Collecting the Dead: A Novel

by Spencer Kope

  “Sounds nice,” I say absently, trying to be polite.

  Jane stares at me a moment. “You’ve forgotten already, haven’t you?”

  “Forgotten what?” This can’t be good.

  “Last Christmas; you said you’d be happy to help with the makeover. We need someone with experience.”

  Crap.

  “That was probably the Baileys Irish Cream talking,” I say, screwing on a grin. “Besides, my tiling experience amounts to one hall closet and half a bathroom.”

  “Did any of the tiles crack?”

  “No.” Not yet.

  “Well, then, you must have done it right.”

  “I have to say,” I begin, choosing my words carefully, “I’m a little shocked at how cavalier you are about the qualifications of your remodel crew. One poorly laid tile can absolutely ruin a remodel. I even read that if you don’t—”

  “Stop! You’re not getting out of it, Steps,” Jane says in rapid-fire. “Jimmy doesn’t want to pony up and hire a licensed and bonded expert, which is fine. I get it. It’s a lot of money. But if I’m letting amateurs work on my kitchen, I want at least two brains trying to figure out how to spread the mortar and hang the cabinets. Between the two of you, I should get a usable, perhaps functional, maybe even a beautiful, kitchen.”

  Silence.

  “Wow,” Jimmy mumbles. “I feel so emasculated.”

  “Harsh,” I say. “Just give me the word, Jimmy, and I’ll go all spider monkey on her. I’m pretty sure I can take her.”

  “I’m pretty sure you can’t,” Jimmy replies.

  “Wow,” I whisper. “I feel so emasculated.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  June 22, 12:17 P.M.

  “Eleven possible victims,” Diane says. “Seven bodies recovered so far, that includes Alison Lister. The other four are listed as missing persons, but their physicals and the MO appear to match.”

  All but three of the chairs have been removed from the conference room and pushed out into the hangar. Eleven stacks of paper of varying heights line the elegant mahogany conference table, stretching in single file from one end to the other. One of the stacks, the second from the door, I recognize immediately from the photo resting on top: the Alison Lister case.

  The other stacks appear to be in reverse chronological order with a summary and photo on top—courtesy of Diane’s meticulous attention to detail. In front of Alison, in the number one position, or number eleven depending on which way you approach things, is twenty-four-year-old Lauren Brouwer, a brunette who went missing in Oroville just two months ago. The police report contains scant information spread out over a couple dozen pages. As I glance down the line, I note that all of the women are in their late teens to early twenties; all are brunette, with hair color ranging from the darker brown tones to black.

  But Alison Lister was a natural blonde.

  Two photos grace the top of Alison’s stack: one is her driver’s license, issued two years ago, which clearly shows her shoulder-length blond hair. On top of this, however, is a second photo, a more recent photo.

  “Where’d this come from?” I ask Diane.

  “The Redding Record Searchlight, February third of this year; I pulled it from an archived article. The photo’s not that great.”

  “It’s good enough,” I say.

  The four-hundred-word article from the business section of the Record Searchlight trumpets the recent announcement that PizzaZ, Alison Lister’s employer, planned to open two new stores, one in Redding, another in Anderson. More importantly, Alison’s name and picture are attached to the article. She’s smiling at the camera as she tosses pepperoni onto a large pizza, her distinctly brunette hair pulled back into a ponytail behind her. Brunette, not blond.

  “Did any of the other victims dye their hair?”

  Diane hesitates. “I don’t think so.”

  “We have their driver’s license photos,” Jimmy says, gesturing to the case files on the table. He starts going down the line, reading from each printout. “Brown … brown … brown … black … brown … wait, here’s another blonde. Tawnee Rich out of Susanville.”

  “She’s one of our missing persons,” Diane says immediately. “I think she’s also one of the anomalies.”

  “Anomalies?” I say, but Diane is already punching keys on her laptop.

  In less than ten seconds—which is a lot longer than you’d think, especially when you’re watching someone who types at ninety-plus words per minute—she says, “Here it is,” and turns the laptop to face us. On the screen is a chart of the dead and missing girls, along with some basic biographical information and a column listing the times between abductions. The first victim, Valerie Heagle, went missing fifty-seven months ago. Thirteen months later Jennifer Green went missing, nine months after that it was Tawnee Rich, but only a month later the fourth victim, Leah Daniels, was kidnapped out of Eureka.

  “One month,” Jimmy says. “What didn’t he like about Tawnee?”

  “Her hair,” I say. “He was expecting a brunette. When he found out she’d dyed her hair, my guess is he scalped her and cut off her head with a hacksaw, just like he did Alison Lister.”

  “Then he went hunting for a natural brunette and Leah Daniels caught his attention.” Diane taps the laptop screen, saying, “It’s almost the same pattern with Lauren Brouwer, who was kidnapped just two months after Alison.”

  “Of the seven bodies found,” I say, “were any others scalped?”

  Diane shakes her head. “No, just Alison.”

  “How is it we never got called in on any of these?” Jimmy says.

  “We did,” Diane replies. “Natalie Shoemaker. Lake Washoe. Remember?”

  “Aside from that.” There’s an edge to Jimmy’s voice. “Nobody noticed that nearly a dozen women had been kidnapped and murdered in less than five years?”

  “The crime scenes are spread out over three states and nine counties,” Diane says. “This guy’s no dummy. My guess is he’s done some serious time, and probably for something where the evidence ensured his conviction. He’s not taking any chances this time around and is spreading the crime scenes around, which means he also knows that law enforcement has a poor track record of sharing information between jurisdictions.”

  “Great,” I say with a sigh. Circling the table once, I glance at each stack in turn and then decide to start at the beginning: Valerie Heagle. Taking a seat, I pull her file close. “Anything else we should know before we start?”

  Diane nods. “Valerie Heagle,” she says, her eyes indicating the file. “She’s the odd one out. The age, height, weight, hair, and most of the MO match, but there’s one distinct difference.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She was a prostitute. Not the street-walking type, either. She advertised her services through various online forums—Craigslist, Backpage, the usual—and then met her clients at local motels.”

  I close the folder. “That … that doesn’t make sense. Serials who target prostitutes generally stick to prostitutes; look at Gary Ridgway, Joel Rifkin, Lorenzo Gilyard, Jack the Ripper.” Turning to Jimmy, I say, “That doesn’t make sense, right?”

  He’s got a curious look on his face, as if he’s puzzling it out. “At first glance, no, it doesn’t make sense. It’s a complete change of victimology.” He starts pacing slowly up and down the table, his eyes never leaving the stacks. At last he stops and turns to Diane. “Valerie was the first, you’re sure of that?”

  “That’s what it looks like, at least in this part of the country. I haven’t extended the search beyond northern California, southern Oregon, and western Nevada.”

  He paces to the end of the table, turns, looks at me, shrugs his shoulders. “She was practice.”

  “Practice?”

  He nods. “I think Diane’s right. This guy’s been locked up somewhere, probably for a while. Valerie was an easy target, someone to cut his teeth on, so to speak.”

  “Bad choice of words,” Diane scol
ds.

  “How so?”

  “You’ll see when you start going through the files.”

  “What makes you so sure she’s one of our victims?” I ask.

  Diane walks over to the folder and flips it open in front of me. Leafing through the pages, she stops on an eight-by-ten glossy of Valerie’s car and points to the rear window.

  “Crap.” I just stare at the image.

  Instead of stones in the high desert scrub, as was the case at Lake Washoe, or clothes nailed to a tree, the pattern is drawn into the dirt and grime on the back window. Whether Redding PD intended to document the image or just got lucky while photographing Valerie’s car, who could say? It really didn’t matter.

  “That’s what he drew on the back of Alison’s car, too,” I say. “We just couldn’t see it after he pressed his face all over it.”

  Jimmy moves around the table to take a look and the muscles around his mouth visibly tighten when he sees it. After a moment, he says what I’ve already thought.

  “They’ll call him the Sad Face Killer. Just watch.”

  * * *

  At precisely four o’clock, Diane corners me in my office. I know exactly what this is about; Diane was kind enough to inform me an hour after Heather left. Since there are no windows to dive out of, I just sit behind my desk and smile politely.

  “Don’t forget you have a date at six,” she says sternly.

  “I forgot to go.”

  “What do you mean, you forgot to go? It’s not till six.”

  “I’m planning ahead.”

  She gives me a scowl and then turns her disapproving eyes to my clothes, looking at them as if they just came off some syphilis-ridden leper. She doesn’t need words; her downturned mouth and upturned eyebrows say it all.

  Twenty minutes later I’m at Big Perch changing into “something more appropriate,” which means another excursion into Jens’s closet.

  A date with Heather at the Hearthfire Grill.

  I could kill Diane.

  What makes this worse is that she’s recruited Jimmy to make sure I actually show up. They’re like a matchmaking Bonnie and Clyde, using a restaurant in place of a tommy gun as they march me off to my doom … though perhaps doom is too strong a word.…

  “Technically, this is kidnapping,” I tell Jimmy as he backs out of my driveway and throws the black FBI-issued Ford Excursion into drive.

  “You don’t have a drop of Viking blood in you, do you?” he shoots back.

  “I’m Norwegian; of course I have Viking blood.”

  “Your mother is Norwegian. I think that bloodline skipped over you somehow and just left the Scottish. Frankly, I’m disappointed.”

  “Because I don’t want to have dinner with Heather Jennings I suddenly lack the Viking pedigree?”

  “Yes!” Jimmy roars, his voice rolling off in laughter. “She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s got legs up to here—” He smacks me with the back of his hand and I look over as he puts his hand at chest level and repeats, “Up to here.” He wags his index finger at me, saying, “She’s smoking hot in every way and you’re like a third-grader at recess.” He pauses. “You do like girls, don’t you?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “I’m just saying,” he purrs, shrugging his shoulders.

  I look at him hard. “Don’t you remember what she wrote about me?”

  “Something about gonorrhea…” he begins, laughing even louder as I throw my hands up in exasperation. “Come on, Steps. It wasn’t that bad; some of it was actually pretty flattering. You’re the only one who was upset with it.”

  “She revealed details that could have compromised us … that could have compromised several of the cases.”

  “You’re just upset because she came a little too close to the truth.”

  There it is.

  I should have guessed that Jimmy would figure it out. He knows as well as I that Heather has this uncanny way of separating fact from fiction, even the fiction we build up around ourselves, say, to hide some secret ability we don’t want anyone to know about.

  I was mad about the article, that part is true.

  She wrote about things she shouldn’t have, things she promised not to. It was that dishonesty, that betrayal of trust that hurt the most; it wasn’t like her. Or maybe I just didn’t know her as well as I’d thought. In the end, though, the article was just an excuse; a means to an end. The real reason I pushed her away was raw fear. Fear of what she’d learn.

  Heather Jennings.

  I loved her.

  I love her still.

  But she only knows Steps the FBI tracker. What happens if she meets the other Steps, the real Steps? Will she be repulsed? Horrified? Intrigued? Will she put pen to paper and carve out an exposé eviscerating the Special Tracking Unit and laying bare the fraud of its chief tracker?

  I’d rather not take that chance, so I’ll bury my heart deep so it can’t be found. I’ll get through this dinner—somehow—and then get on with life. Alone. Maybe love is not meant for everyone. Maybe that’s the price some pay.

  * * *

  She’s waiting in front of the restaurant when Jimmy pulls up. Waves of dancing heat rise above her and around her, emanating from a flaming basin placed within the landscaping behind her, but they may as well be emanating from her. She’s stunning, breathtaking, every inch the woman I remember, though more beautiful from her absence.

  “Holy crap,” Jimmy mutters as his eyes fix on Heather.

  It’s not really swearing, but still surprising coming from Jimmy’s lips. He loathes profanity like I loathe forests, coffee, animals, and Styrofoam. This contempt doesn’t prevent the occasional spontaneous utterance, however, which explains the Holy crap that just spilled out of his mouth. Fortunately, crap is on our list of acceptable words, so he gets a pass this time.

  I’ve always been fascinated by word origins and find it interesting that the root of profanity, the Latin word profanus, translates to “outside the temple” and was taken to mean something that desecrates what is holy. But what if you are in a wholly unholy environment? How can you desecrate the holy when there’s nothing holy in sight?

  I imagine that’s why cops cuss more than librarians.

  Jimmy’s objection to foul language isn’t based on his religious beliefs, though. He avoids such language out of respect for what he calls the “higher mind.” He’s told me repeatedly through the years that profanity is the refuge of a simple mind, and that people who swear excessively lack the imagination to think of anything better. He once told me that profanity pushes the mind into the sewer of human wretchedness and drags the soul along for company.

  I’ve argued that in law enforcement you often have to speak the language of your audience. I’ve known detectives who could talk to clergy one moment, and then dive into a sea of the filthiest profanity with a heroin addict the next. It’s an amazing process to watch, almost like they flip a switch and become a different person.

  Of course, most deputies, officers, and detectives lack that unusual gift and have to muck around somewhere in the middle range, which means they occasionally drop the F-bomb in front of clergy or say hallelujah to the heroin addict.

  It’s not that Jimmy doesn’t curse, but it’s a rare occasion, and shocking to behold. He’s quite good at it when he wants to be. Over the years we’ve established certain words that are acceptable within our one-on-one conversations. These include damn, dammit, and hell, though he prefers the minced oaths darn, darnit, and heck.

  The minced oaths shoot, friggin’, bull snot, and bull hockey are also acceptable, though I’ve yet to use the latter two in conversation.

  Ass is acceptable … surprisingly.

  I had to argue for it, however, pointing out that it’s the common term for a donkey and has historical precedence in the Bible and literature. Nevertheless, Jimmy was not happy when I uttered it in front of Petey one day. It was strictly by accident and my attempts to smooth it over where less than succes
sful. I told Petey we don’t call people asses, we call them donkeys.

  A week later we were in the lounge at Hangar 7 watching some G-rated movie—I don’t remember which one. It was just me, Jimmy, and Petey; Jane wasn’t there, which is why I’m still alive. Halfway through the show, Petey points at the bad guy and says, “He’s a real donkey-hole, isn’t he, Uncle Steps?”

  Yep. Not one of my finer moments.

  * * *

  Heather cuts a demure pose, hands clasped together in front of her as if she’s unsure what to do with them; her long hair is as I remember it, her face, her posture, her grace. She’s wearing a breathtaking V-shaped silk blouse in soft lime with cascading ruffles that end at a point halfway between her waist and her knees in front and well past her knees in the back. This is complemented by black denim stretch jeans that empty into a pair of black high-heeled Michael Kors sandals.

  I know my shoes.

  When we first met, she was a twenty-three-year-old up-and-coming reporter, one year out of grad school, who had already made a name for herself with an online investigative news blog she founded and edited. Newsweek scooped her up before the ink was dry on her diploma and she soon found herself specializing in crime and criminal justice stories, including a major piece on the Porsche Novatny abduction and murder that had so captivated the public that year.

  “Heather,” I breathe.

  “Steps.” The corner of her mouth curls up temptingly, teasingly. “You know you’re almost late?”

  I grin. “Almost late is right on time.”

  “Same old Steps,” she says, shaking her head.

  I study her a moment, devour her.

  “It’s good to see you,” I finally say. “You look … hot.”

  She begins to smile, but then I hurriedly add, “Let’s go inside where it’s a bit cooler.”

  I hold the door open and she brushes briskly past. For a moment I wish she’d turn around and club me over the head; it would serve me right.