by Tim McBain
“The plot thickens,” Darger said, thinking about the profile, and the over-bearing mother trope that featured in so many serial killer backstories.
“Bishopville is the Sheriff’s jurisdiction. They’re gonna do a drive-by and see if it looks like anyone’s home. Chief Haden assured me that they’d sit on the house ‘til we got there.”
He stopped and looked at her.
“If you’re coming, that is.”
“Are you kidding? Of course I am. You can drop me at my car, and I’ll follow you back. It’s back at the hospital.”
Luck nodded.
“You gonna check on Loshak?” he said.
“No,” she said. “He would want me to close the case.”
She was suddenly feeling on the verge of tears. She didn’t know why. Or maybe she did. It had been an emotional couple of days.
No. Strike that.
It had been an emotional couple of years for Violet Darger.
Chapter 93
Darger followed Luck back down US-33 to Athens county. Next to the freeway exit for Bishopville, Darger parked her rental in a Park and Ride lot and climbed into Luck’s van.
Luck’s radio crackled while they waited for a traffic light to turn. He picked it up.
“This is Luck.”
“Luck, it’s Deputy Donaldson,” a familiar voice said. “We borrowed a van from Animal Services, used it to have some of our guys knock at the Van Ryper residence. Pretending to look for a loose dog.”
“Anyone home?”
“It appears not,” Donaldson said. “But we did find something of interest parked a few blocks away. A dark blue Buick LaCrosse. 2011 plates registered to a Kurt Van Ryper.”
“Like he half wanted to dump it, and half wanted to keep it close by in case he needed it?” Luck asked.
“Exactly my thoughts, Detective,” the tinny voice said.
“You’re using unmarked vehicles, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Alright. Agent Darger and I will be there in about twenty minutes.”
Cherry Lane was one street over from the house where Kurt Van Ryper lived with his mother. Luck pulled alongside a green Subaru Outback and rolled down the window on Darger’s side. Donaldson sat behind the wheel of the Subaru, wearing a nylon windbreaker to obscure his uniform.
“Agent Darger,” Donaldson said in greeting. “Detective Luck.”
“Any change?”
“Not a peep so far. I have cars stationed on most of the other surrounding routes. Notified SWAT to be ready for the call. And since we know he’s not driving the Buick, we ran the mother’s name through the vehicle registry. She drives a white Silverado. Brand spankin’ new. Made sure to circulate that and Kurt’s driver’s license photo to the other guys.”
Through the window, he passed them an enlarged photocopy of Kurt Van Ryper’s photo. Darger stared into the face, strangely unmoved. He looked plain. That was her only conclusion.
“Great,” Luck said, staring down at the grainy black and white image. “I’m gonna see if we can find a place to camp out a little closer to the house.”
Donaldson gave a nod.
“Give me a holler on the radio if you need anything.”
Darger started to put her window up when Donaldson put up a hand. She stopped.
“I forgot to ask about Agent Loshak.”
“He went in for surgery this morning. I’m still waiting on a call with an update.”
“Heck of a thing,” Donaldson said. “Prayin’ for him.”
They parted then. Luck steered them down to the next intersection and took a left. Another left and they were a mere three houses away from Van Ryper’s home. Luck rolled by slowly, and they both made an effort to take in the house without staring. It was a nondescript white and brown split-level, with a sloped driveway that led down to a two-car garage nestled into the lower level.
“Weird, huh?” Luck said.
“What?”
“Just looks so normal.” He smirked a little then. “No sign out front that says, ‘Beware of Psycho.’”
Two houses down and across the street from the Van Ryper residence, a woman stepped out onto her front walk and strolled down to the mailbox. Luck pulled up next to her, and at first Darger saw the unmistakable glisten of fear in her eyes. It seemed to ebb when she saw Violet in the passenger seat.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Luck said. He unclipped his badge from his belt and showed it to the woman. “I’m Detective Luck, this is my partner, Detective Darger. We’re investigating reports of a string of break-ins in this area, and we wondered if you’d heard or seen anything suspicious lately?”
The woman’s mouth opened in a perfect “O” shape, and she fiddled with the zipper of her jacket.
“My goodness! No, I hadn’t heard anything about that.”
“That’s OK. We’re going to stick around for a while, keep an eye on things. I was wondering… I couldn’t help but notice that you have two driveways.”
The woman glanced behind her at a second two-track dirt path that led to a pole barn behind the house.
“Yes?”
“Would you mind if we parked in the second driveway? Less suspicious than if we park on the street.”
“Oh. Of course,” she said.
“You’re sure it’s not an inconvenience at all?”
“Absolutely not, Officer… I mean, Detective.”
“Thank you, ma’am. That’s quite a help.”
“Don’t mention it,” she said, giving them a wave before heading back into the house.
As Luck backed the van into the drive, which also had the benefit of being partially hidden by an overgrown evergreen shrub, Darger shook her head.
“Telling tales left and right today. Surprised you haven’t sprouted an extra long beak like Pinocchio.”
Luck shrugged.
“I want my own two eyes on that house, and I don’t want to screw things up by sitting right out in the open. Run the risk of spooking him.”
He turned off the van, and so began their watch.
Chapter 94
It was tense the first hour or so. Each time a car approached the four-way stop in view, they both perked up, sitting forward in their seats to see if the car would turn down Hickory Lane. Of the four vehicles that had come to the intersection, only one had turned toward the Van Ryper residence. They held their breath as the car rolled down the pavement. It was a small silver car. A Ford Fiesta, Darger thought. It glided past them, around the slight bend in the road where they were parked, and slid into the driveway of a house up the lane. A teenage girl got out and went inside.
Luck and Darger exchanged a wordless glance and slumped against their backrests.
Darger reached for her bag, wanting suddenly to check if Kurt Van Ryper’s name was on the list Luck had printed out before the vigil for Fiona. She wiggled the folder free from the mouth of her bag and set it on her lap. When she opened it, the candid photos of Sierra Peters as a child spilled onto the floor. With everything that had happened — least of all The Daily Gawk story facilitated by Sierra’s mother — Darger hadn’t returned them like she’d promised. Knowing what she knew now, she figured Patricia Peters hadn’t planned on getting those photographs back.
Luck leaned across the console to help collect the scattered pictures. He stared at one of them for a beat before he handed it up to her.
“We went to high school together, you know.”
Darger’s head snapped up, the movement something like a spinal reflex, as if she were pulling her hand away from a hot stove top.
“You never told me that,” she said.
“Well, I didn’t really know her. She would have been a freshman the year I was graduating, so we didn’t really cross paths much that I can remember. But my little sister had a class or two with her.”
Darger looked down at the photograph of Sierra, a melting blue popsicle in her hand.
“Do you remember her?”
Luck
bent his head to one side, gazing out his side window.
“Not personally. But I remember she had a reputation.”
“And?” Darger pressed.
“It wasn’t great.”
She tapped the photographs into a pile with her fingers.
“Care to elaborate?”
“You can probably guess,” he said. “She liked to party. Got in her fair share of trouble.”
Luck rubbed his hands together like he was trying to warm his fingers.
“People called her a slut. You know the type.”
Darger shook her head, feeling angrier than she probably had a reason to.
“The type?”
Through her gritted teeth, the words came out strained.
“Hey, I’m not the one saying it. It’s just the kind of talk I heard,” Luck said.
After a silence, Darger said, “When a Fiona Worthington dies, we’re practically tripping over ourselves to solve it. The media can’t go a night without plastering her face on the news. But when a Cristal Monroe or a Sierra Peters or even a Katie Seidel gets murdered? Forget it. They’re trash. I’m not like them, we think, so their deaths don’t matter.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Casey said.
“No? You think it was an accident that it was Fiona’s memorial we used? Where was the candlelight vigil for the other three?”
Her voice had risen over the course of the tirade, and she was on the verge of shouting now. Casey only stared at her.
“Jesus, Violet. Forget I brought it up. I didn’t know you’d get so upset.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, turning her face away and taking a deep breath. “You’re right. Let’s just drop it.”
After a few minutes of awkward quiet, Casey said, “I think there might be a deck of cards in here somewhere.”
He flipped up his armrest and hunched over so he could scoot into the rear of the van without hitting his head. He thrust a hand into the pocket attached to the back of his seat.
“Ha!” he said, holding a box of Bicycle playing cards up.
They played a few rounds of Gin, laying out their sets and runs on the dash of the van. Eventually, they tired of the cards and lapsed into silence again.
Violet itched to pull out her laptop so she could watch the Sierra interviews again, this time imagining that the man she was describing was Kurt Van Ryper. But Luck had already accused her of being “obsessed” earlier in the week, and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking he was right.
“Fuck it,” Casey said, after they’d gone at least thirty minutes without either of them uttering a word. It was the first time she’d heard him drop and F-bomb, and it immediately seized her attention.
“Are you pissed at me, or what?”
“Huh?”
“I spooked you, right?”
“No,” she said.
Casey shook his head.
“Come on, Violet. You’ve been lukewarm ever since that night. With Jill.”
“Believe it or not, the last few days have been a touch distracting. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a murder investigation going on.”
She studied a scuff mark on the toe of her boot and avoided looking him in the face.
“Stop bullshitting me,” he said, and his voice was hard. He took a breath and softened.
“I know something’s up. Why don’t you just tell me?”
Violet squeezed her hands into fists, fingernails digging deep into her flesh again. Time to tell the awful truth.
“You keep acting like this,” she gestured between them, “is going somewhere. And it can’t. You know that right?”
In the moment before his eyes flicked away from hers, she saw the hurt in them. The dread in her heart grew heavier.
“I’m just being realistic,” she said, keeping her voice light and matter-of-fact. As if that would make it sting less.
“You live here. Your family lives here. I don’t. When this case is over, I have to go back. And that’s that.”
A sparrow landed on the hood of the van and hopped over the shiny metal surface before fluttering away.
“I’m sorry if you thought it… meant something,” she said, staring after the bird so she wouldn’t have to see the damage she was doing.
Not that he would look at her now. There was a long pause, and then his head moved from side to side. When he spoke, his words were thick and strained.
“No, you’re right. I was being stupid.”
He sniffed and rubbed at the end of his nose.
The silence that followed was awkward. Darger went to say something, but a burst of static emanated from the radio, and they both sat up, staring at the small black box on the dash.
“Luck, you there?”
It was Donaldson.
He grabbed the mouthpiece in a lightning fast motion.
“This is Luck. Go ahead.”
“Hey, me and the guys have been talking.”
His tone was so blasé, both Luck and Darger instantly relaxed a little. If it was anything important, they would have heard it in his voice.
“We were just thinkin’ that none of us knows how long this is gonna take. We weren’t exactly prepared to be out here for the long haul. I thought we might take turns running up the road for some supper and any other needs one may have. There’s a Subway in that filling station where 78 takes the bend south.”
Luck’s voice still sounded dead when he replied.
“That’s not a bad idea, I guess. Good thinking.”
“Don’t mention it,” Donaldson said. “Why don’t you and Agent Darger take the first break?”
Luck reluctantly glanced in her direction. She shrugged.
His knuckles stood out white as he squeezed the button on the radio mic.
“Sure, thanks.”
The wait was excruciating. Eating a crappy sub in a mini-van did little to help that.
Chewing the last bit of her sandwich, she wiped her hands with a napkin and wadded it and the paper wrapper into a ball. She stuffed that inside the bag the sub had been in, and tucked the lot of it by her feet. She drank a bit of water, just enough to moisten her throat and wash the last crumbs down. She sat back and gazed through the windshield. The sun had dipped below the houses before them while they ate. Twilight tinted everything in a dim blue light.
They saw the headlights first, the cones of light announcing the car before it made itself visible. Darger’s head whipped to attention, and from the corner of her eye she saw Luck do the same. Donaldson wasn’t back yet. If he had been, he may have been able to get a look at who was in the car, to give them a heads up. Instead, they had to wait as the agonizing seconds ticked by. The car slowed to a halt at the stop sign and seemed to hang there. They could see already that the blinker was on, signaling a left turn. It was coming this way.
Darger realized she was holding her breath and forced herself to inhale. It wouldn’t do anyone good to pass out from sheer excitement.
After what felt like forever, the car took the turn, heading straight for them. The two square portals of light on the front of the car were blinding, but Darger stared anyway. She didn’t want to blink. Didn’t want to risk missing it.
The Nissan puttered up Hickory Lane, and Darger felt a strange heaviness as they waited to see where its path would end, as if gravity were rooting her to the seat. Holding her in place so she couldn’t move a muscle.
The tires slowed and stopped in front of the split-level with the sloped driveway leading down to the garage.
Darger and Luck, still not making a sound or even the slightest movement, waited to see what would happen next.
Chapter 95
“Can you see anything?” Luck whispered, the words strangely formed, because of the way he struggled to keep his lips still like a ventriloquist.
“Too dark,” she said.
The Nissan’s passenger door opened then, and the dome light clicked on, illuminating the interior of the c
ar. There were two men inside. The driver and a man riding shotgun. The passenger leaned closer to the driver for a moment, and they made some sort of exchange or perhaps a handshake, and then the door opened wider. The passenger stepped from the vehicle, but he had a hood pulled up over his head. She could see that he was a white male, and that was about it.
Luck clutched the radio mouthpiece in his hand, but he didn’t dare move to use it. The man was still partially facing them.
The hooded subject paused next to the open door then ducked his head back into the vehicle, laughing at something the driver must have said. Darger had seen a glimpse of his jaw and cheek when he’d turned toward the light of the car. Based on the photo she thought it could be him. Maybe.
Luck took the momentary distraction to announce into the radio, “10-66 on the scene. Stand-by for positive ID.”
The hooded man tensed like a gazelle feeling the presence of a stalking lion. He looked directly at them, squinting. He wore a look of bewilderment before he yelled something to the driver and jumped back into the vehicle. Gravel spun under the tires as the car pulled a tight U-turn and sped back the way it had come.
“Shit,” Luck said, turning the key to start the engine.
He gunned it out of the driveway in pursuit. Darger groped for her seatbelt as they fishtailed onto the road.
“10-80,” Luck barked into the radio. “Subject has fled the scene, 10-80.”
His hand scrabbled at the dash. Darger could see blue and red lights reflecting off her side mirror now that Luck had engaged the flashers on the van. The Nissan showed no signs of slowing.
What had been a paved road turned to dirt, the houses thinning and the forest growing thicker around them. Well, at least they weren’t heading for a more populated area.
Gravel pinged against the van’s undercarriage, and Darger heard the engine rev into a higher gear. Ahead, the road curved sharply, disappearing into the trees to the right. A black and yellow sign glinted at them, recommending they slow to 25 miles per hour for the upcoming curve. Luck let off the accelerator, but the Nissan maintained speed.
