by Spencer Kope
Jimmy will tell me later that it’s not my fault, that we did everything we could to find her, to unmask Sad Face, but in the end his words are but wind and I’m left with the image of a once-beautiful girl on one side of my brain and a rotting corpse on the other.
My failure.
I feel hands on both sides of me now, Jimmy to my right and a giant to my left. It’s Walt. He has tears in his eyes. They lay me down on the cool dirt in the shade of the copse of trees and I rip the surgical mask from my face and toss it aside. Jimmy forces me to drink some water; his forehead is hard and wrinkled, his eyes narrow with concern. He pats me on the chest and forces a bitter smile.
“Susan’s alive,” Jimmy says. “You saved her. She’s going home to her little girl because of you, Steps.”
I’m shaking my head and trying not to lose it again. “Lauren…”
“I know.” He puts his hand on my shoulder, my brother in so many ways.
He doesn’t say it; he doesn’t have to. I hear the words in my head, the motto, the mantra.
We save the ones we can.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
July 9, 5:27 P.M.
The burgundy Chrysler 300 sits where I last saw it, still impeccably clean, still loved, still waiting. The well-groomed car is the embodiment of the Brouwers’ sad vigil for a daughter too long missing.
I stand on the porch, Lauren’s locket tight in my right hand, working up the courage to ring the doorbell. I can feel Jimmy watching me from inside Walt’s Expedition. I insisted that they let me do this myself; I don’t know why. It all seems so hard at this moment and I’m weary; weary beyond measure, beyond sleep.
My soul is weary.
I’m just about to turn and walk back to the SUV and let Walt and Jimmy handle this when I hear the doorknob turn, and then Alice Brouwer is standing before me. She sees the subtle streaks on my face and the watery glisten in my eyes and she knows.
She knows.
“I’m sorry.” It’s all I can manage to say as I gently place the locket in her hand. Her fingers hesitate to take it at first, but then she holds it tight. She collapses, broken, in my arms, sobbing, weeping; she wails a dreadful dirge that shatters the last of me into tiny pieces. I cradle her. I cry with her.
I don’t know how long we stand there. There’s no clock in purgatory. Eventually Walt and Jimmy join us and help guide Alice to the living room. Her pastor was notified before our arrival and is soon at her side. An assistant pastor is on his way to Redding to retrieve Martin Brouwer from work and drive him home.
Minutes turn to hours and word spreads among neighbors and family. They begin to arrive in ones and twos until the house is full to bursting. I’m on the porch, standing by myself at the rail and looking out over the California hills, when a young man arrives. He has Lauren’s eyes and cheeks, and I immediately recognize him from her Facebook page—Larry, her brother. Beside him is another young man who can barely walk, his face tortured, his mind in a surreal fog. It’s Lauren’s fiancé.
Larry pauses on the porch and looks at me a moment. Letting go of the fiancé’s arm, he walks over slowly and extends his hand. We’ve never met and I wonder how he knows me, but then I remember I’m wearing a Windbreaker with FBI in large letters on the back.
I take his hand; we shake. He puts his other hand over mine and just holds it for a moment. No words are said; there are no words for such a meeting. We just tip our heads at each other and share a moment of grief, an unspoken thank-you, an unspoken sorry. Then he’s gone, guiding the fiancé into the house to face the sorrow within.
So much lost.
So much broken.
After a while, Jimmy and Walt join me on the porch and we make our way slowly back to the Expedition, Jimmy to my left, Walt to my right. Walt still has two crime scenes to process and three bodies to recover. For Jimmy, it’s back home to Jane and little Pete. They’ll wonder why he holds them so tight, as they’ve wondered a time or two before.
And when Jimmy kisses little Pete on the cheek, he’ll say, “Stop, Dad. You’re goofy. Boys don’t kiss boys.” He’s said that a time or two before as well.
For me, it’s back to Big Perch and Jens. It’s back to Mom, Dad, Diane, an eccentric nudist neighbor who has too many hats, a pint-sized rodent who pees in my shoes, and … maybe … Heather?
Right now it’s hard to hope for good things.
As I open the Expedition door, I hear a shout from behind and turn to see Alice racing from the porch. She slows a few feet in front of me and then embraces me hard. Her eyes are dry now, empty of tears. She stands on her tiptoes and whispers in my ear, “Thank you,” and then holds me again. Stepping back, she places a piece of paper in my hand, and then says to the three of us, “Thank you for finding my girl, for bringing her home. You don’t know what it means.”
She turns without another word and walks back to the house. Larry’s waiting on the porch and slides his arm around her as they come together and make their way back inside.
I feel it between my fingers—the paper. It has a silky smooth feel to it and I suddenly realize what it is, though I haven’t yet looked.
I don’t want to look, I tell myself. I’ll just put it in my pocket, and later, much later, when the wound is not so fresh or so deep, then I’ll look. But my eyes betray me, my hand defies me. I find myself staring at the four-by-six photo, and I can’t look away.
Lauren smiles at me from a happier time not too long ago.
It’s a good smile.
July 9, 9:41 P.M.
As we descend to Bellingham International Airport, a bloom of red and silver fireworks erupts over the bay, expanding to a large moon of sparkling light before dissolving into a storm of falling stars. Close on its heels, a second bloom of blue and gold lights the sky in a flash. Like the first, it quickly dissolves, and the night sky reverts to a dusky blue trailing into black. Independence Day has come and gone, but the revelers remain.
Marty’s voice booms over the PA system, loud and as ridiculously obnoxious as he can make it. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Bellingham International Airport. The temperature is a comfortable sixty-two degrees, with clear skies and a light breeze from the south. Thank you for flying Les and Marty Air, and remember that gratuities are always welcome.” Marty peeks around from his seat in the cockpit and gives us a big grin.
I know how he feels; it’s always good to be home.
Hangar 7 is open and waiting as Les wheels the plane along the tarmac and expertly maneuvers it through the wide, though still tight opening. If the hangar is open, that means Diane is still here. I know that Jimmy called earlier to update her on the case, to tell her of Susan’s rescue. I’ve noticed over the years that she waits for us on occasion. At first I thought it was because she didn’t have anything better to do, or that she’s just that married to her job.
I realized about three years ago that that wasn’t the case.
She only lingers after the tough cases, the ones that take a while to solve and rip your guts out along the way. After those, Diane is always waiting, sometimes with cold beer, sometimes with Chinese takeout, sometimes with her homemade white-chocolate-and-macadamia cookies.
Diane waits because she needs to know her boys are okay. She, better than anyone, knows the dark path we sometimes walk. She’s seen the damage it does, despite our efforts to hide it.
As I step through the Gulfstream’s forward door and make my way down the ladder, two figures wait at the side of the hangar, silhouetted by the lights behind them. One is clearly Diane by her shape and posture, the other … is familiar.
Her face comes into the light as I move away from the plane, and now I can see her warm eyes, her high cheeks, her graceful hands. She steps toward me, trying to read my face, a gentle smile on her lips.
“Heather? I thought you were still in D.C.”
“I finished yesterday,” she says. “I just happened to be talking to Diane earlier and she mentioned that you were flying back tonight, so…”
> I can’t help but chuckle. “You just happened to be talking to Diane, huh?”
A smile spreads across her face, erupting into dimples at each end as her mischievous eyes beam with delight.
“Well, it’s good to see you,” I say. “Really good.”
She moves close as I set my bag down and then her arms are around me and her head is pressed to my chest. Her hair smells of strawberry and I melt into it, forgetting Zell, forgetting Lauren, forgetting everything and taking each second as it comes.
EPILOGUE
August 13, 3:17 P.M.
Her name was Ally McCully.
She was born in Fairmont, West Virginia. Ally went to high school in Fairmont, fell in love in Fairmont, worked at a hair salon, performed with the local theater guild, and took night classes at the community college in Fairmont.
Ally McCully died in Fairmont.
An urgent early-morning call from the Criminal Justice Information Services complex in nearby Clarksburg, West Virginia, brought us to this dark and gloomy patch of earth. It’s one of the most dismal forests I’ve set eyes on.
The trees are twisted and contorted, limbs bent as if they have elbows, leaves plentiful, though starved and ugly. The canopy overhead is thick with them, blocking out the sun and blanketing the woods in constant twilight. Even the underbrush is thick, armored in spikes and thorns, barring passage.
This is the dark forest of fairy tales, a haunted wood out of fantasy … only worse, for here is the domain of real monsters.
The prints are before me, behind me, around me; their essence a hard ebony, barely illuminated by a fiendish, slow-pulsing glow. The texture is that of congealed blood, the stuff of nightmares. It corrupts her perfect essence of lilac.
As I stare down at the posed body of Ally McCully, an eleven-year-old crime scene—my first crime scene—suddenly shrouds my vision, and it’s as if I’m staring down at the body of Jess Parker all over again.
In the wild hills of West Virginia, the beast has risen.
My nemesis has left his calling card upon the forest floor.
And as my eyes read the story before me, I can’t help but wonder: Is this Chapter Two, or Chapter Twenty-two? Is this murder two, or murder twenty-two? I choke on the fear that it could be the latter, and shiver as I take in the shine of his hands upon her, every part of her, but most heavily upon her throat, where he squeezed the life from her. Simmering ebony oozes about her neck as she lies upon the ground both beautiful and terrible, as if nailed to an invisible cross.
Welcome to hell.
The white rises in the knuckles of my rigid fists and I force myself to release.
I stumble and nearly fall as my mind simultaneously devours and gags upon the scene, every dark impression of it. I see what the others don’t. I see where he first placed her arms in a raised position before laying them perpendicular to the body pointing east and west. I see the lilac stains where her legs were likewise splayed before being pulled together pointing south.
I see Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man cast upon the ground in black and lilac.
All the elements are here, even the ring encapsulating the likeness; for the devil has walked in a near-perfect circle around the body, leaving a black trail in his wake.
Vomit comes easy and I feel better, but curse myself for looking the amateur.
My left hand begins to tremble, not from muscle spasm or chill but from something deeper in the bone. I shove it quickly into my pocket.
“What is it?” Jimmy asks furtively, pulling me away from the group.
I don’t answer.
“Talk to me, Steps.” His voice is urgent, distressed. Outwardly he’s composed, but I see the alarm on his face, hear it skulking behind his words. “I’ve never seen you get sick at a crime scene, and we’ve been to some bad ones.” Raising his hand toward my chin, he gasps, “Your face is as white as paper!”
I say but two words and he knows my meaning; two words that will set me upon a new obsession and change what we thought we knew; two words that may well destroy me before the end.
“It’s Leonardo.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SPENCER KOPE is the crime analyst for the sheriff’s office of Whatcom County, Washington, where he provides case support to detectives and deputies. Prior to that, he was an intelligence operations specialist with the Office of Naval Intelligence. He lives in Lynden, Washington. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
COLLECTING THE DEAD. Copyright © 2016 by Spencer Kope. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover photographs: silhouette of man © Mark Owen / Arcangel; smoke © Fiore / Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kope, Spencer, author.
Title: Collecting the dead / Spencer Kope.
Description: First edition.|New York: Minotaur Books, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016000053|ISBN 978-1-250-07287-0 (hardcover)|ISBN 978-1-4668-8483-0 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation—Fiction.|Serial murder investigation—Fiction.|Tracking and trailing—Fiction.|Psychic ability—Fiction.|BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural.|FICTION / Thrillers.|GSAFD: Suspense fiction.|Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3561.O63 C65 2016|DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000053
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First Edition: June 2016
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