by L. T. Vargus
The car rounded the bend, and Darger watched as the back end swung around, skidding out of control. She was sure then that it would roll on its side and tumble into the ditch. The car juddered and shook and then somehow gained traction again, speeding away behind the cloak of the trees. They lost sight of it then, and for the first time, Darger thought they might lose him.
But as they came around the bend, they saw brake lights ahead. The red glow lit the overarching branches of the tree like a Halloween display.
The passenger door opened, and a figure fled into the dense woods at the side of the road. Darger was already unhooked from her seatbelt and halfway out the door before Luck had fully stopped the van.
“Stay on the car!” she shouted as she loped after the fleeing man.
A cloud of dust rose up where the car had taken off again, and she spat particles of dirt from her tongue.
She high-stepped into the foliage. It was dark, and she had no flashlight. But periodically she caught glimpses of him darting through the trees ahead of her. And she could hear him. His feet crashed through the dry leaves and deadfall littering the woods.
They were moving steadily uphill, toward what looked like a clearing ahead. Her lungs burned, and pain sent splinters through her thighs. Twice she came down on a low spot and almost fell, but somehow she kept her balance. Steam puffed out of her mouth and nostrils in pulsing clouds.
She was gaining on him now. They were close enough that she didn’t lose sight of him in between the silhouettes of tree trunks. The end of the woods was looming ahead. A field of some kind. Corn or soybeans or whatever else they might grow out here, she didn’t know. He seemed to hesitate on the edge of the woods, unsure of the wisdom of crossing into open ground. And that’s when she saw her chance.
With a burst of speed she didn’t know she had left in her, she surged forward, leaping at him with a cat-like aggression. Her shoulder rammed into his lower back, and she grappled around his waist. They went down together, hitting the tilled earth hard. He struggled to get free of her grasp, kicking, punching, scratching. Anything to loosen her grip. He rolled, his knee coming down on her head. She felt her cheekbone slam against a rock in the soil, and a bright white light flashed in her head. But still she held strong. She jabbed out with her fist, catching him in the gut, and he grunted. Another blow aimed a little lower, and he curled up like a dead spider, hands at his groin. She knelt next to him, grasping a handful of his hair with one hand. She turned his head so she could see his face. It was definitely him.
“Kurt Van Ryper?”
He only moaned in response.
She rolled him onto his belly and knelt with one knee pressing into his back.
“Give me your arms,” she said. He was still cupping his crotch. She yanked one arm out, pulling it behind him. His groans were muffled by the dirt his face was pressed into.
A low rhythmic pulse could be heard now, getting louder. A helicopter.
She cuffed him, and he held still then, seeming to fall into a strange calm. The chopper’s light appeared overhead, shining like the brightest star coming right at them.
Luck came crashing out of the trees, a crazy smile lighting up his face when he saw them.
They had him. They had their man.
So why was there that empty feeling in her stomach like it was all wrong?
Chapter 96
Loshak drifted for a long time in a peaceful place. Neither alive nor dead.
Moving.
Floating.
Weightless and free of the pain he’d felt for these past weeks.
He was dreaming. Or something like it. Not all the way there. Not all the way real.
Unconscious.
Yes. He knew that much. Even if he couldn’t make sense of it. Couldn’t remember how things were supposed to be.
Mostly he didn’t think about it. His existence simplified to a meandering serenity.
He could sense his respiration sometimes. That feeling of his ribcage expanding and contracting. Air rushing in and out.
And he reached out now and then. Tendrils of his mind stretching into the nothingness. Seeking some answer. Some explanation for his inanimate state.
But when he reached out, he sensed only the spiral beyond his being. A chaotic motion that twisted life into an ugliness. Contorted the universe to a cold and distant Other, forever closed off to him, unexplained and uncaring.
His questions had no answers. No positive or negative outcomes. Just indifference.
The infinite unknowable. The big nothing.
The void that swallowed up his daughter without reason. Without explanation. Without any sense of fairness or dignity or decency.
During those times when he reached, he felt trapped. Trapped in his skull. Trapped in this inert state. Nauseated. Lying motionless somewhere. Paralyzed.
Sometimes he drifted closer to the surface of the physical world, and he could hear it. The heart monitor beeping out its endless rhythm.
And the pain came back some. A dull version of it, like a butter knife stabbing him in the gut. It gripped him entirely.
But the self-awareness faded, and he roamed again in the stillness. The peace of the in-between. Not quite able to form complex thoughts any longer. Just there. And sometimes she was there with him. He could feel her there.
The beep of the heart monitor slowed, almost like it was relaxing. Tired after fighting for so long.
At 9:26 PM, Victor Loshak’s heart stopped.
Chapter 97
After a night in lockup, Kurt was seated in Interview Room One. He hunched forward, head resting on his arms which were folded over the table.
Letting him stew a while had been Luck’s idea, and a good one, Darger thought. Van Ryper probably hadn’t slept much, and his anxiety would have only grown as the hours ticked by. Maybe now his ass would be puckering a bit, Luck had said. Maybe now he’d be a little more apt to talk.
Detective Luck took the seat directly across from Kurt while Darger sat off to the side.
“Do you know who I am, Kurt?”
His eyes rose slowly, fixing the detective with a sullen stare.
“Yeah. You’re that cop that’s been on TV.”
Darger gripped the phone in her hand a little harder, and she thought she noticed an almost imperceptible stiffening of Luck’s spine. They didn’t dare risk glancing at each other. It could mean nothing, of course. A lot of people recognized Luck from the news these days. But still. It felt like something.
“Detective Luck,” Casey said, placing a hand on his chest. “But you can call me Casey.”
“Who’s she?” Kurt asked then, not looking at Darger but gesturing with the twitch of his shoulder.
“This,” Luck said, “is Special Agent Darger. From the FBI.”
That got his attention. Kurt raised his chin and studied her with a surgeon’s scrutiny.
“FBI? What’s the FBI want?”
“Oh, Agent Darger here has been very interested in talking to you, Kurt,” Luck said. “We all have, as a matter of fact.”
“Yeah, well,” Kurt said. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
There was a pause, and then he fixed Darger with irises that were so dark brown they were almost black.
“No first name for you, huh?”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“He’s ‘Casey,’” Kurt said, placing air quotes around the name for emphasis. “But you’re ‘Special Agent Darger.’”
More air quotes.
Darger did her best not to look unnerved. She smiled.
“You can call me Violet if you’d prefer. Kurt.”
Air rustled in his nostrils as he inhaled, sniffing with a shrug, as if it didn’t matter to him either way. He angled his face toward the wall, and she felt Luck’s eyes on her for a beat before he proceeded.
“Why don’t we start by getting to know one another. You got a girlfriend?”
Kurt seemed thrown off by that, almost winc
ing before composing himself.
“A what?” he said. “Why? What do you care if I have a girlfriend or not?”
Luck spread his hands wide.
“It’s only a question. Like I said, I want to get to know a little bit about you. You don’t have to answer if it makes you uncomfortable for some reason.”
That was good, Darger thought. Make him feel like not answering is worse than answering.
“I’m not uncomfortable. Just don’t know why it matters,” Kurt said, scowling at the table top. “No, I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Good lookin’ guy like you? Come on. There must be girls, though, right? Just no one serious.”
“Psht.”
Kurt glanced up at Darger and then over at Luck.
“I know what you’re doing. I’m not a moron.”
“Hey, I know that,” Luck said, defensively. “Come on. I’m not trying to bust your balls or anything. How about we take a quick break. You want something to drink? Coke? Diet? Sprite?”
Kurt sat back, seeming to relax a bit.
“I’ll take a Coke, I guess.”
Luck shot her a look, and they both rose.
“I’ll be right back with that, Kurt. Sit tight.”
Just as Darger reached the door, Kurt called out from behind her.
“Hey. Violet.”
She froze, turning back to face him, her hand clutching the edge of the door. Ahead of her, Detective Luck had stopped also.
“Sorry about your face,” Kurt said, gesturing in the vicinity of his cheek.
His lips and eyes were devoid of humor, but neither did they seem particularly pained with remorse either. She followed Luck into the hallway.
“What do you think?” Luck said, feeding a dollar bill into the machine. It squealed and whirred, sucking the money into its mouth like a piece of spaghetti.
“Hard to say so far. He’s shut up pretty tight.”
“Yeah. But he seems smarter than he looks, right?”
“True,” she said.
“What about what he said to you, about your cheek? You think he’s needling you?”
“I don’t know. He seemed genuine, which might be weirder than if he’d just been taunting.”
She prodded the tenderness at her cheek absently.
“Hard as hell to know whether we’re over-analyzing or not.”
Darger leaned her back against the wall and crossed her arms.
“Ask him about the car when we go back in.”
Luck nodded, leading the way back to the interview room.
The legs of the chair skidded over the floor as Luck returned to his seat. He slid the can across the faux wood veneer of the table. Kurt popped the tab with a metallic click and a hiss.
“You drive a navy blue Buick LaCrosse, is that right?” Luck asked.
There was a pause before Kurt answered.
“No.”
“No?” Luck said. “Huh. What do you drive, then?”
“A white Silverado.”
“The new one? Parked in the garage at your mom’s?”
Kurt’s head bobbed up and down. He took off the beanie, revealing a tangle of greasy ear-length hair, the ends of which were bleached an icy platinum. He held the hat in his lap and fidgeted with the cuffed edge.
“Registration on that one had your mom’s name. You don’t have your own car?”
“We share it,” Kurt said.
“OK. How long have you had it?”
“Bought it a few weeks ago,” he said, and then his demeanor changed suddenly. His shoulders tensed. Agitated? Scared? She couldn’t tell.
Before Luck could push him further on the car, Kurt Van Ryper spoke up again.
“Where is my mom? Does she know I’m here?”
Darger felt this was an odd question for a 28-year-old man to be asking.
“Don’t worry,” Luck said. “She’s here.”
“I want to talk to her.”
“You can see your mom when we’re done here. But we’ve got some more things to talk about.”
The muscles in his face seemed to harden as he set his jaw. Darger watched the flesh on either side of his chin bunch into knots.
His eyes rolled up to meet Luck’s. For a moment, he just stared, unblinking.
And then he said, “I want a lawyer.”
Chapter 98
“Well, that was interesting,” Luck said once they’d left the interview room behind them.
She grunted in agreement.
“You think we can use his mom to get him to talk to us some more? She’s supposed to be the one wearing the pants, right? That’s what your profile said.”
Darger ran a finger down the bridge of her nose.
“It’s not that simple. If he’s our guy and if the profile is right—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Luck said. “What are you talking about? Of course he’s our guy.”
“I’m just saying… everything we have is circumstantial at this point. We need more than the car and something orange hanging from the rearview mirror. You know that.”
“I know. That’s why I’m saying we should talk to Mother Dearest and see what’s up with her.”
Darger held her arm out toward the other interview room.
“After you, Detective.”
They repeated the ritual. Entering the room, dismissing the officer assigned to watch the door, introducing themselves, and taking a seat across from their subject. The subject, in this case, was Rhonda Van Ryper. Cold, hard eyes peered out from behind a face weathered by sun and age. Her hair was permed, dyed, and cut short. She wore a little bit of makeup, but not a lot. What struck Darger most was that she didn’t look afraid or even confused. It was as if she knew exactly what she was doing here.
“We were hoping we could ask you a few questions, Mrs. Van Ryper,” Luck said, smoothing his tie and scooting forward in his chair.
Kurt’s mother regarded him from the corner of her eye.
“Am I under arrest?”
Luck frowned.
“No ma’am.”
“Then I’d like to leave. Where’s Kurt?”
“Now see, that’s the problem we have here, ma’am. Kurt resisted arrest and assaulted a federal officer,” Luck said and gestured to Violet. “We only wanted to talk, but Kurt didn’t really give us a chance to do that, and now he’s in some trouble. We thought you might be able to help him out of that.”
Rhonda’s head swiveled to face Darger. The woman’s eyelids squinted almost closed while she examined her.
“You’re a Fed?” she asked, though Luck had already introduced her as such.
“FBI,” Darger said.
Rhonda’s lips pinched together as she mulled something over.
“If I’m not under arrest, then you can’t keep me here. But I’m not leaving without Kurt.”
“And as I made clear before, ma’am,” Luck said. “You’re not under arrest, but Kurt is. He’s not going anywhere. But if you could get him to talk to us—”
Rhonda whirled on him, the whites of her eyes showing like a dog about to bite.
“He won’t say boo if he knows what’s good for him, and neither will I! I’m not sayin’ another word. I know my rights, and I know I don’t have to tell you a thing.”
Exchanging a wordless glance, Luck and Darger got up from the table and exited the room.
When they were out of earshot of both rooms, Luck said, “She didn’t ask why they’re here.”
Darger nodded.
“She didn’t seem all that surprised about any of it. Could just be a good actress, but…” She trailed off.
“But it fits, though, right?”
“What?”
“I mean, wouldn’t you call her overbearing?”
“Yes, but that isn’t necessarily evidence of anything. A lot of people have controlling mothers and don’t end up serial killers.”
“Jesus! I know that,” Luck snarled.
He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers
against his eyelids.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“It’s OK,” she said, her voice cool.
Luck’s eyes flicked open, as if he just remembered something.
“What time is it?” he asked, glancing at his watch. “Shoot. I better call Claudia, see if she can pick Jill up from pre-school.”
He started to stalk down the hall and stopped.
“Hey,” he said, “maybe you should try to talk to her.”
At first she thought he meant his daughter or mother-in-law, before finally realizing he meant Kurt Van Ryper’s mother.
“I don’t know. She seemed especially unenthused to find out I was FBI.”
“Yeah, but you’re a woman. She’s a woman. Talking to someone like you… you can crack her.”
“Crack her?” Darger repeated. “You watch too much TV.”
“You know what I mean. Do your thing.”
“What’s my thing?”
He ran his fingers through his hair, messing up the part.
“Whatever you did to get Sierra Peters to talk. Cozy up to her. Make like you’re friends. Get her to spill her guts. If we can get her to loosen up, we might get something we can use against him.”
Darger felt her hackles rise. He made it sound like she’d manipulated Sierra. Like she’d never actually cared, only wanted to tease the story out of her. Luck was still talking.
“Plus, she’s not under arrest, so she can’t hide behind the attorney thing. If she won’t leave here without Kurt, then she might as well talk to someone.”
Darger thought about arguing, felt herself planting her feet, ready to dig in. She forced herself to relax.
“I need to think about it first. Get my head on straight,” she said.
Luck seemed pleased by that.
He smiled.
“Great.” Holding up his phone, he added, “I’m gonna go make this call real quick.”
Darger watched him turn a corner at the end of the hall. She pivoted on her heel and went to find where she’d dumped her things when they’d first arrived at the station.
She would talk to the woman, eventually. But for now, she had her own idea of what she needed to do next.
