by L. T. Vargus
When Darger was up, she asked for the BLT and an orange juice.
The waitress stalked off toward the kitchen, and Fowles and Furbush shifted topics. It sounded like sports to Darger. Maybe football.
“Offensive line is coming along. I didn’t have much hope a month ago, but they’re coming along.”
“Good enough to beat the Rams?”
Furbush guffawed.
“Hey, I didn’t say that. I may be an optimist, Mr. Fowles, but I’m not legally blind. That Rams front seven is ferocious. Pack of damn wolves. They’ll eat the poor Seattle offensive line’s lunch, I’m sure.”
Darger wondered if Fowles actually liked football, or if he was only asking questions to humor Furbush. He didn’t strike her as the type to be into sports all that much. Then again, he hadn’t seemed like the type to be dying of brain cancer, so you never really knew, did you?
This dark thought brought the threatening prickle of tears to her eyes again. She held her breath.
Get it together, Violet.
She needed to think about something else. Find something to focus on.
Her eyes ran up the wall, landing on a stuffed fish mounted there. Its scales glittered under the fluorescent lights. The mouth was stretched wide, giving it the appearance of being permanently startled.
There was a place just like this where she’d grown up. The Moosehead Diner, it had been called, named for the trophy displayed over the front door. She glanced at the door. No moose head here.
Her gaze fell lower. They did have the exact same candy machines by the door. Put in a quarter and get a handful of Chiclets or some cheap trinket, like a faux gemstone ring that left a green mark on your finger if you wore it for too long.
Darger’s father had abandoned the family when she was six, and one of her only clear memories of him was when he showed her how to work the gum machine. How you set the quarter into the slot with one hand and held the little metal door shut with the other. Then you turned the crank so the quarter disappeared and watched the colorful bits of candy shift in the glass case. She remembered the tinkle of the gum hitting the shoot. And then carefully — so carefully — how her dad helped her cup her hand under the door. And finally the last step: lifting the hatch and catching the sugar-coated rectangles in her sweaty little palm.
Absently, Darger wondered if her dad was dead. She thought not. She’d have heard, right? It wasn’t like he’d disappeared off the face of the planet. He’d only disappeared from their lives.
For a while, when she was in middle school, he’d been really good about calling on her birthday, on Christmas. And he made plans and promises. Said that he was going to come visit, come pick her up. But he never did.
Why was she thinking about this, of all things?
She pried her eyes away from the candy machine and noted something else this place had in common with The Moosehead. There was a counter at one end of the restaurant, each stool taken by an old man in flannel. There’d always been a similar group of old guys in the diner when she was a kid. Guys that knew every waitress by name.
Darger wondered if these were some of the so-called “Old Boys” Carole Whitmore had complained about. If so, they’d probably been coming to this place their whole lives. Having breakfast with the same group of men every morning, trading town gossip, complaining about the crops and the weather and the government.
The food arrived. Darger was surprised to find herself salivating at the sight of her sandwich. Maybe she was a little hungry after all.
Eating grounded her a little, brought her out of her head and back into the realm of basic animal urges and concrete sensations. The fatty, salty bacon on her tongue. The crispy toast crunching between her teeth. The tartness of the orange juice hitting the back of her throat.
From time to time, Fowles glanced over at her, like maybe he was worried.
She smiled, for real this time. Maybe Furbush had been right. She’d just needed some real food in her stomach.
Darger thought then of something her dad used to say when they were on one of their Sunday morning diner outings: Breakfast like a king!
She didn’t think she’d ever heard him utter the rest of the phrase. He always stopped after the first line, as if that said it all.
Darger had looked him up when she’d first joined the FBI and gained access to their database. It wasn’t exactly kosher, but according to her coworkers “everyone does it.” And even though she knew that wasn’t a valid excuse, she’d done it anyway, unable to stave off her biological curiosity. She’d had that same thought then, had used it to justify peeking into something she really had no right to: What if he was dead? That was something she should know, wasn’t it?
Not everyone had an entry in the Triple-I system — only individuals with a criminal history — but it wasn’t too wild a guess to assume her father might have a record. And, surprise, surprise, she’d been right. Two drunk driving citations and a more recent conviction for check fraud. Daddy, as it turned out, was on probation in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Father of the Year, William Darger was not.
More recently, Darger’s aunt sent her a link to the family tree she’d been working on. Her Aunt Tess had been quite thorough — aside from Darger, there were entries for her mother and stepfather, her stepfather’s children, and of course, her own father. After clicking her father’s profile, she noted a marriage certificate issued in Ohio. Her father had moved to Ohio and remarried?
Then she noticed another document on the page. It was a birth notice for someone named Mary Alice Darger. According to the birth date listed, she was five years old.
Darger had a half-sister? A half-sister her father hadn’t bothered to tell her about?
It shouldn’t have been a shock. This was what he did. And yet her eyes had stung with angry, frustrated tears as she sat there staring at the computer screen.
That had been about a year ago, and now Darger wondered bitterly if dear old dad had abandoned little Mary Alice yet. Was six the magic number? The time most ripe for abandoning your family?
Why was she even thinking about her father right now? She glanced up at the fish with its mouth agape. Then at the old men lined up at the counter. It was this place. The memories it had loosened from the back of her mind. That was what nostalgia did for you. Dredged up all the old happy thoughts.
Right.
But there was something else. Something tugging at her conscious mind from deeper in her psyche.
Something relating to the case? It didn’t seem likely.
And then it hit her. What everyone kept saying about Dustin’s family.
The Reynolds clan goes way back.
Far enough back that someone might have taken an interest in entering the family history into a site like Ancestry.com? Where someone might have entered personal information about Dustin, like maybe that he’d gotten married recently or had a child. And often this information was accompanied by the city and state such an event had occurred.
A prickle of excitement ran through Darger’s body.
It was a long shot. But it was something.
Darger tried to wait for a lull in the conversation, but it was taking too long.
“I have an idea,” she said, interrupting.
Both men stopped talking and looked at her.
“I was beginning to think you’d lost the ability to speak.”
Darger ignored Furbush’s quip.
“Genealogy sites,” Darger said, too antsy to properly explain herself.
Furbush’s brow wrinkled.
“What?”
“We should check genealogy sites. They often have major life events listed — like marriages and births — and they usually say where the events took place.”
“Wouldn’t that have come up in our internet searches?” Furbush asked.
Darger shook her head.
“You have to be a member of the site.”
“And if you are a member, you can see anyone’s fam
ily tree?”
“Some are private. But most people keep them public, because that’s one of the easiest ways to complete your tree. You end up finding distant relatives who can fill in the blanks with the parts of the tree they’ve already done.”
The waitress had brought them a check, and the three of them were heading for the register now.
“It’s a crapshoot,” Darger said. “I know that. But it’s worth a try.”
“Better than sitting around twiddling our thumbs,” Furbush said.
On their trek to the register, they passed the group of men seated at the counter, and one of them spun around on his stool and hailed Furbush.
“Hey there, Chief. Working hard or hardly working?”
“Tell you what, Sam. Working so hard we ran out of gas… needed to refuel.”
“Heard ya went out for a chat with ol’ Chief Milton,” the old man said.
“That’s right. Now we’re trying to track down a local kid. Well, actually I guess he isn’t a kid anymore.”
Darger cringed at this and tried to catch Furbush’s eye.
“Who’s that now?”
Before she could stop him, the Chief had blurted, “Dustin Reynolds.”
Jesus Christ, Darger thought. He should know to be a little more discreet. The last thing they needed was the rumor that they were looking for Dustin to get around town. From the sound of it, gossip traveled fast here.
“That wouldn’t be Dirk Reynolds’ boy, would it?”
“No, I believe this would be Dirk’s grandson.”
Darger bit the inside of her cheek to keep from muttering a string of annoyed curses. It was too late now.
“Good old Dirk. I was just thinking about him, it being Cascade bull elk season and all. We used to go hunting every year, back in the day. They had some family property out near Marmot. Real nice piece of land that was. Untouched by man, except for a little cabin just off the road there. They owned a big chunk of land, 100 acres or more. And we’d camp out under the stars unless it rained. If Mother Nature didn’t cooperate, we’d hole up in the cabin there for a whole weekend, drinking and carousing. Used to get up to all sorts of mischief. One time Dirk switched Little Bart’s and Big George’s boots after a night of drinking. Snuck out of his tent in the middle of the night and swapped ‘em without anyone knowing it. Then he woke everyone up saying there was a bear in camp. Bart and George came stumbling out of their tents still half-drunk, and it was the funniest thing I ever seen, watchin’ them two struggle to get on boots that didn’t fit right.”
The old man let out a wheeze of laughter. Furbush and Fowles were chuckling along with him. But Darger was interested in something different altogether.
“This cabin… it was on land the Reynolds family owned?” she asked, giving Furbush a loaded look.
The Chief’s eyebrows shot up when he got the implication. He hoisted his belt and stepped forward.
“Say, Sam… you wouldn’t happen to know if the family still owns that cabin?”
“Not for certain. But I can’t imagine Mamie selling it off, to be honest. Tighter than a duck’s ass, that one,” the old man said, then winked at Darger. “If you’ll excuse my language, miss.”
As they hurried back over to the station, Furbush grumbled and swore under his breath.
“All those records we sifted through. All those calls we made. And here the answer was right under my nose the whole time,” Furbush said, tugging at his belt in irritation.
“We don’t know that yet,” Darger said.
“But it’s something.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “And it’s a hell of a lot more than my stupid genealogy idea.”
Chapter 34
Back at the station, Marcy worked her magic again with the local property tax records, bringing up a page that showed all property owned by the Reynolds family trust. She typed in the address and brought up a satellite map of the Marmot land.
Darger pointed at a small square outline on the map.
“I bet that’s the cabin,” she said.
Furbush nodded and reached for his jacket.
“I think I ought to pay another visit to Mamie Reynolds. See what she can tell us about this place. Maybe she’ll even fess up to knowing he’s camped out up there.”
Before he turned to go, Darger thought of something else.
“Someone should drive out in an unmarked car and sit on the place. If he’s there, we don’t want his aunt or anyone else tipping him off.”
“You volunteering?” Furbush asked.
“Sure,” Darger said.
Fowles raised a hand. “I’m coming with you.”
As they walked out to their respective vehicles, Furbush called over.
“You’re not gonna do anything wild now, are you?”
Darger paused with her door half open.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Storming in there on your own.”
“Of course not,” she said.
“It’s just that you’ve got a bit of a reputation for being a hotspur is all.”
“A what?”
Fowles, who was already ensconced in the driver’s seat, leaned over to her side and said, “It means rash and impetuous.”
“I am not rash and impetuous,” Darger said.
Fowles only shrugged.
To Furbush she said, “I promise to stay in the car until given further orders.”
“Good. You got your phone turned on?”
“Yes,” Darger said, double-checking just to be sure.
“I’ll give you a call after I talk to Mamie Reynolds. We can go from there.”
“Great,” Darger said. “Talk to you then.”
She climbed into the passenger seat and pulled the seatbelt over her chest.
“Rash and impetuous,” Darger scoffed.
Fowles chuckled, and she glared at him as he turned the key in the ignition.
* * *
The road that led to the cabin was remote and pocked with poorly filled potholes. When the rustic log structure appeared on the left, Darger told Fowles to slow down a little. As they rolled by, Darger took a hard look at the place, trying to catalogue as many details as possible in the short amount of time she had.
The driveway was a bare dirt two-track, overgrown with weeds and vegetation creeping in from the surrounding forest. Set back from the road, a few hundred feet behind the cabin, was a small shed. A large fir tree had fallen across the far end of the property, missing the cabin by only a few feet. It didn’t look like the tree falling had been a recent event, and no one had taken steps to move it. Darger didn’t think anyone had been out here for some time. A perfect off-grid hideout.
The cabin itself was small, probably a one or two room affair. There was a single chimney, but Darger saw no trace of smoke. That wasn’t too surprising. The weather was fairly mild at the moment.
Besides, she didn’t need smoke to confirm that someone was home. There was something better.
A beat-up Dodge Ram parked in the driveway, maybe 15 years old. It matched the color and era of the truck registered in Dustin Reynolds’ name.
They continued on past the cabin for several hundred yards before Darger had Fowles turn around and park on the side of the road.
He killed the engine, and the sounds of the forest surrounded them. Squawking birds and chittering bugs. The thought of insect-life brought her focus back to Fowles and his illness.
But she checked her sadness, forced it down, not wanting it to spill over again. She seemed to be able to stay above it at the moment. To hover over the darkest feelings without letting them touch her. It was like she’d gained the ability to separate her emotional side and observe the situation with an analyst’s mind.
Still, studying Fowles from the corner of her eye, he looked… healthy. Happy.
She found it hard to believe that someone with so much vitality and enthusiasm for their work and life in general was so close to death, and it occurred to her
suddenly that he very likely wouldn’t finish his doctorate.
Before she could stop herself, she’d blurted, “What about your thesis?”
“What about it?”
“Well, with your illness…”
He raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.
Darger fidgeted.
“If you won’t get to finish… I mean, doesn’t that make all your effort a little… pointless?”
“But why should it? I’m not doing the work for the diploma to hang on the wall. I’m doing it for science. For the pursuit of information. To improve forensic entomology. How could anything render that pointless?”
“OK, pointless was the wrong word to use. Of course I see how it’s valuable work. Important work. But don’t you want to… I don’t know… do something fun?”
“You think I should be backpacking around Asia? Learning to fly an airplane? Following my bliss and/or heart? Standing windswept on the bow of a grand oceanic liner and yelling about how I’m the king of the world?”
“Maybe not those exact things...”
They were silent a moment. Then he looked at her, eyes squinted down to slits against the bright sun.
“Of all people, I would have thought you would understand. All that curiosity. All that drive to do something with purpose in your life. If you thought you only had a few years or a few months to live, would you really walk away from your work?”
Darger stared at him, then back out the window.
“I don’t know.”
And before she could gain any further clarity, her phone rang. It was Chief Furbush.
“Mamie Reynolds confirmed the existence of the cabin but denied any knowledge of her nephew staying there. Said that if Dustin is there, it’s news to her.”
“Do you believe her?” Darger asked.
“Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t. But she seemed pretty ticked off at the idea that he might be crashing there without her permission. She gave us the go-ahead to take a look around. Even gave me a spare key.”
“That saves us having to get a warrant. I’m sure you’re probably already thinking the same, but I think we ought to call in SWAT on this. Maybe you have a connection with the State Police, but the FBI SWAT teams are very good, and I’m sure the Portland team could be here in under an hour if I put in a call.”