by L. T. Vargus
Contents
Title & Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Epilogue
Author's Note
FIVE DAYS POST MORTEM
Violet Darger Book 5
L.T. Vargus & Tim McBain
Copyright © 2019 L.T. Vargus & Tim McBain
Smarmy Press
All rights reserved.
Version 1.2
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Prologue
Soon.
A voice in your head.
Your voice.
It sounds small just now. Tight and skittish.
Soon they will know. They will all know.
You walk now in the dark. Only the moon above to guide you.
You pick your way through the woods. Creep away from the dump site. From the surging water of the river, the rapids that tumble over each other endlessly.
You’re excited and scared and thrumming with a current of cold energy. Dark energy. Cruel impulses that you don’t understand. An appetite for violence and destruction.
An appetite for death.
Some wickedness pushed you here, and now it will push you somewhere else. Anywhere else.
The faint glow of the deed still burns in the hollow of your chest. A throb of pleasure that you can never hold on to, that never lasts.
And sweat leaks from your palms. From your brow. Sops the hair along your hairline. You are greased with it. Glistening with it.
Soon.
You tell yourself your own story in your head — a rushing stream of words not unlike the river. That disembodied voice in your skull cataloguing and commenting on the things happening to you. Recording snippets of words and playing them back. Little whispers narrating for you.
And you watch yourself watch yourself. Consciousness of consciousness of consciousness. Shadows of shadows. Infinite levels. Echoes that overlap and drown everything out.
Soon. Soon. Soon.
They will know what you did.
The branches pop and crunch as you bend them out of your way. Crashing through. Too loud. You need to get out of here.
Sometimes you wish you could turn it off. That voice in your head. That self in your head.
But no. It doesn’t work that way. Once it’s off, it can’t come back.
The big sleep. The dirt nap. Like the girl in the river back there.
Gone for good.
You can still see the water pull her away from you. Sucking and ripping. The current a thrashing, violent thing. Wild. Aggressive.
The memory flares in your head. A searing flash of images. Burning so bright that it pulls you away from the here and now. Incinerates reality for a bit. Melts it right out of the way.
Stops your chest mid-inhale.
And she is there. In your head. The movie of her projected into your skull just as she was minutes ago.
Floating. Sinking.
Pale skin glowing purple in the moonlight. The dark of the water lapping at every side of her. A flutter of black wetness that seems excited to touch her, to take her away.
Tendrils of hair dance in the current like snakes, whipping around her face. Wet coils of darkness. Undulating.
She disappears under the surface like it was a magic trick. And you hold your breath. Wait. This overwhelming empty feeling pulsating inside of you like it could burst out of your ribcage in a bloody spray.
And then she pops up in the rapids a few beats later. Reappearing. Completing the magician’s illusion.
Ta-da.
And she is already rushing away from you. Fast. Shrinking and fading. Bobbing along the water’s surface, the rapids flinging her limpness about like a toy boat. Rough with her.
She disappears around a bend. The white of her skin is the last pop of brightness you see in the half-light.
Reality coagulates before you. Overtakes the memory.
And your truck appears there. Parked in the dirt along the edge of the woods.
You climb in. Jerk the key in the ignition. The steering wheel cold against your hands.
You tear out of the parking lot. Dirt and stone flinging every which way. Tinkling against the undercarriage.
And your heart hammers in your chest. Jaw clenching and unclenching.
And little splotches spatter the edge of your vision. A pink and black quiver in the periphery.
The world will know.
Soon.
* * *
The fishing lines flicked in and out of the water with little snaps and swishes. Hooked flies fluttered on the surface and retreated with each pluck of the appropriate string.
Dan and Jim didn’t talk for long stretches when they were out on the water like this. They just stood on the muddy banks of the river and fished and slurped down cans of Deschutes, listened to the sound of the river rushing past.
That was the point, though, Dan thought. To relax. Get away from life’s troubles. It was all either of them wanted. If they handled it right, they didn’t need to talk.
The sun crept over the horizon and kept climbing, dawn giving way to full daylight. Still, neither fisherman saw any returns on his line-flicking efforts. Not so much as a nibble.
“They ain’t bitin’ hardly at all today. Tell you what,” Jim said just above a whisper, breaking a long silence. He said “what” as though the word started with an h — “Tell you h-what.”
And there it was — what Dan thought of as Jim’s redneck accent making one of its cameo appearances. The twang didn’t dominate his friend’s speech patterns. It just poked its head out once in a while to say thang or purty or something about the po-lice.
These little linguistic flourishes never failed to amuse Dan. He didn’t l
ook down on them. Didn’t judge. More than anything, he found himself at a loss as to where this way of speaking had come from in his friend’s case.
They’d been friends from third grade on, had experienced all the same things in life — more or less — for the next 26 years, and they were from Oregon for Christ’s sake, not Alabama. Even so, touches of this vernacular had crept into Jim’s speech somewhere along the way, laid down roots that seemed unlikely to be ripped out easily.
Life was full of mysteries, great and small.
Dan knew that this accent existed in varying degrees in any rural area in the country. It was just weird that it’d happened to Jim and not him.
“Ain’t too hungry, I guess,” Dan said, not sure why he felt the need to fall into an ain’t call and response. Maybe the dialect was infectious, like yawning.
Both men paused the casting of their lines and stared into the muddy water as though some explanation lay there, just beneath the surface. If the river knew why the fish were laying off, though, it offered them nothing. The water swirled and churned and moved along. Babbled out its endless wet sound.
Jim broke the motionless spell to get back to it, flicking his line out over the ripples and jerking it back, falling into an easy rhythm.
Dan took a break from casting to try to adjust his poncho. The seams along the shoulders had shifted forward and the fabric now restricted his throwing motion some, made him feel awkward.
Once he had that fixed, he fished a hand into the cooler for another can of beer, cracked it, brought it to his lips and slurped. Tasted good. Hoppy and bright. At least they had that to fall back on. Fish or no fish, they had good beer. He’d savor this one before he went back to his rod, he thought and let his gaze drift out over the water.
He watched the bobbing object a while before he really noticed it. A bloated looking thing upstream, slowly drifting their way. As it drew closer, the size of it started to become clear to him.
It was big. Puffy. Looked naked. Even before the notion of it being a body truly occurred to him, he thought it looked naked. Like a blowup doll bleached white.
Dan shifted his feet, the mud sucking at the rubber soles of his boots. The beer can remained frozen mid-lift, halted just shy of his lips and held there.
And now Jim saw it as well. He stopped casting his line, the faintest little sigh coming out of him as he did a double-take and locked onto the mass in the water.
“Goddamn but she’s all tore up,” he whispered, his words whistling a little between his teeth. He repeated the last three words but slower, dragging them out. “All tore up.”
They both stood very still, the sound of the river seeming to swell to fill the silence.
Dan remembered to breathe, the air making a ragged sound as it entered his nostrils and throat. He could feel his pulse squishing in his ears.
The dead body seemed to make sense to his eyes in stages.
A female, he thought. Pretty far gone to bloat and rot. The lifeless white of the thing going pale purple in places. Skin sloughing away in others. Soft and wrong and pulpy somehow. Like pulled apart wads of wet paper.
The body hit a surging spot in the current, and its bulk twirled in the water, the head now turning to face them. The river seemed hell-bent on sliding the dead thing toward them, and Jim took a step back instinctively.
The mouth was open. Gaping.
No. Not open exactly.
The jaw was gone. And the teeth on the top were missing too. Pulled away as the flesh went mushy. Swollen and colorless and as soft as the Friskies pâté he fed his cat this morning. Spongy.
The face sheared off at the gummy palate. The once-pink flesh draining to something pale and wrong. Pearly. The shade of a maggot with the faintest pink hue.
A floater, Dan thought, not sure where the words came from. A floater.
Chapter 1
Darger sat in one of the hard-backed chairs at her dining room table. Her laptop rested on the table in front of her, its screen casting a diffuse glow over her face.
Her eyes flitted down to the corner of the screen, checking the time yet again. Any minute now.
She shifted in her seat, feeling fidgety. The chair was probably the least comfortable in her apartment, but in a way, that was good. It would keep her alert. She’d tried the sofa, but the soft cushions and throw pillows made her feel like she was slouching. Next she’d moved to one of the stools in the nook off the kitchen. Not bad, but the height was all wrong, causing her to hunch over the keyboard.
She adjusted the angle of her computer screen and suddenly noticed the layer of dust, lint, and dried splatters of God-knows-what on the surface. Pulling her sleeve over her hand, she wiped at the filth, resorting to scraping at some of the spots with a fingernail.
Why had she agreed to do this?
She already knew the answer: Because Loshak had asked her to.
He said he was worried about her. Felt responsible. And the guilt trip snapped onto her like a bear trap wrapping its jaws around an unsuspecting animal’s foot.
Well, she thought as she waited for the call to come in, at least I have nothing to lose. She didn’t need the job, after all. She was only technically “on leave” from the FBI. She could go back whenever she wanted.
Maybe.
But did she even want to go back? She still hadn’t decided.
She wondered if what Loshak told her was true. That consulting was different. Different rules, less bureaucracy. She was a student of psychology, after all. Any institution — whether a lumbering dinosaur like the FBI or a small private consulting firm — was a beast of bureaucracy. Humans were creatures of social order, which was just a more scientific name for bureaucracy. All of society was ruled by the arbitrary dictates determined by the top of the pecking order. So the question was not whether there was bureaucracy at Prescott Consulting, but what kind.
And if she didn’t want to return to the FBI, then she did need this job. Or a job. Her mother might have married into being independently wealthy, but Darger had not, and she would rather chew off her own foot than be financially dependent on someone else.
Yeah, she thought. She might need this job after all.
Maybe that was why she was so nervous.
An electronic jingle from the computer’s tinny speaker announced the incoming Skype call.
Darger took a deep breath and used the reflection on the screen to make sure she didn’t have anything in her teeth. Smoothing her hair with one hand, she reached out with the other and answered the call.
Dr. Margaret Prescott looked like she was in her late forties, but Darger thought she was probably older than that given the mandatory retirement age in the FBI and the fact that Dr. Prescott been one of Loshak’s mentors.
She wore a cream-colored silk blouse with a matching jacket over it, and her blonde hair was sheared into a stylish pixie cut.
“Violet,” the woman said with a charming smile. “It’s a pleasure to finally be speaking with you.”
Darger nodded at the projection on the screen.
“Dr. Prescott. Thank you for the opportunity.”
The older woman waved a dismissive hand. Her fingernails were manicured, but unpainted and cut short. A gold watch encircling her wrist glittered in the light from a desktop lamp. It looked expensive.
“Call me Margaret, for Christ’s sake. Or just Prescott if you’re more comfortable with that. I reserve my academic title for when I’m on the stand as an expert witness or for my byline in the psych journals.”
“Very well… Prescott,” Darger said.
She wondered if it was a test. A real kiss-ass would try to ingratiate themselves by insisting on referring to her as “doctor.” And calling her Margaret given the circumstances would smack of over-familiarity. The simple surname acknowledged that they were peers but also maintained an air of professionalism.
It was possible Darger was over-analyzing, but Loshak had cautioned her that Margaret Prescott was shrewd and calculati
ng. She’d hardly needed the warning. Dr. Prescott was a pioneer in the field of Criminal Psychology, and though Darger attended Quantico years after her departure as an instructor there, her reputation lingered on the campus.
Above all, she’d been known for her elaborate psychological cunning. Playing mind games with students and faculty alike. Constantly testing people.
Prescott rested her chin on a closed fist and leaned a little closer to her computer’s camera.
“I’d love to say Victor has told me so much about you, but that simply wouldn’t be the truth. He’s very tight-lipped about his protégé.”
“Yeah, well, I think Loshak might have been absent the day his preschool class learned about sharing.”
With her head thrown back and her mouth open wide enough that Darger could see a silver amalgam filling in one of her molars, Dr. Prescott laughed.
She had the laugh of a jackal. It made her sound slightly unhinged, like maybe she was such an expert when it came to criminal psychology because she was a little insane herself. In an odd way, Darger kind of liked her more for it.
Amusement lingered in her eyes when Dr. Prescott spoke again.
“What our dear Victor did tell me is that you’re frustrated with the red tape that hinders the Bureau all too often. If that’s the case, it might be that our operation is more to your liking. Of course, I don’t want to give the impression that I employ a bunch of trigger-happy cowboys. We always strive to be thorough and professional. We dot our i’s and cross our t’s, we just do it more efficiently than most law enforcement agencies.”
The muscles in Darger’s gut tensed. This topic was a potential minefield, one of Prescott’s famous traps. Answer too enthusiastically about being free from the limitations of the FBI, and she might come across as not only undisciplined but disloyal.
“I can appreciate that. And I don’t have a problem with the rules and regs. It’s the politics I’m not interested in. Not when it prevents me from doing my job.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Dr. Prescott said with a frank nod, and Darger felt herself relax a little.
Settling back in her seat, the doctor blinked thoughtfully.
“I have a feeling this is going to work out beautifully for both of us. Are you married?”
The sharp left turn into personal territory threw Darger for a moment, and she didn’t answer right away.