Twenty-Two
By the time the SWAT team gathered at the Jaynes’ farm, it was almost three in the morning. In the headlights of two dozen police cars, long shadows danced across the potato fields.
On no sleep, Josh and Skye stood back and watched the scene from a culvert some thirty yards away from the shed and out of the way of the officers gathering along the perimeter. The SWAT team, wearing their body armor, spread out and surrounded the grounds. One team headed for the shed Gavin had guarded while a second team went to the farmhouse, hoping to find their suspect in his bed asleep.
But Skye’s focus was on the shed, hoping Emmadine was in there alive. She watched those officers dressed in tactical gear get closer to the door, and then break the lock before crashing through the wood.
She elbowed Josh when the door gave way. “Any bets on booby traps or tripwires?”
“I think we’re about to find out,” Josh said as the deputies moved inside the shed, treading carefully wherever they stepped. “But my money’s on explosives.”
Floodlights were brought in and aimed at the inside walls.
“I hate standing back here, watching from the sidelines,” Skye groaned. “We’re the reason they’re here.”
“Yeah, but this way we’re not taking the risk. It’s all on the backs of those officers going in there.”
“Point taken.” Skye watched as Quade disappeared into the shed. “The least he could do is give us a play by play.”
Josh’s eyes tracked back to the old building. “Settle down. I’m sure we’ll know what they find very soon.”
“You think the place is gonna go boom?”
“I hope not. We’re not that far from the action.”
Quade had been given the go-ahead to check it out for himself by the lead officer. What he found was a small machine shop on one wall and a trailer-sized kitchen on the other side. The potato shed had obviously undergone a renovation at some point. No longer used as storage for potatoes, the place had more of a rustic, cabin feel to it rather than a storage unit for tubers. There was a twin bed in one corner. An old loveseat in the other. But he also smelled an overpowering odor. It hung in the air like burnt oil and rotten eggs.
“As soon as the bomb-sniffing dogs are done, get the cadaver dogs ready. Once we make sure there are no explosive devices, let them sniff around and find out where that awful smell is coming from.”
It didn’t take long for the entire operation to take on a circus-like atmosphere. They watched the canine unit switch out. Forty-five nervous minutes ticked by with no word on Emmadine.
“Why hasn’t Quade come out and let us know if she’s in there?” Skye wanted to know, beginning to pace back and forth.
“I was wondering the same thing. I’m heading over there, getting closer to the door.”
“Not without me.”
The first officer met them and blocked their way. “You can’t come in here. We aren’t nearly done.”
“Bodies?” Josh asked.
“Not yet.”
They were about to oblige the officer and back up when someone called out to Quade. “Hey Grayhawk, I think we might’ve found those stolen National Guard weapons from the break-in over in Oregon last September. The boxes are stacked in the back almost as high as the ceiling.”
Quade glanced around the dingy walls. “Contact the ATF. They’ll want in on this. Any sign of the missing woman?”
“Not so far, but I think that smell is coming from an unknown source. We haven’t nailed it down yet. We might want to clear out and let the forensic team take over.”
Quade heard a disturbance behind him and spotted Josh and Skye. He waved the couple back. “We’re just getting started. Stay out of the way. I’ll let you know if we find your friend.”
“Her name’s Emmadine Duvalier,” Skye said, raising her voice. “When you’re ready to tell us something, we’ll be here. We’re not going anywhere. Staying right here until you tell us what’s going on.”
Josh tried to pull her back a step, but she jerked out of his grasp. “The least he could do is tell us what’s in there.”
“He’s got his hands full right now, Skye. Let the thing play out until we know what we’re dealing with. We’re lucky the place didn’t blow.”
Knowing it was true, she puffed out a breath. “I get it, but I don’t like being kept in the dark.”
Quade ducked back into the shed. He stood back and watched as the cadaver dogs went straight to the bed in the corner and plopped down next to it, alerting her handler to the smell of decomposition.
The forensic team arrived next, traipsing into the shed in their hazmat suits.
While Skye and Josh watched that scene play out, the deputies at the farmhouse had their hands full going room to room until they found their suspect hiding in the master bedroom under a pile of clothing, looking disheveled and somewhat rattled at the prospect of getting arrested.
Gavin Jaynes was hauled to his feet by two deputies while a third cuffed his hands behind his back. He wore nothing but a pair of soiled jeans and no shirt.
They marched him to the front door, half dragging him out of the house to the porch. He didn’t seem to want to go, so the deputies forced him down the steps and pushed him to walk toward the driveway where a patrol car waited.
But Jaynes glanced up and stared out over the fields. As if seeing it for the first time, he took in the activity happening at the potato shed. The bright lights were a dead give away that something big was happening there.
With the cool night breeze gusting and swirling around his body, Gavin stopped walking. He began to try and pull away as if he didn’t want to take another step. The closer they dragged him to the squad car, the more he began to ramble.
“Wait. No. Wait. You gotta believe me, I didn’t kill anyone. You gotta listen to me. Get me outta here. I’m not safe here. He’s watching us. He’s gonna kill me. You have to protect me. Put me in protective custody or something, a safe house maybe, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know. But get me outta here first. Take me to the station. That woman is still alive. I can help you find her.”
A shot rang out, the sound echoing into several more shots that took out the floodlights, car windows, and a slew of shots aimed at the septic tank. The SWAT team took cover and began returning fire. Everywhere. With shots pinging around their feet, hitting the dirt, and stirring up dust, the tactical unit was pinned down.
And then the firing stopped.
By the time Skye and Josh ran over to the house, they saw Gavin Jaynes lying in a pool of blood just a few feet from the cruiser. The man lay dead from the bullet hole in his forehead, his blood pooling on the asphalt and trailing into the black earth.
****
The chaotic scene remained hectic even as dawn broke. The morning sun tracked higher in the eastern sky as a contingent of officers dispersed into the woods to look for the shooter. The rest fanned out to go through the farmhouse again, searching the barn and the outbuildings for someone they might have missed. It didn’t seem to matter that no one could pinpoint the exact location where the shots had originated.
“How can they track the shooter’s movements if they don’t know where to start?” Josh grumbled.
Skye pointed to the tree line. “That’s the most logical place, a perfect spot for a sniper to take his best shot.”
A few moments after that, she saw officers approaching the woods, yelling that they’d found shell casings from a .30-30 and a shoe impression in the soft dirt. There were signs that someone had stretched out prone on the ground…and waited to take that one lucky shot.
Quade came up next to them and stood to the side. “I’m sorry, but there’s no sign your friend was ever held in that shed.”
“You come to that conclusion already?” Josh asked. “How can you be so sure?”
“For one thing, the place was stuffed to the rafters with weapons of every kind, ammo to go with it, and explosives. I’m not sure where Jayn
es could’ve hidden her in that small space except on the bed. The cadaver dog did hit there.”
Skye’s heart sank. “For human remains?”
“Yeah. But there’s no sign of Emmadine Duvalier.”
“I want to see inside,” Skye prompted. “Don’t give me any guff, Grayhawk. We got you this far. You didn’t even want to believe you were dealing with a cop.”
Quade scratched his head. “Well, technically speaking, we have a dead cop that might’ve been dealing in guns and non-traceable illegal weapons. What we don’t have is evidence he was ever a serial killer.”
“And now we never will since our suspect has been shot while in police custody,” Skye snapped back. “Sloppy work, if you ask me.”
“An unfortunate incident,” Quade established.
“More like convenient,” Skye tossed back. “That’s why I want to look around for myself inside the shed.”
“Okay. Fine. But if you’re hoping to score bodies or remains, you’ll be sorely disappointed. What we have are large quantities of AR rifles with serial numbers that match a shipment of guns stolen from the National Guard last fall, a machine shop where he produced his own untraceable weapons, guns of all kinds, and a roomful of ammo, enough for one or two battles against…who knows? Gavin Jaynes was a bad guy, but he’s not our serial killer.”
Skye kept walking toward the shed. “Sorry, Quade. You’re just plain wrong. The answer is here within reach, on this farm. The bodies are buried here somewhere. And Emmadine is nearby. I know it, I can feel it.”
Quade shook his head. “Not to insult your instincts or anything, but we need actual proof of that. Look, take this as a victory. You helped us nail a bad cop, a cop who was really into some weird shit. But…”
Skye didn’t hear the last of Quade’s rambling. She left him talking to Josh and entered the shed. It was a mess inside. Machine shop to the left. Kitchen to the right. A ratty old couch. A grungy bed. She perused through the length of the building to the back. She tried to ignore the flurry of activity around the guns where officers were still taking inventory.
The room where the guns were stored reeked of stale air freshener and mildew. She walked around wooden Army crates, tapping on sections of walls listening for a hollow patch. She examined cracks on the floor, cracks in the walls, looking for anything that sent up a red flag. Disappointed, she headed back to the main room.
In the corner next to the twin bed was a pile of junk, untouched, unsearched. An old broken chair that needed new caning and various rusted out machine parts blocked access to what was underneath that part of the floor.
“Hey, did anyone bother looking under here?” Skye shouted.
The only person who seemed interested was Josh, who had finally managed to break away from Quade.
“Help me get this junk out of the way,” Skye said as she began clearing the corner.
Together they made short work of the pile until finally, they could see the wooden floor.
“Is that a handle?” Josh asked.
Skye leaned closer to inspect the knob. “To a trap door. Help me lift it up.”
Josh grabbed hold of the metal and gave it a yank revealing a black hole to a space that could only be described as a dank cellar. The odor overwhelmed them.
Skye asked one of the officers for a flashlight.
“You can’t go down there. I’ll go get Quade or the lead investigator. They need to know about this.”
“You do that.” In the meantime, she grabbed a rusty metal flashlight off the workbench. “Do you see any stairs or a ladder?”
Josh peered into the hole. “Wooden steps. I’ll go down first.”
She handed him the flashlight and watched as he descended into blackness. The narrow beam of light revealed a dungeon-like room. It held a chemical toilet in one corner, a cot in the other. A flash of light revealed a rusted-out chain attached to the wall, complete with cuffs to make sure no one escaped.
Josh took out his phone to capture the layout and the evidence of torture. “Get Quade down here. If this doesn’t call out serial killer, I’m not sure what he wants.”
“They missed it,” Skye bellowed as she swiped through the photos Josh forwarded. “Emmadine could’ve been down there dying, and they would’ve missed it. They didn’t even bother looking under the junk. This is where he held his victims. How recent do you think this has been used?”
Climbing up to the top, Josh stuck his head out of the hole. “Two weeks ago. That’s a guess.”
“This is where he brought Rosa Andreas.”
“And everyone else.”
“Forensics would be able to swipe for DNA and verify who was held here.” She glanced up and spotted Quade. “Here’s your torture chamber. Well off the Reservation. You can thank us later. Because now we have to focus on nailing his partner, the guy who put a bullet in Gavin’s head.”
“Has SWAT gone after the shooter?” Josh asked, dusting himself off and handing Quade his phone. “These should tell the story. And don’t tell me this is from Gavin’s own personal S and M playpen.”
“SWAT’s combing the woods now.” Quade’s stomach churned as he slowly went through the photographs. “This…Sara could’ve endured this…before…?”
Skye took in Quade’s disgust. “Jaynes probably held his victims here for days, maybe even weeks. We’ll never know the answers if we don’t find his brother.”
“You think Roman is involved in this?”
“We were told Gavin dominated his siblings,” Skye began. “Sharon made it clear she was afraid of Gavin. However, she never said a word about Roman. Not one word, which makes me wonder. Roman could’ve been led around by his older brother, but what if…what if Roman was the main aggressor all along? Living in the shadow of his older brother might’ve triggered something. Roman should be your top suspect. Who else is around that Gavin trusted that much? Logic suggests Roman is the likely second piece to all this.”
“The bottom line is, don’t rule out Roman as the primary offender,” Josh added. “Keep an open mind. Although you have to find him first.”
****
After emerging from the shed, Skye remembered how she’d seen Sara Grayhawk and Kiya together at the edge of Gavin’s property near the woods. She walked over to the exact spot where she’d seen the wolf pawing the dirt. Kneeling on the ground, she scooped up a handful of loamy soil that the potatoes loved so much and gave it a sniff.
She caught a whiff of decomposition. Human remains. Kiya had not been wrong. Knowing she should have followed her instincts that day, she mentally kicked herself. When would she learn that ignoring a vision was never a good thing?
Sara Grayhawk had been here, both in life and in spirit. The girl had shown her the truth about this place. Why hadn’t she bothered looking closer, listening to the things in the same manner her ancestors had?
The answer came.
Gavin Jaynes had appeared out of that crappy shed to run them off from this spot. She’d left but should’ve come back to explore the area herself.
Scanning the landscape around her now, she bent down on all fours to what would’ve been Kiya’s level to get the same view as the wolf. Picking up on human scent, she uncoiled back to a sitting position, resting on her haunches. “What’s behind that tree line? I mean, I know there’s another strip of land over there. Who owns it?”
Josh used his phone to find an answer. After several long minutes perusing a county tax site, keying in the location, he shook his head. “Roman Jaynes owns the five acres on the other side. It’s a small tract, much smaller than his brother’s place. Four hundred acres versus five. Remember what you said Sharon told you? That Gavin inherited everything? Maybe Roman came along and bought that land over there in response. Roman’s place only stretches from the road until it winds around the bend to the creek bottom.”
The creek bottom.
“Any water running through it, or is it a dry bed?”
With the help of GPS and the Int
ernet, Josh pulled up a map of the area. “It’s a dry bed. But a few miles up the road is a small pond where locals go fishing.”
But Skye had already moved on in her head. “The birch trees grow there on the other side, don’t they? Spruce. Aspen. Ponderosa pine. Even oak.” A tingle of excitement gushed through her like water at high tide. “That’s it. Somewhere on the other side is Gavin’s dumping ground. He used his brother’s place instead of his own, hoping he could outsmart all of us. He almost did. Somewhere over there, he stuck Emmadine on his brother’s land.”
When she started to take a step into the brush, Josh snatched her arm. “You’re not going over there, especially through those bushes.”
“Why not? It’s the only way to get a good look at how it lays out. All Gavin had to do was walk through those woods to dispose of the bodies.”
“Skye, you’re not going in there,” Josh repeated. “Someone just took out Gavin Jaynes with one shot to the head. Whoever did it probably used those woods for cover.”
Skye met his eyes, met his concern. “And who had the best reason to end Gavin’s life? Think about it, Josh. Gavin got everything. Land. The family homestead. Mom’s approval. Mom’s love and devotion. Roman got none of that. He’s probably resented his brother his entire life.”
Quade took a step into the conversation. “No. That makes no sense at all. Why would his own brother shoot him down like a dog?”
“I can only think of one reason. Whatever resentment Roman felt, it must’ve built to hatred over time. Maybe Roman followed his brother into the darkness by kidnapping and murdering the girls. Then again, maybe not. But hey, why don’t we find him first and ask him to explain his reasoning?” Skye proposed.
“I’ll get some men and head that way,” Quade promised.
But Skye and Josh were already on the move, working their way through the first grove of birch. Kiya led them to the second dense thicket where spruce and aspen grew on the side of a slope. Up the hill and down again, they trekked into a valley of tall Ponderosa pine. They reached a green meadow sprinkled with oak trees that stretched across to the dry creek bottom. Here, Junegrass had taken off, sprouting to foot-high willowy shoots that swayed back and forth in the gentle, summer breeze.
Forgotten Bones Page 26