Alexander Death(68)

“Come on, S-dog, let's hit the bar.” Wooly pulled him forward through the crowd. He nodded at a group of pretty girls in skimpy tops and stretchy black pants. “You should get a taste of that tang. Those bitches are begging to spread.”

“Right,” Seth said. They wove through the mob, Wooly stopping to greet people left and right—apparently he'd been attending parties here throughout his senior year of high school.

Seth was barely conscious of where he was. He'd drifted his way into his freshman year at College of Charleston and let Wooly drag him through the pledge process. He was still waiting for any kind of solid information from the Hale investigators. It had been almost two months since Seth had hired them, but their weekly updates boiled down to “we're still working on it.” Seth had hoped things would move much faster, though to be fair, he hadn't exactly given them a mountain of useful information for their investigation.

If Jenny had meant to disappear, she'd done an amazing job of it. If not, she was in a lot of danger.

Wooly pressed a plastic cup of beer into Seth's hand and steered him out onto the back porch of the fraternity house. Small clumps of students were out here, smoking cigarettes or pot. Wooly pulled him to one corner of the porch, away from other people.

“Time to make the magic happen,” Wooly said. He popped open a brown pill bottle, then dumped out a pair of pink tablets and a few little squares of paper into the palm of his hand. “Open your mouth and get ready to flip some candy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“One tab of Ex.” Wooly pointed to one of the pink pills. Then his finger moved toward the squares of paper. “One or two hits of Captain Syd.”

“What's that?”

“You know, like Syd Barrett, dog,” Wooly said. “Why are you so slow?”

“Acid?” Seth asked.

“Just take it. Acid plus ecstasy equals a candyflip, the best night of your life.”

“I don't think so,” Seth said.

“Come on, S-dog!”

“I'm good, Wooly.”

Wooly shook his head, then popped one of the pink pills. Then he placed a square of paper on his tongue. “Your loss, hombre. I'll save the rest for my bitches.” Wooly returned the drugs to the pill bottle and sealed it. “Let's go inside and flip the motherfucking switches!”

“Do you always have to talk like that?” Seth asked.

“Talk like what, S-dog?” Wooly clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Let's go find some slut puppies to Hoover our hot dogs. This place is like the QuikTrip snack bar of pussy.”





***





Later, Seth wandered drunkenly through the parking deck on Meeting Street. He'd had a few more beers than he intended, mostly to help him talk, since he didn't really feel like saying a word to anyone. Seth had last seen Wooly leaving in the company of a few freshmen girls, whom Wooly had variously described to Seth as “frat groupies” and “easy meat.” Seth managed to refuse Wooly's hundred insistent invitations to come back to the girls' apartment with him. Ultimately, Wooly had called Seth “a total sack-licker” and left without him.

Now, Seth was having trouble remembering where he'd parked, so he walked up every level of the graffiti-spattered concrete garage, looking from row to row for his blue Audi.

Then he saw another car he recognized: a reddish-brown 1975 Lincoln Continental, with a daisy-colored passenger door. His heart nearly stopped. It looked just like Jenny's car.

He looked closer. Shag carpet, cheetah-spotted seat covers. He even recognized the empty glass Red Rock soda bottle in the floor of the backseat. This was definitely Jenny's car.

Seth leaned against it, looking around, as if Jenny was going to pop up from behind one of the other cars at any moment. If her car was here, that meant she was back in Charleston. All he had to do was wait for her to come back. He smiled.

After a minute, he thought of another, more chilling possibility: maybe her car had been sitting here, in the back corner of the fourth level of this parking deck, ever since the night of the riot. Which would mean she had definitely been kidnapped.

He tugged on each of the door handles, but the car was locked up. He wouldn't get inside without smashing a window, or acquiring some car-thief skills.

Seth looked into the driver-side window and cupped his hands around his eyes to block the fluorescent glare from the overhead lights. On the driver's seat, he could see the narrow paper coupon printed out by the machine at the parking deck entrance, the one that told the attendant when you'd arrived and, consequently, how much you owed. The print was tiny and faint.

Seth squinted his eyes and tried hard to focus, but the printout was just too small to read. Seth banged his fist on the roof of the car. He needed to see that piece of paper.