Rose City Renegade

by DL Barbur

  “I took some pictures before we started digging,” Struecker said, and nodded at the camera sitting in the dirt beside him. Like the rest of us, he was taking shallow breaths through his mouth.

  Alex pulled a vial of Vick’s Vapor Rub from her bag. She rubbed some under her nose and passed it around. It helped. Some.

  “I’m going to go back and copy that laptop,” Casey said.

  Bolle nodded, and she turned to go. She found an out of the way place to be noisily sick in the bushes, then wiped off her mouth and went back into the shop. It only smelled marginally better in there.

  Alex donned gloves and helped clear the rest of the dirt away from the dead man.

  “Gunshot wound to the head looks like,” she said.

  She was right. There was a hole the size of a silver dollar in his left cheek. By the way the skin was torn and the shards of bone were jutting out, it was most likely the exit wound. We’d likely find a smaller entrance wound on the top of the right side of his head. His left eye looked deflated.

  “Probably shot while kneeling,” Alex said after she lifted his head up.

  His hands were bound in front. He was wearing paper coveralls and no shoes.

  “Could be Middle Eastern, but it’ll take a while to confirm that,” Alex said. She pushed up the sleeves of the coveralls. “Look at his wrists.”

  He had big jagged wounds on the inside of his left wrist.

  “Shine a light on here?” she asked.

  Dalton pulled a penlight out of his pocket and shined it on the man’s wrist. Alex bent close, flexed his hand back and forth. She had a powerful stomach apparently. I was doing ok with the smell, but I was several feet farther away and doing my best to not look and smell at the same time.

  “Do you think he tried to cut his wrist?” I asked.

  “Nope.” She dropped the man’s wrist and stood up. “Looks like he chewed on them.”

  Everybody was silent, as that sort of hung in the air between us for a little while. Towards the front of the property, I heard the sound of tires on gravel and doors slamming. The rest of Bolle’s team announced that they had arrived over the radio, along with a couple of local deputies to help with traffic control.

  “So, uh, you think he tried to chew through his own wrist?” Dalton asked. Even the seasoned Delta vet looked a little disturbed at that one.

  Alex took a deep breath and looked away from the body. Everybody had their limits, and I was guessing she was pretty close to hers.

  “I need to do a full autopsy to be sure, but it looks that way. I’ve never seen it before, but I’ve read about it, in mental patients, even some folks in POW camps and concentration camps, that sort of thing.”

  “Wow,” I said. It was out of my mouth before I realized it.

  “Let’s run him through the SEEK,” Bolle said.

  SEEK was short for Security Electronic Enrollment Kit. It was a tablet-sized electronic device that was used for taking fingerprints and retinal scans. They’d become widespread during the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody carried driver’s licenses or ID cards there, and our guys often had trouble figuring out if somebody was an insurgent or not. If the same guy got fingerprinted a couple of times near something like an IED blast, it was a clue that maybe we needed to keep an eye on him.

  Dalton pulled out the SEEK. “Can somebody rinse his hands off?”

  “We’re messing with some evidence if we do that,” Alex said.

  Bolle shook his head. “It’s more important to me to figure out who he is. We need to figure out what’s going on.”

  Alex shrugged and pulled out a bottle of water. She squatted again to help Dalton clean off the corpse’s fingers and take the prints. Dalton worked the controls, and then looked up.

  “Ok, he’s uploaded. Might be a couple of hours before we get a response. It’ll go through AFIS, and the DOD.”

  AFIS was the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, run by the FBI. It was a huge database for people who had been fingerprinted for committing crimes, or because they’d joined the military or held numerous government positions. The DOD maintained a separate, classified database full of people US forces had fingerprinted all over the world, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  We spent the next hour carefully getting the guy out of the hole, and into a bag. We documented each step. Finally, we had him in the bag and carried him to a waiting Washington County Medical Examiner van. Alex knew the guy from the county ME office and they compared notes quickly.

  She walked back to me and Bolle.

  “They’ve got a table waiting for me. I’ll do the autopsy as quick as I can.”

  Bolle nodded. “Thank you, Doctor Pace.”

  She turned to me, and Bolle abruptly found something else to occupy his attention. She stood an arm’s length from me, her arms folded across her chest.

  “Well. I’m really glad you’re not dead.”

  “Me too.” I shuffled my feet on the gravel. I suddenly felt like an awkward high school kid who didn’t know what to say to the attractive girl that was finally paying attention to him. I thought maybe after Alex and I spent enough time together, this would go away.

  She took a step towards me.

  “I guess I shouldn’t grab you and kiss you right now, in front of all these people, huh?”

  “I guess probably not,” I said. “I mean, I want too. I just…”

  She smiled at me then. I liked it when she smiled because when she did she smiled without reservation, self-consciousness, or pretense. Alex never gave a fake smile. If she smiled at me it was because something I did truly made me happy.

  “Yeah. You’re wearing a Lynrd Skynrd shirt, and I have a dead body to cut up. I guess we should save it.”

  “I guess so.”

  I expected her to go then, but she didn’t. She just looked at me without saying anything, while over by the shed, Dalton and Bolle were conferring over a tablet. Drogan and Byrd were setting up tarps over the eight-foot chain link fence at the front of the property to keep out prying eyes. The guy over by the ME’s van opened up the back door as Eddie and Struecker carried another body bag out of the trailer. I wondered who was inside, Dolph or Brody. I was standing there gazing into the eyes of the woman I loved, as the body of a man I’d killed was being loaded into the back of a van. I had a weird life.

  “We figured out you were gone. We found your phone by the side of the street. There was no trace of you, and I realized something.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, trying to focus on what she was saying as Eddie and Stuecker went back in the trailer, probably for the second body.

  Then she stepped towards me and wrapped her arms around me. I didn’t care who was watching, I hugged her back.

  “I realized I loved you,” she said.

  “I love you too,” I said. I didn’t hesitate for an instant.

  “I want to get Marshall,” she said. “But don’t you get killed. My dad is gone and you’re all I have left. Promise me.”

  “I promise,” I said and as soon as I did, I wondered if it was a mistake. I thought about those moments in the van when I expected I’d be hauled out and shot. It wasn’t all up to me.

  “After Marshall, I want to be done with this,” she said. “I don’t care what we do. I’m a doctor. I can make a living. I don’t know what you can do, but I can’t handle this.”

  “I want out,” I said, and I realized I meant it. I’d had plenty of time to get used to not being a cop anymore. Even though I was on Bolle’s team now, I didn’t feel like I was a cop again.

  “Maybe I could open a guitar store,” I said. That actually sounded like a good idea.

  “That sounds nice.”

  She kissed me, right there in front of everybody, and I didn’t care. I kissed her back and didn’t want it to end.

  Finally, she pulled back.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  “I know.” She gave my hand a little squeeze, then walked over to the van.
Eddie and Struecker were loading another bag into the back. It looked heavy. That one was definitely Brody.

  She climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door. Everybody was very studiously not looking at me, which I appreciated.

  I walked back to the shop, and the horrors it contained. I tried to shove Alex out of my head, best I was able.

  It was time to go work.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I walked over to Bolle and Dalton. They were looking intently at a tablet. Bolle looked up at me.

  “We got a hit on the prints,” he said.

  “That was quick,” I said.

  Bolle handed me a tablet. I was looking at an Army report from two years ago on a Abdel Lafif Farah. He’d be about seventeen years old right now, give or take. He’d been fingerprinted by an Army patrol after they found him hiding in a ditch a quarter mile from where an IED had detonated, wounding two US soldiers. He’d sustained minor injuries from shrapnel, and three of the goats he’d been herding had been killed.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “That’s it,” Dalton said. “No other intel reports. We have access to most of them.”

  “This kid is an Afghan goat herder,” I said.

  “Looks like it. Either that, or he is a very deep cover, seventeen-year-old operative.”

  “And now he’s dead in a backyard in Oregon.”

  “Yep,” Dalton said. “There’s no record of this guy entering the country. Nothing with ICE, DHS, nobody. It’s like he was teleported from the middle of Afghanistan to here.”

  “Or he rode in on a Cascade Aviation cargo plane,” I said.

  “Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “But if you’re going to go to the trouble of smuggling in a bunch of dudes for some kind of an attack, why not find some real badasses? Surely there are some people who would love to come over here and deliver a little death to America that aren’t teenage goat herders,” I said. I was thinking out loud, trying to get all the pieces fit together in my mind.

  Bolle pointed at the shop. “If you keep somebody in there long enough and fill them up with PCP and violent images, does it matter how they started out?”

  “Huh,” I said. He had a point.

  Casey walked up with a tablet in her hand.

  “It’s really getting off the hook downtown.”

  She showed us the screen. We were seeing a jerky live feed from downtown. A pall of tear gas hung in the air, while a line of armored riot cops wearing gas masks and helmets marched down the street. It seemed like the skinheads and black masked anarchists were having a contest to see who could do the most property damage while being pelted with rubber bullets.

  “That’s the worst I’ve ever seen,” I said. Protests were virtually the official sport of Portland, and I’d worked more than my share while I was a cop. They got out of hand sometimes, but I’d never seen anything like this.

  The feed cut away to a news anchor sitting behind a desk. I recognized him from one of the local networks or the other. I could never keep them straight. They had all done something that pissed me off over the years.

  “Those are the dramatic live pictures from downtown Portland, where the unrest has been going on since this morning. Portland Police report they’ve made dozens of arrests, and have activated mutual aid agreements with outside agencies. Local authorities appear to have been caught by surprise by the level of violence in what was supposed to be a peaceful protest. Senate Candidate Henderson Marshall had this to say.”

  “Marshall has a controlling interest in the station through several shell companies,” Bolle murmured.

  The shot cut away to Marshall, who was sitting in a chair next to an American flag.

  “It’s clear the current leaders in the city of Portland have been far too lax on this so called peaceful demonstration. We need law and order, and we need it now. Clearly, the only real solution is to call up the National Guard and do it soon. This is an embarrassment, a national disgrace. One of my first acts as a US Senator will be to introduce legislation that transfers control of acts of civil unrest like this to the Department of Homeland Security. This is an act of sedition and needs to be treated as such. Portland, Oregon is part of the United States, not some breakaway socialist republic, and it needs to start acting like it.”

  The shot cut back to the news anchor.

  “What do you think viewers? Have city officials been too lax in handling the rioting downtown? Take our online poll!”

  Casey turned off the tablet at that.

  “Wow,” she said.

  “Indeed,” Bolle said.

  Struecker walked up. He looked a few years older than when I first met him a couple of days ago.

  “We found a few things you should see,” he said.

  It was going to take days to thoroughly search the compound. I guessed it was two or three acres. There were at least a half a dozen abandoned vehicles, a dozen piles of junk, and a couple smaller sheds in addition to the big metal shop. As Struecker led us over to a pile of trash bags, I wondered if there were more bodies buried here, and if so, if I wanted to be one of the people who helped find them. The dead guy we’d dug up was gone, but it seemed like the smell was stuck in my clothes and the inside of my nose.

  The conversation I’d had with Alex was dangerous. My mind was starting to wander towards a life where I didn’t have to ever see a dead person again, and I would wake up next to Alex every morning. I shoved all to the back of my mind again. I had a job to do first.

  Struecker’s find wasn’t as dramatic. “I cut open this bag here,” he said, holding up a black trash bag. “And found this.”

  At first, it looked like a random collection of trash. There were five soiled paper coveralls, just like the ones the dead guy had been wearing. There were also five empty shoe boxes. I didn’t recognize the brand, but they were for black work shoes. There were also a bunch of plastic bags with barcodes and inventory tags on them.

  “Five sets of discarded coveralls. Five sets of shoes. Five sets of work pants and work shirts,” Struecker said.

  “Somebody got some new threads,” I said.

  Casey was typing away on her tablet.

  “That’s a really popular uniform company,” she said. “According to the stock numbers, they’re black pants and white shirts.”

  She showed us the screen.

  “It looks like a waiter’s outfit,” Bolle said.

  “So six guys were chained up in the shop,” I said. “One of them is dead. The other five are dressed in uniforms with new shoes. What the hell good does that do for us?”

  “Seems like an odd choice for the water reservoir,” Dalton said.

  “I’ve got some calls to make,” Bolle said and stepped away with his phone stuck to his ear.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Dalton said. He pulled an olive drab nylon bag out of the pile of trash. It had a broken shoulder strap.

  “Look familiar?” Dalton asked.

  It did, but it took me a second to place it. I had to go all the way back to my Army days.

  “It’s an ammo bag for a belt-fed machine gun. An M-60 or an M-240, one of those,” I said.

  “Your age is showing. They got rid of the M-60 a long time ago.” Dalton unsnapped the bag and upended it. Some bent pieces of metal fell out. I recognized those right away. They were the links that held an ammunition belt together.

  “The plot thickens,” I said.

  Bolle walked back to us.

  “I just got off the phone with Lubbock. The extra Portland Police patrols at the reservoirs have been canceled due to the unrest, and he’s telling me he’s been directed to send his available staff to sights near the downtown core area. Apparently, he hasn’t been authorized to pay overtime to bring more people in.”

  I stood up from where I’d been squatted down to look at the bag.

  “That’s convenient,” I said.”We wouldn’t want to upset the budget.”

  “Jack is on his w
ay,” Bolle said. “Dalton, I want you Dent, Eddie and Struecker, to head out to Powell Butte on the Little Bird. You’ll be on foot until I can get some other assets there with vehicles, but I want boots on the ground there now.”

  “What if it’s all a misdirection?” I asked.

  “What if it’s not?” Bolle asked.

  He had a point. We could think ourselves in circles with this shit.

  “Ok,” I said. I looked down at the t-shirt and stone washed jeans I was wearing.

  “Jack has a set of body armor and weapons for you in the Little Bird,” Bolle said. It probably wasn’t that hard to read my mind.

  The four of us jogged across the road and hopped the fence into the pasture. The horse looked at us with mild interest, then went back to chewing on grass.

  I looked at Dalton.

  “I’ve got an asset in place out by Powell Butte,” I said.

  “Let me guess. Bolle doesn’t know about this asset.”

  I shook my head, then briefly explained who Dale Williams was.

  “He’s a good man,” I said. “I’d like to bring him in. We just need to make sure we all recognize each other, so there are no misunderstandings.”

  He thought about it for a minute, then nodded. He handed me his phone.

  I dialed Dale’s number. He picked up on the first ring.

  “I ain’t got no guitars left, pink or otherwise.” He sounded irritated.

  “It’s Dent,” I said.

  “How’s it hanging?”

  “Low and slow,” I said. “Dale, I think it might be showtime soon.”

  “I wondered if all that business downtown was just a distraction. I’m actually leaving my hotel room to go for a little nature hike, as we speak.”

  I told him everything we thought we knew.

  “A bunch of skinheads running around with a bunch of Ay-rabs dressed as waiters?” he asked. “I reckon they are doing their part to keep Portland weird. I’ll keep a sharp eye.”

  The horse’s ears perked up, and a few seconds later I heard the beating of the helicopter rotors.