Dead Investigation

by Charlie Price

  “Are you.” Again and again … part of a longer sentence, but the rest was blurred. His stomach rolled remembering the first time he’d listened closely to the murdered cheerleader. He thought she kept repeating “hit me.” Later, when they’d actually talked, Murray realized it was “hid me.” Right now he thought the reedy voice could feel him, was saying something directed to him. “Who are you?” Or “What are you doing?” Or “Are you going to help?” Too many possibilities to make sense of it. Another girl, kidnapped and killed? That was the last thing in the world Murray wanted to find. The idea practically made him sick.

  The voice could connect. Knew Murray was out here. Now what was he supposed to do? He couldn’t just walk away.

  But he did.

  * * *

  Murray returned to the shed, lay down, couldn’t sleep. Sat up. The voice wasn’t talking to him. Not really. The voice and Murray weren’t connected. It was just talking. Like the other voices, but higher. Murray pictured a wagon train ambush. A long time ago. Several people killed. Women and children, too. That explained it. The burials had been forgotten, lost, in an ancient section that was now slightly outside the cemetery boundary. Nothing Murray could or should do about that.

  What a relief! Gave him some energy. Time to do something. Visit someone. Maybe Blessed. Hadn’t seen her in a while. No need to mention the other voices. She wouldn’t be interested in stuff like that.

  * * *

  The following morning Murray went back to the library and headed for the newspaper section until he remembered the computer lab. Not having one of the things himself, he often forgot how useful they could be.

  The library had just opened and three PCs were available. As Murray got to the check-out counter he remembered he’d left his card when he rushed out after his last visit. Asked and the librarian’s assistant retrieved it. Murray chose the PC at the end of the table as far as he could get from everyone else, and searched Riverton.com.

  Under kidnapping he found several recent articles, but no reported attempt had ended in a missing body or murder. The stories were for the past month, and he couldn’t find the paper’s archives for earlier crime news. He’d have to check the reference section for those. Under recent murders, he read that a wife killed her abusive husband, one man killed another in a bar fight, a Corning man was shot for no apparent reason while driving his car, but he didn’t find any mention of multiple or serial murders.

  He accessed a tab called “Database” and examined local crime statistics, found it only had the numbers of crimes, not the locations. He spotted an article on serial killers in Northern California but the cases described didn’t have missing bodies in or around Riverton.

  Looking at articles on unsolved murders, Murray discovered, to his amazement, that people who were suspected kidnapped and killed weren’t listed as murders. They were just called missing. And there was no reliable way to track what happened to them if their body showed up in another state. Only about 12 percent of missing-presumed-murdered cases were even investigated by federal authorities. Of the cases actually labeled homicides, at least a third never got solved. Not good news. The east slope behind the cemetery could be full of bodies, and no one would know they’d been killed.

  Murray closed the page and went to the newsprint archives. Found that after a month had passed, the newspapers were stored on some kind of micro-picture cards. He didn’t know how to work the viewing machine and gave up. What was the use, if so many people went missing and weren’t even looked for? Anyone could be the voices he’d been hearing, and the best way to find out who they were would be to ask them. That realization brought a shudder, like someone holding an ice cube to his back. Could he do that? Would he? Not alone. Not by himself.

  Would he tell Pearl what he was hearing?

  CORNED BEEF, HARSH TALK

  Janochek was wall-to-wall busy with a sprinkler renovation project. The private owners had bought a new variable-speed on-demand pump with a sophisticated timing apparatus from a company in San Jose. The firm’s engineer had been staying in Riverton the past three days teaching Janochek to install, troubleshoot, and repair the system. As a result, he had seen little of Pearl, and Murray only when he glimpsed the boy returning from school in the afternoon or visiting graves in the pump-house section.

  Pearl. At least he could keep track of her during quick dinners. He asked questions and received brief answers. He guessed that was par for the course with a fourteen- going on fifteen-year-old. The installation was taking its toll, and lately, while she did her evening homework in the cottage’s small living room, he fell asleep in his easy chair nearby. He would wake after midnight to find his book resting in his lap, Pearl already gone to bed.

  Janochek was glad Pearl had changed schools this year at Christmas break. Sierra High was closer to the cemetery than her old school, Canyon, and Sierra’s sports teams were more competitive, which she loved. Plus, it was the same school Murray attended, which meant they could walk together from time to time.

  So far the change was working out. Pearl had made the girls’ softball team, played every game so far at second, the result of her clutch hitting and determination to catch every grounder anywhere near her. Pearl was usually happy to talk about the game, the things that went well and what she needed to work on. Some of Janochek’s favorite times lately were having her all to himself in the pickup cab, trapped, as it were, for a little conversation.

  Driving her home from a loss to powerhouse Colinas High, Janochek saw a skinny boy with wild hair riding a BMX and thought of Murray. “We haven’t had ol’ Lawnmower Man over to dinner for a month or so. How about I make spaghetti with Alfredo and sausage some night soon?”

  “Okay.” Pearl studied her glove, adjusted the lacing.

  “Just okay?”

  “Whatever you want,” she said, giving him a brief glance, continuing to work with the leather.

  “What happened?” Her tone of voice and lack of affect was troubling. “He was your buddy. Our buddy. You liked him.”

  “I still like him … I mean, I don’t dislike him. I don’t care very much.”

  Janochek steered the pickup to the curb at the top of a grassy hill in the shade of a huge pine on Magnolia Street. Turned off the ignition and twisted to face Pearl more directly.

  “What happened?”

  Pearl exhaled through closed teeth, like this was an unnecessary annoyance. Why did her dad need to know everything? “Nothing in particular happened. In fact nothing happened at all. Murray’s just the same as he always is.”

  “Um, isn’t everybody?”

  “I mean he’s hiding out. That’s all he does. Play his dead games. He’s not going anywhere and he’s not interested in live people … in doing something useful or even having fun.”

  “Did he hurt your feelings?”

  “No. He just pisses me off.”

  “Give me an example.”

  “He could pay attention to the real world. Watch what’s going on. Get involved in something. Come to my games.”

  “Well, I agree with you. Right now I think we’re his contact with that real world, with real people, and if we give up on him—”

  “Dad, let’s just go on home. I’ve tried. He’s … he went to the library and looked up clairvoyance. Says he found out it’s phony. He’s worse than he was before.”

  “The last few times I’ve seen him he’s seemed happy enough. Usually smiling.”

  “Yeah, whistle while you work, right?” Pearl shook her head, disgusted. “He’s hanging out with the dead. Wasting his life and loving it.”

  Janochek thought he saw the ghost of tears in the corner of her eyes.

  “Give up on him, Dad. He’s given up on himself.”

  UNCLEAR ENVELOPES

  The first envelope on Gates’s desk contained a brief investigation log on David Payne, the man Pittman had mentioned. Mission resident missing since mid-January. Disappeared Wednesday, the twenty-second, between noon and ev
ening, didn’t claim that night’s reserved bed at Mission. Currently earning a stipend training Mission client-volunteers and the bookkeeper on public relations and accounting practices. No mention of plans to leave and no reason to leave.

  Random opportunity, or somebody with an ax to grind?

  * * *

  The second envelope had a sheaf of missing person reports under a cover letter signed by Frieda Pittman. She’d obviously gotten the lieutenant’s ear. Title: “List of Missing Dispossessed Citizens.” Seven names. Disappearance unexplained. Arturo Cespedes, 58 (age and name not verified by ID); Will Duecker, 66; Clarence Holmes, 34; Vaughn Miller, 61; Robert Sederman, 29; Jerel Smith, 15-18 (age and name not verified by ID); Alicia Turner, 44.

  Duecker, Holmes, and Miller were listed as client-trainees (greeters/triage); Turner was Mission bookkeeper, Sederman her client-trainee assistant. No additional information was given for Cespedes or Smith.

  Gates remembered the name Payne from Pittman’s morning report to the deputies. Didn’t know any of the others. He’d seen stats for California, in general—50 percent of the homeless were men, 25 percent children, and 25 percent women; in warm urban areas like Los Angeles, sometimes 40 percent women. The number of homeless children had been increasing every week for years.

  Gates was surprised by the teenage boy. Jerel “Smith,” if that was his real last name. Not many teens showed up alone in shelters. They didn’t want to be picked up and returned as runaways. Unusual name, Jerel. Rang a bell but Gates couldn’t put his finger on why. It would come to him.

  Before he focused on these uncleared cases, he had some leftover business. Bruce and his new medication. “Skag.” That word itself was kind of a tip. People selling on the streets of Riverton called it “Lady” or “Tar” or sometimes “China,” which was ironic because most of the cheap junk was now made in Afghanistan. The kid didn’t invent the name skag. The term was old, older than Bruce, and seriously out-of-date. Made Gates wonder if that’s what the seller called it and whether that person was an aging product of the sixties. Time to check out the Sadler.

  * * *

  The Sadler House, downtown near the Cascade Theater, was a four-story tan stucco building with red tile trim, Monterrey-style relocated to the top of the Central Valley. Outside, the sidewalk was swept, the windows clean. Inside the door, the good impression faltered. Poorly lit lobby, dull and broken linoleum tile, moth-eaten furniture sitting on thin area rugs. Perhaps forty years past its heyday.

  The first people Gates saw were an older couple on the divan by the plate glass window. If they were drug dealers, their disguise deserved an Academy Award. The lobby held five others. Four were playing Spades or something like it at a card table back by the nonfunctioning elevator. A young woman somewhere between nineteen and thirty in tight black jeans and an Oregon sweatshirt stood at a table corner, watching over the players. Gates thought she could definitely be someone who moved drugs, but he doubted she’d use the term skag.

  The front reception counter was unmanned, the mailboxes behind it mostly vacant. The bulletin board advertised “upcoming” events but all seemed far past—a bluegrass concert in a bar that had burned to the ground last year, and so on. The door leading back to an office was open and Gates went around the counter, walked through to find a bald man with a thin goatee sitting, grimacing at a laptop on a scarred walnut desk. The office walls were covered in posters of bright-colored muscle cars and large, tired, framed prints probably acquired at a local thrift store.

  “I think this game’s fixed,” the man said, not looking up. “Help you?”

  Gates walked close enough to see the screen the man referred to. Computer poker.

  “As I remember,” Gates said, flashing on his ruinous gambling, “the house always wins.”

  The man looked up and quickly closed the laptop cover. “This ain’t illegal.”

  Gates ignored that. “How are your residents doing?” he asked, nodding toward the lobby.

  “Sheriff?” the man asked.

  Gates nodded.

  “Everybody’s fine,” the man said. His eyes shifted. “You come with that county case worker to deal with Springst— Crap, he’s even got me saying it! Uh, Simmons, right?”

  Gates nodded.

  “Yeah, well, he settled down soon as you brought him back. Gave him an inject probably. He could be woozy a couple a days.”

  “The others?”

  “No problem. We don’t have trouble here. This place is a fair deal and we run things right.” The man’s fingers were tapping lightly on the computer. He stopped when he saw Gates watching, reached to his shirt pocket for a cigarette, but the pocket was empty. The man shrugged. “I get older, I don’t never know where I put things.” He opened the desk’s middle drawer and found a pack of gum. Didn’t offer any. Set out two pieces, unwrapped them and jammed them in his mouth. “That all you wanted to know?”

  Gates shook his head.

  “You being mysterious on me? I don’t know nothin’. If I did, I tell that county woman right off so she could nip it in the butt.”

  “Well, I know for a fact,” Gates said, “that you got hired for this position because you’re responsible and you have your finger on the pulse of this neighborhood.”

  “Damn straight,” the man said.

  “I thought you might set me right on something,” Gates said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve like this matter was vexing him.

  “If I could,” the man said. “You know that.”

  Gates nodded. “Mental Health Department tells me there’s fewer drugs being sold here downtown. Is that what you’re seeing?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m seeing. Things getting better all the time.”

  “What do you hear’s still available?”

  “Well, this medical licenses thing. Everybody and his parrot’s got more grass than they can cut.”

  “What else?”

  “Oxy still top dollar.”

  “Thanks. That confirms the reports we’re getting from Glenn County. Anything about the others?”

  “Meth’s on the downslide. Coke’s too expensive. Skag’s hit and miss.”

  RIGHT AGAIN

  Janochek made an effort to locate Murray early the next week. Found him sitting, legs folded, in front of a relatively recent grave in the newer section.

  Murray heard him approach and leaned back. As usual, the man was wearing faded brown jeans over laced boots. Red checked shirt under a canvas vest. Janochek was a couple of inches taller than Murray, around six feet. Gray eyes with smile wrinkles, always clean shaven. Slim, strong, big hands.

  “Hi, Mr. Janochek. This is Feathers.”

  “I remember. Accident at the 44–5 on-ramp. What are you guys talking about?”

  “Uh, astronomy, I guess.”

  The surprise left Janochek without a response.

  “Feathers is saying there’s a big meteor shower supposed to happen this summer. He was finding things like Pleiades, Jupiter’s moons, stuff like that with just binoculars.”

  “Um, how does … did he know where to look?”

  “He says there’s a list. Messier objects. A hundred and ten things. Book he got from the library. Do you have binoculars?”

  “I might.”

  “Let’s do it some night. We could come here and Feathers could tell us what to check out.”

  Janochek considered that. Learn astronomy from a dead boy? Murray would never cease to amaze him. “I was thinking it was about time you came up for some pasta one of these nights. What you been doing lately?”

  “You know. School. Meeting new people.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah. Malik,” Murray said, gesturing to the stone in front of him. “And hey, guess what! There’s a girl I kind of knew a couple of rows over. A junior like me. Sandray Vance.”

  Janochek’s stomach twitched. “Really?”

  “Yeah, she’s a dancer. Endeavor High’s pep squad. Beautiful. Probably really smart.
”

  Present tense! “Uh, great. You meeting any new people at school?”

  “No. Oh, and I’m getting in shape. I’ve started jogging. I found a web-strap tightener for my pack so it doesn’t bounce around so much when I jog home from school.”

  Janochek didn’t ask “for what?” Said instead, “Sounds like you’re going to need some spaghetti. Tomorrow or this weekend?”

  “May not be such a good idea,” Murray said, looking at the ground between them. “I think Pearl’s mad at me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Jealous?”

  Janochek kept his jaw from dropping.

  “I’ve found my place, my job, my home, and it’s pretty much a perfect fit. And Pearl’s so intense, always pushing. She wants me to be more like her.”

  “Maybe she just wants you to find ways to use your skills like you did for that Parker girl’s family.”

  “Yeah. She doesn’t get it. That’s exactly what I’m doing. Like Sandray’s father would be so glad to know his daughter has a new friend who really likes her.”

  Janochek cleared his throat. Fiddled with his shirtsleeves. “Okay, uh, good, so why don’t you come up the end of the week, Sunday. We’ll eat about six.”

  “Do you have another minute?” Murray shifted to face the man squarely.

  Janochek nodded.

  “What do you know about the cemetery’s history?” Murray asked. “When was it dedicated? Is it bigger or smaller than it was in the beginning?”

  “Well, the place was established in the late 1800s. Licensed by the city around then, I think. As far as I know it’s always been the same size. Landscaping’s made it seem a little smaller, the hedges … and of course the trees have gotten much larger. Main attraction originally was the central oak, huge, even in those days. First graves were just north of that. The crypts and mausoleum were added in the early 1900s. Admin office in the 1950s, about the same time as my cottage and workshop. That what you wanted to know?”