Prologue
Corduroy pants swished between Teresa’s thighs as she crossed the parking lot. She had a headache. That drive-thru headset gave her a headache every damn time. The band squeezed her skull like an old man trying to find a ripe cantaloupe in the produce department. Pressing and pressing until her temples throbbed. When the headaches were really bad, she got the aura. And it was gonna be a bad one tonight. She could already tell. By the time she got home, she’d be nauseous from the skull throb along with the stink of fryer grease clinging to her clothes and hair and skin. Sometimes she swore she could feel it permeating her pores.
She placed a hand under the lid of the dumpster and lifted. The overhead lights in the parking lot glinted on the surface below. It looked like water, but it wasn’t. It was oil. Every night they emptied the fryers, dumping the used oil into this dumpster. It was a disgusting task. Worse than taking out the trash on a 90-degree summer day, when the flies got real thick, and the meat went rancid almost as soon as they put it in the bin.
It was dead out. No traffic. No noise at all but her fiddling with the dumpster and the bucket.
Her skin crawled a little whenever she was out here this late. In the dark. In the quiet. A feeling settled into the flesh on her back and shoulders, a cold feeling, a feeling like after watching one of those scary movies when she was a teenager. It might have been a thrill while she was watching, but later on that night she’d always get spooked. She’d tremble in bed, too terrified to walk down the hall to pee. The house never seemed so ominously still as it did on those nights. Anyhow, she couldn’t stand to watch horror movies anymore. Her weak stomach couldn’t handle the gore.
Bending over the metal cart she’d wheeled along with her, Teresa scooped one of the buckets of used fryer oil and balanced it on the edge of the dumpster. She tipped the bucket and watched as the gallons of brown grease oozed into the dumpster, disrupting the smoothness. Settled at the bottom of the bucket, there were clumps and chunks. Burned bits of fries and chicken tender crumbs. They splatted and splashed into the pool of liquid that looked black in the night.
That’s when Teresa saw it. Something rising out of the oil, disturbing the otherwise unblemished surface.
Great. Some dumbshit threw two bags of trash in the grease dumpster.
Not cool.
Probably that Simmons kid. She knew he went out to his car on his breaks to smoke pot. Everyone knew. He always came back reeking of mouthwash and skunk weed. He even had a bumper sticker with those rainbow Grateful Dead bears. He wasn’t fooling anybody.
She’d wanted to institute random drug testing, but the store manager wouldn’t allow it. Something about the Constitution. Whatever.
She set the empty bucket down and let out the breath she’d been holding. The reek of old oil was heavy in the air.
Standing on her tiptoes and holding her breath again, she leaned over the edge, her arm swinging into the dark space but coming up empty.
Damn.
She hoisted herself up onto the side. With the edge of the dumpster jabbing her in the gut, she kicked one leg up onto the rim. One of her hands slid in a greasy residue, and she lurched forward, her upper body dipping into the darkness inside. For a split second, she was certain she was going in, all the way in, neck-deep into the foul muck. Her leg flailed behind her like a monkey’s tail, struggling to regain her balance, and Teresa was able to catch herself at the last moment.
Cheese and crackers, that was close. Too close. She imagined herself teetering over the lip, plunging into the dark pool. That would have been awful.
She wiped her hand on her pants and peered into the inky interior. She wouldn’t be able to reach the bags unless she got back up there, but she wasn’t willing to risk taking a swim in a vat of grease. No way, no how.
Cursing the Simmons kid under her breath, she strode back inside the restaurant. A few moments later, the back door swung open again, and she reappeared with a step stool from the walk-in freezer and a pair of tongs.
The stool clattered onto the concrete. She shoved it as close to the dumpster as it would go with her foot, and it clanged against the metal. The sound reminded her of waves thumping against the side of a boat’s hull.
Climbing atop the step, she gripped the tongs in her fist. Hovering over the gaping mouth of the dumpster, she swung her arm out, reaching for the first garbage bag. It rustled under her touch, and she clamped the tongs onto the flimsy black plastic. Tugging it a few inches closer, she felt the grip lose purchase. The bag was no doubt coated with a film of oil. Slippery as hell.
Damn it all. She should have brought a pair of gloves.
She clicked the tongs together in frustration, then redoubled her efforts. This time the tongs got a nice big bite of the plastic, as well as whatever was inside the bag. Clenching her fingers around the handle, she hauled the bag closer.
It was heavy. Probably the garbage inside was all sodden with oil by now. What a damn mess. She was going to end up driving home lubed up with the filth from head to toe.
The plastic crinkled as she lifted the bag. It was really gosh damn heavy. Something inside the bag bonged against the metal as she dragged it up along the corner.
She had it up on the lip of the dumpster now, and then she felt some resistance and a sort of stretching feeling and then the pop as the plastic ripped, and then the garbage was tumbling out, half on the ground and half back into the grease with a sploosh, and there was an odd thud of something hitting the ground — it sounded kind of like dropping a head of lettuce or something — and then she looked down, and it wasn’t a head of lettuce, but there was a head, alright. A mannequin head, still connected to the torso, though there was a big crack along the neck. The arms and legs were gone, and just as she started to wonder why in the world someone would toss a broken mannequin into their grease dumpster, she realized it wasn’t a mannequin at all.
It was a body. A limbless woman. Her eyes closed. Her skin as pale as bone. Red flaps of meat exposed where each arm and leg should be.
Teresa’s breath hissed in her throat. She clambered down from the stool and scrabbled back in a crabwalk, the corduroy seat of her pants dragging over the asphalt in jerks.
She retreated without thought. A blind panic that bashed her shoulder-blades-first into the steel door twice before she realized what she was doing and got a hold of herself.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the grisly scene, and one word reverberated in her mind:
Gore.
Chapter 1
The smell of solvent hung like a cloud over the workbench. She sprayed a cotton rag with Hoppes solution, attached it to the cleaning rod, and forced it into the barrel of her Glock 22. When the white rag had turned dark gray with carbon powder, she traded it for a new scrap of cotton, sprayed, and started again.
She’d done well on the range today, practicing with a QIT-99 target. She managed to score 96% despite the fact that she hadn’t shot in over a month. Well over the 80% required to pass her annual qualification test. She glanced over at the paper target riddled with bullet holes. Fat lot of good it did when she was stuck behind a desk most days.
Lately, she’d begun to question her decision to leave her position as a victim specialist. Violet Darger had spent her first four years at the FBI in the Office for Victim Assistance before giving up her position to become an agent trainee. She knew her colleagues thought she was nuts for making the move. Victim specialist jobs were highly competitive. To give that up just to have to start over at the bottom of the special agent chain was something almost everyone had counseled against. Not that she’d asked for their advice. “Impulsive” was the word her former supervisor had used. That was almost two years ago now, and she’d brushed them off at the time. They didn’t understand. She didn’t expect them to.
She moved on to the wire brush. She pushed the copper bristles through the barrel once, removed the brush tip, and then repeated the motion. A guy at a nearby table was using his wire brush as well, and he inserted it into the barrel and shimmied it back and forth. The sound of the wire fibers scraping against the inside of the barrel sent goose bumps scuttling over the flesh of her arms. Worse than nails on a chalkboard. Not because the sound was even so bad, but because she imagined the abrasive brush scratching the steel surface of the barrel, throwing off its accuracy micron by micron.
She mentioned this fear once, to the firearms instructor at Quantico. He’d laughed.
“You need a chemistry refresher, Darger. Brush is made of copper. Barrel’s made of steel. It won’t scratch.”
Darger didn’t care what he said, and she didn’t bother trying to correct anyone else either, but the sound of it still set her teeth on edge. Her brush went into the barrel only one direction: the same direction the bullet traveled. Out and only out.
After another pass with a fresh cotton cloth, she ran her bore snake through the barrel.
Her attraction to the FBI was something she’d never really tried to explain to anyone. Not in any kind of honest way. But deep down, she knew what pulled her in. She wanted to be part of the best. She wanted to spend her life fighting for something.
On the simplest level, a battle of good and evil still existed in the world. People did unspeakable things to each other. Rape. Murder. Human trafficking. Mankind devoured itself the same way it always had. The same way it always would. The big ones ate the little ones. The monsters defiled the meek.
And yet others existed who dedicated their lives to stopping the violence. To fighting the monsters.
Violet Darger wanted with all her heart to be part of that. She wanted to stare into the abyss, to do her part to keep the darkness at bay.
Twenty-some weeks at the training academy plus nearly two years in the Crisis Negotiation Unit, and she found herself looking around her beige cubicle and wondering, “Is this what I signed up for?” It was just another desk job most days, more bureaucratic than anything visceral. Hardly the change she’d been expecting when she transferred from OVA. She yearned to work the cases up close, but so far that hadn’t happened yet.
The FBI spent half of the training time telling them it’s not like what they saw on TV and in the movies. In other words, the prospective agents shouldn’t expect their days to be filled with car chases and explosions and shouting into walkie-talkies. More often, it was paperwork and court dates and an endless string of meetings with your superiors. And then in the next breath, the instructor would be telling them all about the crazy shit they’ve done — kidnappings, bank robberies, active shooters.
Darger worked over the frame with a toothbrush, then wiped up the excess solvent with a dried out baby wipe.
Just as she twisted open the top of the bottle of gun oil, her phone rang.
She removed one purple nitrile glove and tossed it on the workbench. She retrieved the phone from her pocket, saw that the caller was Cal, and swiped her thumb across the screen.
“Hot Pocket Ryskamp I presume,” she said.
She put the phone in speaker mode, set it in her lap, and slid her hand back into the glove.
Cal’s chuckle crackled out of the tinny speaker.
“Funny. But I don’t know if that’s the best way to answer when the new Deputy Assistant Director of CIRG calls.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yep.”
She stopped oiling the barrel and picked up the phone.
“Congratulations, Cal. Or should I say, sir. You’re a sir now, huh?”
“I guess so.”
“So for future reference, how should I answer the phone when you call from now on?” Darger asked.
“DAD Ryskamp would be fine.”
“Mister Critical Incident Response Group. Hot damn.”
“I know. So, hey, I didn’t just call to gloat.”
“Yeah, right.” She dabbed oil into the creases and the slide, then used another rag to oil the recoil spring.
“OK, it was mostly to gloat.”
“I knew it.”
“Seriously, though. I have something for you.”
She set the phone down again and returned to her task, working oil into the nooks and crannies of the gun frame.
“Is this like the time you set me up with that guy that thought that dinosaur fossils were a hoax?”
“You’re not ever gonna let me forget that one, are you?”
“It’s kind of unforgettable.”
“Yeah. Well, we’re consulting with the Athens County Sheriff’s Department out in Ohio on a case of theirs—”
Darger snorted. Of course. He was going to try to send her out to some BFE resident agency to play Sheriff’s pet.
Cal was still talking, ignoring her derisive sigh.
“—multiple cases, actually. The most recent victim was found in garbage bags in a Burger King dumpster. Dismembered. I don’t know if you’ve seen any of it in the news, but they think they have a serial murderer out there. They’re calling the killings the Trash Bag Murders or the Doll Parts Murders. But if you’re not interested, I can try to find someone else.”
The smirk on Darger’s face vanished.
“Are you jerking me around?”
“Nope. I’m dead serious.”
“You know, people always complain about cronyism,” she said, “but I don’t really see what’s so bad about it.”
“Ha. So listen. We already have an agent out there, and therein lies part of the problem. Guy’s a real piece of work.”
“How so?”
“Oh, he’s one of these BAU hotshots who thinks he’s Christ returned. Still thinks it’s 1982, and he’s hunting Ted Bundy or something.”
“Ted Bundy was arrested in 1978.”
“Whatever. You know what I mean. He’s the type that refuses to work with other agents, constantly submits reports late, if at all, and just generally drives guys like my new boss totally apeshit,” Cal said. He had a habit of cracking his knuckles when he was stressed out, and while she couldn’t hear it over the line, she still imagined him doing it while they talked.
“Victor Loshak, I’m sure you’ve heard of him,” he added.
A row of creases appeared on her forehead.
“Yeah. I’ve heard of him.” Who hadn’t, was what she didn’t say. She cleared her throat.
“So am I to take it that you want me to head out there and… what? Report on his findings?”
“Exactly. He hasn’t touched base with the liaison in the Resident Agency out there in three days, so we’re in the dark.”
That was disappointing. This was starting to sound a little more like a babysitting mission and lot less like her profiling dream job.
“And look, I hope you don’t think I’m just sending you out to the boonies to play nanny to some pain-in-the-ass old timer.”
“I didn’t think that.” She hoped he couldn’t hear the smile in her voice. He knew her too well.
“The truth is, I’m just as interested in hearing your take, and I suspect the local law enforcement would feel the same. You and I both know that you’re the best profiler in CNU. You were spot-on with that active shooter in Phoenix. You saved lives.”
She frowned and said, “He turned the gun on himself. I didn’t do anything.”
“What are you talking about? That was in your profile, that he’d take himself out. So we sat. Who knows what would have happened if we’d sent HRT in right away? He might have killed one of our guys. Might have killed another hostage,” Cal said. “Don’t get humble on me, Darger. It doesn’t suit you.”
There was a brief pause.
“Or are you trying to tell me you don’t want this assignment?”
“No. I want it,” she said.
“Good. Then have your butt on a plane to Columbus tomorrow morning. I’ll get a copy of the files ready for you before you head out.”
Darger was scribbling instructions for herself on a scrap of paper while Cal continued to talk.
“The way I see it, we’re killing two birds with one stone. We’re kept in the loop, and you get your foot in the door with BAU. I know the weirdo stuff is kind of your thing.”
“The weirdo stuff. Nice.”
Cal chuckled. “You know what I mean. What I’m trying to say is, I’ve gotten the impression that there are people that would love for him to be out of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. All the talent in the world is worthless if you won’t be part of the team.”
“And he doesn’t get reprimanded for… I don’t know, not playing well with others?”
“Yes and no. He has friends higher up the chain, and like you said, cronyism is alive and well in the FBI. He’s totally protected. For now.”
Personally Darger wasn’t interested in FBI politics. Actually, it was more than that. She detested it. But she kept her mouth shut and let Cal go on.
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