Violet Darger (Book 2): Killing Season

by L. T. Vargus

  He took a long drag from his Winston, held it, exhaled smoke from his nostrils.

  “I thought about mixing up some ammonium nitrate and diesel. That’s what the terrorists use, you know? But it’s volatile stuff, and I figured we might as well use what the army uses, right? After all, this is still America, by God. Anyway, you’ve probably been wondering where my money’s been going these past couple years? Well, you saw a little of it out in that junkyard. I’ve been stocking up, little by little. My whole life has built to this moment, to this project.”

  “How’d you get it?”

  “Oh, don’t you go worrying your sweet, little head over these things. I’ve handled it, acquired more than enough for our purposes, and I know just where we’re going to use it.”

  Levi scratched his chin before he responded.

  “And where is that?”

  “What did I fuckin’ say? Don’t worry about it. You promised to help me finish this. And finish it, we will. Soon. Until then, the less you know, the better. In case things go south.”

  They fell quiet. Luke flicked his cigarette butt into the grass and lit another.

  The sunlight had crept the rest of the way over the horizon at some point, but Levi had barely felt the passing of the hours. It was a gray day, overcast and dreary. It smelled clean, though. The green of the grass hung in the air around them. Alive and fresh.

  Luke cleared his throat and spoke again.

  “This is going to be it, man. The big one. My magnum opus. And I can’t do it without you. Nor would I want to.”

  Luke smiled at Levi, and things once more made sense. As much as they could, maybe.

  “Now let me show you how the backup detonation method works.”

  Chapter 44

  The entire task force convened within the hour to plan the apprehension of the Foley brothers. Darger stood off to one side of the large room with Loshak, leaning against the wall for support. She was bone-weary, but there was no way she could sleep now. She wasn’t stepping foot in her hotel room until the two men wore matching sets of handcuffs.

  Driver’s license photos for both brothers flashed onto a screen at the front of the room. Darger had to blink several times to get her tired eyes to bring the pictures into focus.

  Luke, the elder brother, was on the left. He had pasty skin and greasy hair the color of porridge. His gaunt cheeks and dead eyes gave him an almost skeletal appearance.

  Younger brother Levi was on the right. He looked an awful lot like Luke. His hair was a little darker, his face a little fuller. He was Luke without the flat gaze and emaciated lines.

  Atlanta Police Chief Terry Hogaboom was laying out the preliminary measures of their plan.

  “Names and photographs are being circulated to all area law enforcement agencies,” the chief said. “The boys have been added to the no-fly list, and there’s an APB out on the Wrangler.”

  He raised both hands in the air, revealing a wet patch underneath each armpit. Darger wondered if he was nervous, or if he was just a heavy sweater.

  “Now I want everyone to listen, and listen good: we are waiting to release the names to the public. That means not a word of this to reporters, to your wives, to your goddamned priests. I don’t care if Christ himself comes down from Heaven. These. Names. Do. Not. Get. Out.”

  Chief Hogaboom emphasized each word by hammering his fist into the podium. His cadence was starting to remind her of a football coach giving a pre-game speech.

  “We only get one chance to get the jump on ‘em, and our colleagues at the FBI have assured me that taking them by surprise is in our best interest.”

  She had to give him credit, he did a decent job selling it despite the fact that she knew he had reservations. He’d resisted when she and Loshak first recommended holding the names back from the press. Both he and Fitzgerald wanted to plaster the faces of the brothers Foley on every newsstand and morning live show possible. But the last thing they wanted to do was push whatever plan the brothers had into the next phase. Hogaboom and Fitzgerald eventually agreed to withhold the names for 24 hours. If they didn’t have the brothers by then, they’d make their identities public.

  Satisfied that everyone was on the same page in terms of keeping their mouths shut, Chief Hogaboom moved on. He brought up a picture of Luke Foley. This time it was a candid shot, probably from his Facebook page or elsewhere on the internet. In it, he wore a white tank top over a pair of camo fatigues and was giving the finger to whoever was operating the camera.

  “Luke Foley. 30. A respectable rap sheet going back to age fifteen. Several assault charges which led to his expulsion from Fort McPherson High. A handful of alcohol-related charges: Driving Under the Influence, Public Drunkenness. Criminal Trespass and Damage to Property. Also, a history of domestic violence calls from his ex-wife, but no charges were ever filed.”

  A photograph of Levi, hood pulled up over his head, giving a half-smile, half-scowl to the camera.

  “Little brother Levi, on the other hand… 28, clean record aside from an alcohol charge back in his late teens.”

  Hogaboom loaded the same map Darger had memorized over the past few days: an aerial view of Atlanta with the crime scenes marked with red dots. A blue dot now marked an apartment building on the east side of the city.

  “Levi’s driver’s license and tax returns list this as his current address in Kirkwood. I just got off the horn with the manager of the complex, and the address appears to be up-to-date. We’ve got unmarked eyes on the house as we speak. They’ve reported a light on inside and a car parked in the assigned space — not the Wrangler, but a Hyundai. It’s possible they dumped the Jeep.”

  One of the detectives sitting in the front row raised a hand.

  “What about the other brother?”

  “Luke’s last known address is down in Griffin, about an hour out of town. The house belongs to his ex-wife, Shelly Webb. Local guys are sitting on the house while a unit heads down to check it out, see if maybe the boys fled south, but our profilers think that’s unlikely,” Hogaboom answered, glancing over at Loshak and Darger.

  He left out the rest of what they’d speculated: that if the brothers were found at the ex-wife’s house, then she was probably already dead.

  “Could be that Luke got his own place and never updated his info. Or maybe he’s been couch-surfing with Levi or living in his car. In any case, we figure they’re together now.”

  Hogaboom marked a second blue dot on the map.

  “We’ve got another car sitting on the Fed Ex sorting facility on Shoals Road, Levi’s place of employment. The office won’t open until eight, and we don’t imagine he’s been showing up to work with all this going on. Obviously, we’re keeping an eye on it regardless.”

  “No job for Luke?” the same detective asked.

  “Hasn’t filed a tax return in three years.”

  “What about parents? Or other family in the area?”

  Gesturing at the map, Hogaboom said, “We got an address for the mother over in Sylvan Hills. Father is deceased.”

  Darger squinted at the map, trying to sense a pattern or logic to the location of the crime scenes and the places Luke and Levi might have connections to. For example, they’d discovered that Luke’s ex-wife had once worked at the Supercuts that shared a parking lot with the Publix. She wanted to believe that wasn’t a coincidence. But if the other sites had any particular meaning, they hadn’t been able to connect the dots yet. It was likely they’d only figure it out after they’d apprehended the men and talked to them. If they even got that opportunity. She knew there was a very real chance the brothers would go down shooting.

  Hogaboom clapped his hands together, wrenching her from her thoughts.

  “Alright, everyone knows where they need to be, and I know I can trust you all to keep your lips zipped until tomorrow morning. Let’s go bust down some doors.”

  Chapter 45

  “Diddly-fuckin-squat.”

  Detective Horst was a bu
rly man in a bright blue shirt. Most of his head was shaved except for a longer tuft of platinum hair on top that reminded her of a swirl of vanilla ice cream. He stood inside the door of Levi Foley’s apartment when he made his pronouncement. Darger wasn’t sure if it was for the benefit of her or everyone or maybe just for Horst himself.

  The apartment was about what she’d expect from a 28-year-old guy living alone: thrift store furniture, carpets pocked with cigarette burns, a flat screen TV with a gaming system and a stack of games piled beside it. The walls were bare except for an Atlanta Braves pennant hanging over the only window in the room.

  Darger crossed the living room to look closer at a small table next to the couch. It had casters on the bottom so it would slide under the couch, almost like the bedside tables in hospital rooms. She ran her finger through the layer of dust on the surface, noting a dust-free rectangle in the center, roughly 11” by 16”.

  “Looks like he took his laptop with him,” she said.

  Aside from the fact that he was a bachelor in his twenties, Darger wasn’t getting much of a read on the place. It didn’t have a ton of personality. In the kitchen cabinets, she found a few boxes of cereal, some energy bars, and a can of potatoes, which she hadn’t even known was a thing.

  She paused in front of the refrigerator, tilting her head to one side. Written in words from a magnetic poetry set was the phrase: MY POLE BLOWS A CHAIN.

  She sensed someone looming over her shoulder and turned. The fleshy lips of Detective Horst bunched into a pout.

  “The fuck does that mean?”

  Darger shrugged, jotting the phrase down in her notes, just in case.

  “No idea. I mean, I assume it’s dirty.”

  She opened the fridge and found it similarly barren: a jar of pickles, off-brand steak sauce, and an orange so old and shriveled she thought it was some kind of strange mushroom at first. There was a fifth of cheap vodka on top of the fridge, 3/4 empty.

  Someone’s phone rang, blasting out the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Detective Horst answered and began an obnoxiously loud conversation.

  “Horst here. Uh huh. Yeah. Well, shit. I know, right?”

  He bellowed with laughter.

  “No doubt about it. I’m cryin’ my fucking eyes out over here. Yeah. Alright. Talk to ya.”

  He hung up and addressed the room.

  “That was Reggie,” he said, and Darger wondered if it was the same Reggie she’d met after the biker brawl the other night. “They knocked on Mama Foley’s door. Young couple answered, say they bought the house last year. Apparently, Mrs. Foley has early-onset dementia. Had to be moved into a nursing home. Very sad, blah blah blah. Anyway, another dead end.”

  Darger ran a knuckle over the scabbed up wound on her forehead. His empathy knew no bounds.

  Around 3:30 in the afternoon, Loshak convinced her to take a break.

  “Let’s go get a bite to eat. It’ll help clear our heads.”

  Darger didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to risk missing some minute detail that could clue them in on where the brothers could be or what person or place they might attack next.

  But she was starving, and he was right. A moment away from the dingy interior of the apartment might bring the clarity she needed to put the pieces together, even if those pieces felt a little sparse at this point.

  Outside, the day had turned warm and bright. It was hard to believe that most of the day was already gone. Between sifting through junk in the apartment and filling out additional paperwork, she knew the rest of it would blur past with similar speed.

  They passed a taco truck a few miles from the crime scene. Loshak pulled over, and they each scarfed three tacos a piece. Even though she couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses, she could tell Loshak was studying her from across the picnic table.

  “Maybe we should go back to the hotel. Get a few hours of sleep.”

  “Fuck that,” she said and sat up straighter in an attempt to appear more vigilant. “These guys aren’t done. It’s only a matter of time before they strike somewhere else.”

  “On that, we can agree.”

  “We can’t quit until we figure it out.”

  On the ride back to Levi’s apartment, Darger let out a colossal yawn. The food had made her sleepy. She let her eyelids droop closed for a moment. It felt good to rest her eyes. Better than good. It was as luscious as eating a sun-warmed peach straight from the tree and letting the juices drip down her chin.

  A car door thunked shut, and Darger startled awake. She spent several disoriented seconds trying to figure out where she was before she realized she was still in the car.

  But the car was off, the driver’s seat empty. Loshak was gone. They were parked across the street from Levi Foley’s apartment building, under the shade of a sprawling live oak. She must have dozed off for a few minutes on the way back.

  It wasn’t until she stepped out of the car and saw how long her shadow was, noted how low the sun hung in the sky, that she glanced at her watch. 8:17 PM? She’d been asleep for hours.

  She burst into Levi’s apartment and found Loshak poking through a closet in the bedroom. An open shoe box rested near his foot, overflowing with a mishmash of cords and chargers for various electronic devices.

  Violet stood there, arms crossed over her chest, until he turned to look at her.

  “You look grumpy,” he said. “Bad dream?”

  “You could have woken me up. Who just leaves someone sleeping in a car like that?”

  “The windows were cracked.”

  “I’m not a fucking dog, Loshak.”

  His trademark breathy laugh filtered out from the closet.

  “Is this going to be a thing now? I fall asleep, and you go gallivanting off on your own?”

  “If you’d slept a little longer, I bet you wouldn’t be so crabby,” he said, ignoring her question.

  She sighed.

  “Find anything in there?” she asked, examining the sleeve of a letter jacket. An embroidered patch on the shoulder read Fort Mac Marauders and featured a pirate clutching a knife in his teeth.

  Loshak tossed out two pairs of shoes.

  “Size 12, which matches the boot prints they found at the first crime scene.”

  She figured that since they were in Levi’s apartment, they didn’t have any of Luke’s shoes to compare. Could Levi have been the shooter in both sniper attacks? She’d been operating from the assumption that Luke was the sniper, the leader. He was the one with the extensive criminal record as well as the military history.

  The revelation that they were looking for two men instead of one had thrown her off her game. She felt like she was sprinting after a loping gazelle that kept getting farther and farther away.

  Two shooters wasn’t unprecedented. The DC sniper attacks were perpetrated by a two-man team. So was the Oklahoma city bombing and the Columbine school shooting. Hell, a pair of brothers had been responsible for the Boston Marathon attack.

  The question shouldn’t be why it was throwing her off. She should be asking herself why she hadn’t thought of it before.

  “What else?” she asked.

  Loshak motioned to a pile of old newspapers on the bed.

  “Those were probably the most enlightening thing I found so far.”

  Darger moved over to the stack of yellowing newsprint. She lifted one by a corner, studying the masthead. The name of the paper was The Nexus. A familiar image of a pirate caught her eye in the upper right-hand corner, and she realized it was a newspaper from Levi’s high school.

  Flipping through the pages, she stopped when she reached a block of text outlined in permanent marker. Darger brought the paper closer to her face, studying the byline. Sure enough, it read “By Levi Foley.”

  “So Levi was a budding journalist,” she said.

  “It would appear so. Did you notice how he used a Sharpie to draw a box around all the stories he wrote?”

  “I did,” D
arger said, noting two more of Levi’s bylines as she thumbed through another edition.

  She knew what Loshak was thinking. The fact that he’d kept the newspapers at all suggested they meant something to him. That he’d gone through them and highlighted his work said it even louder. Whether that meant anything now, she had no idea. But he’d cared about something once, and that fact reminded her that he was human.

  Darger moved over to a bedside table and rifled through the drawers.

  “Also,” Loshak said, “Agent Dawson stopped by with a juicy nugget.”

  “What’s that?”

  “One of Luke Foley’s army buddies jumped off the Lake Street Bridge a few months after their unit returned from Iraq.”

  “The first sniper crime scene?”

  “The very one.”

  “Huh,” she said, pausing in her search of the nightstand.

  Suddenly she felt on the brink of some epiphany.

  “That’s it, then.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the personal connection. That’s why they chose that spot. The second attack was in the Publix lot, right where Luke’s ex-wife used to work.”

  “You think he thought she still worked there?”

  “Maybe. But even if he knew she didn’t, it would have been a familiar place.”

  Loshak crab-walked out of the closet.

  “OK. And then when they shot Ethan… that was a return to the first crime scene in a sense.”

  She nodded and watched her partner ponder this revelation.

  “I think you’re onto something. But what about Carol Jones? The pregnant gal.”

  Darger gnawed on her thumbnail before admitting she was at a loss.

  “I don’t know.”

  Her gaze fell onto the open drawer, where she spotted a small electronic device. It was rectangular, perhaps three-by-five inches, and sported a handful of buttons beneath an LCD screen.