Skye Cree 03: The Bones Will Tell

by Vickie McKeehan

  “Well, that’s just great,” Skye muttered. “That leaves cracking the reports on all the missing women in the area.”

  “What age group, specifically?”

  “Don’t leave anyone out.”

  Leo whistled through his teeth.

  “Okay, narrow it down to females under the age of thirty. How’s that?”

  “I’ll try.”

  A couple of hours later, they hadn’t counted on so many surprises.

  “I’m astonished to find the list is so long. This tops the information I’ve been trying to maintain for the last five years,” Skye uttered as she skimmed the missing names.

  She looked over at Josh. “Maybe we can get Hennings in on this. I understand he and Harry have been going through boxes of cold case files. They even asked Bayliss if he’d revisit the remains of missing people he hasn’t been able to identify yet. Some go back as far as 1985.”

  “That’s farther back than we know our killer was active,” Josh added. “But it might be a good idea to eliminate a timeframe and move on from there, although that would make our guy in his fifties.”

  “Age doesn’t mean he stops killing. BTK was sixty when they caught him. And Dennis Rader began to want attention more than anything else, enough to reach out, make contact with several news outlets. That’s what tripped him up. Technology. If we’re lucky this guy will trip up as well.”

  Josh stared at his wife. “It amazes me how good you are at this, Skye Cree.”

  She sent him a glowing smile. “You mean Ander. Skye Cree Ander, that’s me. Besides, you always say that.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “I hope you guys don’t mind but I’ve asked Harry to join us tonight when he gets time.”

  Josh looked at Leo who had a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face. A hacker coming face to face with a cop might not be a smart move. “Is that wise? I realize you trust Harry, but after all, Leo’s putting everything he is on the line for us.”

  Skye patted Leo’s hand in reassuring fashion. “I wouldn’t expose what you do unless I thought it was important. Harry’s thinking of retiring after we nab this guy. He’s been a little down now for several months. For a guy who used to follow the straight and narrow down the line, I think he just wants an end to these recent murders and cases he hasn’t been able to crack. He’s looking to get justice for the families.”

  “Less than a year ago this was the same guy preaching about how we shouldn’t cross a line and now he wants to see how we do it?”

  Skye smiled. “Something like that.”

  “If that’s true then why don’t we just ask the cop to share his official list of people who’ve gone missing like Willa Dover?” Leo wanted to know.

  “His commander’s been giving him a hard time about us. Cops don’t generally trust consultants. That’s what we are…unofficially.”

  “But we’re supposed to trust him?” Josh said clearly troubled by this one titbit he couldn’t ignore.

  “We need him in on this, Josh. He shares with us to find Willa. We share with him. He did help us give Maggie’s family some answers once we pointed him in the right direction. By the way, how’s Tate handling this? And what about the rest of your staff?”

  “Tate’s devastated. So is everyone she worked with. I need to be there for him and them.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Of course, you do. We both will.”

  When the buzzer rang signaling someone was downstairs, Skye got up, drifted over to the panel. “That’s Harry now.”

  “Make sure it’s him before you let anyone in,” Josh cautioned.

  Skye rolled her eyes in response as she spoke into the speaker on the security plate. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Skye.”

  Recognizing the voice, Skye pushed the button, granting access. “Come on up.”

  Out of the corner of her eye Skye saw Leo fidget in his seat, clearly not comfortable with the new arrival. She felt she needed to reassure him one more time. “It’ll be okay, Leo. Don’t worry. I know Harry.”

  She’d been hounding the detective for two weeks to send over copies of any files he had that might fit their killer. When he stepped off the elevator, he was carrying a banker’s box.

  “These are from my own stash I brought from home,” Harry explained. “Do me a favor, don’t advertise it around.”

  “Sheesh, there’s an awful lot of mistrust floating around here tonight,” Skye said shooting a knowing look in Josh’s direction. “With so much suspicion on both sides, I guess we know now this is going to take a while.”

  “What’s to eat?” Harry said, sniffing the air. “Smells like Italian.”

  “How’s leftover pizza sound?” Josh offered. “Homemade.”

  “I’m starving. Skye always puts on a great spread. I wouldn’t say no to a beer either. It’s been a rough day.”

  Once Harry settled into his seat at the dining room table, several awkward moments hung in the air until Skye said, “Leo thinks we shouldn’t trust you. Josh isn’t so sure about it either.”

  Harry frowned into his slice of cheese and pepperoni. “I’m not here to judge anyone. I want resolution. I’m sick of these cases going unsolved.” Harry looked first at Josh, then at Leo. “That’s the same thing we all want, the reason we’re pulling an all-nighter.”

  From there, everything began to click into place. The men began to trade good-natured barbs. The more they talked, the more they found they shared common ground. Despite their age difference, Leo and Harry discovered they had a lot in common. They both rooted for the Mariners in the spring, the Seahawks in the fall, and both believed with every fiber it would be a damned shame if the Sonics ever won another game in Oklahoma City.

  “I’m glad you two don’t still hold a grudge about the team’s move,” Josh mused.

  “Nothing against the players, but it’s the principle. Moving out of Seattle was just wrong,” Leo asserted.

  “Leo’s right, the team’s owner screwed the fans. Big time,” Harry vowed.

  “How about we table this discussion and do some real work?” Skye prompted as she brought in a tray with another round of bottled Redhooks.

  “Spoilsport,” Harry grumbled.

  “She’s such a taskmaster,” Leo said in agreement.

  “No fun at all when she’s in Skye-mode,” Josh added with a wink.

  She ignored the teasing and decided to test Harry’s intent so the guys would know he was a team player. Using Leo’s surveillance video for the night Willa went missing would be perfect to make her point. “So even though Country Kitchen didn’t have cameras installed, what about looking at other buildings in the area?”

  “Nothing substantial has surfaced so far. We have a distorted view of a vehicle passing in front of the bank around twelve-thirty or so. But you can’t make out much of the driver or the plate,” Harry answered.

  Skye met Josh’s eyes as if proving a point. She cut a glance in Leo’s direction, got a subtle nod of the head. Satisfied they were all on the same page, she picked up the list Leo had compiled, held it out to Harry. “Take a look at these names. Some of these match the ones I already know about, the ones that correlate to the map I keep. A lot of these are kids. But I’m thinking what we need now is to expand my list and include yours.”

  “Sure, make one master list.”

  “Exactly, and then narrow down the ones, if any, who fit our guy.”

  “You mean like his type? But we don’t know his type yet,” Harry questioned.

  “We look for three key points. Timeframe. Location. Age. Anything at all that looks like a pattern,” Josh clarified.

  “This list is huge,” Harry said putting on his reading glasses. “Open that box, Skye. Let’s go through what I’ve got, compare it to what Leo’s come up with.”

  Inside the box were notes from the original missing person reports, info collected by investigators who hadn’t spent a great deal of time digging and looking. That conclu
sion was evident by the lack of information in each individual file.

  Skye handed off the photos. Most were females ranging in age from twelve to mid-thirties who’d gone missing under mysterious circumstances. They tried to eliminate runaways but it became clear that would be difficult because of the scarce amount of details.

  “Wait. Some of this pertains to murder victims,” Skye realized. “There are crime scene photos at the bottom of the box.”

  “I brought those along because I thought we should take a look at homicides of women who fell into the time fit in 1993.”

  “Then we need to separate the data into two groups, one for the missing. The other for those we know were found but not yet identified.

  “Why don’t we enter the particulars of each case into the database? Easier to keep track that way,” Josh suggested.

  “That’s a lot of keying,” Leo pointed out.

  “Not really,” Skye returned, thumbing through the mess in the box. “Some of these files are incomplete. Your organizational skills leave something to be desired, Harry.”

  “How about we each take a stack of files, enter the names and notes and then merge the info into one database,” Josh offered. “It’ll go faster that way.”

  For almost two hours the three of them with the most computer skills—that left out Harry—sorted through reports and notes, keyed in information, and sorted it all into chronological sequence until they each had a workable spreadsheet.

  For the missing, it included names, physical descriptions of those people last seen with them, witnesses, name of the person who had reported them missing, anything from the investigation, such as it had been, was added.

  For the cases they knew were homicide, they added columns to include where the body had been found, its condition, and any details from the coroner’s office. After finishing with that, they scanned victims’ photos, and any pictures from the crime scenes that included any additional pages relating to the autopsies.

  Once that was done, they spent another hour making sure every crime scene photo matched to a name on the list. Next, they combed through each entry, line by line, checking for errors.

  Like Leo said, it took an incredible amount of keying, but when it came time for Leo to merge everything into a single database, they each felt confident in the work.

  While they had been busy inputting names and dates, stats and descriptions, into the computer, Harry had scoured the remainder of the case files the old-fashioned way. One by one, he looked for any kidnappings of women that had gone awry, searching for any reports on anyone who might have escaped.

  Hours later, Skye pushed back from the table, stretched her back and looked around at the group. “Who wants coffee?”

  “I need the caffeine jolt if we intend to break down the spreadsheet in more depth,” Leo admitted.

  “I’m with Leo,” Josh agreed.

  “I need something to stay awake just so I can make the drive home…eventually,” Harry said with a yawn.

  “No need for that. It happens we have two guest rooms at the Ander Inn tonight. You’re welcome to bunk here,” Josh offered.

  As Harry took out his cell phone to check in with his wife, Skye came back in from the kitchen. She glanced at the stack of reports Harry had already gone through. But one open file caught her eye. “Did you see this?”

  “See what?”

  “The Judy Howe case from 1999. Her assailant drove a Jeep Cherokee. The timeframe fits.” She thumbed through the pages, read the first page, then the second, then the third. “Oh my God. we may have found a survivor, a girl who managed to escape his torture chamber and live to tell about it.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Both Josh and Harry believed it best if Skye talked to Judy Howe without them being there. They made that decision based on what Harry had uncovered overnight about the woman and the aftermath of her ordeal. Judy hadn’t done well.

  So later that morning, Skye took a twenty-minute trip down to Kent. She found the woman’s apartment building in a modest section of town known as East Hill. Ahead of the visit, Skye took out her cell phone and punched in the number Harry had given her as she’d been instructed to do. Good thing he had already set up the visit because Judy didn’t like having people in her home.

  Once she arrived at the little condo, it took several long minutes for Judy to open the door. Skye heard locks flipping on the other side.

  When the woman did open the door, the first thing Skye noticed was how old she looked—far older than her thirty-five years indicated. Her face was pale, her dishwater blonde hair looked brittle and dry from lack of sunshine.

  Fifteen years earlier Judy had been a twenty-year-old sophomore at Evergreen State with hopes of getting her degree in marine science. But a case of bad judgment one night had ended any hope of realizing her dreams.

  Skye got comfortable on an old plaid sofa. Judy finally sat down beside her because there was no other place to sit in the tiny living room. “Judy, I know Harry told you why I’m here. We have a series of murders, abductions and we think it’s the same man who kidnapped you years earlier.”

  Judy nodded. “I let you in because I’ve seen you on the news. I know your face, your story. I know you help victims. You find people who’ve been taken. I saw your press conference about Willa Dover.”

  Skye took Judy’s hand. “Why don’t you tell me what happened the night he abducted you? You were living in Olympia at the time.”

  Unsettled at having someone in her space, even someone who she considered a local celebrity, Judy hesitated. She spent a good minute ringing her hands before she finally said in a low voice, “I was. Olympia is my hometown. I didn’t go very far from where I was raised to attend college. My family didn’t have much money.”

  “Evergreen State is a good school.”

  “I loved it. I was a good student, but even good students get tired of studying all the time. That was the way I felt that Saturday night. I wanted to let my hair down a little. I’d been invited to a party about a mile from my apartment. I thought what the heck? I’ll go have some fun with friends, have a few drinks, get back around midnight, get a good night’s sleep before spending all day Sunday finishing up my term paper for my hydrographic science class.”

  “Sounds like very technical stuff.”

  Judy’s brown eyes grew moist at the memory of what she’d lost. “Oh, it was. I loved it. At one time I pictured myself a marine biologist traveling all over the world collecting and mining data from the ocean. Can you believe that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Judy glanced around her shabby little rental, threw up her hands. “Look at me now. I’m afraid to go out my front door, afraid to look my own friends in the eyes. I have difficulty interacting with my own family. My sister does my grocery shopping for me because I’m petrified I’ll go out and see him. I spend my days and nights afraid he’ll come back one day for me and finish the job. I sleep with the lights on. At one time, I wanted to move, to get out of the state, but in the end I didn’t even have the courage to do that.”

  Skye couldn’t help comparing how her life might’ve paralleled Judy’s if she’d let terror take hold. If she’d been paralyzed with fear that day, she never would have gotten out of Whitfield’s apartment, at least not under her own power.

  “But he didn’t come back for you, Judy. You’re still here, strong as you were the night you got away. Did you get counseling after the attack?”

  Judy nodded. “Every day for two years. Therapy didn’t matter.”

  Skye took her hand. “It probably mattered more than you realize. We’re both survivors. I hate to ask this but I need to know. How about going through your story one more time? Tell me what happened that night.”

  Judy let out a huge sigh that reverberated off her tiny four walls. “I’d met a few friends at the party. But I didn’t know most of them. Around midnight someone brought out cocaine. I decided this is crazy, not my kind of crowd at all, so I slipped
out the back door. I hadn’t driven so I set out on foot. I was a little tipsy because I’d had five margaritas in those little plastic cups. I wasn’t used to drinking that much. It’s about forty degrees out and cold. All I had on was a sweater and jeans. Anyway, I got four blocks down the street when this guy pulls up driving a Jeep Cherokee.”

  “By any chance do you remember the color?”

  Judy twisted up her mouth. “Hmm, I think it was red.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He looked normal, you know? Attractive, well-groomed with brown hair, pretty green eyes. He looked like a thousand other guys I’d seen hanging around my neighborhood since moving there. From behind the wheel, he told me I looked cold and wanted to know if I needed a ride. At the time I thought that was sweet. I told him I lived nearby.”

  “But it was freezing out and you got in the car because he looked like a safe bet.”

  Judy let out another loud sigh. “Exactly. And when he rolled the glass down on the window, I could feel the warmth inside from the heater. I remember that. I decided it was just a few blocks away. What could it hurt? So I ran around the side of the car and hopped in. Everything was fine for the first couple of minutes. But then he reached over to touch me and I backed away. That got him mad. He bashed the side of my head into the passenger window. As soon as my head hit the glass, it seemed like he floored the accelerator. I don’t remember exactly. I was dazed. But at some point, he gunned it out of there and headed to the highway. We drove for a short time, maybe three miles or so till we got away from town.”

  “Do you remember where? Was it near the army base?”

  Judy nodded. “I remember the general area even though it was dark. I was able to catch a glimpse of the sign for the base out of the corner of my eye. You know the one that hangs over the road. But he drove past the entrance, past that sign and turned onto a side road, off the freeway where it was even darker. There were no streetlights. It wasn’t long after that he pulled to a stop on a bumpy stretch of road out in the middle of nowhere. My head was still pounding so much I thought I might pass out. In fact, I remember hoping I would. But then…he dragged me out of the car and into something that looked like an old shed. It only had three walls.”