The Girl In The Sand

by L. T. Vargus

  Darger aimed her knees and elbows for his balls, her fingernails for his eyes, but he was wily and strong and bucked away from her each time.

  His hand shot out, reaching for something behind her. The gun? The desk leg? With one vicious tug, he yanked the vinyl shower curtain over her head, looped it all the way around. Layers of white plastic blotted out her vision. She scratched and flailed, but she couldn’t see.

  His arms were clumsy but strong, pinning her thrashing limbs to her chest, turning her so she was face down. Posed like an unwilling doll. The weight of his big body crushing her small one.

  And then she felt the plastic sheeting cinch tight around her head, around her neck. He was suffocating her.

  Darger clawed at the thick vinyl, but her fingernails couldn’t break through.

  She bucked and writhed, but he was too strong. Too strong. Holding her down. Grinding against her to maintain his grip, to quell her movements.

  Confusion. Swirling feelings in the dark. Trapped. Out of control. Lost.

  Everything hot and wet from the humidity of her own breath. Her final breaths.

  The incredible pressure of the vinyl pressed into her face and throat, taking her life.

  His body was taut, muscles rigid and straining. And then all at once they loosened. Went slack. His weight shifted off her back.

  Darger ripped the curtain away from her face. The cool air rushing to fill her lungs in quick, greedy breaths.

  Pink and purple splotches clouded her vision as she peered over her shoulder. Stump’s eyes were wide. Shocked. He gasped a little, and a strand of saliva flew out of his mouth and dribbled down his lip. It was red.

  She rolled away from him, and he oozed onto the tile, not seeming altogether solid. A blob of flesh and bone.

  And Emily now filled the frame of Darger’s vision. Standing over both of them. A bloody knife in her hand.

  The girl’s face was expressionless. Dead-eyed.

  She held still, and the room went so quiet. So empty after all that fighting and crashing about.

  Stump sprawled face up. His chest still moved, still went up and down with each breath. But his teeth and lips were stained red with blood.

  And Emily moved at last. Squatted over him. Her knees sliding up over his shoulders to straddle him at the neck. Knife poised.

  The blade disappeared into an eye socket, pierced the bridge of his nose, carved red gouges into his cheeks and lips and chin.

  Her face remained blank as she worked the knife up and down. Stabbed him in the face again and again.

  It sounded wet. Her fist slapping at his open wound of a face as she drove the knife in to the hilt.

  Each outward thrust flung flecks of blood everywhere, spattered it all around the bathroom like an abstract painting rendered only in red.

  Darger could only watch this unfold. Somehow frozen. Her lips parted in shock. Her mind not quite able to process it.

  Stump’s chest trembled and a pink bubble of bloody spittle formed over his mouth. Popped.

  The girl still straddled him at the neck, but her knife lay still, hanging lifeless at the end of her arm.

  She stared into Stump’s ruined face, a strange look on her own. Curious, Darger thought. She looked curious.

  “Well?” Emily whispered, talking to the barely living body between her legs. “Anything?”

  And Darger couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t look away.

  “Yeah. I didn’t think so,” Emily said.

  The girl’s chest heaved in and out, her eyes still locked on the ruined face, on the blood trickling out of it everywhere.

  Nicole pulled Emily off then, scooping her under the armpits, hugging and lifting.

  “Come on,” she said in a small voice. “It’s done.”

  Darger closed her eyes for a little while. And everything went quiet.

  She and Stump lay bleeding together. Dying together.

  A tiny mewl came out of Leonard Stump at the end. A feminine sound. Almost feline.

  And then, at last, he was still.

  Chapter 65

  By the time Loshak arrived at the scene, the sun was up, casting its piercing yellow brilliance over everything. He tried to block the harshness out with a pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled down low on his brow, but they offered little help.

  The driveway was unmarked, an unpaved gash in the landscape. No mailbox. No house number. On most days he would have driven past without noticing it at all. But today the narrow lane was choked with vehicles. Law enforcement. Media people. Even pedestrians out to gawk, filming it all on their phones.

  News vans sat at the bottom of the hill, antennas protruding from their roofs. A mess of cameramen pointed their lenses at reporters wearing channel specific windbreakers, all gesturing to the area beyond the police tape.

  Further up he found police cruisers and a few unmarked units he knew to belong to detectives and local Feds. Quite a turnout. And understandably so. Everyone wanted a piece with a case this big, wanted to experience it, to celebrate it, to see it up close with their own two eyes.

  He pulled past the media and parked the rental off to one side of the drive, keeping his head down until he got out of sight of the cameras, thankful he’d worn the cap and Ray-Bans.

  Loshak flashed his badge before ducking under the police tape, getting a nod from the officer guarding the perimeter. He walked the driveway, mounting the slope.

  The blackened husk of a shed seemed to rise from the ground as he crested the hill. Steam still fluttered out of the structure, evidence that the fire department had doused it.

  It was the smoke that led them here — that black coil snaking into the sky. The full magnitude of the scene had only come clear when the girls approached the firefighters, frantic and covered in blood.

  The house itself looked normal enough in the daylight, Loshak thought. Nice, even. He wondered if it had seemed more sinister the night before. He tried to picture it — Darger storming the place in the dark without her gun. The violent pictures that came made him uneasy, a little nauseous, so he let it go.

  Investigators swarmed the property. Latex-gloved crime scene techs snapped photos, logged and bagged various pieces of evidence. Three detectives huddled just outside the front door, discussing, heads bobbing, arms and fingers pointing to parts of the house, parts of the property.

  The atmosphere was entirely different from the earlier scenes — the burned cars in the desert, the mass grave. Back when the killer was still at large, the tension vibrated in the air, kept everyone on edge. But nobody had to worry about that this time around, and he could read it in the body language, in the tones of the chatter. The scene maintained a certain level of professionalism — the stoic disposition of people doing detail-oriented work — but there was a jubilation to be felt here. Subtle but present.

  Loshak slipped past the detectives without drawing their notice, and once again he was thankful. He didn’t care to partake in the small talk today. Not with all that had happened. He wanted — needed — to see it for himself, and then he could get out of here. Be done with it.

  He passed through the doorway, entered the shade of the house. He thought about taking the sunglasses off, but a pang of anxiety told him not to, told him to stay covered up, and he obeyed.

  Potting soil crunched underfoot in the foyer, an upturned fern explaining the mess. Loshak pictured Emily fighting Stump here, swinging a blunt object into his jaw, grappling with him in this dirt. Again a queasiness welled in him. He swallowed and moved on.

  The hallway stretched out. Led the way to the bathroom.

  And he was there. Standing in the doorway. Looking in on where it all happened.

  The room was empty. Quiet. A reverent feel occupied this space, a stillness totally at odds with all those swarming busybodies outside.

  Light spilled in through a single window, clouded by the frosted glass. And Loshak’s gaze danced over all the surfaces here, filling in some of the m
issing pieces that had already been collected as evidence.

  Jagged shards of mirror on the floor, a few still clinging to the frame, cracks running all through the glass like veins.

  The shower curtain ripped away from the rod, exposing the seafoam tiles that lined the tub.

  Gummy blood pooled on the linoleum. Red puddles and smears slowly congealing as time passed, growing thick and opaque, almost cloudy.

  He squatted. Looked under the clawfoot tub. The gap was empty now — a piece of linoleum tucked in the shade. That was where they’d found the gun. It had skittered between the wall and the tub during the skirmish, out of reach. If that hadn’t happened…

  Loshak stood. Pursed his lips. Hesitated for a moment.

  He walked back down the hall, crunched through the foyer, and exited through the open doorway. He’d seen quite enough.

  * * *

  When Loshak stepped into Darger’s hospital room, he found her nestled in a mess of small white blankets. Various monitors blinked and fidgeted over her left shoulder, keeping track of her vitals, and bandages swaddled her head, gauze wound all the way around so she looked like a mummy from the eyebrows up.

  She didn’t see him come in, flexing and unflexing her left hand on the bed before her, totally focused on that routine movement.

  “Knock knock,” Loshak said.

  Her head turned to him, at last, and a medicated look occupied her gaze. Spacey. Far away. But awake, nonetheless. As alert as could be hoped for someone doped to the gills on opioids.

  “Who’s there?” Darger said, mustering a trace of a smile.

  He puffed a courtesy chuckle from his nostrils.

  Darger’s face morphed then, her eyes going huge like something in a cartoon.

  “Are the girls OK?” she said, dropping her voice to a lower register.

  He hesitated for a moment, caught a little off guard by not only her question but her demeanor.

  “Yeah, yeah. Everyone’s fine.”

  Her face softened some, eyes squinting at him. She was sizing him up, he could tell. Trying to see if he was telling the truth.

  “They’re fine, Violet. Fine as someone could be after something like that. I met both of their kids this morning, when we got everyone reunited.”

  The squinting intensified for a beat and then let up.

  “OK,” she said. “Good.”

  “I talked to one of them — Emily — for a little bit when the LVMPD was going over stuff with them. She was nice and everything. Smart, but… I don’t know. I got the feeling there was something more she wanted to tell me, something that trickled to the tip of her tongue, and then she backed off. I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t the right time.”

  Darger had zoned out. Looking at her flexing hand again. Loshak figured that was the strong meds at work.

  He watched for a moment, her fingers folding into her palm and unfolding. Again his eyes moved to the tiny white blankets piled about her shoulders.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  She turned to him, nodded like a toddler.

  “What’s with the blankets?”

  “Hm?”

  “Why so small?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what they gave me. The nurse kept saying I looked cold and wrapping another one around my shoulders. I was shivering, maybe.”

  “Weird. Must be some new hospital thing. Little blankets.”

  “I guess.”

  “I mean, what the hell was wrong with full-sized blankets?”

  “I’m fine, by the way. Just to get it out of the way so you can continue with your blanket rant. The surgery was a success and everything. I mean, apart from the traumatic head wound, I’m fine.”

  Loshak laughed.

  “Your sense of humor appears to be intact. I’ll give you that,” he said. He blinked a few times before he went on. “I talked to the doc. He said you were lucky. Said only about 10% of people who take head shots survive, but everything went just right for you. I guess I don’t know what else to say. I could give a speech about how you can’t keep putting yourself in danger like this, but it wouldn’t do any good, would it?”

  Darger’s smile was a beat late — must be the pain pills, he figured. She shook her head.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “I guess if a bullet to the skull can’t get through to that brain of yours, mere words have no hope at all.”

  Now she was the one providing the courtesy laugh.

  “I just went,” Loshak said. “Checked out the crime scene. I wanted to see it, you know?”

  “Nice place, right?”

  “Yeah. Bathroom was a little bloody for my taste, but yeah. It was nice enough.”

  He took off his jacket before he went on.

  “Look, I’m sure you’ve gone over the details enough times for one lifetime, but I have one question. You were shot earlier on, right? That’s primarily Stump’s blood all over the linoleum in the bathroom?”

  She nodded.

  “Most of it, anyway.”

  Loshak sucked his teeth.

  “I assume they told you that Stump is alive.”

  Her head bobbed almost imperceptibly.

  “Yeah. I made Corby swear they’d keep him double-cuffed to the bed for the duration of his hospital stay. In addition to the armed deputies standing guard outside of his room.”

  “Eighteen stab wounds.” He shook his head. “I guess some of your luck must have rubbed off on the piece of shit.”

  Darger looked at him for a moment, blinking. She looked far away. Somewhere else in her head. Maybe it was the drugs, but he thought she was remembering something, reliving something. And then the corners of her mouth curled upward.

  “He lost an eye, though.”

  Epilogue

  Darger slept most of the first few days in the hospital, groggy from the drugs and her wounds. During visiting hours, Loshak rarely left her bedside. She’d turn her head, half-awake, to find him perusing the newspaper, reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose.

  A nurse woke her at eight for her morning cocktail of meds. Some she swallowed, others were pumped directly into her veins. Next came the nursing assistant, who emptied Darger’s catheter and helped her with a sponge bath.

  “When can I take a real shower?” Darger asked, hating the way her skin felt sticky and clammy even after scrubbing vigorously with the washcloth.

  “Doctor doesn’t want you out of bed, yet. It’ll be a few days more, at least.”

  “Delightful.”

  After she left, Darger reached for the little packet of toiletries on the bedside table. Lotion, lip balm, a disposable razor, and a small mirror. She tore the plastic wrapper free from the mirror and held it up to her face.

  The hand clutching the mirror started to shake. She’d never thought herself all that vain, but with the combination of shaved head, swelling, and bruising, she looked like a potato. A fuzzy, half-rotten potato.

  A breathy sob escaped from her mouth, and she tossed the mirror in the trash can next to her bed. The doctors had warned her she may never walk without a cane, may never regain full use of her left arm and hand, but here she was crying because she was ugly.

  Reaching for a tissue, she dabbed the tears from her eyes and blew her nose.

  Someone knocked at the door. Darger’s eyes went to the clock on the bedside table, figuring this was usually the time Loshak showed up. The door opened, revealing a familiar face, but it wasn’t Loshak.

  “You’re awake,” Owen said, smiling. “They said you’re still in and out.”

  He came around the side of the bed to kiss her, and to his credit, Darger didn’t see a flicker of disgust cross his face at the sight of her misshapen head. But she was sure it was there. Owen had always had a good poker face.

  She shouldn’t think that way, she knew. Not when he was only trying to comfort her.

  “Bullet to the head,” he said. “Way I figure it, you finally got yourself a little street cred.”

&n
bsp; “Yeah, my album drops next month. It’s going to be huge.”

  She tried to focus on the joke, to forget what she’d seen in the mirror, but it was a struggle.

  He studied her face, got a glimpse of what she was thinking perhaps, and frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Darger turned her head. Fiddled with the tape on her IV tubing.

  “Nothing.”

  “Horse shit. Come on, Violet. Tell me.”

  Without looking over at him, she muttered, “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Stay. I know this isn’t what you signed up for.”

  Owen leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms.

  “What are you going on about?”

  “Oh come on, Owen. I look like fucking Quasimodo.”

  “And?”

  “Well first of all, you’re supposed to tell me it’s not that bad.”

  He cocked his head to one side.

  “So which is it? I’m supposed to sugarcoat it for you, or I’m supposed to be so shallow that I scream at the sight of you and run for the hills?”

  Darger picked at a nubby spot on one of the flannel blankets.

  “Technically, you could do both.”

  Owen let out a dismissive scoff and wrapped one hand around her wrist.

  “You got shot in the head. Of course you look like hell. I don’t think I looked so fresh after my liver transplant. The swelling will go down. Your hair will grow back.”

  He shrugged.

  “And if it doesn’t… well, then I’m definitely out.”

  Darger grit her teeth together but couldn’t keep the smile off her face. Owen grinned back at her. She let him entwine his fingers in hers.

  “You didn’t think I’d scare away that easy, did you?”

  Tears prickled at the corners of Darger’s eyes. She wiped them away, her throat feeling thick.

  “Sorry. I think the morphine is making me weepy.”

  He took her hand again and squeezed it.

  “Almost forgot. Loshak wanted me to let you know he’s taken care of everything. He’s picking your mom up at the airport now.”