Collecting the Dead: A Novel

by Spencer Kope

  Or did he just leave a sad-face circle on her window?

  Perhaps Ashley isn’t one of Sad Face’s victims. It’s possible. Perhaps her age and height and hair are just a coincidence. After all, she doesn’t have much in common with the other victims—except Valerie Heagle, the prostitute.

  Diane might be wrong on this one.

  For Ashley’s sake, I hope so.

  The California Department of Motor Vehicles shows her car currently registered to Jacob Aase, five-foot-seven, 155 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes. His driver’s license photo looks hollow around the cheeks and eyes. I recognize the look. His license is suspended due to unpaid tickets and his address is on the north side of Red Bluff.

  Simple enough, right?

  But when we pull to the curb in front of Jacob’s house, simple becomes suddenly complicated, and complicated becomes, well, frustratingly typical.

  Planted at the edge of the dead lawn, snug up against a cracked and weathered sidewalk, is a red, white, and blue FOR SALE sign that looks like it may have aged and faded since being placed. The house itself looks naked: no blinds, no drapes, no ratty moth-eaten curtains. The large window to the left of the front door opens into a stark and empty house. The walls have a coat of fresh paint, but the lousy patch job on the abused interior walls leaves them looking pockmarked and worn.

  Some would call it a quaint single-story bachelor’s pad, which is, no doubt, how the real estate agency listed it.

  I call it a shack …

  … with an apology to shacks.

  The house is barely nine hundred square feet, has a noticeable downward pitch on the southeast corner, and green paint on the exterior that’s so far gone it looks like some faded, curling, alien fungus. The front door is off-kilter and even from the road I can see the frame is damaged at the latch where it’s been booted open more than once—either by cops or crooks, maybe both.

  And those are the better features.

  The crowning glory is so redneck I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream: someone has stapled a giant blue tarp to the roof. Bright blue. Big. Yacht-sized. It covers most of the backside of the roof and drapes over the peak by several feet, giving the house a fluorescent-blue Mohawk.

  “Safe to say Jacob Aase doesn’t live here anymore,” I say casually.

  “Safe to say,” Jimmy echoes.

  We stand at the sidewalk a moment just staring at the house, wondering what our next move is. After a moment Jimmy says, “Tweaker TV,” and points to the front door. My eyes follow his finger and I see it, hidden above the door and tucked up under the eaves.

  “There’s another one.” This time Jimmy points to the right front corner of the house.

  “Probably a couple more in the back and one on the other side,” I say.

  Tweaker TV.

  It’s a bit of a joke within law enforcement. Whenever you see a $500 house with $2,000 worth of surveillance equipment, it’s a good bet you’re dealing with drug dealers, meth cooks, or a nest of dope fiends. Sometimes it’s just one monitor and a single camera at the front door. Other times it’s a wall of monitors, each dedicated to a single camera.

  The tweakers—meth addicts, so named because of their sudden, jerky, tweaky mannerisms—have a particular affinity for surveillance cameras, especially when they haven’t slept for days on end and paranoia and hallucinations are starting to kick in. When that happens, Tweaker TV is the best show on the box.

  “Looks like they left in a hurry,” I say. “Didn’t even take the cameras.”

  “Why bother?” Jimmy replies. “They can steal more.”

  Both Jimmy and I know what this means. It’s not just that Jacob Aase has relocated, he’s likely an addict or a dealer, which means tracking him down is going to be problematic. It’s easy to get lost in the drug community. There are always flophouses, drug dens, motor homes, and transient camps to disappear into.

  “What now?”

  “Call Diane.” Jimmy sighs. “See what she can dig up. I’ll call the PD and see what they have on Jacob.”

  * * *

  Sometimes it all comes down to luck … or good timing.

  I’m still on the phone listening to Diane churn through one database after another in a high-speed digital pursuit of the elusive Mr. Aase when Jimmy taps me on the shoulder, grins, and says, “We caught a break.”

  Back in the car, Jimmy tries pulling a U-turn from the curb, but the rental—luxurious as it is—has the turning radius of a nine-legged pig. After three trips to drive and two trips to reverse we finally get straightened out, and Jimmy starts to fill me in.

  It seems that Jacob Aase landed himself in the Tehama County Jail three weeks ago after multiple motorists called to report a naked man walking down the center of Manzanita Avenue swearing at cars as they passed by and sometimes cowering behind light poles talking to himself.

  After a ten-day meth binge, Jacob was tweaking hard. The skin on his face and right arm was covered in red sores where he had repeatedly picked at the imaginary bugs under his skin—meth mites—until he was covered in scabs, then he picked the scabs. Then he picked some more.

  By the time the cops found him on Manzanita he was in full meltdown. Recognizing immediately what they were dealing with, Red Bluff PD tried talking him down from his psychosis, but by this time the hallucinations were so vivid and frightening all he saw were blue devils with badges.

  “They stole my clothes,” he screamed over and over and over again as he picked and picked and picked. Meanwhile, officers discovered a two-block trail of discarded clothing, starting with a particularly foul piece of underwear—officers dubbed it the underwear that crawls—that was unceremoniously draped over a fire hydrant. Working backward they found socks, then jeans, then shoes—a discount brand designed in the fashion of the Nike Cortez but without the quality. Farther on, they found his shirt stuffed under the windshield wiper of a Dodge Neon—he’s a tweaker, they do stuff like that—and his jacket was lying in the middle of the road thirty feet west of his backpack (which was filled with clothes even more stanky than the underwear that crawls).

  He didn’t discard the clothing, though.

  He made that perfectly clear.

  No.

  They stripped him naked and They stole his clothes.

  Then, apparently, They—he was never quite clear on who They were—laid his clothes out behind him just to taunt him.

  In the end it took four blue devils to restrain him and carry him off to hell … though in this case “hell” was the Tehama County Jail. Not pleasant, but by no means does it resemble the fiery abyss.

  They even have ice.

  And they only have three levels, not the nine described by Dante—though the first floor sometimes smells like the Malebolge, Dante’s eighth level of hell. It can’t be helped. That’s what happens when inmates paint the walls of their cell in their own feces.

  Good times.

  “His car was parked in the street a half mile away,” Jimmy says. “When he ran out of gas he just started walking … and stripping.”

  “Okay, what’s scary is that he was driving in the first place.”

  “Drug-impaired driving. Happens every day in every city across the country.” Jimmy shrugs. “The only thing worse is the drunk drivers; they still kill more people.”

  “Yeah, but that’s just numbers. There are more drunk drivers than tweakers.”

  Jimmy shrugs again but doesn’t say anything.

  “So the car is in police impound?”

  “The meth pipe on the front seat was enough to get a search warrant. The shotgun in the trunk and the three small baggies of meth in a hidden compartment in the door were enough to seize it. It’ll probably end up back at the same auction where Jacob bought it.”

  A Red Bluff officer named Danny Coors—like the beer—meets us at the impound yard with a ring of keys and ushers us through the gate. Danny’s a nice enough kid, but overly rigid and formal, everything’s Yes, sir and No, sir
, and I’ll check on that, sir. Probably hasn’t been out of the academy more than a year.

  Don’t get me wrong, such courtesy would be perfectly appropriate if he was giving me a ticket, but we’re all on the same team here and I get uncomfortable when people call me sir, especially fellow law enforcement.

  “I’ll unlock it for you, sir.”

  Jimmy starts to make small talk with Danny, who’s unlocking the driver’s door, then the passenger’s door, then the trunk, while I walk around the exterior of the Hyundai. Ashley’s car may have been nice years ago … many years ago … but it’s a full-fledged doper car now. Every corner is bent or blemished, like a dog-eared book that’s been loved too much or too little. The right rear taillight has red tape covering a gaping hole from an incident with a baseball bat; the windshield has a horizontal crack that runs the length of the glass; the rear bumper is held together by faded, peeling stickers; and the radio antenna is cockeyed. Its best feature is the two-tone paint job: faded silver and rust.

  Sad Face is all over the vehicle.

  His shine is in the driver’s seat, on the door, the steering wheel, the trunk, even the gas cap. He drove it long enough to put gas in it.

  Ashley’s all over the vehicle as well. The patch of shine in the trunk is particularly disturbing because it’s shaped like a curled-up body; it’s not a place one would willingly go. The original carpet is missing, as is the spare tire, leaving a filthy metal base with a tire-sized hole in the center. At some point the car was used to haul everything from trash to old car batteries and used motor oil, all of which have left their mark on the small space.

  She was alive when he stuffed her into this nasty black hole.

  I can almost see her struggling in the dark. She certainly would have been tied or duct-taped, but she must have slipped her hands in front of her because I see them all over the latch, groping for a handle, a knob, a button—something that would pop the trunk, something that would set her free.

  She would have been smarter to rip the wires from the taillights, I think. That, at least, would’ve gotten the right kind of attention. Kicking the taillight out and sticking a hand through works even better.

  There’s no shine on the underside of the trunk, either; no fist-shaped glimmer where she pounded and beat and pounded on the trunk, hoping someone would hear. Hoping anyone would hear.

  No. She was quiet as a mouse; trembling in the dark; afraid.

  Afraid he would hear.

  Afraid of what he would do.

  Ashley’s shine is flat and dead; no vibration, no pulse, no life. Her fate was sealed when she was placed in that trunk. Better if she had kicked and screamed and pounded until the heavens shook. Her end may have been no different, but a mouse has two choices: it can walk into the lion’s mouth and lie down upon its teeth, or it can bite and leap and claw and spit its last breath.

  Better to fight than to lie down.

  When Officer Coors is out of earshot, I whisper to Jimmy, “He’s all over the car.”

  Jimmy nods his understanding and sighs. “I was hoping she was in Cabo.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Did he drive this one, or just leave his mark?”

  “Oh, he drove it—” I begin, but Jimmy stops me with a furtive hand motion and indicates to the left with his eyes. I see Danny coming back toward us.

  “You find what you’re looking for?” Officer Coors asks, looking from me to Jimmy, then back to me.

  “Typical doper ride,” I say, giving him a crooked smile and thumbing toward the car. “Hard to tell how much of this mess was Ashley’s and how much was Jacob’s.”

  “I hear ya. The worst of it was cleared out when it was impounded—moldy hamburger, used syringes, used condoms, stuff like that. About twenty pounds of pure nasty. I don’t know how they live like that.”

  “I don’t call it living,” Jimmy says in a tired voice.

  “I just pulled the property sheet,” Danny says, waving a lined and columned page in his hand. “It looks like they took about fifteen pieces of stolen property from the interior and the trunk. I don’t think any of that had to do with Ashley, though. Most of it was linked back to several burglaries we had a few months back. A couple items that weren’t claimed are still in evidence, including … let’s see.” He scans quickly down the list. “A ring—a dolphin ring, it looks like. Plus there’s a package of brand-new unopened men’s socks that were probably shoplifted, and … here it is, a TomTom GPS.”

  “The GPS might be worth a look,” Jimmy says. “Remember Quillan?”

  “Yeah, not a chance,” I say. “We’re not that lucky.”

  We take a chance anyway.

  Danny leads us into the main warehouse, where, with the help of an evidence technician, he retrieves the impounded GPS. The batteries are dead, so it takes a few more minutes to find and cannibalize a desk clock in the office that has the required AAA batteries.

  “Try holding the button down for five seconds,” Jimmy says after the new batteries have no effect.

  “That only works on a frozen computer,” I say, “and only when you’re trying to shut it down, not turn it on.” But I hold the button anyway.

  Nothing.

  And still nothing. Technology is a marvelous apocalypse of electricity. No wonder people sometimes lose their mind and pump some twelve-gauge slugs into their computer. In most cases it’s justifiable.

  Danny retrieves the clock batteries and seals the GPS back in the evidence bag. “I’ll send it to the lab. Maybe they can retrieve something from the chip.” I hand him my card—Magnus Craig, Operations Specialist, Special Tracking Unit, FBI—and he promises to call in a day or two.

  Back in the car, Jimmy scribbles some comments in his notebook … again. He hasn’t even hinted at what he’s working on, which has me curious, and therefore irritated. He knows it’s killing me, but I’ll let him do his thing, play his little game. He’ll tell me eventually. He has to. I mean, it has to be something related to the case, he just wants to make sure he’s right before he pops it on me.

  I can wait. Sure I can wait. Patience is a virtue and the sign of a calm, mature mind. He’ll tell me soon enough, no sense in getting all spun up over it.

  “What do you keep writing in that notebook?” I blurt as he closes the cover and stuffs it back into his dark brown Fossil Estate leather portfolio briefcase.

  Damnation!

  Virtue—gone.

  Patience—gone.

  Jimmy doesn’t answer right away, but pushes back in his seat, fishes the keys out of his pocket, starts the car, adjusts the radio, checks his hair in the mirror. After spending forever adjusting his seat—seriously, he could have built a new one faster—he lifts his sunglasses just enough so I can see his eyes and says, “Patience is a virtue,” then throws the car in gear.

  Damnation!

  The rest of the day goes quickly. First to Weed for Sarah Wells, where we don’t find any of Sad Face’s shine on her car, but we do find his mark on her mailbox in pink crayon. Her body was dumped in the Shasta National Forest west of Weed, along a hiking trail but obscured by bushes. The park rangers were able to take us to the exact spot: a dim, oppressive patch of wood with violence spilled upon the ground in a rainbow of color.

  I could feel the trees pressing in …

  … leaning over me.

  Whispering.

  Always whispering.

  We finally make our way back to Millville, a small community just east of Redding, for the first victim, Valerie Heagle, whose body was dumped in the Odd Fellows Cemetery off Brookdale Road. There was no attempt to hide her body and the story got a lot of local attention, probably more than Sad Face wanted.

  He was more careful after that.

  Since the body was found outside the Redding city limits, the case landed in the lap of the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office. Everything in the case report shows a competent, well-executed investigation, but there was no DNA, no hair follicles, no prints, nothing to
point to a suspect or even hint at one.

  The killer had done his homework; forensics revealed that the body had been washed down in bleach. The interior of Valerie’s car, a 1992 Jeep Cherokee, had also been wiped free of prints and spritzed with a bleach solution.

  The only good news is the vehicle is still in police impound. It’s locked away in a storage building protected from the elements, the same building that holds Alison Lister’s Honda, but in a separate room. When we arrive and walk through the roll-up door, I see it tucked away in a corner, the sad relic of a heinous crime now collecting dust and years.

  Sad Face is all over the Jeep: the driver’s seat, the cargo area, the glove box, and, once more, the gas cap. Cut into the grime on the back window, almost indistinguishable now, is his mark. The eyes have blurred out to hazy smudges, but most of the circle is intact, along with the nose and half of the ugly, downturned mouth.

  I see it all in neon amaranth and rust.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Redding, 8:13 P.M.

  Jimmy has a theory.

  He won’t tell me the theory, but assures me it’s valid and says it explains some of what we’ve seen. On the drive back to the hotel I press him for his thoughts. “Just a hint,” I say, but he’s stubborn and mulish when he’s working on a theory, has been as long as I’ve known him. To make matters worse, he placed his briefcase in the trunk, so I can’t even rifle through it when we stop for gas.

  He’s wise to me.

  “Give it a rest, Steps!” he finally says as we’re pulling into the parking lot. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, I just want to make sure it all makes sense first.”

  Jimmy has a natural gift for crime analysis; give him a case file and he’ll find a dozen things that need further exploration: questions that haven’t even been asked, let alone answered. He doesn’t trust his instincts enough.

  He should.