Collecting the Dead (3 page)

“Did you find anything?” Buerger chokes.

Anderson nods. “We found Ann,” he says softly, but before he can continue, I blurt, “She’s hurt, but alive and conscious.”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Jimmy quickly grab Anderson’s elbow from behind. His grip is firm and Anderson catches on quickly; smart man. Normally I’d warn the locals if I’m going to try something like this, but I tend to be spontaneous, and this one just crept up on me as we ascended to the porch. I can imagine the sergeant’s shock, however, and I can tell he’s none too pleased. As far as he knows, Matt Buerger is the grieving husband, and what I just did is unforgivable.

“They’re taking her to Adventist Medical Center in Portland,” I continue, not wanting to give Anderson time to think things through. “She had some interesting things to tell us before she left, though.” I fall silent and let the statement hang in the air. To the innocent, such words are intriguing and beg questions. To the guilty, they’re accusatory, condemning.

Buerger’s face goes blank, and then turns hard as stone.

“What’d she say?”

Without a word, Jimmy reaches around to the small of his back, snaps the button on the leather case secured to his belt, and produces a pair of nickel-plated handcuffs, which he dangles by one end.

“No.” Buerger’s mouth hardens. On his face and in his eyes the transformation is instantaneous and startling, like pudding turning to granite as you watch. He tries to slam the door, but Jimmy’s too quick and launches into the dandelion-yellow field. There’s a loud
crack
as the door slams open. Buerger lands on his back—hard. He lets out an involuntary
ummph
and flies across the polished hardwood floor, gasping, cursing, clawing against the momentum.

Jimmy’s on him.

Watching my partner at work is like watching a tie-down roper at a rodeo—it’s almost a thing of beauty—only instead of binding the legs of a calf together with a pigging string in three seconds flat, he hooks the suspect up with a pair of metal bracelets. If they ever come up with a police rodeo for restraining and cuffing, my money’s on him.

No sooner does Buerger get his breath back than he spits it out again in a tirade of prolific profanity, capped off by, “Stupid bitch! She can’t even die properly.”

Close, but not quite a confession.

“I should’ve drowned her in the river instead of pushing her.”

That’ll do.

CHAPTER TWO

June 16—too early

“Go away!” I say, burrowing deeper into the couch and pulling the blanket tightly about my shoulders. “I need sleep. You’re supposed to have my back.”

I know it’s Jimmy.

The staccato
knock-knock-knock
repeats, echoing off the floor, the ceiling, and the giant picture windows of my sparsely furnished living room.

Of course it’s Jimmy.

It’s always Jimmy.

I need to get a life.

“Come on, Steps. Open up. You’ve got court in Seattle at three-thirty.”

Pulling my hand free from the blanket, I fumble for my watch on the nightstand and slip it onto my wrist before raising the black dial to my face and squinting. “It’s seven
A.M.
What kind of FBI agent is out harassing people at seven
A.M.
?”

“It’s one-thirty in the afternoon,” Jimmy replies. “You put your watch on upside down again.”

“Damn!” I whisper under my breath, unclasping the black Movado and flipping it around. Sure enough, the dial reads one-thirty
P.M.
Traitor
, I think, giving the watch a scathing look, as if its gears and springs are somehow to blame. “Well … it feels like seven
A.M.
,” I say softly.

The knocking persists.

“All right, I’m coming.”

My home is nestled on a hill overlooking the Puget Sound just north of Larrabee State Park and south of the Bellingham city limits. From the massive wall of windows in my living room I have a hundred-and-eighty-degree view of the myriad islands anchored in the Sound’s deep waters. To the left, which is south, is Samish Bay, then Padilla Bay, Guemes Island, and behind her is the bustling city of Anacortes with its refineries, marina, and Washington State ferry terminal. Moving north you’ll see Cypress Island, the San Juan Islands, and finally Lummi Island, with the fifteen-hundred-foot-high Lummi Peak standing sentinel.

It’s inspiring.

My house has a name.

Odd, I know.

I felt a little uncomfortable about it until I discovered there are entire web sites dedicated to naming your house. Who knew? I always thought that for a house to have a name it had to belong to some long-dead patriot, some quirky industrialist, or have some unusual characteristic, such as being haunted. Places like Mount Vernon, Monticello, and the Winchester House come to mind.

Knowing that others are
intentionally
naming their houses makes it somehow less ostentatious, less snobbish. Kind of like naming your car. (Yes, my car also has a name, it’s Gus.)

My house is called Big Perch, I’m guessing because it sits on the side of Chuckanut Mountain like some great aerie perched above the world. I didn’t name it, but love it or hate it the name’s not going anywhere. It’s carved—and carved deeply—into a three-ton boulder at the end of my driveway. I’ve considered using dynamite on the boulder, but I don’t want to cause a slide. I’m already on touchy ground with the neighbors down the hill. (One wayward bottle rocket causes one small fire and you’re marked for life.)

Big Perch is twenty-four-hundred square feet split between two floors; it has extensive decking on three sides that includes a hot tub and an outdoor fireplace, neither of which I’ve used in the last month. I’ve come to realize that I’m in a Catch-22 situation where I have the means to afford such things but not the time to use them.

I also own the adjoining lot to the south, which has a matching thirteen-hundred-square-foot house called Little Perch—again, I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t choose the names, they came with the property.

Ellis Stockwell also came with the property.

He’s the former owner, a retired Customs and Border Protection officer who lost the property in foreclosure. After retiring from CBP about ten years ago, he started a security consulting firm that quickly grew into a multimillion-dollar international operation. Ellis says he had a lot of luck growing the business, but I suspect the fourteen-hour days and seven-day work weeks had something to do with it.

Within four years he was living well. He had Big Perch custom-built, bought a Corvette, and managed to find a new wife along the way. That would be Vanessa, twenty years his junior, with a champagne-and-diamonds appetite.

Almost immediately Ellis began constructing Little Perch for Vanessa’s divorced mother—the two were inseparable. No one was more surprised than Ellis when two years later Vanessa emptied the business bank account and various investment accounts to the tune of $1.7 million. Hiding the money in a series of offshore accounts while Ellis was on a business trip, she hopped a flight to Cincinnati and shacked up with some guy she knew in college. They’d been Facebook friends for three years after reconnecting online. Go figure.

Ellis returned to an empty house. All Vanessa left behind was a single cup, a single plate, and a single knife, fork, and spoon. And one half-used roll of toilet paper in the guest bathroom.

The business was ruined.

Ellis was ruined.

When the bank foreclosed I must have visited the property a half dozen times before making an offer. On every visit, there was Ellis, still tending the flower beds, pressure-washing the sidewalks, touching up the paint. He was always cheerful, despite his troubles. He still has his federal retirement, which is substantial, but you could tell he loved the property.

On my first visit we talked a little; on other visits we talked a little more. He was intelligent, interesting, and had an endless supply of seemingly far-fetched stories. His bushy mustache and strong British accent seemed to fit him—though I remember wondering how it was that a British citizen could work for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Six months later I learned that Ellis wasn’t British at all, he was born and raised in Philadelphia. He just likes the British accent.

He’s odd like that.

In the end we came to an arrangement that served both our purposes. I let him live in Little Perch rent-free and he looks after the property, making repairs when needed and keeping the landscaping under control.

You would have thought I’d given him back all the money his ex-wife had stolen from him, he was that happy. It’s been four years and I have no regrets; he’s as good as family now … bizarre, odd, sometimes Dr. Seuss–like family, but family nonetheless.

Jimmy gives me the quick rundown on the Buerger case as I shave and then scrounge a clean suit from my brother’s closet. Jens is five years my junior, but we’re about the same build—okay, he’s a couple inches longer in the torso, but other than that we’re mostly the same.

Jens is a postgraduate student at Western Washington University. I asked him once why he wanted to study anthropology and he said, “Because people are funny.” I couldn’t agree more, though he meant in the queer and unusual way, whereas I think people are funny in the dark and sinister way.

I like having him stay with me.

I’m gone half the time anyway, so someone might as well enjoy the view, the hot tub, the fireplace, the multiple large-screen TVs, the game room, and the endless flow of college girls that seem drawn to the place … though I’m pretty sure Jens has something to do with the latter.

Finding a striped gray jacket and matching slacks, I dress. Jimmy’s telling me how pissed Matt Buerger was when he found out Ann was indeed dead. By that time he’d already been Mirandized and had given a very detailed written statement summarizing how he’d planned the attack for weeks (something us law enforcement types call
premeditation
, which is usually redeemable for copious amounts of high voltage or a needle in the arm and some bye-bye juice). He even admitted to failing on a previous attempt when he lost his nerve as Ann jogged by.

When I ask why Buerger had a beef with his wife, Jimmy’s response comes as no surprise: The self-indulgent weasel had a girlfriend on the side and didn’t want the hassle and monetary loss of a divorce. It’s so much easier to pitch the wife over a cliff. With any luck his prison girlfriend will be a three-hundred-pound butt-squeezer named Meat, who likes sharing his boy toy with the other guys on the cell block.

Jimmy blathers on about some new case law we need to read up on, and a possible serial killer in Tulsa that may end up on our plate.

I like Tulsa—except for the weather. It doesn’t really matter, though; as Jimmy often says, “We’re not tourists.” Jet in, jet out. Wheels up, wheels down. Get the job done as quickly as possible, and come home. Then do it all over again somewhere else.

“I’m good to go,” I announce as I swing the jacket on, then I remember something. “Actually, I need three minutes.” Grabbing my backpack, I scoot to the master bedroom as Jimmy looks with disdain at his watch.

Digging out the Canon PowerShot S95, I plug it into the computer and quickly download the single image from the disk. Thirty seconds of trimming, sizing, and correcting in Photoshop, and I send it to the printer, which kicks out a beautiful, sharp, yet terrible photo. With scissors in hand, I cut the image from the photo paper, leaving a five-by-seven picture.

A small shelf is mounted to the wall above the computer, a shelf that holds but two items: one is a photo album in black, the other is an identical album but in white. Retrieving the black album, I flip it open toward the back. I try not to look at the other images as I find the next empty space. A couple strokes of a glue stick and the image is set on the page. I close the album and return it to the shelf.

I’ll need to buy another black album soon, probably within the next two months. The white album’s probably good for a few more years. I never look at the pictures in the black album, not intentionally. The white album’s different. I like those pictures. They smile back at me; happy, relieved faces. Mother faces, child faces, husband, wife, and sister faces. Sometimes they’re waving, eyes beaming and so alive.

I don’t look at the black book.

*   *   *

The Gulfstream G100—we call her Betsy—is a dream on wings, and one of the perks of the job that I really enjoy. Forests may make me quiver, but put me in the air and I’m in heaven. Les and Marty, our pilot and copilot, have banned me from the cockpit. Apparently I ask too many questions and touch buttons I’m not supposed to.

They were nice about it, though, and fortunately the G100 only seats four passengers, so there wasn’t an air marshal on board to tase me. That wouldn’t be fun. I went through training three years ago so I could carry a Taser, thinking it would be cool to have one if I ever needed it. No one told me that to complete the course I had to get
shot
by a Taser.

When they asked me if I wanted firearms training I said, “Hell, no!”

The King County prosecutor has me scheduled for three-thirty—last witness of the day. It should be interesting. I rarely have to go to court, which is good, since I get nervous with the whole process. Not from being in court, in front of people. That’s easy. My
testimony
is what gives me fits and starts. It’s too close to a lie, not that I’d lie in court, I just don’t tell the whole story … and I have a guilty conscience, which eats at me. The jury hears about shoe size, trekking poles, stride length, shine, toe digs, and directionality.

But I’m not a man-tracker.

I don’t need a good trail. I don’t need a fresh trail.

All I need is essence and texture … which I can’t talk about in court.

Most suspects fall apart in the early stages of the investigation, usually right after I find the body. They give a full confession long before it ever gets to court; it’s pretty hard not to, when someone can tell you everything you did, where you walked, and what you touched. Most know when they’re caught and are smart enough to work out a plea.