Violet Darger (Book 4): Bad Blood

by Vargus, L. T.

  The kid scoffed.

  “Maybe if the Lions didn’t suck ass.”

  Darger chuckled, and Luck shot her a disapproving look. Right. His daughter was probably about this kid’s age. Reason enough that he might find a child swearing less endearing than she did.

  “How’d you kids even get in here?”

  “Probably the same way I did,” Darger offered.

  “Fair enough,” Luck said. “What are your names?”

  The little one started to open his mouth, but the oldest poked his arm and spoke up.

  “Our mama says we don’t have to say nothin’ to the police.”

  “Well then it’s a good thing we’re not the police, isn’t it?”

  “Like there’s a difference?” the oldest said. “Besides, we didn’t do nothin’.”

  Luck gestured to the three windows lining the wall. All of them were shattered. In one, the tattered remains of a curtain remained. Probably it had once been white, but now the lace was stained the yellow-gray of a rotten tooth.

  “Is that your idea of nothing? Not to mention how the rest of this place has been trashed.”

  The older kid stared back defiantly, arms crossed over his chest. But Darger could see that the younger boys didn’t have the same backbone.

  Suddenly the middle kid stepped forward and blurted, “We didn’t break any windows! We only pushed the microwave over the stairwell, but it was already broke!”

  The older kid yanked his brother back by the arm.

  “Shut up, Damon!”

  But the kid was too far gone, and he started to cry.

  “The windows were already broke! I swear!”

  Luck sighed.

  “Is that true? You threw a microwave down the stairs?”

  The pint-sized leader of the group kept his lips sealed but nodded.

  “What are you guys doing hanging out in here, anyway? Don’t you have a soccer ball you can kick around or something?”

  The oldest scoffed. “Soccer’s for pussies. I’m gonna play football.”

  The smallest boy frowned at his older brother.

  “Mama says you’re not allowed. Because of concussives.”

  “Shut your mouth, Ray-Ray.”

  “You shut your mouth, Tyrell,” Ray-Ray responded.

  Darger smiled. When the little guy grew up a bit, he was going to give his older brother a run for his money.

  Turning back to them, Tyrell asked, “So are you gonna bust us or what? You know we didn’t trash this place. It’s been like this since forever.”

  “I know that. But I’m serious about finding something else to do. This place isn’t safe. I don’t want you coming back here,” Luck said.

  Ray-Ray’s eyes were suddenly glued to Luck’s holster. He pointed at the Glock tucked inside.

  “Can I hold your gun?” the youngest asked.

  “No,” Luck said. The kid’s shoulders sank. “But I’ll show you my badge. How about that?”

  Ray-Ray shrugged noncommittally, and Luck handed him his identification. The three boys huddled around it, taking turns touching the gold badge and murmuring amongst themselves.

  Tyrell handed the badge back.

  “Have you ever shot anybody?”

  “No,” Luck answered, then aimed a thumb at Darger. “But she has.”

  The older boy had been trying his best to maintain a perpetually unimpressed coolness, but Darger could tell by the way his eyebrows shot up that this surprised him.

  “Did he die?”

  Darger glared at Luck. She couldn’t believe he’d sold her out.

  “Yes. But he was a bad man. Really bad. A killer.”

  Darger left out the gruesome details, like the part where Clegg had cut off a girl’s head to keep as a plaything.

  Still, the answer seemed enough for the boys. They’d started heading toward the door when Darger got an idea.

  “Wait a minute.”

  They stopped, and Tyrell looked suddenly suspicious, like he knew getting away scot-free had been too good to be true.

  “Have you ever seen anyone else hanging around here? Adults, I mean. Bad-looking people.”

  Damon’s eyes went a little wide, and he looked at his older brother who gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. So they did know something. The question was, how to get them to talk?

  Darger barely had the thought fully formed when Ray-Ray blurted, “You’re talking about when the Striga killed that guy?”

  “Ray-Ray! Shut up!” Tyrell said.

  “The who?

  He rolled his eyes in expert twelve-year-old fashion. “It’s from The Witcher.”

  Luck must have sensed her ongoing confusion, because he turned and explained, “It’s a video game.”

  “And what was that word you said before?” she asked.

  “The Striga,” Damon offered. “He’s like this big hulking vampire thing.”

  “And this guy you saw, he looks like the Striga?”

  “Well, we didn’t see him. Lijah did.”

  “Elijah?” Darger asked. “Who’s that?”

  “Li-jah,” Tyrell said, enunciating the name slowly, like he thought Darger was an idiot. “And he’s half-retard anyway.”

  Darger figured it wasn’t the time or place to correct the kid’s vocabulary.

  “But this Lijah says he saw something happen here?”

  “Yeah, says. He says a lot of stuff.”

  “And what’s Lijah’s last name?”

  The boys exchanged glances. Darger sensed they felt it would be betraying their friend to give his full name to the FBI.

  “He’s not in any trouble.”

  Tyrell considered it for another moment before finally answering. “Ingram.”

  “And where can we find this Lijah Ingram?”

  Damon’s shoulders rose and fell.

  “He moved away last year. After his granny died.”

  “What about your parents?” Luck asked. “Might they know where he went?”

  Damon shrugged again.

  “Well, why don’t Agent Darger and I accompany you boys home, and we can ask.”

  “No way,” Tyrell protested. “You said we could go!”

  “And you still can, but we need to find Lijah, and your mom or dad might know where he went.”

  “Yeah, and then you’re gonna narc on us for being in here!”

  Luck pointed at him.

  “Look, if you guys swear you won’t come back here, then we promise not to mention anything about finding you inside.”

  The younger boys looked to their brother for guidance. Tyrell’s eyes squinted to slits as he considered the deal.

  “OK, whatever. I’ll believe you.”

  Darger and Luck followed the kids downstairs and back out into the light of day. They crossed the street and picked their way across the empty lot beyond, heading in the direction of the cluster of brick houses Darger had noticed on the drive in.

  The boys led the way, and Luck indicated that they should hang back a little.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” he hissed in a half-whisper.

  “What?”

  “You hear something in a place we haven’t cleared, and you go charging in like that?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “They’re kids.”

  “You didn’t know that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know you.”

  “You think so?” The silence stretched out, and she decided to turn the outrage back on him. “What are you doing here, Casey?”

  “Here? As in Detroit?”

  “No, I mean here as in the FB-fucking-I. You have a daughter.”

  “So?”

  “This job puts you in danger.”

  “And being a cop doesn’t?”

  “Not in Athens, Ohio, it doesn’t. Not like this.”

  Luck blew out an incredulous breath.

  “Oh, so that’s what this is about. You’re the only one that�
�s allowed to do this job, and the rest of us have to stand back in awe of the courageous Violet Darger.”

  “Fuck off.”

  The tension from earlier returned tenfold, but the boys had turned up the sidewalk of one of the homes. This wasn’t the time or the place to have it out with Luck. They’d have to press pause on that.

  Darger did her best to set her emotions aside. Aside from a bit of peeling paint around a few of the windows, the house was one of the more well-kept places on the street.

  Tyrell skipped up the front steps two at a time, opened the front door, and stuck his head inside.

  “Mom! The FBI is here to talk to you.”

  “Tyrell, that isn’t funny. What are you—” The woman stopped short when she saw Darger and Luck standing on the porch. “Oh. Hello.”

  “Good afternoon, ma’am.” Luck held out his badge and ID. “I’m Agent Luck, and this is Agent Darger.”

  “Vonda Chalmers,” the woman said by way of introduction.

  “We’re looking for a boy named Lijah Ingram. I understand he used to live around here?”

  She didn’t look directly at them, studying them instead from lowered eyes. Darger realized she was scared. Of them specifically? No, probably of law enforcement in general. It made Darger sad.

  “That’s right. Until his granny took sick,” Mrs. Chalmers answered cautiously. “What do you want with Lijah?”

  “It’s an ongoing investigation, so we can’t really say,” Luck said.

  The woman’s facial features tightened ever so slightly. Darger sensed that despite her own fear, she felt somewhat protective over the boy, and may not give up information about him freely. It was understandable considering her own boys were similar in age.

  “He’s not in any trouble,” Darger explained. “We think he may have witnessed a crime, and it’s important that we talk to him about it. So if you happen to know where he is now, that would be immensely helpful.”

  The hardness at Vonda Chalmers’ mouth and brow softened.

  “I don’t know for sure where he’s at, but I know his uncle was the one that came to take him. I have his phone number, because he asked that I keep an eye on the empty house while it was on the market. When the scrap scavengers see a For Sale sign, they think it says Open for Business.”

  She gestured at a vacant house across the street. The trees and shrubs were so overgrown in front that you could barely tell there was a house behind all the green.

  “It was only two weeks after the Lambs put their house up for sale that someone broke in and stole all the copper. Gutted the place. Did over $20,000 in damage.”

  Mrs. Chalmers closed her eyes and gave her head a shake. “Anyway, I’ll get you that number.”

  Chapter 7

  When they left the house and returned to the abandoned Ravenwood Estates building, Darger anticipated a continuation of their earlier fight, but Luck led the way to the car in silence.

  The blue Post-it note clasped in Darger’s hand fluttered a little in the breeze, the strip of glue adhering it to the tips of her fingers. Above the phone number, Vonda Chalmers had written a name: Stanley Gerard.

  Darger punched the sequence of numbers into her phone and hit send. It rang three times, and then an automated voice informed her that she should leave a message. Darger hung up.

  “Voicemail,” she explained when Luck gave her an inquisitive look.

  “Why didn’t you leave a message?”

  “Classic rookie mistake.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you remember how Tyrell’s mother reacted when he told her the FBI wanted to talk to her?”

  “She thought it was a joke.”

  “So imagine you’re some average Joe going about your day. You check your messages and some random person from a random number is telling you they’re from the FBI, and they need to talk to you.”

  “Sounds fake,” Luck said.

  “Exactly.”

  They’d reached the car now, and Luck unlocked it with the key fob. Darger paused beside her open door, tapping away at her phone.

  “Now what are you doing?”

  “Locating our mysterious Mister Stanley Gerard.”

  A simple search had yielded an address. Now all she had to do was enter it into her GPS navigation app.

  Darger slid into the car and held out her phone so Luck could see the pinpointed spot on the map.

  “How far is this?”

  “It’s the other side of town. And we were only supposed to stop off here to check out the crime scene. Maybe you don’t remember that our real assignment was to go talk to the widow,” Luck said.

  Darger detected a bit of lingering hostility from their argument and chose to ignore it. Bickering wasn’t going to do the investigation any good.

  “Fine.”

  The buckle of her seatbelt clicked into place as Luck backed the car away from Ravenwood Estates. Darger stared up at the building and tried to imagine what it would have looked like in its prime. Then she remembered what they’d learned from the boys and got out her phone again.

  When she searched striga, the first result was for a parasitic plant with the common name of witchweed. Scrolling past that, she found an entry on a Wiki page for The Witcher video game that clarified the original Polish spelling: strzyga.

  She read aloud from a website dedicated to Polish and Slavic folklore: “The strzyga was a vampire-like female demon with two hearts, two souls, and two sets of teeth. When such a being died, only one soul was allowed to pass into the afterlife. The soul that was left behind would reanimate the dead strzyga, spawning an undead creature that feasted on the flesh and blood of living beings — preferably humans, but for short periods of time the strzyga might be satisfied with animals.”

  “Yum,” Luck said.

  “When a suspected strzyga died, the head was chopped off and buried in a separate grave from the rest of the body. This ritual was said to prevent the undead strzyga from rising. Male strzygas were rare, but would have been called strzyg or strzygoń.”

  “You think we’re looking for an undead vampire thing?”

  “No. But it’s interesting, don’t you think? That a kid would describe a killer like some video game monster. It’s fairly perceptive.”

  “I don’t know,” Luck said, not sounding convinced. “They’re kids. They just repeat what they see and hear. I wouldn’t think too deeply on the meaning behind it.”

  Luck steered onto the highway, and Darger watched the scenery of Detroit roll by in a blur. They took the interstate north, passing through an industrial area before the factories gave way to rows of houses. Each block they went by featured at least one or two homes with plywood over the windows and doors.

  They’d been driving for about fifteen minutes when Darger noticed a change: no empty lots with overgrown shrubs and grass, no boarded up homes. As they progressed north, the houses and yards grew in size as well. Clusters of suburban shopping centers huddled along the main drag. It was clear they’d left the city behind.

  * * *

  Auburn Hills was populated with both the unassuming ranch houses and split levels of the middle class and the ostentatious McMansions of the newly rich. The Howards’ home was one of the latter, a giant beige monument to consumerism. Hideous, in Darger’s opinion.

  They rolled through a gate bolstered on either side by stone pillars and proceeded up the brick-paved driveway to the house. The landscaping was nice at least. Mature cedars and maples and some beds that displayed more flowers and greenery than mulch.

  “Word is, there were problems in the marriage.”

  It was a moment before Darger realized Luck was talking about the widow Howard and her deceased husband.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Danny Boy was sued for sexual harassment a few years back. If I recall correctly he suggested a female employee start wearing G-strings so that her panty lines wouldn’t be visible through her pants.”

  “What a thoughtful employer.
”

  Luck parked behind a champagne-colored Mercedes E-Class.

  “Yeah, well, he won the lawsuit. Didn’t pay a cent. But from what we’ve gathered, the marriage was damaged beyond repair.”

  “Could make the wife more likely to talk to us.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking. And I thought it might make sense for you to take point on that.”

  Darger fixed Luck with a penetrating stare.

  “Because of my aggressive interview tactics?”

  “Say what now? I meant because you’re a woman. She might be more willing to commiserate about her philandering husband with someone of the same sex.”

  “Sorry. Last time we interviewed a witness, Loshak told me that sometimes I have a tendency to be a little tenacious. I believe he compared me to a hungry shark.”

  Luck stifled a smile.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t say a damn thing.” He grasped the keys but paused before he pulled them from the ignition. “For what it’s worth, I always thought you had a lot of finesse with witnesses. From what I remember anyhow.”

  The compliment took her by surprise, and she felt a little heat rise to her cheeks.

  “Thank you.”

  Two potted topiaries flanked the limestone steps that led to the front door. Luck jabbed a thumb into the doorbell, the muted chime playing somewhere inside.

  A middle-aged woman in a peach-colored sweater greeted them. She had cat-like green eyes and dark blonde hair that was swirled into a clip at the back of her head.

  “You must be the people from the FBI?”

  The sweater had short sleeves with holes cut out over the shoulders. Not exactly mourning garb, but then Darger figured everyone had their own way of dealing with grief.

  They introduced themselves, and then Darger asked, “Are you Mrs. Howard?”

  “God, call me Cherie,” she said with a wave of her hand.

  Half a dozen rings glittered in the light when her fingers moved. A tangle of gold bangles on her wrist completed the ensemble.

  “And that’s SURE-ee,” she added, emphasizing the pronunciation. “Not Sherry and definitely not Cherry.”

  She invited them inside and closed the door behind them.

  “You want anything to drink? We have pop, orange juice. I could make some coffee?”

  “No, thank you. We only have a few questions for you.”