A few minutes later, she reappeared, pulling Sierra’s red wooden wagon up to the porch. She handed Josh a pair of black microfiber gloves. “We treat it like it’s a bomb ready to go off any minute.”
“Whatever you say. Let’s just get it open and see what we’re dealing with.”
Lifting it off the cement porch, they set it gingerly into the wagon, then started back across the lawn until they reached the tool shed. Josh looked around for something he could use to cut into the thick tape used to seal the box. But all he found were two-inch plastic pots of lettuce seedlings that hadn’t been put into the ground yet.
“Tell me again why we call this the tool shed when all I see are plants that have overgrown their pots?”
“Why can’t you use your pocketknife?”
He patted the pockets on his shorts. “I don’t even have my car keys. As you pointed out earlier, we were ready to sit down and enjoy sweet rolls and coffee, not play detective for another few hours yet.”
Glancing around, she pointed behind him. “There. Behind that dying japonica. Hand me that screwdriver.”
Josh reached back and snatched it off the workbench. “I’ll do the honors.”
“I’m not arguing, am I?”
Grinning at her, he used the metal end to puncture the plastic tape and pulled back the flaps. The note on top had been typed on ordinary white paper. “It says, ‘this is what you get for butting into my life.’”
“Looks like we hit a nerve yesterday,” she muttered as she watched Josh remove the note and the paper underneath to expose what was inside. “It’s the hoodie Emelia wore Thursday afternoon when he grabbed her. We might be able to get his DNA off it. Why would he risk that?”
“Because he’s a confident bastard. At least it isn’t a body part.”
Skye sucked in a breath. “Yeah. But it might indicate he’s finished with her. We need those drones back up in the air hunting for another dumpsite. ASAP.”
“If that’s the best use of our manpower. Yeah. But think about it. There are thousands of acres of wilderness along 90. Success is a longshot, even with Kiya.”
She raised a brow. “Maybe that’s what we’re missing. We split up. You take the canvassing. I’ll go with the programmers and help them scan the terrain. With Kiya. Meanwhile, we get this box to the lab and see if they can vacuum off trace evidence. I don’t like that he knows where we live.”
“The story broke yesterday. It didn’t take him long to send us a message.”
“Personally. How’d he disable the door cam like that? Unless he hacked into the system. I don’t even feel safe leaving Zoe here to look after Sierra.”
“Yeah. Time to call in reinforcements.”
“Better still, time to ship Sierra and Zoe home to Everett. But first, I want to sit down like a normal person, have my coffee, and eat those sweet rolls.”
****
“I’m not going to the ranch,” Zoe stated, standing at the sink, arms crossed over her chest, a stubborn look on her face. “You need me here, working on this. Mom and Travis are perfectly capable of looking after Sierra. She can ride her pony, what’s his name.”
Sierra stopped eating and shouted, “Sunflower! My horse’s name is Sunflower.”
“Sierra, there’s no need to use your loud voice. Aunt Zoe is standing right over there,” Skye began. “Sit down now and finish eating your cinnamon roll. And please stop yelling at Aunt Zoe.”
“She never listens,” Sierra mumbled.
Skye smiled. “Although that’s true, we don’t yell at her because she only hears what she wants to hear.” She narrowed her focus on Zoe. “What about your trip to Hawaii?”
“Airline tickets can be changed. I’ll postpone it until this is over, maybe go during Christmas break. The point is I’m willing to stay here and help. You need every person you can get, and you know it.”
Members of the team began to make their way into the kitchen.
Brayden hung his laptop bag on a peg by the door. Catching the tail end of the conversation, he pointed out, “We could use Zoe’s help. She could team up with me and handle the drone search, starting today. And hey, what’s with the bottle of wine sitting on your porch? What’s that all about?”
“Beat me to it,” Judy muttered as she brought in a bag full of breakfast sandwiches from Country Kitchen. “Reggie picked it up and is bringing it in now.”
“You guys have a party here last night and didn’t invite us?” Reggie asked, setting the bottle of wine on the counter.
Josh went into detail about what happened earlier. “The box is still in the shed waiting for Tennison to pick it up, hoodie and all.”
“Why would our guy do that?” Leo asked, plopping down in a chair, eyeing the last cinnamon roll. “Anybody gonna eat that?”
Josh pushed the plate toward him. “Be my guest. But Judy brought breakfast sandwiches.”
Leo cocked a brow. “Really? With sausage and egg?”
Judy put a hand on Leo’s shoulder. “And with cheese oozing out of the sides.”
Leo grinned. “Now, you’re talking. I’ll take one of those. I need energy to canvass.”
“Does anything ever come of canvassing?” Zoe wanted to know as she unbagged and passed around the food. “We did that in Idaho and…”
Not letting her finish, Skye held up a hand. “If canvassing turns up even a few tidbits, it’s a worthy effort. Why? Because we know one thing more than we knew before.”
Judy agreed. “Look, it’s never a waste of time to ask people if they saw anything suspicious. Ask them to go back years. If you listen close enough to what they say, chances are you’ll get another take on the neighborhood you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.”
Harry and Deborah rounded the corner into the kitchen.
“Does anyone ring the doorbell anymore?” Josh asked, part in jest, part serious. “We do have one, you know.”
Harry slapped Josh on the back, brushing off the dig. “I’m sorry. I thought this was my second home. Got your text earlier. Got one from Tennison, too. Are you telling me our guy showed up here with Emelia’s hoodie?”
“In a box,” Skye stated. “Major statement dropping it off himself. With personal delivery, he wanted to scare us. It almost worked. That’s my take anyway.”
While Deborah crowded into a seat around the table, Harry went to the cabinet and took down two mugs for coffee. “Not sure how to say this. But I got an update this morning from the coroner. Because Bayliss and I go way back, brace yourself for a major deviation. Everything you thought you knew about this case, toss it out the window. We’re starting from scratch.”
Skye frowned. “What does that mean?”
Deborah cleared her throat. “He means that Roger Bayliss discovered six sets of bones at the dumpsite belonging to male victims. They’d all been shot in the back of the head.”
Judy had been handing out the sandwiches but stopped to stare in Deborah’s direction. “Holy crap. You’re serious. You mean like an execution?”
“How is that possible?” Skye wanted to know. In frustration, she scrubbed a hand over her face. “What am I saying? Of course. I know how. Those bodies had been out there exposed to the elements for a long time, impossible to ID just by looking. I should’ve known better. The general consensus was that we’d found our victims on the board. Nine women, nine bodies. Right? We recognized Anne Harding or thought we did. Convenient, huh? Goes to show what happens when you assume too much without anything to back it up.”
“Maybe,” Harry put in. “Let’s hold off on making more mistakes like that until we get more from Bayliss. The fact is with a sexual predator, six males are out of place there unless we’re dealing with a very unusual killer who isn’t in it for sex. And now, he’s crossed the gender line. Right now, we’re at the mercy of the medical examiner on IDing anybody.”
“That rips our entire theory to shreds,” Brayden grumbled. “Could we be dealing with two killers?”
“Two k
illers? Accomplices? I don’t think so.”
Skye and Josh traded glances.
Josh ran a hand through his hair. “This turns our killer’s profile upside down.”
Skye got up to refill her coffee cup. “Which means he might be strictly a killer of opportunity, stalking males, as well as females. We’ll need to rethink our entire pattern.”
Harry nodded. “Think fast because those three females in the morgue are much older than Cassie and the other victims listed on the board. That creates a problem. If Cassie’s not the oldest, it’s another problematic fact that turns this case sideways.”
“Older? Are we certain about that? I thought Anne Harding was there. And she was only twenty-two. I really thought we’d found her. If I’m wrong, then it puts everything in jeopardy,” Skye asserted. “You weren’t kidding about starting from scratch. If we have three additional older female victims now, nothing makes sense. That’s what you’re saying, right?”
Harry bobbed his head. “Which means the only female victim we’ve found for certain is Cassie Arnett, identified as such. Back to square one. And now the case is further complicated by six unidentified males.”
“Yeah, that’s huge. Because now, in addition to our primary focus, we have a secondary issue. We’ll need to figure out what happened to the females up there on our board.” Skye turned to Zoe. “Forget Hawaii. You should stay and help us. But do me a favor. Get Sierra settled with Lena and Dad first. Let Brayden take you out to Everett in the Subaru. Make sure no one follows you. I’m sure he’s already changed vehicles by now or dumped the SUV he was driving earlier this morning. But just in case, keep an eye out for black SUVs. For some reason, he seems partial to those. As soon as you get back, pick up the drone search where you left off last night.”
“No problem,” Brayden said. “We’ll need a car seat for Sierra. There wasn’t one in the Subaru last night.”
“There’s one in the garage that came out of the Subaru,” Josh stated, looking directly at Zoe. “She doesn’t like driving around with a car seat in the back.”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “I need my own wheels. Bad.”
“Until then,” Josh pointed out. “For now, let’s get it installed and get you guys on the road. Just know that I’m entrusting you with my daughter. Let anything happen to her…”
“I intend to keep all three of us safe, including Sierra,” Brayden insisted with confidence. “Do you really believe I wouldn’t go down fighting for your daughter?”
Josh pivoted to face the younger man. “No, I don’t. I’m just worried. We thought we had this guy pegged. Now we realize we’ve wasted almost forty-eight hours, possibly in the wrong direction. Now we’ve put Sierra square in the crosshairs of this guy.”
Brayden stared into the eyes of the man who had saved him. “Don’t think for a minute that I’m still that skinny kid you first met. I’m not. I’ve gone to great lengths to recover from that whole experience, get stronger in mind and body, and embrace my strengths.”
“I know that. And you’ve done a magnificent job. But this guy is…”
“Another bold, whacked-out, crazy-in-the-head serial killer? Yeah, I get that. And I won’t let anyone like that take me down again or anyone close to me.”
“Look, I haven’t always been what you see now. When I first met Skye, I was a naïve, geeky businessman who had no idea the depth of depravity that was out there in the world. Sure, I watched the news. But those perverts hadn’t touched me personally. None of the stories I saw on the news ever sunk in, not fully. Then I met Skye. That was the tipping point. She’d been living with what happened to her for years. Recovering was just a word in a dictionary. You two have that in common. Me? I had to learn the hard way going up against a foe and getting my ass kicked to fully, completely understand.”
“You?”
“Yeah, me. That incident changed my life. Literally. And here we are. I don’t expect you to act like Superman or some comic book hero. Tread with caution, Brayden. I mean that. Be aware of your surroundings at all times and never let your guard down. Try not to make stupid mistakes the way I did. I’ll show you how to get to Everett using the backroads. It’ll take longer, but you’ll be able to pick up anyone following you. I guarantee it.”
“Did you really get your ass kicked?”
Josh recalled the time he’d died, and Kiya had brought him back to the land of the living. “You have no idea.”
Back inside the house, Skye picked up Sierra and headed upstairs to pack a bag. She did her best to sound upbeat about the trip even though her stomach felt rocky at best. As she tossed Sierra’s outfits—enough to last a week—into a pink suitcase, she tried to put a good spin on it, dangling the only incentive that might work. “You’ll get to ride Sunflower as many times as you want.”
“But I want to stay with you and Daddy.”
Tough crowd, Skye noted. “I know you do. We want you to stay here with us, too. And I would really like to take you out to The Painted Crow myself. But this bad man knows where we live.”
Sierra stuck a finger in her mouth. “He likes to kill people.”
Startled at the declaration from a four-year-old, Skye leaned down and got eye to eye with her daughter. “Did Kiya tell you that?”
“Uh-huh. Kiya knows how mean he is, meaner than all the others. Kiya will help you catch him like always.”
“You’re not worried about this, are you?”
Sierra bobbed her head up and down. “I always worry about you and Daddy.”
Skye stroked her daughter’s hair, then kissed the top of her head, pulled her close for a hug. “You don’t spend any more time worrying, okay? You let Daddy and me do that. Promise me, okay?”
“Okay. But the mean man doesn’t like kids.”
Skye’s forehead wrinkled with frown lines. Instead of having this conversation with Sierra, she decided to have a stern talk with Kiya, the sooner, the better. “Like I said, you let us worry about the mean man. You know that I’d take you to Lena and Pop-Pop’s place myself if I could, right?”
Sierra used her soft voice. “I know. Want me to tell you if Zoe and Brayden kiss?”
Skye hooted with laughter. “Are you kidding? Of course. I want to hear all the details when I call you tonight. It’s your job to keep an eye on those two. Do you think they like each other?”
“Yep. And they’re gonna kiss in the car. I bet.”
“I bet, too. You tell me all about it. Promise?”
“I promise. Be careful. The mean man is strong, and he’s evil.”
“Is he bigger than Daddy?”
“Yep. And he likes to fight. He’s good at it.”
****
Skye took those words and went straight to Josh with them. “Why does Kiya allow this stuff to flow down to Sierra? Why do I have to hear things like that out of the mouth of my four-year-old?”
“We talked about this, remember? Sierra picks up on this stuff from Kiya better than we do. We’re too busy. Our minds are full of useless crap. Sierra’s mind is free of all the clutter. She’s more receptive to it than we are.”
“Then I’d better start freeing up my brain,” Skye lamented as they got ready to canvass the Ames Lake neighborhood. “I don’t want to have another conversation like that again. It’s not right.”
“Why did she say he didn’t like kids? Unless his victims are also children.”
“I don’t know. It just popped out of her mouth, along with how he’s taller than her daddy, and he likes to fight. What do you make of having six male victims at the dumpsite? Are these attacks sexual in nature or not?”
“Maybe these are two separate cases, two killers.”
“No. Cassie was found in the vicinity. Cassie Arnett is the link that connects the victims to one killer. The proximity to the dumpsite isn’t a coincidence.”
With no more clues to mull over, they said goodbye to their daughter and headed out the door to canvass the Ames Lake neighborhood, hoping to score a few
new bits of information.
But by noon, going door-to-door seemed like a bust. First, most people didn’t even bother to answer the knock. Knowing bodies had been discovered within a few hundred feet of their inner circle had given rise to fear. No one wanted to talk or answer questions. Most didn’t even want to diss on their neighbors or consider anyone in their tightknit group might be responsible for cold-blooded murder.
After several hours getting nowhere, Josh gave in and rapped on the front door of Blossom Hill Lodge himself, Skye standing a few feet away. Avoiding the “I told you so” glare, an impatient Josh rang the bell a few more times than was necessary.
Diane and Gil had made their money representing clients who owned massive blocks of commercial real estate. The couple was experts in acquiring land in multiple states and then selling it to those who would develop and build houses or apartments. The couple owned several homes, the least of which was the vast estate located at the top of a ridge they called Blossom Hill Lodge.
A maid, dressed in a black and white uniform, answered the door.
“I’m here to see Gil or Diane, whichever one is available,” Josh stated. “They know me.”
From the side, Skye cleared her throat. “They don’t know me.”
The maid looked apprehensive, a war going on inside about whether to disclose the truth. After several long minutes of hesitation, she blurted out in broken English, “They packed up and went back to Seattle after watching the news this morning.”
Skye couldn’t believe it. “Really? Why? If this were anyone else, we’d write this information down as suspicious behavior.”
Josh ignored the attitude. “Did they say when they’d be returning?”
“No.” The maid slammed the door in their faces.
“You know, that was totally unnecessary,” Josh grumbled.
“Which part? Slamming the door on us or running back to Seattle after bodies were discovered fifty yards from where we’re standing?”
“You don’t for a minute think Gil is our guy?”
“Why not? It’s not that crazy. That’s how that guy in San Diego got on the radar of law enforcement after kidnapping and murdering his seven-year-old neighbor. The guy didn’t answer his door when officers did their first round of canvassing. Then, he wasn’t at home the entire weekend. They went back three days later and found him disheveled, sweating like a pig, and flirting with the female officer. Never underestimate weird vibes. Besides, the San Diego guy left trace evidence all over the place.”
Down Among The Bones Page 11