Collecting the Dead (19 page)
Tami half gags. “That’s disgusting!”
“As I said.” My fingers are back to work on the water chestnuts.
In my peripheral vision I see her watching me, and then she slowly shakes her head. “I still say you’re missing the best part.”
“Not—in—my—book,” I say, plucking a disgusting morsel with each word. The last one I toss in her direction. Instead of dodging it, she catches it and pops it into her mouth.
As the receptionist for the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, Tami’s no stranger to odd behavior; she sees it every day … and not just from deputies and the occasional FBI tracker. To the public, she’s the face of the sheriff’s office; to the deputies, she’s a chokepoint: a filter.
She’s like an old 1940s switchboard operator, but instead of phones, she plugs people into the right slot. Sex offenders go to a Sex Crimes detective for registration, concealed firearms applicants are directed to the Records Division for fingerprinting and application submission, witnesses are handed off to detectives, those waiting for a polygraph sweat it out in a lobby chair until the examiner is ready for them, victims queue up to see the station deputy, packages are received, and Hershey’s Kisses are handed out to anyone walking by with a need for chocolate.
Tami has the place wired, and with a willow-tree waist, black hair, and a smoky tan, she has the looks to match her natural talent and charisma.
“There’s a guy in the lobby who says he needs to talk to the FBI. He wouldn’t give me any details but said it’s about Alison Lister.”
“Another psychic?” I ask, though it’s really not a question. “Maybe a mental?” I add, then pause and look up, not at her, but at the wall directly in front of me, as if it holds some secret revelation. “Or better yet,” I muse, “a twice-convicted felon looking to get his charges dropped for some half-baked information? Yeah, I like that. Please let it be a half-baked felon,” I say, turning toward Tami.
“Wow!” she snorts. “And I thought I was jaded.” Her left eyebrow is perched high on her forehead, looking like some mutant hairy cobra about to strike. It’s pointed in my direction. “Just my personal opinion,” she says, “but this one seems legit.”
Legit
. That would be refreshing.
I stare disappointedly at the steaming stir-fry, my mouth watering. With an intentionally loud sigh I set my fork next to the unopened chopsticks. Placing the bowl in the community fridge—which smells like ten-day-old balut—I wipe my hands on a paper towel and follow Tami to the lobby.
Chas Lindstrom doesn’t look like a psychic or a psycho—not that I know a lot of either type. He doesn’t strike me as an ex-con, either, so I extend a hand, force a smile, and greet him like I’m ever so glad to see him. In twenty sentences that could have been two, he tells me he’s a cell phone salesman for Verizon—Salesman of the Month in May—and is on his lunch break.
Lunch break
, I think, forcing a smile.
Me, too
. Feigning an itchy eye, I remove my special glasses for a moment and quickly size Chas up: dirty purple with a stucco texture. Not even close to Sad Face. Still, I had to check. Serials, particularly the killers and burners, have been known to inject themselves into investigations. Some get an extra thrill out of it; for some it’s just an extension of the fantasy they’re making up as they go along; and for a few it’s a way of muddying the water to throw off the investigation.
Three years ago I had just such a case. The guy wasn’t a serial—yet—but he was working on it. With two victims to his credit, he was a walk-in, like Chas, and claimed to have seen the second victim get into a tan Volvo wagon after the bar closed. We interviewed him for an hour before I happened to take off my glasses to rub my eyes, and there he was: all essence and texture.
I’m a little more suspicious of walk-ins these days.
Still, Chas seems to be on the level.
“About two months ago,” he jabbers, “I go out to my truck to go to work and I notice this piece of paper lying on the seat. It stands out because I keep my truck neat—no garbage, no clutter. My sister, Peggy, she’s got like six months of fast food bags, empty soda bottles, candy wrappers, and crap like that on the floor of her car. It’s disgusting. I don’t know how she can drive around like that. Know what I mean?”
He pauses, like I’m supposed to respond to that. I just nod my head in agreeable disgust.
“Well, like I said, the paper stood out and at first I thought it dropped out of my notebook—I keep a notebook to track my sales statistics, sales techniques that seem to work better than others, that sort of thing.” He produces his leather-bound portfolio and flips it open to the indexed pages with their color-coded entries. “The note was folded into quarters, though, and I don’t fold my pages, as you can see. The creases weaken the paper and distort the text. It’s just not a smart practice.”
I’m starting to like this guy.
“So then I’m thinking someone stopped by to visit while I was in the bathroom or asleep, and they just left a note in my truck—weird, I know. But when I open the note, there are just these fifteen entries, one to a line, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they’re first initials and last names. The top eleven entries have a little check symbol next to the name, and the first ten have a line through the name.
“So now I’m thinking it’s someone’s fantasy football notes or something like that and I put it in the glove box in case someone comes looking for it—at this point I’m still thinking it belongs to one of my friends; one of my three friends, actually. I find that any more than three or four friends at a time is a bit of a burden, don’t you? Anyway, there it sat. I completely forgot about it. And then I saw the newspaper this morning. J. Green, T. Rich, D. Grazier, A. Lister, they’re all on the list. So now I’m thinking this isn’t fantasy football. This is like a death list or something. Am I right?” He pauses. “Which means this is the killer’s list and he was in my truck for some reason.”
I suddenly feel that prickly sensation you get when the hair rises on your neck, and I hear myself asking, “Do you have the list?”
“Sure,” Chas replies, “it’s right here.” He reaches for his shirt pocket and I shout, “No!” startling both of us. Holding a finger up, I say, “Don’t touch it. Stand right here and I’ll be back in a second.”
Rushing into the reception office, I bark two words: “Tami. Gloves.”
Without missing a beat, she tosses me a box of disposable latex gloves. I pull out a pair and toss the box back.
The latex groans softly as I pull them on, first the left, then the right. Gently, I reach into Chas’s shirt pocket and retrieve the folded paper. With my left hand, I lift my glasses an inch and gasp aloud at the brilliant amaranth and rust. The paper is awash in it, almost as if the bastard had rubbed it over his body.
“Chas,” I say, “I think you’re my new best friend.” I hold up that single universal finger, the one that everyone understands regardless of language or culture—no, the other universal finger. “Stay here for just a moment,” I say. His eyes are fixed on my index finger like a drunk doing a sobriety test. Probably doesn’t help that I have it six inches from his face.
Tami’s on the phone when I rush into her office. After listening politely to the person on the other end of the line for twenty seconds—an eternity—she says, “Please hold,” and directs the call to Detective Forgendirgenstern or something like that and smiles at me as she hangs up the phone.
“You called that one spot-on,” I say, thumbing toward the reception window and the lobby beyond, where Chas is taking a seat and looking around at the plaques and pictures on the wall.
“You got something?”
“Just the Holy Grail, that’s all.” I hold up the paper.
She smiles and nods. “The Holy Grail looks different than I thought it would.”
“Yeah, yeah. Can you
boop-boop
Jimmy for me? He wandered off somewhere with the sheriff and I need him to interview Chas ASAP. I’m running to the copy room to burn a few million of these.” Pointing to the lobby, I add, “Don’t let him leave! I don’t care if you have to tase him and duct-tape him to a chair.”
“I don’t have a Taser.”
“You’ll think of something.”
“I’ll threaten him vigorously with my letter opener.”
“See?” I say with a grin. “That’s creative. I like that.”
As I head down the hall, Tami’s voice booms over the PA system requesting that Special Agent Donovan report to the front desk.
An hour later, we have everything we need, including Chas’s white 1992 Ford F-150 pickup, which is impounded pending a thorough sweep by at least two crime scene investigators. Chas is gracious enough to sign a consent form allowing a search, so we don’t need a warrant. It probably helped that Jimmy rented a new Mustang for him.
Jimmy has an expense account.
I don’t have an expense account.
I once asked why I don’t have an expense account and was told I don’t need one. I don’t need a pet whale, either, but it would be cool to have one.
Back in the conference room, Jimmy plops down in a deformed chair that looks like it fell out of a Salvador Dalí painting. When he turns to the left it
thu-thu-thu-thu-thumps
; when he turns to the right it squeaks like a miniature banshee; when he leans back it groans like some restless spirit with its finger in a vise.
I’m thinking Jimmy needs to take that expense account and buy the sheriff a new chair, one that’s not possessed. Better yet, a dozen chairs, that way they all match.
“So,” Jimmy says, “what are we thinking?”
I’m thinking I need a damn expense account
.
I put the thought aside and say what Jimmy already knows. “He steals cars to commit the abduction and then returns them to the exact spot they were stolen from so the owner is none the wiser.”
“Chas was adamant that he never leaves his keys in the ignition,” Jimmy throws out, “and there was no evidence of tampering on the ignition—at least none I could see.”
“So he’s got some car skills,” I say, “or an assortment of shaved keys.”
A favorite among car thieves, shaved keys are nothing more than old car keys that have been ground down a bit. The locks and ignitions on older vehicles, like Chas’s truck, tend to wear down and loosen up over time so that even an inexperienced thief can often start the car in twenty or thirty seconds with a shaved key.
“An auto thief turned serial killer?” Jimmy wonders aloud.
“Or a serial killer turned auto thief.” I shrug when Jimmy looks up. “It’s not like he’s interested in the cars, right? He’s just covering his tracks. Actually, it’s pretty smart—and kind of scary. How else do you explain Chas’s death list? We know Sad Face didn’t toss it through the window as he strolled by; his shine was all over the interior.”
Jimmy leans forward, sips at his coffee, and thinks for a moment. “You’re certain the only other shine you recognized on Chas’s truck was Lauren’s? Not even a hint of Alison, or maybe—” He sees the look on my face and quickly holds up his hand. “Right, right. Sorry. It’s just that Chas’s truck looks a lot like the one in the Walmart surveillance video. It’s even the right color.”
“White’s a popular color for trucks.”
“It’s not just that. You said it yourself, that he’s probably using a shaved key. Doesn’t a shaved key have to have started as the same make: a shaved Honda key to steal a Honda, Chevy for Chevy—”
“Ford for Ford.” I see where he’s going with this. “So maybe he only has one shaved key and has to keep stealing the same type of truck?”
Jimmy taps his nose with his index finger.
“That helps a little, but not much,” I say. “The Ford F-150 is a popular rig.”
“Yeah, but ask yourself this:
Why that type of vehicle?
” He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a wallet that looks like a booster seat, and extracts a $50 bill with his thumb and index finger. Dangling it in the air a moment, he places it gently on the table, slides the booster seat back into his pocket, and says. “Fifty bucks says that’s the same make and model he owns. Probably had a copy of his own key made and then shaved it down.”
I don’t have a $50 bill in my wallet. I have a debit card, my driver’s license, and a punch card for the place where I get my hair cut (three more punches and I get one free). No $50 bill, though. If I had a $50 bill it would probably elope with the expense account I don’t have.
“I’d take that bet,” I say boldly, for a guy with no $50 bill in his wallet, “but I think you’re probably right.” Then, in a somber voice, “I also think Chas’s aptly named
death list
is exactly that. And based on what he wrote down, it looks like Sad Face preselects his victims well in advance.” I hold a facsimile of the list up, but Jimmy only glances at it. I’m sure he already has it memorized. “The check next to each name indicates he’s kidnapped them. Then, when he kills them, he draws a line through the name. So the last time he touched this note was right after he killed Alison Lister and abducted Lauren Brouwer.”
“I know,” Jimmy says in a quiet voice. He’s silent for several long moments, lost in thought. Eventually he turns slowly in the moaning chair until he’s facing me directly. “I think we need to focus on the last four names on the list, the ones without the lines or checks. If we can figure out who they are, we can break the cycle, throw him off his game. Save some lives.”
“What about Lauren?” I want the words to come out calm, matter-of-fact, but when they leave my mouth they have an edge to them, an urgent and raw vibration that hints at distress. Inside I’m screaming,
I promised her mother. I promised!
Somehow that internal scream cuts through mind and matter and attaches itself to those three words:
What about Lauren?
I realize that I’m clutching the locket in my pocket—Lauren’s locket—and rubbing it with my thumb as if it were a worry stone.
“We’re not giving up on Lauren,” Jimmy insists.
I wish I could be so sure.
June 29, 2:45
P.M.
“I ran all four names through CLEAR,” Diane says, referencing the massive public records database run by Thomson Reuters and used for corporate security, fraud investigations, skip tracing, and other purposes. It’s a favorite tool of the FBI and other law enforcement because you can locate just about anyone.
