Collecting the Dead (31 page)

A low chuckle escapes through Zell’s lips.

“Why don’t you stand over here?” Jimmy continues, moving up to the hospital bed. “You can hold his hand while we talk to him, that way he won’t be frightened.”

Stacy shakes her head and shrinks into a corner.

Point made.

There’s a smug look on Zell’s face as he studies us through fragile eyes. “Special Agent James Donovan,” he says weakly. “Operations Specialist Magnus Craig—”

“Steps,” I say stupidly, before remembering that I’m talking to a serial killer.

A wide smile blossoms on his face and his gaze lingers a moment before turning away. “Sheriff Gant,” he finishes as he takes in the giant lawman. “Nice of you all to visit me.” His voice may be weak, but his words are coated in sarcasm and contempt.

“You know why we’re here,” Jimmy says without emotion. “There are two women still missing and we need to find them, it’s that simple. You know that Susan Ault has a small daughter; you saw her; you were in her room. Maybe you know that her name is Sarah and that she’s two years old. Did you know that Sarah lost her father in a car accident when she was just three months old? No, I bet you didn’t know that. Do you really want to make this little girl an orphan? This is an opportunity for you to help yourself.”

Zell takes it all in; he’s quiet a moment … and then he chuckles. “Help myself? Sure. Let’s see if we can balance the scales. On one side we have the two women you’re still looking for. On the other side are—count them—twenty-one bodies?”

“Twenty-one!” I feel gut-kicked, and it shows on my face.

His smile is sickening, gloating.

“You didn’t honestly think you found them all, did you?” The sentence ends in a coughing spasm. Stacy jumps from her seat but then stops abruptly and slowly lowers herself back into the chair.

When the coughing subsides, Jimmy presses close. “Give them peace, Zell. Give
yourself
peace. Do the right thing here.”

“
Right thing
,” the monster scoffs indignantly. “I’ll die before I tell you anything. I’m doing right by me, just like those women did right by me.” He tries to shake his head, but the effort ends in failure. “You won’t find them,” he says, his voice weaker now. As he continues to speak, we lean in close for the words. “They’re tucked away in a nice dark place … I wanted you to know … they’re in a place you won’t find.… You lose.”

My head is suddenly splitting.

Taking my glasses off, I tuck them away, casting my eyes toward the window, the wall, the floor, anywhere but at Zell and his hideous amaranth shine.

“What kind of deal are you looking for?” Jimmy presses, refusing to back away. “There’s got to be something you want in exchange for Lauren and Susan.”

“I want my lawyer,” Zells says, forcing an end to our conversation.

Just like that, it’s over.

As I trail behind Walt and Jimmy from the room, Zell’s voice rises up, stronger than ever. “Aww, why the sad face, Steps?”

Anger ignites every nerve ending in my body and I whirl on him, my mouth already open to respond—and then I see it: movement near the ceiling. The colors blend and mix and then separate again in a slow-moving vortex of shine. It’s something I’ve never seen before, and for a moment it stuns me to silence. I missed it during the short interview. I had my glasses on when we entered the room, and I was too focused on Zell.

Now, through unfiltered eyes, I see them waiting over the hospital bed, like ethereal vultures over otherworldly roadkill. Perhaps a better description would be vengeful spirits over the condemned.

I shiver—a long and deep tremble that shakes every extremity.

Above the gloating, unremorseful Sad Face Killer, waiting, I count six separate shines. Three of them I recognize: Valerie Heagle, Leah Daniels, and Natalie Shoemaker. The other three I’ve never seen before.

Zell fights off a hard coughing fit after his parting outburst. Regaining his breath and his composure, he stares at me and then grows curious and befuddled. His eyes follow mine to the ceiling and then back down.

“What?” he croaks.

My gaze falls to the evil before me and I smile.

Jimmy’s watching me; he’s just as puzzled as Zell. Before he can stop me, I stride across the room to the side of the hospital bed and place my words in the killer’s ear.

“I have a special ability,” I hiss. “It lets me see things that others can’t. That’s how I know you killed Lauren three days ago at exactly twelve forty-seven
P.M.
It’s also how I know Susan Ault is still alive.” The look on Zell’s face is priceless, but I’m not finished.

Pulling back, I turn my face slowly to the ceiling, linger a moment, and then turn slowly back from the dead to the dying. “I know what’s waiting for you,” I whisper.

As Zell erupts in a violent coughing fit that sends his body into spasms, I turn and make my way to the door.

I don’t look back.

July 8, 3:17
P.M.

Forty miles west of Redding and snug up against Interstate 36 stands the tiny community of Platina. Founded as Noble’s Station in 1902 by local resident Dan Noble, it served as a stop for stagecoaches traveling to and from Red Bluff, Knob, Hayfork, and other destinations. A boardinghouse, general store, and post office completed the tiny settlement.

The Roaring Twenties brought a new discovery—and a new name—to Noble’s Station when Dan Noble and others discovered platinum in Beegum Creek. Soon after, the locals took to calling the place Platina, after a native alloy of platinum.

It didn’t change their fortunes much.

In 1968 a monastic community of the Serbian Orthodox Church founded the Saint Herman of Alaska Monastery. With its adobe walls and bulbous onion-dome spires, the monastery is beautiful and humble among the hills and trees.

Today the town is little-changed from these earlier days, except now a serial killer’s hideout lies hidden somewhere in the hills to the north.

A little piece of luck led us here.

After the initial search of Zell’s property turned up nothing, Jimmy found a cell phone on the seat of the shot-up Ford pickup. It was one of the pay-as-you-go phones—a throwaway phone, in cop vernacular—which explains why we never found a phone number associated with Zell. With throwaways, it’s nearly impossible to link the number to the user, or vice versa … unless you have the phone.

It’s the break we were looking for.

It took less than a half hour to get a telephonic search warrant from a federal judge, which has to be close to a record. Diane immediately faxed the warrant to the cell phone service provider and a personal call from Jimmy explaining that at least one life was on the line helped expedite the data request.

By the time we reached the hospital in Redding, Diane was already crunching data from three months’ worth of calls from Zell’s phone. The provider also included a map of all the cell towers those calls bounced off.

When a call is made from a cell phone, it uses the nearest compatible cell tower to make the connection. If the caller is traveling down the road, the call bounces from one cell tower to the next as the caller progresses. Most of the tower data we received was as expected; they were towers near Zell’s home, around Redding, and along the main roads.

There were seventeen calls, however, that bounced off a tower north of Platina. And since that area is mostly empty land filled with sparse forests and rolling hills, it begs a closer look. The search area is massive, though, the proverbial needle in a haystack.

It doesn’t matter.

We’ve got nothing else to go on.

Walt pulls into the parking lot next to the general store and we retrieve our gear from the back of the SUV. With Zell in the hospital, there shouldn’t be any need for a vest, but Jimmy insists we bring them anyway. After my close encounter with the shotgun, I’m not going to argue.

“We’ll set up base camp for Search and Rescue right over there,” Walt says, pointing to the large empty parking area on the east side of town. “The command vehicle is on the way, so we’ll have good comms, computers, Internet access, a bathroom, even a couple bunks if someone needs rack time. Deputy Ross Greene is our SAR coordinator. He’s about ten minutes behind us. I had him swing by the shop and pick up a couple ATVs for you.”

“I appreciate that,” Jimmy replies. “I know it seems odd, but Steps and I work better alone. And the more mobile we are, the better.”

“Your call,” Walt says. “A few weeks ago I would have challenged you on it, might have even called you crazy.” He hands Jimmy a black backpack. “You’ve got nothing to prove. I don’t know how you do it, but the two of you get results. That’s all I care about right now.” Nodding toward the backpack, he says, “Bottled water, MREs, a couple thermal blankets, first-aid kit, pretty much anything you might need in a pinch.” He grabs a second pack and hands it to me.

I just nod my gratitude.

“We’ll search until we lose the light,” Walt says, “and start again first thing in the morning. Some of us will be here all night, so if you need something, just come to the command post.” He hands Jimmy a portable radio. “It’s set to TAC 3, one of our tactical channels, which has a shorter range than our normal frequency, so you don’t need to worry about interfering with dispatch.”

“I’m not sure if I remember my radio procedures,” Jimmy says, examining the Icom portable radio. “It’s been a while.”

“You don’t need to worry about procedures out here. We’ll be the only ones listening. The call sign for the command post is just
command
. Yours will be
FBI
.”

“That’s what I like about you, Walt: You keep things simple.”

Minutes later the command vehicle appears on the road to the east. It’s a large motor home on steroids. The sheriff’s office bought it with a partial federal grant three years ago as a mobile emergency command center. It has all the bells and whistles, even a large retractable awning on the passenger side so you can sit outside without getting blasted by the sun.

Behind the command vehicle is a black Suburban towing a small trailer and two Kawasaki Brute Force ATVs with matching camouflage paint. The Suburban pulls onto the gravel beside the road, kicking up a cloud of dust, and Deputy Ross Greene is out of the driver’s seat seemingly before the SUV comes to a complete stop. In less than two minutes he has the ATVs off-loaded and begins to top them off with fuel. Jimmy and I make our way over to Greene as other vehicles begin to arrive. The place is soon awash with members of the Shasta County Search and Rescue.

It’s a good feeling.

Reassuring.

Hopeful.

I’ve seen it on searches all over the country, neighbors coming out to help neighbors, even if they’re total strangers. Sometimes they work as an official Search and Rescue team, sometimes it’s just citizens stepping up. When you spend your professional life wallowing in human debris, it’s a good reminder that the honest and decent people outnumber the vile and evil by wide margins.

Jimmy and I greet Ross Greene near the ATVs, shaking hands and bantering back and forth. We haven’t officially met, but we recognize each other from Chas Lindstrom’s town house. Ross gives us a quick lesson on the quads; I haven’t ridden one in probably a year. Jimmy owns one.

“I’ve got an extra five-gallon can for each of you,” Ross says, retrieving the gas from the trailer. He proceeds to strap one down on the back rack using a snake-nest of bungee cords. Jimmy grabs the other can and does likewise on the other ATV. Then he straps down each of the black backpacks and we’re about set.

“Take care out there,” Ross says as we fire up the Kawasakis … well, Jimmy fires up
his
Kawasaki; somehow I manage to flood mine and can’t manage to clear it. After repeated failed attempts to start it—with plenty of input from Jimmy—I let Ross take over and it fires up immediately.

Figures.

We ride for a good fifteen minutes before reaching the edge of the thirty-six-square-mile search grid. Unlike SAR, our goal isn’t to do a methodical section-by-section search. Rather, we’re going to ride like a bat out of hell along every trail we can find, hoping for just one glimpse of Zell’s shine that will point us in the right direction.

“You take the lead,” Jimmy says through the earpiece in my helmet.

“Any suggestions?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” His voice is
right
in my ear; it’s a bit unnerving. “We’re either going to get lucky because he walked a long way in,” he continues, “or it’s someplace accessible by truck and he drove right up to it. That’s going to be a lot harder to find.”

I nod my understanding. “Cross your fingers.”

“And say a prayer,” he adds.

*   *   *

We stop for a chicken-and-rice MRE supper just after seven. I have a raging headache from staring at shine too long and pop three ibuprofens, chasing it with a couple gulps of warm water. While we eat, I wear my special glasses. The relief is almost immediate when I put them on, though the headache doesn’t entirely retreat; instead it lingers in the background at half strength.

Funny thing about the glasses is that the same thing happens if I wear them too long. It usually takes at least six or seven hours before I start to feel the low throb, so I’ve learned to alternate. I wear the glasses for an hour or two, then take them off for fifteen or twenty minutes. It seems to do the trick.

Sunset is at 8:43
P.M.
, so we figure we can search another hour and a half before we start losing the light. It doesn’t matter; not from my perspective. I can see shine without the light. It glows like neon; the darkness might actually help.

The problem is terrain.

One wrong turn, one miscalculation, could send us tumbling end over end down the side of a steep hill. Worse, the landscape is filled with small plateaus and ledges that could end with a sudden drop and a quick stop. Some are long falls ending in certain death, others are content to cripple and maim. In either case, the last thing we need to do is complicate the search by having to be rescued ourselves.

So we sit on the crest of a green hill with the sun wallowing in the western sky and eat chicken and rice while we weigh the risks of a nighttime search.