Whispers of the Dead_A Special Tracking Unit Novel

by Spencer Kope

  Penny just waves the stuff away. “I don’t care. It’s just sitting in a box. Take what you need.”

  We finish inside and say our good-byes to Penny, who continues to sit in the recliner taking regular sips from the vodka bottle. We’re halfway out the door when her words reach us, listless and flat: “He’s dead, isn’t he?” They’re simple words from a beat-down woman, words from the bottom of an empty vodka bottle. “Otherwise he’d be back by now,” she says. “He’d be back.”

  She tips the bottle to her lips and then realizes it’s empty. Screwing the cap back on, she sets it on the end table and stares at it. “He wasn’t much, but he’s the only family I got left … far as I know.”

  There’s a dump truck of unpleasant things associated with the job that Jimmy and I do: dead bodies, blood, fecal matter, vomit, serial killers, dismemberment, and the media, to name only a few. Dealing with grieving relatives is the worst. It’s something you never get used to, and no words ever seem right.

  “I’m sorry.” The statement rumbles in my throat before falling onto the living room carpet, broken and inadequate.

  Penny just stares at her bottle as the door closes behind us.

  Some things can’t be fixed.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later we’re merging into traffic on Interstate 10 when Jimmy’s phone rings. It’s Detective Alvarado.

  “Hey, Tony, what’s up?” Jimmy listens and then his eyebrows lift and he gives me an encouraging look. “With both feet? You don’t say.” Moving the end of the phone away from his mouth, he says in a quiet voice, “They arrested Hector Ortiz last night, alive and kicking—literally,” then turns his attention back to Tony. “So if Hector’s still a ninety-eight-point-sixer, that just leaves what’s-his-face.… Yeah, Larry Wilson. I’m guessing he’s assumed room temperature somewhere—either that or he’s still in the same freezer that the feet were in.”

  Jimmy’s listening; he nods, and then nods again. “No, that’s great. How’d you track that down? Diane! What, she called you instead of us?” He listens and then chuckles. “No, she calls us stuff like that all the time.”

  There’s a long pause this time. With the road noise, I can’t even hear the static of Tony’s voice. “Yeah, of course,” Jimmy says. “We were planning on heading home in a couple hours, but another day won’t hurt.” He glances at me, but then looks away quickly. “Yeah, we’ll be in the air within the hour.… No, it’s not a problem. I’ll call when we arrive.”

  “El Paso,” I say, slowly nodding my head. He can tell I’m not happy.

  “Diane came up with some info on Larry Wilson. Tony wants to start looking for him tomorrow.” He gives me a sideways glance. “It’s just one day.”

  “It’s always just one day.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  River Belmont Hotel, El Paso—September 5, 5:37 P.M.

  The flight from Tucson is uneventful and familiar, and as Les taxis Betsy to her parking spot, the dusty hills of the Franklin Mountains swing into view out the port window looking west. They look like the low foothills out of every Western I’ve seen: brown, dry, and saw-toothed.

  Marty already has his heart set on the River Belmont Hotel, and though there’s no hard-and-fast rule that Jimmy and I have to stay at the same hotel as our pilot and copilot, Marty is intent on getting a promise out of Jimmy that we’ll stay there as well.

  Jimmy finally relents. “But I’m not getting in the hot tub,” he adds.

  Marty just chuckles and waves him away.

  We leave them to button Betsy down, and make our way to the lower level of the terminal, where we survey choices of rental car companies. Since this is Texas, we opt for Alamo and soon we’re pulling out of the parking lot in a silver Dodge Charger.

  It’s a step up from the usual.

  We barely have time to check in and dump our bags in our rooms before Tony calls and says he’s waiting in the parking lot. He and Jimmy think we need a working dinner to go over what we have on Larry Wilson before we try tracking him down tomorrow. Plus, Tony says he wants us to experience a real Texas-sized steak, and he seems to know just the place.

  We find him a few minutes later leaning against a black unmarked Ford Police Interceptor: a police utility vehicle based on the Ford Explorer. The rig is so new it practically glows in the late afternoon sun.

  He grins as we approach, and motions toward the PUV. “Just picked it up this afternoon; what do you think? Dark and mysterious—just like me, right?”

  “Nice,” I say, giving an approving nod.

  “Nice?” Tony replies indignantly. “Steps, this is a Police Interceptor. It’s a thing of beauty. I’ve got three hundred sixty-five horses under that hood—that’s one horse for every day of the year.” He chuckles at himself. “It’s got all-wheel drive and suspension specifically tuned for pursuit driving.” He steps back and spreads his arms wide. “It’s friggin’ awesome! Even the wheels and tires are built for pursuit.” Dropping his arms, he says, “We need to go chase someone.”

  Now it’s Jimmy’s turn to chuckle. “I’m game. Let’s go chase down some dinner.”

  “Not exactly what I had in mind,” Tony mutters.

  Jimmy rides shotgun and I slide into the rear passenger seat, where I find a manila envelope with Steps penned across the front in large letters. The envelope is at least a half inch thick, and when I spill its contents into my lap I find a small trove of printed police data. The top eleven pages contain a summary of Larry Wilson’s life for the last six years.

  The verbiage and layout of the summary leaves no doubt that Diane was the author.

  “Diane emailed that an hour ago,” Tony says, glancing over his shoulder. “I haven’t had time to read through it yet; figured we could do that over steak.”

  “Murder and steak,” I mutter as I leaf through the package. “What wine goes with that, I wonder?”

  Rather than go through the whole stack randomly, I decide to start with the summary and see where it takes me. I don’t make it past the first paragraph before words start slipping out of my mouth. Words like, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” and “Son of a bitch.”

  It seems there’s more to Larry Wilson than a dead neighbor woman.

  In fact, there’s a lot more.

  Jimmy and Tony are yapping back and forth in the front, completely oblivious to my mutterings, so I put them out of mind for the moment and devour the summary. When I finish, I rest the eleven crisp white pages on my lap and stare out the window as the street signs and cars zip past … then I read it again … and once more.

  I’m still reading it for the third time as we make our way into the steakhouse. When following someone, it’s not hard tracking them using your peripheral vision, that way you can read, or text, or dial a number and still make forward progress. The problem comes when paths cross. If you’re paying attention you’ll pick up on it and won’t lose your way. If you’re completely absorbed in what you’re doing, however, you may end up following the wrong person … which is how I end up sliding into a booth next to three perfect strangers.

  They’re only slightly amused.

  Making a hasty apology, I scan the restaurant and spot Jimmy and Tony at a booth next to the front window thirty feet away. They haven’t even noticed I’m missing; I don’t know whether to be insulted or relieved.

  Taking a seat next to Jimmy, I browse the menu and settle on a ten-ounce filet mignon and a baked potato that Tony assures me will be “bigger than a buffalo turd,” which must be a Texan phrase because he uses it twice.

  Jimmy orders a New York strip steak and Tony opts for the top sirloin. The two of them banter back and forth for a few minutes, but the report is resting on the table in front of me, creating a presence of its own. It’s a presence of unspoken whispers, of murder and mayhem; it drags their eyes repeatedly across the tablecloth and past the silverware, demanding attention.

  A silent guest with a sinister tale to tell.

  When the conver
sation finally lulls, the table grows small and uncomfortable. Jimmy gives me the nod. “What did Diane dig up?” he asks.

  Where do I start?

  Clearing my throat, I decide to start with the basics: the address where Chelsey Lane was killed, and Larry Wilson’s place just three doors down. Next, I identify Larry’s current residence: a dumpy apartment he shares with an ex-con named Fiz.

  There are no surprises in any of this. It’s all routine—expected.

  But I’m just getting started.

  When I drop the bombshell, it pulls Jimmy and Tony upright in their seats, like two old Marines in an epic stare-down, only now they’re staring at me. “Say that again,” Jimmy gasps.

  “There’s a second dead woman linked to Wilson,” I say. “Or at least she’s presumed dead, since her body was never found.”

  “Where?”

  “Iowa—six years ago. Little town called Larchwood, just southeast of Sioux Falls. The woman’s name was Corinne Winship. She was thirty-one. According to the report, Wilson had taken an interest in her after they met at a block party about a year after he moved to town. She went on one date with him and apparently found out everything she needed to know, because a month later she filed for an anti-harassment order.”

  “He was stalking her?” Jimmy says.

  “Yeah, in a big way,” I reply, “showing up at her work, at her home, even at her church on at least one occasion. At first she tried to be polite, asking him to stop, telling him she wasn’t interested, that sort of thing, but he wouldn’t let it go.

  “A week after the harassment order was served things started getting bad. First it was a flat tire on her car, then the word bitch was spray-painted on her garage door—and in both cases Corinne remembered seeing Larry Wilson standing on his porch a half block away with a cup of coffee in his hand, smiling at her reaction.”

  “I hate him already,” Tony growls.

  I nod my agreement. “Larchwood is too small for its own police department,” I continue, “so they contract with the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office for their police services—even then, Lyon County is only eleven or twelve thousand people, so the sheriff’s office isn’t that large. When a deputy showed up to investigate the vandalism and the possible harassment order violation, Wilson just denied everything and there was never any evidence to prove him a liar, though they did start patrolling the area a little more frequently. She even had some of the neighbors checking on her and keeping an eye out.”

  “But somehow no one saw anything when she went missing,” Jimmy says, finishing my thought word for word.

  “Yeah, not one of them,” I say. “Corrine just didn’t show up for work one morning. Her car was still in the driveway and there was no sign of a struggle in the house; she was just gone … and Larry was on his front porch with a cup of coffee in his hand.”

  “And they hauled him in, right?” Tony says, completely indignant. “The girl lived thirty-one years on this planet without a problem and after one date with this joker she’s gone? Please tell me they at least hauled him in.”

  “Oh, they hauled him in,” I say, “but he told a convincing tale and even passed a polygraph—though there were questions later raised about how it was administered.”

  “And he got away with it.”

  “And he got away with it,” I confirm. “Six months later he moved to Texas. Small town like Larchwood, I imagine the rumors spread pretty quickly and he probably didn’t have much of a choice in the move. He managed to stay out of trouble almost five years, and then Chelsey Lane came along. Three months after they met she was found at the bottom of her stairs with a fractured skull and some contusions that weren’t necessarily consistent with a fall.”

  “And he beat that one too,” Tony fumes. He shakes his head and looks long at Jimmy, then at me. “This foot-chopper guy—what do you call him? IBK? He did us a favor; you know that, don’t you?”

  “We don’t know yet that Larry Wilson is the victim,” I remind him.

  “Diane’s usually pretty intuitive when it comes to connecting the dots,” Jimmy insists, and though I tend to agree with his assessment, we’ll know when we get to his house tomorrow.

  Tapping his index finger next to the report, Jimmy asks, “How did Wilson meet Chelsey? She was a neighbor too, right?”

  “She was, but there was no block party this time. He just went over and introduced himself.”

  “So if he’s introducing himself, I’m guessing one of them was new to the neighborhood,” Jimmy observes. “Which one?”

  “She was,” Tony chimes in. “She moved to El Paso from Albuquerque a few months earlier.”

  Albuquerque?

  Why is that familiar?

  “We had a storm of media vans descend on the city after her body was found and during the trial that followed,” Tony continues. “Her aunt was a councilwoman on the Albuquerque City Council. It didn’t go over well when Wilson was acquitted.”

  “I can imagine,” Jimmy says. “Did Judge Ehrlich have anything to do with that?”

  “No more than usual.”

  We spend the next two hours picking at our steaks and digesting the minutiae of the case. When we finally pay the bill and leave a hefty tip, we have a better understanding of the monster that is Larry Wilson.

  * * *

  Albuquerque.

  There’s something significant about the city, the name, the word—it’s been eating at me all through dinner. It’s just a little after nine when we return to the River Belmont, and instead of wandering off to my own room, I follow Jimmy to his.

  Borrowing his laptop, I begin to sift through the IBK folder while he excuses himself to the balcony and makes a call home. I start with the Ehrlich report and skim the first dozen pages before realizing I can do a word search, which reveals … nothing.

  Next is the McAllister report, which is short and concise, so I skim through it in a couple minutes, double-checking all the involved parties for any link to Albuquerque, but, again, there’s nothing. Maybe it wasn’t something I read; maybe it was something someone said.

  The sense of relevance is too strong to let go.

  I keep searching.

  The Travis Duncan homicide report—all seven hundred and forty-three pages of it—is contained in a single, massive Word file. Opening the file with a swift double-click, I go to the word search function and type in Albuquerque.

  The return is immediate and definitive.

  I slump back in my chair and stare at the screen. Before me lies that single tidbit of information that’s been playing on the cusp of my memory.

  It’s the link between El Paso and Tucson.

  It’s everything and nothing.

  It’s nothing.

  And though both my instinct and my recollection have proven correct, there’s no sense of elation as I stare at the collection of words on the screen. They are words borne by murder.

  His name was Noah Gray.

  His mother, Melissa Gray, was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was a cheerleader in high school, came from a good family, and found the wrong boyfriend. Three years ago she dropped out of high school halfway through her senior year and moved to Tucson to get away from the abusive, drug-addled boyfriend who got her hooked on meth and heroin … and ended up with another boyfriend just as bad.

  Noah was born premature seven months later.

  Despite the drug issues, Melissa somehow managed to get custody … and so ended the life of Noah Gray. Travis Duncan was the instrument of that death, but he wasn’t the only guilty party. Born with the promise inherent in every new life, Noah found only death among the squalor and needles of a Tucson drug house.

  Most seasoned detectives will tell you they don’t believe in coincidence. For the most part, I agree, though I have had occasion to stumble upon more than one unusual coincidence that could have led an investigation astray. Still, when it comes to murder, the maxim is usually correct: there are no coincidences.

&nbs
p; Melissa Gray was from Albuquerque.

  Chelsey Lane was from Albuquerque.

  Both were victims: one directly, one indirectly. Both had friends and family in Albuquerque. Both tragedies would have been covered by the Albuquerque media.

  These are not coincidences.

  IBK is somehow linked to Albuquerque.

  It’s that simple.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  El Paso—September 6, 9:12 A.M.

  Today we hunt for shine: mocha-brown with wisps of lime-green and the texture of pumice stone spewed from a volcano. Whether the shine belongs to Larry Wilson or some yet-to-be-identified victim will be discerned by the end of the day.

  Before we leave the hotel I make two calls. The first is to Tom McAllister to bring him up to speed on Travis Duncan. He’s startled by the revelation, I can hear it in his voice, but he takes it well.

  He takes it well.

  What does that really mean?

  He takes it as well as anyone would upon hearing that the severed feet found on his living room floor belonged to a former client. He takes it as well as anyone would upon hearing that a killer has a particular interest in his living room.

  I suspect his wife may not take it quite as well. Tom thanks me, his voice genuine and sincere. He again extends an open invitation to me and Jimmy.

  I’d like to see the night sky the way he describes it.

  I’d like to see stars so thick it’s as if some astral giant poured out honey upon the blanket of night.

  I’d like to see the McAllisters again.

  We’ll just have to wait and see; Fate is a fickle travel agent.

  Next I call Diane and the office phone goes to the answering machine after three rings. I could call her on her cell, but it’s Saturday morning, and Diane’s the type who would drop everything and rush to the office. It’s bad enough that Jimmy and I spend our days in a haze of temporal confusion; there’s no need to drag Diane down with us.

  After the answering machine beeps, I lay out my first request: get hold of the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office and find out if Larry Wilson’s DNA was collected for the Corinne Winship case.