Darger laughed and refilled her coffee. Loshak was already back in the chair scrolling through the Burger King footage again, and she wandered over and watched from over his shoulder.
She was about to suggest that she start going through the video from the previous night on a different computer when something interesting happened on the screen.
“Did you see that?” Darger asked.
“Yeah. Looked like it headed over to the school parking lot, didn’t it?”
Loshak stopped the video and backed it up. They watched it again, this time at normal speed.
“I’ve seen a lot of cars come through the Burger King lot and turn left or right, but this is the first one that clearly goes straight.”
“Hey, Ambrose,” Darger said. “You should check this out.”
Loshak played the video for the detective. After watching it through twice, he put his hands on his hips.
“And the only thing across the street is the school parking lot?”
“Yep.”
“How far is the dumpster from the street again?”
“Ten yards, at most.” Loshak replayed the clip again, pausing the moment before the car left the Burger King lot. “Not a good angle in terms of getting a license plate, unfortunately.”
Ambrose clapped his hands together and addressed the room.
“Alright, I want everybody to bring up the footage you’ve got from early Thursday morning around 2:45 am. We got a dark-colored sedan, newer model. Looks higher end. Maybe a Lexus or an Infiniti,” Ambrose said. “He goes cruising through the Burger King lot, hops across the street, right over to the school dumpster, it looks like. But we can’t see the license plate from our angle.”
The other three detectives in the room got to work, and Darger followed Ambrose over to observe. They ran through the footage from the other three cameras, but none of them showed a dark sedan.
“He must have taken Rose Street when he left the school lot,” Detective Ambrose said, consulting a map someone had scrawled on a whiteboard showing the positions of the various cameras in relation to the school. “If he skirted around the southwest corner of the lot after hitting the dumpster, he wouldn’t be on any of the other cameras.”
“The question is whether he was avoiding the cameras on purpose,” Darger said.
“Shit,” Ambrose said. “If he was avoiding the cameras, what are the odds this isn’t our guy?”
He went back over to stand behind Loshak’s computer and peered down at the screen.
“Times like this, I wish we were like the TV shows. You know, where all I have to say is, ‘enhance!’ a few times, and then out pops a perfect image of the license plate.” Ambrose inhaled and let out a breath. “You think he could have three bodies in that sedan?”
“The three bodies we found, yeah. They didn’t exactly take up much space, did they? Even if he couldn’t get them all in the trunk, he could have had one or two in the backseat.”
Ambrose clicked his tongue in disapproval.
“Can you imagine putting a corpse in a ride like that? I mean, I drive a 2012 Passat. Nothin’ fancy. And I still wouldn’t be putting any corpses in there. Not in the trunk and definitely not on the upholstery. You get some of that stanky decomp smell in the fibers? That ain’t never coming out.”
Ambrose’s phone rang.
“Oh… it’s Gilly. This could be good.” He answered the call. “Ambrose.”
Darger watched Loshak play the video of the dark sedan on a loop. Over and over. Frame by frame, hoping for a magical shift that made the license plate visible.
“Good work, Gill. Yes. Absolutely.”
Ambrose ended the call. His eyes were gleaming with renewed energy.
“That was my esteemed colleague, Detective McGill. He thinks he found the tattoo artist who did the ink on John Doe Two.”
“We have an ID?” Darger asked.
Ambrose grinned.
“The deceased’s name was Stephen Mayhew. And there’s more. I guess the tattoo artist was kinda friendly with our guy.” He rubbed his hands together, beaming. “He’s coming down here now to give a statement.”
Chapter 14
Ambrose read off the rap sheet of Stephen Mayhew, or “the artist formerly known as John Doe Two,” as the detective seemed to delight in calling him.
“DUI. Criminal mischief. Drug paraphernalia. Misdemeanor theft in the third degree, which means whatever he stole was valued at less than fifty dollars. Standard petty crimes of a what I like to call a D.A.K.”
“What’s that?”
“Dumb Ass Kid,” Ambrose explained. “Of course, he wasn’t a kid anymore, but... these are pretty mild, run-of-the-mill charges. Nothing violent. Nothing weird. No hard time. Couple fines, community service, drug and alcohol counseling. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved in something more serious. But this doesn’t give us much to go off. He also doesn’t seem to have any family in the area from what we can tell so far.”
“What about this tattoo artist?” Loshak asked. “Any criminal history?”
“Negatory. He’s as clean as Clorox. Good work as an artist, albeit as expensive as hell. Huge following on Instagram, too. Anyhow, see for yourself. I just got a text that he’s waiting in interview room two.”
Gage Medina was a short, fit man wearing a pair of ripped jeans and a tank top that showed off his tattoos. His head was shaved, and Darger assumed it was to make room for more ink, since the back of his neck and head were marked up as well.
Darger and Loshak crowded into the interview room with Detective Ambrose, and they took turns introducing themselves to Medina.
“Well, Mr. Medina—”
“Call me, Gage, man. That ‘mister’ stuff sounds weird. Too formal. I feel like I’m back in school at St. Mary’s about to get my ass handed to me by one of the nuns.”
“Gage, then,” Loshak said. “How long have you known Stephen Mayhew?”
“Oh, maybe five years or so.”
Ambrose nodded.
“And how did you meet?”
“He was looking for someone to do a big chest piece. I think I was the second or third artist he’d talked to about it. And we hit it off right away. He was a cool dude. Very laid back. Non-judgmental type, you know? A free spirit.”
Medina had long dark eyelashes, and he fluttered them open and closed a few times.
“And that’s how I try to live, you know? I try to keep a pretty open mind about most things. Judge not lest ye be judged and all that. Plus, I figure, you never know what crazy shit you might experience if you just go with the flow. Like one time, I met this dude named Asher Moon at a gas station in Escondido. Turned out he was this, like, shaman dude. Very spiritual guy. Talking about how, like, everything is harmonics and shit.”
Darger immediately pictured a white guy with dreads in some kind of white linen robe.
“He ended up inviting me out to Joshua tree where he was leading this ayahuasca vision quest. There were five of us, and we all took off our clothes and laid down on the rocks and communed with our spiritual ancestors. Changed my whole perspective on shit.”
Medina’s dark eyebrows knitted into a frown for a moment.
“And just to be clear, Asher’s, like, half-Mexican, so it was like… totally legal for him to be in possession of ayahuasca. It’s ceremonial or whatever.”
“So you’re what some might call a free thinker,” Darger offered, and she thought she saw Loshak struggling not to smirk beside her. “Not hemmed in by traditional ways of thinking.”
Medina snapped his fingers.
“Exactly! It’s like, I ain’t afraid to admit that I don’t know everything, so why pretend like I do?”
“And Stephen Mayhew… is that where you found a common bond?” Darger asked. “He was another free-thinking type?”
“Well yeah. At first, anyway. He seemed very enlightened. We’d talk about the Nasca lines in Peru or the Voynich Manuscript. These ancient mysteries that no one has been abl
e to solve, which is mind-boggling, you know? We have all this technology, all this artificial intelligence we can use to solve shit, but we’re still stumped by these things created thousands of years ago. That’s just wild to me, man. Anyway, one day Steve came by to pay off the most recent piece I did for him. I let some of my more regular customers pay in installments. So he was dropping off his last payment and mentioned that he was going out into the boonies for this celebration of the full moon with a group he was in with. Asked if I’d be interested in tagging along. I said hell yeah.”
“What were they planning on doing?”
“Well, when he first mentioned it, I was imagining some kind of half-hippie, half-hillbilly kegger out in the woods.” Medina scratched the side of his head. “I ended up driving us up there, because I guess Steve’s girl bailed, and he didn’t have his own ride. Anyway, he started telling me more about these people on the way up. Said they had built this community out near Hershey. Self-sufficient and all that. Solar power. Off the grid. Totally green. And I can get behind that, you know? I think the current lack of action toward the climate crisis is criminal. But that’s beside the point I guess. What he was telling me sounded pretty cool. The guy that’s sort of their leader is big on self-actualization. On stripping away the material trappings of our current society. Of getting back to what matters. Personal connection. Mind-body-spirit wellness. Plus Steve said the women in the group were pretty much all smokin’ hot. Like, not just pretty faces. Killer bods, too.”
Normally Darger would have been tempted to make a sarcastic remark at that, but something Medina had said earlier had caught her attention.
“You said this group has a leader?”
“Yeah. Dude named Curtis,” Medina said. “Steve talked about the guy like he was some kind of messiah.”
“Curtis?” Darger repeated. It wasn’t exactly the type of name she’d expect from a messiah.
“And did the group have a name?” Loshak asked.
“Mm… something golden. Children of Gold? No… that’s not it. Children of the…” Medina shook his finger in the air. “Golden Path!”
“Children of the Golden Path?”
“Yeah. Pretty sure that’s it.”
Darger glanced over at Loshak. He was obviously thinking what she was.
A self-built community with a messiah-like leader. Sounded like a cult. And they’d already discussed cult behavior once when they were speculating on possible causes for the emaciation. Darger felt giddy but knew she shouldn’t get ahead of herself.
“Would you say the group was religious in nature?” Loshak asked.
“Religious… well, see, that has such strong negative connotations for me. My parents were very strict. I went to Catholic school and everything. So my idea religion tends to be tainted by all that.”
“OK, so you drove out to the country for some kind of celebration,” Darger said. “What happened when you got there?”
“Well it was great, at first. They were very welcoming. Some of the women took us to this bath house and, like, literally bathed us.”
“You and Steve?”
“Yeah. Which probably sounds weird, but it just, I don’t know… It felt right. It was like I could literally feel all the bindings of the material world washing away. All the stuff you worry about on a day to day basis — job, mortgage, taxes — gone. A true cleansing. They get all the water right from a creek that runs through the property, and they make their own soap and essential oils. The whole place is like… of the earth. We had this incredible meal at this long table in the middle of a field full of flowers. That’s how they bring in cash. I didn’t know this until Steve told me, but apparently cut flowers are one of the most profitable crops you can grow. This place is a real working farm. We’re talking freshly churned butter. Honey straight from the hives. It was… wholesome.”
“At first,” Darger said, repeating the words he’d said before. “And then something… unpleasant happened?”
Medina licked his lips and fidgeted. It was the first time in the entire interview that he’d seemed uncomfortable. He’d been leaning back in his chair, but now he sat up straighter in his seat.
“There was this drink at dinner. They called it moon juice. I thought it was just, like, boozy punch. Tasted good as hell. I had like three glasses. Later I found out it had been dosed with psilocybin.”
“Magic mushrooms?”
“Yeah. And like, I’ve done shrooms tons of times. It’s great if you’re prepared. The right frame of mine, you know? I think it should always be consensual. Sneaking it into a beverage without a warning… that’s not cool. You don’t know who you’re dealing with, you know?”
He rubbed the backs of his knuckles.
“So anyway, once it got dark, they built up this big bonfire and started dancing and chanting. Drums. And they all put on animal masks. Tiger and bear and wolf. All very primitive looking. Feathers and bark and strips of leather. I swear mine had real teeth. Tiger, you know.”
His eyes stared into the middle distance, and his voice took on a faraway tone like he was reliving all of this as he told the tale.
“We walked over to this altar, and there was a girl. In this like, pristine white gown. Like something a Greek goddess would have worn. At first she was lying very still. Almost like she was asleep. And then she opened her eyes, and when she saw all of us standing around in masks, she recoiled. Tried to get away. But she was tied down. She started pleading with us to untie her, but we weren’t supposed to talk. It was supposed to be very animalistic. Role-playing, you know? Feral and shit. So she could talk, but we could only grunt or growl or scream in response.”
He swallowed hard, and his throat clicked.
“And she was pulling at the ropes. Eventually she freed herself and ran. And we all chased after her. Running through the woods. She was laughing then. Or at least, I thought I heard laughing. That part was kind of amazing. There was a full moon, and it felt very visceral. Like maybe what it would have been like to be a prehistoric man, you know? Nomads and whatever. Living off the land—”
“What happened with the girl,” Darger asked, more interested in the ritual than what Medina’s drugged-out mind had thought of it.
“Well, eventually the group caught up with her. I was toward the back, but when I got there, some of the masked people had surrounded her. And she was trembling. Actual tears in her eyes. And they closed in on her and started tearing at her clothes. They ripped the gown to shreds until she was completely naked. And there was blood, like they were scratching her with real claws or something.”
His eyelids fluttered and then steadied.
“They tied her to this post. And she was screaming and crying, and that was when it got to be too much for me. I mean, Steve insisted later that this was all planned, that she was playing a role. It was something she’d signed up for. A ritual. But the fear looked real to me, man. That’s not my scene. Like, it’s just not. So I screamed for them to stop.” Medina shrugged. “I told them I was done. I wanted out. And I guess any of the congregation speaking actual words interrupts the ceremony or whatever?”
Darger waited for him to continue. He reached up and scratched the side of his face, grimacing slightly.
“Things got kinda heated after that. They were pretty pissed that I’d ‘broken the circle’ or whatever.” Medina made air quotes with his fingers. “I tried to tell Steve I only wanted to get my stuff and go. After the cleansing bath, they gave us these robes to wear and took our regular clothes, so I didn’t have my keys on me. But… well, I wasn’t even supposed to be at this ritual. Steve had sorta snuck me in, and I blew the whole thing. And so he got led away looking like he was going to face a firing squad. A couple of the others tried to corral me, take me somewhere so I could come down from the trip, so they said. But by then I wasn’t going anywhere but home. Luckily I’d left my wallet in my truck, and I always keep a spare key, so I just ran to where I’d parked and got the fuck out of there.”<
br />
He inhaled deeply and seemed to return to the present moment. He made eye contact with Darger and smiled about halfway.
“I mean, I’ll admit that I had a bad trip, right? Like, I realized after I came down that it had to all be set up. When we chased her through the woods, the path was very clear. Like, no sticks or rocks to trip over. And then when we caught up to her, we ended up right next to another bonfire with a post and stuff to tie her up. It was like she ran from Point A to Point B. A planned course. So yeah, I freaked out. But I wasn’t prepared to witness something so intense in that state. Steve didn’t warn me, you know?”
“Did you go back or see any of the people again after that?”
“Steve came by a few days later. He stopped in and brought me the stuff I’d left. My pants and keys and whatnot. He was pretty angry about me, uh, leaving like I did. Kept saying that he never would have brought me there if he’d known I couldn’t handle myself. And that if I would have played it cool, it all would have been fine, which I still think is pretty unfair. But I guess he got chewed out by Curtis and was being punished.”
“Punished how?”
“He didn’t say. And I felt bad about it at the time. But it turns out I was right, huh?”
Darger shifted in her seat.
“Right about what?”
“About them being into weird shit. I mean… the ritual might have been a big show, but the detective showed me that pic of Steve’s body. Pretty gnarly. He was all messed up.” Medina sighed. “I don’t know what they did to him, and I’m sorry it happened, but I’m, like, glad it ain’t me.”
Ambrose pulled photos of the other victims out of a manila folder and laid them out. Three bony faces stared up from the tabletop, angled at Medina.
“I know Detective McGill already asked if you recognized any of these others, but I want you to take one more look. Could any of these people be you recognize from the Children of the Golden Path?”
Medina’s eyes skittered over the faces, twitching forward and back.
Violet Darger | Book 7 | Dark Passage Page 7
