Forgotten Bones

by Vickie McKeehan

  Skye made a face. “Is that the best use of our time, though? How viable were they to you at the time they made your list? Let’s say on a scale of one to ten?”

  “No one was a ten. Maybe the highest I’d go would be a five. Some of them had weak alibis. So there’s an opening. The rest were alibied by girlfriends or relatives. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for where they were at the time, especially with priors.”

  “Do any of these men own property, a sizeable chunk of real estate they could use as a burial ground?”

  “Dan Twofeathers has a spread.”

  “Is it located off the Rez?”

  “No. It’s a family-owned ranch that provides lessons in horseback riding and trains kids to look after the horses. It’s an attempt to keep the tradition alive for the next generation. The Twofeathers family has been here for generations.”

  Skye shook her head. “We’re not looking for a Native offender here, Quade. We’re not. You can pretty much mark off any man on that list who lives on the Rez. The guy we’re hunting is most probably White, in his late twenties or early thirties, and has a wife with one or more kids. He definitely owns a piece of property somewhere in a rural area that allows him access to a barn or outbuildings with enough land to use for a dumping ground. He has a job with some authority…” Her voice trailed off, hesitating to put the cop angle back on the table. It had to be said, though. “We could be looking at someone who interacts with kids regularly, stops them while they’re walking just to have a friendly chat. Our guy could be a cop.”

  Quade’s jaw tightened. “If that’s where the evidence takes us, then so be it. I just want this guy stopped.” He looked over at Josh. “How reliable is her gut?”

  “I’d trust her instincts with my life and often have.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that you have to say that? So you agree there’s no point in revisiting these twenty guys?”

  “Where are your interview notes? Did anything stand out when you talked to them the first time around? Anybody send chills down your spine?”

  Quade stood up and grabbed a cardboard box off the credenza. He laid his hand on the top. “Read it all for yourself. Look at the videos.” He glanced over at Skye. “Both of you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Skye fired back. “Unless you think Josh needs to read them to me.”

  “Look, I’m just trying to be thorough. Two pairs of eyes are better than one. Seeing these men on tape might trigger a red flag. I don’t want to leave any stone unturned.”

  “We’ll take it with us,” she uttered, beginning to read the first transcript from the first folder. “I’ll ask Harry to weigh in, too, a fourth pair of eyes should be even better.”

  For the rest of the afternoon, the trio pored over the interview notes and taped sessions, some went back ten years to when Sara had gone missing.

  “They did what most departments do after a child goes missing,” Harry began. “They bring in the usual suspects, mostly sex offenders, heavy on the pedophiles. But I honestly don’t see a single man here who fits our profile.”

  Josh tossed another man’s file into the discard pile. “That guy was locked up between 2011 and 2013 when six of the victims went missing.”

  “Same with this one,” Skye murmured, casting another file aside and eliminating the guy from the suspect pool. “I don’t know what Quade is thinking. Is this busy work to keep us out of his hair or what?”

  “If it is, it’s working.” Josh was just about to tackle another file when Judy burst through the front door without knocking.

  “Guess what?” Judy announced. Flushed with the same amount of excitement, Reggie and Leo trailed after her.

  Without waiting for a response, Judy plopped down on the sofa and began to relay her news. “Felix gave us a list of the families Lily Redfern used to babysit for.”

  “And?”

  “Leo’s been working his magic. He’s tracked down addresses and plugged the client list into his database. He came up with some surprising results.”

  Leo stepped to the whiteboard in the corner and dragged it into the center of the room. He began to draw a map, a rough sketch that represented a portion of the area. “If the Reservation is the center where most everything happens, then our killer is within a two- to five-mile radius outside the perimeter of that base. But if you take away all the neighborhoods, the retail outlets, and public parks, then factor in Skye’s theory that he resides somewhere in the countryside, that leaves only two possibilities where he might live.”

  Josh got to his feet. “That’s brilliant, Leo. We were just walking along the Harrison Slough this morning. There are a good amount of cabins in the area. If we could take the names and match them to an address outside the city limits, we’d have a starting point.”

  “The name won’t be here among these sex offenders,” Skye reiterated. “Our guy’s too important to get caught. If I’m wrong, and he has ever been in trouble with the law, he’s managed to skirt around the problem enough that he didn’t get arrested for it.”

  “You think he has connections?” Reggie proffered.

  “I think he does now. He didn’t start out that way, though. Let me take a look at Lily’s list.”

  Judy handed off the paper version. “You can keep that. Leo has it all in the database, color-coded as to how it fits in with the victims.”

  “Even Gabby Knight?” Skye asked Leo.

  “Well, no. Factoring in Sawtooth Lake and the ones out of state would toast the results. I could break it down into a change of behavior type thing, though.”

  “That’s okay. I get it. We won’t know why the offender might have had a reason to get away from his family during those events—work issue, family matter, or just took off for a retreat. While out of his comfort zone, he nabbed another girl, and another, and another. I wouldn’t be surprised if the wife is submissive to his needs, enough that he comes and goes as he pleases.”

  “He wouldn’t allow her to question him about his travels or put up a fuss about being away from the family unit,” Josh added.

  “Exactly.” Skye held Lily’s client list in her hand. “Where are you, asshole? Which guy are you on this list? What are you doing right this minute? How did you charm all these girls into trusting you enough to get in your car?”

  “It gives me chills,” Judy said.

  Harry leaned back in his chair. “Look, if you want, I’ll finish up here. I can see you’re chomping at the bit to get out there and talk to the people on that list.”

  Skye shot him a grin. “You know me too well.” She turned to Josh. “Let’s head out. Who knows? We might get lucky.”

  “Hold down the fort, guys. We’ll send up a flare if this leads us in the right direction.”

  Fourteen

  Even though she was thirteen, Lily Redfern had been quite the entrepreneur. Her client list proved it. Her babysitting business might have begun on the Indian Reservation, but it didn’t end there.

  To get a better idea of Lily’s babysitting jobs and her movements, they started on the Reservation talking to Lily’s mother, Ivy, who had been her daughter’s booking agent.

  For two years, Lily had worked steadily for a variety of families, putting aside money in a savings account to pay for a laptop.

  “I’ve been keeping that money for four years now,” Ivy stated. “Her dad wanted to use it for a down payment on a pickup, but I wouldn’t let him touch it. We needed transportation at the time. That was probably September, six months after she went missing. Our old Dodge truck finally gave out. But I wouldn’t hear of taking that money out of Lily’s savings account. When she comes back to us, I want her money to still be sitting there just like she left it. The interest has been adding up. We’ll get her that laptop then. You’ll see.”

  Skye studied the woman, a young mom not even late thirties with big brown eyes that had lost their sparkle. Ivy had bundled her hair up in a ponytail that made her seem even younger despite the circles under her eyes that
said she didn’t sleep much. “Did you personally make sure you knew the family where you sent Lily?”

  “Absolutely,” Ivy said as her eyes tightened into firm slits. “You think one of the fathers did this? You think one of them took her?”

  “I don’t know yet. We need to explore every scenario.”

  “It wasn’t unusual for Lily to get multiple jobs on the weekend during a school year. She came highly recommended. Sometimes I had to turn down jobs because she was already booked up well in advance. Summers were crazy because her schedule would fill up. You know, Lily was only two weeks shy of her fourteenth birthday. And we were already making plans to keep the entire day open, including the evening, so she could spend it doing something fun. Not looking after kids. We’d already planned to take her and her sister over to Silver Lake Mall to get new shoes for spring and then eat tacos. Those were Lily’s favorite.”

  The sadness in Ivy’s voice got to Skye. But she had to keep the conversation on track. “The evening Lily went missing, she’d been booked to babysit two streets over.”

  “That’s right. The Plummers, a young couple with two kids under the age of four. They’d wanted a date night. It was a typical Friday after the end of a long work week. I couldn’t say that I blamed them for wanting to get out. Ellie and Sean were just settling into parenthood. And the job was so close to home, I thought nothing of it when I wrote it down in Lily’s little red calendar she kept by the phone. The kids were babies really, and all Lily had to do was put them to bed. When the kids are that young, it’s one of the easier jobs.”

  “Tell me about what happened before she left. Did she talk to anyone on the phone? Was she worried or anxious? Did it seem like she didn’t want to leave?”

  Ivy shook her head. “Not at all. What I remember is that it was just routine, normal. Lily got home from school that day on time. She did her homework, which didn’t take more than an hour. We ate supper. I warmed up a lasagna casserole, and around six-thirty, she left out of here to walk the two blocks to the Plummer’s house. She had her big coat on because it was around twenty-five degrees. But she never got there. It wasn’t even seven o’clock when the phone rang. Ellie was asking where Lily was, worried that she’d changed her mind and they wouldn’t be able to go out. I knew something had happened the minute Ellie got the words out. Because my Lily was so reliable, you could set a clock by her. Everyone knew it. That’s why she got so many people recommending her. That girl took her babysitting jobs very seriously.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Well, I was supposed to drop off my husband, Jim, at his part-time job cleaning office buildings. Friday nights are his turn. My nights are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. But once we realized Lily wasn’t at the Plummers, we didn’t go. Jim ran right out of here and jumped in his truck and started driving through the neighborhood, looking for her. When he came back around forty-five minutes later without her, I called the cops. I refused to put up with a lot of runaround from them either about Lily taking off, about her running away. Wouldn’t listen to it. People knew Lily, and fortunately for us, the cop who answered the call knew that Lily wouldn’t do that.”

  “What was the name of the officer who answered the call?”

  “Daryl Fast Horse. That name should be on your list,” Ivy pointed out. “Lily babysat for them, too. I’ve known the family my whole life. We lucked out when Daryl showed up instead of someone who wanted to label her as a runaway.”

  A girl of about fifteen came barreling into the house, chattering on about a boy flirting with her at the store.

  “This is Sage, Lily’s sister,” Ivy said. “Say hello to the people who are gonna bring Lily back to us.”

  “You found Lily?” Sage asked her voice rising with hope.

  The declaration from Ivy, combined with being put on the spot, made Skye’s stomach churn. “No. Not yet. But…”

  Josh cleared his throat. “We’re hoping your mother might be able to help us get to know Lily a little better.”

  Sage’s face fell. It had been so full of sweet teenage innocence only a few seconds earlier, the smile disappeared at hearing there was no good news to share. “She’s dead then. You won’t find her alive. She wouldn’t stay away this long. Someone murdered her.”

  “Sage! Don’t say stuff like that,” Ivy demanded. “I’ve told you before that if you don’t have anything positive to say, just go to your room. Go on. Get out of here. Right now. Go.”

  “Fine,” Sage uttered before storming off down the hallway.

  In the distance, they heard a bedroom door slam shut right before loud music began to play at a decibel-pounding level.

  “Sorry about that,” Ivy said. “But kids at school always put those kinds of ideas into her head. What can you do? They always say something to her about Lily being dead, and she should get over it. You know how mean kids are. They’ve been saying stuff like that for four years. I’ve told her to ignore it, but it’s hard not to hear something like that about your sister and not believe it. Anyway, it’s one reason we don’t let Sage date or babysit.”

  Poor kid, Skye decided as she took the interview to the next level. “Is there any way I could look at the red appointment book you kept on Lily?”

  “Sure. But you can’t take it out of the house.”

  “I understand.”

  Ivy went into the kitchen and rifled through a kitchen drawer directly underneath the telephone that hung on the wall. She came back into the living room, hesitating for several long seconds. As if she’d changed her mind, Ivy finally let go of the little book and handed it off to Skye. It felt like Ivy had just passed off something truly big like the Olympic Torch. “If I let you take it, will you promise to bring it back?”

  “I promise I’ll keep it safe.”

  “Okay. If it helps find where Lily is, you can take it with you.”

  After leaving the Redfern home, they headed further into the Reservation and the first name on Lily’s list. Sitting in the passenger seat while Josh drove, she was on her phone, looking up the history of the Reservation. “It used to be a lot bigger, stretching across Lake Coeur d’Alene. But when silver was discovered here, move over Indians. We want your land. The government treaties shrunk the area and shoved the people off what they’d always known to the other side of the water, onto a much smaller piece of land that looks kind of like an upside-down arrowhead.”

  “Nice way to change the subject. Did Ivy Redfern come across like that when you met her yesterday at the meeting with Barb Smith?”

  “Like what? Sad? Depressed? Angry? Disillusioned? Overprotective? Yeah. Except maybe the overprotective part. Sage wasn’t with her yesterday. But can you really blame the woman for trying to keep her only other daughter in a protective bubble? Kids running on all the time about how her sister is dead, rubbing it in. Sage must be fed up with the whole thing, too. After all, this is a nightmare that never ends. That family is proof of it.”

  “I meant that Ivy seems to still be holding out hope.”

  “Oh, that. Yeah. Hope’s the only thing she’s got left. And I wasn’t about to rain on that parade yesterday. I got the sense Ivy knows good and well the statistics, but as long as no one’s found a body, she won’t give in to the idea that Lily isn’t coming back.”

  “I keep coming back to the fact that most of these girls are gone in the blink of an eye. The window is so small. He picks up Lily within two blocks of her house. It’s like he knew where she’d be.”

  “Maybe he did. He picks out a girl, his next victim. He somehow strikes up a conversation with them, gets them to reveal their plans for the day, the evening, or whatever. He knows exactly where to strike. I don’t think this is as random as we first thought. He puts a lot of time and effort into abducting the right girl. His chosen girl. What’s indisputable is that he definitely has a type and doesn’t veer far from it. He sticks to what he likes, what he prefers. It’s obvious he finds everything about these girls sexually allurin
g. He’s drawn to their small stature, their eyes, their hair, the way they talk.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Josh said as he drove past a radio station and then an extension of the university. “You know, this is pretty country.”

  “It is. That bluff in the distance is called Steptoe Butte, the highest point on the valley floor, standing more than a thousand feet. It’s a sacred site they still use for prayer, meditations, and special ceremonies. They say it’s five hundred million years old.”

  Josh pulled the minivan to the curb of what was the home of the Plummer family. But after spending almost an hour talking with Sean and Ellie, no magic answers popped up as to who had grabbed Lily that cold March night four years earlier.

  At the Fast Horse home, Daryl answered the door wearing his police uniform. He let them come inside and motioned them toward the kitchen. “Want something to drink?”

  “Nah. We’re fine. I take it you know why we’re here,” Skye began.

  “Grayhawk told us he’d finally let in outside help on the serial case. And since my wife and I used Lily to babysit, I figured you might be stopping by eventually.”

  The microwave dinged, signaling that whatever was inside was ready. Daryl went over to retrieve the contents, pulling out a pizza steaming with heat with a pair of dish towels to keep from burning his fingers. “I work the graveyard shift tonight. My wife’s not home from work yet. But I need to grab something before heading in.”

  “Go ahead and eat. Sorry to interrupt your meal.”

  “No problem. The night I got the call about Lily, my heart just flipped in my chest as soon as I heard the name. And after I confirmed the address, my heart sank. I called the radio station immediately and had the DJ working the timeslot cut in and make an announcement.”

  “Over the airwaves? That’s brilliant,” Skye noted. “Quick thinking.”