Echoes of the Dead--A Special Tracking Unit Novel

by Spencer Kope

  Point taken.

  I’m about to make a more vigorous argument—leaving out my obvious and logical hesitation to enter a dark and creepy barn while hunting for a sadistic killer—when a distinct clank! echoes nearby.

  Not from the barn, but from beyond the barn, from the other side … somewhere. It comes again, louder this time: clank! It’s followed by some smaller sound, a barely audible nothing.

  Jimmy and Ross draw their handguns instantly, instinctively, and move quickly to the corner of the barn. Satisfied the way is clear, they move forward along the wall of the barn, stacked one on the other as they advance on the next corner. I follow a few steps behind, my hand searching uselessly for my diminutive Walther P22 … but then I remember.

  Damn!

  Near the far corner of the barn, Jimmy extends his Glock and steps away from the side of the barn. With measured steps, he slices the corner in small wedges, clearing the area on the other side without overexposing himself. He’s halfway through the practiced maneuver when his body language changes abruptly. With an audible sigh, followed by a small, nervous laugh, he drops his hands, letting the handgun hang at his side a moment before holstering it.

  Goats.

  Friggin’ goats.

  A pair of them are staked out between the buildings, no doubt to keep the vegetation under control. The little beast on the left bleats at us pathetically, its tongue hanging over its teeth, white foam at its mouth. I don’t know goats. I don’t want to know goats. But the galvanized water trough nearby is bone-dry, and it looks as if the animals haven’t had anything to drink in some time.

  Jimmy finds a hose attached to a spigot and drags it over. We stand by for a couple of minutes as he tops off the trough, the goats seeming to empty it as fast as he fills it.

  Our respite among the goats allows us a moment to compose ourselves before continuing our sweep of the various buildings. It doesn’t take long, and when we finish, we have nothing to show for it. Or so it seems.

  I know better.

  In one of the buildings, and on the ground just outside, I find Marco’s shine. He was here for an extended period—hours, maybe a day. The intensity of the shine tells me we just missed him, but there’s something more: his shine is still pulsing, meaning, wherever he is, he’s still alive.

  Angus’s shine is all over the place, including the barn and several of the other outbuildings.

  He liked the goats.

  I see where he took the time to pet them and hold their chins in his hand, perhaps speaking to them as one would a dog or a favorite cat. It makes me wonder what a psychopath would have to say to such an animal. Perhaps he was just sizing up their necks for a knife and decided against it.

  Who knows.

  Sirens approach as we make our way back to the house.

  43

  Time stands still.

  The sun continues to move in the sky, the wind caresses the remaining trees at Foothill Orchards, and the hum of activity in and around the house continues … but time stands still.

  Diane has nothing new for us.

  The despoiled home on Old Stage Road, it seems, was her last hurrah. She continues to dissect records, query databases, and make phone calls, but finding another possible location for the psychopath Angus Graves remains beyond her reach.

  When they roll Barbara Mills from the house on a gurney, her frail frame barely inflates the body bag that contains her; just a couple lumps zipped up inside. It seems undignified because it is undignified.

  Graceful exits are a hard thing to come by.

  When the soul departs, the earthly remains don’t simply wave a hearty goodbye and wander off to find themselves a grave. Something is always left behind, and unless one dies in the wild, where nature tends to take care of its own, someone has to deal with the bag of bones that nobody wants to touch.

  I feel sorry for Barbara Mills.

  She seemed a good woman, a hardworking woman, unworthy of the death she was dealt. I feel sorry for Otis. The man is going to have to listen for all eternity about how Barbara was brained to death with his ashes. Poor bastard.

  Jimmy, Ross, and I are gathered near the Mustang while Kip hovers impatiently nearby. A cluster of trees provide some small measure of shade, and we’ve commandeered some of Barbara’s outdoor furniture to set up a temporary office. Not much can be done here until CSI finishes with the house and gives us the okay to enter, so we do what we can.

  We watch—all three of us—as the gurney is loaded into the ambulance.

  “Did you know that Walmart sells body bags?” I ask as Barbara makes her slow departure. I don’t know why I say some of the things I say. Words just come out and then I have the rest of the day—or of my life, depending on how outrageous the statement—to regret them.

  “Huh?” Ross replies. “Body bags?”

  “It’s true. Google it.”

  “I don’t remember seeing that in the clothing section,” Jimmy scoffs.

  Ross chuckles. “I wonder if they let you try them on in the fitting room? You know, in case it’s too big or too small.”

  “Too tight around the waist,” Jimmy suggests.

  “Body bags for muffin tops!”

  They both laugh at this before they remember that they’re at the scene of a rather bloody homicide and rein themselves in.

  “I don’t think they have them in the store store,” I say with mock disgust. “You probably have to order them online.”

  Ross ponders this. “Can you return them if they’ve only been worn once?”

  “That’s disgusting.” Jimmy laughs, throwing a wad of paper at the detective.

  * * *

  It’s almost 4:00 P.M. when we finally get the go-ahead to examine the interior of the house more closely. CSI has been through the place thoroughly, leaving traces of fingerprint powder on doorknobs, countertops, the toilet handle, the fridge, and anywhere else the suspect might have touched.

  The smell of blood and death hangs in the air, though the corpse of Barbara Mills is conspicuously absent. I can see where she lay from the blood. The larger pool is where her chest had been—largest because, for a few moments at least, her heart continued to pump, pushing out the vital fluid through the numerous two-inch gashes in her chest and stomach.

  I suspect she bled out quickly, a godsend considering what came next.

  Though the head is a notorious bleeder, there is relatively little blood where hers had come to rest because by that time her heart had given out. With the body now absent, all that remains is a smear upon the tile, a mix of brain and tissue matter congealed with a scant amount of blood.

  * * *

  Angus’s shine litters the floor and walls of the old farmhouse from top to bottom, but almost all of it is decades old, perhaps from his childhood. The only recent tracks enter from the back porch and appear to immediately confront Barbara in the kitchen. They move this way and that as if a conversation took place, and then he ends it—quickly and with force.

  From the kitchen, he walked into the living room and plucked the urn from a shelf. I know this from the shine leading to the shelf, and the void in the dust where it once sat, a void in the shape of the urn’s base.

  He paused here.

  His feet shuffled sideways a step and it seems he picked up a framed picture. Shine from his thumb glows on the front of the frame’s glass. There’s also blood—his hands must have been dripping with it.

  He didn’t try to wipe the blood clean, as some might—those interested in covering their tracks and hiding actions. Instead, he laid the picture faceup on the shelf. He wanted us to find it, wanted us to know of his interest.

  “Why didn’t CSI bag this for evidence?” I say to no one in particular.

  Ross shrugs. “If they took everything with blood on it, they’d have to cart off half the house. Don’t touch it yet. I’ll check and make sure they got pictures of it.”

  He’s gone less than a minute. When he returns, he’s snapping on a pai
r of gloves.

  “They got seven pictures, including a close-up of the image in the frame. Some sort of boys’ camp. He said they placed it back the way they found it.”

  With the blue nitrile gloves snuggly in place, the detective picks up the frame and rights it, setting it back on the shelf facing out. The image certainly looks like a camp. Two boys wearing jeans and T-shirts—and looking none too happy—are side by side next to a large wooden sign with rustic letters that spell out RANCHO COLINA BIBLE CAMP. In smaller letters below, it says FOR BOYS.

  “Rancho Colina?” I say.

  “Ranch Hill,” Jimmy interprets.

  “Where’s that? And why would Angus pause to stare at this picture while he’s in the middle of an unspeakable homicide?”

  “Good questions,” Jimmy replies, but provides no answers.

  Ross points at the two boys. “You suppose that’s him and his brother?”

  Jimmy shrugs. “We don’t know yet if Barbara and Otis had boys of their own. It could be kids, grandkids—hell, it could be a friend’s kids.”

  We spend another ten minutes in the house, making sure we don’t miss anything. While Jimmy, Kip, and Ross linger in the kitchen, the scene of the crime, I spend my time in the hall and living room. Barbara loved Otis, that’s for sure. Pictures of them adorn the walls: wedding pictures, anniversary pictures, pictures of them at the Grand Canyon and at some tropical beach—probably Hawaii.

  They were not camera shy, and I suspect that somewhere in the house photo albums are bursting with moments in time—microseconds of life frozen for posterity. I don’t know what those photo albums might show, but I can see more than thirty pictures on the walls and shelves, images spanning decades.

  Only one shows a pair of boys.

  * * *

  Back at our makeshift tree-shaded “office” in front of the Mustang, Ross flips open his mobile data terminal and waits for a signal. Accessing Google, he does a broad search for Rancho Colina Bible Camp and gets several returns, all of them linked to 1000 Rancho Colina Road, a private road off Route 190, east of Porterville.

  Ross studies the map on his screen. “It’s past Camp Nelson, which is maybe thirty miles from here but an hour’s drive.”

  “You haven’t seen Jimmy drive,” I say under my breath.

  Ross ignores the barb and seems to be fixated on the screen. “Rancho Colina Road…?” He suddenly begins typing frantically. Connecting the MDT to the Bakersfield Police Department’s records management system, or RMS, he types in the address exactly as presented. When the screen refreshes, he sucks in a breath that would empty heaven.

  “Remember the suicide?” he asks, the words falling over one another. “When he was fifteen—Angus tried to hang himself and we were wondering what would cause a boy that age to do such a thing?” Ross taps the MDT’s screen hard. “It was at Rancho Colina Bible Camp. I thought I recognized the address.”

  A look crosses Jimmy’s face: stern and hopeful and desperate all at the same time.

  “An hour’s drive, you say?”

  Ross closes the laptop and stands. “Maybe less.”

  44

  When Marco finishes digging the hole, he places the shovel against the side of the van as Angus instructs and then returns to his seat, hands behind his back. Before surrendering the shovel, he calculated his odds of braining the big man with the business end before Angus could shoot him.

  The odds weren’t good.

  I’m dead anyway, he told himself. Despite this, something stayed his hand, something that Angus had said as Marco pitched dirt from the growing hole. It was a casual, offhand remark: “They’re figuring it out.”

  Angus had said it with a sense of urgency as if time was running out and all might end in ruin if he didn’t accelerate his plans.

  Marco didn’t know who they were, though he assumed it was law enforcement of one variety or another. Perhaps Secret Service.

  How close were they to figuring it out?

  Based on what he’d discerned of Angus’s plan, Marco had another hour, maybe two, before things got … well, nasty. He’d live considerably longer, he was sure of that, but, dear God, he didn’t want to think of it.

  Angus is feeling the pressure. His words and actions speak volumes. His wandering glances as he looks to the trees and hills with increased frequency. He now has but one purpose before his pursuers reach the old Bible camp: kill Marco in a spectacular manner that’s worthy of eternal praise or condemnation—it doesn’t matter which.

  One way or another, he was going to make the congressman famous.

  “Hell, we’ll both be famous,” Angus says, the words spilling out as if the two of them just won the first billion-dollar lottery or discovered the lost city of Atlantis.

  We’ll both be famous.

  What an absurdity.

  * * *

  After securing Marco’s compliant wrists with a fresh pair of black zip ties, Angus steps back and then thinks better of it. Retrieving another zip tie from his bag, he adds it to the others.

  “Can’t be too careful,” he says with a grin.

  Since their arrival at the camp that morning, Angus had spent his time—hours upon hours—building what he refers to as his “project.” Most of this involves a network of beams and supports that stand thirteen or fourteen feet tall. To this, rigging has been attached.

  The steady click-click-click of a ratcheted pulley now issues from the top of the structure as the big man slowly hoists a timber into the air—the very timber he’d cut from the stable; the special timber that Angus seems to hold in such regard.

  As the end of the beam rises into the air, it drags its trailing end in small steps across the ground, leaving an impression in the soil, a scar. When it’s close to its apex, Angus gives one long pull on the rigging and the timber clears the ground, swinging gently in the air, like a dead man at the end of his rope.

  Angus barks his victory and wipes the sweat from his brow with his dirty sleeve. He pauses for a long drink of water, and then, still breathing heavily, points at the swaying timber. It’s the gesture of one about to reveal some insight or secret … or one simply talking to himself, reminiscences of glory past.

  “I carved my name in that beam.”

  Walking over, he reaches out and steadies the beam, then runs his fingers through the grooves once more, the crude letters spelling ANGUS. His fingers are alive as they explore the cuts, but his eyes are dead, dead to the timber, dead to the boy who made the cuts, dead to the world.

  “I hanged myself from this old beam,” Angus mutters, patting it affectionately. “Hanged myself and almost succeeded.” His voice grows low and cold. “Imagine the people that would be alive today if they would have just left me strung up like I wanted. If they would have let me die. They’re to blame, not me. It’s their fault, not mine.”

  He seems to remember Marco.

  With his dead eyes, he finds the congressman in his seat.

  “She made me come here, you know? My mom. She made me and Mikey come here every summer after she joined her crazy cult. We told her we hated it, but she said we were sinners and had to be cleansed before the Second Coming.”

  He nods as if that somehow makes sense.

  “She beat us with a length of rope—what she called her rod—and made us lie all night facedown before a cross because her soul guide”—he frames the words in air quotes—“told her that was the way to righteousness. But it was never enough. She looked at us and saw herself, like looking in a mirror. I hated the old bitch. I hated her, and I hated her crazy doomsday cult. I hated her almost as much as Mikey did—and that boy had a powerful hate.”

  Angus looks directly at Marco.

  “I was going to kill her, you know? When I got out of prison?” Angus sighs. “I figured it was about time. Besides, she’s the one who turned me in the last time around. Bitch!”

  Marco’s confused. “I thought this was because I couldn’t save her?” he manages to say between dry,
chapped lips.

  “It is.”

  “I … I don’t understand.”

  “It’s because you didn’t save her!” Angus barks impatiently as if restating the obvious. “If you had, I could have killed her my way, the proper way. But you failed, didn’t you? What kind of worthless doctor are you?”

  “My God,” Marco mutters in hopeless desperation. “You’re mad!”

  Angus smiles with malice and spits on the ground. “Oh, I’m a genius. You’ll see.”

  * * *

  After lowering the timber into the hole, Angus packs dirt tightly around it until he’s satisfied it’ll stay upright. Earlier, before building the rigging supports, he cut a half joint into the beam. The notch now faces outward, about two feet off the ground.

  It’s the perfect height.

  Picking up the second beam, a six-footer that he’d pre-fitted, Angus manhandles it over to the upright and drops it horizontally onto the ground at the base. Like its larger brother, the smaller beam has a half joint cut into the wood, though this cut is dead center.

  With one final groan, Angus bends at the knees and deadlifts the beam so that the two halved joints slip easily together. Pushing the smaller crossbeam hard against the timber, the two ancient slabs bind together as the two cuts embrace and hold.

  For good measure, Angus drives four six-inch spikes into the joint. Stepping back, he takes a moment to admire his creation. He glances over at Marco with a satisfied look, as if to say, See what I made? See what I made … for you?

  Marco looks away.

  One last measure of defiance.

  The grin fades from Angus’s face and hard words rumble from his throat. “This next part’s going to be difficult for you.” Angus nods. “Great things take great sacrifice.”

  Over the next few minutes, several things happen, each progressively worse than the one before. Knowing that a cornered animal is dangerous, Angus uses caution as he ties Marco’s feet together at the ankle with a half-hitch knot. A good length of the rope remains after he finishes, so he stretches it out from the chair in a line, giving a good tug to make sure it’s tight around the ankles.