by Tim McBain
“No, normal sounding. But I hear him coming. And he pulls a little ahead of me before he stops.”
“You can see the back of the car?”
“Yes.”
“What about the license plate?”
There’s a pause. Sierra’s forehead wrinkled.
“No. It’s too dark.”
“Is there anything else? Anything about the car you can think of?”
Sierra’s shoulders rose and fell with her breath.
“I don’t think so.”
Violet tapped the top of Sierra’s hand.
“That’s OK. Thank you for trying. You did good.”
“That’s it?” Sierra said, her tone sounding disappointed.
Darger leaned forward.
“Hey, you remembered that you smelled chlorine, right? That’s something.”
Sierra rubbed the palms of her hands over the tops of her thighs.
“Doesn’t seem like much, though.”
“It’s more than you realize. You never know what small detail might turn out to mean something big,” Darger said, and she couldn’t stop the corner of her lip from turning up.
Sierra had already told her quite a bit. More than she probably even realized.
She hadn’t corrected Darger when she started the narrative on Vine Street, walking away from campus. That was from Sierra’s original statement. In her second interview, she’d insisted she was several miles away, near McHappy’s bakery.
But secondly, confirming that she had indeed smelled chlorine — smelled bleach — proved for Darger that Sierra had been taken by the same man who had killed the other girls.
When they’d finished eating, Darger paid the bill at the front register, then returned to the table to leave a tip.
“I’m gonna hit the bathroom before we go,” she told Sierra.
The girl started to scoot out from the booth.
“I need a smoke. I’ll be outside.”
The diner’s ladies room reeked of cinnamon scented Glade, and the water pressure was such that everything in a three-foot radius of the faucet got sprayed when Darger turned the sink on.
She made a fruitless attempt at blocking the spray with an outstretched hand before turning the water off. She dabbed at the front of her shirt with a wad of paper towels and scowled at her reflection in the mirror. Should she keep playing it slow with Sierra or push her a little? Time was ticking. It was very possible another girl could go missing in the next few days. Then again, she might scare the girl off and lose the best lead they had.
As she passed by their table on the way to the door, Darger noticed that while the $5 bill she’d left was gone, the dishes hadn’t been cleared away.
Bit of a klepto, Deputy Donaldson had said. Darger sighed, removed another bill from her wallet, and tucked it under the pepper shaker. She’d made her decision. Or maybe Sierra had made it for her.
Tendrils of smoke spilled from Sierra’s nostrils. She leaned casually on the hood of Darger’s rental, not looking the least bit guilty for stealing the tip.
Darger wondered if she should give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, the waitress may have grabbed the money and intended to return for the dishes. But Darger thought not.
They got in, buckled their seat belts, and Darger steered them onto the street.
Sierra sat up a little straighter when they turned onto Vine Street.
“I haven’t been this way since…” she said and trailed off.
This was good, Darger thought. Very good. She slowed the car down a bit.
“You said you heard him first. Can you show me where you were when you heard the engine?”
Sierra’s eyes were wide now.
“Sierra?”
“Stop the car.”
“What?”
Sierra undid her seatbelt and then she was wrestling with the door, trying to open it. But the lock was engaged.
“Sierra, wait. I just want to know what really happened.“
But she wasn’t stopping. She’d found the unlock button and pressed it, and now she was yanking the handle, opening the door. Darger brought the car to a halt, her seatbelt going taut across her chest at the sudden stop.
Sierra scrambled out of the front seat, then went to the back to get her things.
“You tricked me!”
“I didn’t mean to trick you.” Violet put the car in park and started to get out. “Just hold on a second, please.”
“No way. You all think I’m a liar, but you all are the liars!”
She slammed the door and started to run down the sidewalk.
“Sierra, wait.”
Darger scrambled back into the car to follow.
“Leave me alone!” Sierra screamed back at her, then jogged up a side street marked “One Way.”
“Shit,” Darger muttered and sped around the block. By the time she’d found a way onto the street, there was no sign of Sierra. Darger did a few more loops, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, but it was no use. The girl was gone.
Having nowhere else to go, Darger returned to her hotel room. She took off her boots and paced over the green shag carpet, periodically moving to the window to gaze through the glass before pacing some more. She’d knocked on Loshak’s door, but he hadn’t answered. She didn’t know if he wasn’t in or if he was still recuperating from his illness. In either case, it was probably better that he wasn’t answering. She’d wanted to impress him, and somehow she thought that scaring off their best witness wasn’t going to do that.
Fuck. If she’d just been patient. But no. No, she had to push. And she’d pushed because she’d been annoyed about Sierra stealing the tip if she was being honest with herself. Stupid.
She didn’t want to sit around moping in her room, but she had nothing else to do and nowhere in particular to go in this unfamiliar town, so she decided to take a walk. Clear her thoughts.
It was a nice enough day that it almost didn’t matter that the motel wasn’t located in the most picturesque spot. Across the street was a gravel-paved lot shared by two different used car lots. She knew the Hocking River was somewhere off to her left, but she couldn’t see it through the trees.
Violet had progressed nearly a mile down the road and was passing the Squeeky Kleen Carwash when her phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Special Agent Darger?”
Darger stopped walking and held very still.
“Sierra?”
“I didn’t know who else to call,” Sierra said, then started to cry.
“It’s OK. What’s wrong?”
“Can you come pick me up?”
Darger scribbled the address on her hand with a ballpoint pen from her pocket.
“Stay right where you are, OK? I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
When she pulled up to the house, Sierra was sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette. Her makeup was smeared again and her possessions were set in a neat pile next to where she sat. Darger unlocked the doors, and Sierra climbed in after stowing her box of rescued things in the back seat.
“Did something happen?”
“Sometimes you think people are your friends, but…” Sierra said, wiping at her cheek. “No one cares.”
“That’s not true, Sierra. I care.”
It wasn’t just a platitude, either. Violet had spent the early part of her career counseling girls a lot like Sierra. Girls with addiction and untreated mental illness. Girls with a history of trauma and abuse. Girls that felt lost and unloved.
She tried to avoid making spur-of-the-moment diagnoses, but she suspected Sierra may have borderline personality disorder. It would fit with her wildly shifting moods, her chaotic relationships, her impulsiveness. And the scars Darger had noticed at the restaurant… It would explain those, too. People suffering from BPD were often cutters.
But Sierra wasn’t listening, and when Violet got a look at her pupils, she could tell she was high.
“Sierra?”
“I need to use y
our phone.”
Darger handed over the phone. Sierra sniffled as she dialed.
“Mom?” she said after a moment. “Listen, I need to ask you somethin’. Yeah. Yeah, but—”
The next thing Darger knew, Sierra was shouting into the phone.
“No. No. No, that’s not true!”
She backed down a little, her tone coming out more of a whine.
“You’re not listening to me. Why do you always take his word for it?”
There was a pause, followed by more screaming.
“Fine! Take his side, I don’t care! I hate you!”
Her fingers gripped the phone so hard that her knuckles were white, and Darger worried for a moment that she was going to smash it against the dash.
“Sierra.”
The girl blinked at her, and Darger thought she might be so angry and so high that she’d actually forgotten where she was and who she was with.
The tears returned.
“This isn’t fair. I was doing good. I tried really hard. And then all this stuff happened. I give up.”
Violet reached out and squeezed her shoulder.
“Look, my room has an extra bed. Why don’t you stay with me for the night? Everything else can wait until tomorrow.”
Chapter 10
Sierra told her where the good pizza was in town, and they stopped at Angelo’s on the way back to the hotel. While she waited for the order, Darger went to the liquor store next door and grabbed two six packs.
They arrived back at the room and dove into the beer and pizza — half with mushrooms for Violet and half with pepperoni and extra banana peppers for Sierra.
Darger turned the TV on for background noise, and time moved in fast speed as three-quarters of the pizza disappeared along with several beers. It felt good to not talk, to not think, to just funnel food and drink into her face. The girl was right about Angelo’s, too. Tasty.
Carbon dioxide hissed as Darger twisted the cap off her third beer. Sierra was on her fourth. Violet tipped the bottle back and took a slug, wondering at the ethics of getting drunk with a witness.
“Oh well.”
Sierra looked over at her.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”
Sierra stared at her for a moment, then grinned.
“You’re wasted.”
“I am not.”
A snorting sort of laugh came out of Sierra’s nose.
“Yeah, you are. Lightweight.”
“You’re the one that sounds a little tipsy with that Miss Piggy laugh over there.”
Sierra was in the midst of taking another drink from her beer, and a fine mist sprayed out of her mouth as she laughed again.
“Miss Piggy?!”
White foam oozed from the top of her beer bottle, and she quickly held it to her mouth so she could slurp it before it dribbled on the bedspread. After that, she sat still a moment.
“You’re not like all them other cops.”
“I’m not a cop, really.”
“FBI, whatever. Once a cop, always a cop,” Sierra said, smirking to herself.
“Pretty much.”
“But you weren’t?” Sierra asked. “A cop before, I mean?”
Violet shook her head, suddenly somber. Sierra had pushed her sleeves up, and she’d caught another glimpse of her scars. Coupled with this line of questioning, it had her mind going to all the places she’d been trying to avoid lately. Violet’s gaze strayed to the window. Between the parted curtains, she could see the orange sodium glow of the streetlights shining on the cars in the parking lot. Blood on pavement looked black under those lights, she knew. Black blood and the tangy, acrid smell of spent gunpowder.
“Agent Darger?”
Darger’s head snapped up.
“What did you do before this?”
Another swig of beer washed the bad taste from her mouth.
“I was a Victim Specialist. Still FBI, but… Sort of like a counselor. Or a therapist.”
A moth fluttered at the window, wings beating against the glass before it moved on. Violet stared down the open mouth of her beer bottle. Tiny bubbles broke on the golden surface below.
“I was seventeen the first time I got drunk. I was at my best friend’s graduation party. She had a big family, and there was plenty of booze to go around, of course. We waited until after the party, when almost everyone had gone home, and we snuck outside to the coolers and snagged some leftover Boone’s Farm. Sangria. Tasted like grape juice and piss.”
Sierra snickered.
“I used to love the Strawberry Daiquiri flavor.”
“We each had our own bottle,” Violet continued. “And at first we only took one sip. And then we waited. We kept saying, ‘I don’t feel anything!’ And then we’d take another sip. And pretty soon, we’d each drank half a bottle.”
“I bet you felt something then.”
Violet’s lips stretched into a smile.
“My friend stood up to pee and almost fell over. She hadn’t even taken a step or anything. And that set me off giggling. I thought she was faking it until I tried to stand up, too. I stumbled sideways and took out a table lamp.”
They both laughed.
“It wasn’t long before it all caught up to us, and we were running for the door so we could go puke in the backyard so her parents wouldn’t hear.”
Darger tilted her head back and sucked down the last dregs.
“Haven’t touched that stuff since. Even real Sangria makes me a little queasy.”
“I don’t remember the first time I got drunk for real,” Sierra said, running a finger along the wallpaper and frowning. “But I do remember the first time I drank a beer. It was me and my neighbor, Kylie. We swiped a can of Bud Light from my mom’s fridge. And one of her cigarettes, too. And then we crept out to the woods behind our houses, and we practiced holding the beer and cigarette in the same hand, the way our moms did.”
She grabbed a pen from the bedside table and demonstrated.
“I don’t think we even drank half of the beer. We thought it was disgusting. Same with the cigarette. We didn’t inhale or nothin’, just held the smoke in our mouths.”
Sierra had that faraway smile people got when remembering fond times from their childhoods.
“How old were you?” Violet asked.
Sierra chewed her lip.
“Nine, I think. Maybe ten.”
“Young,” Darger said.
“I guess so. It was so innocent, though, you know? We didn’t know what we were doing. It was only a game. Playing grown-up.”
Darger tapped her fingernails against the beer bottle in her hand.
“When I was ten, I wanted to be a paleontologist.”
“Which one is that?”
“Dinosaur bones. Or at least, that’s what I was interested in.”
“In other words, you were a huge nerd.”
“Hey!” Darger protested, then laughed. “Well, yeah. Pretty nerdy.”
“I’ll try to hide my shock and surprise,” Sierra said, and Darger threw a pillow at her.
She was feeling a little giddy from the beer.
“Didn’t you have dreams when you were a kid? Something you wanted to be when you grew up?”
“Not really.”
“None at all?”
She thought, tilting her face toward the ceiling as she did.
“A dancer.”
Violet slid off the bed so she could sit on the floor with her back leaned against the mattress.
“No judgments, but are we talking ballet dancing or g-string dancing?”
Sierra tipped her head back and laughed.
“Not that kind! Like you said, ballet. And tap and jazz, too. I used to take classes.”
“Why’d you stop?”
She shrugged noncommittally, and a cloud seemed to descend over her face.
“Come on, there had to be a reason.”
“I grew out of it, I guess. I dunno. It’s kid st
uff, isn’t it? You can’t be a dancer for a living. Not that kind anyway,” Sierra said, and a trace of a wicked smile returned.
“Well maybe not everyone can be a professional ballerina, but you could be an instructor. Teach kids.”
Sierra was shaking her head.
“Nah. I don’t think I’d have the patience for that.”
They were quiet for a while, the only sound was canned laughter from the sitcom on TV that neither of them was watching. The laugh-track was the perfect counterpoint to the exaggerated beer sadness Violet felt. The girl gave up so young.
“I did these cosmetology courses in high school,” Sierra said, and her eyes suddenly brightened. “I could see myself doing that.”
“Yeah?” Darger said. “Then you should.”
Sierra shrugged again, looking a little embarrassed. Like admitting she wanted something in life made her feel sheepish.
“I don’t know.”
“What did you like about it?”
With one thumbnail, Sierra picked at the label on the beer bottle. The scratching noise was the only sound for a while.
“We used to go to this old folk’s home,” Sierra said. “We’d practice on the ladies there. Do their hair and makeup, give them manis and pedis. Those old ladies always looked so happy when we were done.”
Violet pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin on top, watching the girl.
“Sounds like it made you pretty happy, too.”
“Yeah,” Sierra said. “Yeah, it did.”
They had settled into a strange comfort with one another by then. They flipped through the channels, pausing once on the shopping channel where some sort of strange boob cushion was being advertised. Sierra laughed so hard she rolled off the bed.
Darger was surprised to realize she was actually having a good time. It was not what she’d expected when she’d first invited Sierra to stay with her.
When she considered bringing up anything about the case, she felt a twinge of guilt. Not only because she didn’t want Sierra to think that had been the reason she’d offered to help her. But maybe because it had been at the forefront of Violet’s mind when she’d made the suggestion.
Violet didn’t realize she was chewing on her nails until Sierra’s hand latched around her wrist.
“Damn girl. You need a manicure.”
