“The problem with trying to draw comparisons between that case and this one, of course, is that those were kids being abused by their parents,” Darger said. “Even though some of them were adults, there was probably a sort of natural Stockholm syndrome inherent in the situation. The parents could use their power to perpetuate the abuse and get away with it for years. I’m struggling to imagine how you might achieve the same with adults. Maybe you could do it with one, but with several? At the same time?”
Loshak got a sudden gleam in his eye.
“What about some sort of religious cult?” he said. “There’s a lot of that going around these days. Cults. The starvation could be a ritualistic activity, a fast, either done willingly as an act of penance or forcibly as punishment.”
“Maybe…” Darger trailed off, nodding.
“It could explain the attempt to cover up the deaths. No cult would want it known that three of their members had met rather sudden demises.” Loshak heaved a sigh. “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s see what the autopsies tell us, and then we’ll piece that together with where the bodies came from, once Zaragoza’s team has answers.”
Detective Ambrose stalked over, finally finished with his phone call.
“God damn politicians. I got three unidentified bodies and a mountain of trash to sift through, and the mayor wants to bitch to me about optics. What the fuck are optics anyway?”
Ambrose crossed his arms and surveyed the techs bustling back and forth inside the marked grids.
“I’ll tell you what, when I was a young detective, I envied the older guys. The ones with seniority got all the respect. All the good cases. The headline cases.” He scoffed and shook his head. “Well, now I’m the detective with the most seniority, and you know what? I could happily go the rest of my career only getting the vanilla assignments. None of this weird shit. Trudging around in garbage. Emaciated bodies showing up in landfills three at a time. It’s a shit show, and I’m perched ankle-deep in it.”
No one spoke for several seconds. They watched the techs dig and sort and log, working hard but barely making a dent in the mountain of trash.
“Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I appreciate the FBI lending a hand. I figure with everything you’ve seen, weird shit must be kind of your specialty.”
“Yeah… weird is par for the course. But this… this is weird even for us,” Loshak said.
“I have to tell you, that is not a comforting thought.”
There was a sudden commotion from the far end of the search area. An urgent shout that sounded female.
Everyone froze, all the white-suited figures going rigid at the same time. Except for one. A willowy woman toward the back quadrant of the furthest search grid was waving one arm and yelling something at Agent Zaragoza, but her mask muffled the words too much for Darger to make them out.
Loshak and Detective Ambrose exchanged a meaningful glance.
“Sheeeeit,” Ambrose said.
“What is it?” Darger asked. “What did she say?”
Loshak inhaled. It was several seconds before he answered.
“They found another body.”
Chapter 5
Darger and Loshak followed Detective Ambrose toward the commotion, slogging up the slope. Darger’s foot sank into a sludgy section that gripped her up to the mid-calf, her boot coming out slick with what she could only think of as “garbage juice.”
As they got close to the tech crew, Agent Zaragoza put her hands up and addressed the gathering crowd of law enforcement. Pretty much everyone working the scene had stopped working and were now huddled along the edge of one of the search grids, trying to get a look at the new discovery.
“I need everyone but Detective Ambrose and myself to stay back so we can keep the integrity of the scene intact.”
There was some shuffling and muttering, and then a path opened up for Ambrose, the swells of bunny suits parting. Darger stood on her tiptoes as the people around her shifted, trying to get a glimpse of the body. She was curious whether the newest victim was male or female, but there were too many people for Darger to see anything but more trash.
Agent Zaragoza began issuing orders to her people.
“Mike, can I use your camera to document?” Agent Zaragoza asked a thin man whose head bobbed once. “Thank you. Heather, I need you to mark off this new area, starting from the southwest corner of the previous grid and extending to just past where I’m standing right now. Where’s Luis? Come over by me so you can record video with an unobstructed view, please.”
Ambrose glanced around until he found Darger and Loshak in the cluster of white suits and waved them closer.
“I’d like the Feds to see this.”
Zaragoza only nodded and continued snapping photos of the body.
Loshak shouldered his way through the crowd and Darger followed closely behind him until they’d reached an edge marked by red string. Finally, she could see what all the upheaval was about.
A man’s body sprawled there, lying face down, his black-clad figure still partially buried by trash bags, water bottles, and what looked like crumpled balls of newspaper. The garbage covered up the sides of the body and most of the limbs, the head wedged down in the trash, leaving only his back exposed — the image reminded Darger of something she might see at the beach, kids partially burying each other in the sand before running out into the water to wash the grit away.
While they watched, Agent Zaragoza instructed her people as to which pieces of garbage to remove. They worked piece by piece, excavating in meticulous fashion, with Zaragoza snapping photographs at each interval until he was mostly uncovered.
Plastic sheeting swathed his legs, and Darger wondered if he might have been wrapped in it at the time he was dumped. None of the other bodies had been covered or wrapped in anything. She supposed this one could be different, but she doubted it. Everything about these body dumps suggested a lack of planning. Rushed and disorganized.
The techs continued working, revealing a little more at a time. Now Darger could see that the dead man’s face was pressed against the side of a crumpled KFC bucket, the folded up red and white cardboard concealing his features.
Like the others, the man was horrifically thin. His clothes — a pair of black pants and a black shirt — looked far too big on the stick-like frame of the body. Spiky bits of skeleton poked against the fabric. Again Darger tried to make sense of the emaciated condition of the bodies and came up with no simple, logical explanation.
“Dressed in all black again,” Loshak said from beside her, his voice low and gravelly. “Just like the other male victim.”
Darger nodded. She’d been thinking the same thing.
“But not identical,” she said. “I think the other guy was in a black t-shirt. This guy’s shirt has a collar. Maybe a polo style. And the pants look like they might be black work pants versus black jeans. Still, could be some kind of uniform.”
Agent Zaragoza was at the far side of the new grid, crouching down low to get a photograph of the body at a new angle.
“I’m ready for him to be flipped if that’s OK with you, Detective Ambrose,” she said, straightening to her full height of approximately five feet.
“Ready when you are,” Ambrose said.
Zaragoza gave a signal to the two techs who’d been clearing each piece of trash under her guidance. They stooped, each one taking hold, one gripping a shoulder and one clutching at the thigh and hip.
Darger didn’t envy them. This body looked more decayed than the others. The skin was splotchy and flecked. Dark gray patches shone here and there where the outer layer of dermis was missing. Even standing a few yards away made her skin crawl.
Flies buzzed around the remains, spiraling, spiraling, a miniature rendition of the seagulls circling the landfill. Their fizzy sounds seemed frantic, excited, a bunch of tiny zippers being pulled endlessly.
On the count of three, the two men heaved the body onto its back. As t
he face rolled into view, maggots spilled from a hole in the cheek. Darger could sense the crowd around her recoil at the sight, the mob wincing and rolling a step back as one.
It wasn’t just the maggots. The face cast an appalling picture even without the insects.
Skin mottled and torn. Lips pulling back from the mouth, exposing all the teeth in a grimace. Nose mashed and sunken in. The whole face looked shrunken and gray and wrong.
There were gasps from the onlookers, and Darger heard someone behind her gag.
“You know it’s a bad one when the pros start blowing grits,” Loshak muttered.
Darger stared at the body, thinking that it wasn’t only the maggots and decay that turned the stomach. It was the obscenity of finding human remains here, in this heap of refuse.
There was a reason death had so many rituals and traditions attached, Darger thought. Embalming. Funeral rites. Eulogies.
Death demanded reverence, demanded awe. Each passing person was a singularity, a unique individual ceasing to exist. Their body was to be honored. Washed. Preserved. Buried or cremated with great care. The various death ceremonies dated back thousands of years, to the roots of human history.
To throw someone out, to literally dump them like trash, was worse than cruel. It was inhuman.
Chapter 6
Back in the canvas tent outside the crime scene, a numbness came over Darger as she stripped off her gear in reverse: first the gloves, then the hardhat, the boots, and finally the coveralls. Loshak did the same next to her, neither of them talking. Maybe that cold, blank feeling had gotten a hold of him, too.
After, they stood a moment in the parking lot. A white van from the M.E.’s office was parked with its rear doors open to the curb so the two assistants could more easily load the body bag into the back. In it went, and then the doors folded shut to close the body off from them, the rear of the cargo van feeling very much like an internment chamber in a mausoleum.
Darger and Loshak split up then, each heading to their respective vehicles. Ambrose had spoken to the Medical Examiner, a Dr. Fausch, who would be fast-tracking the next autopsy, and Darger wanted to be there to observe that. She and Loshak had agreed to meet up at the morgue, in the university district, where the examination would take place.
Alone in her car, Darger couldn’t help but picture the body again in her mind’s eye. So skinny that the elbows and knees seemed to bulge. Limbs looking stretched out and distorted. And then she saw the maggots spilling from the John Doe’s face.
An icy shiver ran up her spine, the inside of the car suddenly feeling cool and dank, almost cavernous. It felt striking and strange after all that time out in the open atop the trash heap — the sea gulls swooping and shrieking, the bulldozer engines grating in some off-key harmony. The chill gripped her arms and didn’t let go.
It suddenly struck her as very odd that her job was to make sense of these crimes. They would work this case. Gather and examine the evidence, search out the meaning behind these deaths.
But what explanation could possibly make sense of it all?
At a red light several miles from the dump, Darger realized she was still breathing through her mouth. She inhaled through her nose and instantly detected the odor of garbage. The question now was whether she smelled like a dumpster or whether the interior of the car had some residual stink from being parked a few hundred yards from Mount Garbage. She hoped it was the latter. This case was going to be taxing enough without having to trot around for the rest of the day reeking of rotten kitchen scraps.
These thoughts were interrupted by the ringtone of her phone. It was the opening riff of a Black Sabbath song, which told her immediately the caller was Casey Luck.
“What’s up, Iron Man?” she asked. She’d given him the nickname after he’d had ten screws inserted into his ankle after an arson case they’d worked together the previous year.
“Oh, just having a crappy day and wanted to commiserate with someone who understands the special hell that is desk duty.”
“But filing requisition forms and processing background checks is so fulfilling,” Darger said with a flat affect.
Luck scoffed.
“At this point, that might be all that’s left for me. I don’t know if they’re ever going to let me get back to field work.”
“That’s bullshit,” Darger said. “If I can claw my way back in, then you have no excuse with your measly injuries.”
In reality, his injuries had been anything but measly — aside from the broken ankle, he’d suffered a concussion, smoke inhalation, and severe burns — but Darger had figured out by now that offering Luck sympathy was the opposite of effective. He seemed to interpret attempts to comfort him as pity and responded much better when she took a slightly antagonistic angle.
“It’s not the injuries. It’s the way everyone looks at me. Like I’m something fragile and pathetic.” Luck sighed. “Every time I bring up requalifying for fieldwork, Slevin gets this patronizing smile on her face, and her eyes go straight to my cane.”
Darger switched the phone to her other ear so she could adjust the rearview mirror. There’d been a lot of pep talks like this over the last few months. Luck’s recovery had been slow and not always steady. She didn’t mind, though. They shared a certain bond now that they’d faced a brush with death together.
“Well, who gives a shit what Slevin thinks or how she looks at you?” Darger said.
“She’s my supervisor, Violet.”
“So what? You think I asked anyone for their permission or their blessing before I came back?”
Luck snorted.
“No.”
“It’s not Slevin’s decision anyway. You don’t need her approval to retake the fieldwork exams, so fuck her. After my head injury, the more people looked at me like I was some pitiful charity case, the more I wanted to prove them wrong. Rub their stupid faces in it. You gotta do this the Violet Darger way: Take all the anger and frustration flowing through you and use it as motivation.”
“You sound like a sith lord from Star Wars,” Luck said.
“Good. Jedis are pussies.”
Luck laughed.
“Anyway, what you have to do now is focus on what you can do, not what you can’t do. How’s rehab going?”
“It’s going. Irma thinks I’m making great progress. She has me doing this exercise where I have to write out the alphabet with my foot.”
“Like, with a pen?” Darger asked, imagining Luck clutching a ballpoint Bic between his toes.
“No, just in the air,” he said, chuckling. “And it sounds easy, but it hurts like hell. I had tears in my eyes yesterday.”
“That means it’s working,” Darger said. “If your physical therapist isn’t making you cry, they aren’t doing a good job.”
“I’m going to tell Irma you said that. The woman is a sadist. She’ll love it.” Darger heard the telltale creak of a cheap FBI office chair over the line. “Oh, I almost forgot to thank you for the care package. Jill already tore into the giant bag of gummy bears. Not sure if there are any left.”
“Tell her I said hi.”
“I will.”
In front of her, the right-hand turn signal of Loshak’s rental car blinked on and off. They pulled into the parking lot for the Joseph W. Spelman Medical Examiner’s Building, a large brick structure across the street from the sprawling VA Medical Center.
Darger pulled into the empty parking space next to the one Loshak had taken.
“So as much as I’d love to keep talking, I have a date at the Philadelphia morgue with a decaying corpse. We just pulled him out of the town dump,” Darger said, putting the car in park and pocketing the keys.
“Well, it would be rude to keep him waiting,” Luck said. “My break’s about over anyway. But thanks for the kick in the pants, Violet.”
“Anytime,” Darger said as she opened her door and climbed out of the car.
Loshak raised his eyebrows, a wordless inquiry as to who’d been
on the other end of the phone call.
“Luck,” Darger said, tucking the phone into her bag.
“How’s he doing?”
“Oh, he wanted to whine about desk duty and physical therapy.”
“Still struggling, eh?”
“Yeah, well, I told him to quit wallowing and do the work so he can get back in the field.”
Loshak wheezed out a laugh.
“You must have made such a great counselor when you worked in Victim Services, what with your gentle ways and wealth of empathy.”
“Hey, sometimes you need someone to hold your hand, and sometimes you need to get slapped upside the head and told to quit feeling sorry for yourself. Self-pity never did anyone any good.”
They’d reached the public entrance of the building, and Loshak paused in front of the door.
“You ready?” he asked.
“No, but we might as well get it over with.”
“That’s the spirit,” Loshak said, holding the door open and gesturing for her to go in first.
Chapter 7
Darger and Loshak followed the signs down to the basement of the medical examiner’s building, which was artificially bright despite the lack of windows. The floors gleamed, so clean they squeaked under the soles of Darger’s boots, and the smell of cleaning solvents was strong here, a bright chemical stench that tingled and almost stung in her nostrils.
They checked in with an assistant at a desk, who told them Dr. Fausch would be with them shortly.
Darger crossed and uncrossed her arms, then tugged at the sleeves of her jacket.
“What’s wrong with you?” Loshak asked. “I’ve never seen you get so jumpy over an autopsy before. You getting squeamish on me?”
“I have no problem with fresh bodies. It’s the ripe ones I don’t care for. Especially not when maggots spill out like candy from a piñata. Besides…” Darger paused to sniff the shoulder of her jacket. Nothing.
Violet Darger | Book 7 | Dark Passage Page 3