by Tim McBain
“Why don’t you stay over tonight? I’ll make you breakfast in the morning. You can meet Jill.”
He said it last, but Darger suspected that’s what he really wanted more than anything else. And she knew it was the worst possible thing she could do.
She shook her head.
“You heard Loshak. Big day tomorrow. No late night shenanigans.”
“Damn. I had my heart set on that exact type of shenanigans.”
When he dropped her off in front of the motel, he leaned over to kiss her. She met him halfway.
“See you tomorrow?”
“Roger that,” she said, before dashing out into the rain.
Darger grabbed a towel from the bathroom and tousled her rain-damp hair. She frowned at her moist reflection in the mirror.
Something was wrong with this picture. She should be excited about the vigil tomorrow night. Loshak was. Luck was. But she wasn’t. At all. She felt uneasy.
She tossed the towel over the shower curtain rod and went back to her room. As she took a seat on the edge of the bed, her eyes went immediately to her copies of the newspapers from the previous day. Fiona’s blue-green eyes and perfect smile beamed up at her from the front page of The Columbus Dispatch.
She considered the quotes from Fiona’s mother. Her name will be a footnote…
As far as Darger was concerned, it wasn’t Fiona who was the footnote. It was the other three victims. Even after Sierra’s 15 minutes of posthumous tabloid fame, the papers had all gone back to running the big full-color photos of Fiona when they wanted to reference a victim of the Doll Parts Killer.
She reached out and flipped the paper over, tiring of Fiona’s unwavering gaze.
Her mind wandered to earlier tonight with Casey. She’d been miffed when she found out about his daughter, that was true. So shouldn’t his explanation have made her feel better?
It hadn’t. In fact, she felt worse. Why?
Because, you fool, she thought to herself. He wouldn’t be telling you these things if he was thinking clearly about where this was headed. He sure as hell wouldn’t be suggesting you meet his daughter.
She had done the math, but Casey clearly had not. At some point, Darger would leave Athens. She’d go back to Quantico, get her next assignment, and move on. There was no future for the two of them.
Violet rolled off the bed and began pacing from one end of the small room to the other. Her sock got wet when she stepped on the part of the carpet where her boots had dripped rain, but she didn’t slow.
The off feeling she’d gotten at the mirror returned. Something wasn’t right. Was it just nerves in anticipation of tomorrow? Her revelation with Casey? Or was something else bothering her?
She didn’t know. So she returned again to the files. To the photographs. To the interviews.
She listened to the Sierra interviews in reverse order, starting with the one they’d had here in this very hotel room. It wasn’t until she reached the original interview that she stopped, clicked back in the file, replayed.
DET. JANSSEN: And what about this woman you saw?
MS. PETERS: Woman? What woman? There was no woman.
DET. JANSSEN: Says here you said you saw a woman jogging by. A witness, I guess.
MS. PETERS: No. There wasn’t a woman. It was just the one guy.
It was tucked at the end, after Sierra mentions chloroform for the first time, which always distracted Darger because she almost hadn’t believed the detail herself the first time she’d watched the interview.
Why was Janssen asking about a woman? Sierra hadn’t mentioned it in any of the other interviews, but he’d gotten it from somewhere. Where?
Who had Sierra talked to before Janssen?
That’s when it hit her.
She grabbed her jacket, still dripping from the rain earlier, and headed back out into the night.
Chapter 66
The curtains twitch. Light spilling out from the window. From the room beyond.
He sits forward in the seat. Arms draped over the steering wheel. A weird yip emits from deep within his throat.
It’s the first movement in a long while. Shakes him out of a daze right away.
This is a new project. One that excites him greatly. One that seems irrational. Dangerous. Maybe impossible. And yet he is here.
He doesn’t have to pursue it. Not yet. But a time may come when it makes more sense. When his options go away.
The police will close on him. Sooner or later. And when they do, he will move on her.
She will be his last victim.
The fabric at the window shakes again. Shifting closed. The dark returning to extinguish the light.
Damn. He watches the window covering wag back and forth for a long time before inertia wins out and it keeps still.
Darkness surrounds him on the other side of the parking lot. It seems oppressive after that brief burst of light in the window.
He makes the mistake of taking a deep breath. Gags a little.
He smells like ammonia now. A caustic odor that overrides his earthy smell. Overpowers everything. It stings his eyes if he sniffs it straight on.
He blinks. His eyelids scraping over his dried out eyeballs like fine grit sandpaper.
He’s not sure how long he’s been at this. Time lost meaning somewhere in there. He should maybe sleep soon. But it’s hard to stop. He can’t wait to see what will happen next. Can’t wait to see what she will do next. What he will do next. Where all of this will go.
He sniffs out a laugh. He’s sitting on the edge of his seat. Literally. All scooted up. Legs quivering. It seems funny to him in this moment.
He’s never watched at a motel like this before. With two floors of occupied rooms right on top of him. All of those doors facing out at him. It’s intense. Immediate. He feels safe at the moment, but he can’t say what might happen. Just thinking about it gets the adrenaline pumping in his bloodstream again.
The suspense of it all is intoxicating. Drool pools in his mouth. Some Pavlovian response when he gets excited.
He smiles as he rests his head on the steering wheel for a moment. He knows the latest jolt of excitement will keep him awake. Takes the opportunity to close his eyes for a bit. To relax the muscles in his neck. It feels incredible. Those long strands of red fiber finally releasing the strain.
He drifts for a while. Letting his mind go blank. Letting the silence be the only thing. A warmth settles over him. Starting in his torso and spreading into his limbs.
The chasm of slumber swallows him in stages. Taking him under little by little. He bobs deeper and deeper. His being gone utterly still.
Then the saliva finds a slack spot near the corner of his mouth. A dribble leaking out to wet the stubble along his chin. He shakes himself alert. Dabs at the drool with a finger. Smearing it around.
Damn. His mind is foggy. Fuzzy. Blurred. He doesn’t let this happen. Even sleeping. He stays alert. Keeps his mind clear.
It takes a concentrated effort to lift his head. To flutter his eyelids and get them to stay open. It’s just as well, though. Adrenaline or not, sleep came close to taking him. Too close. How long would he have stayed down? A long while he thinks. Maybe six or eight hours without waking. What a disaster that would be.
And then something scrapes from the direction of her room. His head snaps to attention. All of the sleepy feelings erased from his mind and eyes. The fog vanquished. Replaced with intense focus. With electricity.
The door wiggles. Opens. Something like a surprised bark coming out of his mouth.
Brilliant light shines out of the place where that wedge of wood swings wide. It stings to look at after so long in the shadows of night. Stabbing pain assaults both of his eyes. Water draining out of the corners of each. But he can’t look away. Can’t even blink.
He watches through the tears as she steps into the opening. Lit up from behind so he only sees her in silhouette. But even with her features shrouded in black, she is striking. The mos
t feminine thing he’s ever seen. Her movements effortlessly graceful like a cat’s.
She stands in the doorway. Fiddling with something in her fingers. Keys maybe. The light behind her shining so bright.
And then she closes the door. The light cutting out.
And he feels like he’s falling. Like he’s lost. His throat constricts. Pinching itself closed like a strange valve at the back of his mouth. A sour taste forming on his tongue. A surge of warm fluid erupting from his throat with an almost rotten odor to it. Bile maybe.
He struggles to find her. Scanning along the catwalk for a dark shape in the blackness. Squinting. His eyes still smudged with tears. Still stinging like mad from the lack of sleep.
A black flutter catches his eye. It’s her. Standing next to a sedan. A Honda Civic or Toyota Camry, he thinks. Hard to tell in the dark.
The dome light clicks on within the car. And for a moment he sees her face. That entrancing collection of features he’s only really seen well in pictures on the internet. The creamy skin speckled faintly with freckles. The intelligence and complexity in her eyes and brow. A perpetual feline cleverness to the set of her lip. She is otherworldly in a way he can’t pin down. Primal and celestial at the same time.
And then the moment passes. She climbs into the driver’s seat. Her back to him now. Her hair and the corner of one shoulder all he can really see.
The brake lights cast a red glow over the parking lot. A flash of light that seems to bring out malevolent contours and clefts in the shadows swathing the surrounding cars. Strange phantoms that he knows can’t be real. The engine grinds to life a moment later.
She does not hesitate. She pulls away and is gone. The taillights trailing away from him. Dimming into nothing. After so long watching the world in slow motion, her retreat seems to happen in fast speed.
Her absence is palpable. Something torn out of his environment. Some sense of precious things falling away from him.
The quiet stretches out, and then he remembers to breathe. The air scrapes into him. Wheezing as it enters his throat. Enters his lungs. Puffs up his chest.
He smiles. Not all is lost with her gone. Not at all.
He can go through her room.
Chapter 67
Janssen’s house sat on a corner lot. An American flag fluttered over a small wooden porch on one side. The clock on the dash said 9:20 PM. Late for an unannounced call. But she could see lights on inside, so she at least knew she wasn’t waking him.
Darger rang the bell, waited. Nothing happened. She banged her fist against the door.
“Detective Janssen?” she called loudly.
Finally, she heard the click of a deadbolt. The door handle turned and the grizzled visage of Leroy Janssen appeared on the other side of the door. A can of PBR was clutched in his fist.
“Darger. The hell do you want?”
His tone was apathetic but not nearly as frosty as she’d anticipated.
“I’m sorry to bother you at home, but I had a question.”
“And God forbid you wait until morning.”
He lifted the beer to his mouth and took a long gulp. He didn’t ask her to go on. He just stood there, waiting.
“The first time you interviewed Sierra Peters, you asked her about a woman. But she didn’t seem to know what you were talking about, and I was wondering if you remembered why you’d asked that.”
Janssen blinked at her slowly.
“Christ, Darger. I don’t know. I asked her about a lot of things. I can’t remember the rhyme and reason to every damn question.”
Darger pulled the file from the bag slung over her shoulder. Janssen made no attempt to hide the rolling of his eyes. She read the last few lines of the interview to him. When she looked up, his mouth was pressed into a hard line that obscured his lips. In the shadows, he looked like some kind of strange slit-mouthed creature.
“Right. I do remember. It was in her 911 call.”
It was what she’d suspected when she’d rushed out of her room in the first place. Now she just needed to get her hands on the recording. Violet stared back down at the paper as if a transcript of the call might appear.
“I need a copy of that call. Do you know which 911 dispatch center it went through?”
“Entire county goes through a call center in Logan,” he said.
The metal of the can crinkled in his fist as he polished off the beer.
Darger was already searching the address on her phone.
“But if you think you’re gonna get the recording tonight, you can forget it. They only have dispatchers at this hour. Mary Wilcox handles the filing of old calls, and she’s only there during business hours.”
“Shit,” Darger said. “I need that call.”
Janssen sighed. His regulation mustache wiggled to and fro as he seemed to weigh something in his mind.
“You’re like one of those cats, aren’t you? The ones that sink their claws in and don’t let go.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said.
He chuckled, then said, “I might have a copy of it.”
“The 911 call? Really?”
“On my laptop. Might as well come inside,” he said, abandoning his post at the door. He tossed his empty into the kitchen sink as he passed.
Like Casey’s house, Detective Janssen’s home reeked of bachelorhood, but in an entirely different way. Where Luck was all modernity and cleanliness, Janssen was out-of-date and messy. Dirty dishes and cookware littered the counters, along with several pizza boxes and more empty cans. In the hurried glance she got of the living room, she’d seen a step ladder, a TV tray, a large empty cardboard box with a mass of bubble wrap half pulled out, books, magazines, DVDs, and a folded up camping chair.
At the end of a narrow hallway, Janssen ducked into a doorway off to the left. Darger heard a click and light spilled across the threshold. The bedroom Janssen had converted into an office was as cluttered with junk as the rest of the place. Stacks of papers and files littered every possible surface. She counted three mugs filled with dubious contents. Old coffee or dip spit, she didn’t really want to know.
An orange and white cat coiled around Darger’s ankles as they waited for Detective Janssen’s computer to boot. She wouldn’t have figured Janssen to be the cat-type. Then again, she also wouldn’t have figured him to help her out like this.
“I know we got off on the wrong foot before,” Darger started to say, but Janssen cut her off.
“Spare me the kumbaya shit, or I might change my mind. Sometimes two people don’t get along, and that’s all there is to it. Nothing personal. Just the way things are.”
She opened her mouth to argue but settled on, “Fair enough.”
He leaned back over the computer and used the touchpad to open one of probably 40 folders on the desktop. His virtual office was as cluttered as the real one.
“Here we go,” he said, double-clicking a file. The audio clip opened in a new window, and Janssen bent to turn up the external speakers hooked up to the computer.
Darger heard a crackle of static, and then the 911 operator’s voice. “911, what is the address of your emergency?”
Darger held her breath and listened.
Chapter 68
His heart knocks in his chest. Banging so hard it makes his breathing hitch. A little hiccup interrupting each inhale.
He doesn’t let his state of frenzy affect his movements, though. He walks normally. His head down. His arms slack at his sides. Dangling. Everything fluid. Everything loose. He approaches the motel door like it’s his own.
The key slides into the hole. He twists. Hears the tiniest click. And it’s done. Just like that.
Funny. He’d almost forgotten he had the key. Left it lying in a pile of similar mementos in his chamber with that weird milky ring. If the image hadn’t struck him, hadn’t popped into his head out of nowhere, this project never would have spawned.
But here he is. Violating her space.
He steps into the room. The light still on overhead. The brightness narrows his eyes to slits as he closes the door behind him.
Why leave the light on? Will she be back soon? He’d need to be quick.
The decor is of the usual trashy motel variety. All the fabrics look tired. The worn carpet. The frayed blankets. The odor, however, is glorious.
Her smell overruns the stench of decay that must normally occupy this room. It positively reeks of her.
She smells like fresh baked bread and pine and coconut. A hint of lavender. Some bodily note that ties it all together. Like brie cheese, maybe.
His scalp tingles when he inhales her. Sucks her into his nostrils. Funnels her into his sinus cavity. He is almost drunk with it.
He moves to the luggage at the foot of the bed. Unzips the wheeled duffel and flings the lid wide.
Tops and slacks and socks reveal themselves.
He digs a hand in the pocket and finds what he’s looking for. Underwear. Panties. Nothing too garish. Just normal cotton with a little rim of lacy elastic along the top.
He closes his eyes and brings them to his face. Sniffs. Her same scent intensified. A new note in the odor that he can’t place. Like that faintest hint of char in a piece of salted caramel.
He shoves the underwear in his back pocket. Closes the suitcase. Zips it.
Yes. This is good. He can leave here undetected. Can come back another time perhaps. For more practical purposes.
His chest throbs with electricity as he moves to the door. His hand finds the knob. The metal cold against his feverish skin.
He knows he should go. Now. But he finds himself lingering.
He looks back over the room. At a glance, it’s almost underwhelming. Only a dingy motel room. Verging on rotting. But it’s more than that. To him, it’s much more.
This is it. The motel room of Special Agent Violet Darger.
It’s funny. No matter what else happens, they have one thing in common now.
They are hunting each other.