by Tim McBain
Chapter 99
The key was Sierra. It always had been.
Violet dug around in her bag for her phone. She tried turning it on, but the battery was dead.
“Damn,” she said, hunting for the charger and then for an outlet to plug it into.
She had to get down on her hands and knees to crawl under a table in the waiting room in order to reach it. She stayed there on the floor, huddled over the phone while Sierra’s 911 call played again.
Violet took out a pen and a notepad, wrote “SIERRA” at the top, underlined it, and started jotting notes:
dairy mart — Broadway
had knife and gun
woman running outside
She tapped the pen against her lips as she listened to the 911 call again and then switched to the first interview video.
wore big glasses
cold, hard floor — cement or dirt
basement or garage or shed? What is Van Ryper’s garage like?
lift or roll up door
metal roof
woods
She moved on to the second interview, followed by her own interview with Sierra.
rotten fruit smell (probably the chloroform)
pool nearby (residual smell of bleach?)
She was back on the first interview and had reached the part where she described the man. Dark hair. Wet, like he’d just showered or had mousse in it.
Dark hair.
Kurt Van Ryper had dark hair alright, but he’d bleached it blond, and not too recently. She wrote it down and circled it. Her pen tip dug so deeply into the paper it almost tore.
Because she had her earbuds in, she didn’t hear when Luck came up behind her.
“You talk to her?”
Darger jumped a little, setting the phone aside.
“Not yet.”
“What are you doing?”
He loomed over where she was hunched on the floor. His brow furrowed when he saw what it was. The lines deepened even further when he saw the notepad in her hand.
“Why this? Why now?”
“In the first interview, Sierra describes him as having dark hair.”
“He does have dark hair.”
“No. He has dark hair dyed a very unnatural shade of blond, and that wasn’t done in the last week. It’s been growing out for a while.”
“So what?” he said, crossing his arms.
“So, Sierra would have noticed something like that. She would have mentioned it.”
Luck rolled his eyes.
“Maybe he was wearing a wig. Maybe she didn’t see his hair at all because he was wearing that damn hat.”
“She was specific about the hair,” Darger said. “I told you. She wanted to be a stylist. She paid attention to that kind of thing.”
Casey covered his mouth with his hand and held it there for a moment.
“Just go talk to the mother. Please?”
His voice had taken on a pleading tone, almost desperate.
There was a long pause as Darger eyed the phone and the scribbled words on her notepad and then finally voiced what she’d been thinking for the last several hours.
“It’s not just the hair,” she said. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
“Oh come on, Violet. Don’t do this. Not now.”
Luck planted his hands on his hips and rolled his head around in a circle on his neck like he was trying to straighten a kink.
Now she was the one frowning.
“Don’t do what?”
“This thing you do. We got the guy. And his mother. And you’re still hung up on this.”
He waved a dismissive hand at the phone and her notes.
“We have live bodies here. Stop obsessing over a dead girl and go get some new info.”
“What?” Violet said, taken aback by his tone.
“You think I don’t know what this is? You’re being motivated by guilt. Guilt for Zara that got transferred into guilt for Sierra, and now it’s propelling you down this twisted fucking path that only makes any sense to you. It’s not good police work.”
She pushed herself to her feet, hating how he was hanging over her. Her voice came out in a low growl.
“Fuck you.”
She turned and left before he could say anything more.
The notepad protruding from her bag named her destination. Beneath Sierra’s underlined name, the first line read: dairy mart — Broadway.
Chapter 100
Her hand flailed in her bag. Where was it?
Trying to keep one eye on the road, she glanced into the gaping mouth but saw only blackness. She should get a briefcase or something. Try to keep things more organized.
With a sigh, she pulled into the parking lot of an Applebee’s so she could find her phone without taking out any pedestrians.
It turned out that having two eyes on the task didn’t help any. She finally dumped out the entire contents of her purse into the passenger seat. Only then did she realize she’d left her phone hooked up to the charger back at the police station.
“Motherfucker!” she hissed to no one in particular. No one but herself, anyway.
Well, there was no way she was going back there. Not now. Casey could screw.
“Obsessing over a dead girl. Fuck you, Casey,” she muttered.
Good luck to him and his career-making case. Cal was sending in reinforcements anyway. So-called experienced agents.
Loshak. He would have understood. He would have listened. What had he told her the night Novotny died?
It’s 10% by the book 90% by the gut. You can’t teach the gut part. But you’ve got it.
Jesus. She’d never gotten the call after Loshak’s surgery. Her phone had been dead, and now she didn’t have it. Who knew if he was even breathing?
She almost started to cry again. But no. No, she would not. Not one more tear, she thought, wiping at her eyelashes.
There had to be a way to get the information she needed.
Her eyes lighted on her laptop. That would do, if she could find a wireless signal. Striped awnings cast rectangular shadows across the parking lot in front of the restaurant.
She slid the computer from its case and checked the available networks. There it was, with full bars: NETGEAR_14. And it was unsecured. She double clicked it, and then opened a browser window to get directions to the Dairy Mart on Broadway in Logan. She scribbled the directions down on the next sheet of her notepad and put the car in gear.
It was time to put her gut to the test.
The glittering waters of the Hocking River came into view periodically on her drive. Sometimes it crossed beneath her. Other times, it curved alongside the road, like a big green-black snake.
When she found the Dairy Mart, she used that as her starting point and branched out: north, south, east, west. Violet tried to take every possible combination of routes, looking for anything that might fit the description that Sierra Peters had given of the building she’d been briefly held in. Fold-up door, metal roof. There were plenty of lifting doors on the garages of the houses she passed, but none had metal roofs.
She drove past the Dairy Mart for what had to be the twentieth time, following another route. She’d taken the first right, and then two lefts. Had she done a left and then a right instead? It was getting hard to remember. The scenery was nondescript. Trees and the occasional home and more trees.
Luck’s words popped into her head then.
Motivated by guilt.
Maybe he was right. Maybe she was obsessing because of Sierra. Because of Zara.
Or more like she knew he was right.
She worried at her guilt like a sore tooth, thinking she could fix it all somehow. That some combination of events might bring them back, like a necromancer’s spell. But that was bullshit. Even if she solved the riddle and found the bad guy, Zara and Sierra and all the others would still be dead.
It was all an elaborate story she’d told herself to keep her from feeling the real pain. The hard, ugl
y, bitter truth about the world which was that sometimes good and innocent people died, and there was nothing to be done about it.
And that reminded her of another thing Loshak had said to her some time ago. It could only have been days, but it felt like months or even years. Something about buckling under the weight of her own denial.
Trees whizzed past in a green blur. What was she doing out here? No matter what happened, she would never get another chance to save those girls. She might save others by catching the killer, but Luck was right. She was out here chasing ghosts. It wasn’t good police work.
The car rounded a wide curve, the road was bending back to the south, back toward town. As she tried to decide whether she should turn around or just keep following the road, which she thought might take her back to town on its own, the road straightened. Ahead, she caught sight of a sign for a gym. The logo was a blue circle, with the feminine silhouette of a woman running on a treadmill.
She sped past the driveway for the gym, her brain taking a few seconds to catch up with her eyes, and then her foot slammed on the brake pedal. It was a reflex, and she thought later how lucky she was that no one had been behind her. They would have almost certainly rear-ended her.
The road in front and behind was empty, so she reversed instead of turning around. When she got to the turn-off for the gym, she spun the wheel and rolled into the empty parking lot. As she got closer to the door, she saw a sign taped to the front door: CLOSED FOR RENOVATION — COME SEE OUR NEW AND IMPROVED FACILITY IN THE NEW YEAR!
She woke her laptop and punched frantically at the touchpad, trying to find the right spot in the tape.
“She was outside,” Sierra’s voice said, the phone line or maybe the recording itself crackling. “Outside of the room. Across the street. She was running. A whaddyacallit…”
A treadmill. She was trying to say treadmill.
She must have glimpsed the sign when the man had taken her out of the car.
She stepped out of the car looking for any sign of the room Sierra may have been in. Any garage doors and metal roofs. The gym had a flat roof. She spun around in the lot, and that’s when she saw it, across the way.
A red sign with big white letters that read: STOR-RITE SELF STORAGE.
And then it hit her: cement floors, roll-up door, metal roof. Sierra had been in a storage unit.
Chapter 101
The storage office was open. Darger parked in one of the many empty spaces in the lot and got out of the car. Her heart was hammering in her chest, and her hands felt like ice. She took a steadying breath before she opened the door and stepped inside.
A bell jangled announcing her presence. It was unnecessary. A middle-aged woman hunkered behind a counter watching Dr. Phil on a flatscreen TV on the wall.
“Good afternoon,” the woman chimed. She had full cheeks, shiny and pink. A nest of brown hair streaked with gray was piled into a messy bun on top of her head.
Darger took out her ID and laid it on the counter.
“My name is Violet Darger. I’m with the FBI.”
“Oh!” The woman’s sparse eyebrows reached for her hairline. “I don’t… well… what’s this about?”
“I was hoping to have a look at a list of your customers.”
The woman’s head began to churn from side to side, her bun seeming to cling to her skull for dear life.
“Oh, no. I’m afraid not. Not without a warrant. The privacy of our customers is of the utmost importance to us, you understand.”
Darger had been worried about this. If Luck were here, he would have had some polished spiel at the ready. Darger had no such pitch. She rubbed the back of her neck, pondering.
Then her gaze fell on the television with the fraud doctor and his tawdry show. Violet considered the possibility that the truth might be just as productive in this case.
“I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but… “ She leaned in, lowering her voice. “I’m assuming you watch the local news.”
It took only a moment for the woman to take the hint. Again, her eyebrows leapt to attention.
“You don’t mean,” her voice had come out in almost a shriek, and she clapped a hand over her mouth before proceeding in a whisper. “The Doll Parts Killer?”
Darger pretended to glance over her shoulder, like an imaginary eavesdropper may be present.
“I technically can’t confirm that, but let’s just say that if you let me have a look at that list, you might possibly be saving a girl’s life.”
The woman chewed at her lip, considering for a moment.
“OK,” she said, bun quivering. “I’ll do it.”
Almost as an afterthought, she held up a hand and said, “But this list cannot leave this office.”
“I’ll agree to that,” Darger said.
“It’ll take me a minute to get it printed out.” The woman scooted toward a door leading to a back room. “I’ll be back.”
Violet didn’t have to wait long before the woman returned, with three sheets lined with black text.
“Here they are,” the woman said, sliding the papers across the counter. She slapped a hand against her chest.
“Oh! A chill just ran through me.”
She rubbed at her pink forearms, trying to disperse the goose bumps that had appeared.
Darger ran a finger over the names. Half of her was only scanning through them. Half of her was searching for Van Ryper, Kurt or Rhonda. It was another name that jumped out at her, though.
Mary Jo Clegg.
Darger stopped with her pen hovering next to it. Clegg. Why did that sound familiar? She tapped the pen on the paper, thinking. And then it struck her.
She grappled with the straps of her bag, reaching for her file. She sifted through the pages, paper rustling, and then she found it. The list Luck had made of Fiona Worthington’s classmates. It was right there, third from the top.
James Joseph Clegg.
Violet copied the name and address down in her notepad, scribbling in a sloppy chicken scratch that was the result of speed and nerves.
She shoved the whole lot back in her bag, sputtered a “Thank you!” to the woman behind the counter, and flew out the door.
Jumping in the car, she ground the gears shifting too quickly from reverse to drive, not waiting for the car to stop all the way.
Chauncey, Ohio, the address read. Chauncey was less than ten minutes from Athens, she figured. He’d been less than ten minutes from them the whole time.
Chapter 102
She knew what she should do.
What she should do was go back to the station and tell Luck what she’d found. About the gym with the running woman and the storage facility with the cement floors and the doors that rolled up, one of them under the name of Mary Jo Clegg.
Would he listen? She thought perhaps not. She thought perhaps he’d already made his decision.
Stop obsessing over a dead girl. We got the guy.
It was all on her now. Maybe it always had been. Maybe that’s what Loshak had been trying to tell her when he told her to trust her instincts. Maybe he’d known all along — somehow — that it would be just her when it came down to it.
She pressed her foot on the pedal a little more firmly. It wasn’t far now.
She took the turn north toward Chauncey, which seemed more a cluster of houses on the outskirts of Athens than a real town of its own. The tires bumped over the railroad tracks, tossing Darger from side to side in her seatbelt. Tombstones rolled by as she passed a cemetery. She thought about the superstitious game she played as a child, the one where you held your breath until you’d left the cemetery in the rearview.
She did it now, puffing her cheeks out just as she’d done when she was seven or eight years old. Before she reached the end of the graveyard, she saw her turn. The air rushed out of her all at once. She tried not to think of it as a bad omen, but it was too late. A shudder ran through her.
The turn signal ticked away as she waited for traffic to
clear enough for her to make the left. Again she crossed the railroad tracks, shimmying this way and that. She went along slower now. She was getting close.
Two big Norway spruce trees almost completely obscured the house from view, despite the fact that it stood no farther back from the road than the rest of the houses on the street. The light was starting to fade from the day, and the extra shade cast by the trees made this end of the street feel like it was already night. The sweeping, untrimmed boughs at the base of the tree swished against the side of her car as she pulled to the curb and parked.
Her heart rate, which had calmed some during the drive, picked up speed again. She could feel the blood thrumming in her neck.
When her foot touched the ground, she was almost surprised to find that it still held solid beneath her. She had a strange otherworldly feeling, almost dream-like.
She skirted around the side of the hulking evergreens and into the front yard, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other with all of the thoughts rushing through her head. Her throat felt dry, and she swallowed.
This time she had a plan. She’d come up with it on the drive. She would knock on the door, and when Mrs. Clegg answered, she would tell the story she’d come up with. That she was a classmate of James’. From high school. That she was in town visiting her parents and wondered if JJ still lived in the area. Would she happen to have his address? His phone number? After that, well… she’d have to figure out the rest when she came to it.
She was moving over the grass, rehearsing her lines in her head, when a shadow separated from the dark mass of the trees. She only saw it from the corner of her eye, a black blur that rushed at her from the gloom. It collided with the side of her head, right above her left cheekbone. She saw a colorful burst of stars, and then it was as if she’d been plunged face-first into a pile of snow. A whitewash… that’s what they used to call it.
A freezing cold vapor filled her nose and throat and lungs. So cold it burned. And it was sweet, too. Like the sangria-flavored wine coolers she’d had the first time she ever got drunk. A horrible sweetness that made her feel instantly sick. It was suffocating.
