Echoes of the Dead--A Special Tracking Unit Novel

by Spencer Kope

  * * *

  As I continue my search and find nothing, my thoughts turn dark, to the more sinister explanations for such a disappearance. An accident seems unlikely, only because the odds that all four men were incapacitated and rendered incapable of seeking help at the same time and by the same means seems remote.

  They may have skidded off a road, been caught up in a landslide, or had a spelunking mishap. They may even have gone swimming after dinner without waiting the required half hour, resulting in the disaster our mothers always warned us about.

  All of these are possibilities, I suppose, but then where are their tents and sleeping bags? Where’d they put the outdoor stove and the large skillet for cooking up bacon and eggs at first light? And what about their fishing poles and tackle boxes? These were wealthy and powerful men devoted to fishing. A $500 pole and a $700 reel would be expected, along with at least one backup pole and reel.

  I’m no outdoorsman, but I do know you don’t go camping without a cooler filled with melting ice and an assortment of sodas and beer. I don’t see such a cooler. Nor do I see marks on the ground where a cooler was placed.

  For all the evidence I don’t see, a UFO may as well have flown in from nearby Area 51 and spirited them away in their sleep—tents and all. Which would mean they also stole the BMW.

  “Where are you?” I mutter to the desert wind, but the wind has no answer.

  * * *

  When I join Jimmy at the river, he leads me to an apple-sized patch of blood on a rock near the water’s edge. Like everything else in my macabre world, the decay of spilled blood is something that can be measured and analyzed. It’s not a perfect science, and variables like the thickness of the blood pool and environmental conditions come into play.

  But the process is always the same.

  Once hemoglobin—blood—is exposed to oxygen, it becomes oxyhemoglobin and displays the bright red we’re all familiar with from the many times we’ve cut, scraped, and punctured ourselves since childhood. The oxyhemoglobin is short-lived and converts to the darker red of methemoglobin within a few hours. This, in turn, fades to the dark brown of hemichrome, usually within forty-eight hours.

  In reflectance spectroscopy, white light is directed at a blood sample, and the amount of absorption and reflection is measured to create a reflection spectrum. This spectrum identifies the amount of oxyhemoglobin, methemoglobin, and hemichrome in the sample and helps establish its age. This process is often combined with spectral imaging to aid in detecting and identifying bloodstains at a crime scene.

  “What do you figure,” I say to Jimmy after kneeling to examine the stain, “twenty-four hours?”

  He nods. “No more than forty-eight.”

  “That puts it within the window of the disappearance.”

  “It does.” He glances over at Joe, who’s twenty feet away, conferring with one of the SAR team leaders over the radio. “Is it human?” Jimmy asks in a low voice that’s close to a whisper.

  It’s my turn to nod. “The shine looks like pewter.”

  Animals don’t have shine.

  Or maybe they do, but I can’t see it. Regardless, the revelation tells Jimmy what he needs to know. He thinks on this for a moment but doesn’t seem overly concerned. “There are a lot of ways to cut yourself with fishing gear,” he eventually says. “Kind of goes with the territory.”

  “Right, but this is more than a scrape or a fingertip poke from a hook,” I say, indicating the small pool.

  “I know, I’m just saying let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “I’m not,” I say firmly, “but you tell me how any of this makes sense? Marco’s sister said that this was the spot he called from on Friday. So, where is he? Where’s his car, his gear, his sleeping bag?”

  “They must have moved camp.”

  “Not without telling his sister.”

  Our discussion hasn’t carried us any closer to a conclusion by the time Sergeant Joe Mingo returns with a sour look on his face.

  “Any news?” Jimmy asks.

  The sergeant gives a defeated shake of his head. “I thought they’d have found the car by now … or at least some campers who remembered seeing the men. The river’s just … quiet.” He stares off at the silver ribbon of water as if somewhere upstream might lie the answers we seek.

  “Any theories?” I ask.

  Joe shakes his head, then stoops to pick up a flat rock from the bank of the river. Weighing it in his hand, as if it were a thought rather than a stone, he reels back and flings it across the surface of the water, skipping it twice before the unsteady surface grabs it and drags it down. “The only theory I have is that we’re searching in the wrong place.”

  “You think the sister misunderstood where they were camping?”

  Joe shrugs. “She seemed pretty sure of it, but”—he holds his arms wide and twists to the left and right—“here we are.”

  Jimmy opens his mouth to reply, perhaps to provide a theory, or simply offer up the hope that we all seem to be missing, but before he can speak, his phone rings.

  It’s Diane.

  I know this because Jimmy has separate ringtones for everyone. He’s organized and dysfunctional that way. Diane’s calls always arrive with the theme from The Pink Panther, which now blares from the speaker.

  He presses the phone to his ear. “Hi, Diane. What’s up?”

  As he listens intently, I notice his body stiffen slightly and his face transitions through a dozen expressions, as if unsure which one to wear. “On a bench?” he mutters. “What about the others?”

  He nods to the phone, pauses, then nods again. As sophisticated as the iPhone is, I’m pretty sure it can’t translate his body movements into English and transmit it back to Diane’s ear a thousand miles away in Hangar 7.

  Motioning for a pen and paper, he quickly jots down what looks like an address, then says, “Let them know we’re on our way.”

  He ends the call and slides the phone back into his pocket, muttering a curse under his breath. The profanity, though mild, is startling coming from his mouth, and I suddenly fear what has yet to be spoken.

  “Bad news?” I ask.

  Glancing around at the parking lot, then at the hills rising before us, he shakes his head in a defeated, confused manner. “We need to get back to Bakersfield.” Before I can ask the obvious, he turns to Joe. “Can you run us back to our car?”

  “Sure,” the sergeant replies, a bit confused himself. “Let me stick my head into the command vehicle and let them know where I’ll be.” He points across the parking lot with his chin. “I’ll meet you at the Hummer.”

  A minute later, we’re rolling south toward Kernville, and Jimmy still hasn’t hinted at the content of the call, or the urgency for our return to Bakersfield. I’m giving him his space because I know how he is when he’s got something to chew on, but as the miles and minutes tick by and the Sequoia Market draws near, my patience finally wears thin.

  It’s clear from his posture and movement that Joe is just as interested in the answer as I am. The sergeant hasn’t said a word since leaving the parking lot, but his eyes keep wandering toward Jimmy, either watching him in his peripheral vision or by way of glances meant to be noticed.

  The effort’s wasted. Jimmy notices nothing.

  I’ve been his partner for just over six years, so I know that he gets this way from time to time. What concerns me is that it usually happens right around the time someone pulls the carpet out from under our feet. That this reflective silence follows his outburst of quiet profanity is like the punch that follows the jab: the two together spell trouble.

  “What’s in Bakersfield, Jimmy?” My tone is meant to remind him that this is the Jimmy and Steps show, and not some solo act where he can just tune out and keep the facts of the case to himself.

  When his answer comes, there’s an edge to the words. “They found Jason Norris.”

  Found.

  The word is so specific in its meaning, so straightforw
ard and honest. Lost keys can be found, love can be found, loose change can be found.

  A person … can be found.

  Yet as soon as the words are out of Jimmy’s mouth, I know that our simple search and rescue just became much more complex.

  “Alive?” I ask.

  Stiffening in his seat, Jimmy glances back at me and shakes his head. “He was found on a park bench. He’d been sitting there since sometime last night.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Unknown. We’re heading to the coroner’s office. They’re waiting until we get there to start the autopsy.”

  That’s nice of them, I think, trying to remember what I had for breakfast and wondering if I’ll see it again.

  5

  Over the years, I’ve found that the offices of most coroners and medical examiners are located at or near a hospital. This makes sense, since, in a lot of cases, the subject may have been transported to the hospital before expiring. That, and I imagine it’s considered poor taste to wheel a cloth-draped body through the parking lot of a strip mall while mom, dad, and junior are picking up a family-sized pepperoni pizza from Little Caesars.

  In Kern County, this observed pattern repeats, and we find the coroner’s office located on College Avenue, right behind Kern Medical Center.

  As for the coroner, it seems that in addition to his duties as the chief law enforcement official in the county, or CLEO, the elected sheriff also serves as both coroner and public administrator. This means that if you die, his deputy coroners and forensic pathologists will try to figure out why, and if you died without a will or executor, his public administration people will figure out what to do with your estate.

  It’s a full-service operation.

  * * *

  “Special Agent James Donovan,” Jimmy says, flashing his credentials at the woman perched behind the elevated reception desk. According to the standard-issue government nameplate at the edge of the desk, her name is Lori and she’s a Pisces. I don’t know for certain that she’s a Pisces, but she has stickers of various fish stuck around her etched name.

  “We have an appointment with Dr. Herrera,” Jimmy explains.

  “What time is your appointment?”

  “Now.”

  “You have an appointment for four thirty-nine P.M.?” she asks skeptically.

  “Yes,” Jimmy replies slowly.

  She raises her eyebrows at that and picks up the phone. Punching a single button, she waits a moment, then passes Jimmy’s name to the person on the other end, along with his dubious claim to have an appointment.

  “Okay,” she says into the mouthpiece a moment later, sounding a bit deflated. Hanging up the phone, she forces a smile. “He’ll be with you shortly.”

  When Dr. Benjamin Herrera makes his entrance two minutes later, he’s wiping his hands dry on a paper towel, which he then wads up and swooshes into the garbage can near the door, a solid ten-foot shot. He’s at least six-two, and between his height and the Harlem Globetrotters–style dunk, it’s not hard to imagine that he’s a pretty good basketball player.

  As we take turns shaking hands, he says, “Call me Ben.” His palm is still sticky-moist, and I wipe the transfer off discretely on my pants, hoping that it’s just from washing up, and not from something autopsy related.

  “This way,” Ben says cheerily, holding the door open.

  We follow him down the main corridor, then to the right, and finally left into a large sterile autopsy room accented in copious amounts of stainless steel. It’s well lit and contains three workstations, each outfitted identically with a long stainless-steel sink, additional stainless countertops and cupboards, and an autopsy table mounted to the floor.

  Each table is identical and state-of-the-art.

  The stainless-steel tabletops have an array of small holes lining the outer edges on all four sides, which, when activated, provide downdraft ventilation—basically a vacuum system that sucks up all the bad odors and pipes them away from the work space to someplace where they can be filtered and released back into the environment.

  It’s a godsend when a body has been percolating too long.

  A narrow hose extends from the underside of the table, which is attached to a handheld sprayer used to wash away contaminants during the autopsy. The table itself is mounted onto a thick anti-wobble pedestal that allows the attending pathologist to raise, lower, and rotate the table as needed.

  Two of the three workstations are empty, but the third, the one nearest the door, hints at recent activity. And when I say hints, I mean an adult figure is lying on the table. I can’t make out his features because he’s completely covered in a thick white cloth, but it doesn’t take much puzzle-piecing to figure out whom we’re looking at.

  I stop just inside the door. “Jason Norris, I presume.”

  “Yes, so it would seem,” Ben replies slowly—then his demeanor changes and he steps off toward the table with brisk strides filled with energy and purpose. “It seems that we have a bit of a problem with Mr. Norris, one that I’m afraid we didn’t clue into until just before your arrival.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “Well, it seems he’s dead.”

  Jimmy and I both smile politely at the lame joke—until we realize Ben’s not kidding.

  “It seems this poor stiff died last week and was buried on Saturday.” Ben steps to the head of the table and grasps the corner of the white sheet as if preparing for some grand reveal like they do on the reality shows. “There’s more, I’m afraid, but I think it best for you to see the next part. It’s so much more telling, a picture being worth a thousand words, and all that.”

  With a smooth, practiced flow, he folds the sheet back, exposing the body of an older male from the waist up.

  The room sinks into utter quiet … then both Jimmy and I begin a frantic and noisy scramble through our various notes on the case, looking for the physical description and photo of Jason Norris, the info that Diane so diligently provided before we departed Hangar 7.

  I find mine first and thrust the image in front of Jimmy. He takes it in hand and studies the picture, glances briefly at the body, then back at the paper.

  “He’s white,” I observe.

  Ben grins. “I know, right! It’s my first autopsy where a Black man turned white. I mean, you hear about people’s hair turning white after a good scare, but this is some next-level metamorphosis.”

  A well-refined sense of gallows humor is always something to be admired, but I can barely return his grin before something else occurs to me. It occurs to Jimmy at the same moment because he blurts, “This guy is old—at least thirty years older than Norris.”

  “This is Mr. William Johansson, a longtime native of Bakersfield and an avid gardener, particularly when it comes to plants of the cannabis variety.” Ben points to the stitching on the chest. “This well-executed Y incision is from his last autopsy, performed by my colleague just six days ago in this very room.”

  Stepping back from the table, Ben pauses, as if to contemplate the corpse. “When he died—the first time—detectives initially suspected foul play because Mr. Johansson was found stuffed headfirst into an open-topped fifty-five-gallon drum filled with some variety of fertilizing tea—whatever that is.

  “The deputy coroner assigned to the investigation determined that poor William was reaching into the barrel, possibly to unclog the back side of the external faucet, when he somehow slipped and managed to kick over his step stool. He went into the barrel headfirst and went deep enough that he couldn’t reach a hand up and grasp the edge of the barrel.

  “A thinking man who wasn’t addled by use of his own product might have thought to push off from the bottom of the barrel, but not William. Instead, he bobbed around a bit in the water, kicking and thrashing, and finally expired. His business partner”—Ben frames the words in air quotes—“found him the next afternoon, half-waterlogged and fully dead. Case closed.”

  “I guess that’s one way to go,”
I mutter.

  “Oh, with the amount of THC in his system, he probably barely noticed. We should all be so lucky.”

  Jimmy’s fingers begin to strum against the cold steel of the autopsy table—never a good sign. “So, where’s Jason Norris?” he asks, trying to hide his growing frustration.

  “That I can’t answer,” Ben replies. “I’m guessing Johansson was misidentified because Norris’s wallet was found in his pocket. He was also wearing Norris’s watch on his wrist; some fancy thing with a personalized inscription to Norris on the back. I’m guessing they were stolen from the real Norris, but you’d know that better than me.”

  “How?” Jimmy asks, directing the question at himself as much as to Ben. The word is both a challenge and a plea. “Jason Norris is from San Jose. He met his friends at the airport on Thursday, and they headed straight to their campsite on the Upper Kern. There was no report of a crime, nor was there opportunity.”

  “Maybe they were stolen from the campsite … or the vehicle?” I suggest.

  Jimmy’s not buying it. “A guy like Jason Norris doesn’t leave his wallet lying around unattended. I guarantee he took it to the river with him; probably had it sealed in a Ziploc bag just in case he fell in.”

  “So how did his wallet end up in the pocket of a guy who was dead and buried last week? And the watch…?” A sudden grimace of disgust clouds my face. “What kind of sick bastard digs up a corpse and puts him on display on a park bench?”

  Ben nods his understanding. “I don’t know if this part matters, but he wasn’t exactly dressed for burial. He had on a pair of jeans that were too short by about three inches, a T-shirt, and a fishing vest—one of those with all the pockets. He also had on a ball cap with the logo from some accounting firm. It’s all in his personal effects if you want to take a look.”

  Jimmy glances at me and in an incredulous voice says, “He was wearing Norris’s clothes.”

  “I wouldn’t necessarily jump to that conclusion,” Ben replies quickly, holding up a cautioning hand as if to slow down the thought train before it jumps the track. “Some people just have odd requests when it comes to how they want to be buried. Maybe Johansson was a fisherman; maybe that’s what he envisioned himself doing in the afterlife. You never know.”