates didn’t.

  “He’s also got some equipment to hand out.”

  Eric reached into the bin and pulled out something that looked like a cross between a life jacket and a catcher’s chest guard. He handed it to the man standing closest to him and continued through the other students, passing out padding to the larger of each pair.

  Eric stopped before giving anything to Mike. Charlie looked up at the instructor, one eyebrow arched.

  Mike grinned back at her, then turned to the
class. “We’re going to start with the first thing you need to know how to deal with—someone grabbing you.”

  Without warning, he reached out and wrapped his arm around Charlie’s shoulders, pulling her back hard against his chest.

  She gasped, caught entirely flat-footed, and began struggling on instinct. His grip tightened and he lifted her off her feet.

  Her vision seemed to darken around the edges, sight becoming a single pinpoint of light as anger fought with panic.

  Damn it, Charlie. Do something!

  She was back in a darkened alley outside the Headhunter Bar. The world was tilted and spinning, like she was stuck on a merry-go-round twirling at an impossible rate of speed. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

  She kicked her heel backward, hitting his shin with a glancing blow that didn’t even elicit a grunt. His grip tightened. Clawing at his rock-hard arms with her fingers had no effect at all. She stamped her heel down on his foot, but his boots were hard and her foot glanced off, which was probably the only thing that saved her from a broken foot of her own.

  I’m sorry, Charlie, but I have to do the rest of this by myself. Alice’s whispered words rang in her ears, clarity in a world of insanity.

  She stopped struggling, and the grip on her shoulders loosened. The world seeped back in brilliant light and color, and panic won over anger. She dropped her whole weight downward, slipping from his grip, and rolled as hard as she could into his knee. The move sent Mike sprawling to the mat, and Charlie scrambled to her feet and ran for the door, her whole body rattling with the need to escape at all costs.

  Eric Brannon caught her arm, pulling her to a jerky halt. She was about to fight when she realized he was smiling at her.

  She made herself stop running. It was just a class. Just a game, really.

  No dark alley. No woozy world. No whispers in her ear.

  “Nice job,” Eric murmured, his blue eyes bright with amusement.