Collecting the Dead (16 page)

A Red Bluff officer named Danny Coors—like the beer—meets us at the impound yard with a ring of keys and ushers us through the gate. Danny’s a nice enough kid, but overly rigid and formal, everything’s
Yes, sir
and
No, sir
, and
I’ll check on that, sir
. Probably hasn’t been out of the academy more than a year.

Don’t get me wrong, such courtesy would be perfectly appropriate if he was giving me a ticket, but we’re all on the same team here and I get uncomfortable when people call me sir, especially fellow law enforcement.

“I’ll unlock it for you, sir.”

Jimmy starts to make small talk with Danny, who’s unlocking the driver’s door, then the passenger’s door, then the trunk, while I walk around the exterior of the Hyundai. Ashley’s car may have been nice years ago … many years ago … but it’s a full-fledged doper car now. Every corner is bent or blemished, like a dog-eared book that’s been loved too much or too little. The right rear taillight has red tape covering a gaping hole from an incident with a baseball bat; the windshield has a horizontal crack that runs the length of the glass; the rear bumper is held together by faded, peeling stickers; and the radio antenna is cockeyed. Its best feature is the two-tone paint job: faded silver and rust.

Sad Face is all over the vehicle.

His shine is in the driver’s seat, on the door, the steering wheel, the trunk, even the gas cap.
He drove it long enough to put gas in it
.

Ashley’s all over the vehicle as well. The patch of shine in the trunk is particularly disturbing because it’s shaped like a curled-up body; it’s not a place one would willingly go. The original carpet is missing, as is the spare tire, leaving a filthy metal base with a tire-sized hole in the center. At some point the car was used to haul everything from trash to old car batteries and used motor oil, all of which have left their mark on the small space.

She was alive when he stuffed her into this nasty black hole.

I can almost see her struggling in the dark. She certainly would have been tied or duct-taped, but she must have slipped her hands in front of her because I see them all over the latch, groping for a handle, a knob, a button—something that would pop the trunk, something that would set her free.

She would have been smarter to rip the wires from the taillights
, I think. That, at least, would’ve gotten the right kind of attention. Kicking the taillight out and sticking a hand through works even better.

There’s no shine on the underside of the trunk, either; no fist-shaped glimmer where she pounded and beat and pounded on the trunk, hoping someone would hear. Hoping
anyone
would hear.

No. She was quiet as a mouse; trembling in the dark; afraid.

Afraid
he
would hear.

Afraid of what
he
would do.

Ashley’s shine is flat and dead; no vibration, no pulse, no life. Her fate was sealed when she was placed in that trunk. Better if she had kicked and screamed and pounded until the heavens shook. Her end may have been no different, but a mouse has two choices: it can walk into the lion’s mouth and lie down upon its teeth, or it can bite and leap and claw and spit its last breath.

Better to fight than to lie down.

When Officer Coors is out of earshot, I whisper to Jimmy, “He’s all over the car.”

Jimmy nods his understanding and sighs. “I was hoping she was in Cabo.”

“Me, too.”

“Did he drive this one, or just leave his mark?”

“Oh, he drove it—” I begin, but Jimmy stops me with a furtive hand motion and indicates to the left with his eyes. I see Danny coming back toward us.

“You find what you’re looking for?” Officer Coors asks, looking from me to Jimmy, then back to me.

“Typical doper ride,” I say, giving him a crooked smile and thumbing toward the car. “Hard to tell how much of this mess was Ashley’s and how much was Jacob’s.”

“I hear ya. The worst of it was cleared out when it was impounded—moldy hamburger, used syringes, used condoms, stuff like that. About twenty pounds of pure nasty. I don’t know how they live like that.”

“I don’t call it living,” Jimmy says in a tired voice.

“I just pulled the property sheet,” Danny says, waving a lined and columned page in his hand. “It looks like they took about fifteen pieces of stolen property from the interior and the trunk. I don’t think any of that had to do with Ashley, though. Most of it was linked back to several burglaries we had a few months back. A couple items that weren’t claimed are still in evidence, including … let’s see.” He scans quickly down the list. “A ring—a dolphin ring, it looks like. Plus there’s a package of brand-new unopened men’s socks that were probably shoplifted, and … here it is, a TomTom GPS.”

“The GPS might be worth a look,” Jimmy says. “Remember Quillan?”

“Yeah, not a chance,” I say. “We’re not that lucky.”

We take a chance anyway.

Danny leads us into the main warehouse, where, with the help of an evidence technician, he retrieves the impounded GPS. The batteries are dead, so it takes a few more minutes to find and cannibalize a desk clock in the office that has the required AAA batteries.

“Try holding the button down for five seconds,” Jimmy says after the new batteries have no effect.

“That only works on a frozen computer,” I say, “and only when you’re trying to shut it down, not turn it on.” But I hold the button anyway.

Nothing.

And still nothing. Technology is a marvelous apocalypse of electricity. No wonder people sometimes lose their mind and pump some twelve-gauge slugs into their computer. In most cases it’s justifiable.

Danny retrieves the clock batteries and seals the GPS back in the evidence bag. “I’ll send it to the lab. Maybe they can retrieve something from the chip.” I hand him my card—
Magnus Craig, Operations Specialist, Special Tracking Unit, FBI
—and he promises to call in a day or two.

Back in the car, Jimmy scribbles some comments in his notebook … again. He hasn’t even hinted at what he’s working on, which has me curious, and therefore irritated. He knows it’s killing me, but I’ll let him do his thing, play his little game. He’ll tell me eventually. He has to. I mean, it has to be something related to the case, he just wants to make sure he’s right before he pops it on me.

I can wait. Sure I can wait. Patience is a virtue and the sign of a calm, mature mind. He’ll tell me soon enough, no sense in getting all spun up over it.

“
What
do you keep writing in that notebook?” I blurt as he closes the cover and stuffs it back into his dark brown Fossil Estate leather portfolio briefcase.

Damnation!

Virtue—gone.

Patience—gone.

Jimmy doesn’t answer right away, but pushes back in his seat, fishes the keys out of his pocket, starts the car, adjusts the radio, checks his hair in the mirror. After spending forever adjusting his seat—seriously, he could have built a new one faster—he lifts his sunglasses just enough so I can see his eyes and says, “Patience is a virtue,” then throws the car in gear.

Damnation!

The rest of the day goes quickly. First to Weed for Sarah Wells, where we don’t find any of Sad Face’s shine on her car, but we do find his mark on her mailbox in pink crayon. Her body was dumped in the Shasta National Forest west of Weed, along a hiking trail but obscured by bushes. The park rangers were able to take us to the exact spot: a dim, oppressive patch of wood with violence spilled upon the ground in a rainbow of color.

I could feel the trees pressing in …

 … leaning over me.

Whispering.

Always whispering.

We finally make our way back to Millville, a small community just east of Redding, for the first victim, Valerie Heagle, whose body was dumped in the Odd Fellows Cemetery off Brookdale Road. There was no attempt to hide her body and the story got a lot of local attention, probably more than Sad Face wanted.

He was more careful after that.

Since the body was found outside the Redding city limits, the case landed in the lap of the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office. Everything in the case report shows a competent, well-executed investigation, but there was no DNA, no hair follicles, no prints, nothing to point to a suspect or even hint at one.

The killer had done his homework; forensics revealed that the body had been washed down in bleach. The interior of Valerie’s car, a 1992 Jeep Cherokee, had also been wiped free of prints and spritzed with a bleach solution.

The only good news is the vehicle is still in police impound. It’s locked away in a storage building protected from the elements, the same building that holds Alison Lister’s Honda, but in a separate room. When we arrive and walk through the roll-up door, I see it tucked away in a corner, the sad relic of a heinous crime now collecting dust and years.

Sad Face is all over the Jeep: the driver’s seat, the cargo area, the glove box, and, once more, the gas cap. Cut into the grime on the back window, almost indistinguishable now, is his mark. The eyes have blurred out to hazy smudges, but most of the circle is intact, along with the nose and half of the ugly, downturned mouth.

I see it all in neon amaranth and rust.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Redding, 8:13
P.M.

Jimmy has a theory.

He won’t tell me the theory, but assures me it’s valid and says it explains some of what we’ve seen. On the drive back to the hotel I press him for his thoughts. “Just a hint,” I say, but he’s stubborn and mulish when he’s working on a theory, has been as long as I’ve known him. To make matters worse, he placed his briefcase in the trunk, so I can’t even rifle through it when we stop for gas.

He’s wise to me.

“Give it a rest, Steps!” he finally says as we’re pulling into the parking lot. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, I just want to make sure it all makes sense first.”

Jimmy has a natural gift for crime analysis; give him a case file and he’ll find a dozen things that need further exploration: questions that haven’t even been asked, let alone answered. He doesn’t trust his instincts enough.

He should.

Back at the hotel, I convince Jimmy to eat something while he works, and we order room service. It gives me an excuse to camp out in his room, a constant reminder that he has a theory to explain.

“Seriously, Steps,” he argues, “why don’t you go to your room and get a shower or a bath or watch some TV? I’ll call you when the food arrives.”

“I’ll just watch TV here,” I reply. “Yours has more channels.”

“They both have the same channels,” he says with a sigh.

“My room’s boring.”

“This room is identical to yours, how is it less boring?”

I shrug.

“Really? You’re going to just sit here and watch TV while I work?”

“Unless you want me to help?”

Jimmy holds up both hands and shakes his head. “No!”

After that he just ignores me.

Retrieving the Bureau-issued Dell laptop from his briefcase, along with two pens, one black and one red, and the offending notebook he’s been scribbling in for the last couple days, he settles at the small round table in the corner of the room and gets to work.

Clearly I’m just the eye candy in this brain trust, so I settle back on the queen-sized bed and start flipping through channels. The volume’s a little loud, I admit, so when Jimmy casts an annoyed look my way, I turn it down a notch. Apparently one notch isn’t enough, because his eyes narrow and he continues staring until I turn it down another five notches.

Touchy!

Room service arrives twenty minutes later, and I dig into a pepperoni calzone with extra sauce on the side while Jimmy pauses long enough to eat his eight-ounce steak smothered in A.1. sauce and a loaded baked potato the size of a large river rock. He’s not normally an overly picky eater, but the first thing he does is scrape the chives off the potato.

“Those are good for blood pressure,” I say between bites. “You just turned thirty-three a couple weeks ago; you should pay more attention to stuff like that.”

“Thirty-three is not old,” he shoots back, “and my blood pressure is nearly perfect.” Pointing his fork at the little pile of green ringlets, he adds, “You’re welcome to them, please. The sooner they’re off my plate, the better.”

“I’m just trying to look out for you,” I say, trying not to grin.

He goes back to his potato.

“They’ve also got antioxidants that help fight cancer.”

He looks at me now, fork in his left hand, knife in his right; I notice they’re both pointing in my general direction. “When did you become an expert on chives?”

“We grew chives on the back porch when I was a kid. Mom loves them. Dad’s not particularly fond of them but doesn’t complain much.”

“He doesn’t complain because your mother would beat him with a dirty frying pan.”

I’m about to object, but then realize there might be some truth to that.

In ten minutes I finish off the monarch’s share of my calzone—the thing was huge—and dump the remains in the garbage can. I thoroughly rinse the plate and silverware in the sink and set them back on the serving tray. When Jimmy finishes, I do the same for him so he can finish collecting and sorting his thoughts on the case. As I go to scrape his plate, the only thing left is a lonely pile of chives nesting in A.1. sauce and butter drippings.

Sad. Just sad.

Meanwhile, Jimmy apparently has
a lot
of thoughts to collect and organize. So much so that I finish watching one episode of
NCIS
and I’m halfway through another before he speaks again.

Finally, the theory!

There’s a great shuffling as he turns the laptop around to face me and returns the notebook, pens, and miscellaneous scraps of paper to his briefcase.

I hit the off button on the remote and the TV goes black; the room goes quiet.

Jimmy motions to the chair next to him at the table and I grudgingly extract myself from a stack of pillows and blankets.