by L. T. Vargus
“Sometimes?”
“Yeah well, sometimes it’s not, you know. I’m assuming you’ll need these, then?”
He held up the keys.
“Nope,” she said, and her phone buzzed as if on cue. “In fact, I think that’s my new rental right now.”
She half-expected the rental company to give her some guff about one of their cars being impounded by the police, but no mention was made of the ordeal. She supposed that the kid dropping the car off — she figured him for about 19 and probably a college student — either had no idea, or if he did, couldn’t care less. All in all, it took less than a minute for her to sign the new rental agreement and take possession of the keys.
She’d already talked to Donaldson first thing in the morning, but now she had to make the other calls. As she expected, Donaldson had no problem with her speaking to “his” witnesses. She’d planned on calling them in the order of least problematic to most problematic, and now she couldn’t decide who was likely to be a bigger pain in the ass between Janssen and Luck. She figured it was a given that Janssen would give her some kind of grief. He was just an asshole like that. Luck, she wasn’t so sure about. She opted for the sure thing.
When she got Janssen on the phone and told him who was calling, his response was less than thrilled.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t mind my talking to the girls that lived with Cristal Monroe.”
“Mind? Why would I mind? Knock yourself out,” he said as dismissively as possible. “Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Bye,” he said, and the phone clicked out.
“Fuck you, too, Janssen,” she muttered as she flicked through her contacts, looking for Detective Luck’s number.
He answered on the second ring.
“Detective Luck.”
“It’s Agent Darger.”
There was a pause, and Darger worried for a moment that he might hang up.
Finally he said, “And what can I do for you, Agent?”
“I…” the apology hung there in her throat. She was still a little irritated that he’d turned so hard on her like that during the meeting. Surely he knew she’d meant no offense. She was merely stating a fact, after all.
Fuck it. Loshak wanted her to play like one of the guys? Fine. Guys didn’t apologize or worry about hurting each other’s feelings. They got over it and moved on.
“I was calling to let you know that I’ll be interviewing some of the families today. Of the victims. Professional courtesy and all,” she said.
“Oh. Alright,” was all he said.
Huh. That wasn’t so bad.
“Great, thanks.”
She barely had the words out before he was speaking again.
“So should I pick you up, or…?”
“Sorry?”
“I’m asking if you’re driving or if I’m driving. Doesn’t seem much point to driving separately,” he said, then he added, just to make his point clear, “to talk to my witnesses.”
So he was going to play the territorial game after all.
“I’d planned on talking to as many of the families as possible, for all four victims.”
Might as well remind him that they weren’t all his witnesses. Janssen and Donaldson had already given her the go-ahead.
“That’s a good idea. One of us local guys really should be taking the extra step to pull all the strands together. Can you be ready in half an hour?”
She wasn’t sure if he was being purposely obtuse or not. What was she thinking? Of course it was on purpose.
“Um. Yes. I’m ready now, actually.”
“Great. I’ll be thar faster’n green grass through a goose,” he said, the fake twang coming back.
He hung up before she could respond, and her thumb hit the END CALL button so hard she thought it might go through the screen.
Chapter 31
When Luck arrived at her door, they both did their best to act like professional law enforcement personnel who had more important things to do than focus on petty personal squabbles. But it didn’t last for long.
They took the steps down to the parking lot. Luck paused in front of a dark red Chrysler minivan, and it wasn’t until he popped the back hatch that Darger realized it was his vehicle.
“Wait,” she said, finding it difficult to hold back a snide grin.
He shot her a look.
“You’re gonna give me crap about the van, right? Like I haven’t heard it a thousand times before.”
He pitched his voice into a mocking tone.
“‘Hey Luck, did you have to trade in your testicles when they gave you the keys?’ And on and on.”
She bit her lip, trying to keep from snickering.
“No, no. I figured you were going undercover as a soccer mom.”
She snorted at her own joke, and Detective Luck just shook his head.
“You’ll see,” he said, climbing in. “The Luckmobile is the sweetest ride in the Athens PD.”
They lapsed into silence on the drive. Despite the joking, Violet couldn’t let what happened at the task force meeting go. It was an annoying fly buzzing around her head as they bumped through potholes and over tarred patches of asphalt.
After several minutes of semi-awkward quiet, Luck gestured at the dash.
“I mean, you got your separate climate control for the front and back passengers, heated leather interior — LL Bean edition, no less. What more could you want?”
“Oh yeah,” Darger said, “very luxurious.”
Luck was mute until they rolled up to a red light.
“It’s no Beemer or Mercedes, of course. I’m sure that’s what you highfalutin FBI people drive, right?”
She gave him the side eye.
“I drive a Prius.”
Now he was the one chuckling to himself.
“Of course you do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing at all, Special Agent Darger.”
She was beginning to loathe the way he said her name. Special. Agent. Darger.
Violet folded her arms and glared out the window. That’s how he wanted to play it, huh? That she was some kind of pretentious city girl? She fixed her eyes on the double yellow line that ran ahead of them as far as the eye could see. This was going to be a long day.
“So,” Darger said, searching for neutral territory, “Detective and SWAT?”
She’d noticed the black tactical bag embroidered with the white SWAT logo when Luck had opened the trunk.
“Yeah, well,” he said, glancing at her as he drove, “it’s a part-time thing out here, so a lot of the guys are on-call SWAT.”
“You’re like the FBI cream dream.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah,” Darger said, looking him up and down. “Recruiters would be all over you.”
His cheeks flushed pink, and she was amused to see that he was a little embarrassed now. Ha. Score one for Special Agent Darger.
Another stretch of road went by with only the sound of the tires humming over the pavement. Finally she asked the question she’d been dying to know the answer to since she called Luck this morning.
“What happened with Jimmy Congdon?”
“Dick and squat,” he said with a bitterness that surprised her.
Had he changed his mind on bringing him in, she wondered? Taken her advice? She kept her eyes focused on him until he elaborated.
“It appears our dear friend Jimmy skipped town. Probably heard some buzz about us finding Sierra and put it together that we’d be wanting to ask him some very pointed questions.”
“Hm,” was all she said in response.
“I’m sure you’re happy.”
“Happy?”
She gaped at him.
“Why would I be happy? I wanted to hear what he had to say just as much as you did. Just had a different idea of how we should go about it.”
“Well if you ask me, him running off makes him ten times more suspici
ous.”
“He’s not exactly a law-abiding citizen. Him acting suspicious is like a fox acting sly. It’s his nature.”
Luck didn’t say any more after that. He didn’t have to. She knew where he stood and vice versa.
“I reached out to the few working girls I could think of. Like you asked.”
“Yeah?”
She was a little surprised given how they’d parted ways at the meeting.
“It’s different here. Prostitution, I mean. It’s mostly done through the internet. And the girls are all the type that could be living next door, and you’d never expect it.”
“Believe me, Detective, that’s the case more than you realize. The streetwalkers make up a tiny percentage of sex workers, whether it’s the city or the country,” Darger said. “They are sisters and daughters and mothers. Sometimes the families know, and sometimes they don’t.”
“Well the two I thought might be willing to talk to me weren’t. I suspect they knew why I was asking, and they’d rather not think about that.”
Cristal Monroe had lived in a trailer park outside of Logan, Ohio. The grounds were clean and the units all fairly new, each laid out in its own little swath of lawn. The house she’d shared with two other girls was situated in the back corner of the neighborhood. An older model Jetta was parked in the driveway. Luck pulled to the curb and put the van in Park.
“I’ll let you handle this one,” he said.
She barely gave him a second look as she climbed down to the sidewalk.
Passing a lawn gnome squatting in a patch of shriveled daylilies, Darger reached the front door. Her knuckles rapped three times against the aluminum-clad screen door. She waited.
After a moment, she knocked again. She glanced over her shoulder at the car in the driveway. She had a feeling someone was home, but they weren’t answering for some reason. She considered the fact that these had been Detective Janssen’s witnesses. Given his low opinion of the victim, it didn’t take a lot of imagination to figure that his disposition might have extended to her roommates.
Taking a business card from her pocket, Violet jotted a quick message on the back: Please call me.
She had a feeling they never would, but it was worth a shot.
When Darger returned to the van, Luck had turned the radio on and was listening to an Oldies station.
“No one home?” he said, looking unsurprised.
“Not for us, anyway.”
“That was one of the reasons I stayed in the van,” he explained. “Figured they’d probably had their fill of cops knocking on their door, asking ‘em a million questions. Especially after Janssen was finished with them. I thought you might have a chance, being a woman, but I guess not.”
She mentally crossed Cristal’s name off her list. Cristal was originally from Florida and had no kin here. The family left in her home state rarely heard from her. They’d reached a dead end when it came to talking to anyone that might have known her well.
“Where to next?” Darger asked.
“Lancaster’s only about 20 minutes up the road. That’s where Katie Seidel lived.”
“Let’s go,” she said.
When he answered the door, Darger was mildly surprised to find that George Seidel was older than she’d expected. Katie had only been 20 years old, but her husband looked to be easily in his forties. He was short, about the same height as Darger, with tanned forearms covered in a haze of blonde hair. There were deep bags under his eyes, and several day’s growth of beard on his chin.
The small white house stood under the shade of a giant hemlock tree, but Mr. Seidel squinted at the daylight beyond the door, as if he hadn’t been outside in days.
“Come in,” he said, curtly.
A baby had started to cry, and he ducked back into the house as quickly as he’d appeared.
With a nod, Luck indicated that Darger should enter first.
“Excuse the mess,” George said, clearing away a basket of laundry from the sofa in the living room. “I’m still trying to get the hang of all this.”
He set the plastic basket down and stooped to lift the crying baby from a bouncy seat near the TV. Another child, a boy of about two years old, turned to regard them from where he knelt in front of the screen.
“I told you not to sit so close, Damian,” George barked.
The toddler did a frog-like hop away from the television and went to cling to his father’s leg. He peered around a denim-covered thigh to peek at them, simultaneously shy of and intrigued by the newcomers.
“Hello, Damian,” Violet said. “My name is Violet. And this is Casey.”
Detective Luck waved at the boy, and Damian jerked his head back so he was hidden again.
“Don’t be hanging on me like that,” George said, giving his leg a shake. “Go on. I have to feed your sister.”
The boy slid down to the floor, still watching Darger and Luck. He crept closer.
“Didn’t realize this all had been turned over to the FBI,” George said from the kitchen.
He pulled a bottle of baby formula from the fridge and gave it a shake.
“It hasn’t,” Darger said. “We’re here to assist with the investigation, but it’s still in the hands of the local jurisdictions.”
George held the baby to his chest, balancing her small head against the crook of his elbow, and plugged the bottle into her mouth. The crying cut off, turning into a series of pleased cooing sounds.
“Too bad,” he said, looking up from the baby.
“Why is that?”
George Seidel lowered himself into a glider at the end of the room while the baby in his arms continued to suckle at the bottle.
“Why do you think? Cops around here couldn’t solve a crossword puzzle. String of murders? Forget it.”
He seemed to remember then that Detective Luck was present. He glanced up and said, “No offense.”
“None taken,” Luck said, though Darger wasn’t sure it was true.
“Someone scratched up my rig and slashed my tires a few months back. And by someone, I mean the delinquent piece of trash at the end of the road, Bobby Ringo.”
Darger had seen the truck cab tucked into the carport next to the house when she knocked on the door.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem. Cops said without evidence that he’d done it, there was nothing they could do. But I know it was him.”
“How long ago was this?” Darger asked.
She didn’t think it had anything to do with the murder of his wife, but she didn’t want to rule anything out.
“Six, eight months,” George said, rocking back and forth.
“And why do you think he was the one that messed up your truck?” Luck asked.
“Because. He had a loud party one night, and I called the cops. Him and all his little punk friends got MIPs.”
Luck shot her a look, thinking the same thing she had been. If Bobby Ringo was under 21, there was very little chance he was their killer. It didn’t fit.
While they talked, Damian had scooted over to the end of the couch, inch by inch. Now, he clambered over the arm until he was face to face with Violet.
“Hello again,” she said.
The boy still didn’t speak. Instead, he reached out a finger and touched the golden pin on her lapel. Darger held it out.
“You like that?” she asked. “Do you know what kind of animal that is?”
Damian shook his head, eyes transfixed by the pin.
“It’s a hedgehog. It’s got little spikes all over its back to scare predators away, but under all that armor, it’s actually a very nice animal. Friendly. Some people keep them as pets.”
Damian crawled closer so that he could hold the pin in his hand, effectively winding up in Violet’s lap.
“The lady doesn’t want you climbing on her, Damian,” Mr. Seidel said to the boy.
“He’s OK,” Violet said.
The boy lifted his head to look at her a se
cond and then went back to the hedgehog on her jacket. Darger wondered at how the boy was handling the death of his mother. He hadn’t uttered a word since they’d arrived, and she thought his choice to wriggle into her lap wasn’t just about the shiny bauble that caught his eye. He wanted human affection. Closeness.
Darger was watching the boy’s tiny fingers prod at the spikes on the hedgehog’s back when she asked, “You were away on work that night? Is that correct?”
George stopped the swinging motion of the chair for a moment, staring at the worn blue carpet under his feet. The baby gave a restless squeal, and he went back to rocking.
“That’s right. I mostly do short hauls so I’m not away all the time. But sometimes I take hotshot loads. That’s what I was doin’ that weekend. Drivin’ a half-trailer full of boat parts down to Louisiana.”
“Did she often walk to work?”
“Of course not,” George snapped. “You think I’d let my wife walk alone at night like that? Hell no.”
His jaw worked back and forth, molars grinding together. He seemed to compose himself then.
“Her car was actin’ up. Needed a new, I don’t know what… fuel-line sensor or some such. Used to be able to fix things myself, but these days everything’s got these little computerized parts, and if one of those fails, then there ain’t nothing to be done but take it in.”
“Her car was in the shop then?”
“Yeah, down at the Rider Brothers on Morton Street. Waitin’ on an estimate.”
“Do you remember how many days she would have been walking to work?”
“One or two. She got a ride from one of her friends the other days, but I don’t know for sure which.”
“And in the weeks before… did she mention anything strange or off? Any odd customers coming into the gas station? Unfamiliar cars hanging around the neighborhood?”
He shook his head. “No. Nothing like that.”
The baby had started to cry again, and Darger gave Luck a look. George Seidel had his hands full, and they were only adding to the burden.
They stood, Darger lifting Damian with her before setting him on the ground.
“Thank you for giving us a moment, Mr. Seidel,” she said, and then to the boy, “It was nice to meet you, Damian.”
