Chapter 14
CHARLIE SPRINGS
Charlie didn't like lying.
It wasn't that she couldn't lie; she could.
She could do so very successfully.
It was that she didn't like doing it.
Didn't like weaving that intricate web of lies. Didn't like threading together the pieces of the story. Didn't like ensuring there were no inconsistencies in what she said. Didn't like casting out the net and ensnaring those around her within it.
One could lie for selfish reasons. Lie with only malice and greed in their heart.
But one could also lie for survival.
Change little elements of one's person. Say something was one's favorite when really it's another. Don clothing despite the way it makes one's skin crawl. Act a certain way that's far from who one is.
Lie to appease society and make it a little easier to get through life, even though it felt like losing parts of one's soul and slowly chipped away at the very framework of one's being.
Charlie lied for survival. It wasn't life or death when she lied, but it was the difference between a fight or a quieter evening. The difference between being bombarded with harsh questions of why? and picky, backhanded compliments she could shrug off far easier.
Lying was a forced skill of hers, one that, when she thought about it, she figured she probably started learning long before she could walk or talk. One of her talents she picked up during her childhood.
xxxx
"What's your name?" Rift Oberhofer had asked, beginning their interview.
They sat across from each other at the same picnic table Rift had interviewed Ren at. The sun shone brightly in the sky, and birds flitted through the trees in rapid beats of their wings.
"My legal name or my actual name?"
"Your legal name, please." Rift had offered a sympathetic smile, and Charlie had held back the knee-jerk crawling of her skin and the sensation of wrong, wrong, wrong that shivered up her spine.
It reminded Charlie of the one time she'd gone to a ballet recital, too tired from school the week before to put up much of a fight. The instructor had smartly placed her at the back of the dancers, where few would be able to see her; she had spent more of the recital shifting in her leotard and adjusting how it sat on her body than actually performing. Perhaps if she found that right position for the leotard, then it wouldn't feel so wrong, though she knew it wasn't so much about how the leotard hung on her body and more about the leotard was on her body. The second the recital was over, she had ripped it from her skin, not caring that the delicate seams started to split and a few sequins fell to the ground, and changed into sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt, much to her mother's chagrin.
"You could write it down, if that would make it any easier. I apologize, I know it must not be easy. We need your legal name for our records that we keep of everyone we interview, though," Rift had said.
"I know, I know," she had sighed. "I get why you need my legal name. But call me anything except Charlie Springs, and we're gonna have problems." Charlie had straightened her back and lifted her head just a bit as her skin started to prickle and a defensive irritation flared in her gut.
"I have put down that your name is Charlie Springs. I can add your pronouns, too, if you'd like. May I ask what they are? Mine are he, him, and his."
"She, her, and hers."
"Thank you." Rift had added them next to where she assumed he had written her name.
"I... My-. My legal name is Rose Hendricks. H-E-N-D-R-I-C-K-S." Charlie had ignored the nausea that rolled in her stomach and forced down the tremors that threatened to wrack her body.
"Thank you, Charlie."
"Call me anything other than Charlie Springs, and I will make sure you regret it."
Strike first, before they can hit you. Be aggressive; it will save you in the long run. Make sure only what you want seen is visible. Charlie repeated the mantras again and again in her head.
"I have made a note that your name is Charlie Springs. No one will call you anything but that."
"Good." Her voice was tighter than she would've liked, but it was too late to do anything about it.
Rift had gone on to ask about the weeks prior to Ashley's murder. If anything was different, if she thought Ashley had done anything unusual. But she hadn't really noticed a whole lot.
A few times, the thought had crossed her mind that perhaps Ashley might've been hiding something, but she never knew what and had brushed off the feeling.
But, looking back at it, Charlie wondered if perhaps she'd been right. Perhaps those little details Ashley had masked near-perfectly had been him hiding something. How he'd been just a little more alert. How he'd been looking over his shoulder just a little more often. How he'd been tense, jittery. How his mind had seemed... elsewhere.
He'd been acting almost normal. Almost. But that little gap between normal and not had been his tell.
Charlie had only ever caught glimpses, little flickers she'd seen through the slightest gaps in the mask Ashley had built. The smallest of slivers, so tiny she thought she'd been imagining things.
If Kristin hadn't caught onto it, surely Charlie was making something up. Surely she was.
A bird darted overhead when Charlie realized Rift had asked her another question. "Huh? Sorry, I missed that," she said.
"I asked what you do in the Silverlight Forest Protection Unit."
Charlie settled into her easygoing persona, unbothered by everything. "Oh, ok. Yeah, so, basically, if you need to know where anything is in Silverlight Forest —Pocket Forest, if you prefer that name— I'm your person. All of us know the Forest extremely well, but I know every little nook and cranny like the back of my hand. Every species of flora and fauna, as well. I could tell you everything you could possibly want to know about pretty much anything in this forest. One of the perks of being able to get so sucked into something that manages to pique my interest that...," Charlie trailed off. "Everything else just fades into the background."
Rift asked her about what the SFPU did and those they had arrested, how they worked as a group. Her mind was stubbornly stuck on if she'd known Ashley was hiding something in the weeks before his murder, clinging to it like a fly stuck in sap. Charlie answered Rift's questions, though she remained distracted as she went from rabbit hole to rabbit hole in flashbacks to interactions she'd had with Ashley.
Did she know Ashley had been hiding something?
"You don't seem very concerned about Ashley's murder." Rift leaned back and crossed a leg over his other one.
Charlie snorted humorlessly. "Oh, I am. I'm furious. Positively seething. My personality is a bit like all-or-nothing, though. Either I'm feeling every emotion known to exist, or I'm feeling pretty much nothing. Most often I'm just feeling numb. I'm sure it's not healthy, but it's kinda just how I roll. Some of why I often feel very little is probably my parents. Search them up if you'd like; I'll bet there are articles buried somewhere that they weren't able to bribe people into taking down. And some of it's probably this job. It requires creating some sort of distance. It can get... difficult at times." Charlie's lip curled as she spoke of her parents, but the tingling emptiness subdued much of the anger she'd felt.
Better nothing than everything, she thought.
"Difficult?"
"Yeah, difficult. Sometimes we don't catch poachers in time, and we find the bodies of animals they'd killed. Or we find the bodies of animals just as they die, or when nothing can be done except end their suffering. Other times the hunts for the poachers stretch on for the better part of a day. A few times it was...," Charlie paused as she thought back. "I believe a couple times it was almost a day and a half before we finally caught the poachers. Slippery little guys kept evading us. There have been several times where we were unable to catch the poacher and they came back again and again. Those were tough. Shall I run you through every poacher we've gone after? Zip and Kristin made a handy dandy database. I can show it to you, if you'd like. Just gimme a minute to go get the tablet." Charlie tried to keep the venom from her voice. Armor fell into place, and hackles rose on her back.
Rift hummed, expression unreadable.
"I didn't murder Ashley, if that's what you're getting at. He was a friend, one of my closest friends. I had absolutely no reason to... to-. to murder him. Why the hell would I do something like that?" Charlie snarled as she choked on her words. She threw her head to the side as she fought against the burning in her eyes. Her anger sputtered out a few moments later after a slow exhale.
"Do you have any idea why Ashley was murdered?" Rift kept an even gaze and didn't respond to her outburst.
"No, I don't. I wish I did, though. I wish they were standin' right in front of me so I could tell them just who they stole from this world." Charlie glared off into the distance, elbow on the table and knuckles pressed into her mouth.
It wasn't lying. Not technically. She didn't know what was in Ashley's journal. She couldn't lie about something she didn't know about. The only thing she —or anyone in the SFPU— knew about the journal was that it contained something Ashley deemed important enough to hide. Who knew if it had anything to do with his murder?
But a part of her felt that she was just trying to convince herself.
Charlie took a deep breath to quell the irritation flaring within her.
An alarm sounded in the SFPU house, slightly muffled by the walls and distance. Charlie spun around, mind clearing as she switched modes. Free time gave way to job time. Ferris, who had been talking with Zip and Kristin, jumped to attention. Ren called the dogs to their side, and they obeyed immediately. Morpheus lifted his head from where he lay at Ren's feet.
"Hey," Ferris said, waving down Larson, who had been trying to locate the source of the alarm. "That's the Camera Trap alert. Someone's in the forest."
Larson narrowed his eyes, crossing the courtyard to stand nearer to Ferris. "Who's in the forest?"
"We don't know," he replied. "There's a small chance it's just someone who wandered too far from the public trails on the west side, but most likely it's a poacher, trapper, or some other offender. The alert will say where in the forest the person or people are and the video will give us a better idea of what they're here for."
"Show me this alert." Ferris led Larson into the SFPU house after the detective gave a quick signal for the other members of the Moonfall Precinct to return to what they were doing, and they continued searching through each room and labeling everything they had collected. Ashley's laptop, his phone, some of his books that Charlie recognized as the ones he had been currently reading, and more she couldn't make out from a distance.
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Zip followed Ferris and Larson. The door slammed shut.
Ren examined Morpheus's side and the bandage covering his wound. Zip sat down and had Pyxis lay over his legs, a command he'd had Ren help him teach the dog after he'd found out Ren had taught the same thing to Somnus.
Charlie turned back around to face Rift. "What other questions do you have?"
"That alert is from one of the Camera Traps?" Rift moved his gaze from the side of the SFPU house to hers.
"Yes. Zip coded the Camera Traps to send a signal to the television in the house that alerts us whenever one of the Traps is set off. Some coding trick or something he did only triggers the alert if it's a person walking by, not if it's an animal, though they record 24/7." Charlie brushed back a few locks of hair that had fallen into her eyes.
"What information do you get from the alerts?"
"We get the video footage of whoever set off the alert and tells us which Trap was triggered. If there's a good view of the person's face that matches the face of an offender we already have information on, we'll get that. Zip's still fine-tuning the program to make sure it's accurate, so we don't really use it yet. Once we have a sense of what we're going into, we'll go to the person's location. The Camera Traps will send alerts to the tablets we have in each of the vehicles. They won't alert in the same way, but they keep us updated as the Traps get set off."
Before Rift could reply, Ferris reappeared outside of the house. Rift's eyes looking over Charlie's shoulder made her turn around. Ferris met her gaze. It's not good, he silently told her. "It's someone new. They triggered Camera Trap 24. From the video, it appears they've got several weapons and have materials to set snares."
Charlie winced. "That's not good," she said.
The unspoken question hung in the air: Can we go after the offender?
Larson broke the silence. "I will dispatch several officers to arrest the trapper. They will deal with the alert. I need you all to remain here."
Ferris's expression tightened almost imperceptibly, but Charlie managed to catch it. "Understood. I can keep you updated if any more Camera Traps are triggered and the information we get about the offender from the video and what wildlife they might be after based on where they head."
Larson stepped off to the side and spoke into his radio, though it was out of earshot for Charlie.
"We're done here, Charlie. Thank you for your time. We will reach out if we have any more questions."
"Got it." Charlie stood up and shook Rift's hand.
xxxx
Larson Hotch and the Moonfall Precinct remained at the camp for the next few hours. They went through every room in every building, continuing to collect various things of importance. Charlie didn't know what the items showed or didn't show, but she didn't ask.
They could take it all if it would help catch those responsible.
The officers sent to arrest the trapper did so and brought the offender back to the Moonfall Precinct, then returned to the camp and helped sort through everything gathered.
Charlie and Ren stayed outside in the courtyard with the dogs, occasionally answering a question or giving a code to a locked room or safe. Kristin paced back and forth, looking at everything the officers brought out with sad eyes.
Charlie could feel the weight of officers' gaze on her, watching and taking note, but she didn't pay them any mind. They could stare all they wanted. See if I care.
Officers searched Ashley's room several times, turning it upside down, and Charlie wondered what everything would look like when she walked back inside. How much of what the house looked like previously would remain.
Her stomach twisted. Which was the right decision? Tell the Moonfall Precinct when Ashley said not to tell anyone? Or don't tell them and risk keeping potentially eye-opening information from them? Not knowing the journal's full contents made her flip back and forth on what she felt was right all the more.
But, with a herculean effort, she shoved the feelings down and locked them away. No use in ducking down rabbit holes she didn't need to. She had given her word that she wouldn't mention Ashley's journal unless explicitly asked a question of which the journal was a clear answer, and she wasn't going to break her promise.
Kristin's wish was that knowledge of Ashley's journal be kept to the SFPU until they knew more about it. Charlie would respect that.
So, she didn't mention Ashley's journal.
And, several hours later, the Moonfall Precinct packed up their things. Each piece of evidence they took —from articles of clothing, to calendars Ashley had written, to copies of tapes from the Camera Traps— had each been sealed in a bag and given a detailed label before being placed in a tub and stacked in the back of a car.
Larson Hotch bid a farewell, stating yet again that he was very sorry for the SFPU's loss and that he would work tirelessly to figure out what happened. Ren kept the dogs by their side, allowing one of the officers to say a quick hello to Somnus after they asked. He was the friendliest out of the three dogs. Pyxis and Morpheus would never react to a person touching them unless told to do so, but Somnus enjoyed it the most, and his tail wagged as the officer scratched him on the head.
Kristin asked Larson in a tight, snappy sort of way if he knew what had happened to Ashley.
"I'm sorry," Larson said. "We do not know yet. The second we do, we will tell you immediately."
"Can't you just work faster?" Kristin demanded, voice beginning to crack.
"We are working as fast as we can. We want Ashley to get the justice he deserves, but we need to make sure the investigation is done right."
Kristin produced a sound that was somewhere between a snarl and a sob. "Are you o-ok?" Zip asked, moving to stand in front of Kristin.
"No," he spat in reply before adding on: "Sorry, that was rude."
"Ashley... Ashley just died. Murdered."
"It's not an excuse."
"It... it is, a-a bit." Zip stared at the ground, hands tapping his thighs as he rocked on the balls of his feet.
When Ferris showed Larson the letter Cynthia Corville had sent and asked about Asa and Azrael Smith, he explained that the two detectives would be assisting the Moonfall Precinct with Ashley's case. As Waverwell law required, Ashley's case was considered the same as the death of a government official, as the Silverlight Forest Protection Unit was held in the eyes of the law as a government organization due to it being funded primarily by Waverwell government.
A few anonymous donors gave money to the SFPU as well. Ferris likely knew who they were, but Charlie never asked. A part of her thought that there was a good chance one or more of the donors were her parents, sending sizable checks in an attempt to get her to talk to them.
No way in hell, she thought, hoping that they'd be able to hear her from where they lived in the outskirts of Corville. Still technically in the city, so they could say they resided in Corville, but far enough out that the massive price tags on properties dropped to the point that they could more easily afford a home that was still luxurious enough for their tastes.
Charlie wondered as she held back a snicker what her mother would say if she saw where Charlie was living and working. She had a hundred guesses, all of which revolved around some form of a tight smile as polite as could be forced so as to not be rude, followed by a string of backhanded comments about the house, what she was doing that slowly morphed into statements about what a woman should do and how the SFPU was not that.
Cold tingled across her skin, and she locked away her train of thought before she could fall into it too far.
She clenched her fists and cracked her knuckles, shifting on her feet. She needed to get out of the camp, leave. The urge to run was an itch she couldn't quite shake off. Not be here was steadily pushing itself to the forefront of her mind.
As soon as the last of the Moonfall Precinct cars left the courtyard and the gates closed behind them, Charlie excused herself and ducked into her room to change into her well-worn hiking boots and shuck on a coat. She tucked her notebook and pen into a pocket.
"I'll be back later," she told Ferris and slipped out of the fence surrounding the SFPU camp before anyone could say anything.
Trees surrounded her, and the scents and sounds of the camp gave way to those of the woods. The earthy smell of the soil and the chirps of the birds. The soft smell of pines and the gusts of the wind. Twigs snapped beneath her feet as she hiked out further without an exact destination in mind.
Lost was never a concern of hers. She knew every tree in Silverlight Forest better than anywhere else in Waverwell. More than once she had made wrong turns in Corville and had to hitch a ride back home, but she had never lost her way in the Forest. It made sense to her in a way that nothing else had.
The only time another member of the SFPU had come to find her was when she had gotten so sucked into studying a family of crows that she hadn't realized hours had slipped by and hadn't heard her phone buzzing with calls and messages. Ren had let the dogs track her as practice, and they'd laughed when she explained what had happened, pulling her into a brief hug that Charlie was too surprised to have received to return it.
No one had really been mad; they were all relieved she was ok and had echoed Ren's laugh at her story. Ferris had said he was glad she got interested in the crows to the point that she'd hyper focused on the family but to try to communicate where she was going better.
She usually did tell someone or she left a note with an estimate of she'd be back. But this time the need to get out of here had taken over her brain. The only complete thought she could manage was escape. Get out as fast as she could.
Charlie didn't remember much of her walk. One second, she was just outside the SFPU camp, and the next she was at Silverlight Lake. Trees gave way to grasses and then to gravel and then to clear water. A gentle breeze stirred branches and fronds, creating a soft melody that harmonized with birdsong. Waves lapped at the shore, and small fish leapt from the depths of the lake.
The dock that stretched a ways into the lake was rickety, planks worn from exposure to the elements and a general lack of care. No one really used it, and the SFPU's time could be better spent elsewhere, so the dock was left to its own devices.
Charlie hopped across it, careful in where she placed her feet. Several cracks split open a few of the planks and a handful of holes littered the surface. Patches of moss sprouted along the waterline of the posts holding up the dock, creeping up the sides like green ooze.
She sat down at the edge, hands clenched in tight fists.
Her heart pounded in her chest, and her fingers trembled.
Ashley was dead... but how?
Couldn't she have changed something? Perhaps if she'd done something differently a few days ago, maybe it would've altered something? What if a month ago she'd eaten something different for breakfast? Would it have set off some domino effect and then Ashley would still be here? Would it have played with the strings of fate and kept him alive? Created some butterfly effect with one seemingly insignificant action causing such a dramatic change in time?
Charlie knew it was something she should work through, but she didn't even know where to begin processing something like the death of a friend.
Ignoring things and shoving them to the side was always far easier. She'd done it in the past and it had worked, so why switch things up now?
But it wasn't working. The iron defenses she'd constructed around any feelings she might've felt regarding Ashley's murder were beginning to crumble.
Feeling nothing was easier than feeling everything... yet it wasn't working.
Charlie let her legs swing over the edge of the dock and she let her head fall into her hands.
Why'd you have to go, Ashley?
Charlie pulled her notebook from her pocket. Perhaps a distraction would let her better push away her traitorous thoughts.
The palm-sized booklet was filled with various pranks and jokes she'd thought up, ranging from small ones she could do at a moment's notice to big ones that would likely take weeks of planning. Some were crossed out, either because she'd done them or she decided they wouldn't work. Others were circled; ones she wanted to do and had started putting the pieces in place.
She jotted down new possibilities and altered existing ones. She ran through what she'd need and how she'd get everything in place for various pranks. She sorted them into lists of ones she could do to everyone, ones only to some people, and ones that perhaps she should save for later until she was certain it wouldn't be taken the wrong way.
But nothing could take her focus off of the hurricane of emotions and feelings that threatened to break free of the locked box she'd shoved them into. A storm she couldn't begin to figure out how to process. Where to start processing.
Charlie bared her teeth and let out a sharp snarl.
Why couldn't things just be easier? Couldn't she go back to feeling almost nothing at all? Sure, she didn't get to feel the endless joy when something piqued her interest and the bubbling excitement that came with finding out something new about something she liked. But she didn't get the lows. The consuming pain and choking grief she felt with Ashley's murder. Couldn't she go back to feeling nothing so things wouldn't hurt so much?
Charlie wrapped her arms around her middle and squeezed as hard as she could. She let go when the action made her think of Ashley and the hugs he gave. The ones that provided almost a physical manifestation of comfort.
She sighed.
As her scrambled mind settled into more coherent thoughts, she knew she should send someone in the SFPU a message to tell them where she was. Her phone was a lead weight in her pocket, and she couldn't bring herself to fish it out.
"God," she murmured, voice low and hoarse. "Why is this so difficult? Couldn't it have just been easier? Just continue on with how things were before? Ashley still here and everyone still tracking down poachers?"
Charlie pulled her legs to her chest and rested her chin on her arms crossed over her knees. A bird fluttered over the lake, and a fish broke through the waves, light glinting off the spray of water droplets that followed the flash of scales and fins.
Silverlight Lake always held a peaceful feel, one that could put her mind at ease when she needed time alone. It was always a safe haven from the sights and sounds of the cities in Waverwell, instead holding the sights and sounds of nature. Soft greens of trees, soothing blues of water, melodious birdsong, calming breezes.
But it didn't have the same effect now, despite Charlie's silent pleas that it would.
A wolf slowly padded through the trees a ways off, strides long and confident. Tawny fur shifted with each step, and piercing blue eyes almost seemed to glow in the sunlight.
"Madaket," she whispered, holding her breath as she sat a little straighter.
Five more wolves broke through the treeline after the Silverlight Pack's alpha female, led by the alpha male, Ten.
Charlie had rarely seen the wolves in-person, and she could count the number of times on one hand. Most had been from far away and only the briefest of glances. Much of the information she had on the wolves was either through video footage taken by the Camera Traps or by indirect methods, like looking at their kills or tracks.
But the wolves were so close here. Close enough that she could see the patterns on their coats, see the shades of their eyes. Close enough that if they were to attack her, she would have nowhere to run; they were far faster than she could ever hope to be. She wasn't worried, though. Something told her that the wolves meant no harm. They wished to exist in the same space. She wouldn't go near them, and they wouldn't go near her.
Madaket lapped at the water, while Beck, the yearling pup, pounced on a clump of moss. His mottled brown fur gave him excellent camouflage, and Charlie almost didn't notice him at first until he crossed onto the pebbles lining the lake.
Was that you, Ashley? Did you send the wolves to me?
Are you telling me you're ok?
Despite her attempts, her heart still clenched in her chest and a wave of pain crashed over her. A soft whimper slipped from her lips.
Madaket looked up, tilting her head to the side. She watched Charlie through icy blue eyes, and Charlie watched back. Madaket pricked her ears, tawny fur framing her face, and her nose twitched as she scented the air. Charlie bit her lip as Madaket ducked her head in what looked like a nod.
If it was you, Ashley, thank you.