Free Collecting the Dead by Spencer Kope Page A

already checked the report and there’s no such documentation. Ooh. Here we go. Watch closely.”
    A shadow exits the driver’s seat and walks around the back of the truck to the Honda, cigarette still in hand. He stands there for several minutes, taking pull after pull on the cigarette before flicking the glowing ember into an empty parking space. When he moves to the back window it looks as if he’s leaning over the car, maybe peering inside.
    “What’s he doing?” I say to no one in particular.
    “That’s what we were wondering,” Walt says. “The car doesn’t appear to have been tampered with. In fact, it was still locked when they found it.”
    “I’m assuming Redding PD impounded it?”
    “We did,” Sheriff Gant clarifies. “There’s some ambiguity about jurisdiction on this one, so we’re treating it as a joint case between Redding PD and the sheriff’s office. The car’s locked up tight in our evidence building a couple miles down the road.” Walt anticipates my next question. Standing, he says, “I’ll drive.”
    *   *   *
    The Shasta County Crime Lab and Property Room on Breslauer Way in Redding, California, is like every other evidence building or property room I’ve seen: too much property from too many cases with too few investigators to work the cases and too few leads. It’s always a case of funding, or lack thereof. It’s the same reason DNA from a stranger-rape takes more than a year to analyze in some states; meanwhile the suspect may be out committing additional offenses instead of sitting behind bars where he belongs.
    “Some of the case vehicles we keep outside,” Sheriff Gant says, pulling the Expedition into a no-parking zone by the front door and pointing to a number of cars parked behind a chain-link fence to the left of the building. “Only major-case vehicles stay inside. We just don’t have room.” He leads the way through an alarm-equipped door and into a large open-bay warehouse.
    Alison Lister’s Honda Accord is in the corner.
    Even now, after four months, the car is nearly spotless inside and out, but as I slip my glasses off I see him at once— brilliant amaranth and rust . I walk around the car and check for more shine before returning to the driver’s-side rear window.
    “Can you give us a minute, Walt?” I say. The sheriff nods and walks across the warehouse to a small office, where he pours himself a cup of coffee.
    “What is it?” Jimmy says.
    “I think he pressed the side of his face to the window here.” I circle an area with my finger, being careful not to touch the vehicle. “I couldn’t make it out at first, but I’m pretty sure I see his jaw and his nose.”
    “Like he was looking inside?”
    “No, that’s the thing; the side of his face is completely flat on the window.” I shrug. “It’s almost like he’s using it as a pillow, resting his head on the glass.”
    Jimmy’s face is grim. “He’s imagining her, getting close to her through her car, building up his courage … or excitement.”
    I know he’s right. As soon as he says it I know it, and it sends a shiver through me. I tease Jimmy about his psychology degree, but I’ve seen him dissect the minds of too many sociopaths, identifying their motives, their traumas, their fetishes, for me to doubt him. He reads people, particularly bad people, like I read shine. He should be at the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, but instead he’s stuck with me.
    “That’s not all,” I say. “Before he pressed his face to the glass, it looks like he drew something with his finger. I can barely make out a circle with … I don’t know … maybe some dots and lines on the inside. The facial imprint is fuzzy at the edges; these lines are sharper, but they’re being blocked by the larger print.”
    “You don’t have any idea what it is?”
    “No,” I reply, “but it’s important to him. It means something.”
    It means something.

 
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    June 21, early