Collecting the Dead: A Novel

by Spencer Kope

  “Can you go on?”

  “I have to.”

  “No, Steps, you don’t. We can head back anytime you like.”

  I just shake my head in the dark and keep riding.

  By 12:30 A.M. the gas starts to give out and now I’m worried we won’t have enough to get back to base camp. Earlier in the evening, Ross tracked us down on one of the many dirt and gravel roads that snake their way through the hills. He topped off our tanks and our extra cans, but that was hours and miles ago.

  Jimmy’s ATV starts sputtering two miles out from the command vehicle. Mine soon joins in and we nurse them along the last open stretch until pulling in and parking at the front of the command vehicle.

  Our tanks are so empty you could drop a lit match inside and all it would do is choke and fizzle.

  As we approach the command vehicle, saddle-weary and numb from too many hours on the quads, a steady droning emanates from inside. The sound spills from the RV in waves as Jimmy opens the door; I recognize it immediately and every trail-jarred bone in my body sags as the prospect of a good rest vanishes like mist before the sun.

  Walt’s asleep on one of the rear beds, still fully dressed, snoring loud enough to wake the dead. And speaking of the dead, three bodies occupy the other bunks, each snoring in their own right, or at least breathing deeply. They’re exhausted beyond death, much the way I feel right now.

  A SAR volunteer is manning the communications gear at the front of the vehicle, but at this point it’s almost symbolic, since Jimmy and I were the last ones searching. I give her a nod and notice she’s wearing a large pair of ear-enveloping headphones that aren’t plugged in. She sees me glance at the plug and shoots me a big grin, her eyes shifting quickly to the symphony of snoring bodies to the rear, then back to me. Despite my fatigue, a chuckle manages to clear my throat and I return her smile.

  We decide to rack out in Walt’s Expedition, but when I open the rear gate we find an overflowing mountain of equipment jammed into a hill-sized space. Walt’s got it packed with random electronics, supplies, and tactical gear; everything from traffic cones to clipboards. He’s even got a bag of stuffed teddy bears that he hands out to kids who’ve been traumatized by an accident or an assault.

  “Damn,” I whisper under my breath.

  “Shotgun,” Jimmy says after quickly assessing the situation. He climbs into the front passenger seat and reclines the back as far as it will go. The seats are large and well padded; he doesn’t even say good night, just surrenders to fatigue, and in minutes he assumes the rhythmic breathing of slumber.

  I curl up in the only other moderately viable spot, which is the second-row seat, and there I lie for the longest time with my feet pressed into one door and my head pressed into the other.

  Slumber ignores me.

  Slumber snubs me.

  The longer I lie in this compressed condition, the more frustrated I get, and the more frustrated I get, the more sleep eludes me. Soon I’m more awake than I was when I first lay down. My mind wanders back over the spent day, over the scores of dusty miles already searched. I say a silent prayer for Susan, for Lauren; I think on the endless miles of road and trail that await us in the morning.

  A distant pack of coyotes soon take up a chorus, yipping and howling at each other in their high piercing voices. I wonder if it was their fleeting shadows in our peripheral vision earlier tonight as we returned to camp.

  Soon their howling and yammering is louder and mixes with the heavy breathing from the front seat. Then the ruckus quiets for a few minutes and I’ve just started to relax when I hear sniffing around the door by my head. I lay motionless, eyes wide, barely daring to breathe.

  It’s just a coyote, I remind myself. But the creature brings with it visions of a dark, snow-covered forest, of a distant time and a distant place.

  Then another nose starts sniffing at the other door.

  Two coyotes! Three!

  Still, I tell myself, if I sat up and opened the door right now, they would spook and be gone before I finished pulling on the handle. I will myself to pull the handle and open the door, but logic loses and primal fear scores a point. Next, I will myself to just kick the inside of the door, with me still fully inside the vehicle protected by sheet metal and glass.

  Primal fear wins again.

  Maybe it’s because they’re close cousins to the wolf, or because their howling and yipping really is that eerie, or maybe it’s just because they’re large predatory animals and I’m on their turf; how else do you explain such fear? In the end it doesn’t matter, I suppose. I’ll think of an excuse later; right now I continue to lay rigid and still in the backseat. I know how the rabbit feels cowering in his hole.

  After a few minutes, the sniffing fades, nose by nose, until silence seeps in and the night shakes off a sigh. Then, minutes later, the chorus picks up again, moving away from the base camp toward the hills to the southwest. The pack moves on. The rabbit is safe.

  I take my first deep breath in perhaps fifteen minutes. It feels good; helps me relax. Now I’m exhausted, utterly and completely. Between the long day behind me, the coyote-induced adrenaline rush, and the fear of what tomorrow brings, I’m done. I’m spent in every way imaginable: spent beyond measure.

  It’s in this state that sleep finds me.

  Blessed, contorted, uncomfortable sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  July 9, 5:53 A.M.

  The sun peeks above the rim of the world just before six the next morning. The weight of the darkness seems to hold it down at first, strapping it to the horizon, pushing it and stomping it down. But the sun will not be denied. It shoves past the darkness, casting it into the abyss behind, and rises into the deep blue of earliest morning.

  Shadows flee before it.

  It brings a new day, a new hope. It brings a chance to add a new page and a new chapter to the story of Susan Ault, so that her life won’t be a book half written and abruptly ended.

  “Today we find her,” I vow to the sun. “She goes home today.” But it’s not just of Susan that I’m thinking. I grasp the locket in my front pocket and hold it for a long moment. Today we find them.

  Jimmy’s got a half-gone mug of hot coffee in his hands when I join him outside the command vehicle. I open the large blue ice chest next to the RV door and sort through the various beverages smothered in ice until I find an eight-ounce bottle of orange juice. Shaking off the ice water, I peel the top back and take a long drink that nearly empties the container.

  “Thirsty?” Jimmy says with a small laugh.

  I nod, take another drink that finishes off the bottle, and wipe my mouth. “I think I’m dehydrated,” I say as I fish out another orange juice.

  “I’m not surprised. You didn’t drink much while we were out there yesterday.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to remind me of stuff like that?”

  “I did; you ignored me.”

  “Oh!” I say brightly, unapologetically. “I guess that’s why I’m dehydrated.”

  Breakfast consists of two large boxes of fresh donuts and some leftover pizza retrieved from the small refrigerator in the command vehicle’s kitchenette.

  The donuts have been thoroughly picked through, but there’s a single maple bar that was somehow overlooked; can’t go wrong with a maple bar.

  “Trinity County’s sending us about thirty volunteers this morning,” Walt says as he retrieves a large folded map and spreads it out on the picnic table. “We’re getting close to the county line with Trinity, so it makes sense to bring them in. Besides, we can use all the help we can get.”

  He circles an area on the map using his index finger. “SAR did a thorough job on this area yesterday and Ross thinks we should head north from where they left off.”

  Jimmy nods and takes his turn at the map. “We covered a lot of ground in this section,” he says, circling an area northwest of the SAR grid. “The cell tower analysis from the phone company only approximated ranges, and so far we’ve
been searching at the heart of that area with no luck. I think Steps and I are going to try something different today.”

  That’s news to me.

  “Like what?” Walt asks.

  Running his finger along a line on the map that juts out from Platina in a northeasterly direction, he says, “I think we’ll load the ATVs up and truck them along Platina Road for eight or ten miles.” He looks closely at the map. “Maybe to this Bully Choop Road. That’ll take us into some pretty remote areas; we have to stop thinking like cops and think like Zell. He would have wanted to be as remote as possible, but still have access to passable roads.”

  Sweeping his hand over the map, Jimmy says pointedly, “If we grid-search every square mile within range of any cell tower that bounced his calls, we’ll be out here for a week, maybe more. If Susan’s still alive, she doesn’t have a week. She probably only has what food and water Zell gave her and he would have controlled that in order to control her.”

  I know how Jimmy thinks.

  I know that he’s not so much trying to convince Walt and the others that have started to gather around the table, he’s trying to convince himself. His instincts are right, of course; they usually are. We’ve done enough of these types of searches that we’ve become experts on serial killer behavior. We may not be profilers, but we know how they dispose of their victims, how they hide themselves in plain sight, and how they keep their victims either very close or far away. If Zell was in these hills, it was for one reason and one reason only.

  “Steps and I will follow Bully Choop to the extreme northern end of our search grid and then we’ll work our way south from there. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Walt nods. “Good. That’s a good plan. We’ll start where we left off yesterday and maybe we’ll all meet someplace in the middle.” He tips his head toward the Icom on Jimmy’s belt. “How’s the battery in your radio?”

  “Still full. Barely used it yesterday.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s hope today is different.”

  * * *

  Bully Choop Road proves to be less of a road and more of a dirt byway, which is encouraging because it’s the type of road Zell would have chosen. We follow it for the better part of two miles before parking the truck and off-loading the Kawasakis. I have no trouble starting the Brute Force this morning, having mastered every element of the ATV during our lengthy acquaintance yesterday.

  We ride for an hour, then two.

  We keep the speed between ten and twenty miles an hour: fast enough to cover lots of ground; slow enough to see all the shine. I can already feel a dull ache festering behind my eyes, a harbinger of the headache to come. When we reach a straightaway, I take my hands off the steering wheel and root around in my jacket pocket for the ibuprofen bottle. I can’t reach my CamelBak, so I swallow the three pills without benefit of water.

  They go down hard.

  The terrain is little different from what we saw yesterday: naked, shrubby hillside transitioning to pockets of forest, then back to naked hillside. The forests aren’t as dense as those farther to the north, for which I’m thankful. They’re also dispersed and small enough so that when we ride through, we’re usually out the other side before my phobia starts to kick in.

  As the trees and rocks flicker by, Jimmy and I banter back and forth over the headsets, small talk to keep our spirits up while time and futile miles slowly pull us down into despair. We talk about my book collection and Ellis’s hat collection and Jane and little Pete. We talk about the upcoming kitchen remodel and our mutual lack of confidence that we can pull it off without destroying half the house.

  We talk about Jimmy’s mom.

  She died when he was five. It’s part of the reason he’s so interested in the afterlife. Not that we all don’t wonder what comes after, but when you lose someone close to you at such a young age, that question steps forward from the shadows and raises its voice. You can never put it back in the shadows after such a loss. It begs to be answered.

  I know there’s something after.

  I’ve seen it.

  I just don’t know what it is.

  * * *

  We’re halfway through hour three when I see it: Sad Face—Zell—spilled upon the side of the road in front of me in brilliant amaranth and rust … but there’s something wrong.

  “I’ve got him!” I bark to Jimmy as I come to a sudden, rattling stop and practically leap off the quad. “He parked a vehicle right here, and then walked off toward the northeast. His footsteps are staggered, heavy, like he was carrying something.”

  “Or someone.”

  “Exactly.” I stare at the shine more intently, studying it, dissecting it, filtering it like I’ve learned to do so well over the years. “This isn’t right, Jimmy.”

  “How so?”

  “These tracks are old, at least a year—maybe two or three … and he was here on at least two separate occasions.” I walk along the edge of the road twenty feet and stop. “The first time, he parked here, exited the driver’s seat, walked to the back of the vehicle. After that he walked off and headed down that trail.” I point to a lightly used animal trail that starts about ten feet off the road.

  I make my way back to Jimmy.

  “The second time, he parked right here. Same routine: out the driver’s door, around to the back of the vehicle—”

  I freeze. Dear God!

  It’s on the ground before me, just a brief touch no larger than a silver dollar. Maybe it was a heel, or an elbow. Maybe it was the palm of her hand as she tried to get away. Dead color, without pulse, faded by time. It’s starting to make sense, and I shiver at the realization.

  “Come on.” I don’t wait to see if Jimmy’s following, I just charge after the shine. Sad Face’s trail stays to the animal path a short distance and then turns to the west. It doesn’t take long. A hundred and fifty feet into the scrub I find them, scars upon the ground, his shine all around them. The dirt covering the two graves has settled over the years, blending back into the surroundings by some degree, but the shine outlines them as clearly as yellow police tape around a crime scene.

  Two graves, two distinct shines. I recognize them both.

  I see where he laid their bodies while he dug the grave. One of them was still alive; she tried to get away. Bound hand and foot, she moved by the tiniest of increments as he toiled with the shovel. It took ten incremental moves to gain the first foot, less for the second foot, and soon she was ten feet from the monster at his hole. Distance gave her courage and she began in earnest, pulling with her bound wrists and pushing with her bound feet.

  She found a rock.

  It’s an old piece of granite the size of a football, but with a large chunk broken off; it leaves an edge, not sharp but enough.

  Enough.

  I kneel beside it, run my fingertips over the jagged, broken edge where she tried to sever her bindings; whether she succeeded or not, I can’t tell. The stain of old blood is on the rock where she cut herself in the frenzy of sawing and scraping, but there’s no trail leading away from the rock, no shine running away from the hole and the monster, running away to a future.

  This is where he came for her.

  I see it all in my head as if it were played out before me.

  “Command—” I jump at the sound.

  “—this is FBI, over.” Jimmy waits for a response. I don’t hear it because he’s using the earpiece, but Jimmy continues. “We have a crime scene at…” He checks his GPS unit for the coordinates and rattles off the latitude and longitude. “Looks like two shallow graves. One has been disturbed by predators, exposing a number of bones. They appear human.” Silence for a moment, then, “Negative, these appear to be earlier victims.” There’s another pause, this time longer. “Copy that. We’ll be standing by. FBI out.”

  Five minutes later, Jimmy’s earpiece startles him. “Go ahead,” he replies, fumbling with the radio. As Jimmy listens, he shakes his head slowly. “Copy that.” There’s a pause, then, “I don�
�t know. I’m not sure of anything right now.” Pause. “Yeah, I’ll tell him.”

  “What? Tell me what?” I blurt as Jimmy lowers the radio.

  “That was Walt. He just heard from the hospital. Zell’s dead.” Jimmy looks at the graves, then at the sky, then at the great nothing on the far horizon.

  “He wasn’t going to help us anyway,” I say flatly.

  “Still…” Jimmy leaves the word dangling.

  “We’ll find Susan,” I insist, trying to sound confident. “We’ll find her alive. And we’ll find Lauren and bring her home. There’s nothing else to be done about it. This is the way it is.”

  A half hour passes slowly before the first vehicle arrives. More follow. Crime-scene tape goes up around the graves, photos are taken, measurements, everything. A trail of small red flags marks the path from the dirt road to the crime scene. It’s another hour before Dr. Noble Wallace and his understudy show up.

  “You caught me just as I was about to tee off,” Dr. Wallace says as he exits the coroner’s van and shakes hands all around. He and Walt talk golf for a minute, which I find odd … and not just because we’re at a crime scene. I’ve only ever played miniature golf, which probably doesn’t count. Still, from my limited experience, Nob looks every bit the golfer, and I can easily picture him on the green driving a ball down range.

  Walt’s a different story.

  The sheriff is a big man—which is great if you’re a cop, but I’m not sure how that might translate to golf. From their brief conversation, however, I get the impression he’s not half bad, but then they switch gears and we’re back to bodies and shallow graves.

  “I’m afraid this is going to be a slow process,” Nob tells Walt. “We’ll be digging them out one trowelful at a time, cleaning the bone with the tip of a brush as we go. Every scoop of dirt will get sifted for evidence. Anything that was lodged in the body is now part of the soil, so that’s the only way we’ll find a bullet fragment or the broken edge of a knife—evidence that points to manner of death.