Lonesome Highway

Book 11: Violet Darger

by L.T. Vargus, Tim McBain

Genres: Horror; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals

Synopsis

Her body lies tucked in the shadows beneath the overpass. Steel girders yawing over her delicate form. Above her, the traffic thunders without end. Tires thumping over the bridge, over the asphalt. The black ribbon of the highway stretches into the night.

When a second body turns up in a truck stop parking lot, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to rural North Carolina to investigate. These crimes are quickly connected to more. And more. And more.

The scope of the crisis balloons. Soon, a task force is formed to work a serial murder case spanning a 1,500 mile stretch of the interstate.

A freeway killer stalks up and down the eastern seaboard, his hunting grounds stretching from the everglades into New England.

The logistics strain law enforcement techniques and resources alike. It's overwhelming.

Darger has never worked a case like this one. Progess is slow. Frustration mounts.

And all the while, the killer is out there. On the road. Free to roam.

Darger will need to dig into the history of freeway killers to understand the psychology driving the crimes. Only then can she hope to stop him.

But complications lurk around every corner, and danger lies in wait just down the road. When Darger finally finds her way, somebody is waiting for her.

 

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Release date: October 31, 2022

Publisher: Smarmy Press

Sample

Prologue

The highway stretches into the night. An asphalt stripe etched into the foliage. A black line that slices some 1,908 miles from just south of downtown Miami all the way up the east coast through Maine, where it dead-ends at the Canadian border.

I-95. The interstate.

Traffic pulses down the road at all hours like blood cells surging through an artery. Sedans and SUVs twitch from lane to lane, booming up entrance ramps and coiling aside on the exits, red taillights gleaming as they drive away.

Though lonely sections of the freeway go dark for long intervals, the interstate itself never sleeps. Not fully. There’s always a motorcycle fluttering here, a minivan jiggling there.

Throbbing engines. Sweeping headlamps.

All those hungry animals hunkered over their steering wheels. Hurrying somewhere. Agitated.

Here, in rural North Carolina, the interstate is quiet. Not dead, but quiet.

A rabbit stirs in the greenery along the shoulder. Its nose twitches. The smell of rain is still strong here, though the storm has passed. The animal nibbles at the clover, keeps its black eyes aimed into the emptiness where the road lies, vaguely conscious of the danger the asphalt presents.

The bunny senses the silence expanding over the freeway, the pregnant atmosphere of the lull in traffic. It feels faint bristling along its arched back at the awareness, but the rabbit is not disturbed.

The small creature will never know what horror has taken place just off the next exit, will never grasp the malignant psychology that inspired the act.

Only humans can know that.

Something changes in the air. Fresh vibrations. The rabbit’s ears perk up a second before the sound arrives.

A semi engine growls in the distance, a tiny sound at first but growing. That chunky diesel thrum reaches out over the empty land, disrupts the stillness, fills the space with mechanical ugliness.

The rabbit stops chewing. Watches the dark highway. Waits.

And then the truck crests a hill, two beams thrusting out of it, the headlamps set around the gridwork of the grill.

The semi is a muscular thing. Hulking. Imposing. Something harsh in all the planes and angles of its form. Rigid and boxy.

The truck rushes down the hill. Wet asphalt glitters where the headlights touch it. The glow reaches farther down the strip of black freeway, flitting over the plant life along the side of the highway, grasping toward the bunny’s hiding spot.

The rabbit shivers and hops away from the road.

***

Lightning paled the sky, flaring and relenting. The rain had moved on almost an hour ago, but the last forks of brightness still flashed in the distance, thunderless like a silent movie.

Dwayne Kunkle limped out toward the back lot where the truck still rumbled. He’d waited for this moment. In between mopping sessions and running garbage bins out to the dumpster in the drizzle, he had kept an eye on the traffic flowing in and out all night. He had someone to meet.

Even with the lightning sheening off the wet asphalt, the lot at Big Jon’s Travel Center seemed surprisingly dark tonight. Moonlight shimmered on the tops and sides of the trailers, reflecting panels of silvery light, but the places between the rows of semis held shadowy.

Kunkle glanced over his shoulder. His eyes traced up the twin poles along the road. The big sign, the one visible from the freeway, glowed bright as ever way up high. The spotlights aimed five white beams at the Big Jon’s logo, gleaming day or night, rain or shine. He noted, however, that the neon lights beneath the big logo remained dark.

Sam forgot to turn on the sign again. Typical.

In the second-to-last row of the lot, Kunkle strode into the headlights of the semi that had just pulled in. He raised a hand to his brow and squinted to beat back the glare, and then he could see the shape of one Randall Hendy hunched behind the wheel. A little smile curled Kunkle’s lips at the sight of his friend, but not out of any warmth or kindness. Hendy owed him a hundred bucks.

Friends were one thing. Money was another.

The trucker killed the engine, and the headlights winked off a second later. Kunkle gaped at the fresh darkness around him, all the shapes suddenly indistinct, charcoal smears where the contours had been. The North Carolina humidity seemed to swell in the gloom, the night air still heavy from the recent rain.

Lightning bugs flitted around. Blinked out signals to each other with their yellow butts. Right now they looked like specks in the abyss to Kunkle — tiny flares in a vast nothingness.

The truck door cracked open, and a wedge of dome light drifted down to the asphalt, sculpting solid shapes in the night once more. It helped Kunkle make sense of reality. He watched the beanpole trucker climb down, the man’s lack of a chin and giant Adam’s apple somehow looking all the more cartoonish in silhouette.

“Christ, my legs,” Hendy said, stepping down to the asphalt. His twang made legs sound more like laigs. “How sitting in a truck all day can so thoroughly fuck a man’s legs, I’ll never know. But it sure as shit works that way, don’t it?”

He stood still then, let his eyes flick over Kunkle a couple seconds before he spoke. A cigarette bobbed in the trucker’s mouth, flapping up and down with each syllable.

“Didn’t know the welcome committee would come all the way out to greet little ol’ me. Cripes. You’re worse than the IRS, you know that?”

Kunkle grinned.

“You got my money, then?”

“Nice to see you, too, good buddy. Jesus.”

Hendy hit the cigarette. Exhaled smoke. Otherwise, he didn’t move.

Kunkle’s smile cut out. He pressed his lips together into a tight line and braced himself for tonight’s excuse.

Great. Here it comes. This asshole is gonna stiff me again. Unbelievable.

In the past six months, Hendy had used a menagerie of pretexts to squirm out of paying up. Family emergency, dental emergency, dog emergency, plumbing emergency — all of the major emergencies, now that Kunkle thought about it.

What’ll it be this time? Gerbil emergency? Soap poisoning?

After a couple more seconds of silence, though, Hendy shook his head. He reached into his back pocket, took out a floppy wallet with deep creases crushed into the leather, and fished a couple of 50-dollar bills free. He sniffed and made a face as he handed them over.

“No offense, Kunkle, but you… uh… smell a little ripe.”

Kunkle wheezed out a laugh as he shoved the money into the breast pocket of his jumpsuit. Then he shrugged.

“I’m a janitor, dipstick. Part of the job to get elbow deep in the stanky stuff. Sometimes, anyway. But for 22 dollars an hour, I can deal with that. Way I see it, we’re all debasing ourselves for cash, one way or another.”

Hendy hit his cig again, considered, and then he bobbed his head a couple times.

“Beats sitting in a truck all day. Pissing in a damn bottle. Hell, my legs feel like rubber tubes, dude. Dead meat. Hurts just to stand here — like, shooting pains from my heels all the way up into my ass crack.”

Kunkle wheezed again, harder this time. He watched his laugh slowly infect Hendy, who smiled and then chuckled a little himself.

And then he heard it. They both did.

Their heads turned. Their laughs cut off. They listened.

Nothing. Now.

But there had been something. Kunkle was sure of it.

Something… off.

It was a little scuffing sound and then a bulk plopping and splashing into a puddle. Something heavy. Quiet, though. The volume barely stronger than the whisper of the breeze kicking through the lot even now.

Probably nothing.

So why did it make the hair prick up all over Kunkle’s body?

Hendy plucked the cigarette from his lip and whispered. He must’ve been spooked pretty good, too.

“Fuck was that?”

Kunkle shook his head. Then he pointed deeper into the lot, two fingers jutting toward where the sound had come from.

They both stared another few seconds. Quiet.

Kunkle didn’t want to go look. Felt queasy at the thought of venturing out toward the noise. His gut all disturbed like a pond someone had just dropped a cinder block into.

Still, he hobbled that way, stepped out in front, and Hendy followed. They crept for it, not discussing it, maybe both knowing they shouldn’t be doing this. Kunkle knew for damn sure he shouldn’t, in any case — his thundering heart told him that much. But his legs kept going anyway, each step tremoring electricity down the length of the limbs in slow motion, easing him over the asphalt.

A stillness wafted over the night, a silence punctuated by their soft footsteps. Faint wind slithered over the hoods of the trucks now and then. All else was placid.

As they advanced toward the darkest corner of the lot, thick shadows swaddled them. No lightning seared in the heavens now. Even the fireflies seemed to have gone dark.

Kunkle slowed as he came upon the space between the last two trucks. He scanned the darkness, not quite sure what he was seeing.

Hendy gasped. A scraping sound in the trucker’s throat. So sharp that it made Kunkle cringe, shoulders aquiver.

And then he saw it, too.

Not it.

Her.

The girl. Face down in a mud puddle. Naked. Sort of pretzeled into an awkward shape with something holding her there. Rope, maybe.

Yeah. Hog-tied.

Kunkle’s throat clicked. A shaky breath entered him. His lips popped and parted as though he might say something, but no words came.

He wanted to go back into the light and call for help, call the police, call an ambulance. All those things a person’s supposed to do in a situation like this. But now his legs wouldn’t move.

He stood and stared. Felt his mouth hanging wide open, that muggy night air creeping past his lips, wriggling over his teeth.

Death.

The girl’s skin shone purple in the dusky light. Almost looked phosphorescent against the blacktop, like those mushrooms that glow in the dark.

Murky water obscured most of her face. She wasn’t breathing. That was for sure.

Death.

A body. A dead body. Right here in the parking lot at Big Jon’s.

Death.

The dark lines drawn into her skin only came clear then, after a second. Slashes all over her back. Wounds opening, yawning to reveal slivers of red tissue.

She’s all… slit.

Kunkle made a noise then — a moan or a groan released in an exhale, so soft. His own sound startled him, refreshed the goose bumps pebbling the surface of his body.

And part of him knew that nothing would be the same. Not after this. He knew that these few seconds would stick with him forever. The experience would scrawl something deep into his being with permanent ink, something that would come to him in dreams, something that would stay with him to the grave.

Death.

He’d seen death up close many times in his 42 years. In hospital rooms. On the highway. Once in a neighbor’s garage where he’d found a suicide strung up from the rafters, face all turning black after eight days of dangling there alone.

He would almost think he’d have grown used to it by now. Hardened to it. Impervious.

But no matter how many times he brushed up against mortality — the finality, the fragility, they never failed to shock. Especially when the death crept up and caught him unaware.

He blinked. Let his eyes crawl over those gashes in her skin. Still wet.

And he thought of the lightning bugs in the murk again — those tiny glowing flares in a vast nothingness.

That’s us, a voice spoke inside him. Fragile. Temporary. Little flashes in the darkness. There for a second and then gone forever.

Hendy gasped again, a sucking sound. Kunkle flinched and looked over, so shocked he’d almost forgotten the other was even there.

The cigarette dangled from the corner of the trucker’s mouth, stuck to his bottom lip, adhered there by a thin film of saliva even though his lips were opened wide. The smoldering tube of tobacco wobbled next to where the chin should be, its red cherry pointed straight down.

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

Darger stood in her kitchen, drizzling melted butter over a bowl of popcorn. The odor wafted into her face and made her mouth water.

“You pick out a movie yet?” she asked.

Owen’s voice drifted in from the living room.

“I think I’ve narrowed it down to two. Would you rather watch Alien or The Thing?”

“Tough choice.” Darger considered it while she sprinkled salt on the popcorn. “But I’m going to go with Alien.”

“You got it,” Owen said.

Darger grabbed the popcorn and a bag of Reese’s Pieces and entered the living room as the opening credits were starting. She handed Owen the bowl and plopped down beside him on the couch.

White text appeared on the screen: A JAMES CAMERON FILM.

Darger flinched. Her eyes narrowed to slits.

“Uh… stop the movie.”

Owen picked up the remote, but he didn’t finger the stop button. Instead he swiveled his head toward Darger, and his eyebrows scrunched together.

“Wait. I’m stopping it… why?”

“Wrong movie. Stop it.”

Darger jabbed a finger at the screen while she spoke, but her eyes stayed locked on the remote in his hand. He held it across his body from her, curiously distant as though he might need to keep it away from her. Maybe he did.

The black box shifted in his hand. His thumb hovered out over the number pad in slow motion. He still didn’t press any buttons.

Up on the screen, the title popped up in glowing blue letters: ALIENS.

“Wrong movie? What the hell are you talking about? You picked Aliens.”

Darger stopped herself from lunging for the remote and took a breath.

“No. I picked Alien. Singular.”

“Well, you couldn’t have picked Alien, because Alien wasn’t among the choices.”

Darger stared at him.

“You asked me to choose between Aliens and The Thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Well that’s lunacy. Obvious choice would be The Thing, but to even suggest Aliens without watching Alien first? It borders on sociopathic.”

Owen snorted. He paused the movie at last, and Darger felt a weird surge of relief as the image held still on the screen.

“So any time I want to watch an Alien movie, I have to watch the entire franchise in order? Is that it?”

“No, but it makes sense to at least watch the first one, seeing as it’s the best.”

“Not a chance.” Owen shook his head and shoved a handful of popcorn in his mouth. “Aliens is the best of the series.”

Darger blinked.

“The first movie is the perfect blend of science fiction and horror. The pacing… the atmosphere… flawless. The sequel is like… Rambo in Space.”

Owen squinted at her like she was speaking a foreign language.

“Rambo in space… and that’s supposed to be a bad thing?”

Darger took another deep breath.

“I don’t mean to be dramatic, but this conversation is making me reconsider our entire relationship.”

“Oh, it’s too late for that,” Owen said, scooting closer. “You’re stuck with me now.”

He leaned in as if to kiss her and then latched his hand over her face.

“Quit,” Darger said, swatting at his arm.

He kept his hand on her face, cackling.

“There’s no stopping a facehugger, Violet. Just try to relax. Once it’s implanted the juvenile xenomorph, it will unlatch under its own power.”

Darger squealed and wriggled away from him.

Owen reached out an arm, and she sent a playful kick his way, thinking he was trying to grab her again.

“Ouch!” He recoiled and then reached again, this time plucking her phone from the coffee table. “Your phone is ringing.”

“No calls during movie night.”

“I know, but it’s Loshak, and I figure if he’s calling at this hour...”

“Son of a bitch.”

Darger sighed and took the phone. She thumbed the “Answer” icon and pressed the plastic slab to her ear.

“What’s up?”

“Just got a call,” Loshak said. “A serial case in North Carolina. I usually wouldn’t call so late, but if we head out now, we can be on the scenes while they’re still fresh.”

“Scenes? As in more than one?”

“Yeah. Three victims. Two separate crime scenes.”

She glanced at Owen, who shrugged.

“Alright,” she said. “Give me twenty minutes.”

When she hung up and explained the scenario to Owen, he smirked.

“It’s OK. I know this is all just an elaborate ruse to get out of watching Aliens.”

“You saw right through me,” Darger said, heading into the bedroom.

She dragged her suitcase from where she’d dropped it after her last trip, which she hadn’t even bothered to unpack yet. She plopped it on the bed and traded out the dirty clothes with fresh ones. In the bathroom, she swept a collection of toiletries into a small zippered bag, found her travel toothbrush, and chucked that into the suitcase as well.

As she changed out of her ancient t-shirt and dinosaur-print pajama pants and into a set of work clothes, she got a distinct whiff of coffee. Dark roast by the smell of it. Her favorite. And now her mouth was watering again.

She rolled her suitcase to the door and hesitated there for a second. Then she poked her head into the kitchen.

Owen stood in front of the coffee pot, pouring steaming black liquid into a giant travel thermos.

Darger wrapped her arms around him from behind.

“Have I ever told you how much I love you?”

“Does this absolve me of my take on Alien versus Aliens?”

“Let’s not get carried away,” she said, nipping at his neck.

A car pulled into the driveway, and the headlights flashed twice.

“Loshak’s here. Gotta go.” She spun Owen around and pressed her lips to his. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Not too early,” he said, handing over the thermos. “You know I need my beauty sleep.”

The suitcase went thump-thump-thump down the porch steps as she made her way to the car. The big sedan wasn’t Loshak’s personal vehicle, meaning he must have borrowed one of the loaners from Quantico.

Loshak popped the trunk, and after depositing the suitcase inside, she climbed into the passenger seat.

There was a sensory battle happening in the interior of the car: the lingering odor of Swisher Sweets from whoever had previously used the car versus the “vanilla-rama” scented air freshener dangling from the dash. Darger rolled down her window, hoping the fresh air outside would reign supreme over both smells.

Loshak’s eyes locked on the coffee thermos immediately.

“What have we here?”

“Coffee. Courtesy of Owen.”

Loshak nodded approvingly as he backed out of the driveway.

“You know, I’ve always liked him.”

They coasted down Darger’s darkened street, porch lights dotting the blackness here and there. A crescent moon hung over them, cloaked in a layer of gauzy clouds.

Darger swiveled in her seat.

“OK, answer me this. You’ve seen Alien, right?”

“The movie?”

Darger nodded.

“Of course.”

“And you’ve seen the second movie? Aliens?” She emphasized the S sound.

“Sure.”

“Which one’s better?” Darger asked.

Loshak’s brow wrinkled.

“The first one. Obviously.”

“Thank you!” Darger said, slapping one hand on the dash. “Owen was just trying to sell me on Aliens being the best of the franchise.”

“That’s crazy talk.”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

Loshak put on his turn signal and merged onto the highway, and Darger was forced to roll up her window. The cigarillo smell had faded some, but the phony vanilla fragrance was as strong as ever.

“So? What are we heading into?”

“I only have the barest of details so far. Three bodies, most likely sex workers according to the locals. The first was discovered about two hours ago at a truck stop near Roanoke Rapids. While they were busy with that, they got another call. Two more bodies in a nearby motel.”

“Yikes. And they’re sure the two scenes are connected?”

Loshak nodded.

“Apparently the bodies were in pretty rough condition. Extensive stab wounds and mutilation. Bite marks. The whole nine yards of piquerism.”

“Lovely.”

The dark highway blurred past. White line dotting the way, dividing the lanes. At some of the interchanges, streetlights illuminated the road, the sickly yellow glow barely beating back the gloom. The only other colors visible in the blackness were the periodic bursts of fast food signs. A splash of red here and blue there.

After a long stretch of silence, Loshak spoke again.

“I expect you’ve had some experience with these types, back when you were in Victim Services. Truck stop sex workers, I mean.”

“Yeah. There’s a lot of opportunity for sex trafficking in that kind of location. The population in the area is extremely transient. Most of the truckers are only stopping for the mandatory rest periods, and then they’re back on the road.”

“There’s a name for them, right? The girls who work truck stops specifically?”

“Lot lizards,” Darger said. “They generally don’t like the moniker, though.”

“I wouldn’t imagine so.” Loshak took a sip of coffee. “There’s a certain less-than-human connotation to the word ‘lizard.’”

Rain pattered the windshield now, and the wipers beat out a rhythm like a metronome.

Darger’s eyelids felt heavy, but she knew that sleeping now would lead to grogginess when they reached their destination. She unscrewed the top of the thermos and took a big swallow of coffee.

“How prevalent would you say it is?” Loshak asked. “I mean, I’ve been to my fair share of truck stops, and maybe I’m blind, but I couldn’t say I’ve ever seen any obvious signs of prostitution.”

“Well, from what I understand, it’s not all truck stops. In fact, a lot of them are pretty vigilant about keeping it away, especially the big chain operations. The last thing they want is to get a seedy reputation that scares away the quote-unquote ‘respectable’ clientele. Families and whatnot. So they’ll crack down hard if they find evidence of drugs or prostitution. Many of them employ rent-a-cops to patrol the lots. I suspect a lot of the places that allow this kind of thing are owned by people who are getting some kind of kickback or are possibly partaking in the goods themselves.”

Darger yawned and leaned her head back into the seat.

“But even if you had found yourself in such a place, you probably wouldn’t have been in a position to notice. If you think about it, most truck stops keep the regular traffic completely separate from the semi traffic. Separate gas pumps. Separate parking lots. And from what I recall, the so-called ‘party row,’ which is where most of the illegal activity takes place, is in the very back row of truck parking.”

“Like how back in high school, the back row was the goof-off row.”

“Exactly. Just about as far as you can possibly get from the prying eyes of the regular folk.”

“Huh. Kind of wild to think about how many times I’ve probably stopped for gas at one of these places just a few hundred yards from a hotbed of lawless iniquity.”

The two agents fell quiet then. The highway stretched out before them, mostly vacant as the hour grew late. They plunged into the endless dark, the drone of the tires on the road somehow creating an aura of sleepiness inside the car. Darger’s chin bobbed to her chest a few times, but the coffee kept her from fully going under.

When they curled down the exit ramp, centrifugal force pulled Darger’s stomach to the side and woke her up fully. Her eyelids fluttered open and closed, and then she saw it.

Big Jon’s Travel Center was a compound comprised of multiple buildings, all of it surrounded by a sea of asphalt. Pink neon light glinted down over everything, reflecting off the wet pavement in marbled patches.

Darger spotted three different gas stations, four fast food chains and a sit-down restaurant, a tire shop, and several other buildings with less obvious signage. This oasis of convenience was a glowing beacon enveloped by a whole lot of darkness, a whole lot of nothing.

Swampy-looking woods bordered the truck stop on three sides, with vines and ivy shrouding the trees and growing up the telephone poles like coils of green facial hair. Something about it gave Darger a creepy feeling.

Loshak veered into the parking lot and around the back side of a Bojangles. Beyond the front facades of the various businesses, Darger got her first glimpse of the crime scene.

The spiraling police lights. The cordoned-off area surrounded by yellow tape. The techs fluttering around between two semi-trailers.

The car drifted into a parking space between a police cruiser and an ambulance and came to a halt. It felt strange to stop so suddenly after all that driving, all that momentum. Three straight hours of pressing forward like a shark. And then stillness.

Darger took one last swig of coffee from the thermos and climbed out into the night.

 

 

 

Chapter 2

 

A whitewashed brick facade coated the diner, the building nearest to where the body had been discovered. It looked clean and modern. Manicured bushes rose out of beds of porous red gravel, decorating each side of the front door. Beyond that, bright light gleamed in the boxes of the windows dotting the rest of the building, hollow screens that exposed the booths and tables inside.

Despite the late hour, a crowd of gawkers milled around there in front of the bricks, just beyond the border of the crime scene tape. Mostly men, decked out in flannel and jeans and trucker hats. Smoking cigarettes and drinking from gigantic Big Gulp-style cups.

Darger studied the group as she crossed the lot, wondering if the killer might be among them. She looked for anyone who seemed unduly nervous, but the whole lot of them seemed jittery and restless. More than one of the men rocked from foot to foot. Another chewed his nails. Darger knew that the notion of all truckers being on speed was a stereotype, but she supposed even the clean ones probably chugged caffeine by the liter. Throw in a grisly crime scene and it made sense that they’d be keyed up.

When they reached the line of the crime scene tape, a uniformed police officer manning the barricade held up his hands.

“Sorry, no one’s allowed past this point.”

He was pale-faced and impossibly young. Peach fuzz dusted his top lip. Trying (and failing, Darger thought) to grow a proper cop ’stache.

Loshak pulled out his badge.

“We’re FBI.”

The uniform squinted at the badge, mouth hanging slightly agape.

“OK. But, um… I’m not supposed to… uh… Hold on just a sec.”

He turned and beckoned to a middle-aged Black woman in a suit standing to one side of an evidence van.

“Detective Bledsoe?”

Bledsoe raised her eyebrows.

“The, uh… there’s two people here… Fed-uh… F…”

The uniform gave up and jogged over to her.

Darger watched him gesticulating as he explained the situation. Before he was finished, Bledsoe was marching toward them, shaking her head.

“You the folks from the FBI?” she asked, lifting the crime scene tape so they could step under it.

“That’s us,” Loshak said, and they took turns introducing themselves.

“Sorry about that,” Bledsoe said with a flick of the eyes toward the young policeman. “Some of these rookies take things like, ‘Don’t let anyone past the tape,’ too literally.”

“It’s no problem,” Loshak said.

“Well, we appreciate you coming down on such short notice. My partner’s over at the second scene when you wrap things up here.”

She led them to the back of the evidence van where the tech equipment was set up. She handed them each a pair of booties, gloves, and a bunny suit.

“We know anything about the vic, yet?” Loshak asked.

Bledsoe nodded.

“Name’s Tara Bemis. Twenty-six years old. Has a few priors for solicitation and possession.”

When they were properly suited up, Bledsoe waved them around a line of privacy screens set up to block the crowd’s view of the actual crime scene.

They rounded the barrier, and Darger caught her first glimpse of the body, lit up under the artificial glow of the portable lights.

The girl lay on her stomach, nude save for a pair of strappy high heels. Her wrists and ankles were bound together behind her back, curving her body into something like the letter “L.” She was partially submerged in a puddle, the murky water obscuring the left side of her face.

The glaring lights made the girl look very small and pale. Darger’s first thought was a nonsensical one: She must be freezing. Someone should dry her off. Give her a blanket.

She grimaced. The absurdity of the blanket idea made goosebumps ripple over the backs of her arms.

Then the fear hit — that cold, familiar feeling she got whenever she walked the scenes. Something cleansing in it. Stark and purifying.

The chill saturated her flesh. Her breathing suddenly felt loud and fluttery inside her head.

The fright always made her feel lonely, singular, even when she was surrounded by others. Cold and distant.

With the fear sharpening her senses, she studied the scene again. Pierced the surface of the morbid spectacle and really looked at the details.

The girl seemed a fragile thing. Frail and bony and exposed by the harsh lighting. She remained somehow apart from all the activity flitting around her.

She’s lonely, too.

Death, like fear, eventually made each of us lonesome, Darger supposed.

The ligature marks came clear then. A dark coil of bruising wrapped around her neck like a black snake. Textured like a rope, a braided pattern. Fainter, shadowy lines above and below the first.

Then her eyes swept back to the bulk of the corpse, and the wounds filtered into focus. Red lines slashed roughly into the skin, some of the openings parting enough to reveal bits of stringy muscle tissue.

Loshak was right about the piquerism angle. Even from a distance, Darger could see that the cuts on the body were extensive. Her back was riddled with stab wounds and bruises.

She stepped closer, squatted next to the body, and examined the girl’s face. It was mottled and swollen, and two dark tracks down her cheeks showed where her mascara had run when she cried. The death had been neither quick nor painless.

Her eyes drifted lower on the face. Hovered on the lips.

Something there. Protruding.

The cold gripped Darger more tightly all of a sudden. More goosebumps crawling over her.

A fluttering of her eyelids obscured her sight. Involuntary.

She tried to re-steady her vision on what she’d just seen. Couldn’t.

“There’s something in her mouth,” she said. “Looks like… fabric.”