The Last Victim Read online

  Contents

  Title & Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  The Violet Darger series

  THE LAST VICTIM

  A Violet Darger Story

  L.T. Vargus & Tim McBain

  Copyright © 2017 L.T. Vargus & Tim McBain

  Smarmy Press

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  November 1993

  Her headache throbs. A slow, even pulse of pain.

  And a whoomp pounds along with it, a choppy sound from within like a helicopter encased in her skull.

  Claire feels it. The blood slamming through the veins in her temples, and the muscles there knotting and spasming. It makes her jaw clench and unclench.

  Something isn’t right. She knows this, but she doesn’t know why, doesn’t quite know what’s happening here.

  Wherever she is, she is sleeping. Or was. Can’t quite bring herself to open her eyes even now that alarm bells are blaring in her head.

  Every thought is a little fuzzy. A little distant.

  She tries to focus. Tries to remember or otherwise determine where she is.

  The first sensory details occur to her.

  Hot and cold.

  Warmth radiates in the core of her body. A roiling, angry heat like a broken radiator stuck on full blast.

  But a chill touches the flesh of her face. Not a wintry chill so much as that heavy cold that settles over everything in the deep of the night.

  Moving.

  She is moving. Feels the tug of gravity shift, the twitch and vibration of motion.

  And then the sound fades in.

  The white noise of a car engine. Steady. Constant.

  Yes.

  She is in a car.

  The realization wrenches something free in her memory. A shard of the night restored all at once.

  They’d gone to the bar. Her and Tammy. It was $1 PBR night at The Mystic and neither of them had class in the morning.

  She remembered Tammy handing her that third beer, the cold yeasty taste of it on her lips, but after that?

  Everything in her head seems to jumble up. A stream of nonsense images. Mundane flashes of people crowding the bar, drinking and talking. Clouds of smoke expanding around goateed faces and then vanishing.

  With a little extra prodding, her eyelids peel open at last, one then the other.

  She blinks a few times, and the dark blur sharpens around her, revealing her vantage point.

  She slumps in the backseat, half lying on Tammy.

  Her friend appears to be submerged in a deep slumber of her own, her mouth shiny in the moonlight, slicked with the drool spilling down her chin and pooling on the pewter upholstery.

  The silhouette of a man occupies the driver’s seat, two hands on the wheel, fingertips drumming lightly. At first she thinks it’s Tammy’s friend, Eric — the square chin and jaw seem right in profile, but it’s too dark. She’s not certain.

  The idea that this is a stranger lets that chill in her face snake tendrils of cold down into her chest.

  Jesus.

  She would never take a ride home from a stranger. Never ever.

  But Tammy would. Tammy was always getting them into trouble.

  And she can’t panic. Won’t panic. Takes a breath.

  She looks out the windows, scans for clues about their location.

  The spiky plumage of cholla, yucca, and other cacti populates the side of the road with rocky hills in the background. She can see the looming silhouette of the mountains off to the left. They're on one of the canyon roads, but she has no idea which one it is.

  One thing is clear, though: They’re moving away from the city.

  Away from home.

  The blacktop shimmers before them, practically glowing under the glare of the headlights. The yellow lines of reflective paint shining so bright.

  None of this makes any sense. At all.

  The car slows as it rolls up to a stoplight, and street lamps glint yellow light over them, lighting up the backseat and casting new shadows everywhere.

  She blinks a few times, letting her gaze fall to the floor.

  An empty pair of Converse All-Stars rests off to the left of where she and Tammy sit. Chuck Taylors. Pink and tiny.

  Weird.

  Tammy must have taken off her shoes when they climbed into the car. Gotten comfy. She never realized her friend’s feet were so minuscule.

  Her gaze shifts, however, and she sees the red kitten heels adorning Tammy’s limbs.

  Yes, of course.

  Tammy may own a pair or two of Converse — Claire was pretty sure she did — but she wouldn’t have worn them out to the bar tonight. Not her style.

  Claire looks at her own feet, wiggling the toes of the Adidas Sambas a little as though to verify that they are her own.

  If the shoes aren’t Tammy’s, and they aren’t hers…

  Her torso squirms involuntarily, some shuddering of muscles that seems to roll over her in waves. It was almost like her body had made some leap in logic and was waiting for her brain to catch up.

  The killer.

  The stories on the news about the girls being abducted. Kept for two days. Killed. Burned. The same guy who’d murdered all those girls in Colorado according to the experts.

  They didn’t even know what he did to the girls. Not exactly. The bodies were all burned too badly to offer forensic evidence.

  And one part of her thinks with total certainty that she is crazy. Paranoid. Delusional. Childish.

  This isn’t a serial killer. It’s just some guy that Tammy asked to give them a ride home. Probably someone she knows from one of her classes or something.

  But now she is awake.

  She watches the dark figure in the front seat as she wriggles into a semi-upright position, peeling her top half away from her unconscious friend.

  Apart from those fingers still drumming on the steering wheel, he doesn’t move. The glint of the red light shimmering against his pale flesh blinks away to black and then the light comes back green.

  The car lurches to life, the engine purring once more.

  She gives Tammy a little poke in the ribs with her elbow, prodding lightly at first and then harder the second time.

  She hopes her friend will come around slowly, without panicking. They need to get organized without him realizing they are awake.

  But Tammy is motionless. Zonked. Totally oblivious to the sharp bone now applying enough pressure to bruise the flesh swaddling her ribcage.

  Fuck.

  Jesus.

  Again that cynical part of her laughs at her fear. Finds it hilarious and egotistical to assume a killer would pick her and Tammy out of the crowd. That anything so dramatic would ever happen to her. Ridiculous.

  She moves to grab Tammy’s upper arm and give her a shake, but her hands are clumsy. Awkward. She tries again, but they won’t quite obey. Almost like they are stuck together.

  She stops. Looks.

  It takes her a full second to realize that a zip tie fastens her arms at the wrist. Thick plastic. Opaque.

  And then she sees Tammy’s hands folded as though
in prayer, the ring of plastic lashing them together.

  She bites her lip to stifle the rush of breath entering her lungs, fights to quiet that telltale gasp.

  Because it’s not her imagination.

  He is going to kill her.

  He is going to kill both of them.

  Chapter 2

  Present Day

  The most notorious serial killers have a way of shedding their nicknames. At some point, they no longer require them.

  Just saying the name “Dahmer” triggers an intense reaction in people. Grisly images, queasy feelings, and all of the graphic details rush into their heads.

  The severed head in the fridge.

  The heart in the freezer.

  Bodies dissolved in acid in a plastic tub in the living room.

  The stench permeating the halls, a smell other residents in the building compared to that of chitlins.

  By the time these horrors etch their stain onto the public consciousness, a silly nickname like “The Milwaukee Cannibal” has lost all of its power. It seems kitschy and small compared to the real thing.

  And like Dahmer, those who reach the highest plane of murderous celebrity become such recognizable brands that their first names can go unmentioned.

  Manson.

  Bundy.

  Gacy.

  Dahmer.

  Stump.

  It was the last of these that Victor Loshak thought about as he waited at a stoplight.

  Despite the fact that Loshak had specifically requested a non-smoking car, the interior of the rental reeked of stale cigarette smoke. There’d been an air freshener shaped like a pine tree dangling from the rearview mirror when he first got in, but he pitched it before he even started the car. Whatever artificial lemon crap they soaked those things in was probably more carcinogenic than the secondhand smoke baked into the upholstery.

  Even with the windows up and the air-conditioner cranked, Loshak could feel the oppressive Nevada heat beating down on the car. There was something about the sunlight in the desert that was different than anywhere else. It was whiter. Hotter. Almost menacing somehow. Perhaps it was some leftover animal instinct that made him want to recoil from the brightness, to seek the cover of the shade until the hottest part of the day had passed.

  And here he was sipping hot coffee. Tim Hortons, to be exact. It had been years since he’d had it, probably not since he’d originally worked the Stump case, back in ‘93. Lifting the cup to his lips, he took a swig and frowned. He could swear it used to be much better than this. Or maybe he’d been younger then, armed with a less discerning palate. One thing was certain: the donut holes were practically inedible. Dry and fake tasting. Must be that parbaked garbage. It was a sad day when you couldn’t trust a coffee and donut establishment to make the donuts in-house. They shipped in frozen, half-baked stuff and reheated it in what essentially amounted to a giant Easy-Bake oven.

  He shifted in his seat. Something felt wrong. Something in his gut. Not quite as wrong as his bout with pancreatitis. That hurt like hell. This was more of a general discomfort. Probably the coffee and the two ghastly Timbits he’d choked down before giving up on them, he thought.

  But deep down, Loshak wondered if what he was really feeling was guilt for lying to his partner. As if, upon his deceit, a seed of malignancy had been planted in his belly, and now it had taken root and was starting to bloom.

  Loshak’s eyes fell to the phone resting on the passenger seat of his rental car. He stared at the screen smudged with fingerprints, knowing he should call Darger.

  He replayed their last conversation in his head.

  “What are you going to Vegas for?” she asked.

  “I’ve got that criminology conference. I told you about it,” he said.

  “Right. So it’s nothing to do with the Stump case?”

  Loshak had to concentrate to keep from squirming.

  “What would it have to do with Stump?”

  “His last known whereabouts happen to be Las Vegas, Nevada.”

  “Yeah, twenty-some years ago.”

  “I don’t know. Ever since that letter… I guess I keep waiting for something to happen.”

  “Well, it’s just a boring, old conference, and I won’t even be able to tell you about it.”

  Her eyelids narrowed until she looked like some black-eyed shark. All aggression.

  “Why’s that?” she said.

  He smiled.

  “Because. What happens in Vegas…”

  The intensity drained from her face.

  “Oh. I hate that slogan.”

  “So do I,” Loshak continued. “It’s a good place for a criminology conference, though. We’re talking about a sex trade industry that rakes in over a billion dollars a year in the city alone. All manner of missing person cases. Human trafficking. The works.”

  “The perfect place for Stump to hide in plain sight.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, resisting the urge to pull some of it out by the roots in frustration. Darger really was like a shark with this Stump case. She could smell the blood from miles away. Why couldn’t she just let it be?

  “I almost wish I’d never given you the Stump file. Maybe then you never would have mentioned him in the Vanity Fair interview, he wouldn’t have, uh, reached out to you, and we wouldn’t be having this argument right now.”

  Darger was already shaking her head.

  “Feel guilty if you want. Pursuing guys like Stump is my job now. My life. No matter what you or anyone says or does.”

  He dropped his hand from his hair.

  “Suit yourself. You want to keep running around in circles, chasing shadows? Be my guest,” he said and got up from his chair. “Toodle-oo, partner. I’ll call you from the road.”

  Many blatant lies, of course. There was no criminology conference. He was here to follow up on leads that may or may not be Stump.

  But there was nothing to be done about it. He couldn’t have Darger near it until he could be sure.

  No, that wasn’t true. He didn’t want Darger near it at all. Not after what happened in Ohio. And then Atlanta. His partner attracted trouble like a magnet.

  Or maybe it was the other way around - rather than trouble coming to her, it was Darger that was drawn to it, like a moth to a candle.

  In either case, it wasn’t safe. Not with Stump already on her scent like he was. Sending her that letter. The arrogant bastard.

  Now, with the artificial chill of the car’s AC blasting him in the face, he let his gaze roam over the city, then past it to the mountains off to the west. So much had changed since he’d last been here. So many of the iconic Vegas hotels and casinos were rebranded, rebuilt, or just plain gone. The Desert Inn had been scrapped. The Aladdin was now Planet Hollywood. The one he missed most — the only one that had made him feel any nostalgia at all — was the horse and rider that used to sit atop the sign for the Hacienda.

  He didn’t know why he should care about something like that. Loshak wasn’t one to get sentimental about material things. But he’d always thought of that sign as if it were the official emblem of Las Vegas. Punting the neon horse and rider was like demolishing the Empire State building.

  But he was losing focus. He needed to push those thoughts aside and think back to 1993. Back when this had all started.

  Stump had killed six women in Colorado, leaving all of them in burned out cars along twisting mountain roads. He disappeared for six months and then turned up with another killing spree in Nevada. The crimes had escalated. Sped up. Verging on berserk, on full-out rampage mode.

  It had spree killing ending written all over it. Loshak still remembered thinking about that accelerated aggression, discussing it with the other agents and police. There’d been a fatalistic feeling among those working the case. A heaviness in the air all about them. Not only were they powerless to stop the murders, but they felt increasingly threatened themselves, more than a little intimidated. Like all of it would culminate in some showdo
wn, some bloodbath, some careening violent encounter, and they somehow didn’t like their odds.

  Vegas was a town that was all about the odds, wasn’t it?

  Crazy and naive as it seemed now, Loshak recalled spending night after night in his motel room, awake in the dark. Peering out the window at the dirt field across the street and wondering if he’d survive this trip.

  Lifting the Tim Hortons cup from the holder, he tried to wash that memory away with a big gulp of now tepid coffee. But the taste of it stayed, lingering on his tongue and throat.

  He’d never felt that kind of fear before the Stump case, and he hadn’t felt it since. Until now.

  Chapter 3

  November 1993

  Claire fights at the zip tie for a second even though she knows it’s pointless.

  The plastic bites at her flesh. Grooves itself deeper until it looks like a piece of string pinching at a boneless pork loin.

  No use. Her wrists may as well be welded together.

  But she’s doing it. The one thing she mustn’t do. She’s panicking.

  She can’t do that. Can’t.

  He doesn’t know she’s up. That’s the only advantage she has for the moment, and she needs to hold onto it.

  She resists every instinct to thrash and claw and scream. Tucks them down as deep as they’ll go. And she lies back down. Head nestling in the crook between Tammy’s arm and torso.

  Steadies her breathing. Narrows her eyes to slits. Watches him through thatched eyelashes.

  The back of his head is right there. Dark hair shorn close. Tight and clean.

  Everything about him seems clean, in fact.

  She can see the shoulders of his sweater. Hunter green. A relaxed fit. Loose at the neck. Almost bohemian. Like something Johnny Depp would wear, she thinks.

  Apart from the pair of Chuck Taylors tipped over on the floor, the sedan is spotless. Impeccable.

  Tammy’s drooling seems an affront to the atmosphere. A violation.

  The thickness of his neck suggests strength and athleticism. He’s not all bulked up like some steroid-infested bodybuilder, but he’s substantial. A man.