When Darkness Falls

Book 10: Violet Darger

by L.T. Vargus, Tim McBain

Genres: Horror; Hard-Boiled; serial killers; FBI thrillers; police procedural

Synopsis

Her body seems to hover above the forest floor. Arms and legs torn away from the trunk. A bloody stump mounted upright on a skewer.

Not just a corpse. A warning.

The most recent body was discovered in the woods just beyond a logging cabin. Dismembered. Put on display. Ghostly pale skin stark against the forest's green.

Before that, two campers were found a few miles off. Cut apart. Impaled. Left in public places where they'd surely be found.

The grisly crimes summon FBI profiler Violet Darger to a tiny island off the Alaskan coast -- 2,500 square miles of forested land populated by just 6,000 souls.

Here, in the primordial wilderness, she'll face off with a shadowy killer unlike anything she's seen. Raging. Brutal. Elusive.

He waits. Seethes. In the woods. In the dark. Always watching. He waits.

Darger digs into the history of torso killers to try to understand the psychology behind the crimes. Finds a legacy of savagery dating back over a hundred years.

Aggression beyond comprehension. A recurring phenomenon of human behavior that chills her.

Human anatomy used to mark out territory. Corpses made totems to warn off others. It happens over and over again.

Who could carry out such brutality? And why?

Understanding the interior world, the motivations, of this type of killer will be the key to solving the case.

The dark woods hold his secrets tightly. The terrain itself shielding him, giving him an edge over those in law enforcement seeking him.

When a storm moves in, Darger finds herself in peril deep in his territory. Vulnerable. Exposed. Walking right into his trap.

He waits.

The novels in the Violet Darger series can be read as stand-alones. Scroll up and grab When Darkness Falls now.

Praise for the Violet Darger series:

"Excellent suspense right to the last word. Had the most heart pounding ending of any book I've ever read." -- Anne Bembeck, Goodreads Review

"The Violet Darger books are honestly the best detective novels I've ever read." -- Devin

"The description had my stomach dropping and clenching as if I was in the car with them! Visceral experience! Just terrific." -- B.J. Hyman, Goodreads Review

"Un-put-downable! I cannot wait for this series to grow. If you love Sandford, Slaughter, Kava, Stelljes and Deaver, you’ll LOVE Vargus & McBain!" -- Melody M

"McBain and Vargus have proven yet again that this is their genre, and Loshak and Darger are their stars." -- Jennifer Tooker, Goodreads Review

"Vargus and McBain have, in Violet Darger, created a character that absolutely stands up with some of the greats -- Phillip Marlowe, Dave Robicheaux, Elvis Cole, Charlie Parker, August Dupin, Jack Reacher, Harry Bosch, etc." -- Lucinda E. Snyder

"Wow, just wow! If you like scare-you-half-to-death mystery books this is the one for you. It starts with a bang and just doesn't stop." -- Ada Lavin

"If you liked Silence of the Lambs, you'll love Dead End Girl... At the same time, there's so much attention to detail and organic storytelling that this could easily compete with any of Stephen King's longer works. I found myself completely invested in every character, from the authorities to the killer to the victims themselves." -- eden Hudson

"This book reminds me of some of my favorite books in the crime thriller genre - Dark Places by Gillian Flynn, The Collector by John Fowles, the Mr. Mercedes trilogy by Stephen King, and of course Silence of the Lambs. It's not a glimpse...it's a good long look inside the mind of a killer. It's fast paced, it's scary, and it's satisfying." -- Rain

 

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Release date: June 30, 2022

Publisher: Smarmy Press

Print pages: 486

Sample

PROLOGUE

The music blared, generic hard rock pumping out of the boombox speakers and echoing funny in the cavernous hall of the logging cabin. The reverb on the snare fluttered like 1986 was alive and well, if only on the stereo.
John Ellinger adjusted his baseball cap and staggered over the plank flooring. Wove his way through the rows of bunk beds. A few of the mattresses were occupied despite the blasting music, the blankets bulging with the shapes of the bodies beneath them, but most lay empty.
Home sweet home.
Some three dozen lumberjacks, nearly all of them men, bedded down here every night for weeks at a time — an isolated camp, way out in the Alaskan wilderness. Chopping down trees by day. Sleeping in a rack of bunk beds by night. Just another way to make a living.
It was late, closing in on 2 A.M. The whole crew had the day off tomorrow. A few had made the hour-long drive into the nearest town. Most, out of sheer exhaustion, had stayed in and capped their long workday with drinks. And drinks. And more drinks.
Ellinger lifted his cap again, smoothed his hair and brought the hat back down. Then he blinked and focused on the dark rectangle in the distance. The door wavered there, its blurred state leaving it more a concept than a full-blown reality for the moment, at least to Ellinger’s perception. Still, he was getting there — a little slower than he’d like, but he was getting there.
Jake Jordan was currently puking his guts out in the restroom. He was a loud vomiter. A screamer. One of those people who heaved from the gut — put their whole body into it — and somehow used the toilet bowl as a kind of acoustic amplifier. Projecting the retching sounds like a porcelain megaphone. 
That rendered the bathroom a no-go, at least in Ellinger’s mind. Even if there were free urinals and stalls to be had, he wasn’t traipsing in there for a piss while Jordan bellowed into the next toilet over like a goddamn opera singer. No thanks. Even as drunk as he was, he maintained enough self-respect to avail himself of that cringe-fest.
He would go outside and whiz on a tree trunk instead. Not a problem.
He shuffled toward the fluctuating door. Blinked again like that might help the damn thing hold steady. Leaned an elbow on one of the bunk frames when his balance wobbled. Kept going.
Another tortured howl shot out of the bathroom and echoed around the cabin. Deep-throated werewolf screams ricocheting off the walls and pinging out of the corners.
“He’s fightin’ it,” a voice next to Ellinger said.
“Huh?”
Cyrus Haywood sat up. His face rising from the shadows on one of the bunks nearby, moving into the light. His hound dog eyes blinked once within the paunch of his haggard face, those dark eyes looking wet and somehow wise to Ellinger. Reddish hair hung down toward his chin in strands, a little greasy as always.
A hand-rolled cigarette dangled from Haywood’s mouth, bobbed up and down when he spoke. 
“Jordan.” He tilted his head toward the restroom. “He’s fightin’ the urge to hurl. That’s his problem. You’ve gotta, you know, let it out. Go with the flow and whatever.”
Ellinger squinted. Struggled to process the words.
“Uh, yeah. I guess.”
“Like my nephew, he does that. Fights it when he needs to puke. Spends all day with his belly achin’ rather than lettin’ it out. And then the second he starts to fall asleep — BAM! Pukes all over hisself. But he’s six. Jake Jordan is a full-grown man, supposedly, and he hasn’t learned this shit. You puke, you feel better. It’s how the digestive system works. That’s a scientific fact.” 
Ellinger didn’t know how to respond, so he bobbed his head once. Kept sort of climbing his way along the bunk frames, working hand over hand.
“You got a boy of your own back in Maryland, don’t you?” Haywood said. “Zach or Zane or something like ’at, right?”
The image of his son flashed in Ellinger’s head before he answered. Dark hair and eyes. Freckles on his cheeks.
“Zeke.”
“Zeke. That’s right. How old is he?”
“Eight. His birthday was last week.”
And he hated again that he was here, thirty-four hundred miles away on the opposite coast, while his boy was growing up, becoming himself. Each day that he missed was one that he’d never get back. Birthday parties. Ball games. Sand sifting through the hourglass, the time ticking down to zero.
Ellinger did it for the pay. He could make more out here logging for three months than a whole year at any job back home. Save up to make sure Zeke could go to whatever college he wanted. That was the dream, right? Do this backbreaking work so the kid would never have to. Set him up on a better path and let him go, like teaching him how to ride a bike and watching him roll away.
But was it the right move? He didn’t know.
He’d found the line between happiness and suffering almost comically thin in his life, the two never as far apart as he’d imagined they would be. Likewise, he’d learned that the path forward was perpetually murky, unknowable. He never knew if the moves he chose were the right ones.
When he was young, he’d thought that the right move would look clearer with age, experience granting wisdom or perception. Now? He was pretty sure nobody knew what they were doing.
Haywood hit his cigarette. The cherry flared bright red and sizzled a second. Then he plucked the smoke from his lips and pointed it and the two fingers around it at Ellinger.
“Where you off to?”
Ellinger nodded toward that door, which still shimmered like a mirage in his bleary eyes.
“Gotta take a leak.”
Haywood nodded and stood. 
“I’ll go with ya.”
Ellinger blinked.
“Um. OK. But you’re going to need to, uh, get your own tree.”
Haywood tilted his head back and laughed. Then he nodded.
Ellinger licked his lips. A little confused. Drunken thoughts plodded through his head.
Guess he thought it was a joke. 
Whatever, dude. 
Bottom line: I ain’t sharing a tree. Not with him or anyone else.
Haywood led the way now. Opened the door. Then he looked back and raised his eyebrows as Ellinger struggled to walk the few paces to get outside.
“Not much of a drinker, huh, Ellinger?”
“What?” 
“Tequila really got to you guys. Between you and Jordan, I mean. Jesus Christ.”
Ellinger staggered through the doorway. Stepped out under the yellow porch light. Some part of his mind saw the bulb’s tint and thought: Caution.
He careened over the wooden deck. Death-gripped the handrail as he stumbled down the steps. 
And then he spilled out into the gravel below. Stepped out from under the awning all at once.
The sky opened overhead, heavens yawning just beyond the bill of his ball cap. That vast black nothingness reaching out to eternity, dotted with the brightness of the moon and stars.
He took a deep breath. Felt the crisp mountain atmosphere as it coated his throat and lungs. It took a second for the chill swirl in the air to get through to Ellinger’s nerves, but at last his skin felt the sting of it. Cold as a beer out of the way back of the refrigerator.
They tromped over the dirt and rock of the lot. Advanced toward the darker line where the towering spruce and hemlock trees took over the land.
Ellinger found another tangle of confused words leaving his mouth. He pointed off to the left.
“OK. I’m, uh, headed this way. Right in here. By myself.”
Haywood laughed again. A rich belly laugh this time, like a toddler or maybe Santa Claus.
“Holy hell, Ellinger. I know you’re awful worried that I’m hankering to whiz in close quarters with ya, but I’ll give you a wide berth, man. Jesus, dude. It’s gonna be alright.”
Ellinger stared at the dark blur of Haywood’s face for a second.
“OK.”
Then he crossed into the gloom.

***

His eyes bloom in the darkness. Wet stones peering out of his skull.
He waits.
And he watches the cabin through a patchwork of greenery. Leaves bobbing in the breeze in the foreground.
He stands just inside the cover of the woods. Creeper wrapped around his feet. Boughs nestled about his shoulders.
Still and quiet, he waits. Grits his teeth. His hand flexes on the grip of his weapon. Ready.
The cold surrounds him. Envelops him. An ever deeper chill coiling everywhere as the night grows more and more frigid.
But heat radiates from his chest, from his arms. Rolls off the top of his head like steam.
The cold can’t touch him. Never could. Never will.
Muffled music booms inside the logging cabin. Song after song leaking past. Sounding muddy through the walls, through the wooden siding. Each track cutting or fading out, the stereo taking a breath before it switches to the next. Counting down the minutes.
Through it all, he waits.
Waits.
Eyes and ears sharp. Focus never drifting.
At last the door swings open. A slice of the cabin’s interior is laid bare.
He hears the tinny sound of the music funneling through the open doorway. And then it cuts back to that deadened hum as the door closes.
Two figures drift through the pool of yellow light on the porch. Morph into silhouettes as they pass under the bulb.
His field of vision seems to zoom in on them. Pushing through the strands of plumage dangling from the branches around him. 
They stumble down the steps. Start across the lot. Feet stabbing the gravel with sharp crunches.
One of them walks funny. Wobbling. Drunk.
And they’re loud. Practically yelling about tequila and pissing and wide berths.
When they near the edge of the woods, just a few feet shy of his position, he crouches. Allows the foliage to cover him up to the shoulders.
So close now. So close.
He waits.

***

Haywood had just zipped up when he heard it.
A high-pitched whimper emitted from Ellinger’s area. Sounded like a kitten or puppy or something, but he knew it wasn’t. Knew it by the way the goosebumps rippled over his skin, all the follicles drawing taut in a wave that traveled over his body.
He wheeled his head around. Stared into that dark section of the woods. Didn’t see much more than the outlines of the tree trunks jutting up out of the dirt, even the branches and leaves somehow impossible to discern in the charcoal smears there.
“Ellinger?”
His voice came out smaller than he liked. Made him feel dumb. Preemptively embarrassed.
He thought about all the times in life he’d been a little spooked, frozen like a rabbit in the quiet, in the dark, and it had always turned out to be nothing. 
This time would be the same. Exactly the same. It had to.
Probably tripped. Fell down or got tangled up in some deadfall and snapped his ankle. 
He could picture Ellinger. The dark blue baseball cap on his head. The slumped posture. The glazed-over look in his eyes.
Jesus. First, this asshole thinks I want to watch him take a piss. Now he goes and pulls this shit. 
This time his voice came out confident, solid.
“Ellinger. Whatsamatter, buddy? You end up needing to drop a deuce or what? ’Cause I can go get toilet paper. Not a problem.”
He took a few choppy steps that way. And the fear returned quickly. Crept up his spine again like a cold spider.
He slowed. Took more care with his stride. Quieter.
He reached the area where he was pretty sure Ellinger had been, but he couldn’t see anything. He scanned the darkness. Tense. Quiet. If the drunken idiot was there, either standing or sprawled in the weeds, Haywood could detect no trace of him.
His fingers fished into his jacket pocket. Pried out his lighter. Flicked it.
The tiny flame beat back a small sphere of darkness. He lifted it. Swept his arm around. Wielded his minuscule torch to and fro.
The orange light glinted on the undergrowth. Leaves and fronds and stems and stalks. Their shadows twitching around them as the glow moved.
The flame guttered out, and the darkness swelled again. Stronger than before.
He swore under his breath and relit the Zippo. An orange peak jumping from the lighter’s mouth.
There.
A glistening spot on a birch trunk. Dark and wet. Ellinger had been here alright.
But he wasn’t now.
Haywood instinctively took a step back. Licked his lips and felt the frigid air assail the wet flesh right away. Violently cold the way only an Alaskan night could be.
He wanted to call out again. Wanted to yell for Ellinger, for anyone.
But his throat wouldn’t budge. The valve at the back of his mouth clamped tight.
He turned around. Ready to scoot back to the cabin.
A dark spot on the ground caught the corner of his eye. He wrenched his head down. Stared.
Ellinger’s hat lay at his feet. The dome of the ball cap crushed flat into the dirt where someone had stepped on it.

***

At the first gray of predawn light, Haywood bustled out the cabin door. Most of the other lumberjacks fell in behind him, some thirty-two total pounding down the wooden steps.
The search began. Many men and a handful of women splaying into the woods. A disorganized manhunt.
Haywood beat his way through the thicket. Swinging arms. Kicking legs. The brush swishing out of his way in little green explosions.
After looking around the best he could in the black of night, he’d huddled with the others in the cabin for the last two hours of darkness. No one had slept. On edge. Unsure how to proceed.
Ellinger was still out there in the woods. Somewhere.
Maybe he’d passed out in the weeds. Sleeping off his drunk, facedown in a sprawling bed of creeper or some such. That seemed the most likely explanation, the only thing that had kept them from calling the cops.
But Haywood’s gut told him otherwise, especially now that he was out here, stomping through the roughage.
Something had gone wrong. It was no dark flicker of his imagination this time, no mistaking mere shadows for monsters. This was real darkness, real life.
And even before the final revelation came, a bereft feeling settled over his being. A heaviness in the belly. A floating feeling inside his head. His mind, his being, disconnected from his body. Disconnected from the others.
All alone in a dark, dark wood.
The gloom under the canopy still clung to the last of the night, the shadows deeper here. Weak light trickled through the translucent leaves. Made the green wedges look like they were glowing above — organic Christmas lights.
He stepped through a tightly knitted stand of firs into an open place, the land clear and flat here. And then his feet stopped beneath him. 
It was there.
The bloody stump hovered in the distance. Skewered on a pole. Dead center in the open area as though put on display.
Impaled.
All naked flesh. A milk-white sheet of skin. Bled pale.
The arms, legs, and head had been removed. Leaving the bare torso there on the stick.
Yawing wounds where the limbs and skull used to be. Something ragged in the way the pieces had come off. Tattered meat.
Haywood’s middle flexed and then went still. Whole body gone rigid. Upright. Frozen.
He could only stand and stare. Breathless. In awe.
He didn’t blink. Didn’t move.
Footsteps crunched toward him. Sets of shoulders soon occupying both sides of him. 
Then more footfalls. And more again. A bunch of the others clustering there to behold the image.
Ellinger’s limbless and headless body. A man reduced to a wounded block suspended upright. A trunk on a stick. 
What was left of his anatomy had been crafted into a spectacle here, some kind of brutal showmanship at play. Astonishing. Audacious. Striking and profane. 
None of them could look away.
No words were spoken. A few gasps, and then quiet. 
They held still and gaped. Shocked and hollow. Some awful kind of wonder shuddering through the ranks.
Haywood could feel it like a cold ripple in the air.
That wave of silent revulsion touching all of them.