Over Tumbled Graves

by Jess Walter

  The killer had access to hookers. He had mobility and knew that the police were no longer guarding the crime scene. Could be a resident of Peaceful Valley, just upstream, who saw the police leave. Could be a cabdriver. Could be a cop.

  Laird loped across the clearing, angular and unsteady, weighted to his hips, a six-foot bowling pin. He stepped carefully over the stringed gridwork toward Dupree.

  “How many times have I told you,” Dupree said, “you don’t get the roots, these damn bodies just grow back.”

  Dupree slid under the police tape into the edge of the grid, the strings laid three feet apart at knee level across the clearing, the entire crime scene photographed from above, each quadrant photographed, each square yard dissected, garbage removed, twigs and branches checked for fresh breaks, ground cover checked for impressions and footprints, the very dirt itself sifted. The local FBI guys, a couple of former military types whom Dupree called Gomer and Pyle, were arrogantly and casually offering lasers and computer databases, like rich cousins at a family reunion.

  Laird pulled Dupree away from the FBI agents. “This is bad,” he said. For the first time, Dupree looked at the body. She was blond; the other girl had been dark-haired. And it was clear by the clusters of maggots that she’d been killed more recently. Other than that, it was eerily similar to Rebecca Bennett’s murder. The body was nestled in the same dugout, covered by the same branches. Dupree felt a twitch along his right arm and turned to the river, pretending to look for the direction the killer might have come. He let his breath out in little skips, then cleared his throat and felt the familiar urge to sweep up Debbie and the kids, protect and hide them in the same motion.

  His voice came out raspy and light. “Where was patrol?”

  “A car came by once an hour,” Laird said. “He must’ve snuck her in.”

  Dupree nodded and looked around the clearing again, trying to avoid eye contact with the FBI assholes, who were walking around giving orders to the evidence techs and looking every bit like guys trying to take over an investigation. But there was something else going on with the federales, something even more irritating than usual.

  “FeeBIes giving you any trouble?” Dupree asked.

  “Nah, they’re just a little keyed up. I guess there’s a profiler coming.”

  “Oh, good. A hindsight expert.” Still avoiding the body, Dupree turned back toward the road. “You check for tire tracks along the roadside?”

  Laird squeezed his eyes shut. “Goddamn it. I forgot.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Dupree said, catching his breath and taking a moment to look around the perimeter. “I’ll go back up.”

  Laird turned again toward the body. “You think it might be a copycat?”

  Dupree steeled himself and turned to face the young woman’s corpse, which lay curled against the bank. Only the top of her head and her bare feet were visible, the rest of her partly covered by sticks and brush. He pulled a glove onto his right hand, bent down, and began to pull some branches away.

  “Alan, maybe you should wait for the techs to clear this—”

  Dupree carefully pulled one twig at a time, revealing the right arm and wrist and, finally, what he was looking for, the hand. He stood and backed away. Two twenty-dollar bills had been pressed into the girl’s palm, curled in her hand like paper flowers. Just like Rebecca Bennett. Dupree and Laird stood quietly, as if in a museum, turning their heads this way and that, viewing the work, the simplicity and the daring. Dupree made a noise between a peep and a sigh, and Laird nodded. “Goddamn,” he said.

  The local FBI agents came up, stepped gingerly over the string grid, and took their places next to Laird and Dupree, barely able to contain themselves.

  “We got a guy coming in from Quantico, happened to be in the area,” said the taller agent, whom Dupree called Pyle. “A profiler.”

  “And you think this guy did it?”

  He ignored Dupree. “Your lieutenant asked us to run it through the database.” The FBI operated a database at its Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico that kept track of serial killings all over the country and could be searched for similarities in motive or evidence. For a moment, none of the men looked away from the body, just stared at it as if they were waiting for the woman to do something.

  Finally, the agent Dupree called Gomer turned away. “Unreal. City’s goin’ nuts.”

  Dupree thought about the last two days, imagining a thing that traveled like a wave or a current, invisible until it rolled across your path, when it raised the hair on your neck or made you shiver, its wind pooling with other winds, drawing into streams into branches into rivers that bulged and ran over their banks. He imagined the thing picking up momentum and curling back on itself, doubling and tripling its density and gravity as it spun faster and faster around itself. A whirlpool. A black hole. Fly into a black hole, the theory went, and you emerged on the other side of the universe. Dupree imagined he was standing at the point of a great funnel that could spew dead people forever.

  He walked away to search beyond the clearing for more evidence, spreading out away from the river and exploring every dugout, depression, and stand of pines. Despite being just a couple of miles downstream from Riverfront Park and downtown, this stretch of riverbank remained lightly traveled. A natural floodplain, it had escaped development after the dam went in and had become the place high school kids went for keggers, where transients went to camp, where aging hippies went to sunbathe. Garbage was the only sign that Dupree was actually in the city, and it was garbage he investigated, bottles, boxes, and cigarette butts, carefully sealing bits of promising refuse into sandwich bags.

  Back in the clearing the FBI guys positively beamed as they waited for their expert to arrive. This was so much more glamorous than the usual fare of speed-whacked bank robbers and jughead neo-Nazis. They leaned over their field computer and high-tech evidence kits and used lasers to grid off the fields that earlier the Spokane police, like some Neanderthal investigatory agency, had covered with string. Gomer and Pyle took turns narrating into cell phones, their faces betraying the rush that sickened Dupree because he understood it so well—the humiliating excitement of a murder investigation.

  In contrast to the buzzing FBI agents, Dupree faded as the day went on. He supervised the K-9 officers with their dogs as they searched the riverbank for more evidence. Or more bodies. It stood to reason that if the killer was so attached to this place, he might have dumped other bodies here too.

  Still, Dupree felt unprepared when he rounded a bend in the river, three hundred yards from the first clearing, and was hit with that familiar sweet, rotting smell. One of the cadaver dogs was sniffing at a mound of brush and dirt, so much like the other mound that Dupree heard himself groan. The officer holding the dog was a decent, dull guy named Farley, who scratched the dog’s ears but wouldn’t meet Dupree’s eyes, both of them sharing the horrible and exhilarating flash of guilt at having discovered this.

  Dupree came closer, pulled away a few branches and some of the dirt, and saw just enough dried, darkened skin to know. He stepped back and called the lieutenant on his cell phone to tell him what he’d found and to get an evidence team down there. When Dupree turned back, Farley was staring off into space, the dog still scratching at the mound. Dupree was surprised by the sharpness of his own voice.

  “Get the goddamn dog out of here!”

  Farley pulled the dog toward the river without a word, the dog’s head jittering from side to side as he sniffed for more bodies. Farley looked over his shoulder to make one last eye contact with Dupree, who shrugged a kind of apology.

  Dupree stood in front of the mound, which didn’t so much hide the body as mark it. This was someone who needed a marker to help him return to the body, to see it again. Suddenly, he wished he knew more, and he envied the FBI agents. This was a discipline unto itself, the search for serial killers, separate from routine detective work. Dupree had attended countless evidence and investigative conferences an
d seminars, though he had chosen to ignore the FBI agents talking about profiling and signatures and sex-offender models and the other aspects of serial murder investigation. It seemed too much like voodoo, like something completely removed from the intuitive common sense he relied on as a police officer. Now he found himself wishing he’d paid more attention.

  The sun was dipping behind the hillside and patrol officers were carrying in floodlights and a generator to keep the riverbank lit. Evidence techs and other detectives drifted into the second clearing and Dupree helped them put tape around the perimeter. When the mound had been photographed and measured, Dupree knelt and began pulling branches, one at a time, away from the girl’s right side. Finally, Dupree stepped back and nodded to the corporal with the video camera to come closer. Two twenties lay flat in the girl’s decomposing hand, held in place this time by a rubber band.

  Dupree backed up and dropped to a crouch. The girl was tiny. He thought immediately of his daughter. Dupree felt his stomach curl and he turned away, put his head between his knees, and stared at the ground, a carpet of stinkweed and field grass.

  Spivey put a hand on Dupree’s back. “You okay?”

  Dupree was relieved when the hand was removed. He took another deep breath, nodded, and stood. “Allergies.”

  Spivey headed back upstream. Still lightheaded, Dupree felt a tightness like claustrophobia as he pushed through the thick bushes toward the roadside. He got into deep cover, the branches poking him, tugging at his clothes, his discomfort bleeding into desperation and panic, until finally he burst into the open along the road. Downstream, patrol was setting up a perimeter that would reach two miles of riverfront.

  Looking upstream, Dupree could see the command post; the assistant chief would be there with Branch, who’d been getting regular briefings from Dupree. He began making his way back, his breath evening out, nerves settling. He wiped the perspiration from his upper lip but it returned immediately. Behind the command post, TV news satellite trucks were lined up, their dishes pointed back toward the heart of the city.

  The command post was a blur, the awkward grab and grapple of competing jurisdictions—the FBI and Spokane police both “volunteering” to handle certain aspects of the case, while the county sheriff stood by, pointing out sections of riverbank that were outside the city limits. With the discovery of the third body, new cops arrived all the time, both uniforms and detectives. Dupree looked for Caroline and felt a mixed sense of relief and disappointment that he didn’t see her—relief because this was the last thing she needed. There was no denying it, though; he wanted to see her.

  With the sun down, a chill seeped from the ground, as if April’s warmth had been merely a taunt. In the cordoned-off command post, detectives grabbed for slices of pizza and clutched Styrofoam cups of coffee beneath floodlights that lent a surreal cast to the cars and vans parked alongside the road. Dupree met beneath the tarp of the command post with Lieutenant Branch and Assistant Chief Tucker. They huddled over a map and pointed out the areas where evidence had been processed. They had just decided to keep a presence at the crime scene all night when a tall, muscular white man in a tight, ribbed sweater marched into the command post, his FeeBIe credentials swinging from his neck like bells. Dupree recognized him from somewhere. TV, maybe.

  Tucker lunged forward and shook the man’s hand. “Jeff. Thanks for coming.” Then he turned to Dupree. “Alan. This is FBI Special Supervisory Agent Jeffrey McDaniel…with the Investigative Support Unit.”

  McDaniel was older than Dupree’s first impression of him, hair graying at the temples, stomach held in. He champed on a piece of gum and stared hard at Dupree without actually meeting his eyes. When Dupree didn’t say anything, McDaniel extended a hand and offered a choking handshake. “From Quantico,” he said.

  “Right,” Dupree said, “the Australian airline.”

  McDaniel didn’t even flinch. “Quantico, Virginia. The Behavioral Science Unit.”

  “Well, that makes more sense.”

  McDaniel dropped Dupree’s hand and strode off toward the first body. After a moment, the cops fell in behind, like junior officers at a battlefield inspection.

  “We lucked out,” the assistant chief whispered over his shoulder to Dupree. “Jeff was working on a Portland case and agreed to fly in and give us a quick consultation at the crime scene. This is very rare.”

  “Lucky us,” Dupree said.

  McDaniel stood over the body, running his eyes from one end to the other, as if he were measuring a deck. He asked a series of one-word questions—“Time?” “ID?”—but gave back no information, pacing around the body, staring at it from different angles, then turning toward the vacant fields and blocking with his hands, moving them in shadowy patterns like he was re-creating movements. The effect was of an actor preparing to speak, and everyone, including Dupree, stopped to watch him, to listen.

  “This victim was killed elsewhere,” McDaniel said. “Dragged down here. Gunshots are secondary, overkill. Fingernails broken off, through struggle maybe, but more likely to conceal evidence.” The FBI agent finished speaking and crouched on a hillside. He chewed a piece of grass.

  Dupree looked from Laird to the lieutenant. Was that it? Was that what they’d been waiting for all day? Broken fingernails? After a moment, Spivey came up to McDaniel sheepishly. It looked like he might ask for an autograph. “You think the money is to let us know these are hookers?”

  McDaniel nodded without looking up. “He’s telling us they deserved to die.”

  “Right, right,” Spivey said. “That’s what I think too. Wow. That’s great.” Spivey kicked at the ground with his feet and continued. “I have to tell you, I read your book, like, ten times.”

  This, finally, caught McDaniel’s attention, and he looked up.

  “That case in Detroit—”

  “The Kitchen Killer,” McDaniel said, and Dupree thought he detected a smile on the man’s face.

  “That was amazing. His fascination with handcuffs and everything. Oh, and the guy in Fort Worth. And the Pacific Coast Killer. Oh, man!”

  McDaniel stood and shot Spivey a glare. “That’s Blanton’s book.”

  Spivey looked sick. “What?”

  “The Pacific Coast Killer. That was from Curtis Blanton’s book. Asshole leaves the bureau and makes a fortune talking about our old cases, consulting on every goddamn cop show in Hollywood.” Then McDaniel turned to the river. “And I get to come here.” Spivey stood with his hands at his sides crestfallen.

  It was too much for Dupree, who climbed the riverbank and walked east toward Peaceful Valley. Here the houses ran along three streets parallel to the river and residents had come outside to lean across backyard fences, meeting in the strips alongside their clapboard houses, exchanging rumor for fear, finding new significance in strange cars that had trolled past and the “retard” who used to deliver papers, recalling the recent backfire of cars and the old guy who’d enticed the neighborhood kids into his house with promises of candy.

  The more aggressive gawkers made their way to the edge of the police tape on tiptoes, like the gallery at a golf tournament. Dupree found himself listening to detached voices as the crowd compared other crimes they’d seen, relayed TV shows that made them experts on serial murder, and spun dramatic tales of hearing the sirens.

  “At least he’s just killing hookers,” Dupree heard one woman say. He spun to face the crowd, arms shaking with anger. He couldn’t find the woman who’d said it, and he wondered if he’d heard right; perhaps the sentence was a product of his own fatigue and edginess. Or perhaps it was his opinion. Staring at the expectant faces made him feel exposed and alone, this occasional feeling that the general population was made up entirely of criminals and that it was him against all of them.

  Dupree scanned the faces on the other side of the barrier, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Still, he found Corporal Galatta and instructed him to get some photographs of the crowd, just in case the killer had come down
to watch.

  Dupree was starting to feel wasted, too tired to concentrate. He checked his watch. Just before midnight. He didn’t want to go back and watch the arrogant FBI profiler anymore. He called Lieutenant Branch on his cell phone and said he was going to take his first break of the day, head home for a quick shower and change of clothes.

  He fought sleep as he drove up the hill south of the river, and sat for a moment in his driveway before climbing out of the car. He lingered on the T-ball set in the front yard, picked up Marc’s glove, and opened the unlocked door. He wondered if Debbie did that on purpose, leaving the door unlocked when he wasn’t home, just to piss him off.

  He came in and found her sitting at a bar stool in the dining room, reading a magazine. She removed her glasses and gave him a sad smile that he returned. Her long black hair was ponytailed, draped over her shoulder, and he still could see the girl behind her widened and lined face.

  “You left the door unlocked,” he said.

  She nodded. “You missed the session.” They’d begun going to a marriage counselor two months earlier. She’d been in therapy herself for two years, hoping to avoid the depression that had swallowed her mother, and decided they needed to do something about the creeping discontent in their marriage. But Dupree had missed two of the three sessions, and if there was one thing he felt from her right now, it was discontent.