Whispers of the Dead_A Special Tracking Unit Novel

by Spencer Kope

  I should tell her now—at this moment. If it means I’m a monster in her eyes, so be it. Better to know than to wonder. I tell myself these things, and I pluck at the edge of my courage, and the sun warms my face, and I try … I try.

  But it’s been such a lovely day.…

  * * *

  Night is upon the city when I steer Gus into the underground garage below Heather’s lofty apartment complex. Arm in arm, we amble our way to the elevator, the picnic basket dangling from the crook of my right elbow.

  Tucking ourselves into her cozy apartment, we empty the contents of the basket onto the table and make a snack of what remains—with a few additions from the pantry. Heather’s apartment is on the ninth floor of Empire Tower, with sweeping views to the north and the west, so when we step out onto the balcony all of Seattle is laid out below us, and beyond it the mysterious depths of Puget Sound. We stand together, wrapped in a single blanket, my arms around her.

  It’s a perfect night.

  Minutes fall away one by one, meaningless in this moment and place. Our eyes find each other from time to time, as do our lips, but it’s the distant noise of the city, the milling about of people, and the afterglow of our day together that occupies my mind.

  “There’s something you need to know,” I say.

  The words surprise me, but now they’re out and there’s nothing to do but press on. “That’s … not exactly what I mean. What I should have said is there’s something I want you to know. It’s about what I do; about—how I do it.”

  She’s looking up at me, studying my face as the shimmer of the city highlights her cheeks, casting them in a golden hue. With slow deliberation, she presses her index finger to my lips and says, “You’re not ready. It’s okay, wait till you’re ready. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Heather has a special ability of her own: she reads body language better than any seasoned detective or FBI interrogator I’ve ever met. I should have guessed she’d see how conflicted I am.

  Pushing up on her tiptoes, she kisses me softly on the mouth and then lays her head against my chest. “Stay the night.”

  The back of my right index finger brushes lightly under her chin and then up her cheek, etching her features into my memory.

  “Stay,” she says again.

  “I can’t.” The words are filled with disappointment, regret. “We’re flying out at seven A.M.” It’s an excuse and she knows it, so I give her the real reason, the one she’s already guessed. “I’d never hear the end of it from Jens.”

  She smiles and nods. “Your brother is a moral man,” she says after a moment. “That’s a good thing, and rare these days. I don’t know how he does it,” she adds with a shake of her head. “Especially with the way women are drawn to him.”

  “Yeah, I have the same problem,” I whisper in her ear.

  * * *

  The night deepens, the din from the streets below quiets, and two hours pass by with no regard for hearts or young lovers. I finally pull myself from Heather—away from the warmth and comfort and peace that come with forgetting the dead.

  We really are flying out at seven A.M.; I wasn’t kidding about that. By noon we’ll be in Baton Rouge, and neck-deep in murder once more; another morgue, another pathologist, another body … and a swamp. The only thing I can be certain of is that it’s going to be a long day, made longer by Heather’s absence.

  The drive home is lonely; the only sounds are the undertones of road noise, the soft growl from under Gus’s hood, and the melancholy tunes of a Seattle soft-rock radio station issuing from the speakers.

  It must be the night for sappy love songs.

  Yeah—not helping.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Baton Rouge—September 9, 1:01 P.M.

  “Who’s Aaron Kosminski?” Jimmy asks.

  “He was supposedly a hairdresser or barber who lived in Whitechapel when the murders took place,” I say. “He ended up in an insane asylum in 1891.”

  “And he’s Jack the Ripper?”

  “That’s what the article says.” Jimmy’s driving, so I hold up the day-old paper and tap the column on the right side, which includes a black-and-white image of Kosminski. “They claim they solved the case using hundred-and-twenty-five-year-old mitochondrial DNA.”

  “Please!” Jimmy exclaims. “First off, that’s a bit hard to believe. Second, where’s the chain of custody for the evidence? Where’d they get the DNA sample?”

  “It came off a shawl that belonged—well, that supposedly belonged to one of the murdered prostitutes.” I scan through the article looking for the name. “Catherine Eddowes. The legend behind the shawl was that it was found with her body and taken by a police officer named Amos Simpson.”

  “He just took it?”

  “I guess he wanted a souvenir.” Jimmy looks at me and I shrug. “They did things different back then; I don’t know. Anyway, the shawl was passed down through the Simpson family and eventually auctioned off in 2007.”

  Jimmy shakes his head, and I read him several paragraphs from the article. He’s still not buying it, but after a few minutes of reflection, he asks, “Do you think you could use shine to track down Jack the Ripper?”

  “Maybe,” I reply, “depending on what kind of access we had to evidence and how much of the old streets and buildings are still intact. Even if I could, how would we explain it?”

  Jimmy grins. “We’d figure something out. We’re pretty good at coming up with a believable story.” He palm-punches the top of the steering wheel twice in his enthusiasm and says, “I think we need a vacation to England.”

  “Okay, Sherlock, but if we’re going to the UK, I want to take a side trip to Scotland. My dad still has family there.”

  “I’m serious,” Jimmy insists.

  “I know you are,” I say with a chuckle, and then point at the road sign ahead. “You’re going to miss your turn.”

  “Crap.”

  Somehow he manages to steer the beige Ford Escape across two lanes of heavy traffic and down the Route 408 off-ramp, where the road spills into a cluster of buildings housing the mayor’s office, Homeland Security, and other elements of local and federal government. The East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office is at the back, and, ironically, right next to the airport runways.

  “Looks like we took the long way around,” I say as a corporate jet reaches speed and lifts off with a roar. Jimmy swings the SUV into an empty spot near the front door and we make our way to the lobby window.

  It’s the usual routine: hold up credentials, apologize for not having an appointment, then wait for the medical examiner or coroner, who may or may not be in the middle of an autopsy. In this case, it doesn’t take long.

  “I’m Dr. Kenny,” a young pathologist says. “I understand you have an interest in our mystery man?”

  “We do,” Jimmy replies. “We’re investigating a pair of severed feet that were left on a judge’s living room floor. Your colleague, Dr. Cosentino, advised El Paso PD that you might have a possible match—a body found in a swamp last week without any feet?”

  Dr. Kenny nods. “That would be Trey Cosentino. He’s not a doctor, just an overeager intern. I hope he didn’t jump the gun on this and have you fellas fly all the way out here for nothing.”

  “You don’t think this is our guy?”

  “Well, the body we recovered was clearly mutilated to obscure identification. It’s possible the feet had tattoos or some other features that might be recognizable, so the suspect just cut them off. They probably got dumped in a separate swamp a few miles away.”

  “Possible,” Jimmy agrees. “But we put out an RFI for bodies missing feet and yours is only the second call we’ve taken. The first call was from Tucson with another pair of feet, so now there are two bodies out there with missing feet. I like our odds.”

  Dr. Kenny smiles and shows a row of perfect white teeth. “It’s a thousand miles from here to El Paso,” he says, feathering his words with skepticism. “I’ve never h
eard of someone going to such lengths to dispose of a body.”

  Jimmy shrugs. “Steps and I have seen some strange things, haven’t we, Steps?”

  “Strange,” I say with an affirming nod.

  “So if we could just take a look at the body, we’ll be out of here in no time.”

  “Your call,” the doctor says indifferently. He hands Jimmy a clipboard. “Just need you to sign in.” He grabs two visitor badges from behind the counter and hands them to us, noting the number on each badge and writing it on the sign-in sheet next to our names. “This way,” he says, holding open the blue door with the RESTRICTED sign.

  The morgue is like every other I’ve visited in the last five years. It’s sterile, yet has an undertone of putrefaction that not even bleach can eliminate. A twelve-body cooler dominates the back wall, three rows high and four wide. Dr. Kenny opens the middle door, second from the right, and pulls out the loaded stainless steel tray.

  “I warn you,” the doctor says, snapping on a pair of gloves, “it’s not pretty.”

  “It never is,” I mutter.

  Unzipping the body bag, he pulls it wide, revealing the skeletal features of a face with no teeth. You can see the clean incisions where the suspect trimmed along the hairline, down the back of each cheek, and then under the chin to remove the flesh from the skull, leaving the corpse faceless and grotesque.

  But there’s something else: mocha shine.

  The mutilated corpse is Larry Wilson, beyond a doubt. I catch Jimmy looking my way and give him a furtive nod. Officially, we’ll wait for DNA results to make the announcement, but we have the answer we were looking for.

  The doctor unzips the bag further and lifts each arm free, displaying the raw fingertips where the skin has been removed. Then we’re on to the ankles and the missing feet, where we find clean, precision cuts, just as the report indicated. The position of the two cuts is the same, suggesting the feet were taken at the same time with the same instrument, not separately, as one would suppose. The cut is just above the ankle, and includes about an inch each of the tibia and fibula, the two lower leg bones.

  Dr. Kenny restates what we already know from the police report, and Jimmy pays close attention as the forensic pathologist walks him through the postmortem mutilations, before returning to the cause of death: exsanguination after the feet were chopped off.

  “So he bled out?” Jimmy says.

  “Fairly quickly, I’d say.”

  “And the body was found in a swamp?”

  “Correct,” Dr. Kenny replies. “Bluebonnet Swamp; it’s five or six miles from here. Pleasant as far as swamps go.”

  “I thought pleasant swamp was an oxymoron.”

  The doctor chuckles. “This is Louisiana. We have different grades of swamp here. And when it comes to fishing a body from one of them, you could do a lot worse than Bluebonnet.”

  Jimmy unfolds his map of Baton Rouge and lays it out on the table adjacent to the husked remains of Larry Wilson. “Can you show me where, precisely, the body was found?”

  I’m only partially listening as they examine the map, and when they start discussing the body again I tune out completely, imagining myself back at Mount St. Helens with Heather.

  Oddly, my daydream includes Jimmy this time. His voice floats at the surface of my imagination, drowning Heather out. It seems he’s examining the missing tip of the mountain and commenting on the way the blast cut the rock, peeling parts away and leaving jagged edges that make it unrecognizable as its former self.

  Mountains become bodies, and bodies become mountains.

  Imagination helps pass the time.

  “One last thing,” Jimmy says as their discussion winds down. “Can I get a DNA sample for our lab?”

  “We just sent a sample to the state lab,” Dr. Kenny replies. “I can send you a copy of the report when we get it, if you’d like?”

  “I’m guessing that could be a while?”

  The doctor wobbles his head from side to side, a pensive, noncommittal look on his face. “The lab’s not as backed up as it used to be, but, yeah, it’s probably going to be a few weeks.”

  “We have a dedicated DNA tech at the FBI lab in West Virginia who can have an answer for us in a day, not counting shipping time. And she already has a sample to compare it to … so what do you say?”

  Dr. Kenny doesn’t hesitate. “As long as I can get a copy of the report,” he replies. “The sooner I can free up the cooler, the better.”

  Jimmy writes down the address and point-of-contact info and hands it to the doctor. When he grabs it, Jimmy doesn’t let go right away, but points to the second line of the address. “Make sure you include ‘Attention: Janet Burlingame.’ If you forget, the sample will end up with the general caseload samples and we’ll be waiting weeks or months.”

  “Janet Burlingame,” the doctor says. “No problem. I’ll prepare a blood card and get it in the mail this afternoon. Anything else?”

  “No,” Jimmy replies. “That’s more than enough. We really appreciate the help.”

  Dr. Kenny walks us back to the lobby, making small talk on the way. We hand over our badges, sign out on the clipboard, and say our good-byes.

  As I’m shaking the doctor’s hand, he says, “You two have fun at the swamp.” I don’t know if it’s the hardy-har-har way he says it, or the huge Louisiana grin on his face, but I get the feeling he knows something we don’t.

  Jimmy tells me I’m distrustful of strangers.

  He may be right.

  * * *

  As we’re leaving the ME’s office, I hold the door open for Jimmy and he says, “Thank you,” instinctively, as is his habit. I continue to hold the door for the two people behind him, who are close enough that the courteous thing to do is to wait for them. The first, an older female, brushes past me without a word and barely a glance, though she does toss me a snarl—which I presume was meant to be a smile of some sort.

  The second person in line is even worse.

  He’s in his late teens or early twenties and is dressed like a slob, despite having a county ID card clipped to his shirt—which you would think might imply some level of dress code. He’s wearing earbuds that dangle down to the cell phone in his hand, and he strolls out the door without a glance or a word—like I’m his personal doorman. I watch him as he shuffles down the sidewalk, the crotch of his pants hanging halfway to his knees because he can’t seem to get his pants up all the way.

  Either that or there’s a sudden shortage of belts.

  “You’re welcome,” I call after them, but neither of them hear me, nor care. They’re far too important to pause and say thank you.

  My parents raised Jens and me to always say please and thank you, to hold doors open for women, even though that’s now frowned upon, and to show common courtesy in everything we do. I’m starting to think that we’re archaic anomalies in this new and watered-down world.

  Jimmy has a knowing smile on his face as we make our way to the car. We’ve had this conversation before, so he has an idea of what’s coming. “Maybe she thought you were being a chauvinist,” he says with a shrug.

  “It was common courtesy,” I reply dryly. “And what about Pig Pen? Was I being a chauvinist to him as well?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “I must be an equal-opportunity discriminator.”

  “That would be my guess.”

  I often wonder what happened to the polite society that was once America. So much has changed, and so quickly, even from my parents’ time.

  Part of the problem, I suppose, is that America became a transient society, and not just because we move around a lot and have lost our sense of home and community. Everything we do seems temporary. Even our pictures, once collected in albums and passed around at family gatherings, are now just bits and bytes in our cell phones or laptops. And when a cell phone gets lost or stolen, or a laptop dies, we suddenly realize that we don’t have copies of those photos.

  They’re gone foreve
r.

  There’s nothing to pass on to the next generation.

  Our jobs are transient; our truths are transient; our friendships and marriages—transient. Everything is disposable.

  I wonder if that’s why the Travis Duncans of the world find themselves dabbling in drugs, alcohol, or other self-destructive behavior. I see the same rot and despair everywhere; I see it reflected in our growing prison population. Society seems to have lost its rudder, and we keep looking to find it in all the wrong places.

  Sliding into the driver’s seat and starting the car, Jimmy cranks up the air-conditioning and patiently listens as I rant on for another minute. He doesn’t interrupt; he’s had his fair share of time on the soapbox, and he’s pretty good about taking turns.

  When my words start to falter and eventually cease, he gives me a broad smile and says, “Better?”

  “Ehh,” I say with a shrug.

  * * *

  We make our way south on I-110, which soon branches and turns into I-10 eastbound. Whether in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, or Louisiana, we can’t seem to get away from this road.

  “Exit 162A,” I say, pointing at the approaching overhead sign.

  “Bluebonnet Boulevard,” Jimmy says, reading the words slowly and methodically. “I guess they name their roads after swamps around these parts.”

  Angling to the right after exiting, we make our way past the Mall of Louisiana, and then continue another two miles to the Bluebonnet Branch Regional Library on our right. The parking lot is only partially full, which is probably normal for an early Tuesday afternoon.

  As Jimmy starts to pull into the first available space near the sidewalk, I sit bolt upright in my seat, my spine suddenly as straight as a construction level. My eyes dance along the sidewalk, the parking lot, the grass between the sidewalk and the building.

  It’s everywhere.

  Throwing my seat belt off, I bail from the SUV before it’s entirely stopped.

  By the time Jimmy catches up to me, I’ve already walked the sidewalk and found my way to the grassy strip bordering the swamp at the back of the library. I’m down on one knee next to an ancient tree with the girth of a Russian babushka.