Collecting the Dead: A Novel

by Spencer Kope

  I could be curt. I could even be terse or abrupt; I’m not the one shacking up in my brother’s house. By the time I think it all the way through he’s across the kitchen and down the hall.

  I hear some muffled words—reassuring words? Maybe words like, No, sweetie, you’re pretty. And, No, babycakes, I didn’t say you’re a dog, don’t be ridiculous—and then Jens is back in the hall carrying her purse cradled in his right arm. My eyes aren’t on Jens, though, they’re on the door … waiting … patiently … still waiting.

  Nothing. She’s taking her sweet time.

  “Magnus,” Jens says as he walks up beside me, “let me introduce you to Ruby. And Ruby,” he says in a cuddly-wuddly voice that’s just revolting, “this is Magnus.”

  I’m still waiting …

  … and then the purse barks … and my yogurt goes airborne.

  “It’s a dog.” I say, pointing at the blond bundle in his arms.

  “That’s why you’re with the FBI,” Jens smirks. “You don’t miss a thing.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  June 20

  I’m wearing uncomfortable shoes.

  When I say I’m wearing uncomfortable shoes, I’m not talking figuratively, as in the proverbial “walk a mile in his shoes.” I’m not even using a psycho-figurative version of the proverbial, a version where I’m walking in the shoes of a phony man-tracker or, worse, I’m wearing the shoes of an FBI agent who has a badge but doesn’t normally carry a gun, and who feels more like a pizza delivery guy than a Fed.

  While the figurative and the psycho-figurative might be true, when I say I’m wearing uncomfortable shoes I’m really wearing uncomfortable shoes, the tangible, physical, tying-type of shoes: pinching, squeezing, binding, uncomfortable shoes.

  A certain blond Yorkie named Ruby peed in my Nikes last night.

  It’s true.

  She had ten thousand other places to pee both inside and outside the designated peeing areas, yet she chose my Nikes, my new Nikes, the ones that fit so well. So I’m stuck with an old pair of off-brand clogs disguised as tennis shoes. They’re a size too small and the left heel has a hole the size of Jupiter’s storm, and not nearly as pretty.

  Jens told me the dog will grow out of it.

  She’s just nervous.

  But he said the same thing yesterday after Ruby peed on my car keys … which were on the coffee table. See, to me that smells like premeditation. The little rodent didn’t just stumble upon a comfortable shoe that time, she first had to find the car keys, then she had to get her little wiggly body from the couch to the coffee table—no small trick—after which she had to navigate around, through, and over all the myriad obstacles on the coffee table so she could hover precisely over my keys like a B-17 bomber launching an aerial assault.

  Do you know what happens to electronic key fobs and chipped keys when they marinate in piddle for nine hours?

  I do.

  Luckily I had a second key fob hanging next to the door.

  Too bad I don’t have a second pair of sneakers.

  Now, instead of striding across the asphalt parking lot in front of Hangar 7 with a brisk step-step-step, I’m slouching along with a step-stump-step-stump as the hole in my left heel sucks up every piece of loose gravel or debris in my path.

  When I scolded Ruby—this was after I put my foot into a cold wet shoe—she just fell to the floor and looked up at me with bared teeth. Jens tells me that means she’s smiling, but if a lion smiled at me like that I’d be running for the door. I advised Jens that henceforth I’ll be referring to Ruby as the Rodent, or simply Rodent.

  He just smirked at me and waved it away. The Rodent smiled some more and I’m pretty sure I heard a low growl, vicious little schemer.

  * * *

  Down days—or DDs, as we like to call them—are the days in between missions, the slow, quiet days when we’re really not expected to do much, and rarely do. The first day after a mission, DD1, is usually the best. I catch up on sleep, relax a bit, maybe shop online for a book to add to my collection—I’ve been looking for a first edition, first printing of The Hunt for Red October, but they’re not easy to find in good condition, nor are they cheap.

  Once or twice a week I go to the health club with Jimmy; he lifts and I pretend to lift. Eventually he coerces me into doing reps with him until my arms and legs are solid iron—and I don’t mean strong like iron, I mean heavy like iron: battleship-heavy, with a couple frigates thrown in for good measure. He’s like all the PE teachers I’ve ever had rolled up into one and sprinkled with Nazi dust.

  I’ve never been much for working out; I always thought the term health club was a bit of a misnomer, since every time I leave the place I’m winded, sweaty, and fatigued, like I’m coming down with the flu. Fortunately, I’m blessed with good genes, so I don’t have to exercise much to have a good physique.

  Jimmy says it’s unfair.

  I think he’s just jealous of my abs.

  On DD2 we’re usually in the office about half the day. Well, not in the office part of the office but in the break area downstairs watching a movie, or in the hangar playing ping-pong or foosball.

  By DD3 Les and Marty start popping in and out, checking the plane and lounging around the break area, while Jimmy and I kill time with Nerf guns, exploding soda bottles—we like to experiment—and marathon sessions of CSI, Game of Thrones, or The Walking Dead. Three days is our average downtime.

  Today is DD5.

  “Heather Jennings called for you,” Diane shouts from the railing outside her office as soon as I step foot in the hangar. She’s waving a piece of paper in her hand, no doubt Heather’s phone number, which I’m supposed to dutifully call. Diane should know better, but she has that smug, motherly, the-polite-thing-to-do-would-be-to-call-her-back look on her face.

  Heather’s the hack reporter who wrote the article for Newsweek last fall, the same article that labeled me the Human Bloodhound. I guess I shouldn’t call her a hack reporter, she’s actually very intuitive and thorough; the problem was she saw everything and understood most of what she was seeing.

  To say I let her get too close is probably an understatement.

  She was embedded with the team for three weeks and went on seven searches, amassing enough notes to write a book. I did my best imitation of a human tracker: looking for signs, getting down on my hands and knees with a flashlight—in the mud!—documenting shoe size and stride and pausing studiously at just the right moments. I thought it an Oscar-worthy performance.

  I was wrong.

  On her last day with the team she took me aside and called me a fraud in the nicest, most polite way imaginable, complete with a kiss on the cheek. She admitted that she didn’t know how I was doing it but knew that it wasn’t man-tracking. Still, we parted on better-than-good terms, and over the next month there were a number of dinners together, and several movies. Things were just starting to get, well, comfortable … and then the article came out.

  “Don’t even start on me, Diane. I’m not calling.” She’s still waving the paper.

  “Why not?”

  “You know why. She stabbed me in the back.”

  Ripped my heart out.

  Shredded my soul.

  Diane sighs. “Right. She stabbed you in the back. Why don’t you just admit that you won’t let anyone get close to you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. How many dates have you been on since we’ve been working together? Who was that girl that Jimmy set you up with? The fitness coach?”

  “That was Emily, and she wasn’t—”

  “Right. Emily. After three dates you stopped calling her. Why? Because she wanted to know more about what you do for a living. I’ve got news for you, Steps. That’s normal. That’s the stuff people talk about when they’re getting to know each other.”

  Diane knows nothing about my gift; how could she possibly understand?

  “And about Heather ‘sta
bbing you in the back’”—she uses air quotes to frame the words—“you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’ve never even bothered to ask for her side of the story, have you?”

  “Her side of the story was published in Newsweek for all the world to see.”

  “She has editors, you know. You could at least hear her out. She’s called you every couple weeks since November; I think she deserves a little of your time.”

  “I don’t think so,” I mutter, more to myself than to Diane. Turning, I exit the hangar just as quickly as I entered: step-stump-step-stump-step-stump. A trip to Bellis Fair Mall suddenly sounds appealing; better than sticking around the office while Diane peck-peck-pecks at me in that relentless manner of hers. If I didn’t love her, I’d hate her … okay, I’d strongly dislike her; Diane’s a little hard to hate.

  A couple hours should give her time to put this Heather thing out of her head.

  Besides, I need shoes.

  * * *

  Evil exists.

  Many dismiss it as a relic of our superstitious past, or view it as a religious phenomenon and don’t buy in to good and evil, heaven and hell. Psychologists explain it away as chemical imbalances, genetics, or nurturing.

  I know evil exists—real evil—because I see it from time to time.

  I’m looking at it right now.

  I came to Bellis Fair Mall to buy a new pair of shoes, and instead find the recent shine of my nemesis, the elusive one, the killer I call Leonardo. He’s been here before—just a couple times over the years, but it’s enough. He always parks in the same spot. And not the same general location but the exact same parking spot. Maybe he’s OCD or a creature of habit, it really doesn’t matter. It just means that whenever I come to the mall, I check that parking spot.

  Sometimes I think he’s taunting me.

  But that’s impossible.

  Eleven years have come and gone since that cold February morning. Four thousand days, spent and discarded, falling away one by one like leaves from the great tree that measures the weeks, months, and years of our lives. Into great moldering piles they gather, those leaves, surrendering to time and corruption until nothing remains but the memory of the leaf, the memory of the day. Eleven years; so long, yet I still know the shine: a dark oozing pitch, black as the heart that made it. There are no metaphors for darkness that suffice.

  It was my sixteenth birthday.

  Who goes on a Search and Rescue mission on their birthday? I almost refused but then learned it was Jessica Parker—Jess—who was missing. Cheerleader, Girl Scout troop leader, track star, honor student, Jess Parker. The worst thing she ever did was take a hit off a joint after a football game, and then only once. She was a senior and I a mere sophomore, one step above a maggot freshman, but who didn’t daydream about Jess? It wasn’t possible.

  She walked down her hundred-yard driveway to get the mail and never came back. She was there, and then gone; it was that fast. And of all the countless times my special skills served me well, this was not one of them. There was no track to follow; Jess’s trail ended at the mailbox. I could see where she’d landed on the ground, could see a tiny spot of blood on the weeds by the ditch, could see the black tracks exiting the vehicle, scooping her up, and putting her in the back.

  I pointed out the blood; it was so minute the deputies hadn’t seen it.

  That was the extent of my usefulness; that, and the knowledge that she hadn’t wandered off or run away. This was an abduction; the news hit everyone hard in the gut and immediately changed the tone and urgency of the investigation.

  Two days later they found her in a small clump of forest seven miles away. Her partially nude body was laid out on the ground, empty eyes staring at the sky, feet together, arms extending from her sides. His darkness was on her and around her and I saw what he’d done, how he’d posed her, how he’d used her.

  She’s burned into my soul, Jess Parker is, seared and smoldering and raw, a hurt that everyone in the community felt and one that I could do nothing about. She’s just gone and the world is unjust and I have to look at the human wreckage floating in the wake of such monsters. Over and over and over I have to look, and I fear the monsters are looking back. They’re with me in the lonely watches of the night, when sleep has fled and all that remains are the images. And Jimmy wonders why I want to quit.

  I named the evil Leonardo because he wants to be called that … he left signs.

  Jess Parker was posed as Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The detectives working the crime scene only saw her lying on the ground with her arms outstretched pointing east and west and her feet together pointing south.

  I saw the rest.

  I saw Jess’s shine where he’d first placed her arms in a raised position and her legs wide before moving them to their final pose. I saw the black circle he’d walked around her body. The only element missing is the square; why it’s not included remains a mystery, as does everything else about this case.

  I’ve seen Leonardo’s track four times since the murder of Jess Parker, and always at Bellis Fair Mall. I beat myself up over it every time, wondering, why this mall? Why haven’t I seen his track elsewhere in the county? Does he only pass through from time to time? Is he heading to a vacation spot, a job, a reunion? Is he Canadian? After all, the border is less than twenty miles away. Is he a student at the university, or a visiting professor?

  No answers come.

  All that remains is the puzzle of footsteps; footsteps that always start in the same parking spot in the same far corner of the mall parking lot. He visits two or three stores, always pays cash, and leaves as quickly as he came. In the handful of previous sightings, not a single clerk has been able to provide a compelling description of Leonardo.

  When I’d ask his height, they’d say, “Average.”

  When I’d ask his weight, they’d say, “Average.”

  When I’d ask his hair color, they’d say, “Brown,” or “Black,” or “Sandy blond,” or “Average.”

  Pointless.

  Useless.

  Still, I follow Leonardo’s track; I go through the routine. This time it’s just two stores. Then I walk the path from the mall to his parking spot and back again, looking for anything out of the ordinary. There’s nothing.

  I find my way to the security office.

  “I need surveillance video of the southwest parking lot for the last three days,” I tell the security officer monitoring the cameras. A quick flash of my FBI badge dispels any objections and I wait patiently for forty-five minutes while they look for someone who knows how to copy video from the system.

  I can’t see shine in pictures or video, it’s just not something that can be captured, even with the most sensitive equipment. But I can see what kind of vehicle Leonardo was driving … maybe. The southwest parking lot gets little use, particularly in the summer, so there’s a good chance I can narrow down the selection to just a few vehicles. After all, I have an advantage: I know exactly where he parked.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Craig,” the young security officer says, hurrying up to me. His shine is a pleasing ginger essence mottled with French lilac, I note, with a slow bubbling texture, much like a lava lamp. “We can’t get the DVD burner to work. It tries to copy the file but then gets hung up.”

  “I’ve got a thumb drive,” I say, digging in my right front pants pocket.

  “It doesn’t work with those,” he insists, eyeing the drive in my hand. “Chet will be in later. He can usually figure out the system.”

  I don’t bother arguing.

  There are two truths I’ve learned about surveillance video: one, no one ever seems to know how to download the file, and two, the picture quality is usually so bad the offending camera should be considered legally blind—banks and casinos excluded.

  Pulling a business card from my wallet, I scribble a word on it and hand it to Ginger-mottled-with-French-lilac. “Give me a call when it’s ready. If I’m not available, ask Diane to come pick it up.”
I tap her name where I’ve written it on the card.

  “Special Tracking Unit,” Ginger reads off the card. “That sounds cool.”

  I make my exit before he can ask me how to join up.

  CHAPTER SIX

  June 21, 5:57 A.M.

  Betsy descends from the clouds and banks left as Les lines her up for a landing at Redding Municipal Airport. The early morning sky is clear and blue, promising a beautiful and hot California day.

  Sleep eludes me on these short flights, but sleep tends to keep its distance from me anyway, as it did last night; as it did the night before. The only gifts the Sandman chooses to bestow upon me these days are nightmares, and nightmares of nightmares. Jimmy studies the bags under my eyes but doesn’t say anything.

  The call came in at 7:35 last night, halfway through a recorded episode of Jericho, and just as we were winding down DD5. It was more of the same: a woman’s body found by a hiker at the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area just west of Redding. Foul play suspected. Details are few and sketchy, but the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office had secured the scene overnight pending our arrival, keeping everyone out but the crime scene investigators (CSIs), who, in this case, were not full-time CSIs but cross-trained deputies.

  Betsy kisses the runway at 6:05 A.M. and taxies to the U.S. Forest Service hangar; the USFS has graciously allowed us to use their facilities while here. When the door opens and I start down the ladder to the tarmac, I breathe deep and take in the dawn; it’s crisp, almost tart. The sun has been up less than twenty minutes and night’s chill is still in the air. Broken fragments of dissipating shadow cling to the west side of the hangar, the airport terminal, and the hills to the north. The sounds of morning are everywhere.

  I’m already tired and the day has just begun.

  A dark blue Ford Expedition pulls up as our hiking boots touch the runway. While it’s unmarked, it’s clearly a law enforcement vehicle, evidenced by the collection of antennas on the roof and the hidden lights in the grille and windshield. As the driver swings the door wide and steps out, I see the uniform of the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, complete with four stars on the shoulder boards. He’s a large man, at least six-four, in his fifties, with shoulders like a linebacker and size-fifteen shoes that actually look small under him.