Collecting the Dead (Special Tracking Unit #1)
Spencer Kope
CHAPTER ONE
June 15, 10:12 A.M.
She had small feet.
I say she had small feet because to say she has small feet would imply that she’s still alive. She isn’t. I know. I always know. It’s my special ability, my burden, my curse. The others think we’re searching for a missing jogger, perhaps hurt or lost but certainly alive. I can’t tell them we’re too late; how would I explain such knowledge?
They wouldn’t believe me anyway.
People are reluctant to give up the dead.
I turn the shoe in my hand, looking at it from every angle. It’s a random selection from her closet made prior to my arrival, standard procedure for a track like this. I scrutinize the wear on the sole, the indentations on the leather, the signs of strain on the strap, as if to do so is to unfold and expose the mystery of her walking style, the way she carried herself, the way she sometimes dragged her left foot ever so slightly, almost undetectably.
You get to know shoes in my line of work: women’s shoes, men’s shoes, and, sadly, kids’ shoes. This one is an ankle-strap pump with three-inch heel and leather upper. Not high-end, but nice nonetheless. I know that she last wore it about two weeks ago … but that part won’t be in my report.
“Can you track her?” Sergeant Anderson asks.
I nod, but say nothing, pretending to examine the shoe further for the sake of my audience, which now includes four deputies, a dozen Search and Rescue volunteers, and my partner, FBI Special Agent Jimmy Donovan. The truth is I don’t need to know how she walked, what her gait was, or whether she favored the ball of her foot or the heel. But illusions must be maintained.
Newsweek once called me the Human Bloodhound. I’m sure it conjured up the image they were looking for, wrong as that image was. If only they knew. If only they could see what a fraud I am.
“You said her husband reported her missing?” I say to the sergeant.
“Last night,” Anderson replies. “Said she went for a run after work, as she always does, and never returned. That was sometime after five P.M.”
“And there’s nowhere else she would have gone? No other trails she runs?”
“None that the husband was aware of. She mostly stuck near home.”
“Where is he? The husband?”
“He’s in the house, resting.”
“Resting?”
“He walked the loop four times last night looking for her before he called it in.”
“Four times, huh?”
“Yep. And he walked it again this morning with us.”
Taking off my glasses and securing them in their leather case, I stand for a moment and study the back of Ann Buerger’s modest two-story home. My eyes follow her footsteps out the back door, across the lawn, and to the dirt and gravel trail at my feet. The steps lead north, quickly widening from a walk to a steady jog within the first twenty yards.
“The trail’s a three-mile loop,” Anderson says, “though you can turn off after the first mile and take the shortcut back just before the trail starts rising to Bowman Summit. SAR has walked the whole thing three times.” He lifts his chin toward the Search and Rescue team. “They also checked the shortcut. There’s no sign of her.”
I nod. “Let’s do it, then, step by step.”
The trail starts off level as it skirts the western edge of Crest View, a community of ninety-seven single-family homes thirty miles west of Portland and just northwest of Henry Hagg Lake. The houses are a random mix of ranches, colonials, and the occasional split-foyer. It’s considered an upscale neighborhood in this part of Oregon, and without exception the lawns are neatly cared for and the sidewalks are clean; a nice neighborhood by any standard.
Jimmy and I lead the way and set a brisk pace. The gentle trail around Crest View soon morphs into a steady incline that surreptitiously sucks the breath from your lungs. After the first mile at a ten-degree incline, I’m breathing hard and getting pissed at Jimmy, who’s whistling the theme from Mission Impossible and looking like he’s having the time of his life. It’s not that I’m in bad shape, I can run ten miles with the best of them; I just prefer to do it a half mile at a time with twenty-four-hour breaks in between.
Turning, I wave Sergeant Anderson up from the back of the caravan. He looks like he’s spent a fair amount of time donut-diving at the office, and right now I need an anchor to slow Jimmy. The sergeant’s huffing pretty hard when he reaches us and I stop to let him catch his breath. Mission Impossible falters and then stops.
“What’s up?” Jimmy asks.
“Just taking a breather,” I say casually, tilting my head ever so slightly toward Anderson’s sweaty face while trying to look unscathed by the hike.
Jimmy nods and takes a pull of water from his CamelBak, then asks Anderson, “What’s the summit like?”
“I know what you’re thinking,” the sergeant pants, nodding his head as if he’s been waiting for this question. “We looked over the side and couldn’t find any evidence of someone falling.” He gulps for breath from talking too fast. “It’s not a straight drop, either, so if she lost her footing and went over”—gulp—“she would have left gouges in the dirt, uprooted plants, that sort of thing.” Gulp, gulp, gasp. “Besides, the path is wide enough that she wouldn’t have had to get near the edge.”
“So if it doesn’t drop straight off, I assume you can’t see the bottom very well from the summit?”
“Not unless you tie off and rope out a bit.”