Collecting the Dead: A Novel Page 2

  Diane’s our “intelligence analyst,” which basically means she’s a walking encyclopedia of both useful and useless information, a secretary, a records specialist, a computer technician, a travel agent, and she’s the only one who can unclog the garbage disposal in the kitchen.

  Diane’s the puzzle master, the one who digs through databases and finds the missing pieces and lines them up to tell a story. We won’t need her on this one. The story is easy to read.

  “He hid over there,” I say, pointing to the right of the path, “in the outcropping, behind those bushes. He waited; bastard! Waited until she was almost past and then came at her. Maybe she saw him in her peripheral vision, maybe she didn’t. He knew she’d be wearing headphones, so she wouldn’t hear him coming until it was too late.” I stop in the trail. “Her footsteps end here.”

  “Wha— Did he take her?” Sergeant Anderson breathes.

  Jimmy knows. His eyes are already scanning the edge of the summit.

  “He pushed her,” I say. “Hard enough that she flew at least seven or eight feet before coming down. By that time she was over the side.” I walk over to Jimmy and point. “Her left hand landed first and she tried to grab that root, but she had too much momentum.” I shake off a shiver and continue, now in a quiet voice. “She fought hard, grabbing, clawing, wedging her heels.…” My voice drifts off as my eyes follow Ann’s trail, until it disappears over the side and I gasp weakly, involuntarily, sadly. I didn’t know her, but she deserved better. Not this.

  The base of Bowman Summit is a hardscrabble of debris sloughed off by the mountain over generations, centuries, and millennia, mostly the result of slides and erosion. The castoff is eight to ten feet deep about the base and inclines sharply from the valley floor beginning some twenty feet out from the cliff wall.

  A legion of trees populates the valley, fed by a network of small streams and creeks that no doubt empty into Henry Hagg Lake several miles away. The largest of the streams passes within a hundred feet of the summit base, providing clear, cool water to splash upon sweating faces. The forest is quiet today. The birds are about, but there’s little singing and even the river’s murmur seems muted.

  She’s waiting for us there, broken and quiet, sprawled upon the ground, empty eyes looking skyward, legs contorted unnaturally behind her: Ann Buerger. Two hours of hard trails, guided by GPS, and this is our trophy.

  I’m tired of collecting the dead.

  Their faces look back at me from the slideshow in my mind, as if to ask: Why didn’t you save me? Even though they were dead long before I knew their names.

  I feel Jimmy’s hand on my shoulder as I kneel near the body. “We save the ones we can,” he says quietly. Our words. After years of doing this they’re almost a catchphrase. Their original intent was to remind us that we have a job to do, to get us back on task even under the most grisly of circumstances.

  We save the ones we can.

  Then his hand is gone and it’s down to business. He begins to document the scene: photographs, GPS coordinates, measurements. It’s murder. Everything has to be in the report … or most everything. What won’t be in the official report are photographs of the places on her right forearm and right upper back where he shoved her. There’s no way of capturing that information, no camera or film that sees what I see. My head hurts as I look and my eyes feel tight and full, like grapes on a vine ready to split from too much rain.

  The signs are there like a beacon, a light in the darkness, a neon billboard. So clear they might as well be words on a page. I can almost feel the force of the hit, Ann flying through the air, the emptiness of falling.

  From the pocket of my Windbreaker I retrieve the leather case and the glasses within. Unfolding the earpieces, I slide them onto my face. The relief is instantaneous as the crushing tightness in my head lets go and washes away. I can almost feel it draining out the bottom of my feet as I wiggle my toes.

  It’s a strange sensation. I’ve never gotten used to it.

  My eyesight is twenty-twenty; the glasses have more to do with my sanity than my vision. They’re very special glasses with thin lead-crystal lenses. I had them custom-made in Seattle, which wasn’t cheap. I also have a pair with tinted lenses that pass for sunglasses, but I left them at home this trip.

  The Canon PowerShot S95 is buried at the bottom of my backpack and I have to dig past an extra pair of socks, an Oregon map, some bottled water, a box of granola bars, a thermal blanket, and my toothbrush before I find it. Powering up the camera, I go through the ritual. This photo isn’t for the report. I click the button just once, and then check to make sure the image isn’t blurred or washed out by the sun. I stare at Ann for a moment.

  She won’t leave me be.

  Like the others, she’ll haunt my memories. In one month I deal with more murders than most cops see in a decade. It’s starting to take its toll.

  “We gotta find the guy who did this,” Sergeant Anderson says, breaking my trance. I didn’t hear him come up, but he’s standing next to me, just staring up the side of the cliff, his eyes searching for … what? A clue? An explanation?

  I watch him a moment. I’ve seen that look before: anger, anguish, a sense of helplessness. I’ve seen it on thousands of faces at hundreds of crime scenes. I’ve seen it in the mirror.

  My hand finds his shoulder; I don’t know why. “We save the ones we can,” I hear myself say. The words don’t mean a thing to him. How could they? I just don’t know what else to say.

  I’m not good with people, not really.

  Dropping my hand, I say, “Don’t worry, I already know who did it.” Stowing the camera, I take one last look at Ann Buerger and walk away.

  * * *

  The door is dandelion-yellow, with frosted glass inserts and a brushed-nickel handle. The doorbell chimes for the second time—a cheerful five-note chorus that’s out of sync with the dreadful news about to be delivered.

  Footsteps pad to the front of the house and a blur pauses motionless on the other side of the frosted glass. A dead bolt slides open, a door handle turns, and then there’s a face pressed through the narrow door opening: red eyes, a red nose, a downcast, twitchy mouth—all the bitter qualities of sorrow. Seeing Sergeant Anderson, Jimmy, and myself, Matt Buerger opens the door wide and takes a step forward.

  As I pull my glasses down an inch and peer over the top, my eyes consume Matt in an instant, telling me all I need to know. In the world of man-tracking the term shine refers to a hard-to-see impression left in vegetation or on a difficult surface, usually caused by crushing or pressing, such as a foot on a leaf. The only way to bring the track out is illumination. You can use sunlight, but most trackers pack a flashlight so they can get close and control the angle of the light.

  That’s not me.

  I don’t use man-tracking methods because I don’t have to. Though we’re in the shadow of the porch and I have no flashlight, I see the shine: it’s on the door, on the floor, everywhere Matt Buerger walks and on everything he touches.

  The shine.

  It’s the only track I need, and it’s abundant and everywhere; overpowering. It can’t be hidden or washed away. It can’t be disguised and it can’t be confused with another. It’s not the same shine used by man-trackers, though. This shine is exclusively mine, or at least I think it’s exclusive. Maybe God blessed someone else with this curse.

  “Did you find anything?” Buerger chokes.

  Anderson nods. “We found Ann,” he says softly, but before he can continue, I blurt, “She’s hurt, but alive and conscious.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Jimmy quickly grab Anderson’s elbow from behind. His grip is firm and Anderson catches on quickly; smart man. Normally I’d warn the locals if I’m going to try something like this, but I tend to be spontaneous, and this one just crept up on me as we ascended to the porch. I can imagine the sergeant’s shock, however, and I can tell he’s none too pleased. As far as he knows, Matt Buerger is the grieving husband, and what I
just did is unforgivable.

  “They’re taking her to Adventist Medical Center in Portland,” I continue, not wanting to give Anderson time to think things through. “She had some interesting things to tell us before she left, though.” I fall silent and let the statement hang in the air. To the innocent, such words are intriguing and beg questions. To the guilty, they’re accusatory, condemning.

  Buerger’s face goes blank, and then turns hard as stone.

  “What’d she say?”

  Without a word, Jimmy reaches around to the small of his back, snaps the button on the leather case secured to his belt, and produces a pair of nickel-plated handcuffs, which he dangles by one end.

  “No.” Buerger’s mouth hardens. On his face and in his eyes the transformation is instantaneous and startling, like pudding turning to granite as you watch. He tries to slam the door, but Jimmy’s too quick and launches into the dandelion-yellow field. There’s a loud crack as the door slams open. Buerger lands on his back—hard. He lets out an involuntary ummph and flies across the polished hardwood floor, gasping, cursing, clawing against the momentum.

  Jimmy’s on him.

  Watching my partner at work is like watching a tie-down roper at a rodeo—it’s almost a thing of beauty—only instead of binding the legs of a calf together with a pigging string in three seconds flat, he hooks the suspect up with a pair of metal bracelets. If they ever come up with a police rodeo for restraining and cuffing, my money’s on him.

  No sooner does Buerger get his breath back than he spits it out again in a tirade of prolific profanity, capped off by, “Stupid bitch! She can’t even die properly.”

  Close, but not quite a confession.

  “I should’ve drowned her in the river instead of pushing her.”

  That’ll do.

  CHAPTER TWO

  June 16—too early

  “Go away!” I say, burrowing deeper into the couch and pulling the blanket tightly about my shoulders. “I need sleep. You’re supposed to have my back.”

  I know it’s Jimmy.

  The staccato knock-knock-knock repeats, echoing off the floor, the ceiling, and the giant picture windows of my sparsely furnished living room.

  Of course it’s Jimmy.

  It’s always Jimmy.

  I need to get a life.

  “Come on, Steps. Open up. You’ve got court in Seattle at three-thirty.”

  Pulling my hand free from the blanket, I fumble for my watch on the nightstand and slip it onto my wrist before raising the black dial to my face and squinting. “It’s seven A.M. What kind of FBI agent is out harassing people at seven A.M.?”

  “It’s one-thirty in the afternoon,” Jimmy replies. “You put your watch on upside down again.”

  “Damn!” I whisper under my breath, unclasping the black Movado and flipping it around. Sure enough, the dial reads one-thirty P.M. Traitor, I think, giving the watch a scathing look, as if its gears and springs are somehow to blame. “Well … it feels like seven A.M.,” I say softly.

  The knocking persists.

  “All right, I’m coming.”

  My home is nestled on a hill overlooking the Puget Sound just north of Larrabee State Park and south of the Bellingham city limits. From the massive wall of windows in my living room I have a hundred-and-eighty-degree view of the myriad islands anchored in the Sound’s deep waters. To the left, which is south, is Samish Bay, then Padilla Bay, Guemes Island, and behind her is the bustling city of Anacortes with its refineries, marina, and Washington State ferry terminal. Moving north you’ll see Cypress Island, the San Juan Islands, and finally Lummi Island, with the fifteen-hundred-foot-high Lummi Peak standing sentinel.

  It’s inspiring.

  My house has a name.

  Odd, I know.

  I felt a little uncomfortable about it until I discovered there are entire web sites dedicated to naming your house. Who knew? I always thought that for a house to have a name it had to belong to some long-dead patriot, some quirky industrialist, or have some unusual characteristic, such as being haunted. Places like Mount Vernon, Monticello, and the Winchester House come to mind.

  Knowing that others are intentionally naming their houses makes it somehow less ostentatious, less snobbish. Kind of like naming your car. (Yes, my car also has a name, it’s Gus.)

  My house is called Big Perch, I’m guessing because it sits on the side of Chuckanut Mountain like some great aerie perched above the world. I didn’t name it, but love it or hate it the name’s not going anywhere. It’s carved—and carved deeply—into a three-ton boulder at the end of my driveway. I’ve considered using dynamite on the boulder, but I don’t want to cause a slide. I’m already on touchy ground with the neighbors down the hill. (One wayward bottle rocket causes one small fire and you’re marked for life.)

  Big Perch is twenty-four-hundred square feet split between two floors; it has extensive decking on three sides that includes a hot tub and an outdoor fireplace, neither of which I’ve used in the last month. I’ve come to realize that I’m in a Catch-22 situation where I have the means to afford such things but not the time to use them.

  I also own the adjoining lot to the south, which has a matching thirteen-hundred-square-foot house called Little Perch—again, I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t choose the names, they came with the property.

  Ellis Stockwell also came with the property.

  He’s the former owner, a retired Customs and Border Protection officer who lost the property in foreclosure. After retiring from CBP about ten years ago, he started a security consulting firm that quickly grew into a multimillion-dollar international operation. Ellis says he had a lot of luck growing the business, but I suspect the fourteen-hour days and seven-day work weeks had something to do with it.

  Within four years he was living well. He had Big Perch custom-built, bought a Corvette, and managed to find a new wife along the way. That would be Vanessa, twenty years his junior, with a champagne-and-diamonds appetite.

  Almost immediately Ellis began constructing Little Perch for Vanessa’s divorced mother—the two were inseparable. No one was more surprised than Ellis when two years later Vanessa emptied the business bank account and various investment accounts to the tune of $1.7 million. Hiding the money in a series of offshore accounts while Ellis was on a business trip, she hopped a flight to Cincinnati and shacked up with some guy she knew in college. They’d been Facebook friends for three years after reconnecting online. Go figure.

  Ellis returned to an empty house. All Vanessa left behind was a single cup, a single plate, and a single knife, fork, and spoon. And one half-used roll of toilet paper in the guest bathroom.

  The business was ruined.

  Ellis was ruined.

  When the bank foreclosed I must have visited the property a half dozen times before making an offer. On every visit, there was Ellis, still tending the flower beds, pressure-washing the sidewalks, touching up the paint. He was always cheerful, despite his troubles. He still has his federal retirement, which is substantial, but you could tell he loved the property.

  On my first visit we talked a little; on other visits we talked a little more. He was intelligent, interesting, and had an endless supply of seemingly far-fetched stories. His bushy mustache and strong British accent seemed to fit him—though I remember wondering how it was that a British citizen could work for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Six months later I learned that Ellis wasn’t British at all, he was born and raised in Philadelphia. He just likes the British accent.

  He’s odd like that.

  In the end we came to an arrangement that served both our purposes. I let him live in Little Perch rent-free and he looks after the property, making repairs when needed and keeping the landscaping under control.

  You would have thought I’d given him back all the money his ex-wife had stolen from him, he was that happy. It’s been four years and I have no regrets; he’s as good as family now … bizarre, odd, sometimes Dr. Seuss–like fami
ly, but family nonetheless.

  Jimmy gives me the quick rundown on the Buerger case as I shave and then scrounge a clean suit from my brother’s closet. Jens is five years my junior, but we’re about the same build—okay, he’s a couple inches longer in the torso, but other than that we’re mostly the same.

  Jens is a postgraduate student at Western Washington University. I asked him once why he wanted to study anthropology and he said, “Because people are funny.” I couldn’t agree more, though he meant in the queer and unusual way, whereas I think people are funny in the dark and sinister way.

  I like having him stay with me.

  I’m gone half the time anyway, so someone might as well enjoy the view, the hot tub, the fireplace, the multiple large-screen TVs, the game room, and the endless flow of college girls that seem drawn to the place … though I’m pretty sure Jens has something to do with the latter.

  Finding a striped gray jacket and matching slacks, I dress. Jimmy’s telling me how pissed Matt Buerger was when he found out Ann was indeed dead. By that time he’d already been Mirandized and had given a very detailed written statement summarizing how he’d planned the attack for weeks (something us law enforcement types call premeditation, which is usually redeemable for copious amounts of high voltage or a needle in the arm and some bye-bye juice). He even admitted to failing on a previous attempt when he lost his nerve as Ann jogged by.

  When I ask why Buerger had a beef with his wife, Jimmy’s response comes as no surprise: The self-indulgent weasel had a girlfriend on the side and didn’t want the hassle and monetary loss of a divorce. It’s so much easier to pitch the wife over a cliff. With any luck his prison girlfriend will be a three-hundred-pound butt-squeezer named Meat, who likes sharing his boy toy with the other guys on the cell block.

  Jimmy blathers on about some new case law we need to read up on, and a possible serial killer in Tulsa that may end up on our plate.

  I like Tulsa—except for the weather. It doesn’t really matter, though; as Jimmy often says, “We’re not tourists.” Jet in, jet out. Wheels up, wheels down. Get the job done as quickly as possible, and come home. Then do it all over again somewhere else.