Darger watched the greenery on the sides of the road whiz past in a blur — a mess of leaves and stalks and branches all woven together tightly on this rural stretch.
“Did she know anyone else from the cult? Or any other friends of his?”
“The best she could offer was a guy down the street Stephen was friendly with when he was a teenager, but the guy moved down south five years ago. He’s a band teacher in Kentucky now, and as far as the aunt knew, he and Stephen haven’t been in contact for years. Anyway, I’ll give you a call back if we make any progress with any of this.”
Darger thanked him and hung up. After texting the contact information for Bailey Harmon and Courtney Maroni to Detective Ambrose, she tucked her phone away and shifted in her seat so that she was angled more toward Loshak.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Do the Children of the Golden Path have something to do with all this?”
“It’s an awfully big convenience that at least three of our four victims came from there,” Loshak said. “And I’m not put at ease by the fact that the two living people making up the little clique — Worm and Celestia — are notably absent.”
Darger remembered the way the cult leader had blanched when she’d told him Stephen Mayhew was dead.
“And what about Curtis? Was it all an act?”
Loshak adjusted his grip on the steering wheel and shrugged.
“The guy practically told us himself that he’s an actor. All that stuff about role-playing during their rituals.”
“He did seem to recover from the shock fairly quickly,” Darger said. “But I expected more secrecy.”
Loshak made a dismissive grunt.
“It’s all part of the grift. ‘Look how open I’m being. I’m a free spirit. I have nothing to hide.’ All things considered, we only saw a small part of the camp. Only talked face-to-face with a handful of their members. Who knows what they could be hiding?”
Darger nodded.
“I don’t think he liked that we saw the Primal Scream shed.” She recalled the tightness in his facial expressions. A wariness in his eyes. “He was all smiles on the outside, but I sensed some tension underneath.”
“Oh yeah,” Loshak said, chuckling. “I think it pissed him off that he didn’t have absolute control over what we saw of the camp and how we saw it, start to finish.”
They passed a billboard for a restaurant offering “American fare in a historic stagecoach stop and inn from the 1750s!” at the next exit.
“What do you say we stop off for some vittles?”
“I never say no to vittles,” Darger said.
Loshak grinned as he turned his blinker on and took the next exit.
“And I’m paying, seeing as you won our little wager fair and square.”
“You’re quite chipper for a guy who just lost a bet,” Darger said, squinting over at her partner.
“I may have lost the bet on Curtis’ hair, but I was dead right about his reaction to you. He was positively smitten.”
Darger scoffed.
“Only because he saw me as a perfect addition to his little collection.” Darger attempted to mimic the cult leader. “‘Are you sure you’re not projecting? Oh, you’re shy. Unexpected.’ What a douchebag.”
Loshak chuckled.
“Is that all it takes to win people over?” Darger asked. “Compliments and a vague suggestion that they’re ‘understood?’”
“At their core almost everyone wants to feel valued, appreciated. Seen. And if they aren’t getting it, then someone like Curtis can take advantage. Fill that void. Give them the sense of specialness they crave. He tosses it out there like a fish hook on a line, right? Judges how you react. Someone like you might scorn his attempts. But that’s fine. Sooner or later, he’ll get a bite. And when he does, he already knows what bait to use next time, right? A little ego-stroking.”
The car trundled through a pothole in the restaurant parking lot, and Darger braced one elbow against the door to steady herself. The Stagecoach Inn was an old two-story stone house situated beside an antique mall.
Inside, the place was decorated with old collectibles and gingham tablecloths. The hostess seated them at a two-top near the front windows that looked out on Main Street. Darger stared out at the grid of brick buildings clustered around the only traffic light in town. Probably the whole place had been built during some mining or logging boom.
“So is that the soft sell?” Darger asked as she perused the menu. “Curtis gets you on the hook with all of his flowery words. His understanding, then he makes it clear that the reward is conditional. That you only get it if you become part of the group. Join them. Follow their rules. Change your name. Dress in the homespun hippie clothes. Play your role.”
“Pretty much,” Loshak said.
When the waitress came to take their order, Darger ordered one of the daily specials: chicken fried chicken. Loshak opted for the hot turkey sandwich.
“I can’t believe anyone falls for it,” Darger said. “How do they not see they’re being manipulated? That he’s only telling them what they want to hear? He pretends he’s challenging people to think differently, but he’s really just dangling a carrot of specialness in front of people and dressing it up like some sort of difficult spiritual choice. Won’t they do the very hard work of accepting how special they are? The rub is that they only get the carrot by joining this little society and allowing themselves to be molded however he sees fit.”
“It helps that he’s pretty good at it.” Loshak shrugged. “He has his shtick down pat.”
“No shit,” Darger agreed. “Dude had an answer for everything. Which is a red flag, in my opinion. Real people stumble. They contradict themselves. They change their minds. Especially when they’re being grilled by two FBI agents. He was way too cool.”
Their food arrived then, two steaming masses of various textures slathered in gravy.
As soon as the waitress left, Loshak leaned forward and said in a stage whisper, “I’m not sure there’s enough gravy here. Should we call the waitress back and ask for more?”
Darger snorted and picked up her fork.
Chapter 33
Darger hadn’t eaten much the previous day, not after the stomach-souring experience of trudging through the landfill. It felt good to have her appetite back. And even better to be sating it with a plate full of wholly unhealthy comfort food. She didn’t think Curtis would approve of such decadence, which made her enjoy the food that much more.
She and Loshak were about halfway through their meal when Darger’s phone rang.
“It’s Ambrose,” she told Loshak before taking the call.
The detective wasted no time filling them in on what he’d found.
“I just talked with Courtney Maroni’s sister. She had the standard family-member-of-an-addict story. Not unlike Stephen Mayhew’s aunt, really. Gave Courtney chance after chance and got burned every time. She did feel like her sister’s stint with the Children cleaned her up, but she was pretty jaded overall. Didn’t seem too upset or surprised that her sister was dead. She gave me the mom’s number, and she was even worse. She says that she hasn’t seen her daughter in years. She has six kids, worked her fingers to the bone for them, and as far as she’s concerned, once they turn eighteen, she’s off the hook. And I quote, ‘So whatever Courtney’s done, it’s none of my concern.’ Damn near hung up on me before I could break the news.’” Ambrose’s tone turned sarcastic. “I tell you what, Agent Darger, sometimes this job is such a delight.”
Darger considered the few times she’d been in a similar position.
“The gift that keeps on giving,” she said. “Any luck with the emergency contact for Bailey Harmon?”
“I’ve tried the number three times. No answer.” Ambrose sighed. “We traced it to a local address. I sent some unis over to see if anyone’s home. They happened to see the next-door neighbor out watering her garden and asked around about the Harmons. She said they’ve been on vacation for
the past week or so. She’s been feeding their cat. Anyway, they’re supposed to get back tomorrow. I had them give her my number so she can call when they do get home.”
Darger felt a familiar impatience in her gut but reminded herself that only a few hours ago, they hadn’t identified either Jane Doe. This was progress.
“What about our mysterious friend Worm?” she asked. “Find anything on him?”
“No. We went through the alias database. No one claiming the nickname Worm. I can’t imagine why.” Ambrose let out a single huff of laughter. “I’m going to assign a group to start combing through the DMV records. I made copies of the photo you sent. I’ll have them compare that to the driver’s license photos of anyone who owners a newish black Tundra and hope we can find ourselves a short white dude with a gold tooth somewhere in the mix.”
“We don’t know how long he’s had the tooth, so we should bear that in mind when looking at driver’s license photos,” Darger said.
“Good point. I’ll make note of it.” Ambrose yawned. “As for me, I’m calling it a day. I’ve been going non-stop for three days straight, and I’m afraid if I don’t show my face at home, my wife’s liable to run off with the mailman. You and Loshak should get some rest, too. We’ll reconvene on the morrow.”
“We’ll see you then.”
Darger hung up, filling Loshak in as they finished their meal.
“I can’t say I’m disappointed at the notion of having a few hours off,” Loshak said. “I think I might take a little nap when we get back.”
Darger took a sip of her iced tea.
“I just hope we’re able to track down this Worm guy. Sounds like someone who might be able to give us the real dirt on the cult. Pun intended.”
“Yeah.” Loshak scratched his chin. “Might be too late though.”
Darger paused with a forkload of mashed potatoes inches from her mouth.
“You think he’s dead?”
“Well, we’ve got Stephen Mayhew, known for breaking various cult rules. Causing a ruckus, if you will. He shows up dead along with his lady and her closest friend. That doesn’t bode well for the guy that supplied him with the drugs, does it?”
“Does that mean you think the cult is responsible for the deaths?”
“I’m not saying anything for sure,” Loshak said, pausing to sip his iced tea. “It’s one possible theory.”
“Why the girls?”
“Well, the girls would be my first guess if I was trying to figure out who Worm and Stephen were selling drugs to, for one. They did call themselves the degenerates, after all. Maybe Curtis wanted to make an example of them. Or maybe it was someone else at the cult. Sometimes they task out the grisly deeds to some kind of enforcer.”
“Like the naked guy rocking the AK?”
“Right. And maybe the goal hadn’t been to kill anyone. Only a bit of light torture, you know? But they took things too far. They wouldn’t want to disrupt their peaceful little lovefest, now would they? Not to mention however much cash they’ve got rolling in from the farm business. So they cover it up. Drive the bodies out to the city and dump them.”
“That still doesn’t explain the dirt on the bodies.” Darger sawed off a piece of gravy-drenched chicken cutlet. “And as much as I think Curtis is a complete tool, I can’t picture him tying people down and intentionally starving them to death. Or ordering-slash-allowing someone else to do it.”
Loshak pointed at her with his fork.
“Yeah but can you picture anyone doing that?”
Darger pondered this.
“Leonard Stump, maybe.”
Loshak waved the fork in the air, dismissing this.
“That’s because you already know the things he’s capable of. That’s what we’re always up against, isn’t it? The heinous things we see. The terrible violence. Trying to picture any average person you meet doing any of those things is… it doesn’t make sense. It never really makes sense until after. And even then it’s usually somewhat academic at best. We can dress it up with motive and whatever, but at the end of the day, a lot of things we’ve seen don’t make any sense. Billions of people live their lives going out of their way to never intentionally cause harm. And then we have these others that torture and rape and kill.”
Loshak gazed out the window, chewing silently for a moment. Finally, he swallowed and turned back to her.
“Unless you’re one of them, I don’t think it can ever really make sense.”
Chapter 34
He woke up coughing. Facedown on the rock floor of the cave. Breathing dust.
His eyelids fluttered. Opened. Found nothing but the same featureless black wall of darkness hung up all around him.
He lay there a second. Blinking and breathing. The whooshing was still there in his head, but it was fainter than before.
His face was hot, despite having been pressed into the icy cavern floor for who knew how long. That seemed wrong.
He brought his fingers to his cheeks, found them feverish to the touch. It reminded him of being drunk. Or drugged.
Could there have been something in the water? That wouldn’t make sense.
He sat up. Patted the ground around him. The same cold stone sprawled in all directions, dipped and cratered like acne-scarred skin.
Again, he tilted his head upward. Looked where the string of lights should be glowing — or at least where he thought they should be. Not that it mattered as only the dark gazed back at him, unblinking.
And then it hit him that he could use the string of lights to orient his direction in the tunnel by touch, if he could find them and feel them. He smiled at the thought, grinning in the face of the endless black void.
The lights had been on his right-hand side when he was heading out toward the dig site. They should be on his left if he wanted to head back toward the big cavern and the light switches and, eventually, the barracks.
He stood. Mind reeling through all of these options as he felt along the wall. His arms went up over his head. Fingers brushing at the knobby contours of the cold rock.
He reached up and up. Stood on tiptoes. In his memory, the lights were low enough to touch, not quite to the height of the ceiling. He wondered if he could even touch the ceiling here.
He reached straight up. Felt empty space above his head. He’d have to jump, but he hesitated. Making any sudden movements in this darkness felt wrong.
He’d have to keep the jump short and tight. Wasn’t quite willing to dare a full vertical leap. He counted to three and pogoed.
The split second of being untethered from the ground was strange. Terrifying. Lost in the abyss. He had a sudden memory of being a kid, maybe eight or nine years old, and going down to the basement for something. He hadn’t turned the lights on. Hadn’t thought he needed to. He’d walked up and down these stairs a thousand times. But he’d miscounted the steps. Lost track of where he was. Thought he’d reached the basement floor when really there was one last step. He’d kicked his foot out, expecting to feel solid ground but found only empty space. The same panic he’d felt then came to him now. He flailed in the dark. Desperate to touch anything in all of this emptiness.
And then his fingertips brushed against the ceiling. The surface was rough and gritty. He landed back on his feet and wondered at all the fuss. He was fine, see? He could do this.
His second bounce was more confident, and he was able to press his palms almost flat to the stone surface above.
OK then. That settled things. He had to be able to reach the lights. He just had to find them — a task that should be dead easy but was far more difficult in the absolute gloom.
His hands worked up and along the wall, petting and caressing as if the rock walls that encased him were some sort of show dog with papers.
Feeling. Stretching. Afraid that if he moved too hastily, he’d miss them somehow.
Finally his wrist bumped a bulb, and his fingers moved to the socket and cord connecting it to the rest. He stood for a second wi
th his fingernails adhered to the plastic coating on the cable.
Relief flooded him. His chest loosened. Breath coming easier. He could feel the tension release in his temples and the corners of his jaw.
He’d managed to get turned around in a matter of seconds — the lights turning up on the opposite wall from where he thought they’d be. The dark was no joke, but for now, he’d outsmarted it.
He thought of the Dodge Viper again, that copperhead orange enamel gleaming in his imagination. Hell, screw Rhonda. He’d have better options once he was tooling around in his Viper. It was a convertible, after all, so the girls could pretty much fling themselves in head first, their panties spontaneously shooting off their bodies as they did, making a thwop sound as the fabric vaulted off their legs as though fired from a T-Shirt cannon.
He chuckled at the image, at the sound, the wind of his breath whistling against his front teeth.
Then he started trekking back the way he’d come, letting his fingertips skim along the wall. His footsteps scuffled and gritted against the stone, echoed funny in the tight quarters.
His mind flashed to the place where the large cavern formed that cathedral-like openness in the midst of all this underground rock. He tongued the sharp edges of his teeth as he thought about what that’d feel like. Walking into that wide-open space. Trying to find his way out among all those cave mouths, all those possible paths. A lot could go wrong in there.
And then he thought about how, in order to reach that chamber, he’d have to crawl through the spot where the cave got tight. He imagined the way it always closed around him like a coffin. Pressed its cold rock against his shoulder blades. Gripped his chest tightly enough to constrict his breath.
He swallowed, and a juicy sound emitted from his throat. Sounded loud in the quiet, almost comically cowardly in his ears.
Violet Darger | Book 7 | Dark Passage Page 16