She nudged Josh in the ribs to take a look. In a corner of the huge yard the wolf played with a baby, a silver-gray Alaskan malamute with big blue eyes and the largest feet she’d ever seen on a puppy.
Skye wasn’t surprised when Kiya scrambled over and the pup followed. Though her wolf sat like a dignified lady at her feet, the cute little bundle of fluff did not—the idea of manners seemed foreign to the fuzzball. She jumped and danced around Skye’s legs before bounding into her arms with a lick to the face.
“Aren’t you a pretty girl? You’re just a puppy, aren’t you?”
“The vet says she’s between four and five months old.” From a few feet away Debbie went through the pup’s story and how she’d been found.
Once the dog nuzzled Skye enough to win her over, the puppy moved on to Josh, making sure all her bases were covered.
Josh crouched down, ran his fingers through the girl’s fur. “You’re a roly-poly wad of energy is what you are. Does she have a name?”
“Not yet. That’s up to her new owners. I think you’ve found a new best friend.”
Skye met the woman’s amused eyes. “Your sign says this is the place for it.”
“It’s true. We’ve hooked up quite a few serious relationships since I’ve been here. This one is a sweetheart. Got a name picked out yet?”
Skye looked at Josh.
“Your dog, your call.”
“Our dog. But I think I’ll call her Atka,” Skye asserted as she rubbed the pup’s ears. “She’s Alaskan so it seems fitting.”
“That’s a beautiful name,” Debbie decided. “Does it have special meaning for you? I’ve never heard of it before.”
“It’s Inuit. The name means guardian spirit.” Skye scooped the dog up into her arms and said, “Come on, Atka, let’s go fill out some paperwork so we can get you home.”
They worked the rest of the day unpacking boxes while Atka settled in around them, most of the time underfoot. The curious pup sniffed and explored her new home, but didn’t stay very far away from her owners for long.
That was okay by Skye. Standing in the kitchen perched on a stepladder, she stacked plates in the cabinet as Josh handed them up to her.
“Don’t worry, we’ve almost got this room knocked out then we’ll move to the living room, get that squared away.”
Like a general with a plan of attack, she’d been working like a fiend to put the house right. Josh shouldn’t have been surprised in her resolve—she put Mr. Clean to shame. “Do we get to break for lunch?”
She grinned. “I’ll ignore that while you make sandwiches. If you’re bored, I can finish up. Why not take the dog out?”
“Come on, Atka. Let’s get some fresh air.” He took the leash down off the peg as the dog made a mad dash for the door when it cracked open.
“We’ll need to think about training and teaching her some manners,” Josh said as he disappeared down the back steps.
What the hell, thought Skye. The sun peeking through the clouds drew her outside. She crawled down off the ladder, abandoned her mission and took off running after man and dog. She caught up to them near the little ornamental pond. As they cruised past the hydrangeas, Skye watched Atka snub her nose at the flowers and squat between the sweet fern and pepperbush.
“Good girl.”
“She’s that, and smart,” Josh said, easily enough. “You know she has wolf blood running through her, don’t you? I can sense it.”
Skye nodded. “I figured Kiya picked her out special for us for a reason. It never occurred to me that she would.”
“It should have. The protector is on guard twenty-four seven.”
“The bond we witnessed this morning is unconditional love, loyalty.”
“Look up ahead. Kiya’s teaching her until Atka finds her own way.”
She followed his eyes, saw her wolf walking along the shore ahead of them, sniffing sand and surf. Atka trotted off to the same stretch of beach.
They followed the dog, drifting to the strand, hand in hand. Skye toed off her shoes, breaking the contact between them long enough to reach down and roll up the bottoms of her pant legs. She waded into the current with arms spread wide, spinning and turning.
Josh cupped his hands in the ice cold water and heaved it in her direction.
Darting just out of reach, she laughed and splashed him.
He was about to set off in pursuit when the wolf growled low in her throat. It got their attention about the same time the puppy began to bark loudly and distinctively.
“They share an ability to pick up on good versus evil.”
“That’s handy since you may want to take a look at what Atka’s carrying in her mouth,” Josh observed.
Skye stared down at Atka. “Oh my God. That’s a bone. Atka, where did you find this?” But as Skye knelt down, scrubbed the pup’s ears, she looked up at Josh. A realization beat a drum inside her. “He knows where we live.”
“Yeah. And he left that bone—looks like a small rib bone to me—right where the dog would find it. He wants us to know there isn’t a place we can run or hide, anywhere that he won’t be able to find us.”
“He was here while we were at the shelter.” Skye stood up, steeled her spine. “We aren’t running.”
“No. And we damned sure aren’t hiding.”
“And because of that, we’ll be the ones who’ll end him.”
After Harry had come and gone and taken his report, he’d left with one more souvenir destined for the coroner’s office.
“It’s like a puzzle. He’s sending us these pieces of his first victim. He doesn’t know we’ve ID’d her. Now we need to solve the mystery of this guy, what makes him tick, the why, the where, of his other victims. How many are still out there?”
“We keep circling back to the military base. That has to mean something.”
After they made dinner, the light of the full moon drew them outside onto the back porch. As they stood there locked up in each other’s embrace, Skye cozied up against Josh’s body. She looked out over the sparkling sea and felt as though her life had tilted perfect.
The only problem was she didn’t trust perfect. Never had.
She’d looked into the eyes of evil before and she’d won. Now, she would do it again—for Trisha, for Vanessa, for Maggie and for young Willa.
Chapter 23 Book 3
Monday morning Skye faced the day with a newfound outlook. Maybe it was because she’d brought along the newest addition to the Ander household or the fact that she’d spent a relaxing couple of days resting her brain. Whatever it was, today she was ready to tackle the case from a new angle, a new perspective. And she had help.
At the rate volunteers were showing up to offer assistance at the Artemis Foundation, she might have to get a bigger place soon.
In addition to Velma Gentry and Karen Houston donating their time for a few hours each day, she could now add Travis and Tate to the mix. The two men had offered to come in three times a week as had Vanessa Farrington’s parents, John and Doris. The state senator and his wife had written a generous check to help out the Foundation with expenses. Since there was still a string of other women unaccounted for, they’d also given Skye permission to use the money wherever she thought it would do the most good. Skye decided to do just that.
Today, she had dangled a fat cash incentive in front of three hardworking programmers, only to have each one tell her the same thing. Keep the money for getting the word out or use it to post a reward for information.
Leo, Reggie, and Winston had agreed to do whatever they had to do to stay as long as necessary until they found the man responsible for their coworker’s death. They had only one request—food and drink—provide them with a steady stream of soda, burgers or pizza and they’d be her slaves for as long as Skye needed them.
And she needed all the help she could get. It wasn’t just Maggie Bennett on everyone’s mind or Willa Dover or Vanessa. Selma Tolliver was still missing. Her family hadn’t heard a wor
d from her and no one had found a body. Without a body, there was still hope.
That’s one of the reasons so many people had shown up today. It made for a crowded work space. And because the clock kept ticking, they’d all gotten an early start.
Travis and Tate had showed up at seven a.m. to go through a stack of case binders that she and Josh had put together. The two men had gone page by page, making any notations with sticky notes about anything that law enforcement should check out a second time.
At the other end of the table the programmers sat elbow to elbow as they banged on their keyboards. It was nine a.m. and they’d picked up exactly where they’d left off the night before.
So when Winston came across a property tax record in Pierce County belonging to a man named Jason Berkenshaw, it was a big deal.
“I’ve been searching for all property owners in the specific area and zip code you and Josh suggested I look at. There aren’t that many. It’s fairly rural. But this Berkenshaw owns forty acres near the area you guys searched the other day. It fits because it’s less than a mile from the military base. And since tax records are public, I didn’t even have to hack anything to get the info,” Winston said, a bit embarrassed by how unbelievably simple the process had been.
“You might want to look at this,” Leo added, pointing to his laptop screen. “Berkenshaw is also a member of law enforcement. He’s been a member of ICE for thirteen years now.”
“ICE?” Skye asked, placed her hands on her hips. “You’re telling me this guy works in Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that he’s one of the good guys who tries to stop human trafficking?”
“And a long list of other duties,” Winston added.
“ICE agents do everything cops do but in the name of national security,” Reggie stated.
Skye met the eyes of each programmer. She didn’t want to rock the boat or toss water on their fire but… “What makes you guys so certain about this Berkenshaw guy? What about him sends up red flags?”
But in the amount of time it took her to spout the questions, a flash of memory kicked in.
“Wait. Wait a minute. Jason Berkenshaw. I’ve heard that name. I know that name,” Skye repeated. Then it came to her. “That’s the MP who questioned Daniel Cree after Ellen Schreiber went missing. I’m almost sure of it. You were there, Josh. Wasn’t that the name Harry mentioned?”
Caught up in the amount of data Winston and Reggie had been able to grab on their suspect, Josh raised his head, peered over the computer. “Yeah, I’m almost certain that was the name. Leo, do me a favor and look that up,” he directed. “Look to see if Berkenshaw was ever an MP at Fort Lewis. If he was, then he’s our connection to the military base.”
Leo began hitting keys on his Mac. Five minutes later, he turned the screen around. “He’s an army veteran, all right.” Leo rattled off his length of time in the military, his rank, his pay grade and his assigned duties while stationed at the nearby base.
Skye scanned through the details herself. “Berkenshaw started out as an MP when he was just eighteen, but got drummed out after nine years for having violent outbursts. And get this, he was stationed there during the time Trisha Danes and Ellen Schreiber disappeared two months apart.”
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’r
e 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 24 Book 3
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 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 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.
Skye Cree Boxed Set Books 1 - 3 Page 74