Collecting the Dead (28 page)
“Yeah, we were tied up.”
“I know,” Diane says.
“How do
you
know?” Jimmy replies.
“Please!”
“Right—the all-knowing super-analyst,” Jimmy chides, trying to project some humor with his words. It doesn’t work. He just doesn’t have it in him at the moment. “What did Janet say?”
“The DNA from the blood sample doesn’t match Chas, so it’s got to be the suspect’s. The bad news is she ran the profile through CODIS and didn’t get a hit.”
CODIS, the FBI’s Combined DNA Indexing System, is a comprehensive repository of DNA data from across the country. It holds not just DNA profiles of certain convicted felons and sex offenders, but profiles from unsolved homicides and rapes. This allows the FBI to link cases that they otherwise couldn’t.
Say a murderer in Hawaii leaves behind his DNA at the crime scene and then ten years later he kills again in Maine. CODIS would automatically match the DNA from Hawaii to the new DNA from Maine, and investigators would know with certainty that the two cases are linked, though separated by a decade, a continent, and an ocean.
But it’s still just a database, and databases are only as good as the data within.
“No hit. You’re sure?” Jimmy says.
“Well,” Diane replies, “I didn’t run the test myself, but it’s a pretty simple hit-or-no-hit system, so, on Janet’s behalf, I’m going to say, yes, I’m sure.”
She’s a little testy.
“That just doesn’t make any sense,” I say. “Why would he go through all that trouble cleaning up, particularly using the bleach, if his DNA isn’t in the system?”
“No, think about it,” Jimmy says. “Remember Valerie Heagle? He washed her down with bleach before dumping her in the cemetery, and I’m betting he did it to the others as well; we just weren’t looking for it in the autopsies. And if Valerie hadn’t been found right after she was killed, the coroner might not have picked up on it.”
“That still doesn’t explain why,” I say. “He’s obviously not worried about us linking the cases together or he wouldn’t leave his twisted little signature behind.”
“Right, but you know as well as I do that it’s a lot harder to prove a case without DNA or fingerprints, and he’s gone to great lengths to make sure we don’t have either.”
“I have a better explanation,” Diane says through the speakerphone; I’d forgotten she was still with us. “There are, right now, hundreds of thousands of rape kits across the country that have never been processed for DNA due to lack of resources. Jails and prisons have also been collecting DNA for years, and the Supreme Court expanded that in 2013 when they ruled that DNA is no different from a fingerprint, and anyone being booked into jail on any charge can have their DNA collected. Of course, every jurisdiction is going to have different rules on how that’s carried out, but my point is that there is a huge backlog of DNA that has been collected and never analyzed—huge.”
“And you think Sad Face’s DNA is in the backlog somewhere?” Jimmy asks.
“It explains the bleach,” Diane replies. “He thinks he’s already in the system.”
It’s sobering; frustrating.
“Makes you wonder how many unsolved cases would be cleared if that backlog was caught up,” I say, each word biting, heavy with disappointment. “Imagine; we’d have a suspect right now. We’d know his name.”
Jimmy’s quiet, working it around in his head, processing it. When he eventually speaks, it’s classic Jimmy: “We’ll have to just do it the hard way,” he says.
* * *
At a quarter after nine Walt calls, and we brace for the news.
“After three hours of surgery and a couple hours in the recovery room, Matt Swanson has been upgraded to serious. The doctor says he should make a full recovery. It’s just going to take some time.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time,” Jimmy says as we exhale a collective sigh. “Thanks, Walt.”
Matt Swanson, an unlikely victim of Sad Face—and inadvertent victim. The serial killer may not have pulled the trigger himself, but he initiated the circle jerk that got the kid shot for doing nothing more than holding a remote.
And there are other victims: mom, dad, and the brothers.
There’s also the Redding PD officer who pulled the trigger when he saw a flash of silver in Matt’s hand swinging in his direction. He’s a different type of victim. He didn’t make the call to raid the Swanson house. He didn’t even know all the facts. All he was told was that a woman was missing in Butte County and that the license plate of a supposed serial killer named Steven Swanson was caught on surveillance video. He acted on the information he had.
Regardless, his life will never be the same.
July 7, 9:47
A.M.
Days often fade into one another as a case unfolds; time becomes meaningless, unhinged. Jimmy says it’s because we’re focused on the mission, not on the clock, but it’s still hard to believe it’s been two days since Susan Ault disappeared so completely. Worse still, we’re no closer to finding her—or stopping Sad Face.
On top of that, yesterday was a media disaster for Walt. He spent the better part of the day locked away in his office either talking heatedly on the phone or yelling at the TV as it broadcast repetitive, mind-numbing news stories about the Swanson family, Susan Ault, and the search for a serial killer who seemed impossible to find.
As bad as it was for Walt and the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, it was worse for Redding PD.
“How much longer are you going to be in D.C.?”
“Not long,” Heather replies. Her voice is sweet in my ear, soothing. Though three thousand miles separate us, I can almost feel her lips near my cheek, projecting whispered words toward my ear. “I should be able to wrap everything up in another couple days; a week at the most,” she adds.
“Then back to Seattle?”
“Yes, provided nothing else pops up. How about you?”
I open my mouth, but the words don’t come. It’s an easy enough question, I just don’t know how to answer. Frankly, I don’t want to think about it. Sad Face has us up against the wall; he’s playing games with us, and the life of Susan Ault is the prize. It’s not a game we can forfeit. The pause drags into an uneasy silence, and then Heather’s voice is in my ear again.
“That bad?”
It’s only two soft words, but the compassion attached to them is palpable. I feel a sudden ache inside my chest—an emptiness in my gut—and all I have is the sweetness of her voice and the three thousand long miles between us.
“Yeah.” I barely manage to get the word out, but once I force it past my teeth it’s like a logjam breaking loose and I pour out my hopes and fears in long breathless sentences strung together with angst. “It’s like Leonardo all over again,” I say at the end, then cringe at my own words.
“Don’t do that,” Heather says.
“Do what?” I say the words, but I know perfectly well what she’s going to say.
I hear her sigh, and then her voice is soft again. “You break my heart sometimes, Steps. You have this yoke you wear around your neck with great bags hanging off each side and whenever you don’t solve a crime, or don’t find someone in time, it’s like you pick up the biggest rock you can find and put it into one of the bags. You punish yourself for something that was never your fault to begin with.”
“I’m not punishing myself—”
“You are.” The words are more forceful, direct. “And the greatest punishment of all is that you won’t let anyone help; not Jimmy, not me.” She lets the words sink in. “Your dedication to the victims, to all of them, is admirable, but you have to know when to let go or it’s going to break you. That yoke is going to drive you right into the ground and bury you. Remember where the blame lies, and that’s with monsters like Sad Face, and Mohawk, and Main Vein, and…” She pauses. “And, yes, Leonardo.”
Leonardo.
She’s right, of course; about all of it. My obsession with Leonardo, in particular, has turned him into a sort of bogeyman over the years; the one who got away; the twisted enigma who leaves his calling card upon the ground. Heather knows about him from her time with the unit. Even then, she told me I was obsessing over him too much, letting him get under my skin. She was right, of course. But I couldn’t let it go then, and I can’t let it go now. The fact that Leonardo’s shine keeps reappearing at Bellis Fair Mall only emphasizes my inability to identify and capture him.
The phone is quiet as Heather waits.
“Thanks … for listening,” I finally manage.
“You’ll get him,” she says in that soft, soothing voice. I don’t know if she means Sad Face or Leonardo.
It doesn’t matter.
July 7, 1:13
P.M.
Tami enters the conference room and lingers near the door. I can feel her eyes on us, but Jimmy and I barely stir from our reading. We’re determined to find some overlooked clue or seemingly innocuous tidbit tucked away in one of the case reports. Something—
anything
—that will guide us to Sad Face.
The case narratives are starting to blur together and it seems I’ve read the same pages from the same reports a dozen times. Still, what else can I do? Lauren is dead, Susan is missing, and the Swanson boy is clinging to life in the hospital.
We have nothing.
As suspected, Sad Face stole the Swansons’ truck to carry out the abduction and then returned it to the driveway where he found it, once again leaving no prints and no clues. It’s maddening—frightening.
I haven’t eaten much in the last couple days, and I’m just unwrapping a Snickers bar when my pocket rings. I set the candy bar aside and fish out the cell phone. There’s an odd tone to Diane’s voice when I answer. It’s a tone I’ve heard before and, like Pavlov’s dog, my heart responds to the stimuli, pounding—
thump, thump, thump
—louder and quicker in anticipation.
This is it: the end, the last piece of the puzzle
.
I can tell
.
Diane is half Vulcan when it comes to masking her emotions, at least when she wants to, but she fails when she succeeds. When she solves a puzzle, the mask is ripped away and her emotions run raw and open, like a weeping wound. Her voice reflects every feeling: joy at solving the puzzle, sorrow for the wreckage of victims along the way, relief that the end is in sight, horror after staring too long into the abyss.
“What is it?” I press, my voice husky and low, while in my head I’m screaming,
WHAT IS IT, DIANE? WHAT IS IT?
“I have something,” Diane repeats, “something that changes everything.”
She pauses, probably because she can’t believe it herself, but my head is about to explode and I fight to control my words, my heart, my head as I say, “Go on,” in a quiet, settled voice. “You’re on speaker.”
“I was staring at my ficus tree this morning,” she says, every syllable ripe with the tone. “Just sitting and staring at it,” she continues. “Not admiring its leaves or wondering why its trunk grows the way it does, not even wondering how many days it’s been since I watered it last, but staring at it and not seeing it. Have you ever done that, stared at something even though you’re not really looking at it?”
“Sure,” I say.
More than she will ever know
.
“Why did he switch his pattern?” she blurts.
“What do you mean?”
“Sad Face,” she says. “Why did he switch his pattern?”
“You mean the cars?”
“That’s what I was mulling over while I stared at my ficus: the cars, Jimmy’s analysis. Sad Face had a pattern going, an MO that seemed to work. The first five victims were abducted using their own vehicles. Then, after Ashley Sprague, he changes things up. How come? Why take the extra risk of stealing a car instead of using the victim’s?”
Jimmy and I look at each other, and Jimmy says, “Well … there are probably a number of reasons—”
“That was just rhetorical, dear,” Diane interrupts, and without pausing for breath she plunges on. “When he stopped using the victims’ cars and started stealing them it made me wonder if something happened that made him change, something that scared him or put him at risk or was more convenient. You wouldn’t believe the number and types of searches I’ve done over the last few days. I even checked all the new and used vehicles purchased in the Redding area during the three months between Ashley’s disappearance and Natalie Shoemaker’s disappearance, just in case he bought a car of his own to use before deciding to switch to stolen vehicles.
“This morning—after staring at my ficus for the better part of an hour—it hit me. I ran Ashley’s license plate and there it was, right in front of me, where it had been all along.” She pauses, but only for a second. “On the night of her disappearance, well after midnight, Ashley’s car was stopped by CHP on State Route 36 about ten miles outside of Red Bluff.”
“Did you find that in a citation, or an incident report?” I ask.
“A citation: ten over the speed limit.”
“Does the citation say where she was going, or where she came from?”
“You mean
he
.”
“He?”
“
He
,” Diane repeats. “
He
claimed he had just dropped his daughter, Ashley Sprague, at the Arcata Airport in McKinleyville and was on the way back to their apartment in Red Bluff.”
“That doesn’t fit,” Jimmy says. “Ashley’s father passed away when she was young.”
“Good memory,” Diane coos, “almost as good as mine. Ashley’s father was Walter Sprague, who died in a boating accident when Ashley was seven. Her mother never remarried.”
“So … who was in the car?” Jimmy’s voice is urgent, strained.
Diane lets the question hang in the air, savoring the moment. I sometimes think she missed her calling as a stage actress or a politician.
“Diane?”
“His name is Arthur Zell,” she finally replies, “and he’s a very, verrrry bad man.”
“Tell us,” I say.
“In 1990 he was arrested for the murder of a woman in New Jersey after her badly decomposed body—and I’m talking bones and some skin—was found in the crawl space under his house. The body had been there at least a year. We know that because of a suspicious circumstance report filed by several neighbors in 1989. They complained of a foul smell coming from Zell’s property. Unfortunately, by the time they called the police, several of them had also complained directly to Mr. Zell.”
