Into the Abyss

by L. T. Vargus

  To her shock, Prescott only sighed.

  “I was afraid you’d say that. And ultimately, it’s disappointing, but… I understand. I do. I know it’s a big ask. And I wouldn’t have come to you with it if I thought you were in any kind of danger. If you reconsider, please get in touch.”

  “Right,” Darger said. “Goodbye.”

  Instead of relief, an emptiness came over her as soon as the phone connection was severed. She stared down at the screen, hearing Prescott’s words echo in her mind.

  Think about the parents. The closure this could give them. You can give it to them.

  Had she made the right choice, turning Prescott down?

  She rubbed at her temple as if that might clear away the doubt she felt.

  Of course she'd made the right decision. She needed to see Stump again like she needed another bullet in her head.

  Because there was only one reason Stump needed her there in the room. To get under her skin.

  The shitty dance music grew louder behind her. Darger turned and found Laurie’s head poking through the gap in the door.

  “There you are! I thought we’d lost you,” she said, reaching up to tighten her ponytail and then stopping to study Darger’s face. “Whoa, you look intense.”

  Her Bambi eyes slid down to the phone still clutched in Darger's fingers.

  “Bad news?”

  “Something like that,” Darger said.

  “Well this next song is perfect, then. It’s a real rager. Super intense and emotional, you know? And the routine has some kickboxing moves in it, so you can really kick and punch all those aggro feelings out.” The girl lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “Sometimes I picture my stepdad’s face when I’m punching the air. He’s a total dickhead.”

  That got a smile out of Darger, and she stepped forward to follow Laurie back into the studio.

  She was looking forward to punching Leonard Stump in the face a few dozen times, even if it was only in her head.

  Chapter 2

  Darkness surrounded Darger. Black nothingness that left her confused and disoriented. Her heart hammered in her chest, and sweat soaked her forehead and brow. She held her breath until the details of her bedroom filtered in around her.

  She’d awakened from a nightmare, she realized. Her lungs began to function again, pulling in the cool night air.

  Darger only remembered flashes of the dream now. The boarded-up windows of Stump’s cabin. The cold of the tile floor where she lay in a puddle of her own blood, the sticky wetness clinging to her. The crackling fire that warmed one side of her body. His footsteps approaching the room. Waking in the bed of Stump’s truck, wondering if she was going to die, if maybe she were already dead somehow.

  Back in that place. Trapped like a wounded animal with a steel trap gnawing at its snapped ankle. Desperate. Frightened.

  But it was only a dream.

  To reassure herself, she moved her hand to her face. Perfectly dry. No blood.

  It should have comforted her, but it didn’t.

  Tossing the covers aside, she climbed out of bed. Changed into clothes that weren’t damp with sweat. In the bathroom, she splashed a little water on her face.

  She’d had three blissful months free from the nightmares.

  But Prescott’s call had her thinking about it again.

  About the dead girls out there in the wilderness somewhere.

  That could have been her fate, too. Nearly was. An unmarked grave in the desert. Never to be found. Never to be given a proper burial. Her loved ones denied a chance to say goodbye.

  The line between life and death seemed so thin when she looked at it that way. A game of chance, the winners and losers selected at random. No reason driving any of it.

  She blinked a few times. Stared up at the gauzy abyss where the blackness swallowed the ceiling.

  And she wondered what horrors the others endured. The pain. The terror. The violent ends. All of them trapped in Stump’s cabin like fireflies stuck in a jar without any breathing holes punched into the lid.

  Did the wondering keep their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives awake at night? Did it haunt their dreams?

  She knew it did.

  Darger crawled out of bed, headed out to the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee. The gurgle of the machine offered some reassurance in its familiarity, and the smell of the brew only enhanced that.

  While she sipped the steaming black liquid, she cursed them all. Stump. Prescott. Coonan. But even as she damned them all, she knew what she was going to do.

  As soon as it was a reasonable time on the west coast, she would call Prescott and tell her she’d changed her mind.

  She’d talk to Stump.

  Chapter 3

  There was a driver with Darger’s name on a sign waiting for her at McCarran Airport just outside of Las Vegas.

  “Just another perk of being in the private sector,” Prescott had said over the phone.

  Darger wasn’t sure if Prescott was still trying to woo her or if she really cared that much about nice hotel rooms and hired drivers.

  The driver helped Darger load her suitcase into the trunk and then opened one of the back doors for her. As Darger ducked inside, she was surprised to find Prescott already ensconced in the backseat.

  “How was the flight?”

  “Long and dull.”

  “Oh, then you’re doing it wrong. Once I was introduced to the hot towel and endless Bloody Marys in First Class, I actually started to enjoy air travel. You’ve got to learn to take advantage of these things, dear. Don’t be so austere. This isn’t the FBI, remember?”

  Darger shrugged noncommittally and fastened her seatbelt.

  “We have rooms at the Bellagio. Would you like to stop off at the hotel to freshen up?”

  Leaning back into the leather upholstery, Darger shook her head.

  “I’d rather get this over with.”

  “You’ve got nerve, I’ll give you that,” Prescott said, smiling to herself. She had a self-satisfied way about her that always reminded Darger of a cat. “I’ll phone Coonan, tell him to meet us at the jail. He’s already pulled some strings and got you registered for Professional Visitation status on short notice.”

  Darger turned her head and gazed at the passing scenery while Prescott made the call.

  “Doug? It’s Margaret.” There was a brief pause. “Mhmm. We’re on our way to CCDC right now.” Prescott glanced at her watch. “Traffic’s not too bad. Fifteen minutes or so, I’d say.” She chuckled. “See you there.”

  Ending the call, Prescott dropped her phone into her bag and flashed a barracuda’s smile in Darger’s direction.

  “Did you see the Jillian Barrow interview?”

  “The what?” Darger asked.

  “She did a jailhouse interview with Stump for 20/20. It was just a few weeks ago. You didn’t watch it?” Prescott seemed dumbfounded.

  “No.”

  Darger had been doing her best to ignore the tabloid circus that had surrounded Stump since his apprehension. He was a bigger star than ever, and it made Darger sick.

  “It was a bit on the fluffy side, if I’m honest. Not that I’d expect anything different from Jillian,” Prescott said with a snort.

  The familiarity of using the first name told Darger that Prescott wanted her to know she was personally acquainted with the prosecutor-turned-pundit, like name-dropping was another of her precious First Class perks.

  “She’s always been a bit on the sensationalist side, but then it is television, so I suppose that’s to be expected. Gotta juice those ratings, right? Sweeps week and all.”

  Prescott fiddled with an earring that looked like a gold-plated jelly bean.

  “The reason I bring it up is that every time she asked about his childhood, he changed the subject. I’m not sure if he’s only trying to increase his mystique, or if he’s genuinely unwilling to talk about it. I suppose the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
”

  Darger was only half-listening now. They’d just driven by a Dunkin Donuts, which made her think about early morning task force coffee runs with Loshak. She could still see her mentor wolfing down a few donuts in the car and then rising from his seat, his long arms balancing two big boxes of pastries to deliver to the crew in whatever conference room they were headed for that day.

  Less than an hour after she told Prescott she’d changed her mind about talking to Stump, Loshak had finally called her back. And even though she’d been waiting for him to return her call for days, Darger had avoided answering the phone. It was like he’d sensed something amiss in the universe as soon as she’d agreed to see Stump, as if the infamous serial killer were a collapsing star threatening to pull fresh victims into the darkness.

  She felt guilty about not answering his call now, but if she had, she would have told him about going to see Stump, and she knew what’d say about that. He’d say she was crazy.

  Now she wondered if that had been a mistake. Maybe she should have told him, asked him to come along. She didn’t relish the notion of facing Stump alone. Prescott would be there, but Darger didn’t exactly trust the good doctor to have her back.

  Her eyes slid over to Prescott, who was still rambling about Stump.

  “It’s sort of a cliché, you know — the thoughtful, articulate serial killer. And an unrealistic one at that. That’s why Stump is so rare. He has a little of what I like to call ‘Bundy Charisma.’”

  Darger ground her teeth together in an effort not to betray her disgust.

  Bundy Charisma? Jesus Christ.

  There was a fierce glow in Prescott’s eyes as she spoke. Darger had seen that look before, after what happened in Oregon. Hunger. Excitement. There was a part of Prescott that prized the Leonard Stumps and Kathryn Porters and Ted Bundys of the world. She had reverence for them. They were Special, with a capital ‘S.’

  One of the points Loshak always made when delivering lectures at the Academy was a warning against idolizing serial killers as extraordinary beings.

  “A lot of profilers and criminal psychologists have this fantasy that they’re going to learn some big lesson by talking to a serial killer. Insights. Understanding. I’m sorry to report that it’s not true. Sociopaths only speak out of self-interest. They want, and all of their behavior serves that want. They’re not particularly self-aware, not interested in introspection or honest examination of what they’ve done. What they are very good at is telling you what you want to hear, painting pictures of themselves with words to capture your imagination, manipulating you, drawing whatever narcissistic resources they want in that moment from you. Generally they agree to these interviews to feel important, to convince another audience that they’re more than they really are so they can feel special and powerful for a while,” he’d say. “I don’t believe they have the ability to be honest. Everything about their psychology is tinged with an inherent narcissism and a lack of basic human understanding, so how can they really know themselves? Anyway, their actions speak louder than their words ever can. It’s what they do that defines them. I’m not sure that why is something they know all that much about or even care to.”

  She could see him in her mind’s eye, running his fingers through his hair as he gathered his thoughts.

  “The other trap we fall into is the idea that through our understanding, we might be able to prevent these things from happening in the future. We are not fixers. We are a clean-up crew. The malignant darkness like that found in Edmund Kemper and Leonard Stump has always existed. Will always exist. The darkest appetites — wrath, greed, lust pushed to their limits. So why do we study them at all? What can we learn from them if not to circumvent their very existence? What I’ve learned is that there’s a little piece of that in all of us. We’re all part monster, part animal. The thing that sets us apart from them is that we fight the darkness. They don’t. They embrace it. But it’s that sliver of common ground that allows us to predict their behavior. And if we can predict their behavior, then we might just be able to stop them from killing again.”

  The more Darger got to know Prescott, the more she wondered what kind of relationship she and Loshak had shared. When it came to the philosophy behind their work, they couldn’t be more different.

  Prescott was the type who pressed her face to the lion’s cage to better admire its teeth and said, “Don’t worry, dear. He’s in a cage, see?”

  Loshak was the type who reminded you that lions can spray urine up to ten feet.

  They spent several minutes riding in silence before Darger felt Prescott studying her. She tried to ignore it, but eventually her eyes slid over to meet Prescott’s piercing gaze.

  “I’m glad you agreed to do this. I know you have mixed feelings about seeing him again.”

  “Not so mixed,” Darger said.

  Prescott looked down and scrutinized her perfectly manicured fingernails.

  “Well, if it helps any, you’re going to come out the hero in all of this.”

  Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Darger swiveled back toward the window.

  Prescott still hadn’t figured out that Darger didn’t care about being the hero. This was duty. An unsavory task the universe had assigned her. A price to pay to make the world a better place. She did it out of compassion, not out of seeking glory.

  Besides, she’d already agreed to it. She didn’t know why Prescott kept trying to sell her on how great a plan it was.

  Maybe she was worried Darger would chicken out, which wasn’t totally out of line. She’d considered pulling out about a hundred times since she’d first called Prescott back.

  But she was here now. Better to bulldoze through it.

  Chapter 4

  The Clark County Detention Center was an ugly beige building right in the heart of downtown Las Vegas. The complex took up several blocks’ worth of real estate, and its figure cast a long shadow over the street — asphalt surrounded this dungeon in place of the traditional moat.

  As their car approached the building, they passed a wedding chapel, a sandwich shop, and the main entrance for the Golden Nugget. All in sight of the jail. From the outside, among so much normality (or what passed for such in Las Vegas), you’d never guess the 124,000 square foot structure housed up to 793 accused and convicted at any one time.

  The driver pulled to the curb, and Darger felt a blast of hot air hit her face as soon as Prescott opened the door. Welcome to the desert.

  The sun beat down, seeming brighter, harsher than it had been only a few minutes ago at the airport. They walked by a row of scraggly shrubs nestled in a strip of parched brown grass.

  Despite the struggling landscaping, the place looked like an office building. Benign. Banal, even. It wasn’t the kind of place Leonard Stump should be, Darger thought. She wanted Stump somewhere with guard towers and double rows of chain link fence and razor wire. Somewhere remote, where even if he managed another escape, he’d be surrounded by a harsh and unforgiving landscape, a terrain that would put him down if the legal system failed at the task. A prison colony on some distant moon would be perfect, but barring that, she’d accept something like Ely State Prison. It was about 250 miles north of Vegas, out in Middle-of-Fucking-Nowhere, Nevada. And with any luck, that was exactly where Stump would be heading after his trial, because Ely State Prison also housed the state’s death row for men.

  They pushed through the doors and got in the line for Visitation Check-in. The air inside was stale but cool. Darger plucked at the neck of her blouse, which clung to all the places that had gotten sweaty on the brief walk from the car to the air-conditioned refuge of the jail lobby.

  While the outer facade might be indistinguishable from the other buildings around it, inside the jail had the standard depressing ambiance of all correctional facilities. Concrete floors and cement block walls, nearly everything finished in a shade of taupe or gray. Harsh fluorescent lighting beamed down from the ceiling. The best thing she could say for it was t
hat it was impeccably clean, but even that came off in an institutional way that struck her as cold and unwelcoming.

  Darger thought about the average inmate that wound up here — a conference-goer that had a little too much to drink and got rowdy on the strip, the working girls who’d been picked up for solicitation. Charged with petty crimes and locked up a few cells down from the likes of Leonard Stump. Unreal.

  She spotted Doug Coonan, the Assistant District Attorney assigned the role of lead prosecutor for Stump’s trial, pacing back and forth near a wall of lockers with a phone pressed to his ear.

  At the other end of the lobby, a guard stood near the security checkpoint. He held a leashed German Shepherd no doubt trained to sniff out drugs.

  When she and Prescott reached the check-in desk, a female guard in a swivel chair turned her joyless face on them.

  “Inmate name?”

  “Leonard Stump,” Prescott answered, handing over a sheaf of documents. “We’re on the Pro list.”

  The woman glanced at the papers and nodded.

  “I need a state-issued ID for each visitor over the age of eighteen,” she said as she slid a clipboard across the desk. “Sign in here, and then make sure to deposit all valuables including any jewelry, cell phones, and other devices in the lockers to your left. You may keep your wallet and keys on your person, but they’ll need to go through the X-ray machine at the security checkpoint, as will your shoes and belt, if you’re wearing one.”

  Prescott and Darger took turns signing their names to the form, and then the guard checked their IDs to make sure they were who they said they were.

  “You can collect your identification at the end of the visit. When you’ve finished stowing your valuables, please proceed to the security checkpoint.”

  Darger longed for her gun as she tucked her belongings into one of the khaki-colored lockers. She never would have made it through the jail security with it, but that didn’t stop her from fantasizing about sneaking it inside and unloading an entire magazine into Leonard Stump’s face.