Red Tide

by Peg Brantley

  Ten years ate up a lot of long days. And in a blink it spit them out. Jamie rose and touched her sister on the shoulder, breaking their thread with the past, at least for now. She urged Gretchen back to her lane and Jax went back to work.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jax noted with satisfaction that so far every skull had remained intact. Even two skulls with obvious trauma had retained all their teeth, and in place. That piece of luck would go a long way toward identification.

  The forensic anthropologist from Denver would be here soon to begin work on the older corpses and she would be happy to relinquish the responsibility for that part of the process. Jax excelled at her job, but her expertise had its limits. While the anthropologist played with the old bones she could focus on the new ones. Her lab contained everything he would need to work, including the space to spread out.

  In the meantime Jax would begin with x-rays on the victims who had died more recently. She doubted they’d find any sign of bullets or stab wounds. But fractures and other medical procedure evidence might help in the identification process if necessary. The trace evidence scrutiny on both the clothing and the bodies might provide some clues as well, but as long as they’d been in the ground, she didn’t hold out a lot of hope they’d find very much. The process was time-consuming, but each possible cause of death they could eliminate would bring them one step closer to finding the truth.

  Her cell phone rang with Phil’s ringtone. She’d learned the hard way what could happen if she didn’t answer his calls right away. It usually involved the loss of substantial amounts of money.

  “Hi, Phil. I’m kind of busy right now. What’s up?” She fought to keep her tone light.

  “‘I’m kind of busy right now.’ Is that any way to greet your husband?”

  His own tone sounded petulant, not a good sign. A lot of noise was belting in the background.

  More than likely he’s in a bar—also not a good sign. “I’m sorry. It’s just been kind of crazy today.” She waited for a response but soon realized she was talking to air. He was engaged in a conversation with someone else, his hand muffling the phone. She counted to ten and tried again. “How’s your day going?”

  Nothing.

  While she waited for her husband to finish whatever conversation had taken precedence, she watched Jamie flag another stake. We’re going to be here a very long time.

  Finally her husband’s voice boomed into the telephone. “Jackie Baby, you there?”

  “I’m here.” She hated when he called her Jackie Baby, but he never listened when she asked him not to do something. His continued use of that endearment told her two things. First, it reinforced the fact that he didn’t really care about her wishes. And second, whatever he said next would not be anything she wanted to hear.

  “Good. Listen, Babe, I need you to transfer some money into my business account by Monday morning. Just giving you a heads-up.”

  Jax’s stomach twisted. Transfer some money? What money? They didn’t even have enough to meet their current bills. Of course that was nothing Phil wanted to hear. Nothing he could deal with. “Why? What happened?” Maybe I can juggle something... again.

  “You know. The usual. Mel is holding back my commission check for some reason.” Phil rushed the words as if sheer speed of delivery would make her not question him further.

  The truth was she didn’t need to question him any further. Resolve gave way to routine. Phil undoubtedly had found himself into the car dealership for some cash because he’d requested another advance. It was the fourth time this year.

  “How much do we need to cover?” Jax closed her eyes and held her breath.

  “Two grand ought to do it.”

  “Two thousand dollars? Where in the world do you think I can come up with two thousand dollars by Monday morning?” She loved her husband, but remembering why was becoming harder and harder. “Phil, tell me exactly how much we need to cover and what it’s for.”

  Silence on the line. She fought a strange combination of tears and anger. A picture came into her mind. The end of the rope she held onto hung precariously over a cliff with hungry alligators snapping in the swampland beneath her. And her hands were sweaty. And she had a job to do.

  Finally Phil said, “Look, if we don’t have the money to transfer, you’re going to have to ask your sister for help. Things will be bad for me—for us—if enough money isn’t in that account.”

  Phil didn’t have any answers to her questions, and what if he did? What difference would it make? They were stuck in perpetuity, dancing the same steps on the same dance floor. The orchestra had stopped and gone home years ago, but Jax still kept moving her feet.

  Anger bruised his next words. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “I’ll make a call.”

  “That’s my Jackie Baby.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  He sensed rather than saw the activity in the area—his area—and continued driving along the road. He would go to the high bluff where he’d first learned about the safety buried secrets could provide, where he’d first watched a man dig into the earth and deliver a body into the ground, almost like getting rid of trash. He’d watched for thirty minutes while his fellow truant had slept off the combination of booze and weed they’d shared.

  He savored the details of that quiet afternoon’s education, and he’d returned often to the remote location. Three of those times he’d discovered what he thought were additional fresh graves. The other times he’d stretched out on the ground over a spot he knew contained a burial site, and tried to make a connection to the victim or the killer. He didn’t care which.

  Not until a little over ten years ago, when Leopold Bonzer finally admitted to killing fourteen people and burying thirteen of them, did he know for sure the identity of the man with the shovel he’d seen that afternoon. Bonzer went to prison and he went to college. While getting the pedigree his birth parents failed to provide him, he pondered how he could turn what he knew to his advantage. About a year ago he’d decided to take over ownership of the burial ground. It belonged to him now and these people were intruders.

  He drove up the mountain, each switchback taking him closer to the spot that overlooked the meadow below. He’d have to hike a bit, but no one would know of his presence. He could observe, figure out what they were doing there, make some decisions.

  He pulled his SUV off the road into a small clearing and turned off the ignition. The car’s computer system hummed for a minute, then fell silent. The sound of a droning bee came through his open window. He followed the sound until he spotted a large bumblebee popping on and off some wildflowers about ten feet away. It was too big to actually land. The creature, adapted to its cumbersome shape and weight, overcame its reality. Flexibility was one of the great keys to the universe.

  He looked at the two rolled-up tarps stacked crisscross in the back end of his vehicle and sighed. Two at a time didn’t do it for him. Ten or fifteen wouldn’t either. It was time to move ahead to the final stages of his ultimate plan. Tens of thousands of men, women and children. His formula pushed closer to perfection. Flexibility.

  Flies buzzed and swarmed near the rock that had once served him as a lookout post. A gnarled piñon fought for survival on the slope, its roots binding the large rocks in a death-grip. The fragile, sparse branches were unable to provide shade, and the abandoned carcass of someone’s pet lay in a mangled mess in the sun at the base of the pine. What wasn’t dark and sticky with blood displayed shiny and white—bones picked clean. It was hard to tell what kind of an animal it had been, but the collar sticking out of a mound of fur confirmed that whatever form it once held, it had proved easy prey, like the two he found himself hauling around today and the others he’d already practiced on.

  Hungry Ghosts—they were all around him. Even he was one. He hungered for—craved—to feel something, anything. Sorrow or love or remorse or guilt or compassion—they were feelings he could fake, but they were also feelings he’
d never experienced.

  When he’d learned about Hungry Ghosts while studying Buddhism, he’d felt a kinship with something for the first time in his life. Tormented by unfulfilled desires, demanding impossible satisfaction from any available source, hungry ghosts sought to fill a void—a terrible emptiness—within themselves. They had been depicted through the centuries with enormous empty stomachs, tiny, ineffective mouths, and necks so narrow they couldn’t swallow should they ever be able to get something into those mouths. He could understand their obsession, their hunger.

  He’d spent the next five years of his life traveling in and out of Asia in an attempt to find more elements with which he could identify, something that might not only explain his emotional vacuity but give him a direction to take to void it. Years later, he’d thought, Yeah, right... void vacuity. When he returned home he knew he needed something bigger than some silly, archaic religion to fulfill his personal craving.

  He began to give form to a god of his own design, one who loved him even though he couldn’t love. His god would support him in his quest to experience the same emotions everyone else around him enjoyed and would understand that until he could feel, killing played the role of a means to an end.

  At an early age he’d learned how to force a tear by imagining a pierce to his eye. A cough or a strangled gag, for a man, worked as well as a total breakdown for a woman. Gazing off into the distance gave people the impression he had connected with an emotional memory. He’d fine-tuned his repertoire over time.

  People, especially women, loved him. He was wealthy, successful, powerful and emotive. No one, not one person he’d ever met, would describe him as degage or without emotion or detached. In some circles people considered him too involved and over the top. He could fake passion as well as guilt. He smiled at the thought, but a close look would show it was a disconnected smile born of decades of practice.

  Flat on his stomach, he used his elbows to prop himself up and he gazed down onto the meadow. It lay close enough he didn’t need field glasses, which of course he wouldn’t have used anyway. Too much of a chance they would reflect sunlight and give away his presence. The last time he’d had business in his private cemetery the entire place had been awash in moonlight. The silver illumination and the vision it had afforded made him feel powerful, even unstoppable. He had moved like a ghost among ghosts, better and stronger than flesh and blood.

  Even so, the sense that someone was lurking in the shadows watching him had been intense, if fleeting. If there had been a witness it might already be too late. He would know soon enough. He’d have to engage in conversation with the enemy.

  Uniformed cops were moving around the meadow like human counterparts to the flies buzzing around the animal carcass lying near where he was lying. Several small posts were marked with red flags. He shifted. They found it, but how much of it?

  He narrowed his eyes and focused on the far edge of the meadow. Empty. No posts, no flags, no uniforms. He might yet have a place for the current inhabitants of his SUV, but otherwise the usefulness of this burial ground had drawn to an abrupt close. He began to formulate a plan to mislead the stupid people who thought they were on his trail and buy himself some time. He didn’t need much.

  He worked his way back down the slight slope to his vehicle, then stood and brushed the bits of dirt off his pant legs and elbows. It might even prove stimulating to bury a couple of corpses under their noses later tonight. Could I get away with it? Will I feel anything?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gretchen’s tail began to droop. At some point the golden would begin to make errors and both of them would get frustrated. Jamie turned around and looked behind her at all they’d accomplished. She saw what looked to her like a sea of red. Time to call it a day.

  When the forensic anthropologist had arrived from Denver almost an hour ago, Jax had brought him up to speed and left for her lab to begin her own workups. With potentially two separate perpetrators and multiple victims, they would have the muscle of the crime labs of both the FBI and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. The CBI lab could not compete with the scope and strength of Quantico, but it boasted current equipment and was much closer.

  Looking at her sister’s face before she left, Jamie saw a level of excitement over the scientific work ahead. But another emotion lurked like a shadow. Concern was etched in the corners of Jax’s mouth. Jamie knew that troubled look. She made a mental note to phone her sister later.

  “C’mon, Gretch. We’re done here for the day.” She called the sheriff to let him know they were leaving.

  “You two did good here today, Jamie. We’ll see you first thing in the morning.”

  Before she took her own shower, Jamie sat out on the deck grooming Gretchen. Socks and McKenzie were happy to chase one another around the yard, their own way to celebrate the together-again status of their little family. When Jamie finished grooming her, Gretchen shot off the deck to join her more raucous counterparts.

  Jamie walked into the laundry room and stripped down to her underwear. A day’s worth of dirt and grime had found its way into her clothes and she didn’t want to track the dirt all over her house. Plus, taking off her dirty clothes here would save a trip with them later.

  The harsh fluorescents in the small room made the scar on her mid-section jump out in an angry purple hue. Her impulse was to cover it even with nobody around to see, but she’d also begun to discover that in an odd way, she kind of liked that scar. It represented a very bad part of her life that she had survived, and she was stronger for it. She dropped her hand back to her side.

  She turned out the lights and moved through the kitchen. With her first step on the stairs leading up to her room, the three dogs blazed by in a race to get to the top. Putting in the doggie door ranked as one of the smartest things she’d done in years. They still liked it better when she opened the door for them, but when they couldn’t wait, the outdoors—or the indoors—was accessible. In her bedroom the three found their favorite nap spots and settled in while she turned the shower on to warm the water.

  The hot water cascading over her helped heal the sorrow of the day. She imagined all of her fear and sadness flowing down the drain, leaving behind only the success and closure she and Gretchen helped to achieve. While she was shampooing, the phone rang. Forgot to check my messages when I got home. Later.

  Revived and clear-headed, Jamie wrapped a towel around herself and went to the kitchen to put on the kettle for some tea. Too tired to tackle another home repair job but too wired for an early night, she dialed into her voice mail. Four messages. She put her phone on speaker and opened the fridge to inspect her dinner possibilities.

  Her boss reminded her about the staff meeting set for Monday morning. He must have gotten wind of the S&R job she’d undertaken—on her own time—and wanted to make sure she remembered her commitment. The second one was a message from a local non-profit looking for donations. She laughed. Between home repairs and subsidizing her brother-in-law’s bad habits to support her sister, the amount of money available for donations totaled pretty much zilch.

  The third message made her heart stop. “Hi, Jamison. I feel kind of awkward here but I just wanted to touch base. I’ll be back in Colorado for a conference in a couple of days and I’d like to get together if you can spare the time. There are a few things I’d like to talk about. If not I understand... more than you know.” He left a number.

  Andrew Stanton—the man she’d once believed was her soul mate. The man who had convinced her friends and family of the same thing. The same man who turned on her, isolated her, abused her, and finally left her with something she would carry with her forever. That six-inch purplish scar between her belly button and her left breast.

  Last summer while Ciara was getting her belly button pierced to engage a male eye or two, Jamie stocked up on one-piece swimsuits.

  She closed the refrigerator door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The fourth message helpe
d. “Hey, girlfriend.” Speaking of the uber-pierced. Ciara’s voice penetrated the ice that had enveloped Jamie the moment she’d heard her ex’s voice on her voice mail. “We’re meeting up at E-lev 2 at about seven o’clock. My shoot is over and I’m buying at least one round.” Ciara sounded ready to party, and E-lev 2, the Aspen Falls offshoot of Aspen’s Elevation, was the current hot spot in town. It was more rustic than its Aspen counterpart, and the girlfriends had fallen in love with the overstuffed chairs and fireplaces in the intimate space.

  An evening with her friends sounded like exactly what Jamie needed. Clean clothes, a fresh face, a clip for her wet hair and Jamie was headed to town. She phoned Jax on the drive down her little mountain. No answer. She left a message. “Hey, you okay? You looked a little ragged when you left the site today. We’re meeting at E-lev 2 for some girl time. Hope you can make it. Call me.” She clicked off.

  She would tell her sister about Andrew contacting her face to face. Jax took his abuse of Jamie as a personal betrayal since Jax’s matchmaking efforts had set them up in the first place. Jamie shook her head. Andrew Stanton had fooled everyone.

  The busy gathering places of downtown Aspen Falls forced her to park two blocks away from the restaurant. Her phone rang as she walked toward the bistro. Jax. “You on your way?”

  “I can’t. Looks like this will be an all-nighter.”

  “Thought it might be. Can you take a dinner break?”

  “Gonna try. I might hook up with you guys about eight.”

  “Try hard. We need to talk.”

  Inside, Jamie looked around and spotted Ellen and Ciara at a corner table. It looked like Ellen had a date. Good for her. Ciara spotted her and waved. Ellen and the man looked her way. A nice enough looking guy in a geeky kind of way. Ellen looked happy and energized. Sitting next to this man, right at this moment, she looked like that dynamic teacher Jamie had once witnessed in action, the one who had completely astonished her with energy and brilliance, like a perfectly cut diamond. The shy, retiring schoolmarm had left the building.