“It might,” Loshak said. “But I don’t think we’re going to get any true clarity until we start figuring out who these people are.”
Darger had to agree. So far, they’d only managed to uncover ambiguous details that hinted at certain possibilities but gave them nothing certain. Just like traversing the landfill earlier in the day, Darger felt like the ground beneath the case wasn’t completely solid.
Agent Zaragoza came flying into the room, looking more animated than Darger had seen her before. Cheeks flushed and eyes alight, she looked like a kid on Christmas morning.
“We’ve got it,” she said, holding her phone in the air. “We’ve got it!”
“Got what?” Detective Ambrose asked.
“The dumpster.”
Chapter 11
The mood in the conference room shifted immediately upon Agent Zaragoza’s announcement. The almost dour tone had been shattered, excitement bursting in to replace it, and now Darger found herself bouncing one leg up and down in anticipation. She watched Detective Ambrose crack his knuckles and thought they were all experiencing a similar jolt of adrenaline.
Zaragoza took charge of the projector, bringing up a satellite map of the city. She zoomed in on a four-block section southwest of their current location.
“Keystone Disposal analyzed the waste we sorted through yesterday and this morning and determined it came from one of the eight dumpster pick-ups located in this area.”
She marked each dumpster site with a marker.
“The dumpsters on this route get picked up on Thursday, so that would mean they were most recently loaded four days ago. The truck that picked them up made its run through this area from approximately 5:17 AM to 5:35 AM.”
“So we’ll want surveillance from the area starting at 5:35 AM and before,” Captain Dalton said. “The question is whether we can narrow it down from there or if we need to look at the entire week preceding the pick-up.”
“I’d get everything I could,” Loshak said. “We don’t know yet how organized this operation was. If there was some planning involved, I’d say the bodies were probably dumped within a few hours of pick-up. But then there’s always a chance that whoever dumped the bodies was just driving around town looking for an ideal place to get rid of them. In that case, it could have been done at any point between the previous pick-up and the most recent.”
Detective Ambrose clicked his tongue.
“That’s going to be a hell of a lot of surveillance footage to sift through.”
“Start with ten PM on the night before pick-up,” Loshak said. “If you don’t get anything from that time period, expand backward from there, sticking with night time hours. It’s unlikely someone would be ballsy enough to dump three bodies in broad daylight, but sometimes I’m surprised at the risks people take. If we still come up empty after checking all the night footage, we’ll start looking at daylight hours.”
“Who do you want on this, Ambrose?” Captain Dalton asked. “I told you before, you have your pick in terms of who’s on your team.”
“Caine and McGill are on call. Let’s get them in here, as well as Park.”
Loshak nudged Darger with his elbow.
“I bet if we drive around and take a look at these dumpsters in person, we can narrow it down further. What do you think?”
Darger nodded.
“Should we tell the others?” she asked.
Loshak’s neck swiveled as he scanned the bustling task force around them. Then he tilted his hand in the air.
“Let’s see what we can find out. If we get something useful, we’ll share.”
Darger and Loshak gathered up their things and headed outside. When they reached the parking lot, Loshak pulled his phone out.
“I’ll navigate, you drive?”
“You’re volunteering to use your phone?”
Loshak brought up the marked map on his screen.
“Jan’s been teaching me how to use all the little apps and things.”
“Apps,” Darger said. “Wow. You know the lingo and everything.”
Loshak made a dramatic show of swiping up on his screen, his finger arcing upward in an exaggerated flourish.
“Not to brag, but I’m kind of a pro at this now.”
Chapter 12
They rolled through the streets of Philadelphia, passing by rows of houses and a series of factories that had been converted into offices and luxury apartments. The outskirts of the older cities on the east coast always seemed oddly quaint to Darger, like you could still see the ghosts of the smaller towns they’d once been as soon as you got out away from the skyscrapers. As they drove under an old stone bridge, she spotted a black and red food truck advertising the “Best Effin’ Cheesesteaks in Philly!”
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had a real Philly cheesesteak,” she said.
Loshak glanced up from his phone.
“How is that possible?”
“Well, I’ve had cheesesteaks. But it was like… a Chicago cheesesteak or an LA cheesesteak. Not an authentic Philly cheesesteak from, you know, Philly.”
Loshak squinted.
“I’m not sure there’s anything fundamentally different, honestly.” He ticked off the makings of a cheesesteak on one hand. “You got your beef. Onions. Whiz, if that’s your thing.”
“Come on. I may not have ever had a cheesesteak from Philadelphia proper, but even I know it’s not a cheesesteak if you don’t get Cheez Whiz on it.”
“I’m just saying. Some people prefer real cheese.”
“Buncha snobs,” Darger said. “It’s not like they’re trying to pull one over on you. It’s spelled out right on the jar. ‘Cheez’ with a ‘z.’ It knows it’s not cheese. No illusions.”
Loshak chuckled and gestured at the upcoming traffic light.
“We should be coming up on the first dumpster in a second,” he said. “Right after this intersection.”
Darger kept her eyes peeled as they proceeded down the street.
“There’s one.”
She nodded toward a royal blue dumpster next to a gas station. It was completely surrounded by chain link fence.
“Fenced and padlocked,” Loshak said, waving his pen as they rolled by.
Loshak had scribbled a copy of their dumpster map onto a legal pad, and he scrawled a quick note beside the first marked dumpster.
“OK, the next one is about two blocks up and on the left.”
“I see it,” Darger said a moment later. “It’s right off the street, and it’s got two flood lights mounted over it.”
Loshak jotted this down.
“Noted.”
They continued this process until they’d gotten a look at all eight dumpsters, and then Darger pulled into the lot of a Dollar General so they could discuss what they’d learned.
“So we’ve got two that are locked,” Loshak said. “I figure we can cross those out right off the bat.”
He drew a line through the two locked dumpsters on his hand-drawn map.
“And the three that had signs saying they’re monitored by cameras,” Darger said. “Even if the signs are fake, I don’t think anyone would risk it.”
“Agreed. Scratch those for sure.”
Loshak crossed those off the map as well.
“What does that leave us?”
Using his pen as a pointer, Loshak tapped the locations of the remaining three dumpsters.
“Let’s see… we’ve got the one next to Starbucks, the row of dumpsters along the backside of that Little Caesar’s, and… the last one is over at that alternative high school.”
“Oh right. The one with the big mural of Ed Franklin on the side?”
Loshak blinked and stared over at her.
“You mean Benjamin Franklin?”
“What did I say?”
“Ed,” Loshak repeated. “You said Ed Franklin. Are you having a stroke or something?”
Darger felt her cheeks flush.
“No, it’s just that I used to get Thomas Ed
ison and Benjamin Franklin confused as a kid,” she said, chuckling.
If anything, Loshak looked more worried than before. His eyelids trembled.
“What does that have to do with calling him Ed Franklin?”
“Ed-ison.”
Creased formed across Loshak’s forehead.
“I don’t know if it’s just because we haven’t worked a case together in a while, but I don’t remember you being this weird before.”
Darger rolled her eyes.
“Are we going to go take a second look at these dumpsters or what?” she asked.
“Let’s go.” He waved his hand in the air. “You’re driving.”
Darger steered them back onto the street, catching a glimpse of the setting sun in the rearview mirror. Bands of pink and orange streaked the sky, reminding her of the rainbow sherbet she used to get when she was a kid. Was it already that late?
The nearest potential dump site was actually a series of three dumpsters arranged behind a Little Caesar’s storefront that backed up to a parking area for a group of townhouses. Darger circled the townhouse lot and then idled near the dumpsters.
“Doesn’t look like the lighting is great back here,” Loshak said. “Even with the street lights from the parking lot, those trees would probably keep the dumpster on the far end in the shadows.”
Darger tried to imagine what it would be like back here in the dead of night. Pictured herself creeping into the parking lot after midnight and snugging up beside the dumpsters. Climbing out and then glancing both ways to check for witnesses. The light from the sodium bulbs would stain everything yellowish. A tainted glow.
She felt the trunk latch thunking faintly as she released it, the struts almost sighing as the hatch swung open. Inside, a tarp or maybe some plastic sheeting would partially conceal the tangle of human bodies. The horribly sinewy limbs. Far too thin. Knees and elbows swollen and jutting. With one last look around, she pushed open the lid of the dumpster and began the grisly work. Hugging the nude body of one of the Jane Does to her chest as she hoisted her over the lip and tumbled the corpse into the gaping maw of the open dumpster.
With a jerk, Darger came back to the present moment, shaking off the chill of the imagined scene. And again she wondered: How? How could someone do such a thing?
She turned her head and gazed out her window, studying the townhouses overlooking the area. They were clean and modern-looking, with steel cable guard railings stretched across each balcony. Next she surveyed the cars in the lot — Subaru Outback, Mazda Miata, Audi A3. All newer models. So it was an upper-middle-class place, if the cars were anything to judge by. A woman watering plants on her second-floor balcony stopped what she was doing and stared down at the idling car, no doubt wondering why someone was loitering in her parking lot.
“Hey. Check this out,” Darger said, directing Loshak’s attention to the woman watching them from her balcony.
Loshak peered up.
“Ah. Looks like we’ve got a nosy neighbor.”
“You think that’s enough to cross this one off the list?”
“Maybe so. In my experience, those snooping types are always watching and listening. Just itching to call the cops on a suspicious-looking character.”
They headed over to the Starbucks dumpster next. It was enclosed in plank wooden fencing with a gate at the front, but there was no lock.
“What do you think about the fencing?” Darger asked.
“Could give some cover, but it’s also a barrier to deal with.”
“Maybe they had a truck. If you stood in the back and tossed them in, you might not even have to open the gate part,” Darger said, then studied the traffic. “Pretty busy street, though. Maybe it’s quieter at night.”
“I don’t know,” Loshak said. “That’s a Walgreen’s next door. Sign says they’re open 24 hours. Even if things were slow, there’d be no assurance you were going to find a long enough chunk of time to dump three bodies without someone either driving by on the street or bopping into the pharmacy next door.”
Darger nodded.
“And there’s nothing aside from the fence and the dumpster itself to give you any cover. No trees. No bushes.”
“I say we go look at the dumpster at the school. If we can’t say definitively it’s the one, then we can pull surveillance for these three. But maybe we’ll get lucky.”
The final dumpster was snugged up against the back wall of Hicks Alternative High School. Water dribbled from a broken downspout nearby, and the moisture had stained the dark bricks green with some kind of slimy moss or algae.
Darger parked next to the dumpster and climbed out. There was a Burger King across the street, which reminded her of a crime scene in Athens, Ohio, where a man they’d called the Doll Parts Killer had once disposed of a body.
“I’m guessing this lot is full during the day, but it’s getting toward dusk?” Loshak said, glancing around. “Aside from us, there are only three other cars in the lot. I bet it’s a full-blown ghost town late at night.”
“And those shrubs growing along that fence shield this part of the building from the street.”
As they spoke, the streetlights illuminating the lot blinked on. All of them, except for one. The lamp nearest the dumpster stayed dark. Coupled with the thick tangle of Siberian elm, buckthorn, and honeysuckle that would block most of the light from passing traffic, this small footprint at the back of the building would be quite dark in the middle of the night.
They both stared up at the dead bulb for a few seconds before exchanging a glance. No words had to be spoken. They’d made a decision.
“I’ll call Ambrose,” Loshak said, getting out his phone. “I’ll tell him to pull the surveillance and traffic camera footage from all three unsecured dumpster sites, but we should focus on this one first and foremost.”
Chapter 13
On the way back to the 5th District headquarters, Darger and Loshak stopped off at a local pizza place and ordered enough pies to keep the team that would be going through the surveillance footage fed for at least the first part of the evening. Darger carried the pizza boxes while Loshak manhandled four 2-liters of soda.
When Detective Ambrose saw them come in with the food, he let out a groan.
“Hallelujah,” he said. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
Darger handed him a pizza box.
“Help yourself.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, flipping the lid open and removing a slice. He took a bite and sighed. “I tell you what, standing around that dump really puts a damper on the ol’ appetite. This is the first time I’ve felt hungry since this morning. Maybe that could be the next fad diet. You have to go sift through the trash at the local landfill for a few hours. You never eat again, and the fat just melts away.”
At the mention of the word “diet,” an image of the skeletal bodies laid out in the morgue flashed in Darger’s mind, and again she found herself wondering what was going on with this case.
Her eyes went to one of the detectives scrolling through traffic cam footage, and she hoped tonight they might finally get some answers.
“We’ve got four different cameras from around the school. There are two in the parking lot of the school itself, one at the traffic light down the block, and one outside the Burger King across the street,” Ambrose explained in between bites of pizza.
“May I?” Darger asked, gesturing at the empty computer chair Detective Ambrose had vacated when they’d come in with the pizza.
“Be my guest.” Ambrose took a sip of Pepsi from a coffee mug that said WOKE UP SEXY AS HELL AGAIN. “This is footage from the night before the last dumpster pickup. Figured we’d start there and work backward, like you said.”
Darger pressed play on the video file that was already loaded up. It was grainy black and white feed looking down on the Burger King drive-thru window. In the top left corner of the screen, a sliver of the school parking lot was visible, along with one corner of the dumpster
.
After watching a few seconds of the footage at normal speed, she sped it up until the cars were zipping through the drive-thru line at a much more rapid pace. She stared at the upper left-hand side of the screen as the seemingly never-ending line of cars slithered past, afraid that if she even blinked she might miss something.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Loshak tapped her on the shoulder.
“You’re getting kinda squinty over here. Why don’t you let me have a turn?”
Darger paused the video and squeezed her eyelids shut.
“My eyes could definitely use a break,” she said.
She traded places with Loshak, stretching her shoulders and her neck to try to loosen them up a bit.
A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and Officer Primanti came in with a large box of coffee. He handed the box and a paper sack to Detective Ambrose.
“There’s cream and sugar in the bag,” Primanti said. “Cups too, if you need them.”
“Appreciate it, Primanti.” Ambrose set the box down on an empty table at the front of the room. “Why don’t we all take five? Have a cup of coffee, answer nature’s call, etcetera, etcetera.”
Everyone gathered near the table, each person waiting their turn to fill their cup with hot caffeinated liquid.
“You guys ever hear of a cannibal sandwich?” Loshak asked.
Ambrose wrinkled his nose.
“A what?”
“It’s a thing in Wisconsin,” Loshak explained. “A holiday tradition. You top a piece of rye bread with a mix of raw beef, salt, and pepper. Couple slices of onion on top.”
“Well what’s the deal with naming it a ‘cannibal sandwich?’ Kind of sick, if you ask me,” Ambrose said. “Me, I prefer my cow no longer mooing when I eat it. Never understood the appeal of raw food. Cave men invented cooking for a reason.”
“Sushi’s alright,” Darger said.
“Nope.” Ambrose shook his head. “Raw fish? Forget it. You know, I dated a gal who only ate raw food. I mean, she was vegan too, so she basically only ate sprouts and carrots as far as I could tell. One time she made me try her kale juice. Tasted like something you’d scrape off the side of a boat.”
Violet Darger | Book 7 | Dark Passage Page 6
