Whispers of the Dead_A Special Tracking Unit Novel

by Spencer Kope

  Diane chews while I wait. She chews and chews and chews, until I start to imagine that she’s the reincarnation of Horace Fletcher, the Great Masticator, who used to chew each mouthful a hundred times and attributed his health and long life to the practice.

  “Better?” I say when she finally swallows.

  “Mm-hmm,” she replies. Only Diane can make Mm-hmm sound sarcastic.

  “Was that the entire elephant, or just one of the legs?”

  “It was a blueberry-and-cream-cheese bear claw.”

  “It took you that long to chew a pastry?”

  “Do you want an update or not?”

  “Please.”

  I hear papers shuffle and the tapping of a keyboard. “Isaiah Webster,” she begins, “is not a likely serial killer. You two better be sure of this before you proceed. The guy has a top-secret security clearance with a special background investigation and higher access than I have.”

  “Top-secret clearance? Who’s he work for?”

  “He was a cybersecurity expert at the Cyber Engineering Research Laboratory. I’ve never heard of it, but it’s part of Sandia National Laboratories.”

  “You said he was?”

  “Yeah, he worked there for a couple years, plus another nine years for Sandia National Lab before that. He was friends with everyone he worked with, and even went on vacations with some of them from time to time. Then, in February, he just up and quits. He hands in his resignation, empties his desk, and no one has seen him since. Bottom line: they don’t know where he is.”

  “Is he still in Albuquerque, at least?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m working on it. That address you got from Tony is iffy, though, so before you go storming in there with SWAT, I suggest a knock-and-talk.”

  “Iffy in what way?”

  “It may have been his boyhood home. I found records linking him to that address all the way back to his college years. It’s now owned by a Lisa Webster, but Isaiah used to have an ownership stake. He granted a quitclaim deed about seven years ago and gave it all to Lisa.”

  “Ex-wife, maybe?”

  “I don’t think so. It looks like they inherited the house jointly from Martha Webster in 2006. I think she must have been their mother, which makes Lisa Isaiah’s sister. Also, the county assessor shows that Isaiah owned a home not far from his work, only it went up for sale in mid-February and sold in April, which puts us back where we started.”

  “What’s his boss’s name at the cyber lab—whatever you called it?”

  “Ross Feldman, and it’s the Cyber Engineering Research Laboratory. He’s expecting you at four.”

  “They’re open on a Saturday?”

  “He said they operate twenty-four/seven. Try not to upset them. From what I hear, these guys can hack your bank account, quadruple your mortgage, and wipe out your retirement account just for fun.”

  “I’ll try not to insult them.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Sandia Science & Technology Park—September 13, 3:47 P.M.

  The front of the building stretches the length of the sidewalk, with the main entrance off-center and with a slightly higher roofline that jumps up in two steps. The left and right wings are of earthen red, with the entrance a darker blue, flanked by tan. Trees line the street on both sides, and an abundance of indigenous bushes and plants populate the immaculate landscaping. To the northeast, a low desert mountain rises from the horizon.

  All around the facility, on the sidewalks, in the parking lot, and in the street, is the presence of ice-blue shine, IBK’s shine, folded and woven through other shine and stacked in impossibly thin layers.

  It is the accumulated sum from years of passage.

  Things aren’t looking good for Isaiah.

  We park on the side of the building and make our way along the sidewalk to the entrance, which has CERL in large letters overhead, and CYBER ENGINEERING RESEARCH LABORATORY in bold, raised letters underneath.

  Jimmy badges the kid at the front window. A call is made, and a minute later we’re being escorted down a maze of halls, right, then left, then right again, until our guide stops at an office door and leans his head inside. “Yo, Ross, your visitors are here.”

  I learned a long time ago not to stereotype jobs to specific types of people. I say I learned this; I didn’t, however, say that I properly embraced this knowledge. Ross Feldman is a good example of why stereotyping doesn’t work.

  Generally speaking, those who work in the computer sciences readily refer to themselves as geeks; they’re actually proud of the label. It wasn’t long ago that the term implied pocket protectors, thick glasses, mismatched clothing, and repressed social skills.

  Things have changed.

  These days, computer repair companies even use “geek” in their name to stress their level of competence. Diane’s a computer geek, my brother Jens is a computer geek, Dex is a computer geek.

  Ross Feldman doesn’t look like a computer geek.

  He’s a fisherman, or a grounded, alcoholic crop duster.

  Maybe he’s just a well-groomed vagabond.

  He’s at least six-two, and two hundred and fifty pounds. His brown hair reminds me a bit of that famous Einstein poster, the one that looks like the mega-genius just crawled out of bed after a rough night with some tasty equations.

  “Hi, I’m Ross,” the big guy says, coming around the desk and thrusting a hand at us. His voice is higher-pitched than I would have imagined. It doesn’t seem to fit his body.

  “Special Agent James Donovan,” my partner says. “This is Operations Specialist Magnus Craig.” I take his hand and give it the obligatory two pumps. “We need to find Isaiah Webster,” Jimmy continues, not wasting any time. “I know he doesn’t work here anymore, but we were hoping you could tell us where he might be.”

  “I wish I knew,” Ross replies earnestly. “Truth is, he left in such a hurry it caught us all by surprise.”

  The tech manager’s office is elevated above the others, and the back and side walls are all glass, giving him a clear view of the workstations and employees he supervises. He waves his arm past the field of glass. “Most of us here are more than just coworkers; we’re like family; that includes Isaiah. Frankly, we’ve been worried about him.”

  “When was the last time you heard from him?”

  “July. Every year we all get together for the Fourth, kind of a blowout celebration, you know? I pestered Lisa—that’s his sister—until Isaiah finally returned my call.”

  “Did he say where he was or what he was doing?”

  “No. It was an odd conversation, lots of awkward silence, like we hadn’t been the closest of friends for the last eleven years.” He shakes his head. “I talked to Lisa afterwards and she just started crying. She did tell me that he’s living somewhere near Deming, New Mexico, and doing work as an independent contractor—mostly SQL programming and website development, which is like taking a skilled heavy equipment operator out of his excavator and handing him a shovel.”

  “So he’s good at what he does?”

  “One of the best,” Ross replies. “But he’s that way about everything. You know the type: they get interested in something and so they read up on the subject and practice until they’ve perfected every aspect. That’s Isaiah. After Tracy’s accident, he got heavily into prosthetics, mostly experimenting with new designs using CAD.”

  “Accident?” Jimmy says.

  “Who’s Tracy?” I ask.

  Ross looks from Jimmy to me and then back to Jimmy. “Tracy’s accident … that’s his wife—was his wife,” he quickly corrects. “Sorry, I thought you knew. It was in his last clearance review.”

  “We haven’t seen any of his clearance paperwork,” I say.

  Ross looks confused. “I thought you were here to read him out of his special projects and close out his clearance.”

  “No,” Jimmy says. “We’re here on a different matter.”

  “Which is?”

  Jimmy shakes his
head. “Sorry. Need-to-know.” He gives Ross a moment, and then continues. “Can you tell us about the accident?”

  The supervisor studies us, unsure of what to make of our presence, but after a moment his face softens. “Yeah, sure,” he says, “why not?” He motions us to a pair of chairs on the other side of his desk.

  Returning to his own seat, he swivels to face us. “Most of those working here knew each other before the Cyber Engineering Research Lab was established. Isaiah and I worked together for Sandia National Labs for about eleven years. Same with Scott and Hoover.” He points to a large shared cubicle off to the right.

  “Others, like Oscar and Pip, joined us later.” He pauses, as if a deep pain were slowly working its way up from his stomach, only to settle in his chest, pressing and gripping. “It was about nine years ago. Isaiah was working late—we all were. I don’t even remember why. Seems there was always something. Anyway, Tracy made up some sandwiches and brownies and dropped them off for us around nine.

  “About twenty-five minutes later Isaiah got a call. He was panicked when he got off the phone; his face was white, his hands were trembling. He told us that some drunk driver in a pickup truck crossed the centerline and hit Tracy’s car head-on. It’s not even the cops or paramedics that called, but Isaiah’s sister. Lisa’s an emergency room nurse at the hospital, and one of the responding paramedics recognized Tracy’s name and gave her a call.

  “Well, Isaiah was in no state to drive, so Scott and Pip and I loaded him into my car and started for the hospital, only it turns out she wasn’t at the hospital yet. We came upon the crash a few miles away. We could hear her screaming as soon as we got out of the car. Her legs”—he motions toward his own legs—“were pinned under the dash. The force of the collision was so strong that the engine was pushed partway into the passenger compartment, crushing her feet, and, and…”

  Ross falls quiet for a long moment; when he looks up, his eyes are wet glass. “They had to amputate both her feet—right there in front of us.”

  The words land like a slap to the face.

  They had to amputate both her feet.

  Jimmy and I exchange a piercing look.

  “They were mangled and crushed beyond saving,” Ross continues, “and it was the only way to get her out of the car. If they were going to save her, they needed to get her to the hospital.” He dabs at the corner of his eye, wiping away the memory. “Tracy was in and out of surgery for a month. In addition to losing both feet and facing a future with prosthetics, she had seven broken bones, and her face was disfigured and heavily scarred when the airbag deployed incorrectly—some factory glitch.”

  Tears are openly streaming down Ross’s face, but he continues. “Even after the wounds healed, she was in constant pain; doctors couldn’t figure out why. In the end, it was all too much for her. Eight months after the accident, she killed herself.”

  He pulls a tissue from the box in his second drawer and wipes his face.

  “I’m sorry,” Jimmy says in a quiet voice.

  Ross nods and stares at his desk, composing himself.

  “Do you believe in soul mates?” he eventually asks. “My wife does. She’s pretty adamant that we each have a single soul mate and that fate or God or just circumstance will always allow the paths of soul mates to cross; giving them the opportunity to meet.”

  He wipes at his eyes again, and then chuckles. “She gets so mad at me when I suggest that if I hadn’t moved to Albuquerque twenty years ago—when our paths crossed—that I would have met a different soul mate back home in Sacramento.” He forces a smile. “I have a little fun with her now and then; see if I can get her spun up.”

  He looks at me, then at Jimmy, and then brushes the words from the room with a wave of his hand. “My point is that with Isaiah and Tracy you could believe the idea of soul mates.” His demeanor shifts and I notice he’s staring at a small crystal cat resting at the corner of his desk.

  “After … he was never the same without Tracy. We tried getting him out and involved—all of us.” He waves a hand to encompass the entire office and the dozen or so employees at their various workstations. “We managed to get him out on a few unofficial double dates, stuff like that, but nothing made a difference. It was the same Isaiah, but the spark was gone.”

  Ross shifts forward in his seat and lowers his voice. “It’s like he went cold inside. It didn’t happen all at once, but over years. Like his emotions—love, hate, fear, sympathy, all of them—were a fire slowly dying, if that makes sense.”

  It does make sense; perfect sense, I think.

  How else could he have done the things he’s done, carve up humans like a butcher takes to a cow? He had to kill off his soul first; empty his emotions and turn himself into a sociopath.

  “What happened in February?” Jimmy asks. “What set him off?”

  “Bill Blevins, that’s what happened,” Ross practically spits.

  “Bill Blevins?”

  “The drunkard who hit Tracy.” The words force themselves through a cage of teeth. “One day Isaiah storms in absolutely furious; I mean, it was scary. I’ve never seen him like that. We only got bits and pieces out of him before he ups and leaves for the day, but we found out that afternoon that Blevins was in another drunken accident. This time he killed an eight-year-old boy who was crossing the road at a marked intersection with his mother. The mom barely survived—and then she probably wished she hadn’t.

  “Next day, Isaiah came back to work like nothing happened. We tried talking to him about it, but he refused to discuss it. He was completely different from the day before, like a switch had been flipped. There was no emotion in his words, and his eyes—you know how they say that a shark has dead eyes? Well, that’s what I thought of when I made eye contact with Isaiah that morning.”

  “How soon after did he quit?” I ask.

  “About two weeks later. Blevins had a bail-reduction hearing a week after the accident, and got his bail dropped from a million to a hundred thousand, which he was somehow able to raise. When Isaiah heard about it he didn’t even react, he just nodded, like he expected it.”

  Ross shrugs. “Maybe he knew. Suppose it doesn’t matter now, either way. The bail hearing was on a Friday, and it was the very next Friday that Isaiah came into my office and handed me his prox badge. I tried talking him out of it, but he seemed set on whatever course he was on.”

  As he says these final words, Ross’s face twinges, suddenly fearful. He looks at Jimmy and then at me with a certain foreboding in his eyes. “I don’t suppose you can tell me why the FBI is interested in Isaiah?”

  Jimmy hesitates.

  “He sounds like a good man,” I say.

  “He is. One of the best.”

  I nod and give him a reassuring smile. Then something occurs to me. “Did he ever live in Baton Rouge?”

  Ross seems startled. “Yeah, right after he and Tracy got married—before I even met them. He wrote code for a small software company right out of college; it was only for a year or so, then he and Tracy moved back to Albuquerque.”

  “Any particular reason they moved back?”

  “I don’t remember them ever saying, but I suspect they probably missed the place. Isaiah didn’t have any trouble getting hired on by the labs. In fact, I was on his oral board, and I liked him right away. He was smart beyond measure, and that’s saying something in this line of work. As for Tracy, she ended up working for the Bernalillo County Library System. She worked part-time at a library in Baton Rouge, and just loved being around books.”

  “The library in Baton Rouge,” I ask, “was it by a swamp?”

  “Oh, I don’t recall,” Ross says.

  Jimmy has a few more questions, and when we’re sure there’s nothing else Ross can add, he escorts us to the entrance and we shake hands all the way around.

  “Talk to Lisa,” he says adamantly. “She and Isaiah have always been close. If anyone knows where he is, it’ll be her.”

  When we reach
the door, Ross calls after us: “Agents!” His tone is sharp, but you can hear the pinpricks of pain ebbing back into his voice. When we turn, he says just three words: “He needs help.” Without waiting for a response, Ross Feldman enters the door behind him and disappears into the heart of the high-security facility.

  * * *

  We don’t reach the sidewalk before Jimmy has Diane on the phone. “Yeah, Blevins,” he repeats. “B-L-E-V-I-N-S; first of William. He would have been arrested for vehicular homicide earlier this year, but the incident I’m interested in is a vehicular assault about nine years ago.” He listens a moment. “Yes, Albuquerque. Both of them. At the very least I need a current address for Blevins. Do your magic.”

  As he’s about to hang up, another thought comes to him. “Diane, find out who his attorney was in the vehicular assault.… Right.… No, that’ll be perfect.”

  “Smart,” I say as he slides the phone into his pocket.

  “What’s smart?”

  “Asking about the attorney,” I reply. “Isaiah blames them almost as much as the suspects. Maybe he’ll get tired of just sending gift boxes.”

  Jimmy’s staring at me with an odd expression.

  “What?” I say defensively—he can be unnerving sometimes.

  “You called him Isaiah, not IBK.”

  “It doesn’t feel right anymore.” My words are quiet, reserved. “Main Vein, Proctor, Sad Face, the others; they were monsters; they didn’t deserve the dignity of their real names. Isaiah’s not like them.”

  “Have you forgotten what he did to his victims?”

  “No, I remember, but people break. What would you or I do if something happened to Heather, Jane, or Pete?” This seems to knock him back a step, and he doesn’t say anything until we’re both inside the car and buckled up.

  “I wouldn’t end up like Isaiah,” he finally says.

  I look him straight in the eye. “Are you sure?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Nob Hill, Albuquerque—September 13, 5:32 P.M.

  Isaiah Webster wasn’t always a serial killer.

  Once, not long ago, he was a husband, a son, a brother. He was a successful and skilled cybersecurity expert with a security clearance reserved for only the most trusted, or perhaps just the least corruptible.