by L. T. Vargus
Emily squints to try to see through the gloom. She can’t make out the key in his hand, but she hears the snick of the deadbolt pulling out of the strike box, sliding out of the way.
He turns his wrist, and the door creaks a little as it peels free of the door frame, and it’s open.
Emily can’t help but gasp a little at the sight of it. The open door. The escape route laid bare.
His torso fills the door frame for just a second, and then he disappears into the dark on the other side.
His footsteps are light. More soft scuffing sounds than the pounding footfalls she might expect based on the size of him. She listens as their sound trails away to nothing.
The silence holds for three heartbeats, and then the panic is on her. Eyes locked on that open door.
She strains at the handcuffs. Rocks the desk up onto two legs and braces herself as it thumps back down a second later.
Her heart batters away at the walls of her chest. Awake. Alive.
The way free hangs open. So close.
She lurches toward it like an idiot dog at the end of its chain. Making almost no progress. The desk thrashing around. Scooting a couple of inches toward its destination.
The steel edges of the cuffs groove red circles into her wrists.
So close. It’s all she can think. Wide eyes staring into the dark rectangular opening.
But no. Not now. Not yet. She can’t be stupid.
It would never work like this. Attached to a desk. Him out there waiting.
She needs to think all of this through. Needs to be patient.
She stops flailing. Takes a breath.
The footsteps fade back in somewhere out there. The volume swelling as he draws near.
The shadow figure appears in the doorway. Something solid taking shape in the gloom. Blacker than the rest.
He pads toward her, walking on the balls of his feet, his movements somehow catlike. Lithe. Graceful. He passes into the fire’s light, and color blooms once more on his body. The dark blue of his jeans. The brown of his button-down shirt.
The shadows still swirl about his face, though. Shifting pockets of blackness that obscure his features, shrouding most completely at his brow and jaw.
A bowl hovers before him, cupped there in both hands, the stem of a spoon rising out at an angle.
So he had been talking about feeding her.
He squats just in front of her desk, blocking out the fire’s light.
This space seems very dark now. The nothingness along the floor lurching upward to swallow more of the room.
“Eat,” he says, his voice going harder than it had been.
It takes a second, but she sees the spoon floating in front of her face, a scoop of something dark loaded on it. She obeys his command, mouth closing around the piece of cutlery, around some bit of food she can’t quite see.
The foreign substance reveals itself to her in stages. Cold. Mushy. Sweet. The faintest bitterness in the aftertaste.
After the first bite, she’s pretty sure it’s pudding. The sweetness and the texture tell her that much. After the third, she believes it to be chocolate. That touch of bitterness leads her to this conclusion, though it’s so subtle she’s not certain. It could be butterscotch.
Her eyes adjust to the new level of light between them, and the features of his face start to become clear.
At first, he is all big eyes in the dark. Cold eyes that blink slowly, a motion that reminds her of some intelligent creature she can’t place.
Then the vague shape of his nose fades into view. Straight and bony. The angular cheekbones and brow. The strong jaw.
His lips twitch twice. A pair of false starts before he begins to speak.
“Bodies and souls. That’s the thing, right? That’s what our culture can’t make up its mind about. Our explanations of them morph into something new every decade, and the shared dreams follow suit. All of our desires. All of our ideologies. They never stop shifting.”
He offers another scoop, gently pushes it past her lips and into her mouth.
“That’s the paradox that we’ll probably never figure out. We are flesh. We are skin and bone and blood. A wrinkled up brain. All of our experiences filter through our bodies. And yet our bodies alone are not us. We are some kind of consciousness. We are ideas, dreams, a personality. Things that exist beyond the physical plane, at least in some sense. Something that exists in the abstract. Some people think there’s a soul, but more people than ever don’t. And maybe we’re getting to some kind of crisis on that front.”
The spoon tinkles against the side of the bowl, chimes out a shrill note, and the sound interrupts his thought.
He blinks a few times. Gathers another spoonful and feeds her.
“With the pervading point of view in the world today, life is mostly meaningless and yet it’s the only thing with any purpose, which makes it deeply meaningful. It is both. It’s everything and nothing. Positive and negative. Both things are equally true. It’s a miracle and an abomination. The beginning and the end. The best of times and the worst of times.”
He smiles, large teeth glowing purple among the shadows like strange hunks of porcelain.
“And sometimes I think that makes every experience a religious one. We look for some spiritual meaning everywhere, some way to make existence make sense. And that’s what we’re doing here. Both of us. We’re right on the edge of it. Sitting on the lip of the thing, looking down into the well.”
The tiredness hits her all at once as he jabbers on. Some emptiness spun into her head. Some weakness rendered in her neck and eyes.
Her internal world seems to deepen, to suck her further into her own skull. The outside world suddenly so far away.
Awareness of what’s happening washes over her in waves. An explanation seeping into her consciousness. Slowly, slowly.
The pudding. He’s drugged her. Of course.
“Sleep now. I have to head out for a bit. We’ll have company soon, and uh…”
For the first time, he almost seems to be searching for words. Unrehearsed.
“See, you’ll go second. You’ll see everything. And something about you makes me think maybe you could be… I don’t know. I don’t want to jinx it. I’ve been disappointed so many times before.”
Her head dips. Eyes droop. She catches a glimpse of the darkness before she bobs back to the surface. The black nothing waits just on the other side of her swoon.
She fights it just long enough to see him pass through the doorway again.
And reality is gone.
Chapter 20
Loshak navigated the rental car through the bustle of Las Vegas, though from the passenger seat Darger noticed the sights and sounds of the city not at all.
Instead she stared at the photograph on her phone, all other stimulus blocked out apart from that image. Sad eyes. Dark hair. There was an intelligence in the girl’s features, Darger thought. A vulnerability balanced with a sense of humor, a sense of knowing.
It was the profile picture of a seemingly dormant Twitter account. The girl hadn’t tweeted since late 2016. Her last tweet had been about her daughter’s birthday cake.
Emily Kessler. That was the girl’s name.
Technically, she was Emily Whitlock by marriage, but according to the babysitter who called in the Missing Persons report, the couple had separated some months earlier, and Emily had reverted to using her maiden name.
Darger compared Emily’s photo to the grainy surveillance screenshot of the girl in the pickup truck, just faintly visible in those few moments when the lights of a passing car washed over her. It had to be Emily. The resemblance was there, and the timing was right. Emily had disappeared only hours before the truck was sighted at Marco’s Travel Stop.
And now Leonard Stump had her somewhere, still alive most likely.
The next break came when Castellano found Emily listed on a local escort website called Sin City Bliss. Karli Reyes, the first girl they’d identified from the burned-out car, al
so had a profile on the site. A coincidental connection, perhaps. But for now, it was something to go on. A possibility.
Castellano and her team were busy running down more leads from the site. Pulling dental records of any missing girls who had a listing, hoping to match them to the other body they’d found in the trunk with Karli.
“Too bad the fingerprints at the gas station didn’t pan out,” Loshak said, shaking her from her thoughts. “Would have made things easier. As far as confirming once and for all that it’s Stump, I mean.”
Darger set the phone in her lap, the picture of Emily guttering to a black screen.
“Maybe today will be what we need.”
“I hope so. Her house is just up here.”
So this was it. Claire Garcia’s house. Darger had heard a lot about Claire over the years, both in the media reports about Stump but also from Loshak.
Twenty years ago, Stump abducted Claire and her best friend, Tammy Podolak, outside of a bar in downtown Vegas. Somehow, despite being bound and drugged, Claire escaped, and it was this turn of fate that lead to Stump’s capture and arrest. Claire’s friend was not so lucky.
And that’s why they were here today. There was a chance Tammy lay among those skeletons buried in the sand. It was a long shot, perhaps, but if Claire could verify that, it’d be another break in the case. Finally they’d be able to get local law enforcement on board for a full-on Leonard Stump manhunt.
The car seemed to slow as they got closer to Claire’s place. Loshak opened his mouth as if to speak, worked his jaw like he was chewing on something.
“What?” Darger said.
“Nothing, I just…”
He sighed.
“Spit it out. I can tell something’s bugging you.”
“OK, just don’t take this the wrong way.”
“You know, that’s my second-favorite way to start a conversation. My favorite is, You know what your problem is?”
Loshak struggled against a smile.
“It’s serious.”
“I’m listening.”
“Claire’s been through a lot. She’s… sensitive, I guess you could say. And she values her privacy. There’s a reason she’s never done interviews, never written a book. But there’s something else, too.”
Darger squinted into the sun and waited for him to go on.
“She blames herself, which isn’t a surprise. Survivor’s guilt and all that.”
“Expected. I still don’t know what you’re getting at, though.”
“Just don’t push her too hard, OK? We might not get anything from her. She might not even want to talk to us. And we have to respect that.”
Darger narrowed her eyes at him.
“What do you think I’m going to do? Bust out the waterboarding gear?”
“No. I didn’t mean it like that. Just… you can be a little tenacious, you know?”
“Tenacious?”
“I mean, ferocious, maybe. You get that shark look in your eyes.”
“Jesus, Loshak. You make me sound half-feral.”
Loshak wheeled the rental into the driveway, and their attention shifted from the conversation to the house before them.
It was a small home — a stucco box with a tile roof like all the rest in the neighborhood. The front yard was a mostly barren swath of sand and rock.
Claire sat on the porch, if you could call it that. It was a simple slab of concrete with two steps down to the sidewalk, a small rectangle of shade provided by the overhang above the door.
The woman’s face looked blank at first, but when Loshak stepped out of the car, she had a small smile for him.
“This is my partner, Violet Darger,” he said.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Darger said, reaching out to shake Claire’s hand.
It was a small hand, delicate and girlish. Timid.
Up close, Darger could make out the scar — the puckered place extending from the corner of Claire’s mouth where Leonard Stump’s blade had left its mark, written something into her flesh forever.
“Maybe we could go inside if you have a minute,” Loshak said. “So we could talk.”
Claire stood and reached to open the door, but she stopped with her hand on the knob and turned back to face Loshak.
“Wait. I just have to know. It’s her, isn’t it? You found Tammy.”
“We don’t know yet,” Loshak said. “That’s why we’re here. We need you to take a look at some things.”
* * *
Police photographs lay on the kitchen table — shots of the various incidentals found among the bodies in the desert grave.
Trinkets. Bracelets. Necklaces. Keychains. The objects looked strange — almost sinister — when isolated like this, each framed alone in the rectangle of glossy photo paper. The stark effect granted them an eerie quality, like talismans from a horror movie. Curios of the cursed, of the damned. When Darger really thought about it, it wasn’t so far off from the truth.
Claire leaned over the pile Loshak had laid out on the tabletop, her eyes squinted. She took her time, studying one for several moments before moving on to the next. When she spoke, her voice came out just louder than a whisper.
“Is each one of these from a different girl?”
Darger answered in a measured tone.
“We’re not sure. The identification process can be very slow…” Darger stopped talking and finished the thought in her head: When we’ve only got bones to work with.
“But you found a lot of bodies, right? They kept calling it a mass grave on the news.”
Darger glanced at Loshak, not sure if he wanted to answer.
He took a sip of lemonade. Stalling.
“Yes, there are quite a few.”
“How many?”
Again Darger waited, deferring to Loshak’s judgment.
“Nineteen confirmed, so far. But there are more.”
Claire’s hand flew up to cover her mouth, an involuntary movement that reminded Darger of a fleeing bird.
“Take your time, Claire,” Loshak said. “I know it’s hard.”
After a second, the girl nodded and went back to examining the ghoulish photos, that serious look forming again on her face, replacing the frightened one.
Darger couldn’t help but observe her as she worked. Long lashes. Heart-shaped face. Small, elfin features. Dark eyes. She still looked like a girl in most ways, though she had to be in her 40s by now. A wounded child. She’d been through so much already, and now she was tasked with looking through all these remnants of the dead.
In time, Loshak and Darger stood, obeying some unspoken instinct to give Claire space. They lingered a few paces away, sweaty glasses of lemonade clutched in their hands.
Out of the corner of her eye, Darger sensed a man’s figure forming in the kitchen doorway, a dark shape that Darger took as hostile at first. Then some part of her remembered that Claire lived with someone. Mark Morgan, if she was remembering the name right.
“Good afternoon,” Loshak said, holding his hand out to shake.
The man made no move to take it. His eyes had fallen on the photographs on the table.
“What’s all this?” he said, his voice loud and a little piercing.
When no one answered, he took a step toward Claire.
“I thought we agreed you were done with this crap.”
Claire answered him.
“I’m handling it, Mark. Just go watch TV, baby.”
He just stood there, glaring, eyes swiveling from Darger to Loshak and back.
“Go on, Mark.”
At last, he turned. Disappeared into the hall.
“I’m sorry,” Claire said, eyes locked on Loshak. “He just….”
“No need to apologize, Claire. We’re the ones intruding in your life.”
She nodded, turned back to the pictures.
Within a few seconds, Claire blinked rapidly against a line of tears collecting at the corners of her eyes. At first, Darger took this as a sign,
but when she peeked over at Loshak, he gave the tiniest shake of his head. And Claire kept sifting through.
Sensitive was how Loshak had described her, and Darger thought that seemed pretty spot on just now. What did it cost Claire — the only known survivor of Leonard Stump — to look through these mementos of all the girls who hadn’t gotten away?
When Claire had shuffled through nearly the whole stack, Darger felt her hope dwindle. This was going to be another dead end.
She flexed her back muscles, trying to stifle the itch of frustration building between her shoulder blades. It wasn’t Claire’s fault if nothing looked familiar. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. But Darger had so wanted this to pan out.
Abruptly, Claire got to her feet, dropping the photographs onto the table in front of her. Before they could ask what was wrong, Claire had rushed out of the room.
Darger looked at her partner.
“Maybe this wasn’t the best idea.”
“It’s not like we had a choice,” Loshak answered, but his tone said it plainly. He was regretting the decision to come here.
There was a connection between Loshak and Claire. Darger felt it. Both were haunted by the same ghost.
Padded footsteps and a creaking floorboard announced Claire’s return. Darger stood.
“I’m sorry if we’ve upset you. We shouldn’t have pushed you to look at this stuff.”
Claire swept past without acknowledging the words, one hand balled into a fist.
Darger questioned Loshak with her eyes, but he only shrugged.
Claire took her seat again, and began spreading the pictures out on the coffee table. She slid them around into piles, searching for something. Finally she stopped, with one of the photos separated from the rest.
It showed an oblong piece of metal, oddly shaped with one flat side and one rounded side. Darger remembered noticing it in one of the evidence baggies. She’d studied it for a long time, trying to determine what it might have.
Claire’s fingers unfolded. There was a necklace nestled in the cup of her palm: a silver ball chain with a charm on the end. The charm was similar in shape to the mystery item in the photograph, only this one hadn’t been buried in the desert for twenty years.
Hand shaking, Claire set the necklace down on top of the photo. Together, the two pieces formed an egg-shaped oval.