Violet Darger | Book 8 | Countdown To Midnight

by Vargus, L. T.

  Darger went to her phone and searched for the original thread. GinerSpaniel’s post was now at the top of the page, with a long thread of comments. She got to the video he’d posted. A pile of pages in a plastic baggie, just like the others.

  She pressed play.

  “What’s up, fucksticks? You wanted proof that I wasn’t bluffing about finding the clue? Well here it is. Read ’em and weep, bitches.”

  He pulled the pages out of the bag and fanned them out on a desk.

  “Shit,” Darger said, squinting at the screen. “The handwriting looks right.”

  “You think there’s any chance he’s in on the whole thing? Like maybe he knew Huxley somehow?” Loshak asked.

  “I don’t know.” Darger shook her head and scrolled through her contact list. “We need to call Fredrick. Figure out who this GinerSpaniel guy is and pay him a visit. At the very least, he’s in possession of a piece of critical evidence in a major crime.”

  CHAPTER 41

  It was relatively easy to track down GinerSpaniel’s information. One Patrick Dressel, aged 28, lived in a small brick house in Brooklyn owned and likewise occupied by his mother, Kathleen Manning. Or as Fitch had put it, “Dude lives in his mom’s basement.” He posted an average of 93.5 times per day on his social media site of choice, ClackSauce, regularly haunting various subforums on the site, their topics ranging from aggressive stock market investments to horror fiction to busty anime characters. Skimming some of the posts, Darger noted his recurring rants about being fired from his job at Arby’s some nine months ago.

  “Jesus. In a way that’s his full-time job,” Loshak said. “Posting, I mean. I wonder if I’ll ever post 93 times on all social media platforms cumulatively. Like, in my entire life.”

  Barely forty minutes had passed since Dressel had shared the journal video online. Already his house was being surrounded by the SWAT team. Darger and Loshak sat in the high-tech van across the street with Agent Fredrick, watching the live feed from Agent Fitch’s bodycam on one of the monitors.

  The team huddled on the stoop before the front steps, their chests and shoulders heaving. After a countdown from 5 to 1, the battering ram swung into the door, knocking it aside with the crack of splintering lumber.

  The squad of men in tactical gear stormed into the vacant doorway, their Kevlar vests and helmets making them look like a pack of bulky animals. They split into teams as soon as the threshold was breached.

  The feed from Fitch’s camera went choppy along with his gait. Chaos filled the screen. The moving limbs of the agents swallowed some by the shade inside the house.

  Darger could make out what looked like a couch and loveseat. Plaid upholstery in beiges and browns. The one line of radio chatter she could pick up seemed to confirm what she was seeing.

  “Living room is clear.”

  Action seemed to overload the audio and video feeds. Yelling. Waving hands. Assault rifles pointing everywhere.

  Fitch thundered down a wooden staircase into the basement along with the others among his team. Feet thudding. Wood creaking. Camera jostling up and down.

  The steps led them to an unfinished basement with a desk along one wall — a dim room lit by a single desk lamp and the dull glow of a computer screen. Concrete block walls. Exposed joists from the floor above. The sweaty can of Coke next to the laptop made it look like someone had just been there, but the chair behind the desk sat empty.

  Fitch moved deeper into the concrete chamber. A pale slab of cement flooring filled the screen. Then the camera swept left and right. A furnace took shape ahead. Then the rounded white enamel body of the water heater.

  Darger spotted movement at the bottom right-hand corner of the bodycam feed. Fitch must have seen it too, because he raised his rifle and shouted.

  “FBI! Don’t fucking move!”

  The camera shook as he surged forward, causing the feed to blur for a moment.

  Darger sat forward. Eyes squinted to slits. Trying to see what was happening in the dingy space.

  Fitch stopped moving. The image on the screen came clear. Details filling in.

  A man.

  A man with his face pressed against the wall. He was attempting to jam himself in the small crevice behind the water heater in the back corner of the basement. He wore a pair of gray boxer briefs and a white t-shirt.

  “Shit, man,” he said, throwing his arms in the air. “Don’t shoot me. Please!”

  “Patrick Dressel?”

  “Yeah, dude. Just please don’t shoot me.”

  Fitch lifted one hand and waved his fingers.

  “Alright. I want you to come out of there, nice and slow.”

  Dressel didn’t move.

  “I can’t. Oh, God. Please don’t shoot me!”

  Fitch took a step forward.

  “Move real slow, do what I say, and you’ll be fine. Take one step to your right.”

  “I told you, I can’t.” Dressel squirmed. His body scraped audibly against the cinder blocks, torso slithering around, but his bulk didn’t budge. “I’m stuck, OK? I’m wedged in here.”

  Fitch was silent for a second.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” the big CIRG agent said. “Believe me, kid. You’re in deep enough shit as it is.”

  “I’m not. I’m not kidding you. I’m really stuck.”

  “OK. What part of you is stuck?” Fitch asked, and Darger thought she detected a note of amusement in his voice.

  “My tummy… er, stomach area.”

  “Can you try to… you know, suck it in a little?”

  “I’ll try.”

  There was a faint grunting sound as Dressel tried to heave himself out of the space, but he didn’t appear to make any progress.

  “Hubler, cover me,” Fitch said to the other agent in the basement.

  He set his rifle down and approached Dressel. Fitch grabbed on to the crook of the kid’s elbow.

  “On the count of three, I want you to blow all the air out of your lungs, suck in that pot belly, and lean hard this way. OK?”

  “OK.”

  Fitch counted to three. There was a faint rustle and then a scrape. With one final groan, Dressel popped free from behind the water heater. He stumbled out into the open, and the SWAT team cinched around him with their rifles, only easing back when his hands went up again.

  “Holy shit, man. I thought I was trapped back there. Started to panic a little bit.” Dressel brushed dust from the front of his t-shirt. “Fuck.”

  “Mr. Dressel, do you have any weapons in the house?”

  “Yeah right. My mom won’t let me have so much as a BB gun.” Dressel scratched his head. “Is this about the stuff I found in the park? Because I swear I was gonna call the police about it as soon as I finished reading it. Jesus, if I’d known you guys was gonna bust in here like that, I wouldn’t have touched the thing.”

  “What about explosives?” Fitch asked.

  “Explosives?”

  “Do you have any explosives in the house?”

  Dressel looked bewildered.

  “Hell no. What do you think I am? Some kind of psycho?”

  “I’m going to need you to come answer a few questions,” Fitch said. “Why don’t you put on some pants.”

  “Look, I said I was sorry. Or maybe I didn’t say it, but I am. Sorry, I mean.”

  “Pants,” Fitch repeated. “Unless you want to chat with the FBI in your drawers.”

  A few minutes later, Dressel was led out of the house by Fitch and over to the SUV where Darger, Loshak, and Fredrick were now waiting.

  Fitch opened the back door and ushered Dressel inside.

  “Mr. Dressel,” Loshak said. “We’d like to ask you some questions.”

  Dressel let out an audible gulp, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

  “Um… OK.”

  “How old are you?”

  Dressel fidgeted, flexing and unflexing his knuckles in a mincing way. His words came out slowly now.

  “Twen
ty-eight.”

  “And what can you tell us about Tyler Huxley?”

  He blinked. Eyes swiveling around, not looking at anything for long.

  “Well, I can’t really tell you anything other than that the guy seems like a real nutcase. I mean, you gotta be to go around blowing people up, right?”

  Loshak leaned forward.

  “And how is it that you know Tyler Huxley?”

  “The same as everyone else. He’s all over the news.”

  “You’ve never met him?”

  “Met him?” Dressel’s voice was shaking now. “No way.”

  “What about online?” Loshak asked. “Maybe you talked to him in one of your, uh, chatroom things?”

  “No. I mean, not that I know of. What is this? I only found the clue, like I said, and I was gonna call you, I swear.” His eyes began to tear up. “Man, I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I just thought it would be baller as hell to find it, that’s all.”

  “Baller?” Loshak repeated.

  Dressel swallowed and wiped his eyes.

  “Yeah, I mean… I figure I cracked the clue faster than like, the whole FBI and NSA and NYPD and whoever else is working on this thing, right? That’s like… a totally baller move. There’s gonna be clout involved in somethin’ like that.”

  Darger crossed her arms, wanting to argue that most of the task force were running on little to no sleep and had been since yesterday morning. But it was pointless.

  “It didn’t occur to you that it might be dangerous to do what you did?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  Something between a laugh and a scoff erupted from the back of Loshak’s throat.

  “Son, the man leaving these clues has blown up one person, grievously injured another, and attempted to kill a third. We have the bomb-sniffing dogs with us at every location, checking and double-checking to make sure there are no additional explosive devices.”

  Dressel chewed his lip.

  “OK. That’s fair. But it wasn’t a trap or whatever, so… No harm, no foul, right?”

  “And maybe you knew it wasn’t a trap because Huxley told you so,” Loshak said. “Maybe that’s how you solved the clue so fast. You already knew exactly where it was.”

  Dressel’s chin quivered.

  “What? No way. I already told you, I didn’t know that dude.”

  “Why don’t you walk us through solving the clue,” Darger said.

  Dressel shrugged.

  “It wasn’t that hard. It was the thing about phonies that struck me first. I thought about how it was a funny thing to say. Like, I hadn’t heard anyone use that word since I read Catcher in the Rye in tenth grade. And then I recognized the song titles, I guess, and the pieces all snapped into place.” Beads of sweat had sprung up along Dressel’s temples and upper lip. “So like… am I being detained or whatever? Because I was kinda planning on going back to bed. Been a long night.”

  “Back to bed?” Loshak raised an eyebrow. “You work the night shift or something?”

  “Uh, well, I’m currently unemployed, actually.”

  Darger and Loshak exchanged a glance. As far as she was concerned, Dressel seemed to be exactly what he said he was. An unemployed man-child living in his mother’s basement with a bit too much time on his hands. She could tell from Loshak’s expression that he thought the same.

  “You’re free to go,” Loshak said. “But a word of advice? Next time you have the urge to insert yourself into an active crime investigation: don’t.”

  Dressel chuckled nervously.

  “Right. Yeah. That’s good advice. Uh. Thank you, officers. Err… agents? Whatever. Uh. Thanks.”

  Dressel hopped out of the SUV and scurried back into his house.

  “Not the sharpest tool in the shed, is he?” Fredrick said.

  “No. Which makes it all the more irritating that he solved the clue before we did,” Loshak said. “That’s just embarrassing.”

  “We’re all exhausted,” Darger said. “He had the advantage.”

  Fredrick’s phone chimed.

  “That’s the handwriting analyst from the FBI lab. He says this sample is consistent with the others. It’s legit.”

  Darger hadn’t really had any doubts. Dressel might have had the pop culture chops to crack the clue and the balls to go dig it up, but the kid had been genuinely scared shitless in the interview. She thought he’d suddenly realized how far in over his head he’d gotten himself. There was no way he had the brass or the smarts to fake one of Huxley’s journal entries.

  Fredrick held the newly bagged evidence in the air.

  “I say we head back to headquarters, dig into this latest packet he left us, and try to figure out the next target,” Fredrick said. “Speculation is that this could be the last one, if Huxley meant what he said about it lasting for 24 hours. God, it’d feel good to have all this over with.”

  Darger nodded, trying to match Fredrick’s optimism. But internally she was wondering how they would manage to do it again when they were all running on fumes.

  CHAPTER 42

  I can’t sleep at night lately. Too keyed up.

  Electricity spins inside my skull. Like the filament of a light bulb burns in there. A white-hot wire that won’t turn off. Won’t burn out. Just sizzles away, slowly cooking the gray matter in my head like one of those hot dogs spinning on a gas station rotisserie — that collection of questionable sausages all plump and sweaty.

  I toss and turn in bed. Twist the sheets around myself.

  Doubts come and go. Negative thoughts come to me in the night like ghosts. Haunting. I try to shut them out, but they keep talking. Keep calling me.

  Sometimes I think I should give all this up. These big plans. These explosive devices.

  Just leave it. Move on. Live whatever passes for a normal life. But I know I can’t.

  The mission is too important.

  Some of us have no choice. Something outside of us has chosen us, set us on our paths. So we endure the restless feelings, endure the crushing loneliness, the sleepless nights.

  We sacrifice it all to make our mark. Spend ourselves in service of something bigger.

  So here I am. Here I am. Open my veins. Pluck out my eyes and tongue and heart.

  Take everything. I’m ready now.

  Ready to go.

  I get up sometimes in the middle of the night. Go up onto the roof of this ramshackle building. Look down on the city at night.

  The wind is so cold once it hits about 3 A.M. Ghostly and dank. It goes right through your clothes. Goes right through you.

  And all those lights in the city burn in the distance. They burn all night long. Just like the one in my head.

  Glimmering spots dotting the purple. Flickering just a little, which you can see if you watch long enough. If you never blink.

  The city makes more sense at night, I think. More than that. The city itself is of the night. Maybe I am, too.

  We come alive in the dark. When no one’s looking.

  And it never really sleeps, the city. There are people milling about the streets and alleyways. Headlights swinging around corners, plunging into the dark. Even in the wee hours, the city throbs with life, teems with restlessness. Agitation. Disturbance.

  All the freaks come out in the dark. The scum like me. The night sets us free, sets us loose.

  We snuffle around. Watching the prey. Waiting for one of you to venture too far out into the shadows.

  Waiting to pounce.

  There was a murder on the sidewalk outside my building. Dead guy just lying there. Face down on the concrete. Bulky torso pinning down both his arms to kind of arch his back funny. Made me think of a beached whale somehow.

  The blood spread over the sidewalk. Ran down into the cracks like little troughs, almost like those tiny paper cups they used to put ketchup in at Wendy’s. Except it slowly went darker as the sun got to it. Thicker and gummier. Almost black.

  Someone put a jacket over the dead
guy’s face after a while. Some dated-looking windbreaker blocking out his features. Like that makes it not so bad.

  They say it was a gang thing. The people out there talking, I mean. The lookie loos. I could hear their voices carrying on. Gossip peppering the wind like spores. Floating up to my window. Spreading like a fungus.

  He was out there for a good five or six hours after dawn broke. Slowly cooking in the sunlight. I guess they were waiting on the medical examiner. Busy morning. Who knows how many bodies, you know?

  There are some 20 or so murders per year here in Jersey City. Not bad for a town so small, desperate mobs of humanity all stacked on top of each other in shitty apartment complexes and disintegrating houses. Hell, I don’t think all the residents could go out in the street at the same time if we wanted to. Too many people.

  After the M.E. finally got to the scene, they bagged up the body and carted it away. The cops stood out there a long time. Talking. Milling around. Picking at their mustaches and whatever the fuck.

  And then a couple of hours later they finally left, and the bloodstain was still there.

  A dark puddle. Looked like someone spilled a whole bottle of cherry syrup and then the sun scorched it there. Blackened it. Adhered it to the concrete.

  Anyway, I guess nobody comes and cleans that up. Like that’s not someone’s job, you know? I never thought about that before.

  It’s still there. The blood just crusts to the sidewalk. A man’s life spilled onto concrete. And the world just carries on. Walks right over what’s left of him.

  You want to see peak humanity? Well, there it is. Just look at the bloodstains on the sidewalk.

  I sit at the diner down on the corner and listen to the idiots blather their heads off. It’s one of those dumps with peeling paint and sun-bleached Formica everywhere. Holes worn in the upholstery seats of damn near every booth. Coffee strong enough to strip the varnish off furniture.

  I hunker down in my booth. Scrawling in my notebook. Watching the people. Among the people, surrounded by them, but not really of them.