Five Days Post Mortem

by L. T. Vargus

  Yes.

  She dialed the three digits and lifted the glowing phone to her head, cupping her fingers around the edges to try to block the light out. The ringing gurgled in her ear.

  Her heart thundered in her chest, and her breathing seemed fluttery and panicked. It was hard to stand still, but she had to. So close now. So close to finding a way out of this. Please, just let the call go through.

  The line clicked, and Darger was certain the call had been dropped.

  “911, what is your emergency?”

  She was so startled by the voice, she nearly lost her grip on the phone.

  “My name is Violet Darger,” she choked out in a whisper. “I’m with the Sandy Police Department. My colleague has been shot. We’re at a cabin on the old logging road north of Marmot. I need an ambulance and—”

  She experienced the gunfire in slow motion.

  The thwack of the bullet hitting the bark of a tree to her right seemed to happen first. A violent sound, little flecks of tree spilling down from the point of impact.

  And then a tiny orange burst flared in the distance, something she saw out of the corner of her eye. A momentary burst like a sparkler on the Fourth of July, there and gone within a blink. The muzzle flash.

  The booming crack seemed to arrive last, at least in her consciousness. It reverberated wholly unlike the gunshot in the cabin. Loud, yes, but it somehow sounded smaller in such a big space, as if out here, the sky could swallow much of the volume up.

  She ran.

  Veered away from the bank to brave the rough stuff again for the added cover, stumbling through varieties of plant life, large and small.

  She tripped on a tree root at top speed, launching forward as if shot from a catapult. Colliding. Skidding over dusty earth.

  She came up with a sore ankle. Twisted but still functional. She’d knocked her head against something back there, too. A branch, maybe? Too dark to know.

  But she didn’t worry about these things. She ran.

  Weaving and dodging and keeping upright.

  A sharp ache slowly sharpened under the right side of her ribcage. The side stitch swelled until it killed. And her breathing had gone ragged some time ago, she realized, her mouth and throat dry and raw.

  She needed to rest, needed to hide. She had one idea.

  She veered to the right, coiled back toward the river, slowing a little. Prioritizing quiet over speed now.

  The dark blobs around seemed unchanging, seemed unkind. She started to think the river would never emerge, that she would run in the woods forever, some endless terrifying loop.

  But that flutter of black and silver came to her then, appearing there through the crisscrossing net of branches in her way. The moonlight glittered atop the water’s surface, little shards of white light reflecting everywhere.

  When she got to the river’s edge, she studied the rocky shore until she found what she was looking for. A place where one of the huge rock formations jutted out over the water like a cliff.

  Would it work? She hoped so.

  She ducked low and braved shining the phone’s light down into the jagged stuff for a split second.

  An open space yawned back from beneath the overhang, mostly concealed by a tangle of vines. The water had carved an indentation in the rock here, chiseled it out, eaten away at it while the water was high and then retreated.

  It was at least a twelve-foot drop down to the tiny cave, maybe more, but she thought she could manage it.

  Darger gripped the rocky edge with her hands, lowering her legs down into the dark and letting them dangle there in the nothingness for a moment. Her arms quivered from the strain. She took a deep breath, held it a beat, let it out in a long even heave.

  Then she swung herself toward the face of the cliff and let go.

  Chapter 66

  Sounds crashed through the woods for what felt like a long time, menacing and hard to place from her hiding spot. Everything echoed funny from the water and the walls of rock around her, somehow giving the impression of being right on top of her and far away at the same time.

  Sticks snapped. Leaves swished and rattled and popped. Tiny little percussive sounds like someone pinching a bunch of bubble wrap.

  All the running had kept the chill mostly at bay, but now Darger was shivering so hard she had to clench her teeth to keep them from chattering.

  At one point heavy footsteps seemed to patter just at the edge of the cliff above. Frantic. Restless. Darger held her breath until the sound receded, falling back into the woods.

  Now she listened hard and heard nothing but the babble of the water, turning her head to the left and then the right to try to be certain of the quiet.

  The peaceful sound of the river seemed out of place here, poorly cast for this moment. No thundering rapids. No ripple of white water juddering over rocks with violent purpose. Darger heard only laziness in this little bend of the stream, calm and quiet.

  She took big breaths to try to keep calm herself, in through her nose and out through her mouth. For the moment she would stay put. This rocky semi-enclosure made for good cover, a good hiding place, and the throbbing in her head seemed to be receding some now.

  The fog of shock had begun to clear.

  God, she was cold. Colder than she’d ever been in her life. The slab of stone she was sitting on felt like ice where it pressed into her flesh. Her fingers were almost numb. Still quivering uncontrollably, she clenched and unclenched her hands, trying to get the blood flowing again.

  What if the 911 operator hadn’t understood her? Or wrote her off as a crank call? She might be stranded out here all night. Cold and wet. Her hair and clothes were still soaked from the bathtub.

  She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. Slow and even. The clean smell of the woods enveloped her.

  She just had to stay calm. Patient.

  And then the picture of the legs jutting out from behind the table in the cabin interrupted her moment of clarity.

  The camera in her mind slid up to that funereal looking face, the eyelids already gone blue-gray, the lips looking puffy, pursed a little like the sucker of some bottom-feeding fish.

  That’s when it hit her with full force.

  Fowles was dead.

  It was like a shard of broken glass lodged somewhere in the back of her mind had suddenly come loose, and now it cut and wounded from the inside.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

  When Fowles had talked of his death as an inevitability, it somehow took on a noble sort of feel. Something he bore down on. Something he faced with bravery, without fear.

  But up close to the real thing, those ideas seemed hollow, Darger thought. Empty gestures. Sound and fury signifying nothing. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

  Meaningless.

  It didn’t seem fair. Even if he didn’t have long to go, it didn’t seem fair, didn’t seem right. His time had become so precious, so scarce as to be made sacred, and now the last little bit had been ripped away from him. Stolen.

  And for what?

  For no good reason Darger could see.

  And something about the gravity of Fowles’ death in this moment made the weight of the loss of all the victims hit as well. Holly Green. Maribeth Holtz. Shannon Mead. Dustin Reynolds. Christy Whitmore. And the two most recent bodies, the ones they hadn’t even identified yet.

  But Darger knew it wasn’t only these local victims. It was all of them. All the loss out there. Every day. Everywhere.

  She hugged her knees against her torso and squeezed herself into a ball, tucked her face into the tiny space between her legs. The tears gushed out now as she rocked herself back and forth. Silent spasms jolted outward from her core. Water poured from her eyes.

  Heat flushed her face, and she couldn’t imagine that this weeping would ever end, that this wound would ever close. Because this was it, wasn’t it? The big wound. The fatal one. The one that could never heal, not for any of us.

 
The big sleep waiting for each and every being. The ticking clock that counts down for one and all, the clock in every chest that unwinds and one day stops.

  And she wondered where Loshak was at that moment. Probably out there working a case, fighting the good fight for as long as he could. How did he keep going, day after day, knowing that any justice they brought was a mere pinprick of light in the darkness?

  She thought of her mother. Of Luck. Of Owen. Of all the people who meant something to her, their faces painted there in the blackness.

  The people she loved. The people she seemed hell-bent on running away from. Focusing everything on work instead. Like maybe that would keep her safe from all the pain life seemed to have in store, her and everyone else. Like maybe she could defeat death if she assigned herself a seek-and-destroy mission to find these killers and make them stop. Maybe if she gave everything, it could be bigger than the sum of its parts. Maybe she could sacrifice the time from her own ticking clock and somehow keep everyone else safe.

  It had a warped logic to it, but the world didn’t work that way.

  And now she was alone, and Fowles was dead, and it hurt worse than anything she could remember.

  Chapter 67

  It’s over. Unraveling the rest of the way.

  You crash through ferns and vines and prickers now, but you no longer know why. Don’t know what you expect to accomplish.

  She called for backup. Maybe called 911. Something. Anything. They will be here soon.

  It’s already over. Already past. The end of your story already etched in stone. You cannot change it.

  You had your chance. One final shot to end her, to end it. To put a bullet in her before she spoke into that glowing phone in the distance, but you failed. Missed again. A fatal mistake. You heard her voice rise above the river’s whispering, if only faintly. Heard her speaking. Telling your secrets.

  The panic seems to settle over your body before you really sense it. Finality.

  Sweat engulfs your torso. Puddles in your armpits. Dampens your hairline. Weeps down from the corners of your brow.

  And your stomach gurgles out strange sounds. Strangled and squished noises that remind you of those recordings of whales singing in the depths of the ocean.

  You feel cold and hot all at once. Sweating and shivering. The hatred still churns heat out of your middle, but your arms and legs have gone icy and half-numb.

  The core reality driving this panic hits you after the fact.

  She is gone. Escaped. Far from here.

  You’ve lost the game.

  And the people will know now. They will all know who you are, what you are.

  They will know everything. They will know the truth.

  Yes. The truth remains your enemy here. That’s the one thing that could always hurt you, isn’t it? The one threat you could never fully eliminate.

  You believe way down deep that you could live with the lie indefinitely. Comfortable to hide behind a mask for always, to never really know anyone and never really be known. Just kind of here, kind of quiet, kind of alive during the days, the real you only creeping out at night when no one would see.

  The dark hid you for so long, but not tonight. It turned on you at some point. Seems to close in on you now. All those gnarled shadows stretching, bending, arching toward you, reaching out their crooked fingers.

  And sirens moan somewhere far away. Mournful wails bending out of key, distorted by wind and distance.

  The last part of you still looking for her seems to lose faith all at once. A crumpling of willpower. A sagging of posture.

  If she were near, you would sense her, wouldn’t you? You would feel her there, sense her presence.

  But it’s over. You know that. You knew it as soon as you heard her voice ring out over the night.

  So let it be done.

  You veer for the river. Splash out into the water. Pick your knees up high to push through. Feet slapping into the wet. Kicking up all kinds of watery noise.

  The current swells around you, tugs at your thighs, at your hips, a living thing that lurches and spits.

  And the cold touches you everywhere. A sharp cold that reminds you of metal. Biting. Penetrating.

  As if on cue, you see the police lights rise up over a hill to twirl in the distance. Red and blue spiraling in the dark. Disconnected from everything else, at least from your vantage point. Just the strange glow casting light over all that darkness. Spinning and spinning and spinning.

  This is the end.

  It’s over now.

  In a way it doesn’t seem so bad, you think. In a way, it’s a relief.

  An easing of all of that tension. A way, at last, to disconnect your head.

  A way to keep all of those bad thoughts still. Forever.

  Chapter 68

  Sound shook Darger from the dark place where her thoughts still drifted.

  Footsteps clattered past on the cliff above. Heavy footfalls like a galloping Clydesdale, somehow desperate. Wild. Reckless.

  Darger peeled her face out from between her legs, snapping to attention. Listening.

  She realized that she’d stopped crying some time ago. She didn’t know when. Had lost all sense of time, all sense of reality until these fresh sounds brought her back.

  And splashes rang out from the river somewhere just upstream. Weighty explosions of wetness that sounded like a series of bowling balls being plunged into the muck and somehow ripped straight back out, little sucking sounds accompanying the plops and slaps.

  Footsteps.

  Darger leaned forward, edging out of her small rock enclosure to try to get a look.

  Hunching her shoulders. Squinting her eyes.

  At first, she couldn’t see much.

  Light shone on the ripples in the water. Yellowed curls and quivering lines reflected back the glow from the moon and stars.

  But the disturbances in those crooked bars of light led her eyes to what they sought.

  Movement. Shadows.

  A dark figure wading out into the river. It seemed to move in slower and slower motion as it progressed. The figure looked tall and stick-like in the half-light. Stretched out.

  It must be Kathryn Porter. Must be. But why? Was she trying to cross the water? Still seeking after Darger?

  The figure stopped toward the middle of the stream, the water rushing around her nearly chest high now. The jerky rise and fall of her shoulders marked big uneven breaths.

  Darger got to her feet now without thought. Started walking a straight line toward the place where the woman stood in the water.

  And then she saw the gun in Porter’s grip, the silhouette of the weapon and the hand and the little stick arm protruding from the rippling water. Lifted just above shoulder high and pointed at the sky.

  And now that she’d stepped out of the little semi-circle cliff enclosure, Darger could hear the sirens warbling out there, getting closer, could see the police lights spinning through the black of the woods.

  She picked up speed, moving toward the figure in the water, waving her arms to try to catch the woman’s eye, lips puckering, mouth poised to speak with no words actually coming out.

  What could she say? She didn’t know.

  The sound of the sirens kicked way up in volume all at once. Probably cresting the last hill on the road, at the cabin, pulling into the driveway.

  She waded out into the river, running against the current now. Icy cold water gripped her feet and ankles and calves and knees, slowing her down more and more with every step. She could barely move once it reached waist high, legs kicking at the frigid water as hard as they could but barely getting anywhere.

  She wasn’t going to get there in time, so she jumped up and down.

  Screaming.

  No words. Just a furious sound tearing out of her throat. Ragged and raw and alive.

  And the scream seemed to swirl out over the water and come echoing back from the pines on the other side. A harsh and dry and ugly noise coming out
of her, her own voice one she couldn’t recognize by the time it bounced back to her.

  If Kathryn Porter heard the awful sound, she showed no sign of it. She brought the gun to her head, the barrel coming to rest under her chin.

  And Darger’s scream went up half an octave, more shrill, more disturbed, but it did not falter.

  The figure in the water squeezed the trigger. The little muzzle flash looked like a bottle rocket going off from this far out, the tiniest orange burst in the dark, glinting off the water.

  Darger recoiled from the sight, arms drawn into her chest as though to hug herself away from this horror, hands crawling up onto her cheeks to cover herself, shield herself.

  Darger’s scream cut out, and the sirens wailed no more. The whole world quiet but for the sound of the rushing river.

  The figure hovered for just a second before the head jerked forward. One final nod. Flung hard on the limp neck.

  And then the silhouette slumped down into the black water and disappeared.

  Epilogue

  Kathryn Porter’s body was spotted by a kayaker three days later, tangled in branches some 26 miles downstream.

  Darger watched the divers bring in the corpse and wondered if Kathryn had any sense that she’d end up looking like one of her own victims. Pale and bloated and waterlogged.

  The only real difference was the clothes. They swaddled her body more like rags than garments, tattered and torn, and the waistband of the pants constricted the bloated torso like a string of butcher’s twine around a pork loin. But they were there. The other victims had traversed these rivers, lakes, and streams naked. Stripped of that final dignity.

  A brief journal found at Porter’s apartment had filled in most of the lingering gaps about her personal life and crimes. Extensive references were made to Christy Whitmore and Shannon Mead in particular. A manifesto of obsession. Darger thought it sounded more like she wanted to be them than be with them. Her secret relationship with the final victim, Callie Snodgrass, was laid out pretty well, too.

  All written in the second person, the few dozen pages of writing were eerie. Unsettling. Distant but still vivid. Aloof yet insightful.