Five Days Post Mortem

by L. T. Vargus

  “Is that when you two started dating?” Furbush asked. “High school sweethearts?”

  Furbush must have sensed the same thing, as he proceeded in a very ginger manner with her, too. Almost talked to her the way a school nurse talks to a frightened kindergartner.

  Kathryn’s eyes went far away as she spoke, rotating off to the right.

  “No, I knew him a long time before we ever dated. And we were always off and on, so I wouldn’t call us sweethearts. Right away it was like that, and it stayed that way for a couple decades, I guess.”

  Just like the first interview, Darger was struck by how cold and distant this person was, her way of speaking somehow robotic and childlike at the same time. Hushed and small.

  “You were off and on even during the time you were married?” Darger clarified.

  Kathryn nodded.

  “We got married around — I guess I would have been 22. Got divorced around 31. At some point you look around and you realize this person you're with... they aren't who you thought they were.”

  Darger resisted an urge to lean in and seize on this. She had to treat this one gently. Too much pressure, too much excitement, and she might frighten Kathryn into silence.

  “That's how you felt about Dustin? Was there a reason? Did he change somehow?”

  Kathryn’s brow furrowed.

  “No, it wasn't like that. I said it wrong, I think. Because maybe it’s me that's not who I thought I was. Maybe I was the one who changed,” she said. “I’m 37 now. And the last few years…”

  She trailed off for a moment, and then her gaze locked on Darger.

  “Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in between places? Like you started somewhere in life, and you’re supposed to get, I don’t know, to someplace better, but it just seems like you end up going ‘round in circles?”

  Darger felt a chill run through her, because she knew exactly that feeling and had been sensing it often of late. She shook off the unease and found her voice.

  “I do, actually. Is that how you felt? Leading up to the divorce?”

  Nodding again, Kathryn brought her hands together in front of her and knit her fingers together.

  “Even after splitting up, we went another few rounds of on again off again.” She paused and chuckled nervously. “It really was like one of those carousel rides sometimes. Up and down and around and around.”

  “Had you two been involved recently at all?”

  “No, ma’am. We haven’t seen much of each other these last few years. For a while there we tried to be just friends, but we always seemed to end up fighting. Too much baggage, I guess.”

  “You’ve had no contact at all, then?” Darger asked, wondering how Jennifer Strickley would even know about Kathryn if they hadn’t been in touch for several years.

  “Oh, I thought you meant involved. Because I did run into him at Freddy’s a few weeks ago. I didn’t even know he was back in town, so it was a bit of a shock.”

  “Did you talk?”

  “A little.”

  “Do you remember what about?”

  “Just basic how’ve-you-been type stuff. Nothing memorable.”

  “How did he seem to you?”

  “The same. He ended up asking to borrow money, which was pretty typical. Almost the whole time we were together, I worked, and he didn’t.”

  Furbush caught her eye, and Darger was certain he was thinking that this revelation plus the whole Freegan thing pretty much rounded out how Dustin Reynolds had remained so off-grid all these years.

  “And did you lend him the money?” Darger asked.

  Looking sheepish, Kathryn bobbed her head up and down.

  “I always had a hard time saying no to Dustin.”

  “How much?”

  “Eighty dollars, I think?”

  “Did he say what it was for?”

  “He said it was for gas to get to a job he had lined up, and that he’d pay me back as soon as he got his first check.”

  Kathryn’s face morphed into a deep frown.

  “Geez. I guess that would have been right before… right before he died, huh?”

  Her hand went to her mouth and fluttered there like an injured sparrow.

  “Gosh, I feel awful now. I don’t mean to make him out to be a bad guy. He didn’t have the easiest life, you know. There were things in his past… he went through some real rough times.”

  “Like Christy Whitmore?” Darger asked.

  Kathryn’s hand froze over her mouth.

  “You know about that?”

  Darger nodded. “Did he ever talk about it?”

  “Not really. But it was always there. Under the surface. The anger and the guilt, just eating away at him.”

  “Why was he angry?”

  “Well… I mean, people said he did it, you know? That he killed her. Which is a load of baloney. Dustin wasn’t a saint, but he wasn’t a killer, either. Still, I think he felt responsible.”

  “If he didn’t kill Christy, why would he feel responsible?”

  “Because he loved her. And when you love someone, you’re supposed to protect them, right?”

  Shaking her head slightly, as if trying to clear an Etch-a-Sketch, Kathryn continued.

  “What I’m trying to say is that we had good times, too. Dustin… he could be sweet. But in the end, I kind of realized that we’d wasted the best part of each other’s lives. And I could see it happening again. We ended up drawn to each other it seemed like. Better to leave it be, you know?”

  Kathryn shrugged upon finishing her answer, a gesture Darger took as doubt as to how helpful any of what she’d said could be.

  “I know it probably doesn’t seem like it, but filling in Dustin’s background is a big help to us,” Darger said. “Can you think of anybody Dustin had trouble with? Anyone who’d want to hurt him?”

  Again her eyes flicked up and to the right.

  “No. I mean, we had our squabbles, but he was a pretty agreeable guy. A talker. A charmer. I can’t see him getting that far afoul of anyone to lead to something like this. Even back in school, he wasn’t one to get in any fights or anything. I mean, I’m his ex-wife, right? And I can’t imagine him having any real enemies. That must say something.”

  Again she followed this with a shrug that seemed to question the worth of any of this.

  Darger thought about what all had been said so far. Most of Kathryn’s dealings with the victim had been years before. She decided to try to dredge up some memories about the scene of the crime.

  “What about the cabin?” Darger said.

  “What about it?”

  “You lived out there for a time?”

  “Yeah, quite a few years back. I think we stayed out there for close to a year.”

  “How were things between you and Dustin at that point?”

  She tilted her head back and forth as she mulled this.

  “About the same, I guess. We got along a lot of the time, but we peppered the peace with some pretty major fights. I remember him getting so mad he stormed out into the woods one night, not coming back for a few hours. He was too proud to admit it, but I think he’d gotten lost out there.”

  “And do you remember anything odd from around that time? Any conflicts or trouble Dustin had gotten into?”

  For the first time, Kathryn jolted forward in her seat. Deep wrinkles creased her forehead.

  “Wait. There was something. It’s been so long, I didn’t think about it at first, didn’t relate it to Dustin’s… to what happened to Dustin or anything.”

  Darger held her breath, didn’t dare move, somehow worried she’d spook the girl out of elaborating.

  “There was a man at the cabin.”

  “Staying there with you?”

  “No. He was more like… a stalker or something. I mean, the first few times, Dustin seemed to have some kind of business with him, but then I saw him creeping around after that.”

  “Creeping around? Like, watching you?”

&nbs
p; “Yeah.”

  “What did Dustin say about it?”

  “Dustin always said it was nothing, this guy lurking around, but it was creepy, you know, seeing something moving out the window at night, something solid in the darkness.”

  Darger’s heart beat a little faster.

  “And you don’t know his name? Or what kind of business Dustin would have been doing with him?”

  Kathryn frowned at the table top, head shaking side to side.

  “No, ma’am. It must have been ten years ago, at least. He was someone Dustin knew, but he wouldn’t talk about it beyond calling this guy Chicken. Like a nickname, I mean, not like he was calling him a chicken.”

  “Did you ever get a good look at him?”

  “He mostly came at night, but I saw him once in the daylight. I was cooking breakfast. Bacon and eggs. So early it was still gray and dewy out, and he was there outside the kitchen window. Maybe ten feet off leaned up against a tree, smirking at me like he’d been watching a while. Amused that he’d scared me.”

  Darger swallowed, and her throat felt dry and sticky.

  “I turned to yell for Dustin, and when I turned back he was gone. Still gives me goose bumps thinking about it, closing my eyes and seeing that face.”

  “Do you think maybe you could talk to a sketch artist, try to give us something to work with?”

  “I only saw him for a second, and I was pretty shook up to see his figure standing there, but I could try. He had dark hair. Black or close to it. Real messy. Dark stubble crawling almost up to his cheekbones. Average height, probably. And a pointy nose, I think. You could tell he was a creep just looking at him, though. One of those, you know, weirdo types.”

  They fell quiet for a moment, Kathryn’s eyes now darting everywhere as she remembered.

  “I still have dreams about that cabin. Dreams that I’m back there. Isn’t that funny? Only lived there a year, if that, but it embedded itself in my memories real deep, I guess. I kind of think I’ll always dream of that place.”

  A knock at the interview room door interrupted, and Fowles poked his head in. He waved that Darger and Furbush should come into the hall.

  “Excuse us for just a second,” Darger said to Kathryn, though the girl barely seemed to notice.

  “A call just came in from dispatch. Someone spotted something floating in a pond out by Bonnie Lure Park.”

  “Please, don’t,” Furbush said, wiping a hand across his brow. “Don’t tell me we’ve got another body.”

  Fowles nodded.

  “Dispatch sent a patrol car out. Mantelbaum and Parks just radioed in after taking a look. Said it looks like the body of a young woman. Nude.”

  Chapter 49

  The downpour that morning had given way to an overcast afternoon with periodic misty drizzles. Everyone at the scene was wearing plastic ponchos over their gear.

  Darger rubbed her hands together. Her fingers were freezing. That was the problem with the ponchos. They kept the wet off, but they couldn’t keep the chill out.

  It was the same thing with the strobing lights on the police cars. They could flash and glimmer all they wanted, but they added no real brightness to this dim reality.

  The way the red flashers sliced through the gray day reminded Darger of the bright red gashes on the belly and chest of the woman they’d pulled from the pond. Sharp strokes of angry color where everything else was dull and ashen.

  Fowles and Dr. Kole hovered over the body. Darger stood just outside the tent with an umbrella shielding her from the wet spray. They’d invited her to stand inside the tent while they worked, but Darger knew she’d only be in the way. She wasn’t much value to this part of the investigation. So she stayed outside and gave them space.

  Her mind drifted back to when they’d first arrived on the scene.

  She’d watched the divers secure the body to the floating stretcher and felt an incredible sense of déjà vu. It was eerily similar to what she’d witnessed yesterday, though there were two marked differences. The first was that there was no boat. It was determined that the pond was so small and so shallow — not to mention lacking a current like the river-fed lake — to require the use of the Sheriff’s boat. And so the divers had handled the recovery on their own, swimming the small raft out to the naked corpse and then dragging it back to shore by hand.

  The second thing setting this scene apart from yesterday was the body itself. While she’d have to wait for Dr. Kole’s official word, if Darger wasn’t mistaken, this body looked fresher than the others. And as she’d watched them load the remains onto a proper stretcher and move her into the nearby tent, she’d decided it only made things slightly less horrifying. It was still bloated and too pale and wrinkled from the time in the water.

  Anyway, she supposed it made sense for this body to be found sooner. A pond like this didn’t conceal things as well as a rushing river with twists and bends and rapids, not to mention the miles and miles of territory.

  Her thoughts were punctuated by the flashes of a camera as one of Furbush’s men photographed the scene.

  They’d found footprints in the muddy ground near the edge of the pond and what looked like drag marks. The problem was, with the deluge of rain that morning, any definition that might have existed had been eroded away. Washed out. As a result, there was no discernible tread imprint. Even the shoe size was hard to determine because of the way the wet earth had collapsed in on itself. All they really knew for certain was that this was the place the killer had stood when he’d dragged the body into the pond.

  It was yet another infuriating addition to the day. A detail like a specific boot design or even a shoe size could have given them something to go on. It felt like a definitive clue had been dangled before their noses only to be snatched away at the last moment.

  And that feeling kept resurfacing in this case. Again and again they thought they’d found a lead. First with Dustin and then with his credit card suddenly and mysteriously being used. But instead of answers, what they seemed to end up with over and over were more questions. More complications.

  And more bodies.

  How many more would die before Darger put a stop to it?

  Frustration and fatigue threatened to overwhelm her, and as she glanced around at the men and women at work, she knew many of them had to be feeling that same sense of defeat. She’d only gone through it twice. These people had been forced to re-enact this five times now.

  She could see the exhaustion on their faces. In their movements. Processing crime scenes like this took an emotional toll on top of the physical work required. These people would be on their feet for the next several hours. Furbush would want the autopsy results as soon as possible, and she suspected that Dr. Kole would feel pressured to conduct the postmortem immediately.

  Darger got out her phone and looked up the cafe she’d been to the other morning with Fowles. A woman’s voice answered, perky and cheerful, and said delivery was no problem, so Darger ordered enough coffee and baked goods for a small army.

  When the delivery arrived forty minutes later, Darger made the rounds with the boxes of pastry. The men and women working the scene thanked her, happy for the small, pleasant interruption. Because that’s all it was. A brief pause to scarf a cheese danish and chug a small cup of coffee. Then it was back to the grind. Bagging, logging, photographing.

  Darger dug her fingernails into her styrofoam cup, leaving behind a row of tiny crescent moons pressed into the white surface. Three bodies in six days. She knew the actual murders had been spaced apart, despite finding the bodies one after another. But it still suggested the killer was growing more frantic. More desperate.

  What had she missed? Something, surely. She could feel it in her gut, along with the jitters from the caffeine and a sense of guilt for failing this woman.

  The hours passed, and the sun sunk lower in the sky. And as the light of day dimmed, so did the color of things.

  Darger glanced around the scene and found only blea
kness. Like the woman’s corpse laid out a few feet away, everything was gray and sad and sodden. Colorless and dull.

  Chapter 50

  Darger rode to the county medical examiner’s office with Fowles. The windshield wipers beat out a plodding rhythm and left behind smears of moisture on the glass where the blades were worn.

  “Find anything noteworthy?”

  “Actually, yes,” Fowles said.

  “What was it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Say again?”

  “No insect activity.”

  “But the others…”

  “They all had substantial larval activity, because they weren’t put into the water until approximately 1-2 days after death.”

  “So that means this one was dumped immediately?”

  “Or close to it.”

  Darger shook her head, feeling any clarity she’d had about the case slipping away again. She closed her eyes and let out a noisy breath.

  “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Fowles said.

  “This case is just… it’s like stepping into a mountain lake, the kind with water so clear you can look down and see your feet on the sandy bottom. Except with each footstep, more and more of the silt at the bottom gets stirred up until the water is as opaque and murky as pea soup.”

  He reached out and took her hand in his.

  “Would some of my world famous lasagna cheer you up?”

  She narrowed her eyes, smiling.

  “You never mentioned it was ‘world famous’ lasagna.”

  “I don’t like to brag.”

  * * *

  Dr. Kole had already made the Y incision and was prodding the dead woman’s intestines when they arrived in the autopsy suite. All thoughts of lasagna, world-famous or otherwise, immediately fled Darger’s mind.

  She didn’t consider herself particularly squeamish, but there was something unsettling about watching the dissection of a human being.

  It was rougher than one might expect, for starters. Cutting through ribs and sawing open skulls were not delicate tasks.

  It reminded her a little of the first time she’d seen someone administer CPR in real life. She’d witnessed a car accident her first year in college, and she still remembered how violent it seemed when the paramedic began chest compressions on a man pulled from the wreckage. The woman threw her whole upper body into the effort, and the unconscious man convulsed with each thrust. It hadn’t been a shock when she’d learned that recipients of CPR often sustained fractured ribs or a broken sternum.