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
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Epilogue
Author's Note
More From the Authors
About the Authors
DARK PASSAGE
Violet Darger Book 7
L.T. Vargus & Tim McBain
Copyright © 2021 L.T. Vargus & Tim McBain
Smarmy Press
All rights reserved.
Version 1.0
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
The dozer scuttled up the trash heap, shoving the bulk along, grinding its way closer to the center of the landfill. Keith jerked the wheel, felt the vehicle wobble over the uneven surface of the garbage heap, its tracks grating and churning.
He glanced at the rearview mirror. Saw the sweat glistening on the puckered skin beneath his eyes. Already he felt that itch, the little rectangle in his breast pocket calling out to him. Not yet, though. Better to get further out to sea first, well away from the office, out toward the middle of the ocean of trash where no one was looking.
The incline grew steeper beneath the bulldozer. Tilted Keith’s shoulders back in the bucket seat. He climbed the mound of garbage slowly but surely, inch by inch, like that first hill on a roller coaster.
This was his job, for better or worse. Driving a tractor over a sea of trash known as the Wissahickon Creek Landfill — a giant hole in the ground with 500 feet of mostly shredded Philadelphia County garbage floating atop it. He sailed his lonely vessel out over the mess like a makeshift raft and let the blade shove the swells of trash around so someone else could shred and then compact it all, shove it deeper into the hole.
The pay was OK, but this was a shit job, as far as he was concerned. The smell alone confirmed that. The slop was ripe today — acrid and tangy, some umami punch adding a layer of pungent earthiness. Savory, he thought. Like a few tons of rotting hamburger and mushrooms had been blended in with the usual shit smell.
Smell that rich aroma, he thought, gritting his teeth. His recurring internal joke had never been spoken aloud. It probably never would.
A giant wad of debris rolled in front of him, growing slowly like a cartoon snowball tumbling down a hill. And it was juicy. Like the sun was coaxing sweat out of the trash’s paper and plastic skin.
Keith’s eyes flicked to the rearview again. Watched the slowly scrolling ski slope of trash there. The office had become a tiny speck. That was good enough.
The box in his breast pocket thrummed with cold current. His fingers reached for it. Found it.
He plucked a Marlboro Red from the pack and attached the filtered end to his lips. His lighter flickered to life. The flame bent into the tobacco cylinder and made a faint sucking sound as it lit.
He drew in a big lungful of smoke. Could only kind of detect the flavor of it with the garbage smell so strong today. Even so, it tasted pretty goddamn good.
He’d been smoking these for twenty-seven years now, since his junior year in high school. “Cowboy killers” people called these particular cigs, presumably since multiple models from the Marlboro Man advertising campaigns had succumbed to the Big C.
What a shame it’d be if the tobacco took me down, Keith thought. Gone way too soon. He had so much shoving around of garbage left to give.
His eyes shifted to the mirror again. The office remained a tiny dot there. He didn’t know what he’d expected to see. The boss man, Mike, rocketing up the trash heap to catch him in the act? Mike would have no idea about this violation, a thought that brought the faintest smile to his lips. Sometimes he thought he only enjoyed smoking out on the garbage pile because it wasn’t allowed. Strictly verboten.
The other workers wondered how he could even stand to do it, too grossed out by the smell. He’d been working here eighteen years now, though. Had given the best years of his life to this squalid expanse of filth. And time had a way of changing you, hardening you to certain things. The stench had become part of his world, part of him. It simply was. Getting upset about the smell would be like getting upset about the wind or the stars.
He hit the cigarette hard. Felt the smoke swirling in his lungs. Held it there. Savored it.
This time when his eyes slid over to the mirror, he saw something there that made him cough. The smoke sputtered out of him. His foot jammed the brake.
He sat there a moment. Eyes fixed on the image in the mirror. Staring. Not smoking. Not breathing.
The lower half of a body jutted up from the trash heap, everything from the waist down angled awkwardly into the air. Naked. Legs limp and folded. For a second he told himself it was a mannequin, that he was overreacting, but something was wrong with it.
Too bony.
The hip bones looked skeletal. Skin drawn taut over the joints as though no muscle tissue remained. No mannequin existed like this.
And yet something about the shape reminded him of his daughter, Mia. She was scrawny and frail, just like the girl out there.
Just like her.
He stubbed his cigarette out on the Mountain Dew can he used for an ash tray. Watched the white tube of tobacco bend and crush and then disappear into the wide m
outh hole.
He knew it wasn’t her. Knew it. He’d seen her this morning. It couldn’t be her.
Nevertheless, he climbed out of the vehicle. Felt his boots sink ankle-deep into the sludgy garbage. The smell assailed his nostrils, sharper out here in the open. The stench seemed to cook in the sunlight, some oily vapor that changed in the heat and hung in the air.
He waded over to where the corpse projected from the garbage. Knelt down beside it.
His gloved hands dipped into the trash, went to work digging the girl out. The heavy work gloves disappeared into the junk and reemerged over and over, flinging bits away. Excavating.
The sun-baked the back of his neck. Beaded fresh sweat along his hairline. And the wind blew in haphazard bursts, touched the wet bits of his skin and cooled them some.
Part of him knew he shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be messing with a likely crime scene. But he needed to see her. Needed to know.
He shoveled away crumpled popcorn bags and crushed paper Pepsi cups from a movie theater. Then he pulled out a tattered blanket, faded blue, scratchy material damp with garbage juice. Next came empty Heineken cans in various states of dented-ness.
His hands kept working, kept digging. He watched them in a daze. Watched the pale skin of the girl’s upper body slowly come clear until he reached the milky white flesh of her face.
Purple surrounded her sunken eyes, breaking up the pale sheet of skin. Dainty elfin features formed her nose and lips.
Ghostly.
Angelic.
Beautiful.
Even with her face emaciated so the cheekbones protruded like doorknobs set beneath her skin, she was beautiful.
He stood and stumbled back a step. Choked. Coughed. Felt hot tears in his eyes.
Not Mia. Not his daughter. He’d known it wouldn’t be, and yet he found no relief in the revelation.
For this girl — a daughter to someone — had been plucked from this life. Taken. Set afloat in the sea of trash, launched into his reeking world, like another used up plastic object to be doused with piss and shit and garbage juice.
And he knew that this moment had changed everything again, that this world would be forever different for him now. For both of them. She was part of it. Eternally. Like the smell. Like the wind and the stars.
He dug back through the trash he’d thrown. Draped the rough blue blanket over her. He knew it was silly, this overwhelming urge to cover her, protect her. It was far too late for that. But if it had been Mia… well, that’s what he would have wanted for her. Someone to give her one last bit of dignity, at least.
Then he hustled back to the tractor to call the office and tell them what he’d found.
Chapter 1
The road sliced a clean charcoal line through the forest. Hemlock trees formed a wall on either side of the asphalt, with a sliver of pale gray sky visible overhead. Violet Darger’s rental car rocketed through the cleft in the foliage.
She fidgeted in her seat. Shifted from one butt cheek to the other. She’d been driving for almost four hours straight, and she was antsy for the journey to be over.
Her finger found the power button for the radio and turned it on. The chorus of “Take It Easy” by The Eagles blared from the speakers, and just as soon as she’d turned the music on, she turned it back off.
It’s been a long drive, and I hate the fucking Eagles.
Darger’s gaze slid over to the navigation app on her phone. She was nearly there, anyway. Might as well settle in for the last stretch in silence.
But the quiet had a strange way of amplifying her anticipation. Snake-like tendrils of anxiety squirmed in her belly.
Her mind flashed on the photographs in the file Loshak had sent. Three emaciated bodies found in a garbage dump in Pennsylvania. Two women and a man. One of the women had been wearing a thin tank top and panties. The other had been completely nude. The man was fully clothed in all black and covered in a layer of what looked like dirt or soot unrelated to the trash around him.
The first question was how three people could go missing without any fanfare until they turned in up the garbage heap.
The second question, the more troubling question, was how they’d become so thin.
Darger lifted her travel cup from the drink holder and took a sip. Her nose wrinkled involuntarily. The barista had been a bit too heavy-handed with the vanilla syrup in her latte. It was a touch over the line in a way that made the sweetness stick to the back of her tongue and throat.
The car rounded a corner, and an ending to the dense cluster of trees appeared in her windshield at last, taking shape in the distance. The opening in the hemlocks grew larger as she sped down the two-lane road. When the trees finally parted for good, the land opened up, spreading out to the horizon on either side. And then she saw it.
Two immense heaps of garbage jutted up from the earth, towering peaks with smaller crests surrounding them that sprawled in all directions like foothills. A breath sucked into Darger’s throat and held still there as she took in the display, eyes dancing over the hulking bulges, almost awe-inspiring in their sheer size. A virtual mountain range of trash.
This was the Wissahickon Creek Landfill, one of many large dumps serving the Philadelphia metropolitan area. It was also the location where the bodies had been found.
Small black shapes circled above the two big mounds, swooping and diving. Darger’s first thought was flies, but then she realized they must be seagulls, swirling everywhere in the sky in search of fresh meals.
Chain link fence traced the perimeter of the compound, the barrier complete with faint coils of barbed wire spiraling around the top, as though the precious piles of garbage must be protected at all costs.
Darger pulled to the gate and wrestled her ID from her pocket. With a quick glance at her FBI badge, the attendant lifted the arm of the boom gate and waved her through. It wasn’t until she was moving again that Darger realized she’d held her breath as soon as she’d rolled the window down to show her badge.
Even still, she hesitated to inhale, worried about what kind of stink might have snuck inside when she’d had the window open. As the seconds wore on, her lungs began to protest.
She finally relented. Took a test sniff. Detected nothing.
Well, that was a surprise.
Maybe it was a wind direction thing. Or maybe the stench would only hit her once she stepped outside. In any case, she kept a steady stream of oxygen moving to her lungs for the moment.
She wheeled into the dirt parking lot, passing dumpsters of various sizes and colors arranged in rows. The tires of her rental gushed through the muddy sand, sizzling over the wetness.
Darger slid into an empty space next to a shitty little office building. The once-white corrugated metal exterior of the place was stained brown like a tooth, smudged with black streaks emanating from the corner of each window. A gull squatted on the roof eating something it had harvested from the massive smorgasbord of trash surrounding them.
Darger’s eyes slid back to the massive garbage peaks as she pulled the key from the ignition. A bulldozer scurried up the pile, the yellow vehicle bumping up and down as if it were tottering atop the trash instead of rolling over it. For a moment, she could only marvel at how small the machine looked next to the heaps of refuse.
And then her stomach churned a little at the thought of what other secrets might be buried in all that garbage.
Chapter 2
The moment Darger stepped out of the car, the wave of garbage smell hit her — an odor somehow rich and sour at the same time. It seemed to rise into the air like a filmy vapor and cook there in the sun. She wrinkled her nose.
She’d only taken few steps in the muddy lot when a man in a hazmat suit approached. He was very tall and thin, and the white coveralls fit him awkwardly. Tight in the crotch but baggy everywhere else.
“Agent Darger?”
“That’s me.”
“I’m Officer Primanti,” he said, shaking her hand.
“I’ve got a suit for you right over here. Detective Ambrose and Agent Loshak are already inside the search grid.”
Darger followed Primanti over to a canvas tent where he handed her the various pieces of PPE gear. She stepped into the suit first, zipping the Tyvek coveralls up to her neck, and then donning a bright yellow reflective safety vest. Next she traded her regular boots for a pair in black rubber. Primanti helped her fit a respirator over her nose and mouth before pointing to a row of hardhats.
“The helmets are a facility requirement. Anyone going past the crime scene barrier has to wear one.”
“They get a lot of trash falling from the sky around here?” Darger asked, her voice muffled by the mask.
Primanti chuckled, shrugging.
“Liability and all that, I guess.”
Darger smoothed her hair back and snugged up the strap on the hardhat.
After they each squeezed into a pair of gloves, Officer Primanti lowered his respirator and put his hands on his hips.
“Ready?”
Darger gave him a thumbs up. Primanti nodded once and led her out of the tent and through a gap in a row of police saw horses.
“We have to sort of edge around this ridge here,” he said, gesturing to the angled slope of one of the trash mounds. “And you’re gonna wanna watch your step. The garbage is awkward to walk on.”
That was an understatement in Darger’s opinion. Each step was a fresh gamble as she moved up the slope, shuffling from a section that felt like stable ground to another area that buckled and shifted under her weight.
Her arms splayed out to her sides, working to maintain her balance through the rough stuff, and she kept her eyes on the ground as she walked, trying to determine by sight whether her next step would be mushy or firm. She was still watching her boots when she heard a shrill whistle.
She glanced up and realized they’d rounded the far side of the garbage mountain. A cluster of figures huddled in the distance, all matching in their white coveralls and yellow hardhats. One of the suits put up a gloved hand and waved.
And even though the suits made the figures look identical from this distance, Darger knew by the whistle that it was Loshak.
Primanti turned back to face her.
“You think you can make it over there on your own? I have to get back to my post.”
Violet Darger | Book 7 | Dark Passage Page 1