After a day of hard work, his gift was about to arrive in the form of Tracy. He hoped unreliable Tracy hadn’t stopped off at the bar or the liquor store. That would put him behind schedule and put a definite ding in his plans. The longer he spent in the house, the more at risk he was that things could go wrong.
What seemed like an hour went by before the wife arrived home. He let the full horror of the scene sink in before he pounced on Tracy.
The fight she put up caught him off guard. Tracy even managed to land a couple blows before he fully gained control of her. Once he had her cuffed, he rolled her over onto her side, so she could watch the scene play out, watch each head shot, each bullet pierce the flesh.
He started with Daddy first and watched Tracy’s eyes tear up when he shot her husband. With each pop of the pistol, Tracy kept pleading for him to save her kids.
Of course, he had no intentions of doing any such thing. And it was all over way too soon to suit him.
He looked around at the mess, scanning the room, trying to pick it apart as if seeing the scene through the eyes of the cops.
He ran his hands over his face in dismay. What had he done? This was unlike his first two kills. Those had been carried out with military precision. These…these had veered off course. Why had he been so reckless like this? Could he still pull this off and make it look like Tracy had gone nuts?
He glanced at the woman in question. At five-ten, Tracy could certainly have physically taken out her family, especially armed with a 9-mm handgun. But would the authorities buy it?
Panic started to rise in his throat. He tamped it down, doing his best to think. He ran a hand through his hair and started to pace.
It came to him then what he had to do. Turning to the bodies, he snipped the plastic bindings from around their hands, making sure to pick up each piece of evidence. Checking their wrists, he made sure the cuffs hadn’t left any red marks. There were only faint indentations that might escape an overworked or apathetic coroner.
He removed the duct tape from around their mouths, disposing of that in trash bags. He took a bottle of alcohol and used it along with paper towels to scrub off the tape residue from around their cheeks. He used a mop to obliterate his footprints, even changing his footwear and clothing.
Next, he went upstairs and packed a bag for Tracy, making sure he took several outfits and an extra pair of shoes, even earrings and jewelry. He threw all her stuff into a suitcase he found in the back of her closet.
Back downstairs, he loaded Tracy onto the floorboard of the family’s SUV already parked inside the garage. He retrieved his bike from the outside shed and tossed it in the back.
To hide his face, he put the hood up on his jacket and started the engine. He pushed the remote on the garage door opener and slowly backed the car out onto the street.
As he drove away into the night, he noticed the fight had gone out of Tracy. She’d curled up in a fetal position on the floor, sobbing her eyes out.
Just as well, he decided, convinced that he’d saved the best for last. He drove all night to reach Cochiti Lake, a body of water fifty miles north of Albuquerque he knew would be deep enough to get rid of the car. The surrounding woods would be a perfect spot to have Tracy all to himself, remote enough where no one would hear her screams.
As the sun rose over the lake it was just the two of them. And just as he’d done with Maitlin, he waited until just the right moment to slit her throat. And just like Maitlin, he watched her bleed out until there was nothing left.
Even though he’d taken his time and made it last as long as he could, he felt let down. This was not as satisfying as the others. What had gone so completely wrong?
After burying Tracy’s body and disposing of his bloody clothes, he pushed the SUV into the lake. He smiled knowing that no one would be looking for the Evanston family car here. Why would they bother?
He felt some satisfaction in that, but not enough. This time around he’d made mistakes. As he used the motorbike to head back to the nearest town, he vowed never to repeat a daytime attack again. From now on, he’d strike in the dark; he wouldn’t vary from his original core of success. He couldn’t afford to make these kinds of blunders ever again. From now on, he promised himself he’d be more vigilant—no more women who resembled his late wife, no more variation in MO.
As he headed for home, he assured himself he would regain his composure. He couldn’t get sloppy and risk getting caught like his hero had done. He was smarter than Israel Keyes. And from now on, he set out to prove it.
Eight
Monday morning
Heading east out of Seattle required a trip through the Central Cascades via the I-90 corridor as it climbed toward the three-thousand-foot Snoqualmie Pass. Even though they’d exit well before reaching the peak, Skye sat back in the passenger seat taking in the beauty of the soaring spruce and Douglas fir dotting the countryside.
Josh took the exit ramp to the South Fork of the Snoqualmie River, a recreational paradise that offered a place for urban dwellers to escape their inner-city confines just a short drive outside Seattle.
Wildflowers were doing their best to sprout despite the chilly temps and snow falling fast and hard. Even though it was officially spring, someone had forgotten to ask Mother Nature to turn off the spigot and the lock she had on winter.
Josh pulled the car into the picnic area and cut the engine while Skye tugged on her gloves and yanked a hat down over her ears. Without the heater, it didn’t take long for the interior of the car to get cold.
Josh got busy programming the GPS coordinates they needed to find the right spot, while Skye reread the police report she’d brought along. She handed it off to him for a quick down and dirty refresher. “If I’m reading this right, Christy’s body was discovered where the river flattens out just before the waterfall.”
“Which means he must’ve known something about the area,” Skye muttered as she watched a winged gull swoop out of the sky, desperate to hunt up something for lunch. “He couldn’t have gotten this far in without some knowledge of the Snoqualmie River. This was no random dump site.”
“Hmm. I would’ve gone the other way, thinking this is the first remote spot that made sense where he could pull off and do the deed.”
“It was in the middle of the night, though,” Skye pointed out.
“I-90 is the fastest way out of town. I’m saying he pulled into the nearest wooded area he could find. Somewhere he could shoot Christy without anyone hearing the shots and have a convenient place to get rid of her body.”
“I suppose that sounds…reasonable enough. Do we know if he bothered to bury her?” Skye flipped pages to find the answer.
“Nothing more than a shallow grave,” Josh provided from memory. “That’s how wild animals easily got to the remains. You ready?”
“Ready when you are.”
They hopped out of the van and went around to the cargo hold where they’d stowed their backpacks.
Shouldering their gear, Skye followed Josh out of the parking lot as he set out toward McClellan Butte to the south, and curving westward.
The trail snaked through a U-shaped lowland dotted with thickets of red cedar and hemlock. The valley spread out in front of them laden with beargrass and a thick undergrowth of ferns. Rimmed with patches of Pacific silver fir at the fringes, the meadow opened to wetlands and riparian areas in between. Soon tiger lilies and lupine would be in full bloom, along with a bountiful treasure of wild blueberries that grew here in abundance during summer months.
Skye looked up at the gray clouds and realized it had stopped snowing. “The sun’s coming out.”
“Just in time, too. Let’s hope it warms up. It’s still below freezing.”
A lush carpet of vegetation softened their tracks as they trekked toward the river bank where Christy’s remains had been found.
They scooted down a hilly embankment to reach lowland scrub that clung to the sides of the river. The runoff from the snow ha
d been good to the current. It flowed fast and constant.
Skye took out the police report from her backpack. “Harry said the kayakers spotted the skull under a knotweed bush. But which one? Because that stuff seems to grow all over the place along the river bed.”
“You know what?” Josh said, scratching his head. “I’m beginning to see your point. This is too far off I-90 to be a random dump. He had to know where he was going. There’s no question about that now.”
Skye followed the track of the yellow police crime tape, now completely ripped off the trees and barely visible in the mud. “I bet he chose this spot in advance before going into Seattle that night. That might mean he didn’t fly into SeaTac. Are you picking up on anything yet? Because that could give us some indication why he wanted to bring her here. Look around you. It’s beautiful scenery. It’s a shame such a spiritual place like this could be touched by that kind of evil. Now try to picture the guy stumbling around in the dark that night getting rid of a body.”
“That’s not helping. And I don’t think he stumbled around anywhere. Is this your first visit to Olallie State Park?”
“It is, and I’m beginning to wonder why.” She heard the babbling brook of a stream nearby and spotted a family of mallard ducks, the chicks barely old enough to tag along behind the mother. “Sounds like the current picks up around the bend.”
“The fast-moving river is what attracts the whitewater rafting crowd. Hence the kayakers who found the body. The waterfall is located up around the curve near the ranger station.”
Skye bobbled her backpack. “What? There’s a ranger station near here? Throw that into the mix and I don’t get it. This is a recreation area usually packed with people. How did he know he wouldn’t encounter campers along the way? Or that ranger? I get that it was April and nighttime, but still…”
“Yeah. Plenty of people out and about, all jumping the gun on beating the crowds if the weather warmed up enough. There could’ve been a host of campers in the area. How did he know there wasn’t?”
“That’s just it. The hearty souls who do this all the time are usually itching to get outside after a gnarly winter like the one we had and head out here the first weekend the weather even looks like it might be sunny.”
“Plus, fishermen use this area for trout fishing. Diehards like that, chomping at the bit might not wait for June. How did our killer know he’d have the area to himself?”
“I wonder if anyone was out here? Did they report hearing gunfire that weekend? It occurs to me that you really need to see the area to get the full impact of it, how expansive it is. This is the very thing that’s impossible to pick up by reading a bunch of paper and looking at pictures.”
“My thoughts exactly. He also had to contend with anyone he met on the trail while getting to this spot. That makes this location significant for some reason. It triangulates between the two waterfalls, the picnic area, and the river itself. All great places that draw hikers and campers.”
Skye lifted a brow. “So he wasn’t concerned if someone spotted him? That’s nuts. And weird.”
“And sloppy.”
“Is it possible he wanted her to be found?” Skye turned in a circle, trying to gauge what the killer might’ve experienced that night. “How far are we from the parking lot?”
He checked the GPS. “A little more than two and half miles, not quite two and three quarters.”
“We’re overlooking the fact that he might’ve panicked. Weekends were his prime spurts of activity. But maybe he was running out of time and had to get rid of the body and get back on the road to head home. He saw the exit for the state park and was desperate enough to risk taking care of Christy right here.”
“Sounds careless to me.”
“Not if he’d been here before. He felt comfortable in the area.”
“Maybe that explains why he didn’t continue going down the road to Snoqualmie Pass, where it’d be much higher in elevation and much more wooded, a much better spot to dump a body than here.” Josh looked around at the pebbly beach in the distance that led to a remote swimming hole. “I’m not picking up anything at all. I’ll have to backtrack until I do. We could be here a while.”
“No worries. We’ll go back to the car and start over.”
They tried a different reference point and another search pattern, making sure they ended up at the same dump site. But nothing they did seemed to jumpstart Josh’s brain. It wasn’t the first time he’d been shut down. The ability wasn’t a hundred percent every time.
But Skye refused to give up. “Why don’t we follow the river farther downstream to the west from where the body was found? That way we could get a glimpse at the spot from the opposite angle.”
“I’m willing to try anything.”
They found their way to the waterfall and picked a scenic point to eat the lunch they’d packed—peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and apples.
Skye washed hers down with a swig of water from the reusable container she’d brought. “This reminds me the first time I fed Sierra peanut butter. I gave her a taste of the stuff on a teaspoon and then waited for her to break out in hives or something worse. I was so relieved to find out she wasn’t allergic to nuts that I did a little dance. Your daughter thought it was hilarious.”
“Lucky for us, Sierra’s such a good baby. She thinks I’m funny every time I bring out a frying pan and try my hand at cooking. It’s like she knows the only thing Daddy can make that’s edible is scrambled eggs.”
“At least she doesn’t turn up her nose at them the way she does whenever I make meatloaf. I don’t think she’s fond of tomatoes either, not even the sauce.”
“It occurs to me that we could catch a flight to Vegas and check out the Ebert house, maybe get permission to do a walkthrough.”
“Why bother? It’s a fifty-fifty shot whether you’d get a clear image of anything that went on there. Plus, we wouldn’t have the cooperation of law enforcement in Henderson. And, we don’t have the location of the doctor’s body who supposedly went crazy and killed his family. Making the trip would probably be a waste of time.”
“Good point. Since I’m not getting a reading out here, got any suggestions?”
“I’m more convinced than ever that this spot wasn’t random. Why don’t we go back to the river bank and dig around near where the skull was found? Did we bring a shovel?”
Josh eyed her with interest. “No. I think we have a plastic pail and shovel buried somewhere in the cargo hold from the last time Sierra and I tried to make a sandcastle. Will that do?”
“I don’t think so. What’s it doing still in the car? That had to be last August when she was a year old.”
“I couldn’t get Sierra to let go of it and when I had to run to the store, she wanted to take it with her. Hence, I tossed it in the back when she lost interest and it’s been there ever since.”
She chuckled. “Maybe at some point we should really think about cleaning out the car.”
“What exactly are we digging for?”
“It seems silly now, but I was thinking maybe poking around the perimeter where the remains were found.”
“For what exactly?”
“His stash maybe. I don’t know. There had to be a reason he stopped at the Olallie State Park like this. How did he know the place wouldn’t be teeming with campers? Yet, he took the risk to kill Christy here.”
“We could ask the ranger if he has a shovel.”
“Great idea. Let’s go.”
They trekked over to the ranger station and found a man in his late forties manning the cabin. His ID badge said he was Pete Highmore.
“Mr. Highmore, would you happen to have a shovel we could borrow?”
The ranger sized up the campers. “I do. But you gotta promise me to bring it back. You’d be surprised how many things I’ve lent out to folks like you, only to never see them again. Some bastard took off with my best lantern.”
“Not us,” Skye promised. “When we’
re done, we’ll run it right back over here. Promise.”
“You’re not burying a body, are you? Because we just had a big to-do up here when some campers came across a skull.”
“No, nothing like that. Just excavating around a prickly patch of gorse,” Josh explained, hoping the guy wouldn’t ask too many more questions.
“Well, why didn’t you say so? That noxious weed is on our quarantine list. You take pictures of the location and I’ll get the staff to help you. I don’t want that stuff multiplying on my watch. I could’ve sworn we rooted gorse out five years back.” The park ranger took time to remove his ball cap to scratch his head. “But if we didn’t, we need to. That stuff’s also a major fire hazard. One reason it makes great kindling. But that’s about all it’s good for. No such thing as a patch. It takes over large thickets quicker than Johnsongrass does.”
“We know. We’ll take care of it for you,” Josh said and inched toward the door.
“You’re sure it’s gorse?” Pete asked.
“Actually no, we’re not,” Skye admitted. “It looks similar. We didn’t want to take the chance, though. We’ll take a photo and let you decide when we drop off your shovel.”
That seemed to satisfy Pete and the ranger finally let them out the door.
On the hike back to the area, Skye rattled off a list of reasons why she planned to dig and where. “Call me crazy, but to me it didn’t look as though the crime scene techs went to too much trouble combing the area. They supposedly found Christy’s remains two weeks ago, and yet the entire river bank looks like most of the terrain is undisturbed.”
“Yeah, I noticed that, too. But what exactly are we digging for?”
“If he patterned himself after his hero, Israel Keyes, he may have stopped at this location to revisit his cache of guns and money. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Truth in the Bones Page 11