Violet Darger | Book 8 | Countdown To Midnight

by Vargus, L. T.

  When they reached East Hampton, the houses and yards grew bigger still. Set back from the road and landscaped to maximize privacy. Darger caught glimpses of some of the homes through the trees. Many were traditional, with cedar shake siding and shutters on the windows. Some were quite large, others were more modest. Darger figured they were all worth more than she could imagine. This was prime real estate.

  Out of boredom, she pulled out her phone and glanced at the listings for houses for sale in the area. She let out a hissing breath.

  “What?” Loshak asked.

  “The prices on these houses. I knew it was an expensive place to live, but I don’t think I realized how much. Here’s a house that looks like the one I grew up in. 1.8 million dollars.”

  Loshak whistled.

  Up ahead Darger spotted two New York State Police cruisers posted at the end of a driveway.

  “This must be it,” she said.

  Loshak flashed his credentials, and the troopers waved them through. The whole neighborhood was shaded by mature oak trees, houses tucked back into patches of wilderness. It was several moments before Darger caught a glimpse of the building as they wound their way up the long brick drive.

  The house was a massive modern thing. All metal and wood and not a 90-degree angle to be found. Loshak brought them to a halt behind an Evidence Response Team truck parked among a dozen other vehicles along a circular turnabout.

  Darger input the address into the real estate app.

  “Holy hell.”

  “Now what?”

  “The rent on this place is ten grand a month.”

  Loshak leaned forward and stared up at the behemoth of a house.

  “Big place for a guy that lives alone.”

  “Good point,” Darger said. “This listing says it has six bedrooms. Why does one dude need six bedrooms?”

  They climbed out of the car and proceeded to the front of the house. The landscaping was as abstract and modern as the house. Boxwoods cut into perfect spheres. A water feature with a large glass pyramid that appeared to hover over a rectangular koi pond. The path leading to the front door was a manicured strip of green lawn inlaid with oblong marble pavers.

  There were boxes of gloves, booties, and masks waiting outside the massive front door, and they paused to gear up.

  “Ready?” Loshak asked, grasping the giant vertical steel bar that functioned as the door handle.

  “Yeah. I feel like I’m entering a modern art museum instead of a house, though.”

  Loshak gave the behemoth of a door a shove. It was at least five feet wide, and instead of being hinged on one side, it pivoted open on an axis.

  “No kidding.”

  The inside of the house was just as uber-modern as the outside. Everything white and angular. There was a carved statue in the living room that had to be at least twenty feet tall. Most of the height was dedicated to an intricately decorated post of wood, but at the very top, a female figure stood carrying a baby on her back. It looked like something that should be in the rotunda of the Smithsonian. In any other house, Darger was sure it would dominate the space, but here, with the vaulted ceilings soaring so high above, the wooden tower seemed almost delicate.

  The place was swarming with people, which made sense considering the scene was only a few hours old. Darger spotted the insignias of at least four different law enforcement outfits: FBI, ATF, East Hampton PD, and State Police. The men and women bustled around with cameras and baggies and clipboards.

  “Would you look at that?” Loshak said.

  Darger turned to see him admiring the dining room table, which was another gargantuan creation of wood. One solid slab with uneven edges and actual tree trunks functioning as table legs.

  “That’s gotta be six or seven inches thick,” he went on. “Probably weighs 800 pounds. Insane. Must be a redwood. I’ve seen live-edge tables before, but never on this scale.”

  “You have to appreciate how subtle they went with the decor,” Darger said, eyeballing an abstract painting that took up most of the wall adjacent to the table. The canvas was an angry snarl of grungy black smears and splotches.

  Loshak snorted.

  “Right. Everything in here is cranked to eleven,” he said.

  Darger caught a glimpse of the pool out back. It fit in with the rest of the place in that it defied conventions. Instead of being round or even a rectangle, it had five sides, none of them equal. A reflection of the odd angles of the house. The pool was bordered by more of the spherical boxwoods, and another large statue stood watch over the northeast end. This one looked to be made of stone.

  “It really does feel more like a museum than a place someone would actually live,” she said, stepping over an orange ball laying in the middle of the floor. A few feet away, she spotted another. That was when she realized they weren’t balls, but oranges. Then she spied the overturned bowl.

  “I wonder why—”

  The words died on her tongue. They turned the corner, the kitchen bomb site coming into view at last, and Darger’s feet stopped beneath her involuntarily. A breath hiccuped into her lungs, and then her chest, too, held still.

  She stood there, her eyes tracing over the wreckage over and over again.

  Time seemed to stand still for a beat, everything going quiet.

  The body was gone, of course. The autopsy was already underway according to the brief Darger had been given. But the remaining evidence still showed precisely where the blast had taken place.

  The cratered kitchen island — a gaping wound in the quartz — exposed blackened cabinetry innards where the fireball had flared. The surrounding blood spatter and debris pattern displayed streak marks indicating where the victim had stood, the red and black marks on the tile floor interrupted by the place where the actor’s bulk had taken the brunt of the blast.

  The overall effect was beyond grisly. It looked impossible. More like a surreal art exhibition than a real live crime scene.

  Soot marks stained the vaulted ceiling high above in a whirled pattern that resembled black clouds. Darger thought it looked like an impressionistic charcoal sketch — an abstract version of those ancient cave paintings, lines and shapes that seemed to signify something essential that was somehow just beyond her mind’s reach.

  A bitter smell still hung in the air. The tang of charred plastic that stung the inside of Darger’s nostrils.

  Finally, sound began to fade back into Darger’s consciousness: little shards of quartz crunching everywhere under the bunny-suited feet tramping around the scene. Brittle sounds like broken glass, the pointed bits shrill where they scraped against the tile.

  Darger took a breath. Glanced over at the large painting hung over the dining table, noting the similarity in color and form to the damage. Shades of gray to black on white. Anger and chaos and darkness.

  She’d told Loshak she thought this would end up being a serial case. She hoped like hell she was wrong.

  CHAPTER 4

  Darger squatted down, feeling overwhelmed.

  She thought Loshak must be feeling the same, as he hadn’t uttered a word either since they entered the kitchen area.

  They’d seen hundreds of murder scenes between them. Stabbings. Shootings. Stranglings. Drownings. Bludgeonings. But this was something different. The damage left by the explosion was almost hard to fathom. Solid objects shredded into confetti in a single second. A quartz countertop rendered into pea gravel. What would the force of something like that do to a human body?

  She knew the answer. She’d seen the photos. Passmore no longer had a face or much of a head at all, really. Skin, muscle, brain, and bone, all fragmented in a heartbeat.

  Darger stared at a gummy puddle of viscera on the tiles near her feet. Blood had gathered in the grout lines, forming a strange series of nearly black canals that spread outward from the sludgy pool. What part of Gavin Passmore might that have been? It was impossible to tell. The blast had erased every recognizable detail.

  She le
t out a long breath. It seemed loud, which made her realize how quiet the scene was. Aside from the periodic snap and click of a camera or the rustle of a plastic evidence baggie, there was a hush. Very little chitchat happening among those processing this area.

  Darger’s eyes were still locked on the splotch of human smoothie staining the tiles, half in a daze when Loshak broke the eerie silence by clearing his throat.

  “I see Agent Fredrick out back.” He gestured toward the wall of glass looking out on the pool. “Let’s go see what she’s got for us.”

  Darger nodded and rose to her full height.

  She’d started to sweat as they’d stood there in the kitchen, observing the scene. Now the movement of the air on her skin sent goosebumps crawling over her arms. Her hands felt clammy inside the gloves. The mask over her face had gone especially hot.

  They moved through the doorway leading out of the kitchen. Darger’s legs felt slightly wobbly beneath her. Then the world seemed to pitch around her.

  “Give me a second,” she said, squatting down again.

  Outside of the immediate crime scene, Darger ripped off her mask and basked in the sensation of the open air on her face. An air-conditioning vent blasted upward from the baseboard.

  The cool air did not clear away her growing sense of unease, however. If anything, it had only strengthened.

  That puzzled her.

  Was it the scale of a bombing? The utter destruction possible with one small package?

  She remembered what she’d told Agent Jackson about impostor syndrome. Could that be what was happening here? Was she feeling out of her depth?

  “I hate bombings,” Loshak said, swiping a gloved hand at his bunny suit.

  Darger let her eyes slide over to him, wondering if he was saying this in earnest, or if he’d noticed she was rattled and was trying to get her to talk.

  “Oh yeah?” she said.

  “Most scenes end up looking kind of like the victim just kinda keeled over. Even if there’s blood everywhere. The body is more or less intact. And so is the rest of the place.” He gestured back toward the kitchen. “But that? That reminds me of seeing the destruction after a tornado. Houses flattened. Trees blown into toothpicks. And you think, ‘No one could survive this. They never even had a chance.’”

  The thin sheen of sweat covering Darger’s body was causing her collar to adhere to the back of her neck. She tugged at it, nodding along with Loshak’s words.

  “Thinking about Owen?” he asked.

  That threw her. She whipped her head around to frown at him.

  “What?”

  “It’s just that the last time we saw a bombing, we lost a lot of people, and Owen was almost one of them.”

  An image of Owen impaled on a piece of rebar flashed in her mind. She could still hear the sound of the explosion that had demolished the Atlanta motel room. See the smoke and dust and piles of debris.

  “Right,” Darger said. Maybe Loshak was onto something. Maybe the gnawing dread she was feeling was a lingering bit of PTSD. “I hadn’t thought of that. Not consciously, anyway. But I do feel a little off-kilter, to be honest. Like this is all… too much.”

  It felt better to admit it. To have some sort of concrete explanation to cling to. Now she could move on. The tension she’d been feeling loosened ever so slightly.

  “Anyway, whenever we’re ready, we can get a more in-depth briefing from Agent Fredrick.”

  Darger inhaled, breathing easier.

  “I’m ready.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Loshak led the way, and they passed through another doorway leaving the damage behind. Darger could still feel the blast zone behind her, her body somehow oriented to the wounded place in the countertop, the dark energy radiating outward from the detonation point. Even as they turned a corner and meandered toward the back of the house, a twitchy feeling deep in her ribcage stayed tuned to the direction of the wreckage like a compass needle.

  They fell in with a group of bunny-suited techs, an exodus of traffic that filed outside through gaping French doors, venting into a side yard where law enforcement had set up a white polyethylene tent as a command center. The bright sunlight made Darger squint for a second, but then she moved into the shade beneath the canopy, the plastic-like tent material overhead crinkling and snapping in the breeze.

  It smelled fresh out here. Clean. The green of the well-manicured plant life intertwined with a hint of a soil smell. No trace of the acrid burnt notes she’d smelled near the detonation point. Nothing blackened or scorched here.

  Agent Beatrice Fredrick turned and greeted them from deeper inside the tent’s chamber, her bunny suit wrinkling as she waved them over with both arms. She was probably around Loshak’s age, with blonde hair cut short and a thick Maine accent. After making their introductions, she wasted no time filling them in.

  “Do we have any more details on where the package came from?” Loshak asked.

  “We’re still working on it. We’ve traced it back to a drop box in New Jersey, as you know. And we know from the tracking information that USPS took possession of the package and scanned it at 7:48 P.M. on the 8th. We’ve already pulled surveillance from the area in the vicinity of the drop-off point to see if we can spot the person dropping the package. There’s feed from multiple cameras, so we have high hopes that this will pay off.” Agent Fredrick sighed and propped her fists on her hips. “The thing slowing us down right now is that the drop box is only emptied once a day, so there’s a full 24 hours of footage to comb through.”

  Agent Fredrick walked to one side of the tent and plucked a tablet from the table there.

  “We’ve got video of the explosion from the security cameras in the house, if you’d like to see it.”

  “Absolutely,” Loshak said with a nod.

  Swiping a thumb across the tablet screen, Fredrick located a folder of video files and selected one.

  “This is 10:44 A.M., time of delivery.”

  The video was in color. Decent quality. A white USPS truck silently motored up the drive.

  “No sound?” Darger asked.

  Agent Fredrick shook her head.

  “Only video.”

  The mail woman hopped down from the driver’s seat, the box already in hand. She jogged up to the walk, pulled a device from her pocket, and scanned the label on the package. Then she rang the bell and set the package outside the front door before hustling back to her truck.

  “You’ve interviewed the driver?”

  Fredrick bobbed her head once.

  “She was pretty shaken when she heard what happened. Spooked her to realize she’d been toting around a bomb in her truck half the morning. Our impression is that she’s not a person of interest, but she’s been told to stay in the area in case we need to question her further.”

  “Bombs aren’t generally a woman’s M.O. anyway,” Loshak said. “But there are always outliers.”

  Agent Fredrick opened a second video, this one trained on the backyard and the pool.

  “Passmore swam laps in the pool for a decent chunk of the morning. He was getting dressed in the pool house at the time of delivery, and then he paced around the grounds on his phone for a while after that. The box sat on the doorstep for more than an hour before he noticed it was there.”

  Darger squinted at the figure on the screen. Passmore was of average height with a lean build and wavy hair. He dressed casually, but in a way that still gave off a clear sense of wealth, even in this security video. What was it? The cut of the pants? The way every item of clothing was pressed to perfection? Something in his posture?

  Fredrick returned to the feed showing the driveway and front door and skipped forward.

  “Now we’re at 11:37. This is when his car detail guy shows up to wax the Mercedes. Mark Trobiani. He was the one who called 9-1-1. Or I should say the first one to call 9-1-1. Six neighbors reported hearing a loud explosion in the minutes following the blast.”

  Now the actor stood at the
edge of the driveway talking to the car detail guy for a few minutes. He circled one of his hands in the air, and then his brow crinkled, some embarrassed look flashing over his features.

  Passmore still had the phone pressed to his ear as he pivoted away from the car and strode to the front door. He pinned it between his shoulder and chin and squatted down to pick up the package. The box slowly glided upward until the actor was practically touching his nose to its top, probably looking for a return label or some other clue as to what it was and finding nothing. Then he tucked the package under one arm, readjusted the phone to his ear, and went inside.

  The nonchalant manner in which he carried the explosive unnerved Darger. It felt wrong the way he jostled it and held it so close to his body.

  Agent Fredrick switched cameras again, this one showing an overhead view of the dining area and kitchen.

  With the angle in reverse, they watched Passmore move toward them now, bringing the package into the kitchen. He cradled it to his chest, looking it over again. Then he set it on the counter while he searched for something to open it with in one of the drawers nearby. It was like watching a horror movie.

  Don’t open it, Darger thought, trying to will the man in the video to obey even though she knew it was impossible. Don’t open the box.

  Passmore finally retrieved a chef’s knife from the butcher block. Moved to the package on the countertop.

  Darger winced as he slid the tip of the blade between the flaps of the box and slit it down the middle.

  The three of them waited for the lethal jack-in-the-box to spring to life. Their collective anticipation was palpable.

  And then it happened. It was so fast. The blink of an eye. A single beat of the heart. Normal and then BOOM.