Violet Darger (Book 2): Killing Season

by L. T. Vargus

“My mind is a mystery to me sometimes. Pulls me one way and then the other. It’s like those old cartoons… an angel on my right shoulder and a devil on the left. You might be too young to remember those,” he said.

  “I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, sometimes it’s hard to decide which one to listen to.”

  “Does that mean I’m talking to the angel right now?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” he said with a smirk, “but sure.”

  “Do they have more?”

  “How much did they use in the motel room?”

  “Bomb squad estimated around a pound.”

  “I would guess they have more, then.”

  “How much?”

  “A lot.”

  Darger suddenly felt very, very tired. She turned to leave. She wasn’t entirely sure how wise it was to turn her back on Stokes, but she was too exhausted to care. He wouldn’t hurt her. She was fairly certain of that. He liked playing games with her too much.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To sleep,” she said, recognizing her car a few yards away. Her fingers wrapped around the door handle as he called out to her.

  “It’s a nice picture of you in that article. Thinkin’ about cuttin’ it out and havin’ it framed.”

  “I can still shoot you from here, you know,” she said.

  His shark-tooth grin was visible in the rear view mirror as she rolled away a few moments later.

  Chapter 59

  Darger woke the next morning with no recollection of the night. She’d collapsed into the sleep of the dead. If her mind had conjured even a single dream, she didn’t remember it.

  The first thing she did was grab her phone and check for messages. There were two. One from Constance Baxter, letting her know that Owen was out of surgery. He was recovering in the ICU and would be sedated for the next day or two.

  Darger felt so relieved she started to cry again, and then she felt guilty that she’d insisted Constance call her with an update when she had so much else on her plate. Ethan’s funeral to plan, for instance.

  Sniffling, she listened to the next message. It was Loshak. He and Agent Dawson had matched the newspaper clipping found in the motel room. It was a copy of the Atlanta Journal Constitution from earlier in the week.

  “The remnant we found was from a page listing local events for the next month. The section outlined in the black marker is a schedule for the Braves.”

  She dialed Loshak, and he answered on the first ring.

  “How ya feeling, partner?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said. “What’s happening down there?”

  “I assume you got my message about the newspaper scrap?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Everyone’s mostly focused on beefing up security on the stadium, right now.”

  “They’re not canceling the games?”

  “It was discussed. Ultimately it was decided that this could be the way we get them. They’ve got a team of bomb-sniffing dogs in there now, and we’re calling in more.”

  “There are three home games this week,” Darger said, looking at the schedule online. “How do we decide which one?”

  “We don’t. We stake ‘em all out. Keep running the dogs through. And hope to get lucky.”

  She sighed.

  “I ran into Stokes last night.”

  “Ran into him?”

  “More like he waited for me in the hospital parking garage.”

  Loshak swore under his breath.

  “It’s alright,” she assured him. “He didn’t try anything… shady.”

  Scoffing, Loshak said, “That guy craps shady. What did he want?”

  “To play mind games with me. What else? He was being pretty coy, but the suggestion was that they have quite a bit more of the C4. I think a lot more.”

  “Figures, I guess. Did he give you anything else?”

  “Not really. Where are you?”

  “Right now I’m downstairs in the task force meeting room. But I’ve been running upstairs to check in on the tip line when I can.”

  “I can be there in thirty,” she said, glancing at the clock on the table.

  “Oh no, you don’t. You’re on light duty.”

  Darger’s fingers tightened around the phone.

  “The fuck I am.”

  “You have a concussion, Violet. Doctor’s orders. And FBI policy,” he said, then softened his tone. “I promise I’ll let you know if anything new comes to light.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Alright?” Loshak said.

  “Sure.”

  Darger hung up and headed to the shower.

  Thirty-four minutes later, the elevator deposited her onto the fourth floor of the Atlanta field office in Chamblee. The conference room was filled with activity — phones ringing, people talking, at least half a dozen TVs, all tuned to a different channel. One of the monitors played the footage they’d found on the video camera in Levi’s apartment.

  Loshak scowled when he saw her.

  “I thought we agreed that you would stay put, and I would keep you abreast of the investigation.”

  “You mean when I said, sure?” she smiled. “That was sarcasm. Didn’t you hear the telltale inflection in my voice?”

  “I must have missed that.”

  “You’re getting rusty, partner,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Anyway, I’m not working, technically. I’m here in a consulting capacity. How is Agent Dawson holding up?”

  Darger left the second half of the question unspoken: How is Agent Dawson holding up after learning about Ethan’s death?

  “She went home to freshen up. Change clothes. Insisted on working through it, though. Karla’s tough, but you can see in her eyes that she’s hurting.”

  Darger nodded. She couldn’t imagine — didn’t want to imagine — what it would be like to lose a partner. Not quite a year had gone by since she first met Loshak, but she’d come to depend on him for so much in that short time.

  “I’ve had all our people downstairs listen to the Levi Foley call a dozen times, in case he tries again. Assuming it was really him, of course. I sent a recording of the call and a copy of the videos to the speech recognition experts in Quantico. They gave me a bunch of guff about the fact that he was obviously intoxicated when he called, says it messes with the algorithm.”

  Loshak shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair.

  At his mention of the home movies, Darger’s eyes floated up to the big screen at the front of the room. Teenage Levi was on the roof again. She shuddered, recalling the sickening sound of his arm snapping when he hit the ground.

  “As if I got him loaded myself and then had him make that call,” Loshak was still grumbling.

  Her eyelids fluttered, Loshak’s voice drawing her gaze away from the images on the screen.

  Darger frowned. Something was bugging her, a gnat buzzing around in the back of her mind.

  What Loshak just said?

  No.

  Her head snapped back to the TV screen.

  “Go back,” she said, not even sure who she was addressing. She waved a hand at the television. “Which computer is running that footage?”

  An unfamiliar young woman pointed at a laptop in the corner of the room.

  Darger stalked over and backed the video up, rewinding to when the camera first swung up to show Levi perched on the peak of the roof.

  There. In the background. Something she’d missed before. She paused the playback.

  “Loshak,” she said, hypnotized by the glowing pixels.

  “Hm?”

  He stepped forward, squinting so hard his eyes looked closed.

  “What does that say? My eyes are shit.”

  “Pheasant Brook,” Darger said, reading the gold letters on the sign. “This is it. The house in the video is maybe half a block from Carol Jones’ subdivision. I bet this is the house they grew up in, but…”

 
; She brought up the map on her phone.

  “It doesn’t match the mother’s address. Before the nursing home, I mean.”

  Loshak held up a finger and got on his phone.

  “Karla? It’s Loshak. Do you still have the school records for the Foley boys on your laptop?” There was a pause. “No, I only want the home address listed on the records.”

  He reached for a pen and scribbled something on a pad of paper.

  “Yeah, I’ll see you then,” he said and hung up.

  Darger was already entering the address he’d written down into her phone. When she finished, a marker popped onto the map and zoomed in on that section of the city.

  “Bingo,” she said. “But the house isn’t there anymore. Looks like some kind of grubby little strip mall now.”

  Loshak sighed and swiped a hand down the side of his face.

  “Now we just need to figure out how in the hell to use all this to guess where they are. Or where they’ll hit next.”

  He was right, of course. But she was 100% certain now: the victims may have been random, but the sites were personal. And Luke and Levi were brothers. Bound by blood.

  “I have to talk to the mother,” she said, the words coming out before the idea had really solidified in her mind.

  “From the sound of it, she’s pretty far gone.”

  “I know that. But you know whoever talked to her would have been asking the wrong questions. She might be able to tell me things about them,” Darger said, already grabbing for her bag.

  “You want me to come along?” Loshak offered.

  “No, I think you should probably stay on the stadium detail and the tip line. Just in case.”

  He crossed his arms. “Call me if you get anything.”

  “I will.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I said I will.”

  “You better. Because if you run off on your own like you did in Ohio….”

  Darger paused outside of the room.

  “That wasn’t on purpose.”

  “Right.”

  “You’re quite the nag, Loshak. You know that?”

  “Right back at you, Violet.”

  Chapter 60

  An instant, uncomfortable feeling welled in Violet’s chest as she stepped through the doors into the KindHeart Nursing Home. It was the smell, she thought. Floor wax, stale urine, and medical-grade disinfectant.

  Violet showed her badge at the front desk, and a nursing aide named Tiffani offered to show her to Barbara Foley’s room. The name tag clipped to the girl’s scrubs had hearts drawn over each letter “i”. Tiffani with an “i” and two hearts, Violet thought to herself.

  “Did either of the boys come visit, that you know of?” she asked.

  “The younger one did. For a while…” Tiffani said, frowning a bit at the memory. Perhaps realizing for the first time that she’d met and possibly spoken to a mass murderer.

  “Levi?”

  “Yes. But in the past six or eight months, I think he’s only been here maybe once. He was pretty regular before that.”

  “What about Luke?”

  Tiffani shook her head.

  “I don’t remember ever seeing him. Other than the stuff she has in her room. Family pictures, you know? We have little plaques on all the residents’ walls that have photos of close family and friends. Early on, it’s an easy way to remind them.”

  “And how long has Mrs. Foley been here?”

  “A little over a year,” Tiffani said. “It’s one of the few times it’s almost seemed like a blessing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The dementia. She has no idea what her sons… what’s been happening. We’ve made sure to keep the news footage off her TV, off all the TVs, actually. But even if she saw it, I don’t know if it would register that those are her boys.”

  Tiffani paused in front of an open door, and Violet could hear low television sounds coming from within. Tiffani knocked her fist against the wall anyway.

  “Barb? You have a visitor.”

  Violet recognized her from one of the videos: the clip where she berated Luke about his involvement in Levi’s rooftop rollerblading stunt.

  Barbara Foley was smaller now. Frail and withered. The woman in the video had possessed flowing waves of mahogany hair. Today those waves were wispy and streaked with gray. She hummed and talked softly to herself or perhaps to the TV. At the sound of her name, though, she turned her head.

  Barb blinked a few times, eyeing Violet and the nurse with a vacant expression. Then she frowned and bowed her head, picking at the hem of her blouse.

  “This is Violet. She’s come to talk with you, if that’s alright,” Tiffani continued.

  Barb returned her attention to them.

  “Hello,” she said, then trailed off with a few nonsensical mutterings.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Violet said.

  Barb tried a smile. Licked her lips. Touched a finger to her chin. On the way back down to her lap, her hand stopped to tug at the collar of her blouse. Both hands began to unbutton her shirt then, making surprisingly quick progress. She’d managed to expose her bony chest and the top edge of her bra before Tiffani stopped her.

  “No, no, Barb. Here, why don’t you change Dolly’s outfit?”

  Tiffani pointed to a baby doll on the bed. It was frighteningly realistic and wore a pink frilly dress.

  While Barb reached for the doll and began fiddling with it, Tiffani explained.

  “She’s a disrober. It’s not uncommon with dementia patients.”

  It felt strange to talk about her as if she wasn’t in the room, but Barb barely seemed to notice them. Her attention was now entirely focused on the doll in her hands.

  “Yes, I recall my mother having to invest in some of those special jumpsuits with the zipper down the back for my grandmother.”

  Tiffani nodded.

  “We tried the jumpsuit, but she seemed more agitated. We’re trying to give her something else tactile to focus on when she gets that urge to start undoing buttons.”

  They watched Barb pull the pink dress over the doll’s head.

  “She used to be a walker. She could do ten miles a day, indoors, bare feet. I put my Fitbit on her one day, and she logged 25,000 steps. That’s three times what I get in a shift. She never stopped moving. The undressing seemed to start as soon as she needed some help with walking. I think all that nervous energy needs somewhere to go. If it can’t come out with the walking, it finds another way.”

  Barb hunched over a shoe box, pawing through a pile of doll clothes.

  “I bet Violet would love to help you pick out a new outfit for Dolly.”

  Violet had never been a doll person. In fact, she found them quite creepy, even as a child. But she aimed a friendly smile at Mrs. Foley and said, “Absolutely.”

  Tiffani turned to address Violet then.

  “You’re not going to get too… specific, are you? I mean about the murd— umm… the crimes? We’re concerned that the details will upset her.”

  “I understand,” Violet said. “And the answer is no. I’m more interested in who they were before all of this. I’ll keep it purely academic.”

  Satisfied, Tiffani headed for the door and said, “Let me know if you need anything.”

  Violet sat on the edge of the bed and watched Mrs. Foley tug a lace-edged sock from the doll’s foot.

  “Does she have a name?” Violet asked. She’d heard Tiffani refer to the doll as Dolly but Violet wanted to get Mrs. Foley talking.

  “This is Dolly,” the woman answered.

  Her voice was soft and high, almost girlish. Very different from the stern voice Violet remembered from the video.

  “Tiffani told me that you have two boys. Is that right?”

  Barb’s eyes lifted and circled the room, as if she were following the flight path of an invisible insect. Her gaze landed on Violet.

  “You have two sons?” Violet repeated a simpler version of the question.r />
  Barb smiled then. “My boys? Do you know them?”

  “I don’t, but I’d love to hear about them. Can you tell me their names?”

  The woman’s mouth worked like she might be sucking on a piece of candy. Her claw-like fingers picked through the box of doll clothes before settling on a pale blue dress with a white pinafore that reminded Violet of Alice in Wonderland.

  “What about Levi, Mrs. Foley? Can you tell me about him?”

  Barb bobbed her head up and down but didn’t say more. Violet was starting to think coming here had been a waste of time. And then Mrs. Foley spoke.

  “Levi’s a good boy. A smart boy. Always writing.”

  She lifted a skeletal hand and pretended to scrawl something in the air. Violet scooted to the edge of the mattress.

  “Yes, I heard he wrote for the school newspaper.”

  “He won an award!” The old woman beamed.

  “What about Luke?”

  The woman’s face darkened, and her chin dipped to her chest.

  “Naughty.”

  Violet held very still.

  “Luke is naughty?”

  Mrs. Foley nodded.

  “Bad boy,” she said and spanked the doll. “Bad, bad boy.”

  Chapter 61

  Darger called Loshak as she pulled out of the nursing home parking lot and filled him in on her plan.

  “When you get back to town,” he said, “do me a favor? Go back to the hotel and get some sleep. You shouldn’t even be out driving with a head injury.”

  “Loshak,” she started to say. She was thinking back on the very first time they’d met. He’d been violently ill. When she suggested he see a doctor, he’d essentially told her to mind her own damn business. But somewhere in the midst of her pause, she had a change of heart. Maybe it was the recurrent thought of Agent Dawson and Ethan Baxter. And for the mostly unspoken fondness she’d come to have for this strange man.

  “What?” he asked, waiting for her to finish.

  “This might sound weird, but I love you.” She said it quickly, before she could second guess herself and chicken out.

  She thought it would throw him off. But his response came without hesitation.

  “I love you too, kiddo.”

  The drive to Griffin was uneventful, a mostly straight shot south on US Highway 41. She passed quiet little one-stoplight towns with names like Bonanza and Sunny Side.