Collecting the Dead (5 page)
I take a moment to explain the parameters of the demonstration, and then the bailiff escorts me to the hall and the doors close behind us with a solid
thud
that echoes through the tiled passageway. Beyond, Baumgartner is laying a trail for me to follow, no doubt trying to be clever and using what little he knows of man-tracking against me, poor fool.
I’m thinking about sushi
.
Not that I like the stuff, it’s disgusting; my brother Jens eats it by the plate. No, I’m thinking of sushi because it’s tightly bundled with seaweed, and, like sushi, I’m going to wrap this testimony up with seaweed.
Robert Baumgartner is seaweed … at least his essence and texture are that of seaweed, dark green and slimy-wet, his tracks and touchings not unlike the clawings of some nefarious sea beast risen from surf and slouching ashore for some ill purpose. I find the essence and texture appropriate, since seaweed’s slippery and disgusting and some people actually swallow it, much like Baumgartner’s theories and hypotheses.
The courtroom door opens.
Too soon
, I think. Either Baumgartner is not as clever as I thought, or he’s overconfident.
Walking to the front of the courtroom, I see the jurors have moved to the front of their chairs, where they perch like expectant vultures. Whether they plan to feast on my carcass or Baumgartner’s is not so clear, though Marge Simpson manages a small smile as I pass. Stopping in front of and slightly to the left of the judge, I turn to Baumgartner and point to the floor with both hands. “This is where you were standing when I left.”
He nods, but it was a statement, not a question.
Jimmy’s parked on a pew in the third row on the right. He sees me—
sees
me like I see life energy,
reads
me like I read essence and texture. My loathing for our esteemed defense attorney is as clear as the tracks he left around the courtroom. Jimmy’s looking right at me and shaking his head slowly from side to side. I can almost hear his voice in my ear:
Don’t do it, Steps.
He’s afraid I’m going to lose control and toss aside the part of my job where I
pretend
to track, and instead brazenly walk through the courtroom and point out everywhere Baumgartner walked and everything he touched. It’s tempting. I’m tired of living the lie … but then I hear Jimmy’s unspoken words in my ear again:
Remember, you’re a man-tracker, not some mystic or superhuman aura reader.
I take a deep breath, hold it a few seconds, and then release it in a long stream, letting my angst go with it. Today I’m a man-tracker.
On my hands and knees with a borrowed flashlight, I illuminate the carpet and pretend to find signs and directionality. I follow the trail up to the bench, and then back down, over to the Washington State flag at the right, then back to the U.S. flag at the left, then around the outer edge of pews on the left side of the courtroom, up the center aisle, a pause at the jury box, and then down the pews on the right side. As I reach the back of the room I stop, a smile coming to my lips.
Baumgartner’s trail disappears and I kneel to conduct a faux-examination of the final print, suppressing a chuckle as I picture him trying to fool me. After a moment, I rise and examine the area around the back pew, a seemingly random scan in search of signs. After toying with Baumgartner for a few minutes, I suddenly discover a right-shoe track—or so I say—on the seat of the back pew, then the left-shoe track on the pew in front of it, all the way to the front of the courtroom, where I get down on my knees and examine the attorney’s shoes up close, saying, “I think I found him.”
The courtroom explodes with laughter and one of the jurors actually claps. I stand, brush my pants off, and take my seat back in the witness box. The judge bangs his gavel and bangs it some more until the room settles.
Silence.
More silence.
Ticking-clock silence.
“Mr. Baumgartner—” the judge begins.
“No further questions.”
June 16, Seattle
We’re wheels-up out of SeaTac just after five
P.M.
and just a twenty-minute flight from home. The Puget Sound is large, blue, and beautiful out the left window; enchanting. Ferries like the
Kaleetan
, the
Kittitas
, and the
Tacoma
shuffle passengers and cars east and west between Seattle and Bainbridge Island, Edmonds and Kingston, Mukilteo and Clinton, while freighters run north and south as they come and go from the ports of Seattle and Tacoma. Islands dot the Sound, both big and small, some with roads and busy cities, others with little more than private piers and rough airstrips.
Island living.
It sounds quiet and serene. Might be kind of nice, though I think I’d want to be somewhere more tropical … but without humidity or bugs … and no monkeys screeching all night and pooping on my deck … for that matter, no seagulls, either. They can be just as messy. And no sharks. What’s the point of living on the water if you can’t go
into
the water?
Actually, Big Perch is sounding pretty good right now.
“Seriously, what’s wrong?” Jimmy says, leaning forward in his seat, his hands clasped together on the table between us. When I don’t answer, he continues, “You did good work today … you do good work every day. Bad guys go to jail for a long time and victims’ families get closure and justice.”
“There’s no justice for what Quillan did,” I say flatly.
“Why? Because the death sentence is off the table? He’s off the street for the rest of his life. There won’t be any other victims, except for maybe Quillan himself if he crosses the wrong person in prison.”
“We can hope,” I say, my eyes still on the Sound. Jimmy just watches me. “I’ve thought about it, you know.”
“Thought about what?”
I look him straight in the eye. “Quitting.”
He plays it cool, conversational, but I can tell he’s upset.
“What would you do?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly, slowly twisting my fingers into knots. “Maybe find buried treasure, or Jimmy Hoffa, or Bigfoot; whatever I can do to make a living that doesn’t involve death … well, except for Jimmy Hoffa.”
“Bigfoot’s an animal; shine doesn’t work for animals.”
I long-shrug and stare at my hands. “Buried treasure, then.”
“You think you can find buried treasure using your tracking ability?” Jimmy’s skeptical but intrigued. “Like, say, Blackbeard’s treasure?” Lowering his voice and leaning closer, even though there’s no way the flight crew can hear, he says in a conspiratorial tone, “You’d have to know what Blackbeard’s shine looks like, right? How could you know that? How could his energy still be around after, what, three hundred years? You’re good, but that’s a lot of layers of shine to sift through.”
He knows better.
Once I’ve seen someone’s shine, I can concentrate on it and block all the others out—for the most part—even if it’s been three hundred years and a hundred thousand people have walked the same path … provided the path is enduring, like stone. If someone walks across a field of leaves, or crosses a wooden bridge, the shine survives only as long as the leaves or the wood. Often the leaves blow away and the wood rots, taking the shine with it.
“I was actually thinking of the Lost Dutchman’s Mine,” I say with a half smile.
“Really?” Jimmy’s voice is subdued, but his eyes widen noticeably and he leans in closer. He’s read all the stories about the Lost Dutchman’s Mine and even spent two weeks looking for it after college.
We both know it’s just a dream, though.
If I quit, the STU ceases to exist; what’s a Special Tracking Unit without the Human Bloodhound? Jimmy would be reassigned, most likely to a counterterrorism position. Diane would be transferred back to the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) complex in Clarksburg, West Virginia, which would break her heart, since her daughter and two young grandsons live in Seattle.
Les and Marty don’t actually work for the FBI; they’re on contract. In addition to their base monthly salary, they get bonus pay based on their flight hours, and government-rate per diem to cover food and lodging whenever we have a layover. Jimmy and I draw per diem, too. The difference is when Les and Marty draw it in, say, New York or Fresno or Boulder, they’re out seeing the sights, tasting the local fare, and taking advantage of all the natural and man-made attractions.
Jimmy and I rarely stay at the nice hotels; we never eat a $30 breakfast, a $40 lunch, or a $60 dinner; we don’t sightsee. Jimmy and I spend our time following
shine
down back alleys, across fields, and through forests … all the least desirable places.
Les and Marty would miss the per diem more than the job.
“It’s just a thought,” I say, pushing dreams of the Lost Dutchman’s Mine to the furthest alcove of my mind, saying good-bye to Edward Teach’s treasure, and rest-in-peace to Mr. Hoffa. I can’t ask Jimmy to quit and come with me. He has a family and a good career.
Pushing forward in my seat until I’m perched like a bird at the very edge, I look at my partner, then reach across the table and snatch the folder from his briefcase—
the
folder—the one decorated with gruesome photos of a young mother and her baby, the one with surreal images of a glowing blue kitchen, a blood trail, a heel drag.
“I’m tired of
this
haunting my dreams, even my waking dreams,” I say, slamming it down on the table. “Doesn’t it ever get to you, Jimmy? You’re with me every step of the way. You see the same blood, smell the same decomp. How do you deal with it?”
Jimmy doesn’t answer; he just lifts the folder from the table, his movements slow and measured, not in a caring manner but in the way one would treat a toxic chemical, an infected animal, or unstable explosives. Closing the file with equal care, he slides it back into the briefcase.
“Magnus”—
he never calls me that
—“you’ve got to stop dwelling on the dead and remember the living. How many more would be dead if you didn’t stop these monsters? And I’m not talking about Quillan. He’s just another messed-up tweaker who went over the edge—” He shoots up a hand to stop me as I open my mouth to interrupt. “Let me finish.
“When we started, the FBI had a long list of unsolved murders believed to be the work of perhaps hundreds of serial killers, and that list was growing by about two hundred murders a year. How many are you up to?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. Aside from the hundreds of killers like Quillan and Buerger that you’ve identified, how many
serial
killers are behind bars today because of the work you’ve done over the last five years?”
“I don’t know.”
“Liar! You remember every one of them. You dwell on them, just as you dwell on the dead. It’s seventeen, seventeen of the sickest bastards that ever walked the earth. How many more victims would be dead now, I wonder, if you hadn’t stopped them? Most of them were averaging one every year or two; Plosser was good for three a year himself, and his victims didn’t die quickly or well. He dragged them through hell itself before he finished them. No one deserves that, Magnus.”
There it is again
.
“So just suck it up and live with it, that’s what you’re telling me,” I snap. “Just ignore the nightmares that wake me dripping in cold sweat, leaving me shaking for the better part of an hour before I can calm myself, before I can breathe normally.” I stand and take a few steps to the back of the plane—I like to pace when I’m thinking or fretting or making a point, but the plane’s just not large enough. I pause and turn in the aisle, my hands resting on the backs of the chairs to my left and right.
“I come from a great family, Jimmy. We all get along like families should but rarely do; I love my mother; I love my father; I love my brother. I’ve got no childhood traumas weighing me down, no hidden scars, no unresolved issues.”
“Except the forest, when you were eight,” Jimmy interjects.
“I think we can both agree that that was an unusual exception. The point is I should be the most grounded, sane, and stable person you could hope to meet, yet I feel like I’m going crazy, like the stuff in my head’s just swirling around and beating against the side of my skull trying to get out, only it’s the most horrific … the most … it’s evil … and it plays like a movie in my head over and over again … so awful you just want to hug your knees to your chest and cover your ears and close your eyes and just scream.”
Warm water lands on my cheeks and I look up at the ceiling … then realize the source; embarrassed, I brush the tears away.
I really am losing it.
Jimmy’s silent; he’s not even looking at me now, just staring at the table, picking absently at its scuffed corner, pondering. After a long moment, he lifts his chin and studies me. What can he say? There is no brilliant solution to my dilemma, no pill I can take to feel all better. The only solution is to walk away from it all, to just up and quit, but, much as I talk, I’m not ready to do that yet. Even if I did quit, it would take a hundred lifetimes to forget the things I’ve seen.
“What do I do?” I whisper.
“You take that damn black book of yours and you burn it,” Jimmy says without hesitation, pushing forward in his seat. “You burn the pictures and the memories with it; you let the dead go. You let them rest in peace, the peace that
you
gave them.”
I plop down hard in my chair.
“And then you take the pictures from the white book and you hang them on the wall, hang them where you’ll see them every day, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, in the hall, so you’ll remember they’re alive because of you. They live and breathe and hug their children because of you. They’re the ones you dwell on.”
He pushes back from the table and looks to the window. “That’s what I do,” he adds in a soft voice. His eyes find mine for the briefest moment. “It helps with the nightmares.”
