Skye Cree 03: The Bones Will Tell

by Vickie McKeehan

  Over Skye’s shoulder, Josh read Berkenshaw’s dossier. “None of this explains how he got a job in ICE—unless he found time to work in a college degree.”

  Skye turned to Reggie. “Switch gears. Try finding personal stuff, like education, any colleges he attended. And see if he has a criminal record.”

  “Dig back to juvenile records,” Josh suggested. “This guy may have kept his nose squeaky clean for years but it doesn’t mean he started out that way.”

  Skye nodded. “Let’s go on the premise Berkenshaw managed to get his degree while in the army. A four-year degree is a requirement to even be considered for ICE. They tend to want recruits to present a professional demeanor, similar to the FBI.”

  “So at some point when Homeland Security is at startup, when the agency needs quality applicants, Berkenshaw sees his chance to go from army MP to a coveted position in law enforcement,” Josh said.

  “He applies and is accepted. After all, they think they’re hiring a veteran, a good guy. Recruiting from the military had to help the newly created branch of government fill out its roster quickly. They no doubt hired Berkenshaw thinking they were getting a disciplined army guy,” Skye posed.

  “But how could they think he was such a good guy when he’d been kicked out of the army?” Leo asked.

  “Maybe Berkenshaw slipped through the cracks somehow,” Skye speculated.

  “Did you say Berkenshaw?” Travis asked standing in the doorway between the office area and the kitchen holding a steaming cup of coffee.

  “Yep. You know him?” Skye asked. But before he could answer she rolled on, “I just realized his name is very similar to what Tracy Schreiber gave me the other day. Obviously she couldn’t remember it exactly. All Tracy recalled was that it was odd-sounding and reminded her of Birkenstocks. The shoes. Tracy’s words. Birkenstock. Berkenshaw. That can’t be a fluke.”

  Travis moved closer. “Berkenshaw is also the name of a guy who showed up at the ranch, said he was in the market for a horse. The man spent almost five hours on my property, in my house, before he wrote me a check for a broodmare. And yeah, I remember him but not because the name sticks in your head. He brought the horse back the next day, told me he’d changed his mind.”

  “What? Do people usually do that?”

  “Hell no. In all the years I’ve been raising horses, it’s the first time it ever happened to me. This jerk gave me some runaround about how he’d changed his mind about the color of the mare. The color. Like he’d bought a pair of pants and now wanted to bring them back to the department store because the shade didn’t match his eyes or something.”

  Skye couldn’t help it, she grinned at her dad’s take on the incident, but then wanted to know, “When was this?”

  “I’d have to go through my records but off the top of my head, I’d say sometime last summer. August maybe.”

  Skye and Josh exchanged long stares. “If that’s true, Berkenshaw’s been planning this—the murders of people close to us—for quite a while. But the man waited. He was patient. Why? He then took his sweet time digging up the bones and shipping them off to me for Christmas—his gift to me.”

  “If this was Ellen’s boyfriend, do you think he came out to the ranch for the sole purpose of getting my DNA and slipping it into Ellen’s evidence box?” Travis asked.

  Skye frowned, shook her head. “I don’t think that’s what happened. Berkenshaw had no way of knowing your DNA was on the scarf and not Daniel’s. There are only two people in the world who knew the truth, you and Daniel. And Daniel’s gone. Besides, Ellen’s box was locked up inside Seattle PD. I doubt even an ICE agent has access to evidence without signing in and out. But I’ll follow up with Harry on it just to cover all our bases.”

  She paced back and forth in the little bit of space she had to walk. She went over to the window, stared out at the skyline. “But you can bet Berkenshaw had nefarious intent when he showed up at The Painted Crow. He could have followed me out there on any number of occasions that I made the trip.” The idea of that gave her chills from head to toe.

  Josh chewed on his jaw, directed his comments to the trio of hackers. “I want you guys to find out everything you can on Berkenshaw, federal income tax records, any social media account, credit check, background, get anything you can on property he owns for an address.”

  With three programmers digging dirt on one guy, it didn’t take them long to find a slew of information.

  “Cross-checking Berkenshaw’s name, he’s in the Jeep Cherokee database of owners we put together and were in the process of going through. We just hadn’t gotten to his entry yet,” Leo clarified.

  “This is him,” Josh said to Skye. “This is our guy. I can feel it.”

  “I think you’re right. Come on guys, what’s taking so long. Get us an address.”

  Reggie spoke up, “I have three. One’s the property Winston already mentioned near the base but there’s no house there. According to the power company, his main residence is a three-bedroom home in Lakewood.”

  “That’s less than ten miles from the base.”

  “What’s the third?” Josh wanted to know.

  “A cabin on Silcox Island.”

  “Bingo.”

  “That’s where we should start.”

  Josh looked at Leo. “How remote is the cabin?”

  “According to Google Earth. Very.”

  “Print out the area map.”

  “Then that’s a go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Across town, Jason Berkenshaw wasn’t spending his day off on Silcox Island. No, he’d gone into what he called, ready mode.

  Today was a kind of crossroads for him. He looked in the mirror at himself, stared at the image. For what he had in mind he needed to wear his field uniform today. It provided him with that extra edge of authority. He’d always liked the look, the blue shirt, the tan trousers, the navy lightweight jacket with the white lettering on the back.

  It was a damn sight better than wearing army green.

  He’d hated every minute of his nine-year stint as an army MP. The higher ups were always on his ass about something he’d done wrong, some line he’d crossed, some rule he’d broken. A guy gets tired of that kind of shit at work, day in and day out, he recalled now.

  So when Homeland Security had created the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch, also known as ICE, and sent out a call for recruits, he’d filled out his application the same day he’d read the notice.

  Some people didn’t think he’d ever make it through the testing, the rigorous training, the discipline at the academy, especially the mental evaluations, certainly not the background check. But he’d fooled them all. He’d shown them he could reinvent himself.

  He’d always loved his time working the streets. As he stuffed his M9 into his jacket, he picked up the keys to his Jeep and headed out the door to find his next quarry. Since he already knew who it would be, he wasn’t worried. Glancing at his watch, he realized he needed to get his ass in gear. He had just enough time to make it into Seattle before school let out.

  When Skye and Josh left the Foundation, they jumped in Skye’s car and headed south. Driving down the I-5 toward American Lake, they went over the plan.

  “Do you really think this is the guy?”

  “It’s gotta be.” Josh ticked off the points. “He owns an isolated cabin and property near the military base. He was Ellen Schreiber’s boyfriend at the time of her murder and he was stationed at Fort Lewis as an MP. Let’s not forget that Berkenshaw interviewed Daniel Cree and even painted a picture to his superiors that Daniel had not been truthful about where he was the night Ellen went missing. We have so many indicators we should probably call Harry.”

  “Harry deals in hard facts. Let’s wait and make sure we can give him something concrete that he won’t be able to diss.”

  To get to Silcox Island they had to take a pontoon boat for the three-mile trip across the lake. Even though the water was choppy
, it didn’t take long. Thanks to the groundwork they’d done at the Foundation, when they stepped off the boat, they already had an address. Sort of. They knew the general area where Berkenshaw’s cabin was located from Google Earth. What they didn’t know was the exact directions on how to get there.

  Once they disembarked, surveying the rustic setting of Silcox, it was easy to see why most residents had gone without electricity until 1967. Charming little European cottages blended with sturdy log houses used as second homes.

  Heavily wooded, the terrain was intimidating. But not as much as the locals. Asking directions to the cabin got them blank stares along with several mind-your-own-business looks.

  It soon became clear the little town was not stranger-friendly.

  They finally found a man at the post office willing to tell them how to reach the place. The small house turned out to be more like a hut. There was no one home at the small eight-hundred-square-foot getaway. But Skye and Josh circled the perimeter anyway. It looked like Berkenshaw used the place mostly for a place to stash his fishing gear and hunting rifles, of which there were many.

  It didn’t go unnoticed that his nearest neighbor had to be a good half-mile down the road, providing him with a secluded spot to do whatever he wanted.

  But despite the isolation, Skye commented, “This isn’t what I expected. It looks more like a quaint retreat than a torture chamber used for murder.”

  “Looks can be deceiving.”

  When Josh removed a pick from his jacket pocket, Skye stared at him. “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like? I’m picking the lock.”

  “Another reason we didn’t call Harry,” Skye reasoned.

  “Yeah, I know. But I can’t very well kick the door in. What if he should come back? We don’t want to let him know we’ve been here or that we’re on to him.”

  Josh stuck the little wrench into the keyhole and when the tumbler clicked, they stepped inside.

  If they were expecting blood and gore or least traces of it, they were disappointed. What they found instead was a cabin that smelled like fish. The place was not only devoid of any signs of physical violence but there were no pictures on the walls. There were no personal effects, or possessions of any kind cluttering up space. Other than tacky, second-hand furniture, it sat empty. There was nothing there that could tell them who or what Jason Berkenshaw was all about.

  Since there was no sign of carnage anywhere, no smell of death, and no signs that it had ever touched the four walls, they left the place as they’d found it.

  Like every other fourteen-year-old at Hastings Middle School, Zoe heard the freedom bell ring at three-fifteen. She scooted out of last-period geography, ran to her locker, switched out her math book for her English text, and stuffed a copy of Coraline, down into her already too-heavy backpack.

  When her best friend, Molly, ran up to her in a breathless huff, Zoe prepared for the drama. Molly was always about the over-the-top rehashing of an ordinary event.

  “Do you know what that stuck-up Suzie Meyers told Merry Ann Higginbotham about me?”

  “What?”

  “Suzie said I liked Tristan. You know that’s not true. Tristan is one of those really snotty basketball players.”

  “I thought you liked Tristan and wanted him to ask you to the spring dance?” Zoe asked.

  “What does that have to do with Suzie Meyers sticking her big fat nose into how I feel about Tristan?”

  From there, Zoe gave up and listened to her friend. She didn’t have much choice in the matter since she didn’t seem to be able to ditch Molly or get her classmate to change the subject.

  By the time the two girls reached the side door where the buses lined up, Molly still hadn’t convinced Zoe that Tristan was such a bad guy. The girls kept up their steady stream of I-don’t-really-like-Tristan chatter until Zoe tried, once again, to change the subject. “Are you going to the Spring Dance next month?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Then why don’t you come over to Lena’s house so we can get ready and go together?” Just as Zoe had hoped, that did the trick. Molly went into describing the dress she’d bought for the occasion.

  “I was hoping Tristan would ask me to the dance.”

  Zoe sighed, rolled her eyes, knowing Molly was more than predictable.

  “Come on, Molly, we have to hurry or we’ll miss the bus.” Zoe pushed open one of the heavy double doors and stepped out into another dull gray afternoon. Zoe bounded down the steps with Molly beside her until a man approached her. He was dressed in a uniform, wearing a pair of polarized Oakley sunglasses over his eyes. He flashed his badge at both teens, but directed his question to Zoe. “Are you Zoe Hollister?”

  Zoe swallowed hard. She tried to remember if old Mrs. Faraday was so mean that the librarian would rat her out to a cop for not returning her copy of A Separate Peace on time. “Yes, I’m Zoe Hollister.”

  “Good. Is Lena Bowers your foster mother?

  “Sure, Lena’s my foster mom. Is she okay?”

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this but Mrs. Bowers has been in a car accident. If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to see her in the hospital.”

  Skye and Josh left Silcox disheartened and moved on to Berkenshaw’s main home in Lakewood. But they found no one there either. The little three-bedroom house appeared tidy and well maintained but like the cabin seemed completely without a personality.

  By early afternoon, they realized the trip had been a complete waste of time. As they passed out of the city limits heading toward the I-5, they decided to try, once again, to locate the third property near the base.

  “But there’s no house there.”

  “The info’s wrong. It has to be. Somewhere on this piece of property is where he takes his victims, his death house,” Skye uttered in disgust. About that time, her cell phone dinged. She looked down, saw it was Leo.

  “Something weird I thought you should know about.”

  “It seems to be the day for it. What happened?”

  “Some guy left a bizarre message for you on the Foundation’s website. The IP address tracks back to the Seattle Public Library downtown. You might want to take a look at it when you get a minute.”

  “Leo, you know I’m in the car right now, getting ready to check Berkenshaw’s property near the army base. You’ll have to read it to me.”

  “Okay, here goes. It says, ‘Hey Skye, I promise this one’s gonna hurt.’ That’s exactly word for word what it says.”

  The hairs on the back of Skye’s neck stood up as she had Leo repeat it. When her phone rang signaling another call was coming in, she told Leo she’d call him back. Skye was surprised to see Lena’s number on the display.

  Sliding the bar across to answer, Skye discovered Lena frantic with hysteria. The words flowed out of the worried foster mom in one long breathless chain. “Molly Connelly, Zoe’s best friend, saw a policeman take Zoe away. He had on a uniform and got her into his Jeep Cherokee this afternoon after school by telling her I had been in an accident. It’s an obvious lie. He took off with her, Skye. She’s gone. Zoe’s gone.”

  “Okay. Okay. Calm down. We’re on it, Lena. Josh and I are pretty sure we know where he’s taking her. We’re headed there now. Don’t worry. I’ll get her back.”

  But Josh was less certain. “The bastard took Zoe and you let Lena think we have a destination in mind. You know we don’t. We only have the general vicinity and no specifics.”

  “Then we’ll find specifics. I guess we know now why he wasn’t at home or at is fishing cabin. He was kidnapping Zoe.”

  “Let’s think about this rationally. He’s in a vehicle we already know the description of. He can’t get to his remote cabin without taking a boat. We either head back to Silcox Island or we try to find the property near the base. It’s your call.”

  “Neither one of us picked up on anything at the cabin. But we both get the willies every time we get near the army base. My gut’s te
lling me there’s something about the property there.”

  “Then that’s where we go. We do have an advantage.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We already did a trial run of this area before and know where it isn’t.”

  Josh took out his portable GPS. “We’re six minutes from the base. If the plan is to avoid where we’ve already looked, then we should approach from the north. Don’t get on the 5. There’s a back way in with an asphalt parking lot. It’s about the only place to leave the car.”

  “Okay. But after that, we head deeper into the woods.”

  They maneuvered past traffic trying to get on the I-5 corridor and took a left heading east. The farther they went the more the landscape changed—less shopping and more of a rustic feel. To get to the paved parking lot, Skye followed Josh’s directives from the GPS. That’s when they spotted a Jeep Cherokee ahead of them. It was speeding down the two-lane road at a high rate of speed.

  Behind the wheel, Skye could make out two people in the car. About that time the driver spotted them. The Jeep took another left down a bumpy dirt road and disappeared from her line of sight.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. Thick drops of rain began to splat the windshield as Skye pulled up to the Jeep Cherokee parked on the side of the road. The driver’s door stood open like the occupants had fled in a hurry.

  “He’s ditched the car!” Skye shouted.

  But Josh had already thrown open his door before she could come to a full stop. Jumping out, he began running, trying to pick up where the guy had taken Zoe.

  All of a sudden, she could see Kiya sprinting ahead in the distance.

  Shoving the gearshift into Park, she scrambled out of the car and took off after them doing her best to keep up.

  She finally caught up with Kiya when the wolf stopped at a dry creek bed to sniff at the overgrown trail. The path forked left or right.