Truth in the Bones

by Vickie McKeehan

  Deborah slapped her husband’s arm. “Alan, that sounds awful, just awful. Even though we were trying to stay positive, we were scared to death we’d never see him again.”

  “As parents ourselves, that’s totally understandable,” Skye said, her voice laced with sympathy. “This is my husband, Josh Ander.”

  “Oh, my goodness, I’ve seen you both on the TV news. You’ve done this kind of thing before, lots of times. Thank you.”

  Josh took Skye’s hand. “Right now, Zachary’s with the doctor behind that third curtain if you want to see for yourself that he’s okay.”

  “We do,” Deborah stated, breaking off in that direction. “Thank you again. You guys are the best.”

  Alan pumped Josh’s hand for a full minute in gratitude, not wanting to let go. “If there’s ever anything we can do for you, let us know. Anything. Anything at all.” Tears formed in his eyes as he dashed off to follow his wife.

  Skye blew out a breath as they exited through the double doors and out into the hospital parking lot. “That was intense.”

  Under a streetlight, she threw her arms around Josh’s neck. “I love you so very much.”

  “I love you back,” Josh said, pressing his lips to hers. “That scene with the parents is why we do what we do.”

  “Not for me. If you could’ve seen that little boy’s eyes when I opened that door to the bedroom tonight. For one brief moment there was fear. But then, his face lit up with this glow of hope. That’s why I do this. That’s the reason. I see the victims when they’re usually terrified and traumatized. Sometimes the light’s gone out of their eyes. But when I walk in that room and tell them they’re going home, it’s as if a giant spotlight explodes onto the scene. Once they realize they’re getting out of there, you can actually feel the pound of relief emanating off their shoulders like a weight is gone.”

  She swung his arm up and out. “I feel like I could eat a stack of pancakes, dripping with butter and plenty of syrup, bacon, too.”

  “Country Kitchen then?”

  “Nah. How about we head on home instead and check on our own little munchkin? If we hustle we can just catch the last boat of the night at one-thirty.”

  “Sounds like a plan. You’re hungry and I’m exhausted. I think I’m becoming an old man. These kinds of emotional scenes take a lot out of me.”

  “It’s the adrenaline leveling off. I’m curious, did Markham give you any trouble waiting for the cops to show up?”

  “Are you kidding? The guy peed his pants. Literally. No joke. Those kinds of guys are only good at scaring little kids.”

  “What you said earlier, about living on the island, do you really think we should explore moving back to the mainland?”

  “We should probably talk about it some more. The loft’s no longer an option. I kind of wish I’d held onto it. But then, it wouldn’t exactly fit our needs now for a couple with a baby anyway. But we could start a real estate search and see what turns up.”

  “I hate to pack up and move again, though. But the logistics of going back and forth to the mainland every couple of days just isn’t all that convenient anymore. Even when we drive over using the bridge it takes ninety minutes to make the trip. I guess I was a little naïve about living on the island, getting to live on a farm. It was my dream. But let’s face it, I know now we’ll never be able to give up looking for missing kids.”

  “It becomes clear on every level that we need to be in Seattle or at least the surrounding area, closer to your dad, closer to my parents. If this had happened to Zachary in the morning and we’d gotten the call, we’d have been dealing with gridlock traffic. It might’ve taken us twice as long to get to Bellevue. And in that scenario, Zachary might not have been found alive.”

  “So…you think Markham planned on getting rid of him tonight?” Skye asked.

  “Let’s put it this way, the guy didn’t want to go back to prison, that’s for sure. So I’d say he didn’t want to leave a witness around for long. Markham intended to keep the boy around only as long as he wanted to…satisfy his own…”

  “I get the picture,” Skye said with disgust. “Which means you’re right about being on this side of Puget Sound. We need to make ourselves available…sooner…rather than later, deal with the least amount of obstacles and cut down on our response time.”

  Josh slung his arm over Skye’s. “So we’re a little rusty. So what? We’ll get better at it…again just like we did before. But hey, tonight, we get to celebrate a win.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder. “I like the sound of that. When it comes to saving a kid, I always prefer a win.”

  Fourteen

  Wednesday morning

  Just before dawn

  Skye had a tough time getting her brain to shut off enough to sleep. Yes, she was tired but the image of Zachary lying on that bed refused to go away no matter what she did to block it out.

  A little before six o’clock she gave up and crawled out of bed and got dressed. Atka greeted her, prancing and dancing around her legs.

  “If you need to go out, come on. But first let’s check on Sierra.”

  Skye crept down the hall to her daughter’s bedroom, peeking in on the little girl as she slept. She watched the baby for a few minutes before backing out. There was something about rescuing Zachary that had her feeling especially nostalgic and grateful today.

  With Doug and Phyllis spending the night in the guest room, she tiptoed past their door, using the back staircase to get to the kitchen.

  She opened the back door and let the dog dash out into the misty morning gray. The pooch darted toward the beach where a passel of geese had spent the night in the tall grass.

  “Don’t you bother that mother goose and her babies,” Skye warned Atka. The dog seemed to understand and veered off in the direction of the pond.

  Skye’s first priority had to be coffee. While grinding beans, she couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t heard from Travis. She’d checked her phone at least a half a dozen times since two that morning, but there were no return calls, not even a text message. It became apparent he hadn’t bothered to respond to her SOS last night. She didn’t know how, but she had to get to the bottom of why, one way or the other. She doubted it would be an easy scene.

  She let Atka back inside and fixed her coffee the way she liked it before heading into the dining room, where it still sat junked up with boxes of police reports. Maybe they needed to move this stuff into the office and get it out of the family eating area.

  But for now, she took out a stack of photos and started milling through them, organizing her way to a line across the table that made the most sense.

  In chronological fashion, she lined up pictures from the first kill in Georgia in 2012, to Texas. She added Colorado Springs to the mix, and then Albuquerque, New Mexico. She arranged the ones from Stoneham, Massachusetts, and Fall River, Rhode Island. Next came Ithaca, New York, followed by Seattle, St. Louis, and finally ending with the murder scene in San Diego, California.

  A lot of territory to cover, she mused as she sipped the hot brew and studied the grisly photographs.

  Why these people? These families? “How did you guys get on this man’s twisted radar?” she wondered as she stared into the images. “What did you do to him that he singled you out from the other families in the neighborhood?”

  The answers were here somewhere, she reasoned.

  She got to work. In the first pile, something odd caught her eye, but she couldn’t make out what it was. Realizing a magnifying glass might help, she left the dining room and headed into the office. She had to dig through a closet to find what she was looking for.

  She brought the magnifying glass back to the photographs and settled into one of the chairs. As she studied each picture in more detail, questions popped to the surface almost immediately. Curious, she dug through other police reports hoping they might hold the answers to what was buzzing around in her head.

  A sleepy-eyed Josh fou
nd her like that bent over a messy tabletop. “What are you doing up so early? It’s not even six-forty-five yet. Sierra will be awake soon. You must be bone-tired, running on your last cylinder. What gives?”

  “It’ll catch up to me, I’m sure. But I couldn’t sleep. My brain won’t shut down long enough to drop off. And something’s been bothering me about these crime scene photos.”

  She looked up at him, saw tousled hair and the stubble on his chin from not having shaved yet. “You should go back to bed.”

  “Can’t now that you’ve piqued my interest.”

  “I fixed coffee and came in here to stare at these crime scene photographs again. I’m beginning to see things I missed before.”

  Josh stared at the magnifying glass she held in her hand. “Like what? We’ve been poring over this stuff for four days without success. What do you hope to find at this hour?”

  “Answers. Because we aren’t looking hard enough. Take this one for instance.” She picked up a photo from De Kalb, Texas. “See that little shiny object on the nightstand? Doesn’t that look like the top hat game piece out of a Monopoly set?”

  He squinched his face up trying to see what she did. “So? The family could’ve played a round before they went to bed that night.”

  Skye chewed her lip. “That’s reasonable enough. But look at this one from Fall River, Rhode Island.” She held up the magnifying glass so he could enhance the image for himself. “Isn’t that another Monopoly token?”

  Josh used the magnifier to zero in on what looked like the miniature iron. “It’s difficult to tell for sure. It’s so small.”

  “All right. Fair enough.” She sorted through another stack from a different crime scene. “This photo is labeled Albuquerque from the master bedroom belonging to the parents. This time the Monopoly piece is the little Scottie dog. There it is, plain as day, if you look close enough.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Yawning, he grudgingly took a seat and had to admit she might be on to something.

  She picked up yet another photograph. “This one is from the Sanderson home in Georgia. Am I reading something into this or what? Isn’t that another Monopoly piece sitting on the nightstand next to where Tyler’s parents slept?”

  He took the photo out of her hand to study. “Holy crap. It looks like a silver thimble. Maybe it’s a real thimble and not a game piece?”

  “I suppose it could be. Sure. But Mrs. Sanderson, the lawyer, wasn’t exactly the sewing type. I checked the police file and went through interviews the cops conducted with friends and family. Marilyn Sanderson didn’t know the first thing about sewing…anything. She’d had a maid for most of her life growing up and didn’t own a sewing basket, let alone a thimble.”

  Josh stared at the picture. “You know, when I was at the Maldonado house on Sunday I never followed the killer into the master bedroom. It was the furthest down the hallway. The killer was probably inside that room for less than a minute. I got caught up instead and was focused on him moving into Christy’s bedroom. I knew he’d abduct her in there…so I wanted to see how it all went down.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “But I obviously missed this. What about the other crime scenes?”

  “Each one shows a Monopoly piece near a victim. I don’t know what it means yet, or if it means anything at all. I don’t even understand how that little…tidbit…would be a significant part of the puzzle or how we could even use it to find out who he is.” She let out a low moan. “It’s useless. Everything here seems to lead nowhere.”

  “That’s not true.”

  There was a knock on the front door about the same time Skye’s phone dinged with a text message. She looked at her cell and read off a text from Travis.

  Sorry about last night. I’m here now.

  “That’s Travis at the door,” Skye muttered. “What is up with him at this hour? I’m beginning to see what has Lena so worried.”

  “We’ll know soon enough.” Josh let in his father-in-law and immediately noticed the man’s disheveled appearance. “Looks like we’re not the only ones who had a busy night last night.”

  “I got your voicemail about babysitting Sierra and wanted to explain in person.”

  “I’m all ears,” Skye said. “Want some coffee?”

  “Sure.” Travis followed his daughter into the kitchen.

  Josh heard Sierra over the baby monitor. “Do I need to hang around and referee between you two?”

  Travis grinned. “Go take care of Sierra.”

  “We’ll be okay,” Skye assured him. But the minute Josh disappeared up the stairs, she whirled on Travis. “If it’s not too much to ask, where were you last night?”

  “I had a business meeting.”

  “That lasted all night? Why do you always have to be so damn guarded, Dad? Why do you mistrust everyone so much? Me included. I’m your daughter. You’re sleeping with Lena, but don’t trust her enough to share what’s bothering you. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re family now. When will you realize that? Will you ever understand that you have people who care about you and worry when you’re obviously troubled about something?”

  “I’m…sorry. Okay?”

  Skye wasn’t without sympathy for her father, but she needed to get to the truth. “Does this have anything to do with that business proposal you discussed with Doug?”

  A sheepish look transformed Travis’s tired face. “Yes. I didn’t realize you knew about that.”

  “I don’t, not really. Only that Doug was ready to hand over money to you for it. But you changed your mind at the last minute. That tells me nothing.”

  Doug came into the kitchen, but stopped short when he realized Skye and Travis were embroiled in a heated discussion. “I just wanted coffee.”

  “Hey, Doug,” Skye said in greeting. “Did you and Phyllis sleep okay?”

  “Like a rock. Phyllis is helping Josh get Sierra dressed. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “That’s okay. You come on in and get your caffeine fix. Dad and I will take ours into the other room.”

  Travis reluctantly followed Skye into the office. He held up his hands just as she wheeled on him again for an explanation. “Hear me out before you explode.”

  “Why do you always make this so hard? It’s not like I enjoy getting in your face. Which, by the way, looks drained and ten years older than I saw it last. Just tell me what’s going on.”

  “Do you remember the colt I named Spirit Walker?”

  “The beautiful sorrel born a few days before Sierra? Sure. You sent pictures to everyone you knew, believing this might be a terrific race horse one day.”

  “Last December, a week before Christmas, I was approached by a buyer from Kentucky who wanted Spirit Walker to train and eventually compete on the East Coast circuit. I thought the colt could do it, that he’d perform well enough running against quality competition. I thought it was a good idea. Initially. But I didn’t want to sell the horse outright. I wanted to keep an ownership percentage in him. I thought it’d be a good investment. And once Spirit Walker started racing and winning, the deal was that I’d also get a percentage of the colt’s purse. The buyer agreed to my terms, we signed the paperwork and he took Spirit Walker to a horse farm outside Lexington to begin his workouts. Or so I thought. One day in February I learned from Chenoa that Spirit Walker was being abused by this new owner. That wasn’t part of the deal I signed so I immediately started the process of checking out the story. Through a series of phone calls and a couple of visits to the area, I found out it was true. I confronted the owner. Because at this point, I wanted to get my horse back. This guy knew how much I wanted that horse and was now asking double what he paid. That’s when I went to Doug. Doug agreed to give me the money and we’d both own half the horse.”

  “But the buyer backed out,” Skye finished, beginning to get the picture.

  “Not only did he back out, he disappeared with Spirit Walker. I’ve been trying to find him ever since.”
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  “And that is the big secret? Jeez, Dad, you couldn’t have told Lena this? That’s even more puzzling.”

  Travis ran his hands down his face. “I felt like the biggest idiot for getting involved in such a stupid scam. I learned last night that Spirit Walker is in Saudi Arabia, where they race on a regular basis. I have zero chances of getting him back. Ever. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

  Skye wrapped her dad up in a hug. “You trusted the wrong person. It happens all the time. Stop beating yourself up about it. Unscrupulous people are a dime a dozen and will do and say just about anything to get what they want. Come on.” She looped an arm in his. “I’ll fix you some breakfast and we can talk about it over an omelet.”

  “I am starving.”

  “There’s plenty of people in-house to make you feel better about this.”

  The blend of in-laws gathered around the kitchen table to do just that.

  “You guys are all over the news this morning,” Phyllis informed them, spreading jam on her toast. She eyed her son over the rim of her coffee cup. “You might not have been born with whatever abilities you possess now that allow you to find these kids, but you certainly have a fan base that’s delighted you have them now.”

  “It’s not common knowledge, Mom,” Josh reminded her, looking over at Travis. “Some of my closest friends don’t know the truth. I prefer to keep it that way.”

  Travis put down his fork. “That’s something you don’t want people to know, a secret better left to your inner circle. Otherwise, you’d be lumped into that flimflam category of psychics and charlatans. You’d lose your credibility.”

  Josh smiled with ease. “This is my…our inner circle. I don’t want people expecting a miracle every time we go out to find a child. They never talk about the times we’ve come up short. And there have a been a few.”

  “As many streets as I’ve walked down over the years, the odds aren’t exactly on our side,” Skye added. “That’s why with every win, Josh and I want to make sure the Foundation always gets the credit. There’s enough talk between police officers who wonder how we manage to do it, how we locate these kids. I’ve always been an oddity there, just ask Harry. There’s even a few on the force who think I’m somehow involved in scamming the public. Those are always the people you have to worry about the most. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if one day they cause trouble for us.”