Violet Darger | Book 7 | Dark Passage

by Vargus, L. T.

  “They’ve had an on-and-off thing since high school. And he’s not a bad kid. Just has a bit of a wild streak. Maybe didn’t have the best role models growing up. A rough family background.”

  Mr. Harmon reached up and adjusted his glasses before he went on.

  “As for the job, we know almost nothing. Bailey couldn’t even tell us who it was for. Always referred to Bo’s boss as Mr. Big.”

  Mrs. Harmon suddenly held up a finger.

  “You should talk to Danny Jessop. That’s Bo’s best friend.”

  “What would Danny know about any of it?” Mr. Harmon asked.

  “Well, that time Bailey and Bo came around, when you were fishing with Roger, Danny was the one who dropped them off. I got the impression that they’d come straight from the Mr. Big job because Bo was absolutely covered in filth.”

  Beside her, Darger sensed Ambrose’s spine stiffen.

  “Looked like he’d been digging foxholes or some such thing.”

  Mrs. Harmon chuckled at the memory, and then her smile faltered.

  “But… I’m sorry. We’ve already told you that the… remains you found can’t be Bailey so… well, what are all these questions about?”

  Ambrose pulled his phone out.

  “I’m very sorry to do this, but I need you to look at this photo.” He entered his lock screen code and swiped at the screen. “I should warn you, it’s fairly graphic.”

  Darger knew without looking that it was one of the autopsy photos of Jane Doe Two. Her stomach clenched, and she had an urge to bolt from the room, to save herself from having to watch this family’s grief unfold before her. But she couldn’t do it to Ambrose, and she couldn’t do it to the Harmons.

  And so she sat very still while Mr. and Mrs. Harmon looked at the photograph of their dead daughter and watched as their world fell apart.

  Chapter 37

  The first thing they did after leaving the Harmon home was to huddle in Ambrose’s car and find what they could on Bo Cooke and Daniel Jessop.

  After some typing and swiping, Ambrose pulled up the driver’s license photo of Bo Cooke on his phone. He held it up toward the agents in the backseat.

  “What do you think?” he asked, flipping back and forth between Bo Cooke’s driver’s license photo and the morgue shot of John Doe One. “Looks about right to me.”

  The fleshy face in the license photo wore a stupid grin that seemed almost obscene transitioning to the grimace on the emaciated corpse, but Darger agreed it was Cooke, as did Loshak.

  “I’ll text Detective McGill and see what he can dig up on this Bo Cooke,” Ambrose said, tapping out a message with his thumbs. “In the meantime, why don’t we drive over to see if young Mr. Jessop is home?”

  Darger and Loshak got in their car and followed Ambrose to the west side of Elkins Park. Daniel Jessop’s address was listed as a second-floor apartment in Thornberry Estates, a fancy-sounding name for a rather low-rent looking complex. From the street, it was all cracked stucco and dead grass and a parking lot pocked with potholes.

  They climbed the exterior stairs that led to the upper floor. The walls were dark gray and marked by sloppy looking graffiti tags. Darger could see the layers and varying shades where old spray paint had already been covered more than once.

  Ambrose banged his fist against the door of apartment 2B. There were no peepholes on these units, but each door had a sidelight covered by a curtain. Jessop’s was dark.

  Darger glanced across the small covered breezeway and noticed the curtain on his neighbor’s sidelight shiver slightly. One sliver of a girl’s face peered out at them before the curtain flicked back into place.

  Ambrose rapped his fist again, but after several minutes with no response, it was clear Daniel Jessop either wasn’t home or at the very least wanted them to think so.

  Darger gestured at the neighboring apartment.

  “Maybe we could ask if the neighbors have seen Jessop around recently.”

  “Good idea.”

  They moved over to the apartment with the lit window. Ambrose’s knock was slightly less forceful this time.

  They waited long enough that Darger worried the girl wasn’t going to answer the door, but eventually they heard the sound of scuffing feet and then a click. The door swung open.

  The girl was maybe twenty-five. She wore hot pink sweats, and her hair was pulled into a messy ponytail.

  “Any chance you’re friendly with Daniel Jessop next door?”

  “Why?” She toyed with the zipper on her sweatshirt. “Is he in trouble?”

  “Not at all. We just want to ask him a few questions,” Ambrose said.

  The girl crossed her arms, hugging herself. She was skittish, this one.

  “Well, I haven’t—”

  Darger took half a step forward.

  “Actually, we’re doing somewhat of a wellness check on him. We have reason to believe Danny might be in danger.”

  It wasn’t totally untrue, since several people in Danny’s circle were now dead.

  The girl’s defensive posture softened slightly. She dropped one arm and went back to fiddling with her zipper.

  “Danny? In danger?” The girl looked comically worried now. “I guess he hasn’t been around in a while. Is he OK?”

  “How long is a while?” Darger asked.

  The girl shrugged.

  “Three weeks, maybe? He asked me to get his mail for him.” She gestured to a thick stack of envelopes and catalogs on a small table beside the door.

  “Did he leave a way for you to get in touch with him?”

  The girl pinched the collar of her hoodie tight to her neck.

  “Well yeah, but he said it was only for emergencies.”

  Darger put on her most disarming smile.

  “What’s your name, hun?” Darger asked.

  “Leslie,” the girl said. “Zlotnik.”

  “My name is Violet. I work for the FBI.”

  The girl’s eyes went wide. She mouthed the letters F-B-I back to Darger, possibly without realizing she was doing so.

  “We’re worried that some very bad people might be looking for Danny, and we want to make sure that we find him before they do.” Also not technically a lie. “I’d say that qualifies as an emergency.”

  Leslie swallowed.

  “Well… he, uh, said if I really needed to get in touch to call The Red & Black — that’s a bar he goes to sometimes — and I should ask for Patricia and leave a message for him.”

  “OK, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to call the bar, ask for Patricia, and tell her you need Danny to meet you there this afternoon. Tell her it’s a matter of life and death. Ask if she can arrange that.”

  “Oh God, this sounds so serious,” Leslie said.

  “It is. It’s really important that we find Danny. Today.”

  The girl’s hand shook as she pulled out her cell phone and made the call. Leslie relayed the message to Patricia, whose voice was loud and shrill on the speakerphone.

  “Hold on a minute, Leslie. I’ll text him now and see if he can come.” There was a long pause before Patricia returned. “Danny says one o’clock. That work for you?”

  Darger nodded to Leslie.

  “Yes,” the girl said. “That’s fine. Thanks.”

  When she hung up, she gazed up at Darger.

  “Was that good?”

  “It was excellent. Thank you.”

  “And Danny’s not… I mean, you’re not going to arrest him or something, are you? I’d feel terrible if I got him in a lot of trouble.”

  Darger put a hand on the girl’s shoulder.

  “You’re helping Danny,” she said. “Trust me.”

  “So am I done?”

  “Actually, if you could come down to The Red & Black with us, to help us identify Danny, that would be a great help,” Darger said.

  “Oh. Um, sure,” Leslie said. “Just let me go grab my glasses real quick. I don’t have class today, so I didn’t put my contacts in.
”

  When Leslie had disappeared deeper into her apartment, Ambrose turned to Darger.

  “You think we need her for this?”

  “No, but if she has another way of contacting Danny, we don’t want her to tip him off. Sounds like something spooked him if he took off for three weeks,” Darger said. “Better to keep her close until we have him.”

  “Good point,” Ambrose said. “I’m gonna go down to the car and put in a call for some backup on the bar. Bring her down when she’s ready.”

  He turned to go and then paused to rub his hands together.

  “I feel like the pieces of this are finally starting to fall into place.”

  Chapter 38

  The air seemed to grow colder as he wove his way deeper into the tunnels. The chill made him shiver slightly, made him feel vulnerable. He’d always liked that coolness before. Usually he was working down here, body heat swelling to match the strain of his labor. Now he wanted to pull up the hood of his sweatshirt, but he didn’t dare cover his ears.

  He kept going. Jabbed choppy steps into the void. Pressed face first into that abyss.

  He pictured the lantern again as he’d last seen it. It hung on the wall near the end of the cave where the digging still persisted in fits and starts. Glass and metal. Shaped roughly like an hourglass.

  He was pretty sure it was an old carbide lantern like the miners used back in the day. As far as he knew, it was there partially as a backup light source and partially as a decorative touch. Cowboy loved ranting and raving about the old coal mines in the region, like even now he pined for the days of child labor and black lung.

  Little twinges of giddiness roiled in his gut as he thought about the lantern. Tried to picture the glow coming to life. Beating back the shadows once more.

  Something clacked and scraped in the distance, loud sounds that fluttered in the cave around him, seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

  He flinched. Shuddered. Put up his hands as though the reverberations might leap for his face, for his throat.

  Then he stopped. Held his breath. Listened.

  Nothing.

  Must have been the echo of his own footsteps bouncing around. Coming swooping back at him like a boomerang to damn near scare the cream cheese out of him.

  His heart punched in his chest again, chugging along at top speed.

  Jesus. A little jumpy, aren’t we?

  He started forward once more. Could admit it now — the sound had startled him pretty good, wrenched the thoughts clean out of his head, left him shaky.

  He tried to think of the Viper again to center himself, a reminder of why he was putting himself through all of this. He pictured himself riding around with the top down, Rhonda riding shotgun, both of them sporting sunglasses, wind batting their hair around, his hand gliding up her thigh. It helped a little.

  The cave floor bent upward beneath his feet. He climbed the slope, knowing he was close now, close to the end, close to the lantern.

  He worked both hands along the wall. Patting and feeling in the dark, his touch covering a broader swath of cave wall than before. The lamp would be there soon enough, and he didn’t want to miss it.

  The smell grew stronger as he neared the freshly blasted area. Dustier. Earthier. More pungent. Maybe that made sense, being that they’d exploded a fresh round of particles into the air not so long ago. He wondered how long it took for all those tiny pieces to settle, for the cave to return to its dormant stillness.

  Another scraping sound made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He whirled, pretty sure it had come from somewhere behind him, that whatever it was had been close.

  “Hello?”

  His voice rang down the long tunnel. Wavered as it traveled away from him. Oddly high-pitched. He willed it to sound stronger and deeper when he spoke again.

  “Is someone there?”

  No response. Only the quiet.

  His skin kept crawling. Wriggling. Tightening around the musculature of his body. His scrotum shriveled up into a walnut.

  He struggled to control his breathing. Wind pushing at his lips. Sucking into his chest. Hissing and sounding wet against his teeth.

  He backpedaled a few paces. Brought his fingertips back to the wall.

  Someone was there. Close. Looming in the dark. He didn’t know it for a fact, but he felt it. Sensed it.

  Just keep going. Find the lantern.

  Both of his hands found the wall again, skimming over it with urgency now. Broad sweeps of his arms left and right like he was beating his wings out of time at it.

  And then his wrist knocked into something. Tinkled out a metallic chime.

  His fingers moved to the source of the noise, found a bulbous protrusion jutting out of the wall. So smooth compared to the rough rock face he’d touched for so long. His fingertips squeaked faintly on the glass globe, found the metal of the ventilation cap cooler than either the glass or rock. The thin arms of the frame arced downward from that, feeling angular and skeletal.

  He managed to detach the lantern from its hook, metal scraping metal as he did, the sound so loud in the quiet it made him grimace. He held it up by the handle with one hand while the fingers of his opposite hand swooped around underneath it, clawing at the empty air there. At last they found what they sought.

  The small box felt so solid in his hands. More substantial than it had any right to. Just holding it made him feel incredible.

  A pack of kitchen matches dangled from a string tied to the bottom of the lantern. He remembered seeing it there so many times, wondering if any of them would ever use it.

  He snaked his wrist through the handle and let it hang there like a clunky bracelet while he drew a match. Scraped it along the ribbed strike plate along one side of the cardboard box.

  The match rasped and flared to life. A stuttering burst of light exploded from the chemical tip, orange and blue and white, and as he lifted the tiny wooden stick, that tremoring fit of flashes somehow congealed into a single teardrop of orange flame.

  He watched the blaze a second through slitted eyelids. Found himself almost incapable of comprehending its brightness after stumbling around in the dark for so long.

  His throat got tight as he stared at it. The spiky ball of fire seemed like the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Almost felt like it might make him cry.

  He ducked the flame toward the lantern and lit it. Watched the small orange glow strengthen within the glass dome. He shook the match out, threw it on the ground. Then he held the lantern up to look around the dig site.

  The way the light and shadow danced over everything seemed foreign. The textures of the rock, the shape and contour of everything, it all seemed different than he’d remembered it — the scale, proportion, something was off. Crazy how fast he’d gotten used to the dark, had forgotten what light was like.

  He turned. Held the lantern up higher to let the illumination spill all the way down that slope trailing away behind him.

  The cave floor looked like papier-mâché in the half-light. Blemishes disrupted the surface. Lumps and dips and cavities and hollows twisting the stone into something singular, something detailed to a level he never could have held onto in his memory.

  The walls, too, held the same idiosyncrasies, as did the periodic stalagmites and stalactites growing like rock icicles out of the floor and ceiling respectively. His eyes crawled over it, soaked in the details, watched the way moving the lantern even slightly seemed to shift it all, change it all.

  He didn’t see the shadowy figure nestled among the stalagmites a few feet away until it lurched at him.

  Chapter 39

  Darger rode over to The Red & Black with Ambrose and Leslie Zlotnik, with Loshak following behind. They wove down city streets through some vaguely industrial neighborhood, older brick buildings occupying much of the scenery with a few sickly-looking trees sprouting up from the concrete here and there.

  “This is it?” Ambrose asked as they rolled
past the bar.

  It was a fairly standard dive bar, dark brick with blacked-out windows. A glowing neon Miller Lite sign gave off pale blue light just next to the door.

  “I mean, yeah, I guess,” Leslie said. “I’ve never actually been inside myself.”

  Ambrose gave an almost imperceptible nod to the men in the unmarked car already sitting on the place. There was ample parking on the street at this early hour, and Ambrose chose a spot across from the bar with a clear view of the front door. Loshak eased into the space behind them.

  Maybe twenty minutes passed with only one customer entering the place — a heavyset woman who was very much not Danny. As the hour approached, Darger couldn’t stop checking the clock on the dash and comparing it to the one on her phone. She noticed Ambrose doing the same.

  A few minutes after one o’clock, Leslie perked up. Following her line of sight, Darger saw a figure approaching the bar. The man had his hands thrust in the pockets of a pair of ripped black jeans. The hood of his black hoodie was pulled up over his head.

  “Is this him?” Darger asked, realizing that the man was dressed very similar to their two John Does.

  Leslie squinted.

  “I think so.”

  As the man reached the door of the bar, he paused with one hand on the handle and glanced around, as if worried he was being watched. When his face angled toward them, Leslie nodded.

  “Yeah,” she said. “That’s Danny.”

  “OK. You’re gonna sit tight, alright?”

  The girl nodded again.

  Darger and Ambrose climbed out of the car. A moment later, Loshak joined them. They moved on the building, their little pack splaying and building speed like dogs on the hunt.

  Loshak reached the front door, gripped the metal handle and paused there a second.

  “You ready?” he said to Darger.

  “Yep.”

  He opened the door then and held it aside.

  Darger led the way through the front door. She could feel Loshak just a few paces behind her.

  She let her gaze sweep the room. The place was dimly lit, with most of the light coming from a collection of old neon beer signs on the walls. Heineken. Yuengling. Budweiser. It took a second for her eyes to adjust.