His Garden of Bones

by Vickie McKeehan

  “I’ve studied the way you move. I’ve prepared for this. There’s no way in hell you’ll take me down,” Dillard boasted.

  “Then you’re in for one helluva fight, aren’t you? I doubt you’re able to take the both of us.”

  Just as she’d hoped Dillard fixated on her voice, on her bravado.

  It allowed Josh time to advance from the rear. Timing and opportunity gave him the chance to get close enough to kick the handgun out of Dillard’s fist. When it went sailing into the cedar trees, Josh tackled Dillard and took him to the ground.

  Skye rushed toward both men and stomped her boot down on Dillard’s arm—the one holding the stun gun—grinding her weight into his palm. But she underestimated Dillard’s strength. The man rolled over in pain and grabbed hold of Skye’s leg bringing the electrical device up to her calf. It made brief contact with her muscle, long enough to send a jolt of voltage through her body. The combination of the current plus Dillard’s grip caused her to lose her balance. She tumbled over both men as they locked together in a tussle for control.

  Dillard kicked Josh in the head and crawled a few feet away before getting to his feet.

  Josh caught up with him and rammed his fist into Dillard’s face. He pushed Dillard up against the cabin, but the guy used it as leverage to shove out of Josh’s grasp. From somewhere on his body, Dillard pulled a knife, jabbing it toward Josh. But Josh managed to dodge the tip of the blade.

  By this time Skye had picked herself up out of the mud. She snuck up on Dillard’s blindside, attacking him by swinging her metal stick across the man’s skull.

  In a sweeping move, Josh elbowed the guy in the gut, which gave Skye another opportunity to crack the metal rod hard over the man’s head.

  He went down but he didn’t stay down. Dillard fought like a crazy man high on PCP. Refusing to quit, he lashed out, hurling himself toward Skye in a body block. Skye darted out of the way, but the bastard snagged her ankles again in a last ditch effort.

  But this time Skye was quicker. She batted his arms and head with her stick again and again while Josh rained down blow after blow to Dillard’s torso. Josh used brute force to shove Dillard away from Skye.

  Reeling from the onslaught, Dillard tried to head-butt Josh. But Skye pivoted, brought the stick down across his shoulder blades with a whack.

  Dillard reached back, bent down, swung his arm out to snatch something that looked like a fireplace poker from the stone fire pit.

  Josh ducked in time to prevent the metal from making contact. Skye kicked her leg up and out tripping the bastard. Dillard landed face first into the mucky earth, hitting his head on one of the large stones.

  Josh pounced. He aimed for under the chin for full effect, landed a blow to his mouth about the same time Skye found the sweet spot for a solid crack to his jaw, drawing blood.

  She latched onto Dillard’s wrist, used her strength for leverage, and bent his arm all the way back until Josh could subdue him.

  Skye narrowed her eyes and finished him off with a one-two, left-right punch.

  This time, Dillard Barstow stayed down for the count. Kiya made sure of it.

  High above Lake Union at Theron King’s stately mansion the rain kept coming down. Each drop of water added up, accumulating in ponds, saturating the massive gardens located around the estate until the soggy earth could hold no more. The torrential downpour caused the already waterlogged ground to shake loose debris and rock. The manicured lawns began a slow slide down the hillside.

  Sometime during the night, the earth grudgingly gave up hints of Theron King’s very private personal habits. It revealed a good deal about how he’d started life out as Dillard Barstow.

  Maybe in the spirit of Christmas, Mother Nature had given the ultimate gift, solving pieces of the puzzle that others might never have noticed. Since the mystery of Dillard’s life unraveled—his special garden of bones would be a secret no more.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The hours between midnight and six a.m. had been spent lurking outside a conference room at the Seattle PD. Skye sipped a cup of vending machine coffee from a Styrofoam cup trying to stay awake. No one had been to bed yet—not Josh or Emmett or Harry or Travis, certainly not Dillard Barstow.

  Emmett and Harry had been crammed into an interview room for hours trying to get their suspect to give up information. Josh had even taken a turn, attempting to get the guy to open up to him. But so far Dillard had said very little to anyone.

  No one was giving up hope, though.

  She and Josh had cleaned up somewhat from their fight in the woods. They’d used a restroom down the hall to scrape off several layers of caked mud. But despite their efforts, their clothes were still damp and dirty.

  Her pants and top had become stiff. Even her jacket and vest felt as if they’d never wear quite the same way again. Sitting with any level of comfort in clothes she’d had on for more than twenty-four hours was damned near impossible.

  She needed a hot shower and a bed. But then, so did everyone else.

  Travis paced in front of the large bank of windows on one side of the room, his own coffee steaming in his hand. “Jada called. She says Chenoa has a concussion but should be fine in a day or two.”

  “That’s good news,” Skye said knowing she had to get something off her chest. “Look, if you want to be with Chenoa, I completely understand. I know you still care for her. I promise I won’t give you a hard time about it. Just because you two broke up, doesn’t mean you couldn’t pick up where you…”

  Travis sent his daughter an amused look. “So, I have your blessing to get back together with her?”

  Skye swallowed hard, but managed to toss out the word that wanted to catch in her throat. “Sure.”

  “That’s good to know. There’s just one problem. Chenoa and I aren’t right for each other. You were right about that. Sure, I care about her but at this stage of our lives we have vastly different priorities, too many to overcome to go beyond anything but friendship between ranchers. Our relationship would be a constant battle of wills, an endless conflict. I know that now.”

  Elation washed over Skye but she tried not to show it. Her face though must have beamed with pleasure at the news because Travis flashed a wide smile.

  “Don’t worry. I already have my eye on someone,” her father said with a wink.

  Her eyes lit up. “Lena?”

  Before she could get an answer, Josh stepped into the doorway and motioned for them to follow him. “You guys have to see this. Dillard is finally beginning to open up. But it isn’t what you might think.”

  “What is it then?” Skye wanted to know. “Is he describing his crimes in detail yet?”

  “Not exactly. Emmett’s a ways off from getting him to do that. At least not the way you’d expect.” Josh stopped in front of a window with a view into the interrogation room where Emmett and Harry sat across from the man still dressed in his riding outfit, dirty from the fight. With three people stuffed in there it made the small space seem very closed-in.

  The one-way mirror effect and microphone allowed them a glimpse into the Q & A firsthand along with witnessing the man’s splintering transformation into several other personalities.

  They listened as Emmett picked up the questioning with a firm but patient tone, his voice dripping with understanding instead of a direct verbal assault. “Tell us why you ducked into the Stockman houseboat to hide? We know you’d been to a party there last spring long before the kidnapping took place.”

  It wasn’t Dillard who answered, but Justine who took the stage to introduce herself and explain Dillard’s actions. With a coy smile on his face, complete with feminine mannerisms and voice, Dillard morphed into Justine. “It’s simple really. Dillard panicked. That boy always tended to choke under pressure no matter what he did. No pun intended,” she added with a heartless laugh.

  Tiffany wasn’t about to let Justine hog the entire spotlight, so she chimed in—Dillard’s voice changing slightly in
tone and cattiness to take on Tiffany’s more assertive persona. “What else were you expecting? A brilliant enlightening moment when you finally get it that Dillard had help, because he isn’t bright enough to have acted alone.” Tiffany snickered with delight at her own clever words. “You see, Dillard couldn’t have done anything by himself. Like Justine said he was always panicking when the deed had to be done. It’s time you understand that Justine and I were the driving force. That’s because we have more balls than Dillard and Theron ever had put together. They never made a whole man in their younger days, let alone now.”

  “So you and Justine talked Dillard into committing murder all these years?”

  Tiffany pursed her lips, put a hand up to her mouth, and motioned like she turned a lock. “I’ve promised not to say a word about that.”

  Undeterred Emmett changed tactics. “I’m curious about something. Why keep your victims’ bodies hidden and buried, your activities off the radar? Then all of a sudden start leaving them in plain sight where they could be found? Why remove the breast implants, like you did with Lisa Williams, Carrie Montague, and Taylor Dinsmore?”

  It was Justine’s turn to speak up. “So those were their names? All this time I had no idea who they were,” she said with a shrug.

  But Tiffany held the key to this part, addressing the issue with an air of cool certainty. “Remember we’re speaking about Dillard, right? Those women you mentioned were his rejects. The buyers he dealt with on a regular basis had altered the women’s appearances. With their bigger breasts, Dillard no longer found them attractive, so he got rid of them. The girls had tattoos, belly rings, and tongue studs.” Tiffany scrunched up her face in revulsion. “After those kinds of alterations, the women simply weren’t good enough to put in his garden. He couldn’t bury them on the grounds. He had to do something to get rid of them.”

  “I see. So Dillard Barstow was a major dealer in the sex trafficking business? And he allowed returns?”

  “Of course,” Tiffany said with a casual air, as if the sex trade was no big deal.

  “That’s unheard of. Sex traffickers don’t usually take back the girls.”

  “Dillard did. It was his way of keeping the customers coming back, again and again. He found the best way to customer satisfaction was to take back what he considered damaged goods.”

  Because Tiffany seemed determined to keep talking, Emmett knew she was, most likely, the gatekeeper. It seemed to him that she didn’t just want to talk, she needed to talk, not out of a sense of responsibility or remorse, but because she’d acted as the vault, the place where Dillard had stored most, if not all, the information about his crimes. The Tiffany personality seemed to be the strongest of the lot, the most cognizant, and the most perceptive. That’s the reason she held the knowledge that would help unlock the puzzle.

  So Emmett let Tiffany talk.

  “What people don’t understand about Dillard is that as Theron, he might be able to grow a decent patch of lettuce, but the man was a horrible businessman. Overall, he let his buyers walk all over him.”

  Emmett exchanged looks with Harry, who had turned over the interview to the profiler an hour earlier. Both Emmett and Harry understood that patience would be their greatest asset. Harry bobbed his head toward Emmett, indicating he wanted him to keep at it.

  “How did Dillard let the customers walk all over him?”

  “They’d often place orders, but then when Dillard would fill them, they wouldn’t pay full price. Dillard let them off the hook every time.”

  “Something you wouldn’t have done?”

  “Never.” She tapped the side of her head, leaned in to share a secret. “You’re looking at the person in charge. Dillard was simply the brawn. But he’d often mess everything up in spite of all I did to keep control of the situation.”

  “I see. What was Dillard’s motive? I mean, explain it to me. If you and Justine are Dillard’s feminine side then why abduct women? Did Dillard have sex with them?”

  For the first time, the question made Tiffany visibly uncomfortable. “You just don’t get it do you? Dillard had all this rage and anger inside him. It was all geared at women. Killing them was a way to get back at them for being mean to him, for rejecting him, like his mother did. His mother hated him. You know she castrated him at twelve. Just got angry with him one day and cut off his…” Tiffany stopped talking long enough to spell out the word. “P-E-N-I-S.”

  That statement caught both Harry, the seasoned detective, and Emmett, the long-time profiler, off guard. It took several long seconds before Emmett was able to continue. “What on earth could Dillard have possibly done to his mother to make her that angry to do such a thing?”

  Now, Tiffany whispered in hush tones. “He disobeyed her. No one ever bucked up against Hester Barstow, not even her husband, Harold. Hester ruled the roost, if you know what I mean. She thought Dillard was too much of a sissy. That made Harold beat the living daylights out of Dillard, more than once.”

  “I see. When did the abuse begin? When did you come on the scene?”

  “Hmm, let me see. Dillard was about six when I popped out one day after school, to help him deal with his mother. But I seemed to make her angrier. So you see, my presence couldn’t help Dillard much. Neither could Justine’s.”

  “How many other victims do we have out there, Tiffany?”

  “You mean Dillard. How many victims does Dillard have out there?”

  “Okay. So how many?”

  Tiffany threw out a number.

  Emmett scoffed at that, knowing she’d take his disbelief as an insult. “No way, do I believe Dillard killed thirty-eight women.”

  Tiffany held up a right hand. “Absolutely he did. There are at least twenty on his property right now. If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourself. There’s another ten or so down in Oregon, eight more in Idaho.”

  Emmett shot a look at the detective.

  Picking up his cue, Harry turned up the heat. “This is nothing more than bragging. There’s no way you’ll be able to convince me that you’re smart enough to get that many women to go with you.”

  Tiffany fluffed her hair as if the wig were still attached to her head. “It was easy when they trusted another woman.”

  “Is that why you kidnapped a mother with a baby? What do you have to say about that?” Harry snapped.

  Tiffany rolled her eyes. “That was Justine’s ridiculous notion. She wanted to try motherhood. I knew it wouldn’t work, especially not with Dillard trying to pull it off.”

  With that declaration an argument ensued between Justine and Tiffany—Dillard’s speech changing slightly for each woman’s voice pattern as he went rapidly back and forth from one persona to the other.

  Harry took the moment to take a break, excusing himself from the room.

  Out in the hallway, Skye watched with a jumble of fascination, confusion, and a major dose of implausible skepticism. When Harry rushed past her, she called out after him, “Do you believe this guy?”

  But all Harry gave her was a wave of his hand and muttered, “We’re about to find out. I’m headed now to contact the authorities in Idaho and Oregon. Maybe they’ll be able to search the places where Dillard Barstow used to live.”

  Skye turned back to the window where the man in question sat, ramrod straight, his posture perfect in the uncomfortable plastic chair, acting like several other people. “It’s amazing how calm and confident he is, how arrogant. How he comes off as so much smarter than everyone else in the room. We’re all idiots hanging on every word that comes out of his mouth. Watch his soulless eyes light up each time he divulges a detail.”

  “So you don’t buy the multiple personalities?” Josh asked.

  “Buy his act? Not for a minute do I believe that inside that man’s body, that brain, Dillard is harboring four unique personalities. Do you? I think it’s a clever attempt to set up an insanity plea down the road.”

  Josh twisted his mouth in thought, the nerd surfacin
g as he tried to make sense of it all. “Dillard’s no dummy. You have only to look at his successful business to see that. As Theron King he built one of the best well-run, organic produce farms in the state. Winston and I did some research back and forth via text this morning trying to find out as much as we could about Barstow’s childhood. After much digging and calling around, I finally found an aunt in rural Idaho who says that as a boy Dillard voiced early on, probably around six or seven that he would rather live life as a girl. But that freaked out his parents. They were old school and appalled at the idea that their son might even consider living his life as the opposite gender. So together, they both punished him severely and often. The aunt says they beat him regularly, trying to get him to act more like a boy than a girl.”

  “I see. They wanted the son they thought they had. I get it.” Skye chewed her bottom lip, thinking, considering. “And do we know what happened to his parents?”

  “Neighbors say Hester and Harold Barstow loaded up the car one Friday afternoon to go to a church retreat in Helena, Montana, for the weekend. It was a three and a half hour trip straight up I-15. But for some reason they veered off course. They were killed in a one-car accident on a rain-slick back road. Dillard was a freshman in college at the time, living out of state.”

  “Interesting. Let me guess. Dillard was their only heir and despite the friction between them, he inherited everything they owned.”

  Josh nodded. “The Barstows died intestate, without a will. The probate judge gave their son the bulk of their wealth and property. It totaled in the neighborhood of half a million.”

  “Figures. What about this aunt? No doubt she sat on the sidelines all that time remaining silent through it all,” Skye said with disgust. “Watching Dillard’s bruises build up. Did the boy attend school? Where were his teachers? His counselors? The school nurse? Someone should have asked them how they’d like the idea of getting a beating.”

  After another two hours of batting the issue around in the hallway, Emmett finally emerged from the interview room looking like the life had been drained right out of him.