Collecting the Dead by Spencer Kope

350.
    Kind of like that.
    The thermostat on the dash of the Charger reads ninety-four degrees, which is boiling point for anyone from the Pacific Northwest—and I forgot to bring water. As I ponder the sea of scrub and sagebrush beyond the parking lot, I wonder what spontaneous human combustion feels like. Is there a warning? Do you feel a tingling sensation first—a growing heat at your fingertips and toes—or do you just burst into flame with a big wooomp that sucks the air out of the room?
    Let’s hope we don’t find out.
    From the visitors’ center we strike north along the equestrian trails. The path is completely deserted as we trudge over sunbaked earth, and for a moment I imagine that all the other hikers have already burst into flames and added themselves to the sand and dust at our feet. Or, wisely, they’ve all retreated to cooler areas during this, the hottest part of the day. Really, it’s a toss-up.
    Memories flood back in the form of familiar landmarks.
    We’re getting close.
    The Sierra Nevada Mountains are to my left, rising majestic, silent, and eternal over the desert valley, their crooked backs cutting into the sky. The wind is absent this afternoon, leaving the lake unmolested and looking like so much polished glass. A stunted pine, twisted by the desert winds, stands to our right, no more than a bush, but stubborn and determined.
    I remember it.
    Turning off the path, we pick our way through the low brush. A roadrunner darts from the bushes at our feet, startling other birds to flight. I remember the birds, so many of them, so many different kinds and colors.
    Then we’re upon it, a small outcropping in the middle of flat scrub; memories and images muscle themselves to the front of my mind, escapees from my subconscious where I try to contain them.
    I remember it all; unwillingly.
    On the other side of the outcropping was Natalie Shoemaker; her body, ravaged by coyotes and buzzards, was shoved up under the lip of the jutting rock. Unceremoniously deposited like so much garbage or an unwanted toy cast aside.
    That, too.
    I remember.
    Circling around the mound, I feel my left hand rising to my glasses and then slipping them off before dropping back to my side. I see Natalie’s silhouette upon the rocky ground: prussian blue and bubbles , still beautiful. Time, wind, and rain have blurred the image to a weathered and diluted stain. Other shine surrounds her; I see Bobby and Jimmy and myself among them … and one more, the one I came for: brilliant amaranth and rust .
    And now I remember something else.
    Cursing, I search the ground a moment, and then I’m walking briskly north, away from the formation, twenty feet, thirty, fifty feet. And then it’s before me upon the ground, exactly as I remember it, undisturbed. I fall to my knees and feel the scorched sand burning through my jeans, but all I can do is stare. It all makes sense now, the tree, the shirt nailed below the scalp, the smudge on the car window.
    From the ground a face looks up at me, a face made from the wind-worn rocks of the high desert: Two eyes, a nose, a dark, downturned mouth—all enclosed by a circle of rocks. It’s not the have-a-nice-day face of pop culture. No, it’s just the opposite.
    “I should have remembered,” I say to no one in particular.
    A hot breeze kicks up from the east.

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    June 22, 12:45 A.M.
    It’s late when we land at Bellingham International Airport and ease Betsy into Hangar 7. It’s been twenty-one hours since we left for Redding yesterday morning. Since then we’ve been in the woods, in the desert, and in the air four times—all that on little food and less sleep.
    I’m spent.
    Still, the revelations of Washoe Lake have cast this case in a new light: two bodies dumped two years and two hundred miles apart, a single suspect confirmed through shine, and a calling card in the shape of a face with a downturned mouth. It’s horrifying and intriguing at the same time.
    After