Violet Darger | Book 8 | Countdown To Midnight

by Vargus, L. T.

  Fame is a religion.

  Celebrity bodies turned divine by all the worship, all of the faith directed their way.

  So I offer up a communion.

  This is the celebrity body. Broken for you.

  This is the precious blood. Spilled for you.

  When she reached the end of the pool, she paused to briefly admire the view of Central Park. A sprawling green rectangle dotted with trees and crisscrossed with bike paths. This was probably one of the best views in the whole city. She wondered how often Nielsen was even here to admire it with his multiple homes and “bi-coastal lifestyle,” as one blog had called it.

  They still hadn’t even gotten in touch with Nielsen, though they’d at least confirmed that he wasn’t in the apartment. At some point, he would find out about all of this, Darger supposed, though she didn’t have time to worry about it now.

  She headed back inside, passing a fitness room with a power rack and elliptical machine set at odd angles. Mirrors mounted on the opposite wall made doubles of the equipment and gave the illusion of stretching the room out. She caught a glimpse of herself there, hovering near the free weights. Her eyes looked tired. Red and hazy. Purpling bags puckered the flesh beneath them.

  Yikes. She’d been up for over twenty-four hours now, and it showed.

  She ran into Loshak in the home theater. He was standing on one of the reclining seats, shining a flashlight into the projector mounted on the ceiling.

  “Did you find something?” she asked.

  “No. Just grasping at straws. Thought maybe since the clue at Driscoll’s house was hidden in the Blu-ray player, maybe it was something similar here.” He clambered down from the chair. “But I don’t think he’ll make it that easy on us.”

  “Me neither,” Darger said and let out a sigh that turned into a yawn.

  “Did you see the security footage of the floral delivery?” Loshak asked.

  “No.”

  “Not much to see, really.” Loshak shrugged. “Gal brings the arrangement in, leaves it at the front desk. She and the clerk who took the order are being interviewed now, but apparently this company specializes in doing more elaborate custom deliveries. One of their specialties is hiding an engagement ring in the arrangement. So it sounds like they wouldn’t have found it all that extraordinary to allow a mystery package to be concealed inside a delivery.”

  Another dead end, Darger thought, though she didn’t say it out loud. The fact that they were stuck playing out the world’s worst scavenger hunt designed by a psychopath was starting to wear on her. But it didn’t help anyone to voice her negativity out loud, so she kept quiet.

  “Did you hear about the robo system?” Loshak asked.

  She blinked. Stared into Loshak’s face. It took a second for what he’d said to really register.

  “Robo-what now? Robocop?”

  Loshak snorted before he replied.

  “The building has a robotic parking system for the residents’ cars. Totally automated. It parks your car for you and can retrieve it in less than ninety seconds. Pretty slick.”

  “Huh. And here I am still parking my Prius with the cracked windshield manually. I could use a robot to clean it out, actually. Got like fourteen dirty coffee mugs in there right now, rolling around under the seat whenever I take a sharp turn.” Darger rubbed her forehead. “Sounds like a slamming toilet seat when all that ceramic crap clangs together.”

  Loshak pursed his lips.

  “Well… I wouldn’t mention any of that on your application if you try to get a place here. Believe me, these people don’t want their fancy robo system anywhere near your toilet car, Darger.”

  They went down the hall to a game room where a pair of pinball machines flickered orange light against one wall. A pool table and a row of arcade cabinets sat opposite them. The ping pong table seemed to take center stage — and a whiteboard nearby seemed to show a tournament bracket of some kind.

  “You hear any of the talk about Beyoncé?” Loshak said, lowering his voice though no one was around.

  Darger rolled her eyes.

  “Oh, it’s all I hear it seems. The bunny-suits are all atwitter to know that she might be somewhere nearby. She lives here, huh?”

  Loshak’s lips curved into a sly smile.

  “Nope. Whole thing was a rumor started by a real estate agent trying to push some of the units. One of those enterprising types, you know? To stir up interest in the building, he started spreading the idea that Beyoncé was looking at the penthouse, about to snatch it up. The rumor sort of grew legs and took off from there. She never even had a viewing here. Probably never even driven past the place. Even so, there are people who swear up and down they’ve seen her in the lobby getting a complimentary latte from the machine down there.”

  Darger sniffed out a faint laugh.

  “That’s hilarious.” Then she turned serious. “Do you think we could get a couple of those? Complimentary lattes, I mean. I could use the caffeine.”

  “Good idea,” Loshak said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Twenty minutes later they were still walking circles around Dirk Nielsen’s penthouse, though now they were sipping their complimentary lobby lattes as they hunted for the next clue. The drink was too sweet, but Darger could feel the much-needed caffeine spread through her system — a strange jolt of electrical juice entering her bloodstream. Her eyes felt more alert. Back and neck just a little easier to keep upright. And that cloudiness that had begun to afflict her thoughts seemed to clear. The coffee didn’t kill off the tiredness entirely, but it beat it back a good bit.

  They walked past the exercise room again, glancing in at the mirrors and machines. She lifted one corner of a painting in the hallway next to the doorway and checked the back. Nothing.

  Loshak sighed, frustration venting through his lips and nostrils.

  “We can’t keep searching randomly and hoping to come across it,” he said. “This place is too big and crammed with too much crap. We’re burning time.”

  “I know,” Darger said. “I just can’t figure anything from the last note that applies to Nielsen or this apartment.”

  “Let’s have another look at everything he’s left us. Maybe with a fresh jolt of caffeine running through our veins we can figure it out.”

  Darger followed Loshak to the living room where they plopped onto a white suede sofa.

  There was a low rumbling sound, and Loshak put a hand to his belly.

  “Wish I had a breakfast sammy to go with this,” he said. “All this coffee is starting to piss my stomach off.”

  “Well, it’s no breakfast sammy, but maybe this will help.” Darger reached into her pocket and passed Loshak a small parcel wrapped in a paper napkin. “I saved it for you.”

  He unfolded the napkin and let out a tiny gasp.

  “A badge cookie!”

  His eyes glittered like a kid on Christmas morning spying all the presents under the tree. Darger started laughing.

  “You’ve had this in your pocket this whole time?”

  Darger shrugged.

  “I figured there might come a moment when we needed a little morale boost.”

  Loshak looked at the cookie for a moment. Then he broke it in two and held out half toward her.

  Darger slowly reached out and clutched the thin layer of baked good with the tips of her fingers.

  “Fine. If you’re going to twist my arm.”

  She took a bite of cookie. She hadn’t thought much of them before, but after being awake for so long with so little food, it hit the spot.

  “OK,” Loshak said. “So the clue in Driscoll’s house was found inside a Blu-ray player. And the hint that led you there was something about ‘rewinding’ and ‘keeping those DVRs rolling.’ So maybe we can cheat a little. Figure out if anything in the most recent note would apply to something in this apartment.”

  Darger nodded. Now that she had some sugar flowing through her veins, a fresh thought
came to her.

  “We know how he got the flowers delivered, but how did Huxley get up here to hide the next clue? The front door is guarded. Then there’s the front desk to deal with. And that’s just for the standard apartments. To get up here to the penthouse, you need a special keycard to access the private elevator. And while he might have bypassed any security measures by climbing Amelia Driscoll’s fire escape, there’s no way he climbed all the way up here.”

  She gestured to the view, which from this angle was a slice of pale blue sky and nothing else.

  “Even the person delivering the floral arrangement with the bomb hidden inside only got as far as the front desk,” Loshak said, nodding.

  Then he stopped. He and Darger made eye contact.

  “The floral arrangement.”

  They hurried into the kitchen. The space was still swarming with techs. Darger and Loshak went straight to the dismantled arrangement, which still lay on the counter where Agent Dobbins had put it. The bomb package itself had been removed from the premises and completely disassembled, so the clue had to be here, in the mass of flowers somewhere.

  Loshak lifted the galvanized bucket, spinning it around to study it from every angle. Darger picked through the roses and ferns and clumps of moss scattered over the counter. She had been hoping to find one of those little cards stuck in the arrangement that said who the bouquet was from. The perfect place to tuck a clue. But it was just flowers.

  She sighed, her mind buzzing with frustration. If she could just shut her brain off for an hour or two, maybe then she could figure it out. Her gaze wandered the stark kitchen, landing on the high-tech fridge with the giant LCD panel cycling through different screens: a list of fridge contents, a digital post-it note with a reminder to “refill Pepper’s heartworm prevention pill,” and then a series of photos. Nielsen at a red carpet event clutching an award. Nielsen posing with various actresses. Nielsen on a yacht, a glass of champagne in one hand. Nielsen standing beside a yellow Porsche.

  Darger wondered what Tyler Huxley might say about a man who had photos of himself on the screen of his fridge. And then she slowly turned to Loshak as the realization hit her.

  “What if the clue isn’t up here at all?” she said. “What if it’s hidden somewhere else?”

  “Where?”

  Darger walked over to the fridge and pressed the arrow to advance the screen to the photo of Nielsen and his Porsche. Snippets from the clue pounded in her head.

  Down the tracks.

  Race to the rescue.

  Are you yellow?

  “In Nielsen’s car.”

  CHAPTER 37

  The private elevator made a swishing sound as it whisked them down to the first floor. Darger’s fingers played with the bunched sleeve of her bunny suit, unable to keep still.

  “We need access to Nielsen’s car immediately,” Fredrick was saying into her phone. “I don’t need the owner’s permission, I have a warrant!”

  The building manager — a defensive-tackle-sized man with thinning salt-and-pepper hair and a suit that was somehow several sizes too big even for his oversized frame — met them in the lobby. He led them down a hallway and through a set of doors. They came out in the space age parking garage. A series of touch screens mounted on the wall allowed residents to tell the robo-parking system to deliver their car to one of the nearby bays.

  “Under normal circumstances, only the vehicle owner has access to their vehicle, but we do have the power to override the system in the event of… well, when necessary,” the manager explained.

  Darger stared at the back of his head where a roll of fat seemed to occupy the place between his skull and baggy collar. Internally, she wished for less talking and more overriding, her teeth gritting a little to help her hold the feeling in.

  Fingers as thick as cigars typed in an administrative password, found the entry for Nielsen’s car, and told the system to retrieve it.

  The screen showed the entire retrieval process on camera. A panel lit with blue LEDs under the car suddenly began to slide across the floor.

  By now, Fitch, Alvarez, and their bomb-sniffing dog had joined the group.

  “Oh, this is far out, man! I heard someone talking about this,” Fitch said as they watched the car being lowered to the ground floor.

  When the car was deposited in one of the marked bays before them a few moments later, Fitch balled his hands into fists that quivered with excitement.

  “Far fucking out! Modern technology, man. Love it.”

  Fitch and Alvarez led the dog around the car, allowing it to thoroughly sniff and snuffle, checking for even a trace scent of explosives. The car had come delivered with the keys already inside. They opened the doors, and the dog continued its sniff search inside.

  Finally Fitch stepped back.

  “You’re good to go,” he told them.

  The agents lurched for the car.

  Under seats, tucked between cushions, nestled in the air-conditioning vents. Darger checked all of these places and more but found nothing.

  While Loshak continued combing the interior of the vehicle, she and Fredrick checked the trunk, hood, and under the gas cap hatch.

  More nothing.

  “You know, even as crafty as he was, I don’t think Huxley’d be able to get access to the interior. I doubt Nielsen is ever leaving this thing on the street unlocked,” Darger said. “I think it has to be somewhere accessible from outside.”

  She and Fredrick shone their lights under the car, checking wheel wells and attempting to study the undercarriage, but it was difficult to see much without crawling underneath.

  “Screw it,” Darger said, flopping to the ground.

  Loshak pursed his lips, looking amused.

  “The techs have mats for that, you know. So you don’t have to slide around in the dirt.”

  “I don’t care if the bunny suit gets dirty,” Darger said through clenched teeth. She wriggled deeper under the vehicle. “I’ll have to find something else to wear to the prom, but…”

  She angled her light into the various nooks and crannies. Around exhaust pipes and fuel lines and electrical wires. There were a hundred places the clue might be hidden, but she’d take this job over searching the entire penthouse any day.

  “Hey, Fitch,” she called. “Can I borrow one of those handy mirrors you guys carry around?”

  “Sure thing.” There was a scuffle of feet and then an arm appeared holding out a tactical mirror on a telescoping pole.

  Darger scooted over to one of the rear wheel wells and used the mirror to study it from various angles. She caught a glimpse of something white and paused.

  “I think I see something.”

  She reached for it but couldn’t get her arm in far enough from this side, so she scrambled out from under the car. Squatting next to the wheel, she jammed her arm in up to the elbow, hand flopping around in the tight space, feeling around for it.

  Her fingertips brushed against something flimsy. Another plastic baggie.

  It seemed to be held in place with a strong magnet. A good yank pulled the baggie free and sent the magnet skittering over the ground.

  “I’ve got it,” she said.

  Darger tried to push away from the vehicle but found her elbow was wedged against the inside of the wheel well.

  “You need some help?” Loshak asked.

  “Just a little stuck,” she said, scrunching her shoulders until she gained enough room to maneuver her arm out from the inner workings of the car.

  She held the small baggie with what she expected would be Huxley’s next note aloft for everyone else to see.

  “Righteous. Alright, Agent Darger!” Fitch said, clapping her on the back.

  She wanted to let out a whoop of triumph but settled for a satisfied grin that made the exhausted muscles in her cheeks sting a little.

  Still, they’d done it again. Huxley was going down.

  CHAPTER 38

  A couple of deep breaths was all the time it
took to wipe the smile off Darger’s face. The jubilation of finding the clue tucked in the undercarriage of Dirk Nielsen’s Porsche wore away quickly once she remembered that they still had to solve whatever riddle Huxley had constructed for them this time.

  The note was scrawled in red ink. Spiky lettering on lined paper torn from a spiral notebook, all frayed on the left edge.

  Dear Boss,

  How are you faring with my funny little games? Has anyone lost their head?

  In a perfect world, this note would be written in the blood of my victims. Drain the phonies, yes. Use their strawberry red smears to rewrite the ways of this world.

  Red ink is fit enough I hope. Ha-ha.

  Imagine… these vapid TV personalities interrupt their self-worship long enough to see what further gifts the world must be trying to give them. They open a box and BOOM. Instant karma!

  From Hell,

  -Tyler Huxley

  Darger’s eyes flitted down the page, still wrapped in the plastic baggie. The others huddled close to her, everyone reading. Her head bobbed as she started at the top again. As soon as she got through the letter a second time, she Googled the first line on her phone.

  “‘A letter beginning with “Dear Boss” was allegedly written by the unidentified Victorian-era serial killer Jack the Ripper,’” she said, reading aloud. “Looks like that line about the red ink is a quote from one of The Ripper’s other letters. And he began one of them ‘From Hell’ which Huxley has used to sign his notes numerous times now.”

  Jack the Ripper. The first truly famous serial killer, he terrorized London in 1888. Though some scholars believe he was more prolific, he killed at least five prostitutes, slashing their throats and then mutilating their torsos and genitals. He cut out one victim’s vagina and took it with him. Like the Zodiac Killer, he was never caught.

  “He was in London, right?” Fredrick asked.

  “As far as I know,” Darger said. “Hold on…”

  Darger searched “Jack the Ripper NYC” and found a slew of articles on the subject.