Shadows of the Dead--A Special Tracking Unit Novel

by Spencer Kope

  “It’s a Mad Max reference,” I say defensively. Though the thing I should really be concerned about is how she knows my password.

  “Sure thing,” Diane replies, sounding anything but convinced.

  We give her the same spiel that Dex gave us. “Minus the three possible matches that are linked to Erin Yarborough,” Jimmy says, “there are sixteen candidates for the other six victims.”

  Diane takes control of the mouse and starts scanning through the list, letting the names and images flash by as she absorbs everything. After a few minutes she pauses to give her first impressions.

  “A few of these we can almost eliminate right now. One lives in Spokane, the other in Walla Walla. It’s unlikely this so-called Onion King is targeting women that far away.”

  “What makes you so sure?” I ask.

  “Charice Qian is from Tumwater, Erin Yarborough is from Everett. He’s hunting in the greater Seattle-Tacoma area. I’m guessing the other victims won’t be much more than an hour’s drive from either location.”

  Her logic is hard to argue with, and the fact that she came to this conclusion after one scan of the report—and without making any notes—is both frightening and inspiring.

  “Give me a couple hours,” she says, her eyes never leaving the screen. When we don’t move right away, she turns and says, “Go … go … go!”

  Hard to argue with that kind of diplomacy.

  * * *

  Two hours pass, and Diane barely stirs from her seat.

  From the conference room, she has access to NCIC, LInX, CLEAR, DAPS, and a slew of other law enforcement databases, all of them providing individual bits and pieces of a more sweeping picture.

  Jimmy and I entertain ourselves to the best of our ability and are engaged in a heated round of foosball on the hangar floor when, at a quarter after five, we hear the pointed tap-tap-tap of metal striking glass. Glancing around, we see Diane standing at the conference room’s glass wall, rapping on it with the obnoxious gold ring on her right hand. Even after she knows we see her, she continues to tap away, and then gives us an evil grin as she motions impatiently for us to join her.

  No longer is the hastily constructed facial recognition report on display. Instead, the flat-screen hosts a meticulously crafted PDF that, at first glance, seems to lay out our possible victims by the mannequin number assigned to them a few nights earlier. Each number has names, addresses, and other data attached to it, and rather than trying to make heads or tails of it, we wait for Diane to explain. After all, that’s her favorite part.

  “As you can see, I’ve added some order to our data,” she says as she slides gracefully into the chair next to the laptop, takes the mouse in hand, and scrolls to the top of the report. “Of the nineteen possible matches, we’ve already eliminated three of them with the DNA identification of number six—”

  “Erin Yarborough,” I say.

  “Of course, Erin Yarborough. That leaves sixteen. We have four possible matches from facial recognition for the first mannequin. One of these is living in Walla Walla, as previously mentioned, another is an accountant in Redmond, who, coincidentally, posted several new photos on Facebook yesterday, so I’m guessing she’s alive and well. If we eliminate those two, that leaves Toni Greer of Fife and Abitha Jones of Beacon Hill. Both have criminal history, though if we’re keeping score, Abitha is the clear winner.”

  “When were their last arrests?” Jimmy asks.

  “Abitha was booked for drugs a year and a half ago; Toni was booked for trespass six months ago. Since we don’t know the abduction date for number one—”

  “Don’t … do that,” I say through clenched teeth.

  “What?”

  “Don’t call them numbers. That’s what Murphy did; it’s just … wrong.” I catch myself halfway through the sentence and try to soften the last words, but the damage has already been done. Diane has a startled look on her face, as if I’d slapped her, and I instantly regret both my words and their delivery. “Sorry,” I mutter.

  Jimmy catches Diane’s eye and in a quiet voice explains what I can’t.

  “Murphy was clinical about how he viewed the victims,” he says. “Charice Qian was just number eight; he never called her by name and we don’t know if he even knew her name. It didn’t matter to him. He kept saying Eight is broken, and Eight needs to be fixed. They were just projects to him, tasks to be completed.”

  Glancing at me, Jimmy adds, “I’m sure Steps doesn’t mean to be short, but you didn’t see what we saw. You didn’t see the mannequins dressed in their clothes, or the barrel.” He sweeps his hand over the table as if casting seeds. “You didn’t see the fragments of teeth and bone scattered on the forest floor. It was medieval.”

  Diane is quiet for a moment, and if I didn’t know better I’d say her eyes had teared up a bit. When she finally speaks, it’s in a subdued voice halfway between hurt and ashamed. “I’m sorry, Steps. I sometimes forget that the pictures I see are very real for you and Jimmy. To me they’re just images. Like Murphy, I suppose I view them as a task to be performed.”

  She gives an almost imperceptible shudder. “It’s how I cope with what I see, how I endure it. I imagine it’s a very different experience when you’re standing there surrounded by the sights and smells of it.” She hesitates. “It’s not something I want to experience.”

  “You shouldn’t have to,” Jimmy says in a consoling voice.

  Standing up, I’m rather startled to find myself moving over to Diane’s chair, leaning over, and giving her a hug. When I rise back up, she wipes at the corner of her eye and says, “That’s sexual harassment, you know?” and turns her attention back to the screen.

  Jimmy grins at me, and I just flop back down in my chair.

  Our little drama lasts just over a minute.

  Her voice carries a slight quaver when she begins again, but in a moment it’s gone and she’s ramrodding the report our way as fast as we can chew and digest. “Our second grouping,” she says, choosing her words more carefully, “includes two possible subjects, one of whom is dead.” Scrolling down, she stops when she gets to two driver’s license photos placed side by side on the page. With her pointing stick, which she loves to wave about, she aims at the young woman on the left, a stern brunette with only a hint of smile. “Since we’re looking for the dead, and she is, I didn’t rule her out immediately. But then I learned that she died from a fall.”

  “Mountain climbing?” Jimmy guesses.

  “Ladder,” Diane replies, cocking her head. “Did you know that three hundred people die from ladder falls each year? I had no idea.” Shrugging, she continues. “That leaves just Gabriella Paden. CLEAR shows her at an address in Tukwila for the last five years, so she should be easy to track down, though I have to say she doesn’t fit the profile of the others.”

  “No criminal history?” I ask.

  “None.”

  The third grouping also has two possible matches. After scrolling their images into view, Diane taps the one on the right, saying, “This is Jennifer Holt of Everett. She’s your best bet for number—I mean, grouping three. Last known address was her grandmother’s place about a year and a half ago. It seems the two of them got into a bit of a donnybrook.”

  “Punching?” I say in surprise.

  “More like mutual screaming and pinching. Jennifer was the primary aggressor, so she got hooked up and spent a few days in jail. The whole thing blew up because she’d stolen some of her grandmother’s back meds. The report out of Everett PD didn’t specify, but I’m guessing it was Oxys,” she says, referring to the potent pain reliever OxyContin. “She had plenty of other contacts before that, and an overdose a month later, but nothing since.”

  “What about her?” I ask, pointing to the woman on the left.

  “Elane,” Diane replies, shaking her head. “Highly unlikely; she’s the one who lives in Spokane. Our suspect seems comfortable moving up and down the I-5 corridor between Tacoma and Everett, but nothing I’v
e seen suggests he’d be willing to undertake a six-hundred-mile round-trip journey for one victim, especially since she’d be in the trunk for half that mileage. The risks aren’t worth the reward. Not to mention that she renewed her vehicle registration three weeks ago using the Spokane address.” With a toss of her head, she concludes, “I think we can eliminate her.”

  The minute hand on the clock drags itself fifteen more clicks clockwise in the time it takes Diane to scroll through the rest of the report.

  Debra Mata, it seems, is our likely victim from group four. Her visage is sharp and angular, with cheekbones that look like they could cut meat. Her pallid skin seems to emphasize this, pulling tight in places where it should hang loose. All in all, it’s a dead face—as dead as the mask it created. The only flicker of life is in her haunted eyes, which stare out from the two sunken recesses under her brow.

  Debra was reported missing almost two and a half years ago, which means she may be the Onion King’s first victim. There’s a lot that can be learned from the first. A killer is more likely to make mistakes early on, before they have a chance to perfect their skills.

  For group five we once again draw a lucky card—though I cringe to use the word when speaking of the dead. Of the three possible matches spit out by the facial recognition software, Sheryl Dorsey stands alone because of the simple fact that she was reported missing out of Tacoma just five months ago.

  That brings us to group six, which has already been whittled down to Erin Yarborough, and group seven, where we find two names: Amber Bartlett of Burien, which is near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and Chelsea Younger of Covington, which is ten miles to the southeast.

  Their police records suggest that one is just as likely to be dead as the other, and as I ponder this, I feel the hair rise up slightly on the back of my neck; ghost fingers, some might say, playing at the base of my skull. It’s a sensation I’ve grown accustomed to over the years, though it still sends a shiver down my spine.

  * * *

  “So, even without eliminating the extras,” Jimmy says, tapping the PDF in front of him, “we seem to have a pretty solid profile on our victim type.”

  “Yeah, half are mentals or druggies,” I say. Jimmy gives me a disapproving look, and I return the favor by rolling my eyes—like speaking the truth suddenly became uncouth.

  “Someone going through a mental crisis is far different from someone dealing with mental illness. Anyone can be led to the point of suicide given enough provocation.” He lowers his tone. “You of all people should understand mental anguish.”

  Diane knits her brows at that and tilts her head the way she does when something strikes her as odd. Recognizing his blunder, Jimmy quickly steers his comments back to the victims. “The point is we’re well on our way to identifying the Onion King. We just need to find the common denominator between these names. There’s an abnormal level of suicide attempts and drug overdoses among these women, and that’s what we need to focus on.”

  “What better victim…” I say, letting the words trail off.

  “How so?” Jimmy asks, though he has a pretty good idea what I mean.

  “Who do serial killers prey on?” I ask. “It’s usually the invisible. Mostly that means prostitutes, but if a drug addict with a history of overdose goes missing, how hard do you think police are going to look for her? If a missing person report is even filed, they’ll just assume she overdosed someplace and just hasn’t been found; same thing with suicides.”

  Sweeping my right arm as if to take in the entirety of Whatcom County’s two thousand square miles in one brushstroke, I say, “Even here the sheriff’s office will occasionally find bodies that have been in the woods for months or even years. Sometimes the victim was reported missing, sometimes they weren’t.”

  I shake my head. “Places like Seattle and Tacoma have so many transient and troubled people that a thousand of them could walk off into the sea and no one would notice.”

  “That’s a bit harsh,” Diane says quietly.

  I look at her without reply and then stare at my hands.

  The slow drumming of Jimmy’s fingers begins to play against the table. It’s one of his tics, something he does when he’s conflicted or thinking.

  I like to pace; he strums.

  At length he looks across at Diane and says, “He’s right. Let’s put out a request for information on any missing person reports involving women between the ages of, say, sixteen and thirty. Include a line or two emphasizing the possible drug and suicide angles. I also want to know about any attempted abductions or suspicious circumstance reports. If someone sees a woman getting stuffed into a car too roughly, I want to know about it.”

  Diane nods. “It’ll go out within the hour.”

  Jimmy turns his gaze on me. “Are you up for a drive tomorrow?”

  “Seattle?”

  There’s a smile on his face, but it’s not humor that I see reflected, it’s resolve. “Seattle, Everett, Tacoma … a few others,” he says. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  “Heather just got back…” I say imploringly.

  He sighs, and then nods. “Make it nine.”

  * * *

  When I exit through the steel-reinforced door separating Hangar 7 from our small parking lot, I pause momentarily and close my eyes, drinking deeply the crisp winter air. Standing there, my face to the sky, I feel the brush of something small and wet against my cheek. I imagine for a moment that fantasy worlds are real, and that a kindly, clever pixie has just kissed me on the cheek for good luck.

  Of course, it’s not so, and when I open my eyes I behold the first flakes of winter—or at least the first for Bellingham. And then there are dozens, scores, hundreds emerging from the blackness above, until the dark sky grows light with them.

  Heather wants a white Christmas.

  She may get her wish.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  My home is called Big Perch.

  It’s nestled on the side of Chuckanut Mountain and enjoys sweeping views of the Puget Sound to the west, with unbelievable sunsets over the San Juan Islands and the Olympic Peninsula beyond. At twenty-four hundred square feet, most of it on the main level, Big Perch has more space than I’ll ever need, which is why my brother, Jens, is living with me while he finishes his studies at Western Washington University.

  Jens is determined to get his doctorate in anthropology, and as he’s months away from finishing his master’s, it seems a goal he’ll achieve … not that there was any doubt. When I told him several years ago that there’s no money in anthropology, he said he didn’t need money, he had me.

  It’s hard to argue with logic like that.

  Surrounding Big Perch on the north, south, and west—mostly the west—is a massive deck with square footage that almost rivals the house’s. There’s an outdoor fireplace, a hot tub, random seating for twenty, and, in the summer, sporadic herbal gardens growing from collections of containers here and there.

  I also own the adjoining home to the south, which is a mirror image of Big Perch, only smaller. At thirteen hundred square feet, the appropriately named Little Perch is now home to Ellis Stockwell, the former owner, designer, and builder of both homes.

  It’s an odd journey that brought us to this arrangement. Suffice it to say that Ellis is a retired Customs and Border Protection officer whose successful start-up company took a sudden nosedive that cost him millions and ended his short tenure as a business executive. The tragic part of the story is that none of this was due to any fault or mismanagement on his part—unless allowing your wife access to the business bank accounts is considered mismanagement.

  Ellis’s wife pilfered the money and relocated with her much younger boyfriend, forcing Ellis into foreclosure and ruin. It was clear he loved the houses, so when I closed on the property I struck a deal with the old man that I’ve never regretted: in exchange for tending the grounds he gets to stay in Little Perch rent-free.

  His duties have expanded con
siderably since then—his doing, not mine.

  Both Jens and I like Ellis tremendously, but he’s an odd duck who puts on an English accent most of the time, sunbathes in the nude, and is never without a hat—even during said sunbathing. Despite all that, he’s now a member of our family. Whether that makes him a brother, a grandfather, or a quirky uncle, I’m still not sure, but it doesn’t really matter. On nights when Jens and I both find ourselves at home for dinner, he joins us. And on many occasions, we’ve worn away the longest hours of night listening to his stories, never knowing which to believe and which to take with a healthy dose of skepticism.

  I’ve laughed with him, called him a liar, and been pulled to tears by his tales.

  He’s my kind of family.

  * * *

  After we enjoy some long-overdue home cooking, Jens and Ellis shoo Heather and me from the kitchen and insist on doing the dishes. We don’t argue. Heather grabs the quilt off the back of the couch and, taking my hand, leads me out onto the deck. Steering me toward the porch swing at the north end, she wraps the massive quilt around the both of us before we sit so that the warmth completely engulfs us. The coverage is so complete that it’s as if we’re hiding at the back of a small, soft cave, looking out from our warm place into the wind and chill of a winter’s night.

  A moment later, Christmas music begins to issue from the deck speakers.

  I’m too comfortable to peer out and see who’s responsible, but it’s almost certainly Ellis. This time of year, you can always hear Christmas music issuing from his home, his car, his lips. There’s no other music he takes to so completely.

  For him, only the classics count. He has little patience for songs that seem to make light of the holiday or exploit the season, which means no grandmas getting mowed down by errant reindeer, no cats meowing “Jingle Bells,” and no John Denver singing, “Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas).”

  Ellis is a traditionalist, which means he wants his music draped in nostalgia.