Skye lifted her glass. “Yeah. That’s why we need Barb Smith and Wren Grayhawk working with us.” She turned to Zoe. “You wanted to know the plan. First thing tomorrow, we go see the two women who are the best bets for helping us out. They’re about the only ones who could cut through the cliquish barrier when it rears its ugly head.”
“Which it will,” Josh added. “Give it time, and we’ll hit a wall somewhere…with somebody.”
“Somebody who has something to hide,” Reggie added.
Skye mulled over Molly’s comment about Ellerbee. “And just to cover all our bases, even though he’s dead, check out the donut shop owner. See if he had something major to hide.”
Molly brought out the food, passed the oversized platters around the table to groans and moans. “I know the portions are huge, right? Something I forgot to mention when you ordered. But just ask for doggie bags.”
“I gots two dogs,” Sierra said, holding up two fingers. Right before she began to dig into her pasta, she slipped in, “And a wolf.”
“A wolf? Did she say a wolf?” the stunned waitress asked.
“She did,” Skye answered with a wink to the waitress as nonchalant as possible. To keep from embellishing Sierra’s answer with a lie, she neatly changed the subject. “Is there any way you could sit down with us and tell us about Sara? Anything might help.”
“Sure. But you should really be talking to Sara’s mom and that guy Sara used to go visit. He always had puppies. And Sara liked animals…a lot.”
“I have a wolf,” Sierra repeated and started to howl.
Skye patted her daughter’s arm. “Eat your pasta.”
“She’s so adorable,” Molly remarked. “I bet her wolf is a stuffed animal.”
Instead of answering, Skye segued into the obvious question. “Do you remember the name of the guy with the puppies?”
“Hmm. I think his name was Santo Hopewell.”
“About how old was he at the time Sara went missing?”
“Santo was in high school. So, I’d say, maybe seventeen, at the most eighteen. Gotta go. Other customers. You guys need anything, give me a wave.”
Molly skirted the table, heading straight to a group of four newcomers who sat a few feet away.
Judy ran a fork around her green salad. “She’s given us a place to start, and we just got here. That’s more than we expected on day one.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Reggie cautioned. “We still have to deal with the rude cop. I’m worried about Felix. What happens when the boss finds out he’s been communicating with us?”
Josh licked his fingers from eating the messy ribs, then wiped his mouth with his napkin. “We’ll try to head off any embarrassment for Felix by confronting Quade head-on. We won’t be as nice as we were in January.”
“Or willing to back off,” Skye finished. “The only way to get him to let us in is to meet Quade face to face.”
“Better you two than us,” Judy lamented. “I don’t like that guy. I still say there’s something wrong with a brother who doesn’t want help finding his missing sister. It’s not right.”
“You think he should be a suspect?” Josh asked.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Judy said. “But there’s a reason he wants these cases to remain his and only his.”
Seven
Skye and Josh didn’t have to hunt down Quade Grayhawk. After dinner, the cop found them. He came storming up to their cottage, pounding on the door before they’d even had time to settle in for the night.
The dogs were upset and had to be calmed down before Josh opened the door to see Quade Grayhawk standing on the minuscule porch. His dark eyes were furious. His body language indicated a very angry man.
When he spoke, he shouted, his voice booming out into the night clashing with the tranquil landscape. “How dare you come to my town and think you can solve a decade-old case just by showing up. I’ll have you know that we’ve done everything possible to find out what happened to those girls, including cooperating with the FBI, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the State Police. What makes you think you can do what they couldn’t? I thought I made myself clear last January. I told you to leave this to me.”
Josh narrowed his eyes and held up a hand. “Just stop. Right there. Either lower your voice or leave. You’re scaring my kid. There’s no need to yell, especially at this time of night. You want to talk to us? Fine. But right this minute we’ve got a kid who needs to get to bed. After we put her down, we’ll discuss this like three rational, professional adults.”
Quade took a step back, ran a hand through his long hair, hair that hung loose and fluttered in the breeze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come in here like a bull in a china shop. But I don’t need outsiders moving into territory they know nothing about and trampling all over these cases, getting families riled up.”
Skye had been holding Sierra on her lap and reading a book, but now, she stood up and shifted the child’s weight to her hip. “Just so you know, you don’t have fifteen missing girls. You have twelve. Our retired Seattle detective who works with us found three of them alive and well and living in other parts of the country. Still too many. But your data, to say the very least, is flawed. Why are you so resistant to fresh eyes looking at what you have? Why are you so adamant that no one else can do this except you? If it’s because of Sara, I’d think you’d be willing to accept any help when it was offered. I don’t get you. At all. Because I plan to talk to the families whether you want me to or not. Barbara Smith already wants to meet with us. This time, the momentum is on our side.”
Quade closed his eyes, rubbed his forehead like he’d been dealing with a gigantic pain there for most of his career. “After going behind my back like he did, I’m considering ending Sergeant Tanoose’s long run in police work.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s the answer,” Skye muttered, her tone dripping with sarcasm. “Fire the one guy who wants to do something.”
Suddenly unsteady, Quade looked beyond Josh and into the main room.
Josh saw his intent and held the door open wider. “Don’t just stand there, might as well come on in.”
Quade looked around for a chair. “Go ahead and put your kid to bed. I’ll wait. Then I’ll listen to what you have to say, and you’ll listen to me, a give and take.”
“I’ll do it,” Skye offered, hugging Sierra tighter. “You try talking to this hard-headed cop. Because right now, I just don’t have the patience.”
She snapped her fingers at the dogs, and as a pack, they headed toward the hallway.
Josh waited until they’d all disappeared into one of the bedrooms before turning to Quade. “Look, there are a ton of reasons to let us do this. For one, we think he has more victims out there than the twelve, in other parts of the state, maybe even the surrounding states. That’s a lot of missing girls, a lot of victims.”
“You could start by telling me which girls you found alive.”
Josh ticked off their names.
“So, the two White girls on our list were not victims at all. Interesting. Comes back to the perpetrator’s type, I guess. I always had a hunch Chyna Eastwood might’ve left on her own. She was older than the others. But with so many missing, I couldn’t be sure and didn’t want to take the chance I might be wrong. And…as the oldest, Chyna didn’t seem to fit the look.”
Josh nodded. “Chyna’s blue eyes and blonde hair, totally out of character than the rest.”
“I didn’t know much about the other White girl, Sokoloff. Although from all my interviews, Teresa started out as a good kid. I’m sorry to hear she ended up in jail. What surprises me the most is Denise. She did fit the type, a little older maybe, but still...”
“You didn’t want to risk being wrong.”
“Plus, I knew her stepfather and heard the rumors that he used to knock around mother and daughter quite a bit. He was a heavy drinker, unemployed most of the time. I used to patrol Denise’s street, maybe more than the rest of the area off
the Rez just to see if I could catch Buddy, the stepfather, in the act. But nothing came of it, and no one ever put anything on record. Cinda, that’s the mom, refused to talk to me. So did the neighbors. Even when my superiors wanted to count her as a runaway, I was convinced Denise had fallen victim to the monster we were dealing with around here. Now…I’m faced with the truth. One more wrong turn added to a series of wrong turns.”
Clearly shaken by the news, Quade rested his head in his hands. “I should probably mention that Cinda went to pieces after Denise disappeared, just fell apart. She finally died from liver disease last year four days before Thanksgiving, drank herself to death.”
“This man has certainly destroyed a lot of lives and a lot of families.”
“Yeah.” Quade went silent for several long minutes as if carefully contemplating his next set of words.
To force conversation, Josh asked, “Whatever happened to Buddy?”
“A couple of years ago, he finally went to AA and got himself clean and sober until we found him with a needle stuck in his arm a few weeks after Cinda’s death. That’s irony for you.”
“You have something else on your mind. What is it?”
“Rosa Andreas.”
A sense of dread spread through Josh. “Who’s that?”
“Rosa went missing two days after Memorial Day, right before you guys showed up.” He lifted his hip and pulled out a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. He handed it off to Josh. “That’s her flyer. She’s thirteen. Four foot eleven. Ninety pounds. Black hair. Brown eyes. Was about to finish up eighth grade. Since your detective discovered that the two White girls weren’t part of our series, I’m convinced the son of a bitch has a type. He prefers Native American or African American children. And his preferred type on my list hasn’t turned up alive anywhere, at least not on my radar.”
“Our guy did the deep dive into online identities and social security numbers. None of the Native American or the African American girls on the list showed up anywhere in the country. But keep in mind, some of these girls are very young. They might not be in the system yet.”
“I hear hope in your voice. I like that even though I’m not sure how practical it is.”
Josh finally unfolded the flyer he’d been given, only to read the same description Quade had just checked off. When Skye entered the room with Atka and Bella loping along behind her, he handed the piece of paper off for her to read.
Josh couldn’t help it, he felt bad for the cop. “I can see this thing is eating you up inside. Why not let us help? You’re no closer to catching this guy than you were a decade ago. Why not let us work with you? If it’s pride…?”
“That’s not it. Okay? This is my job, my life’s work, and I haven’t done my job. Not since Sara went missing. I’ve let down Sara, my family, and the entire community where I grew up. That’s the only reason Felix did what he did. He thinks it’s time to bring in outside help.”
“But you don’t.”
“No. I want to catch this lowlife myself.”
“But you haven’t,” Skye pointed out. “And you needlessly got pissed off when our friends reported that they saw Sara at their campsite.”
“Those sightings…they’ve happened over the years like some ghost story that won’t go away. It’s hokey BS, if you ask me.”
“The sightings can’t all be BS. I saw Sara myself back in Seattle, standing at the end of my street. Then again at my office. She wants to be found, Quade.”
“Who are you people? Why are you claiming to see my sister? My sister is…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. “Why would she even be in Seattle? That’s ludicrous.”
Even though admitting she’d seen Sara did sound ridiculous, Skye didn’t back down. She folded her arms across her chest and simply stared at the man. “Yes, the sighting was in Seattle. Multiple times. Sara wants us to help find her. She’s sending us a message.”
“From beyond the grave?” Quade hurled back. “How does that work exactly?”
“You’ve completely given up on the old ways, haven’t you?” Skye charged. “That’s not my fault. That’s on you.”
Hung up in the awkward silence, Quade rubbed the back of his neck. “Without arguing that point, let me ask you this. What can you guys do that I haven’t already done? Or that the FBI hasn’t done?”
“For one thing, our team has already given you valuable information you didn’t have before. Three girls on the Wall of Shame are alive. Second, we’re here. We’re willing to hit the ground running. First thing tomorrow, we start at the beginning, or what appears to be the beginning. With Sara.”
“Not with Rosa?”
“Sure, we could start there. Help canvass. Help with flyers. That sort of thing. But we aren’t here to horn our way into an active investigation. Not only that, we’re willing to go back in time, back ten years, and dig through each report to find who or what was overlooked. We have people who’ve already uploaded the details into a working database, one that we created several years back to help us determine patterns. We’re specifically looking for geographic data. We’re convinced that something or someone was definitely missed. You’ve probably talked to this guy many times, perhaps regularly whenever you see him around town, and nothing registers as off.”
Quade wasn’t so sure. “How can that be? If I talked to someone that much, I’d certainly have my suspicions raised. There’s no one like that around here.”
“Wow. Really? Would you really know a serial killer if he didn’t want you to know his true side? That sounds incredibly overconfident to me. Are you sure that you have the right bead on everyone you’ve interviewed? Because whoever’s doing this is right in front of your face. He’s a local. Someone you might see often.”
Quade’s eyes widened. “You really believe that?”
“I know it. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. Did you ever question a guy named Santo Hopewell?”
“Now see, you’re way off base there.”
Skye ignored Quade’s assessment and went on, “Were you aware that Sara liked to stop in at Santo’s house to see his puppies.” She could see by the look on Quade’s face that it was new information.
“No, I didn’t know that. But Santo Hopewell joined the Army the year after Sara went missing. He was killed overseas, Afghanistan.”
“Doesn’t mean he couldn’t have killed Sara,” Josh emphasized. “Or the touchy-feely donut shop owner. Ellerbee. All twelve cases don’t have to be the same guy.”
Realizing they’d done their homework, Quade seemed impressed. “You don’t really think that, though?”
“No, not really. But did you eliminate Hopewell and Ellerbee? You did, right? Tell me you went that route and discounted it.”
Quade tightened his jaw. “Of course. When Sara went missing, Hopewell had an alibi. He was picking his father up early from his job at a lumberyard in Coeur d’Alene. Several people saw him there. It seems he and his dad shared a pickup between them. Hopewell used it to get to and from high school and then would drive into the city to give his dad a ride home. As far as Ellerbee is concerned, he’d taken his pregnant daughter to the doctor that afternoon. She was due to give birth in two months. Besides, Hopewell wasn’t in the area when most of the girls went missing and Ellerbee died soon after his daughter made him a grandfather. He didn’t last a year after Sara was abducted. Neither man was around when the others went missing.”
Josh rubbed his chin. “Fair enough. But we’ll keep stuff like that on the back burner just in case.”
Something about the exchange had cracked through a section of Quade’s stubborn veneer. “Tell you what, I’ll go along with this…until you screw it up. But you’ll need to coordinate everything through me.”
Josh shook his head. “Sorry. No can do. That’s not the way we work. Right now, I could promise the moon—maybe I should just do that to get on your good side—but we’d get off on the wrong foot. The truth is, you’d just get mad at us eventua
lly. We have our own system, our own way of doing things. We can’t waste valuable time coordinating every step we take with you or your office.”
Skye picked up the thread and ran with it. “Consider this. What if we had to make a move, and for whatever reason, you weren’t available? We don’t operate that way. But we do get results.”
“So I’ve heard. At least you’re honest about it. Just don’t think that your involvement won’t get out to the general public. Hell, Barbara is probably already shouting it from her own rooftop while we’re sitting here. She’s probably sending out emails.”
“You shouldn’t blame a mother for wanting answers,” Skye reiterated.
“I don’t. All I’m saying is that you’re bound to meet with resistance. A lot of it wherever you go. People here don’t like outsiders butting in. Not everyone will be as welcoming as Barb Smith. And when it happens, don’t come crying to me.”
“We can take care of ourselves.”
“Fine. Then at least give me a heads up if you happen to come across anything new. Agreed?”
“You mean anyone…new…who wasn’t interviewed back when it happened?”
“Right.” Quade shifted in his chair. “Do you really expect to get results?”
“Yeah. We do. We wouldn’t be here otherwise. Just to be fair, we plan on talking to your mom tomorrow. We sent her an email yesterday and got a reply back over dinner. She’s eager to talk to us.”
“I’m sure all the girls’ families will be eager to tell you how bad my department screwed things up these last few years. With no crime scenes, no bodies, no witnesses, we haven’t been able to catch a break.”
“Have you ever asked yourself why that is? The perpetrator has to be disposing of the bodies on his own land or access to land. He has to blend in, Quade. People are so used to seeing him that they’re oblivious to his presence.”
If it were possible, Quade Grayhawk looked as if he’d seen a ghost. Shaken at the idea of that, he sucked in a breath, huffed out a response. “The bastard better not be one of us.”
“He doesn’t live on the reservation,” Skye stated. “If that’s what you mean.”
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