Echoes of the Dead--A Special Tracking Unit Novel

by Spencer Kope

  Marco was here, but now he’s gone.

  Where did he go? Noah wonders, casting his wild eyes against the gloom.

  Summoning every ounce of strength left in him, he shifts his weight on the mattress and heaves hard against the restraints. Whether it’s another vain attempt to free himself, or simply to get a better look at the room, even he can’t say. But for all his effort, he may as well be a mouse pulling at a railcar. When the little strength that remains has drained from his body, he relents. Exhausted, he falls flat on the filthy bed, causing it to groan in protest.

  The restraints remain solid, unconcerned by his efforts.

  He’s been strapped to the bed long enough that his wrists and ankles are chafed. They’ve bled and healed and bled some more. The sheets are wet with sweat, vomit, feces, and urine, things the demon cares little about. Noah can feel sores developing on his skin where it lies festering in the filth, and for the first time in his life he understands what bedsores are … only this is much worse. It has to be.

  Noah has the vaguest sense that he’s been propped up somehow, as if the head of the bed is sitting on blocks, elevating it. But, even here, he can’t trust his fractured mind. For all he knows, the bed itself is a hallucination.

  The thought causes his body to spasm and shiver in the lukewarm filth.

  * * *

  He hears it again!

  A quiet disturbance!

  Something beyond the door.

  It’s no hallucination—or he doesn’t think it is. The hallucinations seem … different from the real. Different in a way that’s hard to describe without risking madness. Even with the distinction, it’s getting more difficult for Noah to separate the real from the imagined.

  The sound is subtle, a low rumble: like something on a track, or distant thunder.

  If he could hold his breath he would, but he’s hyperventilating again. It sometimes feels like he’s suffocating, even when he’s not vomiting.

  A voice, now.

  Whispers.

  Noah can almost sense the demon on the other side of the door, ready to top him off.

  He’ll come through at any moment, looming over the room like a mountain, his solid-black eyes looking at Noah, looking through him, beyond him, as if the very act will destroy him in parts. He’ll top Noah off and kill him a little more.

  The knob squeaks as it rotates, then the door folds into the room. A recess stands in the wall, a place where before there was only blackness. Two shadows linger. Small shadows, not like the demon.

  When the light clicks on above Noah, the waves of electromagnetic radiation enter through his eyes instantly and slam into his brain with the velocity of a freight train, causing him to gasp. He blinks dryly against the onslaught, too dehydrated to make tears.

  The boys stare at him, trying to comprehend.

  He stares back through hollow eyes, his mouth moving as he tries to utter two words, two simple words. Yet try as he might, his vocal cords simply won’t cooperate, and before he can issue the plea, the boys scream and bolt down the hall. A door crashes open, striking the wall behind it as if blasted open by an explosive charge. He listens as the screams fade and then disappear somewhere beyond the house, beyond his hearing.

  Silence returns. The boys are gone.

  Noah’s vocal cords relent, too late to do him any good. In a whisper that barely breaks the silence, the two precious words finally bubble from his throat.

  “Help me.”

  28

  In their long history of 911 calls, the police dispatchers at the Bakersfield PD Communications Center have received more than their share from frightened children—sometimes the worst calls you can get.

  So, when Isaiah and Jacob call in a panic, the only thing not ordinary is that the boys seem to be both frightened and excited, almost comically so. They pass the phone back and forth as they try to explain the Saw house and the thing inside. It takes several minutes for them to calm down enough to articulate the main point, that a “zombie-looking guy” was strapped to a bed.

  When dispatch asks where, they say, “In the torture room.”

  When dispatch presses and asks where this room is, they say, “In a torture house.” Jacob finally understands that the dispatcher is looking for a street name and house number and has to fight the phone away from Isaiah to convey the information.

  That settled, the boys talk incoherently about the movie Saw and then become evasive when the dispatcher asks for their names. Isaiah tries to make his voice suddenly older, which doesn’t work so well. They finally give up their names when the dispatcher advises them that their phone number and address were displayed on her screen when the call came in.

  The boys hadn’t counted on that.

  She doesn’t ask the boys what they were doing in the house, or why they weren’t at school. Their obvious distress and excitement make such matters irrelevant, at least for the time being. Besides, if what they’re saying turns out to be true, truancy is the last thing Bakersfield PD will be worried about.

  * * *

  It takes ten minutes for the first patrol car to arrive.

  When Officer Susie Gwyn exits her marked unit and approaches the house on Tuttle Street, she finds the front door standing ajar and an abiding gloom waiting within. Susie has always had a good sense of smell, and the vapors issuing out the front door give her pause.

  It’s the stench of human waste … and something else.

  The home looks vacant and Susie just assumes that squatters have taken up residence. Transients are a growing problem in the city, and they’re not exactly concerned about cleaning up after themselves. In many cases, the water to such homes might be disconnected, but that doesn’t stop squatters from using the toilets.

  At least until they’re full.

  “Bakersfield Police,” Officer Gwyn calls loudly into the house, rapping on the open door for emphasis as she scans the dim interior. When no response comes, she considers whether to enter or wait for backup.

  Most police dispatchers, especially those who’ve been on the job awhile, are intuitive about the calls they take. In their line of work, you quickly develop a feel for what’s important and what can wait. Susie learned long ago to ride dispatch’s vibe: if they think it’s important, she thinks it’s important.

  Though dispatchers across the country are legendary for their emotionless cadence, those who talk to them every day know otherwise. Susie had detected a sense of urgency in the dispatcher’s voice that morning. Maybe the RP—the reporting person—had said something that instilled this urgency, or perhaps it was the way it was said. Either way, this sense of the immediate was carried forward.

  Officer Susie Gwyn decides to enter. “Bakersfield Police. I’m coming in. Show yourself!”

  Dispatch had said something about a bedroom at the end of the hall, so after clearing the kitchen, utility room, bathroom, and living room, Susie approaches the dark corridor and takes note of the three doors, two of them closed, one slightly ajar.

  Clearing the first room, she moves to the door that stands cracked open. Light emanates from within.

  “Bakersfield PD,” she calls out again.

  A sound comes to her, low and indecipherable. With her handgun at the low ready, she gives the door a gentle push with her foot. It creaks slowly inward and stops halfway.

  “Oh, God,” Susie gasps, almost retching. She fumbles for her radio and somehow finds herself in the hall with her back hard up against the wall as if even the wall conspires to thrust her into the horrors that await through the half-open door.

  If she could have pushed through the wall and kept going, she would have.

  “Code three,” Susie says, forcing calm into her voice. “I need backup and an ambulance. Notify detectives.”

  * * *

  It’s just after eight when Ross’s unmarked screeches to a halt in the portico out front of the Sierra Inn & Suites. Jimmy piles into the front seat and I grab the seat behind him. Five seconds af
ter the first screech of tires, Ross chirps them again as he pulls away and flips on his lights and sirens.

  To those having breakfast just off the lobby, the stop-and-go of an unmarked police car, followed by the harbingers of light and sound, draws every eye to the front of the building. Some of those at the breakfast bar rise to their feet and move for a better view, as do two of the clerks at the front desk, watching as the blue and red strobes tear out of the parking lot and race up the street.

  There’ll be questions for us when we return, I have no doubt.

  * * *

  “The call came in a half hour ago,” Ross says after he explains the situation more fully. “I thought they were already on the way to the hospital, but dispatch just advised that the aid crew is working on him at the house. For some reason, they can’t transport yet.”

  “And he’s alive?” Jimmy asks for the third time.

  Ross shrugs. “That’s what I was told.”

  The drive to Tuttle Street seems to take forever, yet it’s just seven minutes from the motel. Time has a mind and will of its own, it seems.

  A couple of medics are huddled around the front door when Ross parks. As we spring from our seats, I see the cause of the congestion: they’re bringing out the gurney. I hold my breath without knowing it, watching as the feet emerge—covered by a sheet—followed by the torso—covered by a sheet—and finally the shoulders, face, and head—uncovered.

  Uncovered means he’s alive.

  I see Jimmy visibly shudder as he lets out a sigh of relief. I can relate. Following him down the sidewalk and up to the front door, I hold back a few paces and let him do his thing. My eyes connect with Noah for a moment, but I’m not sure he even sees me. His hair is matted and filthy, plastered to one side of his head by God knows what. He’s trying to talk, but nothing’s coming out. Or if it is, it’s so low that I can’t hear it.

  Jimmy and Ross flash their badges for the medics.

  “What’s his condition?” Jimmy asks.

  Most of the medics look away, but one of them, a rugged Jason Statham type, says, “He’s dehydrated and showing signs of organ failure. Whoever did this to him had an IV stuck in his arm and was pumping him full of something we haven’t identified. I took a sample for toxicology at the hospital, but the officer”—he dips his head toward Officer Susie Gwyn—“took the rest for evidence.”

  Noah’s right hand slips out from under the covers, and I immediately see the nasty red bands around his wrist, the bloody welts where he tried pulling himself free and failed. And failed. And failed. He tries to lift the hand and manages to tug on Jimmy’s shirt.

  Jimmy looks down, and his eyes follow the hand and arm to Noah’s face. As the hollowed-out man begins to mouth something, Jimmy leans in close and the medics stop the gurney. It takes a moment, but Jimmy finally nods and squeezes Noah’s hand.

  As he lets go, the medics whisk him away.

  In a halo of dust and lights, the three of us watch as the ambulance blasts from the neighborhood, siren wailing. We watch until the lights are gone and the siren is distant and something close to silence settles around us.

  “What did he say?” Ross asks.

  “Most of it was nonsense,” Jimmy says in a distant voice. “Demons and darkness and something about a bear. I’m sure it meant something, but his mind’s not all there—probably drugged. He did say that the demon has Marco and that we have to save him.”

  “Nothing about the others?” I ask, wondering if he even knows.

  A dark look crosses Jimmy’s face. “He said that Wade’s at the dentist’s office … and Jason’s in the ground.” Jimmy meets my eye, holds it a moment, then turns to enter the house.

  * * *

  I spot the malachite shine as soon as I slip off my glasses.

  Trails lead this way and that throughout the house, though most of the actual coming and going appears to have been through the door leading into the garage. I can see two older tracks through the front door, and perhaps three in and out of the back slider, but that’s it.

  The oldest shine dates back only months—six months, tops.

  “I don’t think he was living here,” I whisper to Jimmy. “He visits infrequently, and only in the last week or so has he been here regularly.”

  This conclusion is borne out by the lack of furniture: no table, no couch, no chairs, not even a lamp. More important, there’s no TV. I’ve been in homes where the occupants slept in sleeping bags on the floor and sat on stacks of old phone books, and they still had a fifty-inch TV propped up on wooden crates.

  By American standards, without a TV, the place might as well be a cave.

  I’m not saying that’s good, it’s just reality.

  * * *

  Most of the action seems to be at the end of the hall, so I follow Jimmy to the room on the left and peek over his shoulder through the doorway. Three things stand out about the room, and each of them is uniquely and instantly recognized. First, the windows are papered over with newspaper, which would have cast the room into deep shadow but for the weak overhead light and the considerably more powerful crime-scene lights.

  Second, the rusty bed frame is topped by a box spring and mattress. The entire collection resembles something you’d find abandoned alongside the road with a FREE sign taped to the frame. Even then, no one would want it. The bed is at an odd angle, and I realize it’s elevated at the head by about six inches. Wondering at this, I lean farther over Jimmy’s shoulder and notice that someone has placed several chunks of wood under each side, but only at the headboard.

  Third, and of most immediate concern, is the stench.

  There’s no air movement in the room, yet the smell still comes at me in waves, washing over me with the consistency of smog. Trying not to breathe through my nose, I realize that the sheets on the bed—sheets I took to have a floral pattern—are supposed to be white. They’re not. The stench of vomit, feces, urine, and a host of unpleasantries I can only guess at assaults us from the entrenched room.

  Anyone wondering at the difference between an aroma and an odor would be well served to step into that room, if only for a moment.

  I gag involuntarily.

  “If you’re going to throw up, go outside,” Jimmy says quietly into my ear.

  I have no intention of vomiting.

  I tell myself that I’ve seen worse—smelled worse—and know that it’s true, but still the saliva gathers in my mouth, the quiet herald of stomach contents soon to follow. Stepping back from the room, from the smell, I wait in the living room as my gut settles and the flow of saliva dissipates.

  “How are you?” Jimmy asks as he joins me a few minutes later.

  “Fine.” I wave away his concern. “When Ross called earlier, I wolfed down the last of my breakfast a little too fast. I don’t think it settled well.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Before I can defend myself further, Ross joins us in the living room. He’s holding a small notepad in one hand and a chewed-up pen in the other—old-school. “Gina’s the lead on this,” he says, gesturing toward a female detective in her midthirties. Her ebony skin is flawless, unmarked by the demands of her harried profession. She walks with a perceptible limp.

  “Based on the … evidence”—I assume Ross means the stained sheets—“it looks like he’s been here at least two days, possibly three. As the paramedics said, they found a needle stuck in his arm and a slow-drip bag feeding some kind of liquid into his body intravenously. They’re not sure what was in the bag, but suspect it began as a regular saline solution. Something was added, though, and that’s the puzzler.”

  “How do they know something was added?” Jimmy asks.

  “There’s a slight greenish tint to the water. Very slight, but you could tell when you placed it side by side with a regular saline bag. Samples are off to the lab, and we should have an answer in a few hours.”

  Ross flips the page. “He was dehydrated, despite the IV. Guess the drip rate was set too low, either int
entionally or otherwise.” Ross flips again, then again. “No documents of dominion anywhere in the house. Nothing telling us who the renter is or suggesting he ever actually lived here.”

  The last part I already know. “So, was this just a staging area?” I ask. “Someplace to hold the men until he disposed of them?”

  Ross shrugs. “Seems to be the case. We did find evidence of recent vehicle activity in the garage: imprints in the dust; dirt and debris tracked in by the tires, that sort of thing. It suggests at least two vehicles, one larger than the other. Also, the larger vehicle came and went a lot more frequently. The smaller one might have only been here once.”

  “Marco’s SUV,” I suggest.

  Jimmy nods. “Probably kept it here until he killed Wade, then disposed of it in the hills.” Jimmy looks at Ross. “Any idea what the other vehicle might be?”

  “You mean, could it be our mystery van?” the detective replies. “No idea, but there are some good tire prints. Once CSI gets here, they’ll take some photos and send them off to the lab. They’ve got tire-pattern analysis software that should at least tell us the brand and tire model. From there we can figure out what vehicles it fits and then check with local tire shops and see if they have any records that might point us in the right direction.”

  “Do they keep those kinds of records?” Jimmy asks.

  “They must. When you buy tires, they usually have a limited warranty, right? Which means they have your contact information.”

  “I guess so. I’m thinking that’s going to be a big list, though.”

  Ross doesn’t seem concerned. “Depends on how popular the tire is. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll be a small list. At least it’s something.”

  Jimmy nods and echoes the sentiment. “At least it’s something.”

  “Detectives did a cursory search of the room and house,” Ross continues, “but now we have to clear out and leave it to CSI. Maybe they’ll have more luck.”