Violet Darger (Book 2): Killing Season

by L. T. Vargus

  “And that makes you responsible?”

  Owen shook his head.

  “You really must not have gotten to know my brother well, because everyone that knows Ethan Baxter knows that no one drags him anywhere,” he said. “Besides that, I don’t care if you’re the best damn profiler in the world. That doesn’t give you a crystal ball, and it doesn’t give you power over every psycho with a rifle. Has it even occurred to you that if Ethan had parked in the opposite direction, or if you’d been driving that car, then you might be in his place?”

  She swallowed.

  “No. But I ran. He got hit, and my first reaction was to save myself.”

  Owen stared at her in disbelief, and she thought he was finally getting it. That she wasn’t deserving of any gratitude for saving Ethan’s life.

  But then he said, “A crazy man with a sniper rifle was shooting at you. You’re supposed to run.”

  He ran his hands through his dark hair, pushing the wavy locks off his forehead.

  “This is exactly what I was saying earlier. You think the world is on your shoulders,” he said with a sigh. “You’re not a super hero, Violet.”

  She liked the way he said her name. The way his southern drawl softened the first syllable and dragged it out a little. It made her sad that things were always so damned complicated.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, taking his hand.

  He gave her fingers a squeeze.

  “Don’t be.”

  “I do like you.”

  He leaned down and very gently kissed her brow, just above the spot marked by the pool cue.

  “I like you, too. Miss Darger.”

  She smiled and let his fingers slide from her grasp. And then she got into her car and headed to the call center, still feeling the brush of his lips against her forehead.

  Chapter 36

  In lieu of a traditional greeting, the first thing out of Loshak’s mouth when he saw her was, “Jesus, you look like hell.”

  “Yeah? Let’s see how you fare against a biker that outweighs you by 150 pounds.”

  Loshak started to shake his head but stopped abruptly. He squared his shoulders toward her. His focus felt like a laser beam.

  “Biker? Is that what you just said?”

  Violet sealed her mouth shut. She couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t get her in more trouble.

  “Christ on a crutch, Darger. You can’t help yourself, can you?”

  “What?”

  “Always stirring the pot.”

  “I was following a lead, Loshak. It wasn’t like I went out of my way to be insubordinate.”

  That got a big enough laugh out of him that he was soon wiping tears from his eyes. She waited until he was through.

  “Anything promising?”

  “Agent Dawson stopped by with the forensics on the tire treads,” Loshak said and plucked a sheet of paper from the desk. “Goodyear Wrangler TrailRunner AT. An 18” all terrain tire for trucks and SUVs.”

  “So he likes to off-road in his truck or SUV? Fits the profile,” Darger said.

  “Lab says they’re close on narrowing that down further based on the tire tracks, which will give us the wheelbase dimensions of the vehicle.”

  He paused to peer at Darger’s face.

  “Man, he really got you good, eh?”

  “Pool cue,” Darger said. “But you should see the other guy.”

  “Yeah. Right. You put some ice on that?”

  “Yes, mother,” she said, waving his concerns away. “Are you gonna beat it, or what? It’s my shift.”

  “About that… Did we or did we not talk about how it was eight hours on the clock, followed by eight hours for sleep?”

  She grumbled something about sleeping when she was dead.

  “You haven’t actually slept since your last shift, have you?”

  Darger knew better than to try to lie to him.

  “I got a few hours,” she mumbled.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do, then. You are going back to the hotel, and you will sleep. I’ll stay on until four.”

  “I thought you said twelve-hour shifts were inefficient.”

  “Not as inefficient as no sleep. Now go,” he said.

  His tone indicated there was no room for argument.

  It wasn’t until she was alone in the silence of the car that she realized how exhausted she was. Her joints felt loose, like she was a marionette in need of maintenance. There was also a possibility that she’d sustained a mild concussion during the fight.

  On the drive back to the hotel, a sort of floating sensation took over. The lines on the road seemed to waver and undulate, as if she was seeing them through heat distortion, but she couldn’t recall ever seeing heat distortion at night. She rolled the window down all the way, worried she might doze off at the wheel. As usual, Loshak was right. She really did need to get some sleep.

  She drifted up to her room, the elevator seeming like a portal to another dimension, the mouth of a machine that she was more than glad to walk into for some reason. When the door opened with a ding on her floor, she giggled. What an odd choice it was for a door to ding like that. Were they worried you wouldn’t notice the door had opened when you reached your destination?

  Down the hall she glided, barely feeling the floor beneath her feet. She reached her room, swiped her key card, and kicked off her boots at the end of the bed.

  She was out before her head hit the pillow.

  Chapter 37

  Not all of the lights in Atlanta were turned off that night. Illuminated windows lit up many a neighborhood deep into the post-midnight hours. A number of residents chose to sleep with them on. To try to sleep, anyway.

  Others didn’t bother with this formality, pacing the floors instead, downing comfort beverages based on individual preference — mostly coffee or booze. Consciously or not, the community let the fear fully take hold and then tried to come to terms with the reality of what had happened in the past 96 hours or so.

  The highway.

  The grocery store parking lot.

  The doorway in Pheasant Brook.

  They tumbled these thoughts around in their heads, flung the paranoia every possible direction to find an angle that might make it make sense.

  They grasped for some way — any way — to displace the terror.

  Fear had a piss smell to it, however faintly. Tyrone Gwaltney had never considered it before now, but as soon as the observation occurred to him, it registered as something he’d always understood subconsciously.

  He smelled it now, lying in bed, trying to sleep. Human terror. Was it a pheromone? Something that seeped out of the pores of his skin and filled the air? He didn’t know.

  He sat up, calmed a little when the silhouette of his blanket-draped wife took shape in the gloom next to him. He thought his movements might have woken her, but if so, she showed no signs of it. The blanket rose and fell, her breathing soft. Slow.

  The urge to get up trembled in his chest and limbs, pricked the hairs on the back of his neck. He wanted more than anything to pluck the fire poker from its spot next to the chimney and walk the perimeter of his house, peering out of every window, ensuring that this swath of territory his family called home was secure.

  He could imagine it all too clearly, spotting some figure lurking out there. Maybe wearing a ski mask like the one at the Publix parking lot. It occurred to him that there would even be a certain satisfaction to it. To trust his primal instincts and have them pay off to be correct. It would come with a flush of know-it-all glee, even if it only lasted for a split second before the real terror kicked in.

  He knew the more likely scenario was that he’d find nothing stirring outside said windows. He’d find the same scenes he saw two hours ago when he took a peek whilst brushing his teeth — the empty street and driveway looking out the front and the rectangle of grass out back. Both utterly motionless. And that would be a good thing, of course, to find no murderers prowling around his h
ouse.

  Even so, he hesitated to actually rise from the bed, listening for a moment instead and lowering his head to the pillow once more.

  The trouble with looking out the windows was that the feeling of security only lasted for those moments he was looking. He knew this from experience. He could only feel OK when he saw with his own eyes that there was nothing to fear — when it was a concrete reality before him. As soon as he was back in bed, his security returned to being an abstraction. He’d revert to a state of uncertainty right away, a state that quickly devolved into paranoia.

  He closed his eyes, listened to that slow in and out of his wife’s breathing.

  The night grew still once more around him. Quiet.

  He slipped toward unconsciousness in stages, his mind circling back to that same thought over and over:

  How could someone do these things? Just gun people down like that? Violence that was truly and totally random. Totally without meaning.

  The trench of sleep finally swallowed him, but it remained a shallow and fitful slumber.

  Two blocks down, Peggy Sanchez watched cable news all night for updates. She rocked in her recliner, the remote poised in her hands, aimed at the TV like a weapon.

  With the lights out, the glow of the plasma screen provided flickering illumination to the living room. Light and shadow danced over the carpet, spasmed on the walls. Sean Hannity’s face somehow glowed brighter than the rest, she thought. A fleshy pumpkin of a head, perpetually squinting. It cast quite a glare.

  At least this squinting pumpkin was handsome, in her opinion. A hunky jack-o’-lantern.

  She flipped back and forth, catching each network’s take on the shootings. The pundits all talked about violent video games and the two kids who shot up Columbine high school some years ago. They used phrases like “violence as a spectacle.”

  Each time she changed the channel, there was a transitional moment when the screen went to a black glow. And even in the low light, Peggy could see her reflection in the glass during those times.

  The clunky glasses sitting on the big nose. The tight curls of black hair that almost looked like a strange bush growing out of her head. It was somehow odd to see herself there on the screen, the theater stage usually reserved for the likes of Hannity and his ilk.

  She guzzled Diet Pepsi all the while, the fake sweetener her primary comfort food over these past several years. She was out of real snacks now, but she licked her lips periodically. They still tasted like Dorito powder from the bag of Cool Ranch she’d finished a few hours ago.

  All of this was very stimulating, and she found herself compulsively going over the events in her mind — the highway, the parking lot, the pregnant woman, the cute FBI man. Somehow this behavior made sense, like she was staying alert by dwelling on these things.

  And then it hit her. She needed to take the garbage down to the curb.

  Shit.

  Normally, she might put it off, what with a psycho killer on the loose, but she’d missed it last week. The can was full, and she had two bags stinking up the garage. If she missed it again, she might as well give up her claim on the house and sign the deed over to the rats and roaches directly.

  She stood, dusted Dorito crumbs from her shirt. She thought about flipping the TV off, but she decided she’d rather have it on. The noises and blinking lights provided a sense of comfort, a sense of not facing this alone.

  Peggy peered out the window, finding the street vacant. Dead still. The strobe of the streetlight flickering two doors down was the only source of motion. Well, that was good.

  A tremble overtook her chest as she made her way through the house. A throb like pins and needles that stabbed harder whenever she breathed in. It only got worse when she opened the door to head into the garage.

  Again, she looked out at the street, this time gazing through the glass pane set in the door that led out to the driveway. Nothing. Nothing but that damn flickering light.

  The odds of the killer happening by right as she rolled the can down to the curb were very, very low. And yet he was out there tonight. Somewhere. Probably somewhere in the city. Probably lying in wait to strike again and again, to cut short the lives of strangers — regular people just like her — for no good reason at all.

  The chills throttled her, her shoulders rocking back and forth as they climbed into a shrugged position. Jesus Christ.

  The smell of the garbage hit her then, and that steeled her resolve some. It smelled like wet dog, rancid peanuts, and a hint of that yeasty tang old bread sometimes got. She had to do this.

  She took in a deep breath and held it, fighting against that quiver in her torso. The thrashing muscles steadied some, and her breathing grew easier, if only a little.

  Her hand moved to the doorknob, hesitated just shy of it for a beat, and then clasped around the cold metal. She twisted it in slow motion, somehow compelled to get through this as soundlessly as possible. The door popped faintly as she pried it free from the frame.

  And then she took those first two steps outside, enveloped by heavy night air, cool and thick. Her head went light as she moved into the open, swimmy and tingly and panicked. The scuff of her footsteps echoed around her in the quiet.

  Sweat seemed to seep out of all of her pores at once as she closed on the garbage can. It made her whole body feel clammy, a little sticky. But it was almost over now.

  Her fingers hooked around the handle of the trash bin, and she tipped it so all of the bulk rested upon the two plastic wheels at its base. Again, she hesitated, took a shaky breath. This was going to be loud.

  As expected, the wheels scraped against the blacktop of the driveway, an excruciating sound that made her shoulders shimmy up into that shrugged position again. That faint feeling swelled in her skull — unconsciousness giving its final warning. Violent tremors throttled her now with every breath, her upper body flailing atop her legs. But she didn’t slow. She kept moving.

  Her eyes darted back and forth, scanning the shadows up and down the block for any movement, for any sign of the killer. Every silhouette threatened her, looking momentarily like a ski-masked maniac before it morphed back into a tree or bush or parked car. She saw nothing.

  And then the curb was upon her. Just like that. She nestled the can into place and ran back inside, locking everything up.

  She leaned her back against the door, huffing and puffing. Her body dripped with sweat like she’d run a marathon, but now euphoria filled all the places where the panic had pooled.

  After a stretch of panting, she checked her watch. Good. The Hannity rerun was going to start in nine minutes, and she was excited to get back to him.

  Chapter 38

  Violet was startled awake by the sound of her phone chiming. Her mind struggled against waking, clinging to sleep. Her eyes, still not ready to function properly, were so blurry she couldn’t read the screen on her phone to see who was calling. It didn’t matter. The only person who’d be calling at this hour would be Loshak.

  She cleared her throat and answered.

  “Darger.”

  “Well you got your wish,” it was Loshak, but the nonsensical greeting made her question whether she was dreaming the conversation or not.

  “Huh?”

  “City jail just called. They have someone in custody who says he has information on the gunman.”

  She sat up, suddenly fully awake.

  “One of the bikers? What did he say?”

  “I don’t know yet. Guy says he’ll only talk to you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  Loshak exhaled into the speaker, creating a loud rustle.

  “I don’t know,” he repeated, sounding a little annoyed. “That’s all they told me.”

  “What about the biker’s name?”

  “Yeah, I scribbled it down somewhere. Hold on a minute,” Loshak said.

  Over the line, she could hear the crinkle of paper. She tried to guess who it would be. Maybe Roach had gotten tired of sitting in his cell a
nd decided he’d talk now.

  “You still there?” Loshak asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Guy’s name is Stokes. Randall Stokes.”

  Randall Stokes sat before a spare metal table in an interview room at the Atlanta Detention Center. She watched him through the small window on the door for a moment.

  He held perfectly still, hands spread on the table before him, eyes downcast. His eyes barely even blinked. He almost appeared to be in a trance. She wondered if he was on something.

  “Ready if you are,” Loshak said.

  Darger opened the door. Loshak had insisted on coming along, and honestly, she was glad to have backup with a guy like Stokes.

  The biker’s demeanor changed almost instantly when he saw her. He lifted his head and grinned, and Darger thought of the sharp rows of teeth ringing the jaws of a Great White shark. The smile faltered when he saw Loshak coming in behind her.

  “Uh-uh. Just you,” Stokes said, pointing a finger at Darger.

  She and Loshak exchanged a wordless glance, and he put a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’ll be right outside.”

  She nodded and Loshak retreated, closing the door. Darger took a seat opposite from Stokes.

  “I was starting to think you wouldn’t come,” he said.

  His voice was raspy, almost hoarse. The raw sensation in her own throat led her to wonder if it was as a result of the fight, but somehow she thought not. She guessed it was his natural timbre.

  “How did you know my name?” Darger asked. For the first time, she considered the stupid Vanity Fair feature. She was starting to regret that more and more every day.

  But he said, “I didn’t.”

  “They said you asked for me specifically.”

  “I did. The pretty Fed with the nice ass.”

  Darger ignored the comment. He was testing her. Trying to push her buttons.

  “For future reference, my name is Agent Darger. How’d you know I was FBI?”