Spin Out (3 page)
“So, yeah,” I caught the roll of twine Fred tossed at me with one hand, “We’re what we got out here.”
Kabe’d parked himself in Fred’s vacated seat in the cat’s cab. “You do this a lot?”
As he pulled out more gear, a couple of thin pipes with T handles and a bundle of wooden stakes, Fred chuckled. “Define
a lot
.”
“Yeah, we do a fair share of body recoveries…more than some jurisdictions.” There were some law enforcement agencies that saw a body, maybe, every ten years. Up here we weren’t so lucky. “Most of them are what they call death by misadventure.” Not a lot of population, but a lot of darn stupid people and space where no one could find you.
“Good bit of the time it’s skeletal remains out in the woods. Hikers who fall, folks who drove off the wrong road and die of exposure, poacher who had a heart attack.” Fred used the pipe probes to aim his next words at Nadia. “You ain’t been here long enough, but we get more than our share of suicides.” Then he swung them up onto his shoulder for toting over to the body. “Every time I get a call out for one of these, I think ‘don’t let it be another dead Mormon boy swinging from a tree.’” Almost like an afterthought he added, “Sad.”
Nadia huffed and coated the air in front of her with sparkles. “I thought religion was supposed to give you solace.”
“It’s a tough row to hoe,” I shrugged, “if you’re a bit different and don’t quite fit the ideals you’re supposed to strive for.” Lord knows I spent thirty odd years trying to fit myself into that mold. Since I weren’t really up to a discussion about theology and my former church, I switched the subject. “We ought to get started. I’d like not to be here past dark thirty.”
“Not waiting for the coroner, again?” Nadia’s question played on our own local little joke. The current man who held the job spent more time avoiding his work than he would have spent doing it.
I took a pack of stakes from Fred when he walked over to me. “Where the heck did he take off to this time, Fred?”
“Cabo.” Fred grinned. “I think, maybe Mazatlan.”
Kabe jumped into the teasing. “I thought Joe mumbled something about Sao Paulo while we waited for you guys to show up.”
“I think we all agree he ain’t anywhere near here.” Not all the folks who held the position were this lazy. All of us at the station/jail complex had a pool going about how long it might take before the county supervisors got sick enough of his ducking the job and booted him. Figured we’d wasted enough sunlight, time to get to our gruesome task. “Okay, you know where we’re at. You can follow the tracks back here.” I jerked my chin at the snow-cat. “Nadia, why don’t you take Kabe and head back towards the road so you can ferry the others back here?”
“Alright.” She patted Kabe on the back. “You and I can swap stories about San Francisco.” They’d both lived there at one time; Kabe until he wound up here on probation, and Nadia back when she worked Alcatraz Island for the Park Service—her, and her lady friend.
“We’ll start the setup and basic perimeter work.” I talked more to Fred than the others. “When Trooper Dougherty gets here he can direct us.”
As he swung his legs into the cab of the snow-cat, Kabe shot a tease, “What, he took a week long course?”
“No.” Fred hefted a rucksack of other things we’d need. “He worked as a crime scene technician in Salt Lake while he was getting his Criminal Justice Degree, before he went to the academy.”
Nadia started the engine back up and yelled over the sound of the diesel. “We’ll check on you every so often.” Then she threw the cat in gear and headed on back out to the road.
I kinda wished I still had Kabe to keep me company, but he’d be pretty useless at the scene. The boy knew how to keep me amused without distracting me overly much. Not many people I could say that about. Still, no sense all of us freezing our nuts off in the snow. He and Nadia would at least have some shelter in the cab of the cat.
“How do you think the body got in here?” Fred’s question jerked me back to the here and now.
“It’s a little off the beaten path.” I started following our tracks from earlier towards the body and Fred fell into step beside me. “But, I can tell you that coming on in this way on horseback, I didn’t see any signs of tires or snowmobiling.”
“Okay, well last snow was about a week ago.” Fred glanced around at the trees and the undisturbed mantle of white powder. “So figure at least that long.” As the sound of the cat faded off into the distance, a blanket of silence settled down around us.
“Probably longer by the look of the hand.” That heavy sense of quiet made me keep my voice low. Our footsteps crunching along seemed to be the only sign of life around. “I mean, decomp’s been arrested some because of the cold, but the skin’s gone pretty black.”
“That would mean a bit of time has passed.” By then we’d come up on the place where Kabe stepped on the arm. I could still see it sticking up out of the mess of branches and brambles. “We’ll have to wait on the medical examiner’s office to tell us just how long.”
“Yep.” Didn’t say much more after that. We just got down to our business. Fred pulled out a pad and began sketching off the scene. Once he finished that, he’d write a description down in longhand. I started on with the stakes and the twine marking out a perimeter a good ten foot square. We might have to expand it to accommodate, well, other parts if a scavenger had gotten to the body. Good enough to start with now. Once that was done I fished out the camera from Fred’s bag. The twine would give a good focal point to the evidence shots. Between Fred’s drawing and notes and my photos we would have a fairly serviceable reconstruction of the scene should we need one. After I finished the first round of photos, I’d start stretching the twine crosswise to make a grid for our search.
The crime scene tape we’d given to Nadia, that’s so she could close off the closest gates leading towards where we were. No sense having some snowmobilers tear through and muck the area. About as secure as we could make hundreds of miles of forest.
I’d finished off the pictures and started tying the twine along one side when Fred broke the silence. “You doing okay, Joe?”
By the way he asked the question, I knew he weren’t discussing what I was working on. “Why wouldn’t I be?” I shrugged.
Instead of answering, Fred’s gaze locked up on mine. I couldn’t hardly take that stare, ‘cause I kinda figured what was hidden behind it. Fred was the first one to really ever guess at my personal tastes…for guys. The only time he ever mentioned it in my presence was when I noticeably set my eye on Kabe. Fred warned me off, just that once, and never mentioned it again. ‘Least ways, until now.
Fred tucked the pad of paper under one arm and then shoved his hands into his parka’s pockets. “You’re still on with him.” There wasn’t a question there.
There weren’t a lot of people who I wanted to talk on the subject with. “Why you care?” At this point they either accepted it, or they didn’t, but I wasn’t going to change my life and go back to hiding.
“‘Cause you’re my friend, Joe.” By the way he held himself, all tense and aggravated, I figured Fred didn’t much want to be talking to me about it either. “I trust you with my life, you know that.” But like he said, he was my friend, one of the few I still had up here, and he must have felt like he had to. “And I don’t want to see you go down.”
I shrugged off his concern. “Whatever.”
“You know I did my training over in Salt Lake.” He reminded me. “Five years with Utah Highway Patrol before I put on the green and khaki. I know what the law is in this state.”
“And?” I wish he hadn’t known. Then we wouldn’t be having this discussion and I could just keep on like nothing really was wrong.
“So are you okay?” He stepped in close, the worry tightening up his face. “Kabe’s on probation and you’re keeping on with him. How are you handling that?”
“It’s been handled.” Fred hit me with a harder, far more worried stare than the first. “Don’t look at me like that, Fred.” I swallowed and tried to brush off his fear. “Look, I know what you’re getting at, but I crossed that line the first time. It don’t get worse ‘cause I keep at it.”
Silence slipped around us for a bit, nothing but the wind scraping the branches together. Fred flipped the pad around in his hands for a while. Then he stopped and asked, “You ain’t heard nothing from the POST folks, then?”
“I got a letter.” All nice and official with the logo of the Peace Officer Standards and Training Council on the top of it. Came by certified mail a few days back. “Got a hearing coming up here shortly.” They wanted to have a little chat with me about
allegations of custodial sexual misconduct
.
A hissed out, “Shit,” let me know his thoughts pretty darn well. “Why? Why did you risk it, Joe?”
What could I tell Fred that could explain it? Nothing really. I knew it was wrong to take up with Kabe the first night he and I got it on in the back of my truck. Not just because we were both guys—that was between me and my former church—or that he’d been a person of interest in a suspicious fall out at the Harding Ranch where he lived. No, a big old messy part of it all was his status as a probationer and mine as sworn officer.
But I couldn’t have stayed away from Kabe if’n I tried. Beyond the looks, and there was a good bit of looking that could be done on Kabe, he and I just meshed. Our souls got woven together somewhere up along the face of a cliff. I recognized how much I loved the mountains shining out of a set of eyes that stole from the forest for their color. Kabe may have been born and bred a city boy, but the wild wind flowed in his veins same as it did mine.
I stared at the toes of my boots and offered Fred about the only thing that might sum it all up, “Right person, wrong time.” Jawing wasn’t going to get this scene processed any faster. I sucked it up and went back to tying lines.
He blew out a frustrated breath. “That sucks for you.”
I tried to reassure myself as much as him. “It won’t come to nothing.”
“I hope you’re right.” Fred tucked the papers away in a waterproof bag. Then he pulled out a handheld metal detector and a set of little wire flags. He fiddled with the settings and then began to sweep the perimeter I’d established, looking for bits of metal that might be hidden under snow and debris.
I got it all gridded off in one foot square sections then stood up and stretched. The crab-walking along in a set of hip-waders weren’t all that easy on my legs. I looked over at Fred. He’d pulled out the camera and photographed a few places he’d marked with flags. Then Fred and I walked the grid, pushing the pipes through the snow to try and get a sense of where the body lay, whether it was balled up or spread out or even in one piece. Each little bit we uncovered with our prodding got photographed; size and compass direction indicated by plastic markers Fred brought with him. And we hadn’t even gotten down to the real work yet.
Although I hadn’t wanted to talk about my problems, having an ear sometimes helped. Going through the tasks, with Fred just there beside me, concerned, but not judging, hit me down deep. “Thanks, Fred.”
Fred lowered the camera and raised his eyebrows. “For what?”
“Caring.” I did appreciate him, even if he was prodding me to think about things I didn’t want to think on. “Caring enough to say something.”
“Joe,” he huffed it out with the sound of a man watching an avalanche starting down the mountain and knowing he couldn’t help nobody at the bottom. “I ain’t never given a rat’s ass how you lived your life, ‘cause it just don’t make no difference to me. But, damn it, I sure wish you’d found someone else, or tied your dick in a knot for a couple of years. You say it’s handled, but it could get bad.”
I might have said something, but that’s about the time I heard the rumble of the snow-cat. In a few minutes there’d be more hands to do the work and way too many ears for what we’d been talking on. Best just to let it drop on Fred’s last thought. With the basic setup all done, we’d be on to digging the body out of the snow, layer by layer. We’d have to treat it like it’d been buried in sand: strip off a couple of inches and sift it all out…just in case. That meant I’d be busy as all get out for the next few hours.
Hopefully, too busy to think on the things Fred stirred up.
Kabe dropped his butt in the chair at the desk across from mine and spun it back and forth a bit. “Hey, what’re you up to?” Somebody’d gone and decked the edges of the desk out with tinsel. I laid odds on the dispatcher, Noreen. I knew she did up the tree by the front door and kept leaving cookies and such in the break room.
I spared him a glance and mumbled, “Reading.” Wasn’t quite used to him just dropping on by the station. I mean, I knew it was all out about us, but still, that pretty publicly staked his claim on me.
“What?” He scootched on over and rested his elbows on the desk I used when on shift. “Anything cool?”
I shrugged. “The original file on Lane Walker’s disappearance.” Papers and photos and such from the file lay scattered across the laminate desktop. I’d sorted then resorted piles near three times trying to wrap my head around the facts.
“Who?”
“The dead boy.” Just to be ornery I added, “You know, the one you stepped on.”
Kabe shuddered. “Don’t remind me, I had zombie nightmares all that night.”
“Anywhoo…” I picked up the most recent addition to the file, the Office of the Medical Examiner’s preliminary report. “O.M.E. compared the dental records out of the missing persons file and they confirmed a match to Walker.”
Most everything else indicated that the rest of the report wasn’t yet finished—but the examining M.E. knew we needed to know pretty quick who had died. Without that we’d never find out why. “Although, he had his wallet and ID on him, wearing the clothes Lane was last seen in, but, you know, I wanted to be sure.”
What I didn’t tell Kabe was the other little item we’d found in Lane’s pocket…a note zipped up in one of those plastic storage baggies, basically saying he couldn’t take it no more and hoped everyone knew that he loved ‘em. Normally, something like that might make my job of putting this incident to bed a whole lot easier. But the note almost raised more questions than it settled.
