Five Days Post Mortem

by L. T. Vargus

  OK. Go time.

  Her fist lunged out to rap at the door.

  Chapter 46

  The door peeled open, and the girl standing in the opening showed wild eyes, a little wetness pooling along the lower eyelids. She brought a shaking hand to her chest.

  Her jaw worked up and down. At first Darger thought she was attempting to speak, but it became apparent that wasn’t the case.

  Gum. The girl was chewing gum.

  “Can you turn the music down and step out into the hall?” Darger said, lifting her voice to compete with whatever 80’s trash was playing.

  “What?”

  Darger got louder.

  “Can you turn the music down?”

  “Huh? Hang on. Let me turn the music down.”

  The girl disappeared into the room, and after a beat the screeching vocals and big guitars cut out.

  Some of the tension eased out of Darger’s back, and she removed her hand from the butt of her gun. This wasn’t directly related to the killer — she could feel that in her gut — but it still might lead to something. Instead of giving the signal that told the two squads to converge on the door, she caught Furbush’s eye and gestured him over alone.

  The girl reappeared in the opening. That look of fear still occupied her face, but the jaw chewing the gum seemed unperturbed.

  “Thank you,” Darger said, and now she flashed the warrant along with her ID. “My name is Violet Darger, and this is Chief Furbush of the Sandy Police. This room turned up a hit on a credit card linked to a case we’re working. Do you happen to know Dustin Reynolds?”

  The girl hesitated a second, almost flinching, and then she nodded.

  “He’s my boyfriend. Er, I mean… he was my boyfriend.”

  She blinked a few times upon saying this.

  Darger and Furbush exchanged a glance.

  “Can we come in and talk?”

  * * *

  Darger sat on the edge of the bed, rumpled blankets curling around the small of her back. Furbush remained standing, but Darger wanted to give a sense of casualness to this exchange right off. She thought it might make Jennifer more likely to talk.

  So far they’d learned that the girl’s name was Jennifer Strickley and that she and Dustin Reynolds had been together for the last several months. They’d had a hard time getting her to sit still, though, so the interview had yet to fall into any kind of rhythm.

  Now the girl squatted in front of the mini-fridge in the corner.

  “Y’all want somethin’ to drink?” she asked. “Maybe some Mountain Dew?”

  She held up the two-liter over her head with both hands as if to show them the offer was for real.

  “No thank you, ma’am,” Furbush said.

  “I’ll have a glass,” Darger said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  In no way did she want the Day-Glo yellow fluid to touch her lips, let alone actually enter her body. But accepting hospitality still carried weight with people, won them over. It was a calculated risk she was willing to take.

  Jennifer wore a big smile as she handed over the Dixie cup with the bubbling neon corn syrup inside. Maybe the ploy was working.

  Darger thanked her and took a drink. Very bright and even sweeter. The word cloying did not do the experience justice. It reminded her of being in middle school.

  She force herself to take another sip. It was a small sacrifice to make.

  Jennifer took a seat on a ratty chair against the far wall. Her jaw still chewed at a piece of pale blue gum, worked in an endless loop that reminded Darger of cattle chewing cud.

  “If this is about the credit card, I’ll have you know I had every right to use that,” she said. “Dustin and I had planned to meet here when he got back. It was our little ritual. Whenever he went on the road for a bit, we got a room here to celebrate the reunion. I’d booked the room ahead of time. Of course, that was before… you know.”

  She smacked her gum in the silence that followed. Something about it reminded Darger of some valley girl stereotype character from an 80’s teen movie. As if. But Darger could see that the girl’s face was flushed. She must think she was in some kind of trouble for using the credit card.

  “The credit card is the least of our concerns, Jennifer,” she said, her voice soft. “We’re just trying to figure out who did this to Dustin, OK?”

  Jennifer blew little bubbles with her gum and popped them as she considered this, then nodded.

  “I still haven’t cried over him, you know. Over Dustin, I mean. I guess it just doesn’t feel real yet. Not all the way. It’s like my mind understands that he’s dead, but my heart can’t accept it. My mama said maybe the funeral will help. I guess maybe that’s why they have ‘em, you know?”

  Darger reached out a hand and touched the girl’s knee, making sure to avoid eye contact as she did it. Touching a stranger made them have warm feelings for you, something like affection. But if you made eye contact during the contact, the perception changed. The touch was perceived as sexual.

  “Can you think of anyone Dustin had problems with? Anyone who’d want to hurt him?”

  She stretched the gum out on her tongue, a pale blue serpent flitting out of her mouth.

  “Naw. He was a sweetheart, you know? The kind of guy who’d give you the shirt off his back, give you his last cigarette, split his last beer with you. I can’t imagine anyone holding a grudge. Not enough for something like this.”

  “What about the fact that you hadn’t heard from in a while? It must have been at least a couple weeks.”

  Darger almost referring to the decayed state they’d found the body in, but caught herself.

  “The last time I saw him was three weeks ago. That wasn’t uncommon. He has a cousin in Boise that he visited a lot. Did work for him. Odd jobs and whatever on his property. He’d told me he’d be down there for a few weeks. Told me he’d be back by today, in fact. Hence me booking the room.”

  “And you didn’t talk to him while he was out of town?”

  She sighed before she answered.

  “Dustin wasn’t big on phones. Face to face he’d talk your ear off, but he always got real quiet on the phone. I don’t think he saw much point in having one, really. Plus, money got a little tight and everything. His unemployment ran out two or three months back. Had to tighten his belt and what have you. That’s why he was heading up to Idaho for work. Or planning to, I guess. Seems like he never made it.”

  She went back to snapping her gum but just for a second.

  “Makes him sound like a loser when I say all of this out loud, but it wasn’t like that. This crap wasn’t all of who he was. We had problems, but we had dreams, too. Like Dustin, he was a real talented artist. Painted custom artwork on the side of motorcycles. Little murals I guess you could call ‘em. Unbelievable what he could do with an airbrush.”

  The girl’s mouth scrunched up as she continued to talk.

  “But Oregon isn’t the right place for that kind of thing. In the cities, like in Portland, you got all the hipsters and whatever. More into mustaches than motorcycles. And out in the sticks, you’ve got your lumberjack types. More of that rural, conservative lifestyle. Hard-working, salt of the Earth or whatever. Dustin used to call them ‘the hill people.’”

  She sniffed out a chuckle at that before she went on.

  “We were trying to save up to move down to San Bernardino so he could start a real business. In California, you know? It’s a big biker town. Hell’s Angels have their headquarters there and everything. I was going to do all the website stuff. I’m pretty good at customizing Wordpress blogs, and I was taking a photography class so he could get some of his work up on Instagram and everything, but….”

  Again, they fell quiet. Darger decided to just wait, to let the girl talk.

  “I was looking forward to coming here, I have to say. To this room, I mean. We’d been staying out in the cabin more lately, on account of how we were saving up for the move. It’s rent free, but it’
s an isolated existence. Gets lonely. I couldn’t stay there whenever Dustin would leave. With no car, I’d be stranded out in the boonies without him. I’d probably go crazy after a single night of that. It’s too dang quiet.”

  “Where do you stay when Dustin’s out of town?”

  “With friends.”

  “Can we get the names of these friends?” Darger tried to keep her tone casual. She didn’t want the girl to feel like this was an interrogation.

  “Oh. Well, I kinda couch surf my way around town. Moving on when I feel like I’ve worn out my welcome, you know. But I can write out a list, if you want.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Darger said and handed the girl a pen and pad of paper from her pocket.

  As Jennifer scribbled down the names, she sighed and shook her head.

  “I kind of ran out of places to crash this time around, so I was happy to get a night here. Get cleaned up. Sleep in a real bed. I guess saving money doesn’t matter now. Not with Dustin gone and all.”

  Darger let the silence linger a moment longer before she redirected with a fresh version of an old question.

  “Can you think of anybody that got under Dustin’s skin? Someone who irked him? Maybe a coworker or someone from his past?”

  She was more or less rephrasing the same question from earlier, she knew, but this time the girl sat up. Her jaw finally stopped chewing.

  “Only person I ever heard him talk bad about was his ex, but….”

  “And who was that?”

  “Kathryn.”

  “Last name?” Darger asked.

  Jennifer shrugged, sniffing and looking away.

  “I didn’t have much interest in Dustin’s cast-offs. But she wouldn’t go away.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “He was always asking her for stuff. Borrowing money and whatnot. It was, like, the only thing we ever fought about. I wanted him to make a clean break. I just didn’t see why he would be going to her for favors if they were really through, you know?”

  Darger nodded. A last name would be helpful, but pressing probably wouldn’t help. Her instincts told her that she needed to keep the girl talking.

  “I wondered if you might take a look at this. Tell us what you think.”

  Darger handed over a small photo album loaded with before pictures of the victims, all of them still alive and smiling and full of hopes and dreams.

  Jennifer looked at the snapshots one by one and shook her head. When they reached the photo of Shannon Mead, her eyes opened a little wider.

  “You know her?”

  “Only from the news. That’s the girl. The one they found in the river. And the others? They’re the same?”

  Darger nodded.

  “Do you recognize any of these names?”

  She squinted.

  “No. Wait. How is Dustin related to all of this?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

  “Oh my word.”

  Jennifer brought a hand to her chest, the same gesture she’d made in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry. I just never made that connection, that his death could be… related to all that.”

  Darger gave Furbush a look, wondering if he had any further questions.

  He caught Darger’s meaning and shrugged, getting to his feet.

  He shook Jennifer Strickley’s hand and thanked her, told her they’d appreciate it if she let them know if she planned on leaving town, that they might have more questions.

  “Of course. Yeah, sure,” Jennifer said. “Um… do I have to leave?”

  “Leave?”

  “The room? I mean, it’s paid for through the next two days, and it just seems like a waste to let it sit empty.”

  Furbush grunted a little.

  “Guess that’s up to you, really.”

  They turned, Darger following the chief’s lead, and just as they ducked through the doorway, the girl appeared behind them.

  “Hey wait! I just remembered. It’s Porter. Kathryn Porter. That’s Dustin’s ex.”

  Darger flinched, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up.

  “Kathryn Porter,” Darger said to Furbush. “Wasn’t she one of the witnesses you interviewed relating to Shannon Mead?”

  Chapter 47

  Confusion rippled through Darger’s head. Almost dazed her. The Kathryn Porter revelation was another huge stone thrown into the lake to get the water choppy and murky again.

  After the excitement they’d felt upon getting the credit card hit, Darger couldn’t help but be disappointed. It felt like starting over, somehow. Everything had seemed to circle back to what happened to Christy Whitmore twenty years ago, and their only suspect in that case was dead.

  A pit opened in Darger’s gut when she tried to fit the puzzle pieces together.

  Kathryn Porter could be linked to two of the victims now, but what did it mean? She was Dustin Reynolds’ ex-wife, and she had offered Shannon Mead a ride the night she disappeared, witnessed her getting into a dark sedan of unknown make or model.

  In a town as small as Sandy, could those two events be coincidental? Possibly, but Darger thought not.

  The key to the case must lie in Kathryn Porter’s head, whether she knew it or not. She was too close, too wrapped up in it. Darger doubted Kathryn knew the identity of the killer, but some bit of idle information lay tucked in the folds of this woman’s brain that could point them in the right direction. A clue or a suspect would come spilling from her lips if only they asked the magic question to pull it free. And now it would become a game of teasing it out.

  Darger rode in the passenger seat of the rental, Fowles driving. They’d talked a little upon first entering the car — idle chat about Strickley and Reynolds and Kathryn Porter — but the conversation died a rapid death. Darger fell quiet and tried to sort through everything they now knew.

  Furbush’s people had already tracked Kathryn down, and she’d agreed to come down to the station for another interview first thing in the morning. Darger pictured herself sitting across the interview table from the weird quiet woman who rarely blinked.

  Would a talk with Dustin Reynolds’ ex-wife give any clarity to the investigation? There appeared to be a missing piece to this puzzle, and every time they found a new piece, it only revealed that there was yet another one absent, only seemed to complicate things.

  She gazed out the window, and the day inched toward dusk around them. Overcast skies going further toward grayscale, rain threatening from dark wispy clouds as it always seemed to here.

  When Darger glanced at a slice of her reflection in the rearview mirror, she saw creases lining her forehead, wrinkled flesh that somehow matched her emotional state. Muddled. Confused. Tense.

  She took a breath, slow in and slower out. She’d been here before, of course. Face to face with a pile of clues, interviews, evidence that didn’t quite seem to jell into any kind of story that made sense. But she knew better than to give up. The process would get her there if she trusted it.

  That sounded like something Loshak would advise: “Worrying accomplishes nothing. Trust the process, Darger. Do your job, and the rest will take care of itself.”

  Hearing his voice in her head seemed to calm her. Another deep breath eased a touch of the tension in her upper back, the muscles there releasing a little.

  The killer was still out there, perhaps closer than ever now. She needed to stay focused on that notion. Because whining internally wasn’t going to bring him to justice. Doing the work was.

  So it was decided. She would push the worry down, elbow the confusion away from her thoughts the best she could, and she would press on. She’d interview Kathryn Porter with an open mind, with fresh eyes. Maybe the second go-round would shake something loose.

  She would do her job. It was all she could do, really.

  She would trust the process.

  Chapter 48

  Darger awoke the next morning to a sky so dark it felt like the sun had
never risen. She knew it was somewhere behind that thick wall of threatening clouds, but she wouldn’t know it from looking at the perpetual twilight outside her hotel window.

  A scattering of half-hearted raindrops speckled Darger’s rental as she climbed in, but by the time she’d steered onto the road, she had to put the wipers on full blast. At the station, she got a good soaking on the brief jog from the car to the front doors.

  Darger brushed the wet from her jacket and her hair and found the interview room. The observation area was packed with Sandy PD staff watching like voyeurs through the two-way glass. On the other side, Kathryn Porter fidgeted in the interview room by herself. Darger had to elbow her way to the front to get a peek.

  Kathryn seemed a frail thing sitting alone at the interview table. Somehow smaller than how she’d looked in the video. Still tall, but waify.

  Darger drifted back, letting the locals have the front row, though her eyes never left the girl behind the glass.

  Kathryn took little drinks out of a water bottle every few seconds, delicate little sips that reminded Darger of a bird, then set the bottle back down on the table, her hand trembling just slightly.

  “We ready?” Furbush asked, eyes locking on Darger’s.

  She nodded.

  He led the way into the room with Kathryn, and Darger took one of the seats opposite the girl.

  The girl made fractured eye contact, clearly a little nervous. She didn’t smile.

  “Thanks for coming down here, Kathryn. I think you’re really going to be able to help us out.”

  “I hope so,” Kathryn said. “I can’t imagine that I know anything important, but I’ll do my best.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning. Tell us a little about your relationship with Dustin Reynolds. How long have you known him?”

  “We were just kids when we met, really. In high school. I think I was probably sixteen when we met.”

  Darger knew she needed to keep the tone as light as possible, to encourage, to behave as though this creature across from her was something fragile that might crumple up like a moth wing at the slightest touch.