by L. T. Vargus
As they pulled into the parking lot of the funeral home, Darger’s phone rang. She looked down at the letters on the screen spelling out: CAL RYSKAMP.
“Shit,” she muttered. “It’s my boss.”
She pressed and held the green button, then lifted the phone to her ear.
“Darger.”
“Are you seeing this shit?” he asked without preamble.
Darger’s head fell forward.
“Yes.”
“Well, what the hell is going on out there? How did they get it?”
“That’s what I was just about to find out. Someone must have gotten into the funeral home—”
“Yeah, and about that. What’s this I hear about you trying to pull strings with Victim Assistance to get funding for the funeral?”
This new outrage caused her voice to rise an octave.
“What? That’s not what happened.”
“Look, I don’t know how things worked over there, but that’s not how I’m running things here. I figured you knew me well enough to know that.”
“Cal, I—”
“No, Violet. I don’t want to hear it.”
The disgust in his voice was like a slap in the face. She knew Cal was probably taking some heat for the tabloid story. The Bureau hated bad press. But every iteration of the story she could find made no mention of the FBI’s involvement in the case at all. So she couldn’t figure out why he was so outraged.
Cal’s voice dropped to a grating whisper.
“You’re supposed to be keeping me in the loop, Violet. I’ve been in meetings the last two days and had no idea we even had a fourth victim until my boss dropped into my office to ask about this Daily Gawk clusterfuck.”
Ah, so that was it. Cal had come across ill-informed in front of his boss and felt like an idiot. Now it was her fault. Then again, she’d been so caught off-guard by Sierra’s death that she had maybe been shirking her duties a bit.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right. I should have notified you.”
His breath rattled into the phone.
“From now on, I want daily updates. If you can’t get me on the phone, send a text or an email. And I’ll expect a field report from you no later than 0800 hours tomorrow morning.”
Tomorrow was Saturday. She didn’t suppose Cal would be there to read her report at 8 AM, in fact, she didn’t think he’d even so much as glance at it until Monday morning when he returned to the office. This was punishment for sure. And rest assured, it would be worse if he got the report with a time stamp reading anything later than 7:59 AM.
“Yes, sir.”
“And as for getting to the bottom of who sold the footage, drop it. I think enough of a mess has been made already. I didn’t send you out there to be playing Scooby Doo games.”
“I’m not playing—” she started to say, but the line was dead. He’d hung up on her.
So Cal was pissed, and Bev had sold her out. Not even sold her out. Outright lied. Violet had paid for the funeral herself, despite knowing full well there’d be no funds from Victim Assistance.
Apparently, Violet had fewer friends in the world than she thought. What a shock.
She was still staring down at the now-dark screen of her phone when Luck reached out a hand and squeezed her shoulder.
“You alright?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“You could come stay at my place for the night.”
“I better not,” she said, and his hand fell away. “It’s not that I don’t want to, believe me. But I have to write up a report before morning.”
“Guess I should let you get back, then.”
They parted without so much as a peck on the cheek, and she crossed the darkened lot to where her rental was parked. Violet wasn’t sure if it was her or him or both, or perhaps just the events of the evening that put a damper on things.
Maybe none of it meant anything, she thought as she climbed the stairs to her motel room. Maybe it was all just an outlet for the maelstrom of emotions that come with a funeral.
Her keys clattered on top of the dresser, and she fell onto the corner of the bed with a bounce and a creaking of springs. Oh, how she wanted to crawl under those cheap hotel sheets and sleep for a week. For once she was certain that she’d zonk as soon as her head touched the pillow. But Cal wanted that report by first light. An act of penance if she’d ever heard one.
She slithered over to where her laptop slept on the bedside table and woke it with a brush of her fingertip across the touchpad. She had work to do.
Chapter 44
It was a knock at the door that woke her. The sharp rap of knuckles against the blue-painted steel.
Violet stirred, wiping at a swath of hair that had fallen over her face. What time was it?
11:38 AM according to the clock. She’d submitted the requested paperwork to Cal via email a little after 7 AM and supposed she must have passed out sometime after then.
The knock came again, and she scrambled out of the bed.
“Just a minute,” she said, hurrying over to the chair where she’d tossed her dress from the previous day.
It was wrinkled from lying there in a wad all night, but it was the quickest manner of getting dressed at the moment. Violet pulled it over her head, then glanced in the mirror. Her hair was a mess, and she had a smear of leftover mascara under one eye. The hair she pulled back into a ponytail, and the smudge she removed with the swipe of a spit-moistened thumb.
She didn’t check the peephole, she just swung open the door. She supposed she’d been expecting either Loshak or Luck. It was neither.
The woman looked frailer to Violet standing on the catwalk outside the room. Maybe it was the harshness of the sunlight, illuminating every nook and cranny of her wrinkled skin.
“Mrs. Peters,” Darger said. “Come in, please.”
It wasn’t until she was pulling the door shut that she remembered the night before. The Daily Gawk video. Oh, Christ on the crapper.
Violet removed her bag and the other crap she’d dumped on the chair so that Patricia could sit. The woman’s eyes were wide and darting back and forth, and she clutched at the purse handle that hung over her shoulder as if it were the only thing tethering her to reality.
“I saw…” Patricia said, then wiped a hand over her mouth. “I heard about it this morning. I had to go to the website. Had to see it for myself.”
Violet sat down on the bed across from the chair.
“Mrs. Peters, I’m so sorry. I wish you didn’t have to see that. Especially not that way.”
“So it’s real, then? I mean, that was really my girl in that video?”
Violet forced herself to look Sierra’s mother in the eye when she spoke.
“Yes. I’m afraid so.”
It was the smallest of consolations, but Darger was suddenly glad the body had been mostly covered with a sheet in the video. Perhaps they would have blurred any nudity had she not been, but it would have been obvious nonetheless.
Patricia Peters covered her face with her bony hands. A long moan escaped through her fingers.
“Oh, my little girl. What did he do to my little girl?”
Violet reached out and gave Patricia’s arm a gentle squeeze.
“I’m so sorry.”
When Mrs. Peters looked up at Violet her eyes were moist.
“I just… don’t understand how,” she said.
Violet was about to explain (and profusely apologize for) the indiscretion of the funeral home when the woman went on.
“How could someone do such a thing?”
Now she wept openly, and Darger reached across the bed to grab the box of tissues.
Of course she was more upset about what had happened to her daughter than about the who, what, where, when, and how the damn pictures had been leaked. Come on, Darger, she thought to herself. Pull your head out of your own ass for ten seconds.
“He’s sick,�
� Violet said, softly. “And I don’t mean that in the way that suggests that he could get better with therapy or medication or anything like that. The sickness in him is bone deep.”
Patricia dabbed at her cheeks with the wadded up Kleenex.
“And he’s still out there.”
“Yes. He is,” Violet said, looking down at her own hands. “But we’re going to catch him. I promise you that no matter what happens, I won’t give up on this case until we get him.”
The woman was already shaking her head, expressing disbelief.
“But how? He’s out there right now,” she said and tugged at the neck of her blouse like she was trying to stave off a chill. “Livin’ and breathin’ and probably thinkin’ about who he can do this to next. And I keep wondering about… what if he comes for me? He took her twice, my girl. That means he was stalking her. And you mentioned her ring being gone, meaning I suppose he took it. What if he wants more? Why wouldn’t he, if he was obsessing on her like that?”
Violet patted the woman’s knee.
“It would be…” she struggled to find the right words, “highly unusual for something like that to happen.”
“You know that for sure?”
“I don’t know anything for sure, Mrs. Peters. But my job is trying to figure out what he will and won’t do and how he might make a mistake. Because that’s how we’re going to find him. We have police knocking on doors from dawn until dusk, trying to find anyone that may have seen something. We’re watching the places we found the girls in case he comes back. If you’d like, I can talk to the Sheriff’s Department and have them send a patrol by your house a few times a day. To keep an eye on things.”
That seemed to allay some of the worry on Patricia’s face.
“I don’t want to be any trouble-”
“It’s no trouble. That’s what the police are there for, Mrs. Peters.”
The woman bobbed her head, and an expression passed over her face that Violet couldn’t read. Shame, perhaps.
“I’ve been feeling so much guilt since it happened. Guilty that I thought she was lyin’ just like everybody else. Guilty that I didn’t let her come home like she wanted. Guilty that I didn’t go to say goodbye to my baby.”
A tear ran down her cheek.
“You tried to tell me, but I didn’t listen. And now I’ll never get to see her again.”
Violet handed her another tissue. She could tell the woman that guilt was a normal part of the grieving process, but she knew it wouldn’t make her feel any better.
Bony fingers scrabbled at the purse, disappearing inside and searching for something.
“I brought these,” she said, handing over a few faded photographs. With the pictures came a whiff of stale cigarette smoke.
Violet shuffled through the snapshots: Sierra, age 4, dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz for Halloween. Sierra, age 7, holding a ballet pose in a black leotard and pink tights, her hair pulled into a bun. Sierra, age 11, standing in a pool in a pink bathing suit. She had a blue popsicle in one hand and was sticking out her tongue to show off the matching blue hue of her mouth.
Violet felt a sudden pressure in her chest and struggled to maintain her composure.
“I keep seein’ them use the same photo on the news, but that other girl, the one before my Sierra, the pretty one, they got all sorts of pictures of her. Didn’t seem right that Sierra’s was just the one. And blurry, too.”
“Thank you,” Violet said, setting the photos out of sight. “I’ll make sure they’re returned to you after I add them to her file.”
She didn’t bother explaining that she and the police had nothing to do with the photo selection on the nightly news.
“I was wondering,” Patricia said, gazing down at the hands she held clutched in her lap, “if I might see the photos. Of my Sierra.”
Violet wasn’t sure what she meant at first. The photos she’d just handed over? And then it hit her. She was asking to see the crime scene photos.
Darger’s head was moving before the words came, shaking vehemently.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mrs. Peters.”
“It’s my right, isn’t it? As a family member?”
Violet begrudgingly agreed.
“It is. But in cases like these—”
“I know,” Patricia said, and now she was the one reaching over to pat Violet’s hand as if their roles had been reversed. She sounded calm and reasonable. Like she’d already accepted what she would see. “I know it won’t be pretty. But I already missed my chance to say goodbye in the flesh, and I think…”
She trailed off, eyes lifting to the ceiling.
“Have you ever seen one of those gory movies, Agent Darger? Where they show all manner of blood and guts and violence?”
“I suppose so,” she answered.
“But there are other scary movies. Ones that don’t show all the carnage and slaughter. They’re quiet. They leave things to your imagination. And somehow I think they’re much scarier for it.”
Patricia’s gaze swung down, and her piercing eyes fixed on Darger.
“That’s what seeing that video last night was like. It was all light and shadow. Implied horror. I need closure, Agent Darger. I need to see her one last time. As she was. If I don’t, I’m afraid what’s in my imagination will keep on hauntin’ me forever.”
Violet suddenly had a feeling she’d gotten with Sierra. That there was much more to this woman than she’d initially realized. Again Darger was faced with the fact that she’d done the same as everyone else, as much as she wanted to deny it. She’d pigeon-holed Patricia Peters as a shallow, uncultured old woman who lived in a trailer on the outskirts of a small town. She was poor and from the country and may not know all there was to know about a great many things, but she was not ignorant in the ways of the world.
“OK,” Violet said quietly. She stood and got her laptop, setting it on top of the dresser and crouching next to it. “But if it gets to be too much, we should stop.”
Patricia nodded gravely.
Violet began with some of the least disturbing photographs first: shots of Sierra’s feet and hands. She watched Sierra’s mother for any sign that she might pass out or run for the bathroom to vomit. The woman kept an unblinking stare on the screen.
“Go ahead,” she said, and Violet moved on.
A photograph of Sierra’s buttocks and back. One of the garbage bag trapped in the undergrowth. And then a shot from further away, showing the body from toe to neck.
Patricia gasped then, and Violet stopped. Shit. This was a bad idea.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“No,” Patricia said, squeezing her eyelids shut. “It’s not that. It’s not the pictures.”
After an anguished moment of silences, her eyelashes parted.
“If I had—” Patricia pressed a fist to her mouth to stifle a sob. “Oh my dear Lord, what if she’s dead because of me?”
“No. No, Patricia. This is not your fault.”
“But she wanted to come home, and I wouldn’t let her!” the woman wailed, and Violet scooted closer to embrace her.
“I know,” Violet said, her own feelings of responsibility for Sierra’s death filling her with remorse.
After a few moments, Violet pulled back and took one of Patricia’s hands in hers.
“The reality is that when someone dies, there are always regrets. Those of us who remain can’t help but wonder what we could have done differently. And how things may have ended up if we had.”
Patricia sighed and lifted the balled tissue still in her hand to her mouth. A rattling cough racked her chest.
“Excuse me,” she said, hoarsely. She swallowed and coughed again. “Could I have a glass of water?”
“Of course,” Violet said, rising to her feet and grabbing one of the individually wrapped disposable plastic cups on a tray next to the TV. The cellophane crinkled as she tore it free and went to fill it in the bathroom.
“Do you have any ice? I’m feeling a little warm.”
“Oh,” Violet said, peeking at the rippling liquid in the cup. “Sure. I just have to run down to the ice machine.”
“I’m sorry to be such a bother.”
“Not at all,” Violet answered, setting the cup down in exchange for the plastic ice bucket. “I’ll be right back.”
When she returned, Sierra’s mother seemed to have set herself back to rights. Her eyes were clear again, her purse hung squarely from her shoulder, and her hands were clasped in her lap. Violet plucked a few ice cubes from the bucket with a pair of tongs and handed the cup over.
The woman’s larynx bobbed beneath the loose skin at her neck as she drank. She gave a satisfied sigh and rested the cup on the table next to her.
“Thank you for that.”
“Not a problem.”
Patricia stood then.
“I think I’ve probably taken enough of your time, ma’am. Thank you for talking with me.”
“Anything I can do,” Violet said, clasping Patricia’s hand as they moved to the door. “I mean that. If you need someone to talk to. I’m here.”
“I appreciate that,” Patricia said, then walked out the door. Violet watched from the balcony as she made her way to her car. Darger was still standing with her back leaned against the door frame long after the car had turned onto the road and faded from view.
Chapter 45
McAdoo gazed across the street where the Burger King parking lot looked as empty as ever. No movement. No nothing. The shadows that seemed so ominous when they first got this assignment now seemed non-threatening. Routine. It was getting hard to imagine they’d ever see anything out this way.
He cracked open his can of Monster, and a strange candy smell filled the Mustang.
“Can’t believe you drink that shit,” Novotny said.
“What? We’re sitting out here bored to death all night. I need the extra caffeine and taurine and stuff.”
“You ever heard of coffee? It’s what adults drink in scenarios such as the one you’ve just described.”
