Shadows of the Dead--A Special Tracking Unit Novel

by Spencer Kope

  As I walk through the building, observing everything, I’m presented with a conundrum: the Onion King isn’t acting like a patient.

  His shine is plentiful in every single office; an odd showing if he’s just a patient. Even more peculiar is that in three of the rooms his shine is on the counselor’s chair, on the desk, on the drawers, and, more importantly, on the keyboard and mouse.

  Since it’s hard to imagine a patient doing a Google search or watching YouTube on his counselor’s office computer, the discovery brings us back to the likelihood that we’re dealing with an employee—maybe.

  Smiling at our guide, I ask, “Can you give us a minute?” and then pull Jimmy out of earshot. “His prints are all over the desk, the mouse, the keyboard, and the CPU,” I tell him in a low tone. “We shouldn’t have any trouble getting one or two with good ridge detail,” I add, referring to the dermal ridges that give fingerprints their unique patterns.

  “All we need is one,” Jimmy whispers back. The corner of his mouth lifts slightly and I can see in his eyes a sense of relief. Turning back to our escort, he says, “We’d like to dust a couple of the computers for fingerprints, if you don’t mind.” The girl shifts uncomfortably.

  “I’m afraid we’d have to run that by corporate … unless you have a warrant,” she adds, almost hopefully.

  “We didn’t think we’d need one,” Jimmy replies incredulously.

  It’s partly true. We didn’t expect we’d need one, but we also have nothing to justify a warrant; nothing we can swear to before a judge.

  “It’s just … with HIPAA laws being what they are,” the girl tries to explain, “and because we deal with mental illness, the company has a strict policy regarding what we can and can’t share with law enforcement. Strictly speaking, I’m stretching the rules just letting you back here.”

  Jimmy nods and gives her a forced smile.

  Me—I’m plunging toward the ground again from ten thousand feet.

  * * *

  By the time we make our way through the building we’ve seen all six counselors, a receptionist, and three other employees. None of them have the Onion King’s amethyst and burnt orange shine.

  “Is everyone here today?” I ask our guide as we start for the front door.

  “Rachel is on vacation,” she replies. “Other than her, everyone else is here. No one wants to miss the party.”

  “Party?”

  “Yeah, we’re closing early today for our annual Christmas party. That’s when they hand out bonuses. No one wants to miss that.”

  “You get bonuses?”

  She nods and grins. “They’re usually pretty good. I got a couple thousand bucks last year, enough to go to Maui.”

  I steeple my eyebrows and glance at Jimmy, saying, “They get Christmas bonuses.”

  He doesn’t reply, so I keep staring. I don’t really expect a Christmas bonus, I just want to get his mind off the fingerprints. Annoying him usually does the trick. As I continue to stare, he shakes his head and says, “We’re government employees. We don’t get Christmas bonuses.”

  I’m tempted to add a Bah humbug, but don’t.

  * * *

  Our next stop is Burien.

  Here we run into the same odd and conflicting patterns we found in Seattle: the tracks coming in from the parking spots nearest the door, computers accessed, and all the employees accounted for but not one with the Onion King’s shine. We again ask if we can dust for prints, and again are turned down.

  The rest of the day is a bust.

  In Tacoma we find Melinda Gaines’s shine, and Charice Qian’s shine is at the clinic in Olympia. On the way back north, we veer left and cross the Tacoma Narrows Bridge into Mason County. We keep driving until we reach Kitsap County and the town of Port Orchard. Here we find Murphy Cotton’s shine all over the clinic, the parking lot, and the nearby bus shelter. Apparently he was a longtime customer.

  What we don’t find is the Onion King; he’s conspicuously absent from all three locations. And by the end of the day the question remains: Is he a patient or an employee? In those places where we did find him, he seems to wander about freely, accessing personal workspaces and computers at will.

  Even with this knowledge, I have the overpowering sense that I’m missing something, a piece of the puzzle that dangles before me, just out of reach, like some forbidden fruit.

  By the time we get back to Bellingham the sky is dark, wet, and dreary, the precipitation caught somewhere between rain and snow, as if unable to commit to either. Jimmy and I have matching stress headaches, his from the drive, mine from his driving.

  I’m not much of a drinker, but some nights it sure sounds appealing.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Saturday, December 20

  “Orange juice?” Jimmy offers. He reaches into the fridge and extracts a half-full gallon jug, holds it up, and gives the contents a little shake and swirl.

  “Sure. Thanks,” I say. He pours a tall glass and hands it across the counter, then returns the jug to the fridge.

  I’m glancing around, admiring the kitchen, when he leans on the counter, resting both forearms on the granite, his hands encircling his own orange juice.

  “I still can’t believe how well this kitchen turned out,” I say.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “No … well, yeah.”

  He grins. “Me too.”

  Back in September we gutted his kitchen in one day. We thought the remodel was going to be a job we could finish in a few days, but days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months. Two and a half months, to be precise. We didn’t finish until the week before Thanksgiving, and that’s only because Jane put her foot down.

  It’s not like they didn’t have appliances that whole time.

  The new fridge was in the dining room, a little out of place but working; the microwave was on the dining room table; the stove was … well, the stove was still in its carton in the garage, but Jimmy’s pellet-fueled barbecue is almost as good as a stove, and it was right outside the sliding glass door on the back deck. At least until the weather got nasty.

  They ate off paper plates and used plastic utensils, and if they needed to wash some dishes there was always the tub sink in the laundry room.

  All in all, it was a minor inconvenience, at least for me.

  Jimmy takes another drink of orange juice and we make small talk as he waits patiently for me to get around to the point of my visit. Before parting last night, we’d agreed to take the weekend off. We’re too close to the case; we need to step back and take a breather and come at it again with fresh eyes.

  Still, it’s hard to take time off knowing that Melinda Gaines is being held somewhere, subjected to God knows what. The clock is ticking, and her life depends on us finding her before it winds down.

  “Jane and I are thinking about getting Petey a puppy for Christmas,” Jimmy says, “I was thinking golden retriever, but she’s always loved bull terriers.”

  “What’s a bull terrier?”

  “You know: Patton’s dog.”

  “Patton’s dog?”

  “General Patton. Don’t you remember the movie, his little dog?”

  Then it comes to me. “The one with the funny-shaped head.”

  “Right,” Jimmy says, raising his glass and pointing at me. “For some reason Jane thinks their funny-shaped heads are cute.”

  “Didn’t Patton call his dog a coward?”

  “I think so,” Jimmy says with a shrug. “At least he didn’t slap him.”

  We chuckle.

  “Why not a cat? They’re a lot less demanding.”

  Jimmy scoffs. “Every cat thinks it’s the alpha. They think you’re there to provide food, shelter, and affection on demand, and then dismiss you whenever they please. At least dogs know who the alpha is.”

  “What do you expect?” I say. “Cats are miniature lions and cougars. Genetically, they’re predisposed toward being in charge. Just because they’ve gotten smaller doesn�
��t make them less of a lion.”

  “Please,” Jimmy says with a groan, drawing out the word.

  “Miniature horses,” I say, tipping my head as if that settles the argument.

  “What about them?”

  “Are they horses, or aren’t they?”

  Jimmy senses the trap. “That’s different.”

  “A horse is a horse,” I say.

  “Of course, of course,” he shoots back with a grin, pleased at the Mr. Ed reference. “I’ll tell you what, you find a cat that fetches sticks, and I’ll consider it.”

  We clink glasses at the détente, though I suspect I’m going to have a difficult time finding a cat breed renowned for its stick-fetching prowess. Still, I’m always up for a challenge.

  * * *

  Jane and Petey arrive home a half hour later, and I can only assume that the little guy saw my Mini Cooper, Gus, parked on the street. As soon as he comes bolting through the front door I hear him squeal, followed by the sound of his little feet thundering toward me.

  I crouch at the last moment and grab him in a bear hug.

  I’ve learned to crouch when Petey comes charging at me, because, well, I’d like to have children someday. The kid is all elbows and energy, and when he slams into you it’s like Thomas the Tank Engine on steroids. I don’t know much about football, but someone should be recruiting this kid now.

  Without being asked, Jane smiles and says, “It’s behind the couch.”

  Petey beats me to it. Racing around behind the couch, he drags out a large but shallow storage container, which he pulls into the center of the living room. Inside is a partially completed Lego Millennium Falcon, though at this stage it’s only barely recognizable as such. We’ve been working on it off and on for six months now, a project just for Petey and his uncle Steps. Someday we’ll finish it, but I’m in no hurry.

  I had a lot of things on my mind when I drove out to Jimmy’s this afternoon. I know he sensed it, but to his credit he never brought it up or asked what was troubling me. Instead, we just hung out together, two normal guys in a normal kitchen on a normal Saturday afternoon. Sometimes that’s all it takes to get centered.

  He was right about one thing: we’re too close to this case.

  * * *

  Before leaving the Donovan residence, I decide to let the case of the seven mannequins slip away from me, if only for the weekend. I’ll go home, have a nice dinner with Heather and Jens and Ellis—and whoever else is hanging out at my house. Diane introduced Heather to high tea at some little shop in Fairhaven, so maybe I’ll take her there tomorrow. Afterward we can go to a movie; a regular date-day.

  And as I drive home, picturing these things in all their pleasantness, another image begins to intrude on my thoughts. I push it back, but thoughts are sticky things, they tend to cling and not let go. And by the time I pull into the driveway at Big Perch, my imagination has taken a decidedly dark turn. The perfect weekend I was just picturing with Heather has morphed into something else.

  I still envision Heather and me arm in arm as we window-shop through Fairhaven, sip tea, and then enjoy a movie. Yet always behind us, several paces or seats away, lurks the figure of Melinda Gaines, her expression vacant, as if she were already a ghost.

  The image will haunt the rest of my weekend.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Monday, December 22

  Legend has it that the Greek mathematician Archimedes, upon stepping into a bathtub, suddenly realized that his body displaced water, and that the volume of that water must be equal to the volume of his own submerged body parts.

  As simple as the concept is today, it was a great discovery for the ancients because it allowed them to precisely measure the volume of irregular objects—such as Archimedes’s torso. It’s a handy ability when trying to determine if gold is really gold, since an ounce of gold displaces a different volume than an ounce of silver or an ounce of lead. This was exactly the problem Archimedes was working on at the time, as too many disreputable people were coating inferior metals in gold and trying to pass them off as legitimate coins.

  The old stories tell us that Archimedes was so excited at this discovery that he cried, “Eureka! Eureka!” and then jumped out of the bath and ran through the streets of Syracuse naked.

  My eureka moment is less dramatic. It comes in the shower on Monday morning just as I’m massaging shampoo into my scalp. And though the temptation is great, I decide against running through the streets naked. It’s far too cold.

  Dressing quickly and wolfing down some orange juice and a pastry, I’m halfway to my car when I pause, a cautionary thought rising up, as if to block my way. I shake it off and start toward the car again but find myself hesitating once more. Turning, I hurry back into the house, to my bedroom, and to the gun safe within. Extracting my Walther P22 and two extra magazines, I quickly load the gun and shove the extra magazines into my pocket.

  Not exactly tactical, but it’ll do.

  * * *

  My black Movado watch says 8:13 A.M. when I punch the code into the cipher lock on the south door and hurry into the hangar, hustled along by the cold and the wind. I race up the stairs to see if Jimmy is in his office, but the lights are out and his computer is off. Diane, however, is stretched back in her chair like she never left the place. The woman has no concept of evenings or weekends, but then, she’d say the same thing about us.

  “What’s got you in a tizzy?” she asks as I plop down in the chair opposite her desk and then immediately stand and walk back out to the mezzanine, leaning on the rail that overlooks the hangar floor. “Steps?” she calls after me, but before she can rise and follow, I’m back in her office.

  “Has Jimmy called?”

  “No.”

  “But he’s on his way, right?”

  “I’m sure he is,” Diane says in a placating tone.

  “He’s usually here before me,” I say absently. “What makes you so sure he’s on his way?”

  “Because on Friday he said, ‘See you Monday morning.’ And, well, it’s Monday morning.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Diane barks, throwing an eraser at me that ricochets off my arm and lands in the corner. “I’m sure he’s on his way,” she says with far too much energy, and then asks, “How’s that?” But instead of waiting for an answer, she orders me to take a seat and then says, “Spill. What’s going on?”

  But I can’t spill; not yet.

  “When Jimmy gets here,” I say.

  From the bottom drawer of her desk, Diane produces a bag of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. She pulls out six of the nuts and places them on a napkin. Returning the bag to its not-so-secret hiding place, she picks up one of the morsels and puts it carefully in her mouth, the way one might place a fresh briquette on a barbeque. Small, satisfied noises issue from somewhere deep in her chest as the chocolate melts, and then she crunches down on the nut, savoring it with just as much gusto.

  When half the nuts are polished off in this manner, she drags the napkin across her desk and brings it to rest right in front of me. Hesitantly, I start to reach for one of the nuts, but the old witch suddenly pulls the napkin back a few inches.

  “Spill,” she says again.

  And I do—just like that. I would have held out longer if she beat me with a hard stick and strung me up by the ankles. The use of chocolate-covered anything is just wrong. I don’t think either criminal law or the Geneva Convention cover the use of chocolate during interrogations, but they should. It’s just unethical.

  * * *

  When Jimmy arrives twenty minutes later, I have to explain my revelation all over again, and then it’s his turn to plop down in Diane’s guest chair. “Our theory was wrong,” he says, strumming his fingers incessantly on her desktop.

  “The theory wasn’t necessarily wrong,” I say. “It was just … in progress.”

  Diane, of course, is trying to ignore us as she searches databases and begins to cross-ref
erence the new information. Her task is made all the more difficult by my pacing, Jimmy’s strumming, and the ceaseless barrage of words flying around the office as the two of us reexamine the case from a new perspective.

  Once again, we have to be careful not to inadvertently mention shine. Even preoccupied as she is, Diane would pick up on the reference and demand to know what this shine was that we were talking about. She might even break out the chocolate-covered macadamia nuts.

  Our discussion drags on, growing louder at times, and then more quiet and reflective at others, until Diane can take it no longer. Rising from behind her desk, she says, “Out, out, out!” as she herds us toward the stairs.

  “Go to Valhalla,” she orders. “I’ll call you when I’m done.”

  Valhalla.

  She has a way of saying it as if it’s a curse, when, in fact, it’s the name she herself recently assigned to the break room. During all the comings and goings last week, she found time to hang a four-foot sign on the west wall that reads VALHALLA in narrow, foot-high letters. It’s an early Christmas present for me and Jimmy, and it’s adorned with Viking knots and images from Norse mythology, including the Midgard Serpent.

  “It’s not a break room when you practically live here,” Diane told us when she presented it. “I thought a more appropriate name was called for. Hope I’m not stepping on your man territory.” She frames the last two words in air quotes—as if we’d staked a claim to the break room at some point.

  Jimmy liked it, though.

  “Valhalla,” he’d said with an approving nod, “where warriors go to rest.”