Collecting the Dead: A Novel

by Spencer Kope

  Like I didn’t know that.

  “When he finished, he went into his trailer, the light came on for about an hour, and then it was lights-out until just before seven A.M. We heard his alarm go off and within maybe three minutes he was going out the front door looking like he’d slept in his clothes and combed his hair with a greasy fork. He went into the travel trailer nearest to his single-wide and we heard some banging about and a lot of clatter before he came out again with a bowl of dog food for Tumor.” Troy shrugs. “I don’t know if that’s the dog’s real name, but that’s what he called him—twice, that I heard. I asked Alex and Jason and they heard the same thing. The guy’s not right in the head … but I guess we already know that.…” His voice trails off.

  Clearing his throat, the detective continues.

  “After Zell cleared out, we waited a few minutes and went down to try and make friends with the pooch. He was your typical doper-bad-guy dog at first, barking and yanking on his chain so hard I thought he was going to snap it off the tree.”

  “Let me guess,” Jimmy says. “Pit bull?”

  Bovencamp is gulping down more coffee but manages to shake his head at the same time. “Some kind of Heinz 57 mutt,” he says. “Probably part German shepherd, part rottweiler, and six parts something else. Jason had a leftover bologna sandwich in his pack—I swear he brings six or seven on every op—and he was able to calm Tumor down and make friends while Alex and I did a quick sneak-and-peek.

  “The windows to Zell’s trailer were mostly curtained, but you could see through the cracks well enough to tell that there was no one else inside … unless he’s keeping her in the bathroom. The travel trailers were a different story. Newspaper was pasted to the inside of every window and we couldn’t see a thing. We gave the rest of the property a quick once-over, but without a warrant, there wasn’t much we could do about the travel trailers.”

  Over the next half hour, Detective Bovencamp covers additional details from the op, mostly minutia that would prove irrelevant to the takedown of Arthur Zell, but in the early planning stages, everything is relevant. We still have one big problem: no probable cause. And without probable cause, we can’t get a warrant and we can’t arrest Zell.

  I suddenly realize that I need to see him—in person. I need to see Zell’s shine, see if he glows brilliant amaranth with a rusty texture. I need to see the aura of a monster. Of course it’s him, I tell myself. It has to be him; he was in Ashley Sprague’s car. But I’ve learned through bitter experience that just when you’re sure of something, that’s when it gets turned on its head.

  As the briefing winds down and Troy gathers his pictures and slides together, I know what needs to be done. “Sheriff,” I say, turning to Walt. “I need to get in there. I need to see it for myself.”

  Walt sighs and pats me on the shoulder. “My deputies are tactical thinkers, Steps,” he replies, being kind with his choice of words. “I can promise you they didn’t miss a thing. They’re good at this.”

  This is immediately followed by a few testy words from Jimmy. “The place is under surveillance, Steps; you can’t just stroll in there and have a look around.”

  I’m not finished, and I won’t be put off. “Sad Face has some peculiarities with the way he walks,” I lie, giving Jimmy a scathing look. “They’re barely noticeable, but if I can just look at some of the prints around the trailer, I might be able to say for sure whether Zell is Sad Face or not. I know it’s not enough for a warrant, but at least we would know that we’re on the right track. After that, we can build a case and take him down.”

  Walt seems intrigued by the idea. “There’s something to be said about being certain. I’d hate to waste time and resources on this guy and have it be some weird coincidence.”

  “And we don’t want another Matt Swanson incident,” I add.

  “No, we don’t,” the sheriff replies emphatically.

  Jimmy’s not so enthusiastic.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  July 8, 10:22 P.M.

  “This is Jason Lanham,” Walt says, placing his hand on the shoulder of the deputy beside him. “He’s going to be your guide on this little scenic tour.” Giving the deputy a sideways glance, he adds, “Jason, meet Magnus Craig and Jimmy Donovan. Oh”—he points at me with his right index finger—“you can call him Steps. If you have time to kill out there, have him tell you how he got that nickname. It’s a good story.”

  We’re parked on Placer Road about a half mile east of the turnoff to Wayward. Walt’s Expedition, though unmarked, was deemed too risky for the drop-off. Even without the sheriff’s office markings and the overhead light bar, it still stands out as law enforcement to anyone paying attention. The light bars in the front and rear windows and grille, as well as the landscape of antennae, are a dead giveaway. Instead, we stopped by the impound lot and picked up a Cadillac STS seized during a drug raid three weeks ago. Its tinted windows and twenty-inch wheels are decidedly not law enforcement.

  “Just in and out,” Walt is saying. “See what you need to see and get the hell out of there. I’ve got two guys watching the house from a distance. You won’t see them, but they’ll see you. I’ve got another man in the trees just inside Wayward in case the son of a bitch comes back early. Jason has his radio, so he’s your ears.”

  “Where are you going to be?” Jimmy asks.

  “I’m going to have coffee,” Walt shoots back with a big grin. When Jimmy gives him a smirk, he just shrugs and says, “I can’t stay here, someone might get suspicious. And I’m getting a little too old to go traipsing through the woods.”

  “Okay, then,” Jimmy says.

  * * *

  The mile hike into Zell’s place is less work than I expected. The trees, though constant, are not clustered together in thick patches like you’d find farther north, and the underbrush is light. We add a few minutes to the hike by following a ravine that cuts in a north-northeast direction. It keeps us tucked below the horizon, so even if someone is watching, we’ll pass by unnoticed.

  Twenty-five minutes later we come up a rise and Zell’s compound is laid out before us. My first impression is that Bovencamp’s photos didn’t do it justice. The single-wide trailer is an early seventies model, bleached by decades in the sun. It has a makeshift addition off the back that looks like it’s about to fall over, and a huge chunk of aluminum siding is missing toward the rear where someone—Zell, I’m assuming—had accessed some wiring or plumbing and just never bothered to put everything back together.

  The trailer should have been condemned twenty years ago, but out here, in the middle of nowhere, who’s going to see it—especially with Zell’s Mad Max barrier wall? The travel trailers aren’t much better.

  “Follow me and keep low till we get down there,” Jason says, and then he’s off, moving quickly and using the trees for cover. A hundred feet from the trailer we reach the edge of the trees and stop. Jason is crouched in the brush, watching. We follow his example. “Wait for me to wave you down,” he says. “If anything goes sideways, get the hell out the same way we came in, and don’t wait for me. Remember, we’ve got two guys on overwatch.”

  Tumor starts barking and howling and yanking on his chain like a fiend as soon as Jason steps from the tree line. Fishing a brown lump out of his pocket as he crosses the distance to the trailer, Jason manipulates the package in his hand and then steps toward the growling, howling dog, stopping just beyond the chain’s reach.

  His back is to us, so I can’t see what he’s doing, but Tumor stops barking immediately and cocks his head sideways, sniffing. Though the dog only has a two-inch stub for a tail, I can tell when he starts wagging it because his rear quarters start shaking back and forth and he starts prancing his front feet up and down. He sniffs eagerly at whatever it is that Jason is holding just beyond his reach. When the deputy turns, I see it: a hot dog.

  Smart.

  Seconds later Tumor’s chowing down on the uncooked hot dog and Jason’s scratching him behind the ears and tal
king to him. Probably the kindest words the dog has heard in his short, miserable life—all of it, no doubt, spent at the end of Zell’s chain.

  After a quick walk-around, Deputy Lanham signals us forward and we spill from the trees in a half walk, half run. I already see it, everywhere and on everything: brilliant amaranth with rusty texture.

  “It’s Sad Face,” I say to Jimmy. “It’s him.”

  Jason introduces us to Tumor, who’s more than happy to welcome new friends, especially the kind of friends who scratch him behind the ear and rub his belly—that would be Jimmy, not me.

  “Five minutes,” Jason says, “then we’re out of here.”

  “That’s all I’ll need,” I reply.

  While Jimmy entertains Tumor, I check around the travel trailers. I’m looking for any shine from the victims. There’s none on the ground, but the women may have been drugged or unconscious and Zell may have had to carry them. I check the doorframe around each travel trailer, as well as the single-wide, looking for that spot where an arm or a leg may have brushed against the frame on the way in or out.

  Nothing.

  I’m almost done when I notice Jason messing with his radio. He’s halfway between the trailer and the barbarian gate calling for a radio check with no response. Jimmy notices it, too, and walks toward him.

  “Something wrong?” Jimmy asks.

  Jason shakes his head. “No. I’m just getting some random bursts of static, like someone keeps keying their mic. It happens.” He tilts his head to the hand mic attached to his shirt at the left shoulder, depresses the button, and says, “Sam One-Seven-Two, Sam One-Thirteen, over.” There’s no response. “Sam One-Seven-Two, Sam One-Thirteen, do you copy, over?”

  There’s no response.

  “Is your battery—”

  The words die in my throat when I notice a bush moving on the hill to the northeast of Zell’s property. I notice it because it’s a large bush and it’s over Jason’s left shoulder. I stop and stare a moment, and then realize what it is: a deputy in a moss-green sniper-style ghillie suit waving his arms frantically and pointing … pointing toward the road … pointing toward the front gate.

  And in the moment it takes my mind to put the pieces together, the barbarian gate begins to open in the middle, folding into the property like some great metal mouth preparing to eat its prey.

  “Cover!” I bark, jabbing a finger toward the gate. Turning, I race toward the nearest travel trailer and dive behind it.

  For Jimmy and Jason the call comes too late. They’re caught out in the open, like rabbits in a great empty field, afraid to move for fear of attracting the predator’s attention. Perhaps they’re hoping to blend into the camouflage of scattered junk and piled scrap. In any case, their eyes are glued to the gate as the monster comes into view.

  Zell sees them immediately.

  “THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY!” he bellows through the gate opening, jabbing an accusing finger at them. His eyes dart to the gun on Jason’s hip and the black FBI Windbreaker Jimmy insisted on wearing. You can almost see him working it out in his head. And just that fast he knows why we’re here.

  His reaction is shockingly swift.

  He jumps back behind the barrier and at first I think he’s going to flee, but as the gate continues to swing open it exposes a white Ford F-150 pickup with the driver’s-side door flung open.

  A stream of vulgarity flows from the truck.

  Grunting.

  Banging.

  Jimmy and Jason are racing to join me when Zell leaps from the cab of the truck with a rifle in his hands. The first shot kicks up dirt at Jimmy’s feet and he dives for cover behind a pile of scrap metal. Pop, pop, pop. The rounds keep coming, striking the pile and glancing off.

  Jimmy returns fire with his Glock—random shots in Zell’s direction as he holds the handgun above the scrap metal and pulls the trigger over and over and over. The barrel spits lead in a roaring crescendo. It’s enough to force Zell to take cover and he scrambles behind the pickup. Jason peels off in the other direction as soon as the shooting starts and hunkers down behind a naked truck frame; he’s using the exposed engine as cover.

  “We need him alive,” I shout to Jimmy.

  “I KNOW!” He’s facedown in the dirt behind the scrap metal and inching toward the right to try for an angle through the open gate.

  Zell has cover now.

  More bullets fly. They bounce off the engine, the frame, and the right wheel where Jason is crouched; Zell knows exactly where he is. As the prickling spray of lead turns back to Jimmy, Jason pops up and dumps seven rounds into the front left tire and engine block of Zell’s truck. The radiator explodes in a white cloud of steam, punched through the core by two rounds that shred the aluminum.

  Zell roars with rage.

  It’s a chilling sound: barely human.

  There’s a sudden outburst of banging and crashing from the back of the pickup, an adrenaline-fueled spike of mayhem, followed by another spray of bullets. Then the monster goes quiet. No shooting. No shouting. No banging.

  A minute passes, then two. My ears ache from the quiet. I hear only three sounds: the soft whimpering of Tumor hiding under one of the travel trailers, the quiet roar of air as it enters through my nose and leaves through my mouth, and the boom-boom-boom of my heart.

  Nothing else.

  In the eerie quiet I begin to wonder if Zell caught a round. Maybe he’s lying behind the truck bleeding out, cursing us with whispered words through bloodstained lips. Either that or he’s on the run.

  Jason peers quickly around the side of the skeletonized truck and mouths, Where is he? in big exaggerated facial expressions.

  Jimmy shrugs the best he can from his prone position and then raises himself to a crouch and glances quickly over the top of the pile. Looking around at the junk-strewn yard, he exchanges a rapid series of hand signals with Jason and then, simultaneously, they leapfrog forward to concealed positions nearer the gate.

  Jimmy waves a hand at me and points to a position to his left behind the travel trailer nearest to him. It’s times like this that I realize what a burden I can be. I don’t have the tactical training for a high-risk takedown like this, which means that in addition to watching for the bad guy, Jimmy has to keep me safe and make sure I have the proper cover.

  It bothers me.

  It reminds me of how unprepared I am for this game.

  Rising to a crouch, I’m about to bolt for the trailer when I hear it: the distinct snap of a twig. I don’t have to guess where it came from. It’s right behind me. I pivot around almost instantly, but the world has gone into slow motion and the turn seems to take forever. At the same time my mind is analyzing the sound. It wasn’t Tumor; he’s still whimpering under the next trailer. It wasn’t Jimmy or Jason. Perhaps it’s the surveillance team finally arriving, but then I remember they’re in the opposite direction.

  No.

  In my gut I know the cause and consequences of the snap. And as my slow-motion turn brings me around, I see the barrel rising toward my face not ten feet away. The hole at the end of the barrel is impossibly large and black and I realize Zell has switched to a shotgun. A damn shotgun! There’s no time to duck, to drop, to scream.

  A thunderous shot shatters the quiet.

  * * *

  “Stay with me,” Jimmy shouts, tearing open a package of QuikClot and shaking it out over the chest wound to stop the bleeding. “What’s the status on that medevac?”

  “Five minutes,” Jason replies.

  “He doesn’t have five minutes, this is arterial. I’m losing him.”

  Jason drops to his knees and checks for a pulse.

  “Well?”

  “It’s weak—no, I just lost it. Dammit! His heart just stopped beating.”

  “Start chest compressions.”

  “What about an AED?”

  Jimmy shakes his head. “Defibrillators are only for arrhythmias, to stabilize the heartbeat; they’re useless when the heart flatlines. D
o chest compressions until the medevac chopper arrives. They’ll have Adrenalin and other options; if we can restart the heart we have a chance, provided I can get this bleeding under control.”

  The helicopter sets down in a clearing a hundred feet south of Zell’s driveway. It’s impossible to move a gurney on the rutted mud and gravel road, so the medics bring in a two-man stretcher. Rather than covering the distance back to the helicopter in one run, they stop twice along the way and do a series of chest compressions to keep the blood flowing.

  With their patient onboard, the medevac flight wastes no time getting airborne and the bird quickly disappears to the east.

  “Do you think he’ll make it?” I say to no one in particular.

  Jimmy turns and taps his finger into my chest several times. “That could have been you, Steps,” he chides. “Watch your six next time.” He pats me on the shoulder and then gives a thank-you nod to Deputy Bill Pascal, whose well-placed .223 round dropped Zell just as his finger was feathering the trigger.

  I heard the bullet pass my left ear.

  I think I felt it.

  In the quiet as we crouched behind cover, Zell had worked his way south and skirted around the wall of metal siding and corrugated tin. It was just luck that Deputy Pascal entered the compound when he did. He made good time from his surveillance position on the hill and was breathing heavily, but there was no time to think; upon seeing Zell, he just shouldered his AR-15, sighted in, and fired a single round.

  Don’t hit the FBI guy.

  The thought had to be going through Pascal’s head as he squeezed the trigger. Even so, there was little chance of that happening. He’s one of three certified snipers at the sheriff’s office. And though he doesn’t have his sniper rifle with him today—since this was supposed to be strictly recon—apparently he’s just as good with an AR-15, albeit at closer range.