Collecting the Dead (29 page)
“Let me guess,” I say. “He covered the body in lime and the police didn’t smell a thing. Case closed.”
“Correct, and that brings us back to 1990 and the circumstances leading to Zell’s arrest. It seems his car was linked to the abduction of twenty-two-year-old Katie Stahl after a male was seen stuffing a bound woman into the trunk and then fleeing at a high rate of speed.
“Police immediately respond to Zell’s residence but find the driveway empty and the house dark. While they wait, someone runs an address check and finds the suspicious circumstance report from a year earlier. They put two and two together and start to wonder if they have a serial killer on their hands—”
“Which they do,” Jimmy interjects.
“Which they do,” Diane confirms. “Meanwhile, the officer at the front door claims he hears a scream from inside, the door gets booted, and everyone floods in.”
“I smell a
but
coming,” I say.
“
But
,” Diane emphasizes, “the house was empty. Katie Stahl was found bound and blindfolded alongside the road about an hour after she was taken—claimed she never saw the suspect’s face. After he grabbed her and stuffed her in the trunk, he apparently drove around for at least a half hour, then, just as quickly as he grabbed her, he dumped her alongside the road.”
“No rape?”
“None. The report suggests he got cold feet.”
“This guy doesn’t get cold feet,” I say quickly. “He’s calculating. Something else made him abort.”
Silence. Then I hear paper whispering and shuffling on the other end of the phone.
“There were several witnesses to the abduction,” Diane says. “Three, to be precise. One of them actually chased after the car, but he was on foot—he’s the one who got the license plate number. That could have been enough to give Zell pause,” she offers, “particularly if he had a police scanner in the car. Meanwhile, the officers back at Zell’s house started poking around—that foul smell from a year earlier still on their minds—and one of them decided to wiggle into the crawl space.”
“Where they found Ms. Skin and Bones,” I say.
Jimmy gives me a disgusted, reproachful glare.
“What?” I hiss.
“Where they found what little remained of Kathryn Wythe, a twenty-year-old part-time waitress and full-time student … and a brunette,” Diane adds. “Cause of death was strangulation, according to the medical examiner’s report.”
“Fractured hyoid bone?” I ask, referring to the U-shaped neck bone that is broken in about a third of all strangulation homicides.
“That would be putting it lightly,” Diane replies. “The ME said it looked like someone tried to squeeze her head right off her body. There was also evidence pointing to rape, but no DNA. Zell claimed that she died during consensual, albeit rough sex, and he just freaked out and put her in the crawl space until he figured out what to do.”
“Yeah, that’s a perfectly normal reaction,” Jimmy scoffs.
“That’s only the half of it,” Diane says. “He cried a long sob story about how he’d been sexually abused as a child by his brother-slash-uncle—”
“His brother-slash-uncle?” Jimmy blurts.
“Yeah, apparently his brother was also his uncle. Don’t ask me how that works, because I really don’t want to know.”
“His bruncle,” I say.
Jimmy gives me a queer look.
“Bruncle.” I give him a shrug. “Brother-slash-uncle.”
“The problem is you don’t know what a jury’s going to believe,” Diane continues. “Just look at the O. J. Simpson trial. In this case, because the search of the house was questionable, the prosecutor’s office got cold feet and offered a plea of twenty years with a minimum of fifteen behind bars and the balance on probation.”
“Which the defense jumped at,” I say disgustedly.
“Correct. And now he’s killing women in California.”
The phone is silent as that sinks in; the room is silent.
“So,” Jimmy says at last, “where is he?”
July 8, 8:23
A.M.
Wayward Road is a remote tar-and-gravel two-lane dead-end road west of Redding that’s maintained by Shasta County Public Works, but only just barely. Snaking its way north off Placer Road for the better part of a mile, the road branches off into seven secluded driveways, the last of which is 1407 Wayward Road, which has an eight-foot-high fence along the road made from a patchwork of worn metal siding and rippled metal roofing. A gate at the driveway is of similar material, though slightly shorter.
“It’s a regular compound,” Detective Troy Bovencamp says as he points to the overhead image and circles the ten-acre parcel with his finger. “Coming up the road there’s no way to conduct surveillance without being exposed, so we humped in through the trees to the west and then circled back and came in from the north.”
He tosses a number of eight-by-ten photos on the table and straightens them into three neat rows of seven. “On the west side of the property, where the driveway comes in, is a barricade wall that looks like something out of a Mad Max movie, so that’s a no-go. The north, east, and south boundaries of the property, however, are unfenced.” He points to each picture in turn. “Though the south and east sides have some formidable underbrush and a good stretch of rough terrain, making infiltration and exfiltration problematic.” He points to several more photos.
“Leaving just the northern edge of the property,” Sheriff Gant clarifies.
“Yes, sir. The property’s a regular junkyard: dozens of old cars, piles of scrap, mountains of tires and rims, even a junkyard dog. The good news is all that junk should give us plenty of cover coming in.” Picking up one of the photos, Detective Bovencamp holds it up so everyone can see. “This single-wide trailer is Zell’s primary residence, but there are also four travel trailers on the property. The newest is probably twenty years old.”
“Good places to hold someone captive,” Jimmy says.
“My thought exactly.” Troy swallows a mouthful of microwave-warmed coffee and sets his mug back on the table. His auburn hair is cut high and tight; his woodland camouflage fatigues are starched and look almost new but for the fresh dirt and grass stains at the knees and elbows.
You couldn’t tell by the look of him, but he and two other members of the SWAT team had set up surveillance on Zell’s compound the previous afternoon and hunkered down for the night. They didn’t exfiltrate until eight this morning, and only just arrived back at the S.O., or sheriff’s office.
Bovencamp likes those words:
Infiltrate
,
exfiltrate
, and
S.O.
He uses them repeatedly.
I think he likes
infiltrate
and
exfiltrate
because they’re military terms, and the acronym
S.O.
because it’s short and it sounds cool. He’s a former Marine, so I figure he can say pretty much whatever he wants.
“He didn’t return to the house until almost ten last night and spent about twenty minutes off-loading a bunch of scrap metal from the back of the truck: old tire rims, a broken wood-burning stove, the rusted hood off some seventies- or eighties-model car, even an aluminum ladder, which I’m pretty sure was stolen.” Looking right at me, he says, “No one throws away a perfectly good aluminum ladder.”
Like I didn’t know that.
“When he finished, he went into his trailer, the light came on for about an hour, and then it was lights-out until just before seven
A.M.
We heard his alarm go off and within maybe three minutes he was going out the front door looking like he’d slept in his clothes and combed his hair with a greasy fork. He went into the travel trailer nearest to his single-wide and we heard some banging about and a lot of clatter before he came out again with a bowl of dog food for Tumor.” Troy shrugs. “I don’t know if that’s the dog’s real name, but that’s what he called him—twice, that I heard. I asked Alex and Jason and they heard the same thing. The guy’s not right in the head … but I guess we already know that.…” His voice trails off.
Clearing his throat, the detective continues.
“After Zell cleared out, we waited a few minutes and went down to try and make friends with the pooch. He was your typical doper-bad-guy dog at first, barking and yanking on his chain so hard I thought he was going to snap it off the tree.”
“Let me guess,” Jimmy says. “Pit bull?”
Bovencamp is gulping down more coffee but manages to shake his head at the same time. “Some kind of Heinz 57 mutt,” he says. “Probably part German shepherd, part rottweiler, and six parts something else. Jason had a leftover bologna sandwich in his pack—I swear he brings six or seven on every op—and he was able to calm Tumor down and make friends while Alex and I did a quick sneak-and-peek.
“The windows to Zell’s trailer were mostly curtained, but you could see through the cracks well enough to tell that there was no one else inside … unless he’s keeping her in the bathroom. The travel trailers were a different story. Newspaper was pasted to the inside of every window and we couldn’t see a thing. We gave the rest of the property a quick once-over, but without a warrant, there wasn’t much we could do about the travel trailers.”
Over the next half hour, Detective Bovencamp covers additional details from the op, mostly minutia that would prove irrelevant to the takedown of Arthur Zell, but in the early planning stages, everything is relevant. We still have one big problem: no probable cause. And without probable cause, we can’t get a warrant and we can’t arrest Zell.
I suddenly realize that I need to see him—in person. I need to see Zell’s shine, see if he glows brilliant amaranth with a rusty texture. I need to see the aura of a monster.
Of course it’s him
, I tell myself.
It has to be him; he was in Ashley Sprague’s car.
But I’ve learned through bitter experience that just when you’re sure of something, that’s when it gets turned on its head.
As the briefing winds down and Troy gathers his pictures and slides together, I know what needs to be done. “Sheriff,” I say, turning to Walt. “I need to get in there. I need to see it for myself.”
Walt sighs and pats me on the shoulder. “My deputies are tactical thinkers, Steps,” he replies, being kind with his choice of words. “I can promise you they didn’t miss a thing. They’re good at this.”
This is immediately followed by a few testy words from Jimmy. “The place is under surveillance, Steps; you can’t just stroll in there and have a look around.”
I’m not finished, and I won’t be put off. “Sad Face has some peculiarities with the way he walks,” I lie, giving Jimmy a scathing look. “They’re barely noticeable, but if I can just look at some of the prints around the trailer, I might be able to say for sure whether Zell is Sad Face or not. I know it’s not enough for a warrant, but at least
we
would know that we’re on the right track. After that, we can build a case and take him down.”
Walt seems intrigued by the idea. “There’s something to be said about being certain. I’d hate to waste time and resources on this guy and have it be some weird coincidence.”
“And we don’t want another Matt Swanson incident,” I add.
“No, we don’t,” the sheriff replies emphatically.
Jimmy’s not so enthusiastic.
July 8, 10:22
P.M.
“This is Jason Lanham,” Walt says, placing his hand on the shoulder of the deputy beside him. “He’s going to be your guide on this little scenic tour.” Giving the deputy a sideways glance, he adds, “Jason, meet Magnus Craig and Jimmy Donovan. Oh”—he points at me with his right index finger—“you can call him Steps. If you have time to kill out there, have him tell you how he got that nickname. It’s a good story.”
We’re parked on Placer Road about a half mile east of the turnoff to Wayward. Walt’s Expedition, though unmarked, was deemed too risky for the drop-off. Even without the sheriff’s office markings and the overhead light bar, it still stands out as law enforcement to anyone paying attention. The light bars in the front and rear windows and grille, as well as the landscape of antennae, are a dead giveaway. Instead, we stopped by the impound lot and picked up a Cadillac STS seized during a drug raid three weeks ago. Its tinted windows and twenty-inch wheels are decidedly
not
law enforcement.
“Just in and out,” Walt is saying. “See what you need to see and get the hell out of there. I’ve got two guys watching the house from a distance. You won’t see them, but they’ll see you. I’ve got another man in the trees just inside Wayward in case the son of a bitch comes back early. Jason has his radio, so he’s your ears.”
“Where are you going to be?” Jimmy asks.
“I’m going to have coffee,” Walt shoots back with a big grin. When Jimmy gives him a smirk, he just shrugs and says, “I can’t stay here, someone might get suspicious. And I’m getting a little too old to go traipsing through the woods.”
“Okay, then,” Jimmy says.
* * *
The mile hike into Zell’s place is less work than I expected. The trees, though constant, are not clustered together in thick patches like you’d find farther north, and the underbrush is light. We add a few minutes to the hike by following a ravine that cuts in a north-northeast direction. It keeps us tucked below the horizon, so even if someone
is
watching, we’ll pass by unnoticed.
Twenty-five minutes later we come up a rise and Zell’s compound is laid out before us. My first impression is that Bovencamp’s photos didn’t do it justice. The single-wide trailer is an early seventies model, bleached by decades in the sun. It has a makeshift addition off the back that looks like it’s about to fall over, and a huge chunk of aluminum siding is missing toward the rear where someone—Zell, I’m assuming—had accessed some wiring or plumbing and just never bothered to put everything back together.
The trailer should have been condemned twenty years ago, but out here, in the middle of nowhere, who’s going to see it—especially with Zell’s
Mad Max
barrier wall? The travel trailers aren’t much better.
