Shadows of the Dead--A Special Tracking Unit Novel

by Spencer Kope

  “Okay. That’s kind of cool,” I say with an approving nod.

  Jimmy smiles now. “Danny taught me at least a hundred Crow words, and of all these it’s mah-ish-ta-schee-da that I remember. Whenever I didn’t learn something quickly enough, or if I made a mistake identifying a track, Danny would throw his hands up and call me yellow eyes in the flowing language of the Crow—always with a subtle smile on his face, though.

  “His way of motivating me was to say that little Crow children could do this or that by the time they could walk. This only made me try harder—which was the point, I suppose. Still, no matter how good I got, I was always mah-ish-ta-schee-da.”

  “And what did Danny mean by the dark wolf thing?” I ask, bringing the conversation back around to the original question.

  Jimmy nods. “The Security Forces Squadron is the Air Force equivalent of military police, so Danny and I saw our share of assaults, bar fights, and the usual idiots bumping chests and getting in each other’s faces. On occasion we’d respond to a situation that really got out of hand, more than the usual bloody noses and scraped knuckles. It’s after these that I’d often hear Danny mutter, ‘Dark wolf rising,’ and shake his head the way he did when disapproving of something.

  “I heard him say it three or four times in the first few months we worked together. I didn’t know him well at that point, so it took a while before I asked him what he was talking about. Turns out it’s an old Cherokee legend about the two wolves that reside within each of us: a dark wolf that is evil, and a light wolf that is good. The dark wolf feeds on anger, envy, lies, sorrow, greed, arrogance, and all the negative traits we display. The light wolf is just the opposite, and feeds on joy, peace, love, hope, understanding, truth, and compassion. These wolves are constantly at war with each other, one trying to gain dominance over the other. In the legend, a young Cherokee boy asks his grandfather which wolf will eventually win. The old Cherokee simply replies, ‘The one you feed.’

  “When Danny saw people arguing or fighting, he didn’t view it the way you or I would. He saw it with different eyes, as if he could actually see them feeding the dark wolf … and the dark wolf rising, growing stronger, becoming more dominant.”

  Jimmy shakes his head slowly. “The Onion King didn’t want to do his own killing, which is why he recruited Murphy. In the meantime, he’s been feeding his dark wolf, which has grown stronger. Now he finds that he can kill; maybe he even likes it. I don’t think he’ll need a disposal guy after this.” Looking at me, he says, “Dark wolf rising,” in a whispery voice that borders on the ominous.

  I want to tell him I understand, but the words don’t come. He sees it on my face and in my eyes nonetheless. Pushing back in my chair, I contemplate his words as he starts reviewing case notes.

  * * *

  Before dropping us off at the airport, Jason had handed me a manila envelope that contained a copy of the only real surprise discovered during the search of Murphy’s cabin. It’s a thirty-two-page document that was shoved up underneath one of the cabinet drawers in the kitchen. It’s handwritten in Murphy’s messy scrawl. I glanced at it briefly when he handed it to me, and then dropped it into my backpack.

  As Jimmy starts pounding away on his laptop, getting a head start on the case report, which is going to be extensive, it seems I have about thirty minutes of flight time to kill before we land in Bellingham; I can’t stand the thought of sitting idle, so I open my backpack and find the manila envelope. Sliding the thirty-two-page document free, I lay it on the table and start at the beginning.

  By page three my mind is reeling.

  By page ten I can contain myself no longer. “Are you sure Murphy had this … what did you call it? Delusional disorder?”

  Jimmy looks up from his keyboard. “Grandiose delusional disorder,” he replies. “And no, I’m not even close to sure. That would have required extensive tests and interviews, which obviously we can’t do now.”

  “Because he’s room temperature.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But if you had to guess, you’d stick with grandiose delusional disorder?”

  Jimmy thinks about the question a moment before answering. “I’m not sure. I think that’s part of it, but after finding the cabin and the barrels, I can’t help wondering if something else was going on. It’s not uncommon for someone with mental illness to have multiple disorders.”

  “Like what?”

  Jimmy shifts thoughtfully in his seat. “Well, to paraphrase a commercial, I don’t always diagnose people with mental disorders, but when I do, I prefer the DSM-5.”

  The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, is the American Psychiatric Association’s go-to reference for thousands of mental disorders, from the benign to the extreme. The manual is generally referred to by edition, and since the version released in 2013 is the fifth update, it’s simply called DSM-5.

  Jimmy has the ebook version on his laptop.

  I’ve never really taken the time to look through it, mostly because Jimmy’s the one with the master’s degree in psychology and I defer to his judgment in such matters. Also, I have enough trouble keeping ahead of my own phobias; I don’t need to spend time exploring the peculiarities of others.

  “Have you checked to see if Murphy fits into any other categories?”

  “No,” Jimmy replies soberly. “It’s pointless now, don’t you think?”

  I give him a surrendering shrug.

  “Why the sudden interest?” he asks.

  I pick up the left-hand stack of papers from the document and hold them aloft. “There’s some pretty crazy stuff in here. He talks about transcending his victims, whatever that means. There’s a lot of the same blather about the face being the place of the soul, and about the necessity to destroy the corruption if the soul is to be free. I’m assuming that’s why he dissolved the bodies.”

  “Any mention of the Onion King?”

  “Over and over again,” I reply, “and always in glowing terms. It’s like he worshipped the guy, which, in a way, I guess he did. He certainly laid down some sacrifices at his feet.”

  “Any clues as to who he is?”

  “Nothing,” I reply. “I think Murphy was telling the truth when he said he’d never met him in the … what did he call it? The three-dimensional?”

  “Yeah, that one’s a keeper; we should probably write it down.”

  Leafing through the stack of papers, I find one with a dog-ear. “I marked a couple pages where the Onion King discussed mental health issues with Murphy. Kind of reminds me of some of the things that come out of your mouth.” I nod when he glances my way. “Makes me think the Onion King might be in the mental health profession.”

  “Like a psychiatrist?”

  “Probably not, but remember what I told you when I first learned you had a degree in psychology?”

  Jimmy screws up his face and tries to look indignant. “Yeah, that most of the people who get a degree in psychology do so by accident.”

  “Uh-huh. By taking classes they think will help them sort out their own issues,” I finish, flashing him a good-natured grin, which he can’t help returning.

  Picking up the Pilot G2 gel pen from beside his laptop, he rolls it back and forth between his thumb and index finger as he ponders the idea. “I suppose that makes sense. It seems to me that most people with phobias, compulsions, and other disorders spend at least some time researching the subject.” He looks me up and down in an appraising manner. “Take you, for example.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Because you’re afraid of forests.”

  “So! Lots of people are afraid of forests.”

  “True, but most people are just spooked or a bit anxious in the woods. Your anxiety is more extreme, and it hasn’t gotten better over the years, though you mask it well. More to the point, when you realized you had this unreasonable fear of forests, you took the time to research it and learned that it’s called hylophobia. You claim it was trigg
ered when you were eight years old and froze to death in the forest, but I think part of it may be genetic, considering how superstitious and anxiety-ridden your mother is.”

  I can’t argue with the point, so I don’t.

  “You’re also afraid of Styrofoam,” Jimmy continues, “which is a bit odd, but you recently told me that a good number of Americans suffer from it. How many was it?”

  “About a quarter million.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I looked it up,” I reply grudgingly.

  Jimmy smiles at the admission. “My point is that you don’t have to be a psychologist to know some of the terminology. For all we know, the Onion King is a self-indulgent computer geek in his mom’s basement who likes raping women and gets off on manipulating those who suffer with real mental illness.”

  The stack of pages marked up with Murphy’s sloppy scrawl are still in my hand and I place them back on the table, making the document complete.

  “Well, whether he’s a psychiatrist or just a psycho, you need to read this,” I say, gesturing at the document. “Maybe you can pick up on something I missed.”

  Tipping his chin at the document, Jimmy says, “Flag anything you think I need to see and I promise I’ll take a look when we get home.” With that he seems to refocus on his laptop and the lengthy report waiting to be written.

  A moment later, after I’ve turned my own eyes back to Murphy’s manifesto, Jimmy offers a final thought: “Did you know that caffeine withdrawal is now classified as a psychiatric disorder in the DSM?”

  And then it hits me: he hasn’t had a cup of coffee all day.

  Murderous rampages have started for less.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later we’re beginning our descent into Bellingham International Airport when a question occurs to me. It’s not case-related, nor is it relevant to anything else we’re doing, but it’s one of those questions that pops up and won’t go away.

  “What ever happened to Danny Bear Cloud?” I ask, genuinely interested. “Do you still keep in touch?”

  Jimmy shifts in his seat and it’s a full ten seconds before he answers.

  “He’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Dead,” Jimmy clarifies.

  For a moment I feel like someone took a sledgehammer to my chest. “Sorry,” I practically whisper, and then I say it a second time without knowing why: “Sorry, Jimmy.” The how of it still hangs between us unanswered, and I can’t help but press.

  “He was killed in a terrorist attack on Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.” He pauses for a long moment, his eyes looking past me at nothing. When he continues, the words come slowly, each one strained, as if it were a scab ripped from his soul. “I was with his family at the Billings airport when he came home.”

  He falls quiet then, and I embrace the low rumble of the engine, willing it to wrap me in white noise and hide me away, willing it to take back the question and the memory it stirred.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Wednesday, December 17

  I’m a perpendicular.

  By this I mean that while most people work, act, and think in parallel with one another, I often find myself heading ninety degrees away from them. Not in the contrarian or devil’s advocate sort of way, which can be both obstinate and confrontational, but rather in a way that’s dictated by how I look at the world, and how I go about solving problems.

  One of the benefits of being a perpendicular is that I can’t be bullied into an opinion: I either believe it or I don’t … and when I don’t, I at least try to be diplomatic about it—most of the time. Peer pressure means nothing to me, yet vexes me with hints of disapproval. I’m the least likely to jump off a cliff simply because my friends do, yet at the same time I’m terribly concerned about how people look at me, and how they think of me.

  I realize that almost everyone suffers to one degree or another from that sense that all eyes are upon them, watching, waiting for them to trip or make a mistake. For some it’s so bad that they dare not leave the house, building for themselves a prison that only their mind can see. The laughable truth is that the people we think are judging us are too busy worrying about us judging them to even notice us.

  That’s what I call irony.

  When it comes to perpendiculars, there have always been those who aren’t, yet who try to claim the mantle simply by being contrary. In the sixties they cried, “Peace, love, dope!” and burned their bras and their draft cards. In the seventies it was disco and bell-bottoms—seriously, what were they thinking? The more they tried to be perpendicular, the more they found that others were suddenly traveling in the same direction, and pretty soon they were all parallel again.

  None of this made them perpendiculars, it just made them nonconformist.

  A true perpendicular thinks differently than others. Not always, but often.

  In my case, I suppose I could blame this on my accident, the mishap in the woods, the little episode that killed me and brought me back … well, different. But that seems too simplistic, almost like a cop-out. The more logical explanation is that I was always this way, and the eight-year-old version of me just didn’t realize it at the time.

  Dexter Allen is also a perpendicular.

  The crime analyst for the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office is the type of guy who would tip a room thirty degrees to starboard if he could, just to see it from a different angle. He once told me that when he works on jigsaw puzzles he’ll alternate between looking at the developing picture straight on and looking at it upside down. He says it helps him see what he might otherwise miss.

  I tried it once.

  I saw an upside-down puzzle.

  * * *

  As I pull into the Starbucks on Bakerview Road, I spot Dex’s crappy old car shoved dismissively into a spot at the end of the parking lot. He’s like Jimmy when it comes to transportation: if it still goes down the road, it’s still worth driving, but there’s no love between car and driver.

  It’s Wednesday morning, which means the intel group is meeting.

  It’s not what I or anyone else would call an official meeting, but rather a once-weekly excuse to binge on coffee and unplug from the constant demands of law enforcement, even if it’s only for an hour. The fact that cases have been advanced and a few even solved at these meetings is just frosting on the cake.

  And while much of the discussion relates to law enforcement in one way or another, there are no rules or limitations. One week they might be opining on the lunacy of North Korea’s leadership, and the next, the lunacy of social media. Lunacy always seems to make an appearance in one form or another.

  No topic is off-limits and anything that even smells of political correctness is soundly beaten and sent scurrying from the premises.

  The size of the group might change from week to week, but there are three regulars you can pretty much count on. Aside from Dex, there’s Kevin, a longtime detective with the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office, and Thom, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations.

  Other detectives often join the mix, and it’s never dull.

  I’ve known Kevin almost as long as I’ve known Dex. He’s the lead detective on the Jess Parker cold case, which has been a pet project of mine since before I started at the Special Tracking Unit. Jimmy and I have always referred to it as the Leonardo case because the killer posed Jess like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The cops on scene only saw her feet pointing south, and her arms spread wide pointing to the east and west. Her shine told a different story. I saw where he first splayed her legs and raised her arms, and where the sick bastard walked a nearly perfect circle around the body.

  The Vitruvian Man.

  Dex and Kevin only recently learned of this peculiarity.

  Jess Parker’s was the first in a string of murders that began eleven years ago—or at least we think she was the first. The truth is we don’t really know. I was sixteen when she was abducted, and though I’d already b
een using shine to find the missing for several years, hers was the first homicide case I was asked to assist with, brief though my involvement was.

  * * *

  Between Dex, Kevin, and Thom, the intel group has close to eighty years of combined law enforcement experience, and when you get the three of them together at one table it makes for a lively discussion and some pretty amazing insights.

  That’s what I’m hoping for this morning: insights.

  Much as I enjoy their company, right now I need the group’s wisdom more than their wit and war stories.

  In my pocket I have a thumb drive of the pictures that George, the young ERT tech, took for me Monday night at Murphy’s Misery. That was just a day and a half ago, yet with all that’s happened since, it feels more like a week.

  It’s just a thought—perhaps a crazy thought—but these images may provide a way of speeding up the victim identification process. It’s something I’ve never attempted before, so I’m keeping my optimism in check. Still, succeed or fail, we have nothing to lose by trying, and I’m hoping Dex can help me with that.

  Aside from the thumb drive, I have a DVD that contains surveillance video from the jail parking lot. I’m fairly certain Dex will be able to examine the images of the fleeing sedan and narrow down the make and model.

  Several years ago, frustrated with the poor quality of video surveillance, he developed a process called forensic vehicle analysis. It uses more than fifty identifiable criteria, or markers, that are often visible even on the most deplorable of images. I’ve sat next to Dex a dozen times as he’s studied grainy images and somehow extracted details that others would miss, details that helped lead to the identification of the vehicle and, in some cases, the driver.

  * * *

  The warmth of the coffee shop envelopes me as I step through the door and shake off the cold. The fireplace in the corner burns brightly and the smell of coffee and pastry washes over me, presenting an altogether pleasing sensation. Though I’m no fan of coffee as a drink, I find the smell pleasing, even invigorating.