by L. T. Vargus
George went to stand, but Luck waved him away.
“We can show ourselves out.”
Damian was still waving at Violet from the couch when she closed the door behind her.
Chapter 32
The drive back to Athens was made mostly in silence.
Detective Luck broke it once to comment, “Breaks your heart to think about that little boy growing up without his mom.”
Darger murmured agreement.
They were quiet the rest of the way. The empty sound of the wind spiraling off of the van’s windshield was the only sound until Luck announced that they’d reached their destination.
“Worthington house is up here to the left.”
Fiona Worthington’s parents lived in a house large enough to fit the homes of Cristal Monroe and Katie Seidel under the roof with room to spare. It was a newer build designed in a modern Queen Anne style with bayed windows and a turret on one corner. A two-story porch wrapped from one end to the other, and the house perched on a hill overlooking the town, with a view of the Hocking River and a round domed building she’d heard one of the locals refer to as The Convo. She figured it was an arena of some kind.
Fiona’s mother greeted them at the door, addressing Detective Luck by his first name, and shaking Darger’s hand.
In the foyer, Lois Worthington took their coats. Darger’s boots clopped over the parquet floor. Tucked into the corner below the wraparound staircase was a small round table laden with a large floral arrangement and a pitcher of lemonade.
“Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee?”
“I’d take a glass of lemonade,” Darger said, and Lois Worthington gave her an odd look. Like she’d used her salad fork when she should have used her dinner fork. No, that wasn’t fair, Darger thought, correcting herself. Don’t start with the judgments.
From beside her, she thought she heard Luck suppress a chuckle.
Darger glanced at the pitcher on the little table, and Mrs. Worthington followed her gaze.
“Oh! No,” Lois said, her hand flying to her chest. She started to laugh. “That’s not real, dear. It’s decorative.”
She picked up the pitcher and waggled it from side to side, and the lemonade stayed bizarrely in place. No sloshing about at all, because it was solid.
Violet felt her cheeks go red, and she forced herself to titter nervously along with Luck and Mrs. Worthington, who were now having quite a laugh over it.
Probably happens all the time, Violet told herself.
“That’s cute,” Mrs. Worthington said. “No one’s ever done that.”
She actually wiped tears from the corners of her perfectly made-up eyes.
“Phew! It’s been a while since I had a good laugh. That felt good.”
Violet’s unease only increased the further they made their way into the house. It was traditionally furnished to go with the historical architecture style: oversized gilt-edged mirrors, bookshelves topped with cloisonné vases, and heavy brocade window treatments.
The room Mrs. Worthington brought them into had a baby grand piano at one end and a white marble fireplace at the other. The carved marble slab was topped with a delft mantel clock and two large floral arrangements featuring hydrangeas and delphinium.
It was the kind of place that always made Violet feel acutely self-conscious. She started to notice all of her outward flaws. The lint on her jacket sleeve — a jacket she’d bought secondhand. The scuffs on her boots, which were not real leather. Her teeth, which were neither perfectly straight nor pristinely white.
She made a fist with each hand, obscuring her ragged and chipping fingernails.
There were pictures of Fiona everywhere. With the family, with friends, and many of her alone, on the back of a horse. In the more recent photos, her blonde hair was cropped short, but in all of the childhood and adolescent snapshots, her hair was long, almost to her waist.
“When did she cut her hair?” Darger asked.
She wasn’t sure why she asked, the words seemed to tumble out of her mouth.
“About a year ago, I guess,” her mother said, eyes locked on a photograph of Fiona smiling next to a black horse. “She was always very fashion forward.”
“I imagine she had a lot of boyfriends,” Darger said and instantly regretted it. What the hell was wrong with her? Why would she phrase it that way? “I mean… I didn’t—”
Mrs. Worthington waved away Violet’s apology, in that ever-polite way older rich women often had.
“I know what you meant, dear. And no, actually. She didn’t date much, not even in high school when all the other girls her age were boy-crazy. Fiona was always very focused. Very driven.”
“And what was she studying at the university?”
“It was a surgical scholarship. She got her DVM two years ago. Veterinary medicine.”
Darger nodded while Fiona’s mother went on about her daughter’s achievements and virtues.
Fiona Worthington reminded her of many of the girls she’d graduated high school with. Maybe that was why she felt so out of place in her home.
Violet’s father left the family when she was six. It was just her and her mother after that, and it was a struggle for them. When she was 13, they were evicted quite suddenly when it was revealed that the landlord they’d been renting from hadn’t been paying taxes on the property. For three weeks they lived in her mother’s car until they found a new apartment. And even though it was only three weeks, and she knew plenty of people had it worse, much worse, it left a lasting impression on her. She remembered the shame she felt as her mother dropped her off at school an hour early so Violet would be able to take a shower in the girl’s locker room.
Things turned around quite suddenly when she was fifteen. That was when her mother met Gary. He was the corporate counsel for the real estate company her mother worked for, and within a year, they were married. Violet was sent to the local private school, where most of the students were from very wealthy families. She supposed she was technically from a wealthy family as well by then, though it didn’t feel like it. It never felt like it, not even fourteen years later.
Money or not, she wasn’t one of them. She knew it, and they knew it. It wasn’t that any of the girls were ever directly unkind, either. Girls that age have a way of letting it be known that you are Out as opposed to being In without saying it expressly.
On one occasion, she remembered a girl named Bianca DeVos ranting about where people did their shopping.
“I cannot believe people actually buy clothes at Target. I mean, I’ve seen some semi-cute things there, but it’s always like so last year and so cheaply made. I would be so embarrassed to have to tell people I shopped there,” she said.
Violet had looked down at her outfit. She was fairly certain the pants she was wearing were from Target. And her shoes were most likely from Walmart, a fact that may have driven Bianca DeVos to a nervous breakdown, convulsions, and mouth foam on the spot, had she admitted it.
She’d never known for sure whether Bianca was saying those things because she knew Violet bought her clothes there or whether it had been a random, organic thought not directed at anyone in particular. She didn’t suppose it made a difference. They remained separate, either way.
“I can show you her room if you like?” Fiona’s mother offered, and Violet snapped back to the present.
Luck raised an eyebrow at her, which left her wondering if she’d been staring off like a space cadet.
“Yes, thank you,” she said, and the procession headed upstairs.
Fiona’s room was in the turret, with plenty of natural light coming in through the wrap-around windows.
“You can see that she was very proud of her trophies and awards,” her mother said, gesturing to the wall covered in plaques and ribbons for various equestrian events Fiona had participated in over the years.
Darger thought that Fiona had likely been proud of a great many things, then scolded herself. She forced the images of Fiona’
s dismembered limbs jumbled in a black garbage bag into her mind. Whatever Fiona Worthington had been in life, she was a victim now. The same as all the rest: Cristal and Katie and Sierra.
The awards outnumbered the personal photographs, though Darger guessed that may have been different when Fiona was in high school.
In the closet, there was a collection of bags and shoes that probably equaled Darger’s yearly salary.
Damn it. Violet wasn’t sure why, but she couldn’t think straight in this house. She felt strangely claustrophobic in this place filled with shiny, pretty things. Was she jealous? Resentful?
She knew she was being silly. It hadn’t mattered back then, and it certainly didn’t matter now. Fiona liked fine things. So what? The only difference between them was that Violet was too practical to spend $500 on a purse. And that wasn’t a surprise when the last purse she’d bought had ended up soaked in blood and used as Government Exhibit #1-263 in a murder trial.
There was a bouquet of pink peonies on the bedside table, and Violet reached out to brush one of the petals with a fingertip. She was surprised to find they were real. She’d assumed they were made of silk. Phony like the lemonade downstairs.
“Those were her favorite,” Lois said, then added, “I had them flown in for the service, and I thought it would be nice—”
Fiona’s mother gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.
“Excuse me. It’s the strangest things that trigger it. You know, at first it was any little thing. The phone would ring, and I’d think maybe it was her calling, and then I’d remember that she wouldn’t ever be calling again.”
Violet swallowed thickly, gazing around the room. She took in the bed with the gauzy canopy and the white velvet tufted headboard. The chandelier that hung in the center of the rounded turret area. She’d felt before that Fiona Worthington hadn’t fit the pattern, and now she knew she’d been right. She had a strong desire to leave this place. As quickly as possible.
“Thank you for letting us barge in like this,” she said to Lois, who shook her head.
“It’s no trouble, really. Any time.”
They shook hands again in the entryway, and Mrs. Worthington thanked them for their diligence.
“It means a lot. That you’re all working so hard to find who did this.”
As they rolled down the driveway, Violet watched the giant house shrink in the side mirror, down to the size of something she could hold in her palm.
Chapter 33
He exhales on the window. Watches the fog bloom on the glass. He scoots back and the clouded circle recedes. Fades. Disappears.
The booth smells like mothballs today. Astringent. Worse than usual. The wire mesh veining the glass feels more like a cage than ever.
So yeah. Just another day at the office. He doesn’t know what he does this for. What anyone does it for. The endless hours of meaningless labor. The never-ending cycle of production and consumption. What is he supposed to want from this life? From this world?
The drive-through lane is dead. Empty. Utterly still. There are no upcoming flights on the schedule. Nothing for hours.
This is the lull. The nothingness he stares into for hours at a time. His mind grapples at the goddamn void like sense can be made of black nothing. He can’t help it. He knows the winding thoughts are useless. Circular. Draining. But he can never turn them off.
His eyes flick to the Prius across the lane. Her current resting place. He misses her. She sits in her duffel bag in the passenger seat. Zipped up tight. Being in the cold will do her good. At least there’s that.
Her complexion had gone gray recently. Ashy and mottled. And he got a whiff this morning. Fouled meat. The cold would preserve her some, maybe. Refrigeration. Crazy to think that she would be too far gone soon. That it would all be over soon.
An image flares in his head. The knife slashing a line in her throat. The flaps of skin hesitating a moment before they pulled apart. Sheets of flesh like a layer of paper shrouding the meat which shrouds the bones.
She leaks out everywhere. Red. Blood spurting out with every heartbeat. A wild spray like a garden hose with a thumb held over the opening.
She swoons right away from the blood loss. Eyelids drooping. Muscles gone slack. So scared and small. Her skin icy cold to the touch within seconds. Chest fluttering shallow breaths in and out, little choking gasps.
It is fast. Less than a minute from the incision to unconsciousness. Death arrives four minutes after that. It settles over the body as her self vacates the shell. For now and for always.
She doesn’t suffer long. Barely has time to grasp what is happening. Maybe 45 seconds. He is glad for that in some mild sense. The suffering isn’t his object. Not with her. Not with any of them.
Possession is.
And she wasn’t his until the bleeding stopped. Until the patter in her neck ceased. Until the light drained from her eyes.
When she was gone. Evicted. Ejected. Permanently. Only then was she his.
This was the only way.
His own heart beats faster as the image occurs to him. Swells and wanes in a fraction of a second. His tongue juts out to lick his segmented lips. Fingers twitch a little like the paws of a dreaming puppy.
He is sorry she is dead. Sorry it works that way. But he feels no guilt. No remorse. It is just something that happened now. Somewhere back in the mists. In the past. No one could touch it anymore.
A twinge of warmth brings him back to the present moment. It’s cold as always out here in the booth. But a little heat plumes out of the wall unit furnace now that it’s been on a while. He tilts himself that way. Shoulder lit up orange from the glow.
His eyes look beyond the cage and dance across the parking lot. Flitting from sedans to SUVs and mini-vans. In the distance he sees the planes. Gigantic airliners waiting to shuffle people around the country. Around the world. The busy bodies never rest. They produce and consume and produce and consume. New cars to be bought. New TVs. New gadgets.
There are so many objects all around us, he thinks, and yet this world is utterly, utterly empty.
Chapter 34
The haze from earlier in the day had thickened into a heavy fog. They came to a four-way stop, and Darger watched as the mist seemed to open and close like a curtain for the car in front of them, enveloping it in the cloud as it rolled through the intersection ahead.
“You alright, Agent Darger?”
“I’m fine. Why?”
“Just asking. You seemed awful quiet in there is all.”
“So?”
“I’m just saying, you had lots of questions for George Seidel,” Casey Luck said.
“Well, they’re different, aren’t they? Different victims, different families. Different ways of dealing with them.”
“OK, I didn’t mean anything by it. Was only curious. Thought you might have had something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A theory or something.”
Darger just shook her head. She had no interest in revealing any of those particular thoughts. But he was still watching her periodically, glancing at her during long straight-aways and at stop signs. She needed to change the subject. Get his mind off her and onto something else. She went with what was surely his favorite topic: himself.
“So what’s the story with the van?”
Luck smiled to himself. Like he’d been waiting for her to ask.
“Almost all the guys, aside from Patrol, drive cars from the police auctions. Whatever the department can get for cheap, you know?”
Darger gave a quick nod of the head. It was routine for property to be seized during a drug bust, for example, and then auctioned off. TVs, bicycles, jewelry, sometimes even houses. And of course, cars.
“This sweet ride,” he said, patting the dash lovingly, “used to belong to a psychic.”
Violet blinked at him.
“A psychic.”
“Yes, ma’am. Used to do readings in her living room. Miss Val
entina.”
He dropped his voice and whispered as if he was sharing some big secret: “Her real name was Carol Smith.”
Darger snorted.
“Anyway, there was a Mister Valentina. Her husband. And apparently Mister Valentina was like the cook when it came to MDMA in southern Ohio.”
“Uh-oh,” Violet said.
“Yeah, so, everything’s going along in apple pie order. She’s making her scratch gazing into her crystal ball, he’s making ecstasy in the basement. Until the night Miss Valentina comes home to find Mister Valentina in bed with her sister.”
“She called the cops on him?”
“No, no. She went after him with the 12-gauge they kept in the garage.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Yep, luckily it was loaded with birdshot. She didn’t get him square, either. Got one arm and part of his back. She says she wasn’t even trying to hit him, only wanted to scare him. But the neighbors heard the gunshots, and when the Sheriff’s Department showed up, there were little holes blown all over the place.”
“And then they found the lab.”
Luck nodded.
“The funny thing is, had she not shot up the place, they might not have found anything. But she chased him all over the house with the gun, and the CSI’s had to document each discharge of the weapon. Once they found the lab, that was it. They seized the house, the cars, all of it.”
“The crystal ball?”
Luck laughed.
“Maybe so. She was pretty furious during the whole ordeal, apparently, and legend has it,” again he dropped his voice lower in both pitch and volume, “she cursed it all. Including the ol’ Luckmobile here.”
He stroked the steering wheel.
“Now you know cops. Not a superstitious lot,” he said with mock innocence, and Darger scoffed. “None of the other guys would touch this ride. And being that I was the newbie detective and feeling that my last name gave me some sort of anti-voodoo or whatever, they gave it to me.”
“And?” she asked, waiting for the rest.
“What?”
