Shadows of the Dead--A Special Tracking Unit Novel

by Spencer Kope

  Jimmy turns to me with a stony, unrelenting expression that reminds me of the soldier monuments at Gettysburg. I feel the hope drain out the bottom of my shoes.

  And then the bastard grins.

  “We got him,” he says.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Three efforts begin simultaneously.

  First, Diane begins the warrant affidavit. Considering the nature of the crimes involved, our request will be broad, and will include Lorcan’s home, any outbuildings, and all the vehicles on the property. We’ll be searching for evidence of abduction, rape, and murder, as well as related computer crimes. In addition to the print match on the key logger, Diane will be including a list of the client files that were illegally accessed in the BrightPath database, with special emphasis on Lorcan’s victims.

  The second effort is a SWAT callout. Jimmy places a call to Danny Marchant, the FBI Special Weapons and Tactics commander in Seattle. The call burns up ten minutes while Jimmy walks Danny through the whole case. He needs to understand what he’s up against, so he can fill out a risk assessment. Every deployment of SWAT is considered a heightened response and needs to be justified.

  That means paperwork.

  While Jimmy and Danny go over the details, I start effort number three: contacting Lakewood PD and the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office to request an agency assist. It’ll be at least four hours before the SWAT team is assembled, and I want eyes on Lorcan’s residence while we’re getting all our ducks in a row.

  It’s been almost a week since he grabbed Melinda off the street. I’m not sure I could handle it if we got this close and he chose tonight to drag her off to some tree in a cold and distant forest. Besides, we’ll need extra bodies to help set up a robust perimeter when we move on the house. Don’t want to take any chances and let Lorcan slip past.

  Next, I call Haiden Webber, the FBI’s computer forensics expert. It’s after hours, but Haiden was never one to conform to a standard forty-hour workweek, so I take a shot and call his office. He picks up on the first ring.

  “I was wondering if I was going to get a call,” he says before I even announce myself. “I just heard a rumor that you two tracked down your elusive Onion King. Please tell me it’s so.”

  “It is,” I reply. “He’s living the good life in Lakewood, and we just found the piece of evidence that gives us probable cause for a search warrant. As soon as we have the warrant in hand and SWAT in position, we’re going to take the house down—”

  “And you’d love to have me there to handle the computer forensics,” Haiden finishes, astute as ever.

  “This is your chance to study the lair of a world-class hacker,” I say. “I figured you wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity.”

  “You figured correctly,” he replies with a note of glee. “And when does this grand adventure begin?”

  “I’ll call Les and Marty,” I reply. “Provided they can get to the hangar quickly, we should be landing at Boeing Field within the hour. We’ll need ground transportation, so I’ll leave that to you.”

  As I end the call, Jimmy is still talking to Danny. Raising a finger, he gets my attention and then slips me a scribbled note.

  Briefly scanning the torn slip of paper, I smile and give him a nod. Punching a number into the phone, I listen to it ring. A familiar voice answers.

  “You don’t call, you don’t write,” I say, a grin seeping into the words.

  “Steps!” Detective Nate Critchlow practically shouts. He makes a few cracks about the Feds and unending holidays, chuckling at his own jokes, and then asks, “So, what’s up?”

  “Not much,” I say, completely nonchalant. “Jimmy and I were just wondering if you and Jason want to help capture the Onion King? Provided you don’t have other plans.…”

  There’s a loud hoot, and then I hear him screaming for Jason.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The Moors look as they did the night before. The drizzling rain is the same, the Christmas lights are the same, and the hunched, predatory shadow of Lorcan’s home is eerily the same.

  Haiden cruises through the neighborhood slowly in the red Volvo V40 that he commandeered from the agency motor pool. Jimmy is in the front passenger seat directing him, while Jason, Nate, and I are crammed into the back.

  It’s a tight fit, but we make it work.

  As one of the agency’s undercover vehicles, the Volvo has no lights or push bars or markings to suggest law enforcement affiliation. Even the make was chosen with intent, since no Volvo was ever mistaken for a law enforcement vehicle—except perhaps in Sweden.

  The car fits the neighborhood perfectly, even better than my Mini Cooper.

  Past Lorcan’s residence, we spot the two-man surveillance team from Pierce County. They’re parked two blocks down in a gray Hyundai Sonata that’s missing one of its hubcaps. We can tell they’re the surveillance unit because their faces are shadowed by stubble and they exude a thuggish presence. The look is great for undercover drug buys, but probably not an ideal choice for this neighborhood. Someone’s liable to call them in as a couple suspicious characters. We nod subtly as we pass, and then loop back around and park in roughly the same spot we occupied the night before.

  Danny Marchant and the SWAT team are still two hours out, but a dozen officers and deputies from Lakewood PD and the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office are parked a mile away at the local elementary school, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.

  Once more we wait. Ten minutes into what could be a long night, Haiden decides to thrill us with tales of hilarious computer coding errors and traumatic hardware failures, one of which nearly brings him to tears. Honestly, if I knew the difference between a bit and a byte, it might actually be funny.

  * * *

  Shortly after eight it begins to snow; big flakes that mean business.

  Soon the ground is covered, and the Moors take on the look of a Christmas postcard, the holiday lights reflecting off a pristine blanket of cold white. The night is suddenly brighter. If we weren’t parked up the street from a monster, I’d even say it was magical.

  Like the Grinch arriving home with a sleigh of stolen presents, Lorcan’s BMW drives past and pulls into the garage around eight-thirty, leaving tracks in the fresh snow and disrupting the magic of the Moors.

  The lights come on in the big house and we watch him through the naked windows: a bathroom stop, two trips down the hall, a trip to the kitchen where he retrieves a beer from the fridge, and then to the living room where he turns on the television. He pulls up something prerecorded and then settles in for the duration.

  I’m hoping that whatever he’s watching is at least an hour long, because Danny Marchant and the SWAT team just left Seattle. With the new snow, it’ll be the better part of an hour before they get to Lakewood. Longer if the snow starts to accumulate on I-5.

  “Looks like The X-Files,” Haiden says, peering through our only pair of binoculars as he studies the distant television. “Who still watches The X-Files? I thought that went out with the nineties.”

  “Blasphemy!” I say. “The X-Files will never go out of style. It’s like The Twilight Zone or Kolchak: The Night Stalker. They’re immortal.” As I say this, it occurs to me that I could be an X-Files episode. Hell, I could be a whole season.

  * * *

  “They’re at the elementary school,” Jimmy says after disconnecting the latest call from Danny Marchant. The team made good time from Seattle, covering the distance in forty minutes, and without benefit of lights and siren.

  It’s welcome news; I’m tired of waiting.

  “Danny’s going to give Lakewood and Pierce County a quick brief,” Jimmy says, “and then they’ll move the containment teams into place. We’re about fifteen minutes from go.”

  “So … front door?” I ask.

  “Yep; we have a no-knock warrant, so they’ll go in fast and hard.” He gives me a telling look. “We’ll have to sit tight until he’s in custody. Once we get the word, I want you in ther
e”—he chooses his next words carefully—“doing your thing.”

  It’s always more difficult with other ears around, but I understand him perfectly.

  “What about me?” Haiden asks.

  “You’ll come in with us.” Turning to look at Nate and Jason, he asks, “Can you stay with Haiden while he pulls what he can off the computer?” The detectives both nod, just happy to be part of the action.

  “Right,” Haiden says. “Until then we just … hang out here?”

  “Hurry up and wait,” Jimmy says with a grin.

  Haiden doesn’t think much of the military vernacular and puts the binoculars back to his eyes. “He’s back in the kitchen, by the way; looks like he’s cooking dinner.”

  “For one or two?” I ask.

  He drops the binoculars and gives me a look like I just asked him to solve cold fusion. “How am I supposed to know that?”

  I shrug. “Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of genius?”

  “With computers,” he says, “not people—and certainly not food.” He huffs and resumes his surveillance, but I can tell he liked the genius reference.

  * * *

  The official report will record 9:37 P.M. as go time.

  We don’t hear the command.

  We barely see the SWAT van speeding in our direction. One moment the street is empty, the next a black mass is pulling up to the house and a flurry of figures seem to disgorge from every orifice. The team immediately stacks up and moves at a fast walk to the front door, looking like a giant black centipede bristling with weapons and the possibility of a nasty bite.

  The lead man on the stack is armed with a pump shotgun, so I wait for the cacophonous blast of a twelve-gauge shredding the door latch. Instead, I’m greeted with the equally thunderous shouts of, “FBI,” as the stack pours through the opening and sweeps into the house.

  Apparently, Lorcan doesn’t lock his doors.

  While we wait for the all-clear from Danny, Jimmy has Haiden move the Volvo closer, so that we’re parked at the curb right in front of the house. The windows are down, and we can still hear the occasional shout of, “FBI,” or “Search warrant,” but those aren’t the words I’m waiting for. I want to hear the familiar bark of, “Show me your hands,” or “Get on the ground.”

  The more time that passes without hearing those words, or the radio transmission, “One in custody,” the more anxious I get.

  Five minutes ago, Lorcan was still in the kitchen making something to eat. How far could he have gone? The snow on the ground proves to be a boon, because if he manages to exit a door or window, his tracks will be clearly visible in the fresh powder.

  So far, there are no tracks.

  * * *

  Forty minutes after initial entry, Danny Marchant emerges from the open front door and makes a beeline for the SWAT van, his head down against the snow. At the last minute he looks up and spots the Volvo at the curb. Diverting, he approaches at a half run and stops at the open passenger window.

  The sour expression on his face is not encouraging.

  “We’re going to check the attic with thermal,” he explains, trying to drum up some optimism. “He’s here someplace; he’s just got himself one helluva hiding spot.” He gives us the one-minute condensed version of the search, which includes the discovery of an impressive computer room, and stacks of banded cash lying here and there. Then he’s at a half run back to the SWAT van, and its vast array of equipment tucked away in waterproof containers.

  The hour mark passes … then an hour and a half.

  At eleven-fifteen, Danny steps to the front door and waves us in, a defeated look on his face. If they had Lorcan, we’d know it. The tone and tempo of a scene changes with success, and I’m not seeing or hearing that. Somehow the Onion King has eluded them, and this leaves a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “How’s this possible!” I hiss at Jimmy as we exit the car.

  “It’s not.”

  * * *

  We start by cutting through the living room and depositing Haiden, Nate, and Jason in the computer room. It’s an impressive shrine to Lorcan’s dark web prowess, and the first thing I notice is a large poster of an onion on the wall.

  The room has five thirty-inch monitors mounted onto a massive curved steel frame with two monitors on top and three below. The desk is equally large and impressive. I’m not much for expensive office furniture, but this monstrosity must have set Lorcan back ten or twenty grand. It’s fully ten feet across and shaped like a fat C or a futuristic wraparound cockpit.

  As soon as Haiden enters the room, he catches sight of a large red button on the wall, covered by a clear plastic flip-up lid. At the sight of it, Haiden wails, “Oh, no, no, no!” and rushes over to the computer. Powering up the CPU, he waits on the edge of his seat for something—anything—to appear on the screen. And then his shoulders slump and he says, “He wiped the hard drive.”

  “W-wiped it!” I stammer. “How? He didn’t have time.”

  “It only took a second,” Haiden replies, pointing to the industrial button on the wall. “That’s a kill switch, and this”—he points to a box next to the computer’s central processing unit—“is an electromagnet. All he had to do was hit the switch and run. The electromagnet powered up and destroyed all the data on the hard drive.”

  “All of it?”

  Haiden nods. “What wasn’t erased outright was corrupted beyond—” He suddenly stops, a light of realization clicking on somewhere in his complicated brain, and then he starts searching through the desk drawers with the fervor of a madman. He finds several banded bundles of cash in the process, which he throws onto the floor like so much dirty laundry.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A thumb drive,” he replies, and then pulls the CPU out from its resting space and examines the USB ports on the back. Nothing.

  “Why a thumb drive?” Jimmy asks, trying to track Haiden’s logic. “Wouldn’t that be erased too?”

  Haiden shakes his head vigorously. “No, no. They use a floating gate transistor to store data, not the magnetic method used by hard disks. It’s more resilient.”

  “So, if we find a thumb drive—”

  “Then we might have something,” Haiden finishes for him. He turns and waves at the elaborate computer setup that Lorcan Child used during his reign as the Onion King. “This,” he says, “is all junk; useless.”

  Leaving Jason, Nate, and Haiden to tear the room apart looking for a thumb drive that they’ll never find, Jimmy and I move to the garage and let the connecting door to the house close fully behind us. The garage and its vehicles have all been searched so there’s no danger of Lorcan suddenly appearing and gunning us down.

  We’re alone—or as alone as you can be with fifteen people swarming through the house. For the first time since entering the house, I take off my glasses and turn my eyes to the patterns of shine on the garage floor.

  “Debra Mata,” I say, and the name comes out as a whisper. “Erin Yarborough,” I add a moment later, this time in a stronger voice. Her shine is much older than Debra’s, but the footprints are clear; distinct. Looking around for another match, I find nothing. I walk completely around both vehicles and into every corner of the garage, but there’s no other shine. It’s just the two of them.

  When I tell Jimmy, he just sighs. “So, he brought two of them here, here to his home in this nice quiet neighborhood. Why would he do that?” He seems to sense my deeper concern. “Just because you only found evidence of Debra and Erin doesn’t mean the others weren’t here, including Melinda. It just means he may have carried them.”

  He’s right, but it does little to ease my growing sense of dread.

  “The tracks lead this way,” I say, waving him to follow as I make my way back to the door and into the house. The footprints of both women lead across the living room without deviation, and down the hall to the first room on the right. It’s an impeccably clean utility room that’s the size of most bedrooms. T
here’s a front-loading washer and a matching dryer, a pull-down ironing board, counters for folding, cabinets for storing, and ample room for a vacuum cleaner, mops, a stepladder, and more. There’s also a massive stainless-steel freezer tucked up right into the corner.

  The shine ends ominously at its door.

  The discovery of things in freezers is usually cause for concern when hunting predators like Lorcan Child, so it’s with considerable trepidation that I give Jimmy a dark look and—taking a deep breath—jerk the door open in a blur of motion. I remove bandages the same way; best to just do it quickly and get it over with.

  Jimmy stares inside and says nothing, his expression puzzled. Craning my neck around the door for a look, I begin to understand why: The freezer is empty. And by empty, I mean devoid of everything; there aren’t even any shelves. It’s just a big box of nothing.

  Except … there is something.

  Debra Mata’s shine is brushed up against the inside of the freezer. And then I see Erin Yarborough, Charice Qian, Sheryl Dorsey—all of them. They’re all here … plus one I don’t recognize. It glows and pulses with the energy of the living.

  “Melinda,” I whisper, touching her impression with the tips of my fingers.

  The shine of all nine women seems to concentrate on the lower half of the freezer—and then it strikes me: there are no footprints. There should be footprints from all of them, whether they were forced inside or just placed there unconscious. It’s an oddity I can’t make sense of until I notice that the large plastic piece covering the bottom of the freezer is almost completely free of shine.

  Lorcan’s shine is present around the edges, but not one of the women has ever touched the piece. And as I look closer, I see a wisp of the Onion King’s shine standing up at the front of the base, as if a strand of his hair had fallen and now lay in a curl, barely visible to the naked eye.