It never crossed his mind that this other was the mole, the leak, the traitor working among them. And it never crossed his mind that this man was slyly pumping him for information.
He told the man that it was just the three of them working this angle — Luck, Darger, and himself.
Smart, the man said. He slapped the deputy on the shoulder — classic ego stroking to put the hayseed at ease.
But there was still something confusing him, he explained. Why the secrecy? What was the reasoning for keeping this information from everyone else?
“A mole, you know,” Huettemann said. “A, uh, turncoat or double agent or what have you.”
The other man grew quiet. The praise spilling out of his mouth more like an afterthought this time, more like his brain was busy tumbling something else around.
Well, there was a lot of information to consider here, Huettemann figured. A lot of puzzle pieces to pop into place. Couldn’t blame the guy for taking a minute to ponder it.
The man swiveled his head to look at Jaworski’s place, a look of concern on his face. Eyebrows all flexed.
And the deputy turned to follow his gaze.
He never saw the gun lifted behind him, the muzzle snugged up just shy of the back of his head. Never had any precognitive flash of warning or worry or anything of the sort.
Part of him heard the tiny click of the trigger being pulled, and the first spiking transient of the gunfire cracking. And then Deputy Kyle Huettemann experienced no more on this plane.
A wad of his brain and blood spattered the side window.
Chapter 37
The two men worked in that gray light just before dawn, the whole block outside of Jaworski’s house utterly still, utterly quiet.
Jaworski wrapped Deputy Huettemann in a pair of blankets, the first a pink and blue comforter that immediately soaked through with dark red splotches, sopping and a little tacky on his fingers and palms, like a dishrag that needed replacing. The second blanket was thicker — a cotton fleece Jaworski hated to lose as it was his warmest — and it seemed to keep from saturating completely, for the time being anyway.
The blood spilled on the seat and dash had gone cold rapidly, perhaps nearing the ambient temp already, but the body itself was still lukewarm to the touch, the muscles limp, the skin oddly moist as though a thin sheen of dew had covered it upon Huettemann’s death.
With help from the Other, Jaworski shifted the corpse into the back seat — carrying the blanketed body out the passenger side door and into the back door on the same side with a couple of heaves and staggers, rocking back and forth to swing the limp figure a couple of times before tossing it in.
The deputy sprawled there now, laid out in a semi-fetal position. The blankets weren’t quite long enough to cover all of him, so the feet and calves hung out the bottom.
Though Huettemann wore a black t-shirt for the purposes of his stakeout duty, he still had his sheriff’s department pants and shoes adorning his bottom half. The beige pants with the brown stripe running down the side. Exposed up to the ankles. Unmistakably the pants of law enforcement.
His shiny pair of black shoes protruded from the ends of the beige tubes — tactical pursuit oxfords that looked mostly unused.
Jaworski’s shoulders shivered at the sight of this image. Goose bumps rippled over that thin stretch of skin where his chest and neck met.
Even for a hardened killer like him, this looked wrong, felt wrong — wrapping a half-uniformed police officer’s corpse up and stowing him in the back seat of a car.
This was not good.
Thankfully, not a single car passed as they moved the body. No lights shone in the windows of any of the houses or the apartment complex overlooking their position. The deputy’s car was parked in a shadowy spot, shaded by both a bushy tree and the towering apartment building on the corner.
Things could have been worse, Jaworski knew, but his heart raced along nonetheless.
Now the hitman climbed back into the front seat, one foot on the floor with the opposite knee resting on the center console. He was careful to avoid touching the mess, as much out of a distaste for the feel of the cold blood as any forensic evidence-based concerns.
He mopped up blood from the driver’s side window with a ratty towel, the red smears thinning more than clearing. He’d need bleach and a few more towels to do the job right, neither of which did he have the luxury of time to procure. This hurried job would at least clear the obvious pattern and sheer size of the blood spatter from the glass. The streaks and smudges left might look suspicious, but they were at least more subtle now.
Next, he slit the side of a garbage bag and spread the black plastic sheet over the driver’s seat itself the best he could, draping it like a tarp. The upholstery was sopping with blood, the red pooling in places where the fuzzy stuff was too saturated to soak up any more. The plastic sheet squished when he sat on it, making little wet sounds like a dog’s mouth.
He blinked a few times. Took a breath. This was not how he’d expected to spend his morning.
The sleep still weighed at his eyelids, fogged his mind. He’d been ripped straight out of a placid beach dream to find himself moving a body and wiping up blood, and his groggy brain struggled to catch up to this reality even as he worked.
He settled into the driver’s seat, the heavy-duty sheath of plastic holding up, thankfully, protecting his jeans and t-shirt from the gore. Still, he could sense the wet beneath the garbage bag, hear it squelching and sucking, feel its cool against his body. The combination made him want to squirm.
The Other climbed into the passenger seat, and the door banged shut behind him. He’d removed his suit jacket, sat with it folded across his knees. In no way did his body language suggest that he’d killed a man just minutes earlier, that he planned to transport the body now and dispose of it. He looked more like a guy in a waiting room at a dentist’s office.
Jaworski met the man’s eyes for a second, expecting some words to be exchanged. Maybe a plan. Maybe some reassurance. Anything.
Instead the Other rolled his hand in front of him with impatient gusto, giving the international gesture for get on with it.
Jaworski turned the key in the ignition, the most fearful part of him sure the car wouldn’t turn over as the starter whined, but it did. The sedan revved to life.
And they pulled out onto the empty street. Uprooted. Drifting away from the scene of the crime. A feeling somehow both freeing and terrifying.
They glided to an intersection and stopped. Hesitated. Jaworski realized he didn’t know where to fucking go.
“What are we doing?” he said, his voice low and even, not at all revealing that twinge of panic he felt inside.
“Take me to my car, and I’ll follow you to a dump site,” the Other said. “I parked a couple blocks up — on Linwood — and walked. Thought I was being paranoid with everyone logging plate numbers and whatnot, but it turned out I was right after all.”
The car lurched into motion again, veering left in the apparent direction of the Other’s car. A few seconds passed before Jaworski fully registered what the man had said.
“Wait. Who’s logging plate numbers?”
“The task force watched the lot at Howard’s bar over the last couple nights. That’s why I came over here. You, my Polish friend, are on the list.”
Jaworski blinked, his half-awake brain once more a little slow to process the dialogue.
“My plate? My name?”
The Other nodded. Smiled a little.
“I knew your plate got logged, but I didn’t know where we stood until this morning,” he said. He pointed a thumb at the corpse lying in a fetal position in the back seat. “Our friend in the back filled me in. There’s a small group looking into you. Being secretive about it. Not a great scenario, but I think we can handle it.”
“And how will we handle it?”
“First, we’ll ditch this stiff in the backseat and dump his car. Then, well, I’ll need yo
u to dispose of the agent provocateur.”
Jaworski nodded.
“Just tell me a name and what he looks like. He’ll disappear by this evening.”
“She.”
“She?”
The Other nodded.
“She is Special Agent Violet Darger of the BAU.”
“A fed.”
“Whatever tipped you off? Actually, you may have seen her in the news a couple years back. Big serial murder case in Ohio that made all of the tabloids — the Doll Parts Killer. Whole thing went sideways. Bunch of dead left behind, including at least one member of law enforcement.”
Jaworski shrugged. If he’d heard about it, the details had faded from memory.
“She apparently followed you around most of the day yesterday. Probably seeing if you’d lead her to Vinny, way I figure it. Anyway, don’t be surprised if she comes around again today. Parks her little rental in the same vicinity the good deputy parked his car. I expect you know how to handle that if and when it happens.”
Jaworski felt the muscles in his jaw bunch. He nodded again.
“This is me,” the Other said, jabbing a finger at a dark car along the roadside.
He pulled up alongside the car and let the man out. They made quick plans for where they’d next meet: the Port of Detroit.
“The feds watch the docks now, don’t they?” Jaworski said. “Paranoid about terrorists and shit.”
The Other smiled.
“That was true for quite a few years, but not anymore. Budget cuts. They’re down to a single surveillance team focused on the big marine terminals, and even that’s only active five days a week. If we just drive along the water, we’ll find a secluded spot to splish-splash our friend here. Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll call you on my burner.”
Jaworski led the way to the waterfront with the Other’s sedan following.
The traffic swelled as they passed through the blackened heart of Detroit. Minivans and SUVs and hybrids and rusted out muscle cars all huddled at traffic lights, jostling and weaving and flowing around each other in an endless stream of people. Detroit had fallen off in terms of sheer population, but the urban bustle persisted for now.
Watching it up close, Jaworski thought what he always did. Too many people.
That glut of movement on the roads persisted as they neared the bay and even picked up as they drove along the docks. The shipping sector swarmed with life today, busier than Jaworski had ever seen it. The Other seemed to concur.
“Fuck,” he said over the phone. “Just keep driving.”
Jaworski doubted the wisdom of this whole idea, but he obeyed the Other’s command. Within a couple blocks, the activity waned to nearly nothing. It looked dead down here after all.
They passed rows of buildings until they got to a section where all that stood between the road and the water was tall grass. No buildings. Nobody around. Nothing. Pretty much perfect.
Jaworski pulled onto the grassy shoulder and put the car in park. He swiveled his head to scan the scene one more time.
Smokestacks protruded from the opposite side of the river with what looked like a park sitting next to the industrial structure. Black plumes spiraled above the factory, but nothing else stirred.
Good.
He gathered his blade from the glove box — a hunting knife worthy of Rambo, its metal housed in a camo holster. He wedged it deeply enough in the pocket of his jeans that it would stay put for this next part. Now he stretched his leather gloves over his fingers, took a breath, and exited the car.
The grass made good cover. He pulled the body from the back seat, blankets and all, letting it slump to the ground where its bulk was largely concealed by the tall blades of green. The car blocked most any onlooker’s view of his actions from one side and the grass on the other. A good spot indeed.
He knelt among the greenery, prying the blanket up to expose the torso, the black t-shirt adhered to the body with dried blood.
And now his blade sank into fabric and flesh, biting hard into center mass just above the belly button.
He took a few breaths. Braced himself for the impending effort.
With a ripping motion, he brought the knife up to the sternum. Slashing with all his strength. Arms quivering from the strain.
The deputy’s abdomen flapped opened, a little breathy sound lisping out of his guts, moist and hushed.
And now he ripped downward toward the pelvis, the gash more crooked this time, veering off toward the hip bone, the opening more ragged and angry looking.
Now he jabbed the blade into the organs. Hard and fast. Perforating them so they couldn’t bloat later on and become internal floaties that would pull the body back to the surface.
He felt the flush in his cheeks and neck gone hot, so he rested a moment. Tried to let that tremor in his heart slow some.
The wind blew in off the water then, and the grass rasped around him. Blades wavering and rattling against each other, tangling and untangling over and over.
No more waiting. Time to be done with it.
He got to his feet and crouched over the slit corpse, cupping his hands and wrists under the armpits. Half-lifting and half-dragging the corpse, he waded a couple steps to the mesh point where the grass and water met, a sludgy spot that sloped toward the river.
Now he changed his positioning, preparing to launch the body into the water. He swung around to face the river, hands once more grasping the armpits but going the opposite way.
He squatted and pushed off with his legs and hips, using the torque and muscle to give the corpse one big thrust out and up over the water, and then he let go, pulled back to stay out of the way.
The second before impact seemed to stretch out. A weird emptiness.
The body smacked against the water with a loud crack like shattered concrete immediately followed by a sploosh-y bathtub sound. The head, neck, and shoulder blades hit first, the upper body throttled like a rag doll, disgustingly limp and loose.
Now Jaworski got low to shove the legs in after the rest, gripping those shiny black shoes, his own feet pistoning in the mud.
And then it was free. Floating. The body drifted out onto the river in slow motion, riding high on its back, tilting a little, the meaty legs dangling down into the water behind the bulbous floating part.
Jaworski took a few steps back, shouldering his way into the grass, but he continued to watch the body on the water, anxious to see its final descent.
The blanket pulled away to sink first, ripping the rest of the way off the torso and head with a single firm jerk like a tablecloth yanked free as a magician’s trick. This move exposed the deputy’s face and broken skull, the blood looking so dark against the pale skin of his scalp, the wounds looking so ragged.
And for a split second, it looked to Jaworski like the dead eyes stared right at him. Locking onto his. Not so dead after all.
But they didn’t.
Not at all.
They looked out at nothing, pointed in slightly different directions.
A sucking sound slurped out of the gut, the swirling water rushing to fill the cavity. And now the body lurched a little as gravity went to work.
It looked, for a beat, like the deputy had sat up in the water, perhaps startled by these events, by the river’s chill.
The water tugged and tugged, sinking the body in fractional increments, less than an inch at a time. Fresh ripples fluttered away from the deputy with each of these movements, circles gliding ever outward like a series of smoke rings expanding to the point of vanishing in the air. The current pulled the body further and further out as it slowly sank.
At last, the water’s surface crawled over the face, the dead eyes staring into the emptiness, still open, still visible through the first couple inches of clear fluid.
But the water didn’t relent. Didn’t let up. It claimed its offering. Greedy to pull the fresh meat under for keeps.
The murkiness clouded the details as the body sank deeper, obscuring
the facial features to vague shapes.
Soon, he was gone.
Jaworski stood there another second, and then he trudged back to the car, grabbed the phone from the passenger’s seat. The body problem had perhaps been solved, but they weren’t done yet.
Ditching something as big as the car would be much trickier. Jaworski didn’t like the idea of trying to drive it in. Too much could go wrong. The Other seemed to be thinking about the same thing.
“We’ll ditch the car someplace innocuous for now, yeah? And tonight, in the dark, you’ll come back to take care of it,” he said.
Jaworski ticked his head once.
“Where do you want it?”
“For now, let’s stash it behind one of these storage buildings back there. But as for tonight, I’m thinking the bottom of the Detroit River would be a real nice parking spot for it. Long term.”
Jaworski parked in a dirt lot behind one of the industrial looking buildings near the shipyard, hoping the vehicle would go unnoticed for a few hours, at least.
He rode with the Other back to his house. Neither man spoke for much of the ride, each retreating into their own heads, thoughts tumbling and swirling like the water, Jaworski figured. That was certainly the case for him.
When the Other pulled over a couple blocks shy of the house so Jaworski could walk the rest of the way back, the big Polish hitman found himself hesitant to get out. The strangest feeling seemed to come over his body, almost a clamminess.
He turned to the Other, met his eyes.
“This Agent Darger….” Jaworski started to say.
His mouth seemed to get stuck midsentence like someone had pressed the pause button on his lips. He’d wanted to ask what she was like, whether he should maybe take some extra caution or patience in dealing with her. He wanted nuance. Wanted detail. For once, he wanted to know a little about the target, her story, her personality, something, anything, but the words wouldn’t come.
The Other seemed to know what he was thinking in any case.
“On one hand, she is trouble, but on the other, you’ve killed much worse,” he said. “Let’s put it this way, I have every confidence in your ability.”
Violet Darger (Book 4): Bad Blood Page 20