Sea of Bones

by Vickie McKeehan

  Skye looked up. “Let it rip, but be careful, I can only catch one thing at a time.”

  Josh held the camera out to arm’s length so that it would clear the lower branches before letting it go.

  Studying the flight of the camera, she settled under it like an all-star outfielder for the Mariners, making the final catch to win the World Series. “Got it. Now get your ass down here before you fall and break something.”

  “Gladly.”

  Once he made it safely back to the ground, Skye rewarded him with a hug and a kiss. “If you ever think about climbing Mt. Everest, though, I’d take a pass. You were white as a sheet up there.”

  “I was not.”

  “Yeah, you were. I got most of it on video.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What will you take to delete it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, but you can bet I’ll think of something.”

  ****

  Back at the office, the recovered camera had been disassembled and the parts spread out on the conference table.

  Reggie had personally enjoyed taking the thing apart. “High-end stuff. Although somebody modified it big time.”

  Leo bobbed his head toward the lens. “They upgraded the standard lens to telephoto capability, which means the owner of it could probably count the freckles on your face. The standard transmitter was replaced with a military-grade chip including encryption capabilities.”

  “How does he get this kind of equipment?” Skye wondered.

  “Anything is available on the black market these days,” Josh provided, his eyes glued to the software application. “Looks like it was also programmed with a static IP address, which means the only person who knows the ID is our suspect.”

  “Yeah, but there is some good news,” Leo maintained. “Reggie’s already cracked the encryption code. And after we add a few lines of our very own virus, a highly-acclaimed little Trojan horse we developed, whenever this guy hits the camera again, the IP address should attach itself to our code and deliver us his real IP and server location.”

  Josh winced. “That means someone has to go back out there and reattach the camera to the tree.”

  “You got it,” Reggie said as he busied reassembling the camera. “But not you. Skye sent us the video. Man, that squirrel really freaked you out.”

  “There were two of them,” Josh corrected. “And did I not mention that I once fell out of a tree…?”

  “And broke your arm,” Skye finished. “We get it. Hey Brayden, how are you at climbing a tree?”

  “Like a monkey. And I’m not afraid of a few squirrels, either.”

  “Super.” Skye slapped the kid on the back. “Then take Winston with you.”

  “Me? I hate heights. I don’t even like using the escalator at the mall,” Winston pointed out. “Why do I have to go?”

  “Do yourself a favor, Brayden, get the ladder from the storage room on the main level of the parking garage first,” Josh suggested, before handing Win a package of peanuts. “And take these. You’ll need to feed the attack squirrels as a diversion while Brayden shinnies up the tree.”

  “I’m not really an animal person,” Win said, deflated.

  “They’re just squirrels,” Josh returned. “You wanted field work, remember? Nature lives on the other side of that door.”

  “Yeah, but…this isn’t what I meant.”

  “You’ll be fine. Think of it as an outing with fresh air all around you for thirty minutes or so. I promise we won’t do anything important until you guys get back.”

  “Really?”

  Josh cracked a grin trying to keep this exchange upbeat. “Every team member has a job to do. Just get that camera put back where it was.”

  After Win and Brayden took off, Josh motioned for Skye to follow him into her office and closed the door. “Is it just me or has Winston been acting weird lately?”

  “You mean the combative thing where he argues about anything and everything?”

  “So it isn’t just me?”

  “Nope. He’s been that way since that girl broke up with him last spring. He’s irritable and angry all the time.”

  “What should we do about it?”

  “You’re his boss. Have a talk with him. You know, man to man. Suggest he go talk to an anger management counselor.”

  “Do you think it’s that serious?”

  “We’re talking about it, aren’t we? It must’ve bothered you enough to have this conversation.”

  Josh had to wait until the guys got back to get Winston by himself where he could build up to what he wanted to say. “How’d it go at Copalis Beach?”

  “I felt stupid standing there watching Brayden climb up that tree. He didn’t need me there.”

  “Ah. Maybe he did. We’re all a team here, Winston. What if the guy we’re looking for showed up there while Brayden was defenseless, putting that camera back like we asked? If we don’t have each other’s backs, then who does?”

  “What’s this about? I went, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, but you clearly did not want to go.”

  “’Cause it was stupid.”

  “But it had to be done. Why are you so angry all the time?”

  “I’m…not. Am I?”

  “You’re practically foaming at the mouth, ready to argue over every little thing. What’s going on? If this is coming from a girl breaking up with you, that happens to all of us at one time or another. It’s no reason to carry around so much anger toward your coworkers.”

  “That’s not it,” Win said, letting out a sigh before dropping into the nearest chair. “It’s…I found out that I’m adopted. My parents never told me. I guess I’ve been angry at them for months now. I can’t seem to get over how they lied to me.”

  “Then go talk to someone about it. A therapist would be a good start. You need to get a handle on your attitude before you begin alienating everyone around you who doesn’t understand why you’re…upset all the time.”

  “I’m sure Brayden thinks that. I said some things to him this afternoon that…were…not very nice.”

  “Start making your apologies then. Do it, Winston. I won’t tolerate anyone around here acting all pissed off at the world and bringing that to work. We’re under enough pressure as it is. Besides, that gets old after the first couple of times you snap at people. I understand you’re upset at your parents but get your act together. Because we still have a helluva lot of work to do. If you think your issues are bad, how do you think Deborah Mack feels?”

  Winston shifted his feet. “That’s low. But you’re right. I know my priorities.”

  Josh sent a soft jab to his arm. “Then let’s get in there and do our part to find Jennifer.”

  The team was still gathered in the conference room when Josh reappeared with Winston. All eyes might’ve turned on them, they might’ve been curious, but no one said a word as Winston took a seat next to Brayden.

  Josh rubbed his hands together. “Got anything on the websites yet?”

  “We’ve been waiting for you guys to get back,” Reggie supplied as he dimmed the lights and pointed to the PowerPoint presentation he’d created.

  Using another whiteboard as his projection screen, he started with the first slide, a map of the coast that correlated to the location of the places where people had gone missing, according to the individual websites. “As you can see all the sites are along the coast or near the ocean. We have Carmel-by-the-Sea in California all the way up to Vancouver Island in Canada.”

  The next series of slides showed the top twenty visitors to each site and their IP addresses. The last slide showed the list of IP addresses that had visited each site. “We compiled our data and came up with these IP addresses. These have consistently visited all the sites.”

  Reggie took his pointer and highlighted a single line. “Out of these, this one here has a pattern. It visits each site in a regular order, usually at the same time and it stays on each site for exactly ten minutes. My guess is it stays there
long enough to download any new posts or discussions from the targeted site.”

  At this point, Leo chimed in, “Tracking down this address is taking longer than we thought. So far, we tracked it from China, Russia, and India. We’ll nail it down soon enough though, no one is able to hide their footprint forever, it just takes time to unravel the puzzle.”

  Skye was the first to bring up what was on everyone’s mind. “I think we have a serial killer on our hands. We need to study the information from these websites and learn about the victims who went missing. That’s the only way to determine if there’s anything to the pattern.”

  Reggie scrolled through a few spreadsheets before finding the right one. “From a glance, the thing that stands out right up front is that these people all went missing near the ocean, and by that, I mean either their car, boat or campsite was found at or near the beach, like Dave’s Jeep left at Copalis Beach for instance. The next thing that’s odd is that there were no other car tracks or signs of anyone walking away from the abandoned vehicles. Best guess, they were removed by boat, either already dead or barely alive.”

  “Whoa.” Josh traced his finger along the coastline before clearing his throat. “So, our predator uses a boat to conceal his victims and dispose of their bodies.”

  Skye sat up straighter. “And where have the feet been showing up…exactly?”

  Reggie highlighted his laser pointer on the map from Vancouver Island down to the Oregon coast. “We’ve already discussed how the feet have been explained away by the authorities on more than one occasion. But now that we’re talking about a serial killer, we should probably contact the medical examiners…”

  Skye had been trying to wrap her head around the feet washing up on shore. “Let’s back up a minute. You think our killer takes these victims from as far away as California and Oregon and then brings them back up here, dumps them somewhere around Seattle so that the current carries parts of the bodies back down along the coast? That makes no sense. That’s a lot of trouble to go to for gratification. It certainly wouldn’t be instant.”

  Josh met Skye’s eyes. “Since when do serial killers make sense?”

  “True. And they get weirder. But since when do they delay gratification?” She angled toward Reggie. “These severed feet, are there any that remain unidentified through DNA matches?”

  “According to the Internet, several remain unidentified.”

  “Then we should start with county coroners and see if any of them match up against our own missing person database, DNA-wise.” She glanced around the room. “Winston, you find out for me, will you?”

  “Sure thing. I’ll start emailing them now.”

  Josh walked to the whiteboard with his hands in his pockets. “What if this person is a collector and not a dumper?” He turned back to Skye. “You said he dumps them here. What if he brings them here…alive, but chloroformed or sedated? At least that’s how he started out. Carmel-by-the-Sea was his first kill. Now, he works closer to home, still chloroforms his prey and then waits for them to die.”

  Leo snapped his fingers. “Like that weird serial killer movie where the killer killed people to make his perfect family, you know the scene where they find all the bodies sitting around a dining room table.”

  Josh rolled his eyes. “Try to stay with reality here.”

  “Well, I’m not suggesting that’s what the killer does. I just think everything we know so far, adds up to an organized, souvenir-taking, serial killer, that’s all.”

  Skye joined Josh at the whiteboard. This time, she began to tack up photos of their victims. Dave and Lindsey were on one side while Stacey and Jennifer graced the opposite side.

  “So far, these cases are connected together only by the thinnest of threads—like the Copalis Beach location. Some might say that’s a weak link, but I’d have to disagree. Dave’s Jeep. Clayton’s Audi. We took a giant leap there, hoping something would make sense down the road. Now we have a camera just sitting there in a tree…watching…waiting. I think it’s beginning to slowly click into place. Let me tell you why.”

  With her back to the others, she continued to add to her list. “Since we’ve put the serial killer theory on the table, we might as well take it to the next level. We have a report that the man might have a scruffy face. Don’t ask me to explain further because we’ll get off track. Anyway, we think our guy has a beard or maybe some type of facial hair. He’s proven he isn’t shy about breaking and entering to get access to his target. There’s evidence he uses chloroform to sedate his victims, obviously, so they’ll make less of a fuss during transport. And he possibly lives on family money, which means he has an unlimited supply of cash.”

  “Hence, his expensive tastes in camera equipment,” Reggie muttered as he clicked away on his keyboard.

  Leo fidgeted in his chair before looking up at Josh. “At the risk of getting laughed at, could we be looking at a modern-day H. H. Holmes? You know, the guy who built a murder house. Maybe this guy likes to take his victims back to wherever he lives and tortures them there? Less of a crime scene.”

  “Possibly,” Skye uttered as she transferred several more bullet points onto the board. “No one’s laughing at any speculative theory at this point. It’s too early for that. Now’s the time to open any weird avenues. From here on out, we should think in terms of the Macdonald triad or as it’s better known, ‘the triad of evil’.”

  “What’s that?” Brayden asked.

  “It’s a set of three common denominators, or behaviors, that most serial killers possess at an early age, a precursor to predicting violent predatory tendencies. It’s named for the psychiatrist, J. M. Macdonald who came up with the theory back in 1963. Some of the early profilers at the FBI, who studied the likes of Ed Kemper and Bundy, took this and ran with it. Later, some professionals widely debunked the idea. But I think the guy we’re after might be three for three regarding the triad. Although at this point, I could care less about his childhood obsessions like setting fires or killing animals, or even bedwetting at a late age. The focus now should be what’s he been up to lately. And by lately, I mean let’s find out if he was ever treated for a personality disorder.”

  “So you want us to look for all psychiatric patients who also have a ton of money?” Leo asked. “Needle in a haystack.”

  “I didn’t say the idea was perfect. But if you tweaked your search to include those psychiatric patients with a fat bank account, we might get lucky. See where I’m going with this? It’s a place to start. Grabbing at straws is all we have now.”

  Despite his young age, Brayden was a quick learner. “What about throwing UDub grads into that equation? I did mention the university is a link to all these cases. Margie and Paul’s son graduated from there. Lindsey and Dave went missing from campus. Stacey Dysart attended but didn’t hang around long enough to get her degree. Jennifer Mack was a law student. I don’t know about you, but I see a pattern.”

  Winston shook his head. “Too broad. Everybody and their dog goes to UDub. It would slant the results too much for any real kind of accuracy.”

  “Not necessarily,” Skye pondered, sending Brayden a nod of approval. “He’s made his point. UDub is the major university around here. It would be a logical assumption that most kids would want to go there, even wealthy in-state students. This is all conjecture anyway. But the more we can narrow down a set of criteria, the better chances we have at catching this guy.”

  “But to me, the statistical variation is too high,” Winston countered. He sent Josh a knowing look. “This isn’t me being difficult. Trust me, adding in UDub will send the results into the thousands.”

  Skye smiled. “Not if you include the wealthy angle and the right age group. For starters, stick with men who would be in the same age group as Dave and Lindsey.”

  Winston’s face changed. “Oh. Well. Yeah. That could knock the results down by several thousand right there. That might get the data to a manageable level.”

  Skye finally pu
t down the marker she’d been using to write with and turned to face them all. “Any other questions?”

  Brayden’s hand went up. “Where did the theory about the beard come from anyway?”

  Skye traded looks with Josh. “Let’s just say it’s a tip that came in from a reliable source and leave it at that.”

  Brayden wouldn’t let it go. “So you trust this reliable source?”

  “I have every reason to think she knows what she’s talking about.”

  Eleven

  Harry had spent the afternoon, along with Deborah and Judy, tacking up flyers on utility poles and handing them out to local businesses along Jennifer’s route to and from campus. They talked to store owners and the homeless people they encountered. They went up and down Pine Street, three times. They stood at the corner of the Metra station until they ran out of posters.

  When it started to get dark, Harry suggested to Deborah they head back to the Foundation. “I know you don’t want to stop, but you look exhausted. It’s time to call it a day.”

  Deborah’s face showed signs of stress and strain. “I so hoped we might bump into someone who saw her.”

  “People are busy. They rush by one another most of the time so fast they notice very little about the people they pass on the street,” Harry explained, trying to make her feel better.

  Judy snaked her arm through Deborah’s. “Come on. Harry will take you back to the hotel. You two grab a nice dinner, you get some rest, and we’ll do it all over again tomorrow.” When the woman looked like she might cry, Judy persisted, “You’ve put in a full day. There’s always getting an early start again tomorrow.”

  “I know. Coming here, I’m not sure what I expected. How do we find Jennifer among all these people who don’t even recognize her?”