Truth in the Bones

by Vickie McKeehan

  “That’s a valuable lesson learned,” she muttered to Sierra. “Sometimes Mama and Daddy are a tad dense. We’re first-timers at this. We should’ve dropped you off at Pop-Pop’s place before we came. I promise you we won’t make that mistake again.”

  Sierra took hold of her mother’s face, patting it to get her attention. “Ma-ma. Dad-dy. Kiya. Me.” Sierra pointed toward the house.

  “That’s right. Daddy’s in there with Harry. They’ll be out soon. And yes, Kiya’s watching over Daddy. I’m sure of it. Don’t worry, baby. Daddy’s fine.”

  Those words didn’t seem to satisfy Sierra in the least. Instead of settling down she became agitated, bouncing up and down. “Go! Ma-ma go. Daddy!”

  “No, we’re staying put. Daddy has this covered.” At least she hoped that was true. After all, Josh had done this kind of thing before. He wasn’t a novice. He could handle the heartbreak of watching the murders play out. She tightened her hold on the baby all the while hoping Josh was tough enough to withstand the madness of that night.

  Back in the kitchen, Josh felt his wolf senses take over. He saw everything through Kiya’s eyes. He knew the wolf had already scented the killer’s movements because Kiya led him to the bottom of the staircase. With each step on the way up to the landing, Josh knew what was ahead. The massacre would become clear-cut soon enough.

  Josh bounded up the stairs and Harry followed. Without a word between the two men, Josh moved from the landing down the narrow hallway. At the first door on the left, he watched as the man in the mask opened the door, took three steps into the room, gun in hand, and fired without warning. Once. Twice. In one bedroom, Josh knew their killer had murdered a boy of thirteen, and another male of fifteen. The two kids had been sleeping six feet apart in twin beds.

  Josh caught the scent of blood—the coppery element turning his stomach—the deep red stuff oozed out, staining the sheets as it dripped on the floor.

  The killer sprinted to the next doorway where he stepped inside long enough to point the large caliber gun to the head of a sleeping, elderly female. Josh heard the single shot and watched as the killer emerged, darting past him on a mission.

  He followed the whiff of gunpowder drifting out of the rooms.

  His eyes trailed after the evil as it continued down the hallway to the next bedroom. But physically, Josh was still planted outside the grandmother’s room, unable to move. After several long seconds, he managed to stick his head in long enough to stare at the elderly woman dressed in an old-fashioned nightgown, lying in her bed, her eyes closed, a bullet wound in the middle of her forehead.

  More gunshots rang out, pulling Josh out of his daze. He rushed out in time to see the killer emerge from the master bedroom. Time stopped for him, knowing the last bedroom on the right belonged to Christy.

  From the hallway Josh stood, helpless as an observer, useless to save Christy or anyone else. Again, he poked his head in the room and found a typical teenage girl’s clutter. Clothes were scattered on the floor. A messy vanity was littered with an assortment of makeup and hairbrushes, along with a variety of sweet-smelling creams and lotions.

  The teenager was still fast asleep, unaware that the killer approached her bed. The stranger covered her mouth with a gloved hand and began whispering instructions to the frightened girl. After nodding in agreement, she crawled out of bed and did what she was told.

  Josh finally turned back to Harry. “It’s strange that the killer didn’t take out the two parents in the master bedroom first. It’s like he didn’t care if they heard or not. He started with the youngest members of the family. And then, after he’d murdered everyone else, he saved Christy for last. After the monster subdued her, he slipped off the mask he wore, the one that hid his face up to that point, and transferred it over Christy’s head. He wrapped duct tape several times around her head and taped her wrists together so she couldn’t fight back. The poor girl never got a good look at him. The bastard was too cowardly to show his face.”

  Josh spun on his heel to race down the stairway and then stopped. “But when he removed that mask to put it over Christy’s head, I got a good look at the guy’s face. I know what the asshole looks like now.”

  “That’s great. But are you okay? You look a little…peaked.”

  “I’m fine. I just want out of this house.”

  Four

  Sunday afternoon

  Back in the van, Josh wanted to get away from the house. He stomped on the gas, careful not to hit one of parked cars on the street. He headed out of the neighborhood, making a left at the first stop sign.

  “What did you see back there? Anything that would help us? It had to be something big or you wouldn’t have sent me to the car,” Skye said in total curious mode.

  “The man who murdered the Maldonado family is blond, blue-eyed, and stands six feet tall. He’s average looking, no scars that I could see, no outlandish features on his face. Looks like a regular guy who happens to murder on the side.”

  “We need a sketch artist to capture what you saw,” Skye grumbled. “While it’s fresh in your head.”

  “Believe me, that image won’t be going away any time soon. Besides, I’m already way ahead of you there. I told Harry I’d line up one of the graphic artists from work. There’s a woman we hired in the art department some months back. Her name’s Francine Gaines. Francine does our game covers. For the past several weeks, she’s sent me numerous emails asking what she could do to help out.”

  “Ah, yes. Francine. She’s the one who has a major crush on you, right?”

  “She does not. She offered to help us with Ryan Carpenter, but we’d already gone with Harry’s go-to guy at the police department. I thought I’d make it up to her. Besides, Francine might be a better choice this time. The thing is I hate to bother her on a Sunday but I’ll set it up for tonight. There’s something we need to do first. I have to see for myself the exact spot where he dumped Christy. I have to know what happened the night he got rid of the body. I need to get a better handle on where they discovered the remains. I need to see it in detail. I asked Harry for the GPS coordinates.”

  “That’s fine. But we can’t take Sierra with us this time. She got upset that I left you in that house.”

  “She did? Why?”

  “I don’t know why. I’m just telling you how she reacted. She obviously picked up on something.”

  Josh looked in the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of Sierra snuggled in her car seat, playing with a sock monkey. “She seems okay now.”

  “She wasn’t earlier. Trust me. It was as if she thought I’d abandoned you, left you behind in the middle of a combat zone, or something. I felt like a traitor. It took fifteen minutes for me to calm her down. Which is why I think it’s a good idea to keep her away from this kind of sinister vibe. She’s just a baby, Josh, way too young for this kind of brush with malevolent forces. I should have my head examined for even bringing her along. What kind of a mother does that?”

  “Stop it. She’s okay now, that’s what’s important. But I agree. From now on, we should keep this kind of thing separate, distance ourselves from the evil I just saw back there.”

  “I’m glad you told me to get her out of there. From now on, we think of her welfare first, even before catching this guy. Her well-being comes first.”

  “Agreed.”

  Skye looked out the window for any familiar streets. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know. At the moment, I don’t care. I’m just trying to get away from the Maldonado house and what I saw back there.”

  She took hold of his arm, felt the strength in his bicep. “I knew you’d react this way. I knew it would shake you to the core. Last time it took you a day to recover. I’m sorry you had to experience the scene all over again. But looking at crime scene photos doesn’t seem to generate this same kind of response from you. It seems you have to actually be at the scene where it happened before you pick up on details. Plus, if you were able to see wh
at he looked like…that’s valuable information we didn’t have before.”

  “I know. It’s worth a little discomfort to get the slightest bit of an advantage.”

  Skye reached over and turned on the CD player and let Mozart brighten the mood. She lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “We’ll have to drop Sierra off at Dad’s place, at least for the afternoon.”

  Josh made a left turn, heading toward Interstate 5. “Good deal. We’ll take her to The Painted Crow. She’ll be fine there with Travis and Lena for a couple of hours.”

  “Just Travis. Lena and Zoe are back at the Foundation this morning. Lena texted me that she’s already going through every report we have about any other murdered families that fit the profile in parts of the Pacific Northwest, specifically Oregon and Idaho.”

  “I thought we agreed with Harry that the Maldonados were the only victims in these parts?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Lena and I decided to widen the search. While your guys work one angle, she’s going another way. Maybe there’s some small-town police department out there somewhere that hasn’t included their crime scene in the mix. Maybe they haven’t bothered asking for help from the FBI. Maybe they think they’ll be able to locate whichever family member went on the run themselves. Maybe they took what they had at face value without getting outside input. I hope you don’t mind though because Lena twisted Winston’s arm to help her out.”

  Josh looked at her and grinned. “Harry’s right. He needn’t have worried about your investigative skills. You haven’t lost your edge.”

  “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen until I’m in a nursing home and gumming my food. I’ll have to persuade Dad to drop what he’s doing and look after Sierra for probably six hours or so.”

  “Six? How do you figure that?”

  “The road trip alone will take four, that’s round-trip. That’s not counting if we stay in the area long enough for you to get a feel for what happened. We’re looking at six hours easy. If we’re lucky, we’ll make it back before dark.”

  “Sounds about right. I’ll tell Francine to meet us at the ranch around seven.”

  “I need to bug Harry for the list of items the cops found at the crime scene. That includes every item of clothing found near or with Christy’s body. Harry said she was found clothed. I take that to mean there might’ve been evidence left behind. I want to make sure that whatever they found on or near her body was sent to the lab and tested for touch DNA or fingerprints.”

  “Surely they’ve done that already.”

  “Let’s hope so. But Harry didn’t spell it out yesterday. So I’m going back over the basics. I’ll text him to share whatever information he gets with us. If they’ve already tested and got nothing, we need to know that, too. If not, Harry should nudge the lab results along.”

  She turned in her seat to look at Josh. “I wonder if this guy is already out there stalking his next family of victims?”

  “Probably.”

  “And we don’t have a clue where that is.”

  “Which means we’re running out of time since he’ll likely strike within the next six weeks or sooner.”

  “If he stays on pattern. We all know that with a serial killer there are no guarantees. He could’ve already broken that cycle. We shouldn’t rely on cutting it so close.”

  Josh took the exit off the highway and headed toward Everett and the forty-acre horse farm Travis owned where he raised American Paint Horses.

  Carved out of the Washington coastline, the property was surrounded by a thick forest of evergreens and towering conifers. Rolling pastureland bumped up against rocky cliffs and jutting peaks until the land dropped off a good hundred feet below onto a slender thread of gravelly beach.

  When he spotted Travis working in the paddock with a frisky colt, Josh pulled the van up to the gate and rolled down the window.

  “Your granddaughter wants a ride on her pony.”

  Travis squinted into the backseat to find Sierra fast asleep. “Yeah, she looks like she’s real excited about getting up on a horse. What are you guys up to?”

  “We have a favor to ask. We need you to watch Sierra while we take a trip out to Olallie State Park. We’ll be gone six hours tops,” Skye added. “What do you say?”

  Travis grinned. “I can do that. Want me to take Sierra home though, to her own room? I don’t mind.”

  “That’s okay. She’ll be fine in that cute little bedroom you and Lena fixed up for her. We’ll be back in time to put her to bed.”

  “Why don’t you guys just plan to stay the night then?”

  Josh and Skye traded looks.

  Skye lifted a shoulder. “Sure. Why not? Thanks. We’ll pull up to the house and unload everything we brought.”

  Travis chuckled, knowing what that entailed. “Want some lunch before you head out?”

  “Sorry, Dad. No time. A sandwich to go would be nice though.”

  “You got it. I’ll be in as soon as I put Bellows back in the barn.”

  Once Josh stopped the van near the front door, Skye hopped out to retrieve Sierra. While the toddler rubbed her eyes, trying to wake up from her nap, Atka circled the perimeter like the watchdog they’d come to expect.

  Skye gathered the baby up in her arms and grabbed the diaper bag. “Come on, Atka. Nothing to fear out here.”

  “I’ll get the rest of the stuff,” Josh said as he went around to the back and opened the cargo hold where he dragged out an overnight bag.

  Once Sierra laid eyes on her Dad though, she crooned with delight. “Dad-dy! Dad-dy!”

  “I told you she was worried about you,” Skye said.

  “Daddy’s fine, Peanut. How’s my little angel?”

  The trio sailed through the front door, creating a raucous entrance.

  In recent months, Travis’s home had undergone a makeover. His living room still evoked a strong male presence—comfortable leather furniture everywhere, chrome accents, and plenty of side tables in dark, rich wood. Portions of the hardwood floors were covered with authentic handwoven rugs in Southwestern patterns, using soft pastels blended with radiant earth tones. The walls were decorated with Native American oil paintings that captured landscapes from deserts to peaks and valleys and to village life on the plains.

  “Pop-Pop,” Sierra called out, reaching her arms toward Travis when she spotted him strolling into the house.

  Travis boosted the girl onto his hip. “And how is my little wolf today?”

  Sierra rested her head on Travis’s shoulder. “Wolf,” she repeated before patting her grandfather’s face and giving him her version of a kiss.

  “We came to visit Pop-Pop. Want to stay with him for a little while?”

  Travis jostled Sierra in his arms. “Lena called while I was putting Bellows in the barn. She wanted me to tell you that while she didn’t find any other murdered families in the northwest, Winston came across something you should check out. He might’ve located one in Nevada he thinks fits.”

  Skye took out her phone, staring at the screen. “Why didn’t he call me?”

  Travis shrugged. “Knowing Winston, the guy’s probably still gathering data. You might as well think about postponing your trip until tomorrow. With Sunday afternoon traffic building up, I-90 will be a nightmare. Stick around here and talk to Winston before you head out in the morning. I invited him to dinner.”

  “He has a point,” Josh said. “If we put off going out to the state park until tomorrow, I could go ahead and schedule Francine to do the sketch sooner rather than send it out later.”

  “What sketch?” Travis asked.

  “Josh saw what the guy looked like at the Maldonado murder scene. Blue eyes, blond hair, six feet.”

  With his free hand, Travis slapped his son-in-law on the back. “Who knew the transformation would make you such a seer?”

  “A good one,” Skye noted. “How about I fix everyone dinner depending on what I find in the freezer?”

  Travis shifted Sierra to his o
ther hip. “No need for that. I put a huge brisket on about two hours ago, hoped to have leftovers. But that chunk of meat will feed an army.”

  “Sounds good. How about I make fry bread to go with it. We could have tacos. Will Lena and Zoe be joining us?”

  “Sure, but she and Zoe won’t be spending the night.”

  “Why don’t you guys just move in together?”

  “Skye,” Josh warned. “Butt out.”

  She held up her hands. “Okay. Sorry. Just asking.”

  “There’s a simple reason for that,” Travis began. “We’ve talked about moving in together but with Zoe still in high school, Lena feels it would be a mistake to make that kind of change right now. Lena doesn’t want to uproot Zoe to Everett until the girl finishes high school. I happen to agree with her.”

  “Satisfied?” Josh said to his wife. “It makes sense.”

  Travis sent Josh a knowing smile. “Thanks for being on my side for a change. I’ll try to return the favor when my stubborn, headstrong daughter kicks up a fuss and you need my support.”

  “I’m holding you to that,” Josh fired back.

  “I can’t believe you two. Really? All I’m trying to do is look after your…”

  “Love life?” Travis supplied. “Interfere in things that are none of your business? Thanks all the same, but I’m pretty sure I can handle that area just fine.”

  “That’s so like you. And you wonder where I get my stubborn streak? It makes sense to keep Zoe in the same school district,” Skye admitted. “I don’t blame Lena for wanting that.”

  “We spend weekends together, and so far, that seems like it works for all three of us. Working on a meaningful relationship at our age means a lot of give and take on both sides. No relationship is ever easy. I learned that with Chenoa. Remember her?”

  Chenoa had been Travis’s former girlfriend. He’d almost married the woman. Skye had taken an instant dislike to Chenoa the moment they two had met. “Do you still see her?”

  “Occasionally, I catch a glimpse of her at the horse shows we both enjoyed. She blames me for her kidnapping though. Woman won’t say two words to me now except to snarl every now and then. She does like to gloat whenever she thinks I’ve made the wrong move with a horse.”