The Girl In The Sand

by L. T. Vargus

  “Yeah, OK.”

  “So on a scale from one to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, how red do you think Corby’s face was when he turned on the TV and saw the Stump sketch on the evening news?”

  Loshak chuckled his distinctive silent laugh and drove on through the night.

  Two police cruisers and one SUV were parked near the entrance of the service station when they arrived. A sign hung over the building with glowing letters that read: Marco’s Travel Stop. Loshak pulled in next to the white Chevy Tahoe and cut the ignition. Before they were out of the car, Assistant Sheriff Corby was pushing through the glass front door to meet them. He tipped his hat.

  “Evening, agents.”

  “We appreciate you calling us down here,” Loshak said.

  “Well, considering it was your handiwork that brought the tip in, I figured it was only right.” Corby’s tone was wry, but not altogether unfriendly.

  Darger had been expecting worse. After all, Loshak had specifically gone behind his back when he released the composite to the news outlets. She hadn’t thought the locals would react kindly to that. The two suits from their earlier meeting probably had their overpriced underpants in a real twist by now.

  “Can we talk to the witness?” she asked. “The one who called it in?”

  “Knock yourself out. You’ll want to after five minutes with him.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “See for yourself.”

  They followed Corby inside, past rows of chips, gum, and beef jerky. Behind the register and beyond a door marked OFFICE - EMPLOYEES ONLY, one of the patrolmen sat in a molded plastic chair, typing up a witness statement. The witness in this case was a young man, maybe twenty-five at the oldest. He wore a black polo shirt, and the name badge pinned to chest read Ty.

  Ty had a long-boned, scrawny build. Coupled with his mop of hair and sparse goatee, he reminded Darger of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo.

  “I mean, I didn’t really get a super good look at his face. Dude had his hood up. And he was wearing glasses.”

  “Then how was it that you recognized him?” the officer asked.

  Ty frowned and wiggled his lip ring with the tip of his tongue.

  “I don’t know. I guess it was just the dude’s vibe, man.”

  “His vibe?”

  “You know, there was just something funny about this hombre.”

  The officer stopped typing, and he fixed the kid with a dead stare. “I’m going to need you to be a little more specific.”

  Ty blinked a few times, mouth hanging slightly open. It was evident that the policeman and Ty were not on the same wavelength, communication-wise, and Darger took a step into the room.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I think what Ty here is trying to say is that it felt like the right guy. In his gut. Is that right?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Darger tried to think how she could coax more information out of the kid.

  “So maybe think back to before you saw him. When did you notice that you had a customer? Did you see him pull up?”

  “Naw, I was watching South Park. When he came to prepay, that’s when I first noticed the dude. The door chime made that like… dinging sound.”

  “And then what?”

  “He came up to the counter. Said he wanted $10 in gas. I looked out and didn’t see a car at the pumps, so I was a little confused, but he had one of them gas cans. The big metal ones.”

  “Did you know right away that something felt off?”

  Ty nodded.

  “How?”

  “I mean, dude had his hood up around his face. Made me think of that other dude. The one that lived in a shack and blew a bunch of people up.”

  “The Unabomber?” Loshak offered.

  Ty’s face lit up. “Yeah, that’s it! This dude looked just like the Unabomber.”

  Corby cleared his throat, and Darger took that as a sign that her time with the witness was over.

  “We’ll let you finish up your report, Schneider. I’d like to have a chat with our guests here.”

  He emphasized the word guests, and Darger braced herself.

  As they moved away from the office, she heard Officer Schneider get back to the interview.

  “OK, Ty. Did the dude say anything?”

  “Oh yeah,” Ty answered. “After he handed me his money, the dude said, Nice night for a drive. Or something like that.”

  Back amongst the Slim Jims and Funyuns, Corby took a standard cop stance with his legs spread shoulder-width apart and his hands clasped over his belt buckle. His lips pouted out in an exaggerated frown, and Darger started to wonder if he was going to try to kill them with a disapproving look.

  “I’m not one to cry over spilt milk, but I don’t like to beat around the bush about things,” he said finally.

  Two clichés crammed into a single sentence, she thought. Impressive.

  “So I’ll be honest. The Sheriff’s office is not pleased about how you’ve gone about things thus far.”

  Darger wanted to ask if it was really the Sheriff’s office that was upset or the tourism board. But she kept her mouth shut for the time being.

  Corby continued.

  “I felt I was quite clear about not releasing that composite to the news outlets, but you saw fit to do it anyway.”

  “Actually, it wasn’t—” Loshak started to say, but Corby held up his hand to stop him.

  “I’m not interested in hearing your rationale, Agent Loshak. The FBI has its own purview, separate from our office. I understand that I am not in a position to be giving you orders of any kind.”

  Loshak shrugged.

  “That being said,” Corby continued, “We would appreciate a heads up if the FBI decides to employ any further creative tactics like this in the future. It’s one thing to disagree about the particulars of an investigation. But I sure hate to be caught with my pants down.”

  “Understood,” Loshak said.

  Eager to move on to more pressing matters, Darger changed the subject.

  “I assume this place has security cameras?”

  Corby adjusted the brim of his hat and then gestured at a black dome mounted on the ceiling.

  “Inside and out, but Jeffrey Lebowski in there doesn’t have access to the archived footage. Store manager’s on his way down here right now, though I don’t mind telling you I think this is all a waste of time.”

  “How so?” Darger asked. “The kid says he saw Stump.”

  “Of course he did. That’s what happens when you tell people there’s a boogeyman about. They all think they see him. It’s that — what do you call it — subliminal messaging or whatever. Especially a perma-bake like that.” Corby tipped his head in the general direction of the office.

  “A what?”

  “That’s what we used to call it back in school when a kid smoked too much pot too early on. A drug counselor explained to me once that the brain is like Jell-o. In childhood it’s still liquid, not set. It’s only in the teen years that it begins to congeal into something resembling a solid. But if you interrupt that setting period with too many illicit substances, it won’t set right. Stays partially liquid.” He glanced back where Ty was giving his witness statement to Deputy Schneider.

  “I don’t think—” Darger paused, mid-sentence. She’d been on the verge of arguing that she doubted the Jell-o comparison was meant literally, but decided it was a fruitless effort. “Nevermind.”

  “My point is, he’d believe that Puff the Magic Dragon had come through for a fill-up if you put the idea in his head.”

  Through the bank of windows at the front of the gas station, the three of them watched as a silver SUV glided into the lot. It rolled to a stop in one of the parking spaces near the door, and a man climbed down from the driver’s seat. He was shaped like a walrus, all sloped shoulders and barrel chest supported somewhat preposterously on tiny flipper-like feet.

  “I think this is our illustrious store manager,” Corby said. “If you’ll excuse m
e for a moment.”

  Darger milled about under the harsh fluorescent lighting of the convenience store. She spun through a rack of postcards and then moved closer to a shelf filled with low-dollar souvenirs: shot glasses, ashtrays, sand art. One of the hooks held rabbit’s foot keychains in a range of cotton candy colors.

  Darger poked at one of the feet. It swayed like a pendulum from its chain.

  “I had one of those. When I was a kid, of course,” Loshak said from over her shoulder.

  “Same here. Bright pink. I loved how soft it was.” She ran her finger over the silky fur. “And just the idea of having a ‘good luck charm’ was fun, you know? When you’re a kid, you actually believe it.”

  She released the trinket and spun away from it.

  “And then one day, I asked my mom why they called it a rabbit’s foot.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah. She said, Because that’s what it is.”

  “What’d you do then?”

  “I didn’t get it at first. I thought she didn’t understand my question. Or she was giving one of those stereotypical mom responses, like, Because I said so.”

  An old home movie played in her mind’s eye: Darger as a scrawny little girl, nine or ten years old, staring down at a furry lump clutched in her sweat-moist hand, trying to make sense of what her mother has said.

  “And right before I started to pester her again, it clicked. I said, You mean… from a real rabbit? My mother nodded, I shrieked and dropped the thing, and then had a total hysterical meltdown. I made her promise to get rid of it, but I still spent weeks feeling guilty about the poor bunny that had met its untimely demise. All so I could have one of its limbs dangling from my school bag.”

  She shook her head.

  “I want to know what sick fuck decided that a dismembered animal part was any kind of good luck?”

  Loshak uttered one of his silent laughs, and Darger eyed the souvenirs warily.

  “And people must still buy them, or they wouldn’t give it shelf space.”

  She turned and watched Corby and the store manager talking in the parking lot.

  “So what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “The whatchamacallit subliminal messaging or whatever.”

  Loshak sniffed.

  “I’m not going to stand here and deny the existence of the power of suggestion. Can an idea — once planted in someone’s subconscious — take root and make them see or believe things they wouldn’t have otherwise? Sure. And maybe this particular incident could even fall into that category, but we both know that Stump is here somewhere.”

  She mulled that over for a moment.

  “Yeah. Maybe everyone knows it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I expected Corby to be a lot more pissed off about the tabloid story, for one. When I pull that kind of crap, it never goes over quite this well.”

  “You’re a woman.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that law enforcement isn’t exactly known as a haven of feminist ideals. Loudmouthed, uppity girl like you pushes all the wrong buttons for a lot of these guys.”

  “Uppity?”

  “I thought loudmouthed would have been the one that irked you.”

  “That too.”

  Darger blinked a few times, thought about Loshak’s comment again.

  “You really think it’s because I’m a woman?”

  Loshak shrugged. “In part. Probably doesn’t help any that you’re young, too. Us old fogeys don’t like being told what to do by anyone younger than us, male or female.”

  Darger watched the Assistant Sheriff through the window. Corby smiled, nodded, spoke to the manager, hopefully getting access to the surveillance footage any second now.

  “Even if you’re right, I wonder if Corby has been chewing on the Stump theory all along. You’d have to be an idiot not to, and he doesn’t quite strike me as one.”

  Chapter 12

  The store manager’s name was Marty Beck. He was an oily-looking man with slicked back hair and an unlit cigar in his mouth that he removed periodically to roll between his fingers. There was a gold chain clasped around his neck, and it lay nestled in a bed of graying chest hair, something he showed off intentionally by leaving the buttons of his polo shirt undone.

  Ty had returned to his post at the register, and now Darger, Loshak, Corby, and Beck were crammed into the tiny office, huddled around a flat screen computer monitor. Beck was drenched in some ghastly aftershave or cologne, or maybe he just emitted the odor as a matter of course. Whatever it was, Darger wished she’d gotten the spot next to the door so she could at least poke her head out for some fresh air now and then.

  “We got video but no sound, OK? What time are we lookin’ for?” Beck asked.

  “Around eleven is what the kid said. Maybe a little before.”

  Beck poked at the keyboard on the desk, using only the first fingers on either hand. The cigar wiggled in his lips.

  Shapes flitted across the screen as the footage rewound. There was feed from four cameras: two showing the inside of the store and two fixed on the gas pumps and the parking lot outside. In one of the frames, Ty the clerk spent most of his time hunched over his phone, chuckling to himself.

  When the timestamp reached their mark, Beck’s finger jabbed the keyboard and the video went back to normal speed.

  Darger tried to focus on the footage of the parking lot but kept finding herself drawn back to watching Ty, giggling while he watched his TV show. Because he was alone, and because the angle of the video didn’t show his phone, he seemed to be laughing at thin air. A solitary weirdo, staring into space and finding something amusing there.

  Then they saw it. A huge old pickup truck lumbered into frame, pulling through to the parking lot on the far side of the building.

  “Look at that old tank,” Corby said. “Gotta be 1970s.”

  “Or early 80s. And domestic by the profile. Ford or Chevy, maybe Dodge,” Loshak added.

  Corby pointed at a corner of the screen, nearest to the entrance of the service station. It was just a patch of grainy blackness at the moment.

  “Looks like he came in from the west.”

  The truck jolted to a stop in one of the parking spaces. A man climbed out.

  A collective hush fell over the group. The loudest sound for the next several seconds was the buzzing overhead from the fluorescent lights.

  After closing the door of his truck, the man stalked over the cement to the gas station entrance. Darger squinted and leaned a little closer to the monitor, but it did nothing to improve the quality of the video.

  As the man crossed the lot, the first camera lost him. After a moment, another picked him up. With the monitor split into four panels, it gave the appearance of him jumping from one quadrant to the next, like a magic trick.

  He pushed through the glass door, approached the counter. The size looked right for Stump, but that meant nothing on its own.

  Darger tried to read his body language, size him up by the way he walked, the way he moved. He seemed confident, fairly nonchalant, but there was a touch of aggression to him somehow, an intensity she couldn’t pin down to a feature or gesture.

  His clothes seemed purposely nondescript — a plain hoodie, blue jeans, a pair of Adidas — but Darger had to agree with Ty: the hood and sunglasses felt wrong. Looked like a celebrity trying to escape the paparazzi. Trying too hard, even, like maybe he wanted to be noticed.

  The man’s mouth moved, but there was no voice to match, of course. A silent movie, though Darger wasn’t sure of the genre yet. If it was Stump in the video, it was surely horror. If it wasn’t him, a farce.

  The mystery man handed a bill over to Ty. After punching a few buttons on the register, the drawer opened, and Ty deposited the cash. Meanwhile, the hooded man plucked something from one of the shelves, glanced at it for a moment, and then put it back.

  “What was that?” Darger asked.


  “One of our novelty beer koozies,” the manager said. “Popular impulse buy.”

  From her vantage point, she could just make out the row of foam can covers printed with phrases like In dog beers, I’ve only had one and Drinks well with others.

  “Could try for prints on that,” Loshak said. “Same with the door handle and the counter area. Gas pump, too.”

  Darger studied Corby from the corner of her eye, waiting for him to protest, to talk about wasted manpower and lab costs on a wild goose chase.

  Instead, he nodded.

  “Worth a shot. I’ll call in our crime scene techs.”

  Maybe he really was coming around.

  She refocused her attention back on the video. The man was at one of the pumps now, filling the metal jerry can with his ten dollars in gasoline. When he finished, he sauntered back to his truck and stowed the gas in the rear bed. He opened the door, paused to reach for something, and climbed in. Several seconds passed before the truck’s taillights came to life. As soon as the truck exited the lot and out of the camera’s range, Loshak had Beck rewind so they could watch from the beginning.

  Corby stepped away from the computer monitor, and Darger could hear him issuing orders to someone at his office.

  “Bring Rita, she gets the best prints. We’ve got a door handle, a foam beer koozie, and some cash that might have latents.”

  In the meantime, Loshak and Beck tried to get a clearer picture of the man’s face from the video.

  “Just after he comes inside, when he goes past this camera,” Loshak said, tapping the screen. “Can you pause there and go frame-by-frame?”

  Beck obeyed, jabbing his short fingers at the keyboard.

  “OK, stop there. Can we zoom in on this?”

  The man’s face grew in size until it filled the screen. She knew what Loshak was thinking, because it was the same question on her mind: Is it him? Were they looking at Leonard Stump?

  They repeated this process with each of the cameras, trying to get a best possible picture of the mystery man from the various angles. Darger stared at the grainy footage until the picture devolved into individual pixels. A meaningless dot matrix. She squeezed her eyelids together and sighed. It was pointless. She could gaze into the screen until her eyes bled. The camera footage alone would never be enough evidence to prove it was Stump. But fingerprints would.