by Tim McBain
“I guess you were right after all,” Loshak said after a long bout of silence. “I jinxed it.”
She laughed a short bitter laugh, but something in Loshak’s face told her he wasn’t really joking. He felt responsible.
“No one could have seen this coming.”
“No? All the news stories, the press conferences? It’s a double-edged sword, and I knew it. Like kicking a bee’s nest and then being surprised when you get stung.”
Loshak tipped back his head and finished off his drink. Darger watched him for a while, and then she leaned forward.
“Do you remember what you said to me when I wanted to quit?”
He glanced up at her.
“Knock it off with the self-pity shit,” she said. “There’s no time for it.”
She swirled the cognac in her cup, spinning it into a golden tornado.
“At least I think that was it.”
“I believe I said ‘crap.’ My mother taught me manners.”
Darger snorted and then got serious.
“We’re going to get him. His clock is ticking down. Minute by minute,” she said.
Loshak sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. He was looking drained again. Tired, sickly, and pale. She hoped whatever he’d had before wasn’t making a comeback. She thought about asking how he’d been feeling the past few days. The words were on the tip of the tongue. But then he spoke, and the thought left her.
“You know, I’m glad you didn’t quit. You’re good at this.”
Darger’s hands fidgeted in her lap.
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. I’ve met guys — and gals — who’ve read every criminal psychology book ever written. They’re profiling encyclopedias. You wanna know what Richard Ramirez ate for breakfast every morning growing up? They probably know. But when it comes to actually getting in the head of one of these guys in the wild, who for all we know is some new breed of monster we’ve never seen before? Forget it. They’re in the weeds.”
He’d refilled his drink again, and she thought he was starting to sound a touch drunk.
“I always say, it’s 10% by the book 90% by the gut. You can’t teach the gut part. But you’ve got it.”
Propping her elbows on her thighs and leaning forward to rest her chin in her hands, she asked, “How can you say that before it’s over? I could be wrong about everything.”
“Were you not listening to what I just said?”
Loshak said, then gestured to his gut.
“You sure that’s not just the lingering effects of your bout with food poisoning?”
He chuckled a little at that.
“Come on, now. You were the one that insisted on talking to Sierra Peters again when everyone else wanted to write her off,” he said, pausing to sip at his cup.
“Remember it, Darger. Trust your instincts. I know it’s not very scientific, but that doesn’t make it not true.”
A leaden quiet fell over them for a while. The only sound was the steady drip of the leaky bathroom faucet.
It was Loshak who broke the silence.
“So tell me. Why’d you join the FBI in the first place? What led you down the violent and disturbing road of criminal psychology?”
Darger frowned down at her drink.
“Do you remember the Leonard Stump murders?”
He scoffed.
“Of course. I was there. One of my first cases with BAU.”
“I know,” she said.
“I worked my ass off to get Stump, and then he escaped from the county jail a month later. Not something I can easily forget.”
He was watching her intently now, his curiosity piqued.
“Why do you bring him up?”
“Well, one of the suspected victims — Penelope Frasier?”
He lifted a finger in recognition.
“Right, right. She was one of the girls who went missing around that time and was never found. I remember.”
Violet nodded.
“I was in her mother’s English class when it happened. Seventh grade. The whole thing captured my imagination. I guess I was a fairly morbid twelve-year-old. Anyway, I knew someday I wanted to pursue it.”
“No shit?” he said.
One corner of her mouth quirked into a smile.
“I thought your mother taught you manners.”
“Eh,” he said, shrugging. “She tried.”
Chapter 87
When he finally sleeps, he is all the way out. All the way under. Tangled in that strange web of unconsciousness.
It is intense sleep. His brain fighting for what it needed. Greedily suckling at the teat of REM sleep while it has the chance.
He’s plunged straight into a nonsense dream. His eyes flick about in their sockets. Trying to keep up with the fast-motion deluge of images his cerebral cortex conjures. Forgotten as fast as they appear. Eyelids twitching like mad.
His jaw clenches and unclenches all the while. Teeth scraping forward and back. Grinding at each other. He hears it sometimes. The sound of the molars clicking and gritting and gouging each other. It filters into his dream.
It’s dark when he wakes. Shadows filling his tomb. The furnace hissing from the vents.
His apartment is full of that earthy smell he gives off. The air thick with the odor of damp leaves and leather with some sharper animal stench that is somehow reminiscent of Doritos. Cool Ranch.
Shards of memory come back to him as he lies there half awake. The violent images flicking in his head out of sequence. The crack of the gunfire. The cop’s face flaking apart.
And then he remembers her. The feel of the knife pressed into the soft flesh of her neck.
She never fought him. Not even a little. Total submission.
That’s the memory he wants to dwell on. The face blank. A little scared. Giving herself over to him.
That’s his desire. His fantasy. The way she gives in. The way they all give in to him in the end.
They suffer unto what he wants.
And in those fleeting moments the world makes sense. The universe makes sense. He feels complete. Feels powerful. Like nothing can hurt him.
He sits halfway up. Propping his weight on his elbows. His mind is clearer now. And a calm settles over him. The kind of calm he hasn’t felt in a long while. A sense of actual relief.
There is a strange contentment to realizing that the game has mostly played out. The choices were already made. The pieces moved into place. And all that is left is the ending. The grand finale.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He knows in his heart that it is almost over now.
Chapter 88
Darger had already worn her funeral outfit three times during this trip. Maybe it’s bad luck, she thought, eying the rumple of black crepe. She’d tossed it on the floor next to her suitcase after Fiona’s vigil. She hadn’t thought about how she’d need it again for Novotny’s service. Did propriety insist that she make a trip to the laundromat? Or could she just revive it with a bit of water from the sink and a blast from her hair dryer?
She picked it up, noting the distinct note of booze smell. Right. Loshak had insisted on filling her cup again, and she’d spilled some of the cognac in her lap. That’s when they’d finally decided to call it a night.
Well crap. That decided it, then.
She headed out into the early morning in search of a new dress. The sky was a pale, colorless gray. A sky for mourning if there ever was one.
At the local Goodwill, she found a navy blue number with a straight skirt and a square neckline. It looked as if it had never been worn, fit her near perfect, and was priced at $4.44. On her way back to the hotel, she stopped and bought two lattes — one for her and one for Loshak. By the time she was finished changing into the “new” dress, it was time for the viewing.
She met Loshak on the landing outside of their rooms and passed him a lidded cup.
“Much obliged,” he said, lowering his sunglasses over his eyes despite t
he fact that it wasn’t very bright out.
He looked pale again, and she hoped it was only the remnants of a hangover and not his so-called food poisoning returning with a vengeance. Again she avoided asking if he felt alright. He didn’t like being fussed over, he’d made that clear enough.
“Have you ever taken a peek at the Leonard Stump file?” he asked on the drive.
“No, but I’ve been meaning to. I didn’t have clearance before, when I was in OVA,” she said.
“I can send it over, whenever we get back to Quantico. You know he kept a journal when he was in jail?”
“I didn’t.”
Loshak eased the car into an empty parking space and undid his seatbelt.
“We kept that pretty hushed. Didn’t want the media trying to get their dirty mitts on it.”
Luck was loitering just inside the front door of the funeral home, out of the sprinkling mist that had begun to hang in the air. By the way he hopped to attention when he caught sight of her and Loshak, he’d been waiting for them.
“Don’t you look like a dog with a bone,” Loshak said. “Whaddya got, Detective?”
“Some good news and some bad.”
“Good first,” Loshak said.
“It’s an employee pass for Union Parking,” Luck said, the excitement in his voice coming through despite his hushed tone.
“What airport?” Loshak asked.
“Well, that’s the bad news. Union handles parking for Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Akron, Pittsburgh… I mean they’re all over the country, but those are just what’s in the area.”
“Jesus,” Darger said. “I guess at least it narrows the list down to just airport employees. But that’s still gotta be a fuckton of people.”
“You don’t get it.” Luck couldn’t keep the grin off his face now. “It’s a pass only for employees of the parking company, not the entire airport.”
“I’ll be damned. That is good news,” Loshak said, rubbing his hands together.
His eyes sparkled with the knowledge that they were closing in on their prey. He glanced around the room, almost as if he thought the killer might be there with them. His gaze fell on Novotny’s family, who were stationed at the chapel door to greet people as they came in. Loshak straightened suddenly, the hungry gleam fading from his eye.
“Let’s put a pin in this for now. We’re here to pay our respects to Novotny. We can talk shop after,” he said.
The three of them joined the line of people entering the viewing area. While they waited, Darger considered their next move. They were still on the hunt. They needed to be smart. And careful. Her initial instinct had been to start calling around to the various airport parking facilities and asking about any of their employees that drove big, dark sedans. But that was too sloppy. Too easy for their lead to be blown by office gossip. The safest thing would be to send out a team to each airport. Take them by surprise. But what were the odds that local law enforcement would authorize that? She thought slim.
The French doors leading to the chapel loomed ahead. Darger snapped out of it, and each one of them took turns shaking the hands of the family members and murmuring words of condolence. Novotny’s widow had dark circles beneath her eyes and the dazed look of someone still coming to grips with the awful truth. Darger knew he had a daughter as well, but she didn’t see any children around. Maybe that was for the best.
Darger felt her heart seize in her chest. How many funerals in how many days now? It wasn’t right, so much death being visited upon this place all at once. And the knowledge that there was probably another death waiting to be revealed — that of Sandy Metcalf — made it that much harder to swallow.
When they reached the front of the room, where the casket lay among a jungle of floral arrangements in every imaginable size and color, Darger kept her eyes averted.
“Go ahead,” Darger said, indicating that Loshak should step to the casket first. She wanted to give him a moment on his own. She trained her eyes on the flowers and on the carpet as he moved forward.
“You alright?” Luck asked from beside her.
She blinked, startled.
“I’m fine. Why?”
“You just look a little pale is all.”
She inclined her head toward him and lowered her voice to a whisper.
“I hate open caskets,” she admitted.
Casey’s brow furrowed.
“With all the screwed up stuff you look at on a day-to-day basis,” he said, then gave a slight nod to the gleaming coffin in front of them, “and that bothers you?”
She knew it must give comfort to some, to actually see the person they’d known and loved when they said their final goodbyes. For her, she could only ever think how wrong it looked. The powdery makeup and the dull hair. The way the mouth wanted to pull away from the teeth. The wax plugs in the orifices to keep fluids from seeping out.
From what she’d heard, Novotny’s facial injuries had been extensive. The mortician had to do some sculpting to reconstruct the nose. Glancing at him laid out now, she couldn’t tell where the flesh ended and the sculpture began.
Casey rested a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She turned to smile at him, but then saw that he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring straight ahead, a grave expression on his face. She swung her head up. Loshak was still standing at the casket, but he’d bent forward, hands on his knees.
“Loshak,” she said, and he straightened.
She’d taken a step forward but stopped then, thinking he’d managed to compose himself.
And then Loshak took one odd, shaky step toward the casket, almost falling into it before he caught himself on the edge. That got her moving again, but before she could reach him, his knees wobbled and buckled under his own weight. He teetered to the right, taking out a tripod holding a large framed photograph of Charles Anthony Novotny. Glass shattered as it struck the ground. Darger barely noticed the crunch of the shards under her feet as she rushed to Loshak’s side.
“Loshak!” Darger shouted, and he crumpled to the floor.
Chapter 89
Automatic doors whooshed. The wheels on gurneys and wheelchairs click-clacked and squealed. Feet pattered. A drinking fountain down the hallway hummed. After a while, the sounds all smudged together into one low murmur that she barely took notice of.
She didn’t know how long she’d been staring at the wall when she felt a hand on her arm. It was Luck.
“Your phone, Violet.”
She looked down at her lap, reached into her pocket for the buzzing device. It barely registered that the screen said “Cal Ryskamp” before she pressed the button to answer the call.
“Hello?” she said.
“What the hell is happening out there, Darger? First an officer-involved shooting, and now Loshak’s down?”
She didn’t know what to say.
“Well, what is it? A heart attack?”
“Um no. They don’t know yet. Or won’t tell me. I don’t know. I’m not family.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“He wasn’t right. I knew he wasn’t. He’s been sick since I got here,” she said, feeling a sharp stab of guilt. She should have been more firm. Should have tried to make him see a doctor. She’d known something was wrong. But she’d been so focused on the case.
“Christ.” Cal sighed into the phone. “Well, this is what happens when you don’t take care of yourself.”
Darger bit back an angry retort. His tone was not-at-all sympathetic, and it pissed her off. But it wouldn’t do anyone any good to get in a spat with Cal right now. Least of all Loshak.
Cal was still talking. She struggled to focus on what he was saying.
“Look, no one blames you for this, alright? Like I said before, Loshak’s one of these guys who thinks the rules of the universe don’t apply to him.”
Blame her? Blame her for what? But she only listened while Cal went on.
“There’s a meeting scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll need you
on the first flight back. I’ll have—”
That got her attention.
“Meeting,” she interrupted. “A meeting for what?”
“Violet, this has been one big mess from start to finish, and Assistant Director Linville wants a full report.”
She sat forward, trying to make sense of what he was saying.
“What about the task force? We just leave all these guys here sitting around with their dicks in their hands?”
People passing by in the hallway beyond slowed at her shouting, peering into the small waiting area with mixed concern and interest before moving on.
“We’re dispatching another team to take up where you left off.”
“Where we left off? That’s insane, Cal. They’ll just be playing catch up. They don’t know this case—”
“Violet, these are experienced agents from BAU. They’ll handle it fine.”
Now it was all falling into place. No one blamed her. One big mess. Experienced agents.
Bullshit. They were going to lay this all on the shoulders of a so-called inexperienced agent in over her head. And Loshak would take his share as well, she knew. That enraged her even more than being taken off the assignment. He wasn’t even there to defend himself.
Cal was still yammering on, regurgitating excuses and platitudes.
“They’ll actually be in on the briefing, so you can get them up to speed along with the rest of us. Oh, and that reminds me…”
She considered arguing with him, but she knew it would do no good. He wouldn’t listen.
She pulled the phone away from her face and stared at the screen. She could still hear a small, tinny version of Cal’s voice coming from the speaker.
Her thumb punched the red button, ending the call. The voice clicked out.
He’d call back of course. Her finger found the power button and turned the phone off.
For a long while, she just stared at the black screen in her hand.
“Everything OK?” Casey asked from beside her.
She’d forgotten he was even there.
“Sure,” she said.
“Did I hear something about you going back to Quantico?”
