Violet Darger (Book 6): Night On Fire Read online

  Crossing her arms, Darger sighed.

  “You still make a fair point in that it’s a long shot. A lot of times, investigators only find the pattern afterward. We might never find one at all. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

  Chapter 4

  Most of the crowd had dispersed by the time Darger reached the hallway outside of the conference room, and she ended up in an elevator by herself. Just as the brushed metal doors began to whoosh shut, a very pregnant woman came bustling out of the ladies’ room across the hall.

  “Hold the door,” she called out.

  Darger hit the “DOOR OPEN” button, and the doors slid aside. The woman took a few waddling steps toward the waiting elevator before a file folder slipped from her hand, spilling its contents over the floor.

  “Oh, balls!”

  The woman gave Darger an exasperated look.

  “Thanks, anyway, but it looks like I’ll be taking the next one,” she said, attempting to retrieve her belongings.

  The fullness of her belly prevented her from bending over, so she had to settle for an awkward squat, and Darger was worried she’d tip over like a capsizing ship.

  Darger abandoned her post at the elevator door and hurried over to help.

  “Let me get those for you,” she said, scooping the loose papers and handing them to the woman.

  “This is so embarrassing. Here I wanted to make a good impression, and then I go and pull a classic Georgina.”

  “A good impression?” Darger repeated.

  “Well yeah. It’s not every day we get a real Quantico profiler consulting on a case. I mean, maybe the L.A. guys do, but we don’t.”

  That was when Darger recognized the woman and her baseball cap.

  “Captain Georgina Beck. I run the station out in Yucaipa under the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Violet Darger.”

  “I really enjoyed your profile, by the way,” she said, waving a hand between them. “I know that’s not what it’s for, of course. I just mean it was enlightening and all.”

  Darger nodded, only remembering to mutter a thanks after a second.

  “I had some questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.”

  “It’s just that, to this point we’ve spent most of our investigation working the revenge angle. Trying to find someone tied to the wedding party or one of the guests, you know? I guess after listening to your presentation, I’m worried I just wasted a whole lot of time sniffing down the wrong trail.”

  “I wouldn’t call it wasted time. You worked with the information you had at the time. Besides that, the profile is only a guide. We never get everything right. So it makes perfect sense to exhaust all the obvious leads and suspects first.”

  By now they had re-assembled Beck’s scattered file, so Darger went and pressed the button for the elevator.

  “Well, I guess I’m glad to hear that,” Beck said while they waited, but Darger thought she still looked bothered. It was probably hard to deal with something as devastating as the church fire in a small jurisdiction, especially the kids. Darger looked down at Beck’s swollen belly.

  “I know what you’re thinking. ‘She’s either about 11 months pregnant, or she swallowed a watermelon whole this morning for breakfast.’”

  Darger laughed.

  The elevator announced its arrival with an electronic ping. Darger gestured that Beck should board first and followed her inside.

  “I’d been thinking of driving out to see the scene of the wedding fire. Maybe talk to the owner of the venue, if possible. All with your permission, of course.”

  “Fine with me,” Beck said. “In fact, I’d love to show you around. Give me your info, and we can decide when and where to meet up.”

  They swapped phone numbers and email addresses and then went their separate ways outside of the building.

  The sun made Darger squint as she moved onto the sidewalk. She slid on her sunglasses, regained her bearings, and headed back toward the lot where she and Luck had parked.

  The weather was delightful, as she’d been warned it would be. Maybe a little bright for her taste. She smelled the smoky char of a grill as she got down the block, probably from one of the restaurants nearby, and it made her stomach rumble.

  Luck waited for Darger in the parking lot, standing near his car. As she got closer, she could see that he was chatting with a couple of uniformed officers.

  Luck waved her over and introduced them.

  “Agent Darger, meet a couple of guys from the task force — Damon Bishop and T.J. Klootey.”

  Bishop was a tall black man with his head shaved clean. His partner was shorter and frecklier but solidly built. Klootey’s reddish hair sported the classic crew cut, though it was grown out and looking a bit fluffy on top. They shook hands and exchanged the usual pleasantries.

  “So this might be a stupid question,” Klootey said, “But you usually work cases that involve serial killers, right?”

  “I consult on a variety of cases, but yes. Serial murders make up a significant portion of my caseload.”

  “Is that what this guy is, then? A serial killer?”

  It was anything but a stupid question and had been at the back of Darger’s mind since she first began studying the files.

  “I’m not sure yet. I think that will depend on how his crimes continue to progress. I’ve been wondering if the fire that killed the retiree, Mrs. Galitis, might have been a fluke. He may have expected the house to be empty for some reason. After that, it’s possible that the idea of his fire claiming an actual victim intrigued him enough to try it again, with purpose this time.”

  “Hence the wedding fire,” Klootey said.

  Darger nodded.

  “I mentioned John Orr during the meeting, and I think there are ideas in his novel that give some insight to both his lack of remorse and the fact that he did, to some degree, relish the idea of taking lives,” she explained. “At one point, after the villain in the book sets a fire very similar to the one that claimed the lives of John Orr’s real-life victims, he reasons that it wasn’t his fault that people died. That they were obviously too stupid to get out. Zero remorse.”

  Luck shook his head at that.

  “Man, there was a two-year-old kid that died in that church fire. How do you not feel any remorse over that?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Darger answered. “Later on in the book, the villain attempts to murder a teenage girl. Whether or not Orr ever intentionally killed anyone, I think we can say that he at least fantasized about it. Maybe he even liked to think of himself as a cold-blooded killer. There’s an appealing power there, no matter how backward and sick it sounds.”

  Throughout Darger’s response, Klootey had remained attentive. His partner, however, couldn’t seem to stop glancing over his shoulder. Darger couldn’t figure out if he was rude, up to something, or just kind of a twitchy dude.

  She refocused on the question Klootey had asked.

  “So to answer your question in earnest, I need more time. If he targets another highly populated area — like he did with the church — then yes. I’d call him a serial killer.”

  Bishop went rigid, like a rabbit spotting a fox across the field, and Darger knew then that he was definitely up to something. She gave a casual glance across the parking lot and saw one of the cops she’d spoken to inside the conference room climbing into a yellow Ford Mustang. Camacho of the daily spinach and egg white omelet breakfast.

  His partner, Murphy, jogged over just as the engine rumbled to life. He rapped his knuckles against the window, and Camacho rolled it down.

  Bishop was bouncing on his feet now, sneaking peeks over at the car every so often but trying not to be obvious about it.

  Murphy rested a hand on the top of the car and leaned down to say something to his friend in the driver’s seat. After a few moments, he knocked his fist against the roof and stepped back.

  “Teej! Teej, it’s
happening,” Bishop whispered, his voice on the edge of hysteria.

  Finally Camacho put the car in gear and rolled out of the parking space. Almost immediately, there was a loud pop.

  Everyone flinched at the sound, and at first Darger thought it was a gunshot. Murphy wheeled around, grabbing for his gun, a terrified look on his face.

  The Mustang came to a halt and Camacho lunged out of the car.

  “What happened?” he asked Murphy. “What was it? Did I pop a tire?”

  Bishop and Klootey were both buckled over at the waist now. Klootey’s laugh came out a high-pitched cackle while Bishop’s was more of a silent wheeze.

  Camacho climbed out and scrambled around the Mustang, searching for the source of the explosion, and Murphy followed as his partner ran circles around the vehicle.

  Klootey reached over and punched his partner in the arm.

  Swiveling to face her, Luck asked, “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  “Nope.”

  Klootey peered over at them and managed to choke out, “Inner tube… zip-tied… exhaust pipe.”

  And then he was losing it again.

  Camacho was bent over the rear end of his car now struggling with something.

  A few seconds later, he was storming toward them with a blown-out inner tube in one hand. He shook it in the air.

  “I told you knuckleheads, the car is off limits! You better hope this didn’t do any damage. I just upgraded the exhaust system, and you two jag-offs think it’s funny to go messing with it. Not fucking cool.”

  The two jag-offs were still laughing too hard to speak. Klootey had actually fallen to his hands and knees now.

  “Yeah, laugh it up, Klootey!”

  Camacho threw the shredded scraps of rubber at Klootey, which landed with a smack against one shoulder.

  “Hey man, it was Bishop’s idea,” he said, aiming a finger at his partner.

  As Camacho stomped his way back over to his car, Klootey got himself together enough to stand again.

  They watched Camacho peel out of the parking lot, and Darger caught a glimpse of the vanity license plate that read: MACH0M4N.

  Murphy strutted over, shaking his head.

  “You guys better watch your backs now. You know how he is about that car.”

  Klootey chuckled.

  “Dude is delusional. The car is a ten-year-old piece of shit, and he wants to act like it’s a ‘65 Shelby.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s still pissed about the time you Twinkied it.”

  “Twinkied?” Darger asked.

  “Yeah, it’s where you take a Twinkie and you shove it up under the door handle,” Klootey explained.

  “Now hold on,” Bishop interrupted. “You don’t shove anything anywhere. See, you got to do it gentle-like, so as to preserve the integrity of the Twinkie. When the person goes to get in their car, they reach up and get a handful of cream filling.”

  “These two are the pranksters of our division, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Murphy said, turning to face Darger and Luck. “Always trying to one-up each other.”

  “I think what you mean is that T.J. is always trying to one-up me, because I’m the best,” Bishop bragged.

  Murphy scoffed.

  “My point is, watch yourself around these two. They’ll tie your shoelaces together when you’re not looking.”

  “Duly noted,” Darger said, glancing down at her boots for good measure.

  Luck tapped her on the arm.

  “You still up for dinner?”

  She nodded and followed him over to the car.

  When they pulled onto the street, the three guys from the LAPD were still frantically windmilling their limbs in the general direction of where Camacho’s car had been parked, reliving their prank.

  Chapter 5

  They drove back toward the ocean, the sun drooping low in the clear blue sky. Luck parked near the Santa Monica Pier, and they ordered dinner at a Caribbean chicken joint. They were close enough to the Pacific that Darger could gaze down the street at it while they waited for their food. It was a gray-blue stripe along the horizon, a little blurred through the veil of smog.

  When their number got called, they grabbed their Styrofoam containers and walked down the street to a park with a full view of the beach. Judging from the quiet as they tore into the food, Luck was just as hungry as Darger. A few bites in, however, the edge of the hunger died back, and a conversation finally started up.

  “You’ve teamed up with the LAPD before?” she asked.

  “Twice since I’ve been here. A mass-shooting and a string of burglaries that crossed into Nevada. That’s how I know Klootey and Bishop.”

  Darger swallowed a mouthful of fried plantains.

  “I have to be honest, those guys are not quite what I imagined when I think of the LAPD. I guess it’s hard not to have some preconceived notions, especially after stuff like Rodney King and the Christopher Dorner shootings.”

  Luck shook his head.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I don’t envy them. Can’t imagine being a street cop or even a detective in a jurisdiction like L.A. There’s the danger, of course, but even the guys not on the street… it’s gotta wear on you. A city this big, you must see the absolute worst in humanity. Day after day. Unrelenting.”

  “I guess that means you don’t regret switching sides, then?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Spoken like a true traitor,” she said with a teasing smile.

  He stared out at the beach, so she followed his gaze. The sun was sinking in the sky, coloring it gold.

  “So what do you think of paradise?”

  “It’s beautiful. I’ll give you that,” Darger said, but she couldn’t help but think of when traffic came to a standstill on the highway for over twenty minutes. “Too many people, though.”

  Even now she could hear the non-stop whoosh and rumble of cars behind her. Horns, the waft of diesel exhaust, squealing brakes. In front of her, down on the beach, people walked dogs, tossed Frisbees, stretched out on towels. The masses of humanity spanning all directions.

  Luck laughed as he tossed a chicken bone that had been expertly cleaned of all traces of meat back into his tray.

  “Right. I forgot you were such a misanthrope.”

  “I am not a misanthrope.”

  “You’re not?” he asked, wiping his hands on a napkin.

  “Just because I think most people are idiots doesn’t mean I hate them.”

  He laughed again and shook his head.

  The sun was just touching the edge of the sea now, a giant molten coin melting into the horizon. The ocean looked like hammered bronze.

  They deposited the remnants of their meal in a nearby waste bin and strolled back to Luck’s car. It was getting darker now, the nature of the crowd seeming to morph around them — couples holding hands, a pair of teenagers apparently practicing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, their lips locked together in either desperation or passion.

  Just before they reached the car, the lights snapped on along the pier, and a Ferris wheel lit up in the distance.

  Luck unlocked the car with his fob, and Darger climbed in.

  He turned the key in the ignition and then asked, “You think anyone’s actually read John Orr’s book?”

  “I have.”

  “Yeah?” he said, in a tone that indicated he wanted her assessment of it.

  “Sucks.”

  Luck chuckled.

  They drove back through the city, which seemed to Darger to change dramatically block by block. First it was skyscrapers, then it was the endless rows of small, boxy houses flanked by palm trees. A few blocks later, she could admire the lights of the houses up in the hills. The traffic waxed and waned all the while, catching them for a bit here and there at various clogged intersections and then coming clear for a few blocks.

  The weather. The sunset. The views. It really would be paradise if it weren’t for all the damn people.

>   Luck dropped Darger off at the hotel, where he insisted on getting out to pull her luggage from the trunk. Mr. Chivalry or Mr. Rulebreaker? Dude needed to make up his mind.

  “Thanks for dinner,” Darger said.

  “No problem. I’m glad you’re here.”

  He passed the suitcase to her, his fingers brushing over the tops of hers as she took the handle. The lightness of the touch sent a little trail of goose bumps up her arm.

  She glanced at his face, trying to see if the contact had been on purpose, but he was already heading back to the front of the car.

  “I’ll be in touch tomorrow,” he said without looking back. “Back to the grind, you know.”

  “Yep. See you tomorrow.”

  Darger rolled through the front doors of the hotel with her suitcase trailing behind her. What the hell had Luck meant when he said that? He’s glad she’s here? Like… in a professional sense? Or was there more to it? And if there was, was it a platonic more or a romantic more?

  “Can I see your ID, please?”

  Darger glanced up at the clerk behind the front desk.

  “What?”

  “Your ID? I just have to check it against your credit card.”

  “Oh,” Darger said, digging her driver’s license out of her wallet. “Right.”

  The thing with Luck had apparently rattled her enough to render this simple task difficult.

  And what about the hand-graze? She glanced down at the place where Luck’s fingers had brushed against hers. Had that been an accident?

  The hotel clerk handed her a room key along with her license and credit card.

  “Enjoy your stay,” she said with a picture-perfect Los Angeles smile.

  Darger smiled back.

  “I will.”

  As she rode the elevator up to her room, she wondered what she even thought of Luck’s potential advances. She hadn’t made a habit of making the same mistake twice. But he seemed different, didn’t he? Maybe different in a good way.

  Enough of that, she thought, forcing her mind to switch over to thinking about the case.