The Bones of Others

by Vickie McKeehan

  He let his fingers fly above the keyboard until he hunted through what he needed trying to remember what she’d said was her last name. If he had her name, he might be able to coax out a few personal deets from the Internet.

  Dee. See. Cree. Yeah, that was it, Cree. Skye Cree. He smiled remembering she’d made a concerted effort to make sure he knew not to make fun of her first name.

  Didn’t she know her name, her face, conjured up that of an ancient goddess of war, replete with sword and shield? He could see it now, her standing along the majestic shores of some far off distant land waging battle against an invading army.

  The gamer in him went one step further and painted in those images of regal castles standing tall and stately in the background while Skye Cree went head-to-head slaying the enemy, one-by-one. Somehow he knew he had to make that picture in his head come to life in a role-playing combat situation. Like so many artists had once been inspired to paint their masterpieces, the savvy gamer slash programmer in Josh wanted to make Skye or rather the image of Skye Cree come to life inside one of his games.

  Skye Cree. The majestic, ancient warrior goddess, defender of the weak and vulnerable.

  He chuckled to himself. Cop or not, he doubted the woman from last night would appreciate his enthusiasm at plastering her face on one of his cleverly designed plastic packages.

  But there was one question he could settle with a phone call. If she was a cop, that much could be determined by asking the right people.

  If Skye had known Josh was checking up on her, she would have been livid because at that moment, Josh Ander wasn’t even an afterthought to her.

  Six blocks from his ritzy loft, she was holed up in her tiny, one-room studio apartment still on her laptop—sitting cross-legged on her bed—trying to sort through reams of statistics and information on the area’s sex offenders.

  The room cast a few shadows from the grudging light that peeped through the blinds and did nothing to help her wake up. So she picked up the television remote, flicked on her little twenty-six-inch flat-screen at the foot of the bed. Even though it was Saturday and early still, she flipped through the channels until she got to local news.

  She set her MacBook off to the side, crawling out of bed with the intent to start a second pot of coffee. Her feet hit the floor about the same time the perky, chipper anchorwoman began relating the news of the last twenty-four hours.

  Another girl had gone missing. After listening less than sixty seconds, Skye recognized that face with the spattering of freckles, the red hair from her dream. And now she had a name. Erin Prescott had disappeared from outside her Catholic school yesterday afternoon in the rain. The fifteen-year-old hadn’t been seen since her last-period class. The girl hadn’t shown up for cheerleading practice nor had she made it home.

  Skye’s throat went dry. In her mind’s eye she saw Ronnie Wayne Whitfield. He had to have been the one who had abducted Erin. It couldn’t be a coincidence that she thought she’d spotted him near Gull’s Pub last night. That was what…three streets over?

  She looked around for the phone. She should call Harry Drummond. Even though she was certain he wouldn’t have anymore answers for her today than he had yesterday or the day before or last year.

  She decided bugging him would get her nowhere.

  She’d have to hit the streets again, check out the places Whitfield frequented on her own. She sighed. And that had gotten her absolutely what in five years? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Mainly because the info she had on him was so old it was no longer pertinent.

  Coffee, she needed more caffeine to think. After getting another pot started, she flicked through the channels to get the full court press. Sure enough, Erin’s disappearance flooded the Saturday morning newscasts. Skye watched with sadness and revulsion as the station cut to live feed where Erin’s frantic parents stood outside their house, looking as though they hadn’t slept at all and begged the public for any help in locating their missing daughter.

  Familiar, it was all so familiar. Just seeing the anguish on their faces drowned Skye with memories from the past, a past she had never quite been able to put behind her. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d never be completely normal because of it.

  She chewed her thumbnail, realized she had to do something. To hell with this, she thought. She tossed the remote on the bed and picked up the phone again, pushed in a few buttons she knew by heart. She wouldn’t catch him at his desk, not when he was on a case this high profile but she hoped he had forwarded his calls to his cell.

  Not every private citizen had a cop on speed dial. There were times Skye wished she didn’t. But sure enough, the minute Harry Drummond answered, Skye went into her spiel. “Harry, this is Skye Cree. I’m ninety-nine percent sure the guy who took Erin Prescott yesterday was Whitfield.”

  On the other end of the line, patient as a priest, Seattle detective Harry Drummond bit his tongue. The minute he’d been handed the Erin Prescott case last night he’d been expecting Skye’s phone call.

  “I’m surprised you waited until eight-fifteen, Skye.” Any other person, not even his own wife, would have found him so willing to talk in the middle of a case. But this was Skye Cree, for Skye he had always made exceptions.

  “Okay, so lay it on me.”

  She blew air into the phone and looked around her apartment. In the smidgen of space she considered her kitchen, she began to pace. “Look, Harry, I spotted him yesterday, a block from Fifth and Cherry. I’m certain it was him. That’s less than half a mile from Jesuit Preparatory. And then last night—”

  “Skye, a block from Fifth and Cherry would put him in front of the police station.”

  “I’m aware of that, Harry. But I know what I saw.” If it hadn’t been for getting sidetracked last night with Josh Ander, she might have gotten lucky and caught Whitfield in the act. Okay, maybe not exactly in the act but at least in close proximity to where Erin had last been seen. After all, she knew this predator’s habits as well as her own.

  Skye heard Harry’s sigh into the phone.

  “Skye, honey, I’ll check Whitfield out, again, run him through the computer again and see what it shoots out―but you know as well as I do, he’s been gone from Seattle for some time now.”

  More than once Harry had tried to keep tabs on the man to no avail and more than once he’d tried to convince Skye of that very thing only to fail miserably on both counts. If only he could get her to move past her obsession with Whitfield. “You’ve got to understand I have nothing on him, haven’t since he walked out of prison five years ago. He served his four years and the system cut him loose. If he’s out there he’s kept his nose clean.” And Harry didn’t buy that any more than Skye did. Once a child molester, Harry wasn’t convinced the guy could change his ways, much less keep away from young, innocent girls, he thought bitterly. “Whitfield hasn’t been seen in all that time.”

  At least not by anyone but Skye Cree, Harry wanted to add. But he held his tongue and bit his lip instead. If anyone had the right to judge Ronny Whitfield it was Skye Cree, at least in Harry’s book. “I haven’t even been able to verify he’s back in Seattle—at all.”

  Skye had heard it before. “Which means you can’t discount he’s here. He comes and goes right under our noses at will. I can feel it. I’m telling you I saw him yesterday big as life not a block from the police station. You know he has an aunt and uncle that live in Tacoma. They have seventy-five acres of land out there. He’s living somewhere on that property. Tacoma is only forty minutes from Seattle, Harry. I know it was Whitfield yesterday. Same skinny build. His hair’s a little thinner but it’s still dirty blond. It’s him.”

  She waited a beat trying to let that sink in before she told him the rest. Even though she couldn’t tell him how she knew, her mouth went suddenly dry at what she was about to say. Details were something a cop needed to hear. “Harry, Ronny probably approached her from behind, asked for directions, maybe got her attention away from the fact a stranger wa
s talking to her and then he stuck a needle in her arm or anyplace else he could reach. It was cold yesterday. Erin probably had on a coat, or wore something with long sleeves. Ronny more than likely went for the neck. It all happened fast before he dragged her into his vehicle, which he left waiting nearby, parked on the street.” She heard Harry’s impatient sigh through the phone and added quickly, “You have to believe me…”

  “How is it you can speculate on that kind of detail, Skye? Tell me.”

  “The cops come up with theories all the time, why can’t a private citizen do it, especially one who knows this guy’s routine?”

  “Did know his routine.” At least part of that was true. Part of him wanted Skye to be right for her sake. Something about the way she always tried to keep him in the loop every time she thought she had spotted Ronny Whitfield tugged at his heart. “But I can’t hunt him down every time a girl goes missing. Surely even you understand that, Skye.”

  “Sure, Harry. I get that. But…”

  “No. I don’t think you do. No one would be happier if I could connect Whitfield to every missing girl in Seattle. But it doesn’t work that way. Now, I said I’ll check him out, and I will. If I can track him down I promise I’ll find out where the son of a bitch has been hiding once and for all.”

  With a sigh she finally plopped down in the chair at her little drop leaf table. “That’s all you can do then I guess. Thanks Harry, I appreciate it.”

  Reluctantly, Skye hung up the phone. She went to the coffeemaker, poured another cup. Chewing at her bottom lip, she knew what she had to do, what she always had to do.

  She didn’t intend to let Ronny Whitfield roam the streets of Seattle preying on little girls or anyone else for that matter. Not when Skye Cree could draw a breath.

  Frowning suddenly when she spotted a brown leaf hanging on her dieffenbachia, never one to rein in her ADD, she grabbed her watering can to give the plant a long drink. As she buzzed from cane plant to schefflera to spider plant, she went back over her Ronny Wayne sighting the day before. Even from a distance of sixty feet she’d glimpsed the predatory look. He’d been on the hunt. She was sure of it.

  As she tended her potted begonias, snapping off deadheads as she went, her mind flew to Erin Prescott. She considered what the fifteen-year-old had endured over the past sixteen hours and fought off the anger. She needed to focus on the kidnapped girl. She was alive in the dream last night, which meant Whitfield had been the one to snatch her. That was the man’s MO.

  She knew very well Ronny would play with her for at least two days, maybe more before he either passed her on to someone else in the network—for a price—or got rid of her via his connections in the underground sex trade. Didn’t she know that firsthand? That’s what Whitfield had planned to do with her, wasn’t it? If he could sell a twelve-year-old girl and get top dollar for her thirteen years ago, why would Whitfield leave making that kind of money in the dust for a career at stocking shelves at the discount store?

  No, he was still out there and active. Just because Harry couldn’t find him didn’t mean he wasn’t still picking out little girls in the park. He would set his own pace, take the time to scare the poor girl into doing whatever he wanted. That was the way Ronny worked. Hell, who was she kidding? Any child molester would know how to frighten his young victim into complete compliance, use any method he could find that worked.

  But Erin was alive. Skye could feel it in her bones.

  Would Kiya lead her to Erin? Because her spirit guide had never let her down before, Skye had to believe, that once again, she’d find the answers she needed. It was the only way her brain could work at the moment.

  Even though she could trust Harry, he didn’t really understand the way she felt, maybe he never had.

  After she made sure the soil in her mother’s two-decade-old, four-foot-tall ivy hadn’t dried out, she drizzled water over the Boston fern. With the soaking rain from yesterday, she charged outside to check on the rosemary and sweet basil she had growing in a plastic tub she’d found at the Dollar Store. Her sliver of a balcony served as her garden, a treasured space that always reminded her of her parents and their love for growing things.

  Maybe one day she’d have a real garden where she could actually dig in the dirt like her father had once loved doing, and take care of plants that actually had their roots in the ground.

  Thinking about her father made her feel nostalgic, sentimental even.

  She sighed, remembering how Daniel Cree had loved nothing better than to put a seed in the soil and watch it sprout. He’d been an excellent cook, who had loved going out and picking his own herbs for the dishes he came up with. She looked around at her sad little substitute, her poor excuse for the patch of green she craved.

  For now her fourth-floor, tiny walkup would have to do.

  After all, Skye had done everything she could to keep the one-room space from feeling like the oblong rectangular box that it was. She had a two-cushion sofa, a love seat really, she’d found at a thrift store for twenty-five bucks and recovered it with slipcovers.

  She used it to separate what she thought of as her living room from her bedroom. The “bedroom” consisted of a full-sized antique bed that sat in the corner of one wall at an angle almost touching the sofa, with a mere six inches to spare. But as long as she could maneuver through the space, and she could, it was like another room to her.

  She had a sunny yellow bookshelf she’d painted herself sitting beside the bed. She’d filled it with classic novels like Little Women, Beloved, Pride and Prejudice along with all her music CDs, everything from Pearl Jam and Nirvana to David Cohen’s acoustical guitar masterpieces to Smashing Pumpkins and Teddy Thompson.

  Her “kitchen” was on the opposite wall, a wall that held a sink, a set of overhead cabinets stuffed with a colorful collection of antique Fiestaware she treasured. A narrow slice of shelf space acted as her pantry. The bins beside the sink and stove she used for pots and pans. Those too, she’d picked up at the Goodwill store for a song. A two-burner stove, a microwave, and a compact-sized refrigerator rounded out the rest of her kitchenette.

  Living in such small quarters, Skye had a place for everything and a strategic position for her few precious pieces of furniture. Like the cherrywood drop leaf, a fifteen dollar garage sale find she’d parked in front of the window so she could look out while she drank her morning coffee or ate her supper in the evening.

  For the first time since last night, the garish size of Josh Ander’s loft popped into her head, especially that gigantic kitchen.

  Just thinking about all that wonderful space and how great it would be to prepare a meal there with every utensil known to mankind at her fingertips had her daydreaming about a bigger place.

  She had to shake those thoughts back from fantasy land. She wasn’t destitute.

  There were reasons she lived as frugally as she did. Living on the inheritance from her parents, Daniel and Jodi Cree, such as it had been at the time, kept her from having to go out and get a regular nine-to-five job.

  The money was hardly a fortune, far from it. The fact that she’d managed to stretch such a small amount since the day, seven years ago when she’d finally reached eighteen was a testament to Doug Jenkins.

  Doug had been her parents’ lawyer and a good family friend. Doug had done everything he could to make sure Daniel and Jodi’s only daughter had been well taken care of by investing her inheritance so that if Skye watched her pennies, she could live off the estate for several years to come without having to go to work for anyone else.

  And at this stage of her life, Skye seriously doubted she could exist in a regular job environment where she might be forced to put up with nosy co-workers who would surely get around to asking about her past and then pestering her about details. For her, curiosity from strangers never ended well.

  No, a regular job wouldn’t do.

  Plus, she had never been very good with authority, which brought her right back to why she liv
ed as cheaply as she did.

  In fact, Skye refuted the word cheap.

  She had no problems spending money on a decent laptop when necessary. Her MacBook, for example, had a seven-hour battery and had been well worth every penny she’d paid for it.

  Then there was her car, a used Subaru she’d purchased less than two years ago after driving the fifteen-year-old Honda Civic she’d bought from Velma and Bill Gentry until it had literally fallen apart on the side of the I-5 Freeway. Even now the sporty little gray Subaru still had less than twenty-thousand miles on it. Because instead of driving every time she went out the door, she preferred to either walk or bike wherever she went.

  She had, after all, picked up her Cannondale mountain bike for a song from an ad on Craigslist, bought barely-used from a woman who had been divorcing her two-timing husband and was shedding every reminder of him to start a new life in San Francisco. Lucky for her that included the man’s four-thousand-dollar bike.

  As Skye checked off the mental list of things splurge worthy, she didn’t hesitate to add her stash of state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, equipment essential to her―work.

  She couldn’t do without her police scanner, her night vision goggles, or her weapons. They all fell into the same category as her laptop. In order to chase down perverts who preyed on little girls you needed the finest gear. It was as simple as that.

  Buying things like pricey seven figure lofts, on the other hand, fell into the extravagant I-don’t-really-need category.

  No matter how she tried, Skye couldn’t relate to anyone having as much money as Josh Ander. How could she? Middle class is what her parents had been and middle class is all she knew. Those roots enabled her to live on a budget, made stretching her dollars more of a habit than a choice.

  After all, she cooked her own meals regularly, save for the occasional cheeseburger at the golden arches or the times she splurged on espresso at her favorite coffee shop.