Whispers of the Dead

by Kope, Spencer

  It’s not long before we hear whistling in the hall, accompanied by the metallic rattle of a wheeled body cart. When Paul pushes the conveyance into the room, I’m immediately puzzled by its contents—or lack thereof.

  “Well, this can’t be good,” I mutter.

  The cart is nearly empty.

  There’s a white sheet draped over it, but instead of outlining the rough topography of a corpse, it covers a two-foot-by-two-foot rubber pan resting in the center of the stainless steel top.

  “Let me guess,” I say. “A head?”

  “No,” Paul replies with a grin, “that would make our job too easy, wouldn’t it?” He whips off the white cloth like a magician pulling a tablecloth from under porcelain plates and half-full wineglasses.

  Nestled in the center of the rubber pan are two feet still in their size 9½ gray Converse sneakers and white socks.

  “Okay, you got my attention,” I say.

  Reaching under the cart, Dr. Jimenez retrieves a white Styrofoam ice box, one of those cheap ice chest substitutes you can buy at most stores, especially during the summer. He sets it next to the feet.

  “What’s that?” Jimmy asks.

  “That,” Paul replies, “is what they were found in, sitting in the middle of County Judge Jonathan Ehrlich’s living room.” He chuckles. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.” He shoots us a grin. “You didn’t hear that from me.”

  Jimmy’s curious. “Tell us about him.”

  Paul pauses, looks over his shoulder toward the door, and then leans in close. “He’s the part of the foreskin you throw away after the circumcision, know what I mean? The guy’s as useless as a warning label on a junkie’s syringe. Still, he’s got political connections and somehow got nominated to be a federal judge, if you can believe it. That was last month. He’s still got to make it through the confirmation hearing, but he’ll probably get rubber-stamped—God help us.”

  “You think this might be a message, something related to his nomination?” Jimmy asks. He’s leaning over and checking out the inside of the ice box. I’m not interested in the ice box; I’m keeping my distance. Styrofoam freaks me out. I don’t know why, it just does. I have issues, okay?

  The only thing that freaks me out as much as Styrofoam is your standard everyday forest. Anytime large numbers of deciduous and evergreen trees start milling about together, you know it can’t end well.

  “I suppose it could be some sort of message,” Dr. Jimenez replies. “Still, this is El Paso. All options are on the table.”

  “What about the cartels?” I ask.

  “That’s one option,” Paul replies emphatically, “though they tend to use heads when they want to send a message. Still, who knows? It wasn’t long ago that Mexican authorities found a van abandoned in the desert a few miles south of the border, east of Juárez. The Federales recovered fourteen bodies. The only reason they knew there were fourteen bodies was because that’s how many torsos were inside. Even at that, they somehow ended up with fifteen left arms.” He scratches his chin and shakes his head. “How’s that happen? Fifteen left arms, fourteen torsos?”

  “How much trouble would it be to take off the shoes and socks?” I ask. “Actually, I don’t need to see both feet, one will do.”

  “No trouble at all,” Paul replies. “I’ve already given them a cursory examination for trace, but came up empty.” He retrieves both shoes from the rubber bin and sets them on the examination table, where they immediately begin to puddle. “Did I mention they were frozen?”

  “Frozen?” Jimmy says.

  “Yep. Based on the rate of thaw, they’d been out of the freezer for about two days when we found them—starting to get a little ripe, too.” He wrinkles his nose, and then gets to work unlacing the left shoe. He pulls it off with a bit of a tug, gripping the stump of the ankle in the process. “Freezing complicates things a bit,” he says as he works. “For starters, it makes it impossible to estimate time of death or time of crime. This guy could have died six months or six days ago. I have no way of knowing for certain.”

  The left sock comes off next and I get my first good look at the foot, but it’s not really the foot that I need to see, it’s the shine: mocha-brown, speckled with wisps of lime-green. The texture is that of pumice; it’s porous, vesicular, ugly.

  I don’t know where the rest of him is, but I know he’s dead. That’s one of the peculiar aspects of shine: it vibrates and pulses with energy when the subject is alive, but lies flat and dormant once they’re dead.

  Other shine is present, of course.

  These likely belong to the factory workers who made the shoes, socks, and ice box, the clerks who displayed them and sold them, the killer who cut them off the victim, and the crime scene investigators who recovered them. Most of it is older, and I can filter it out easily enough. That still leaves three distinct examples of shine on the shoes, and four on the ice box, one of which is Dr. Jimenez—a very pleasant shade of purple, simple and clean.

  Of the remaining shine, only one is on both the shoes and the Styrofoam box. It’s bright and piercing: ice-blue with flecks of black and the texture of smooth plastic, a shine so cold my bones shudder at the sight.

  “Any idea what was used to sever the feet?” Jimmy asks, pointing to the flesh and bone at the unfinished ankle.

  Paul nods with appreciation. “It’s a clean cut, isn’t it? I’m thinking some kind of industrial equipment, maybe for food processing or something along that line. Whatever it was, it sliced through the bone without a problem.”

  “Does a butcher have equipment that would do that?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” Paul says with a shrug. “There’s no indication of saw marks, though, so it looks like a clean chop.”

  “How about DNA?”

  “I sent a sample to the lab, but it’s going to be a while before we get results—that’s provided he’s in CODIS,” Paul says, referring to the Combined DNA Index System. It houses the DNA of sex offenders and subjects arrested for or convicted of various other crimes. CODIS also houses DNA from unsolved rapes and murders, running those profiles against new additions to the database on a daily basis.

  “Would you mind sending a sample to the FBI lab as well?” Jimmy asks.

  “Aren’t you guys backlogged worse than us?”

  “Probably, but we get priority processing.”

  Scratching out an address and instructions, Jimmy hands the piece of paper to the doctor. “Make sure you include the line Attention: Janet Burlingame. She’s the lab tech who does all our processing. She’ll make things happen.”

  “Rodger dodger,” Paul says, stuffing the note in his pocket.

  We have everything we came for, which was really only two things: the shine of the unidentified victim, and the shine of his killer. We thank Dr. Jimenez and say our goodbyes, leaving him in the autopsy suite. As we’re exiting the front door, he hurries up behind us.

  “You guys will let me know if you find the rest of him, right?” he says, holding the door open for us. “DNA match or not, I need to ID this guy as soon as possible or these feet are going to sit in the cooler taking up valuable space.”

  “We’ll call you if we find him, or if we figure out who he is,” Jimmy says, shaking Paul’s hand a second time.

  “Beers on me next time,” the doctor says. Then he chuckles as Jimmy and I exchange glances. “No, for real. I know this great little pub.”

  He’s still smiling as we exit the parking lot.

  * * *

  Vista Hermosa Drive lives up to its translation: Beautiful View.

  It’s a fairly straight road of well-tended asphalt that juts right into the western slope of the Franklin Mountains, near the southern tip. It’s a street of high-end houses, high-end cars, and high-end career professionals; home to the well-to-do of El Paso. Judge Jonathan Ehrlich’s house is in the cul-de-sac at the end of the street, snug up against the base of a mountain.

  The crime scene still hasn’t been r
eleased and the spectacle of yellow police tape is an unpleasantness to which the residents of Vista Hermosa Drive are unaccustomed, as is the police car in the driveway. Even now we see faces peering out windows at our approach, more fodder for the text- and Twitter-driven rumor mill.

  As Jimmy eases the Ford carefully up to the curb, we both spot a young city officer, probably fresh from the academy, maintaining perimeter at the open front door. We notice him because he’s getting an unpleasant earful from a short, rotund man in his mid-to-late fifties.

  “Judge Ehrlich, I presume,” Jimmy says under his breath as he slips the Ford into park and gives the ignition key a twist and pull.

  “He seems nice,” I say in a singsong voice before unbuckling my belt and pushing it aside. Taking my special glasses off, I stow them safely in their leather case and leave them on the center console. I have an identical pair in my travel bag, which is still in the trunk, and two more at home. The lead-crystal lenses in the glasses are the only substance I’ve found that completely blocks shine. As such, the glasses are the only thing keeping me sane.

  Still, I can only wear them six or seven hours before a throbbing headache ensues—the same thing happens if I stare at shine too long. So I alternate: two or three hours with the glasses, a half hour to an hour without.

  As Ehrlich continues to rant and even bellow, the city cop keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t react. That’s the one thing about being in law enforcement: Someone’s always mad at you. Someone always wants to fight or argue or scream. The second thing about being in law enforcement is that someone is always blaming you for something you didn’t do or aren’t responsible for.

  The city cop is getting a truckload of both.

  It takes patience to be a cop.

  As we make our way up the sidewalk, Red-Faced-Angry-Man spots us and immediately rampages in our direction. Imagine you’re on safari in Africa; you’re on foot for some ridiculous reason and you stumble upon a herd of wild elephants. Spooked by your presence, the elephants suddenly stampede in your direction, trumpeting and bellowing as they come.

  Red-Faced-Angry-Man is scarier.

  Closing the distance with frightful speed for someone with his drag coefficient, he’s on us in seconds. “Are you the two incompetents I’ve been waiting for all day?” he demands, spit flying from his mouth in seven different directions.

  “Special Agent James Donovan, FBI,” Jimmy says calmly. “Are you Jonathan Ehrlich?”

  “JUDGE Ehrlich,” he replies tersely. “I am. And what are you going to do about this crime scene? My house is wide open; you’ve got police tape cluttering the place up and making an eyesore of it; and my wife says she won’t step foot in this house until someone’s caught and behind bars.” He crosses his arms and glares at us, looking me up and down like I’m some kind of troll that just crawled up through the business end of an outhouse. “When is that going to be, I wonder? Hmm?”

  “Judge Ehrlich,” Jimmy says, “we just got here. Let us do our job. Trust me; we want this over as quickly and as painlessly as you. We just need to examine the crime scene and we’ll be on our way.”

  He just stands there with his arms folded.

  “Hurry up,” he finally snaps. Whirling around, he moves back to the front porch so he can harass the El Paso officer again. As we pass, I give the poor guy a quick wink, a gesture of solidarity for a fellow member of the Jerk of the Month Club.

  The house is expansive, about four thousand square feet in all. As we make our way through the foyer and into the living room, we see a spot outlined in tape on the carpet, courtesy of CSI. We crouch down next to the tape, side by side, and I walk Jimmy through it.

  “Looks like he came in there,” I say, pointing to the far wall where a French-door-style slider opens onto a large deck. “He walked straight here, set the ice box down, and left the way he came; no detours; in and out in seconds. He didn’t even bother to look around or stare at the family photos on the wall.”

  “He’s organized,” Jimmy says. “Mission-oriented; task-oriented.”

  “Looks like it. And there’s no shine suggesting he’s ever been here before. This was his first visit.” Pushing myself upright, I say, “Let’s check outside, see how he approached the house.”

  Through the slider, I follow the ice-blue shine east across the deck and then up and over a decorative rock wall at the back edge of the property. From there the trail goes up the western slope of the mountain range, into Franklin Mountains State Park. The park itself covers over twenty-four thousand acres and is completely contained within the city limits of El Paso.

  It’s not an overly steep climb, but the trail is littered with loose rock, baked earth, and a sampling of lowland vegetation, including desert grasses, creosote bushes, and a variety of cacti. Two hundred feet into our climb, we discover the unexpected: a road.

  The ice-blue shine with its black speckles turns abruptly and follows the road south. From where I stand, my eyes follow the glow until the road veers left and disappears around the corner. “He came and went from that direction,” I say, pointing south, “which means he either walked up from the other side of the mountain, or he drove in and parked somewhere up ahead.”

  Jimmy’s on his smartphone pulling up maps—should have thought of that before we walked up the cacti-strewn mountain. “There’s a scenic overlook with a small parking lot,” he says, his eyes quickly scanning additional images. “It’s just around the corner, probably less than a quarter mile.” Stuffing his phone in his pocket and without another word, he starts marching to the south.

  “Whoa! Hold up,” I shout after him. He pauses long enough for me to catch up. “How about we finish at the house first?” I point down the hill where the whole community is laid out before us. “The road starts just north of the judge’s place. We can grab the car and follow IBK in a climate-controlled environment.”

  “Air-conditioning,” Jimmy scoffs, always up for a good hike, regardless of the weather. “It’s already cooling down—wait, did you say IBK?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What’s IBK?”

  “Ice Box Killer.”

  “Ice Box Killer? Really? Do we always have to give them names?”

  “Just the weird ones,” I say with a shrug. “We always name the weird ones; in fact, you named the last two, if I remember correctly. Besides, if we don’t, the press will … you know they will.”

  He gives me a harrowed look.

  “What?” I say, raising my hands up like I’m pleading for clemency. “You want me to call them unsubs or perps like they do on TV? Seriously, in the last five years how many times have you heard a cop use the word unsub or perp? Hmm? Zero,” I say with authority, holding up a circle with my thumb and index finger.

  “Suspect works just fine,” Jimmy replies.

  “I-B-K works even better,” I say, drawing out the letters. Jimmy doesn’t argue it further, which means I win by default.

  “Whatever,” he grunts. “Let’s get a move on.”

  “No, wait!”

  Jimmy’s already a half dozen steps away and slows only long enough to whirl around mid-stride and say, “Come on, Steps, we’re losing the light.”

  “Seriously, Jimmy, hold up,” I say. “Besides, we’ve already lost the sun.” I point to the western horizon as he stops, shakes his head, and then walks slowly back. “You know as well as I do that there’s a ninety-five percent chance we’re going to walk around that corner and the trail’s going to come to an abrupt end where he got into a car. It may be a quarter mile; it may be five miles. The point is that it’s not going to add to what we know.”

  “We still have to follow it to the end,” Jimmy says. “Maybe the guy dropped his wallet when he got into the car. Maybe there’s a camera monitoring the area where he parked—who knows?”

  “Yeah, I know all that. I’m just saying we should go back to the house and finish with Judge U-lick—”

  “Ehrlich.”

  “That’s w
hat I said; and then we can finish the track in the car. Besides, the poor cop at the door looked like he could use a break. If he has to put up with U-lick much longer we may have another homicide on our hands.”

  “We’re already here,” Jimmy argues. “Why not just trudge on?”

  A dusky tint settles upon the mountain as we speak, and shadows deepen and come to life, creeping across the landscape from every cactus, rock, or bush. From the edge of the road thirty feet ahead of us something moves; just a small movement at first, but enough to catch my eye in the failing light. As Jimmy and I talk, I tilt to the right, looking past him as a thin strip of blackness moves slowly out onto the road.

  “Do they have rattlesnakes in these parts?” I ask.

  Jimmy chuckles. “If you want to go back that badly, just say so.”

  “No.” I grab Jimmy by both shoulders and spin him around, pointing up the road. “Do they have rattlesnakes in these parts?” I repeat.

  Jimmy stares up the road for a good thirty seconds and then fumbles for his smartphone; it only takes a few seconds to find the answer. “Not only rattlesnakes, but tarantulas, scorpions, and poisonous centipedes.”

  We’re fifty feet down the mountain when something occurs to Jimmy. Rather than keeping the thought to himself, he decides to share: “What if we’re walking right through them?” he hisses.

  Now all I can think about is a poisonous centipede crawling up my pant leg and nesting in my underwear. Frankly, I’d rather get bitten by the rattler. We pick up the pace until we’re practically running down the mountain, barely able to see the obstacles in front of us. When we reach the rock wall at the back of the judge’s property we vault over it like Olympians and don’t slow down until we reach the deck.

  I’m bent over, catching my breath; Jimmy’s holding up the wall with both hands. A minute later he brushes his clothes off and stands erect. “Let’s clear the crime scene,” he says in a calm, almost ho-hum voice, as if nothing had happened.

  Entering the house through the rear slider, I’m instantly aware of what sounds like a muted riot issuing through the open front door and reverberating off the walls and ceiling. The caterwaul only grows louder as we cross the living room and enter the foyer. There’s no doubt as to the source of the discordance, though how a would-be federal judge learned to whine so prodigiously is beyond me.