Down Among The Bones

by Vickie McKeehan

  “Either way, it’s the ideal place to hide a body.” But Brayden did a quick calculation in his head. “I’d say four football fields.”

  “More like six,” Leo stated.

  Skye folded up her map. “We’ll find out soon enough who guessed right because we’re covering every inch. I’m convinced that he buried the others somewhere along the Snoqualmie River.”

  Leo shouldered his backpack. “Then we best be getting to it. Time’s wasting away arguing about it.”

  ****

  Guided by Kiya, Skye led them out of the park. Leaving campgrounds and picnic tables behind, she found an old dirt logging road she could use as a shortcut to get to the banks of the Snoqualmie River. After reaching the shoreline, Skye directed the team to spread out. Shoulder to shoulder, they trekked into the woods using methodic steps.

  They searched out spots where the woods were less thick and the trails less traveled. They stopped for water breaks along the way but mostly kept up a pace that could only be described as brisk and determined. Knowing they were looking for remains kept complaints to a minimum.

  About five hundred yards in, the team met rocky landscape and with it the first sign of grumbling.

  In the blink of an eye, Winston reverted to his old ways. “I don’t see how anyone would use this area to get victims in here without wasting a lot of time and energy.”

  Ahead, Skye spotted Kiya standing in the middle of an old fire trail that probably hadn’t seen any use in a decade or longer. “Just because we went in this way, doesn’t mean our killer didn’t know a better way in.”

  To prove her point, she bobbed her head toward the back trail, seeped in undergrowth thick with flowering viburnum and yucca.

  “We’re close,” Josh whispered, reverence in his voice.

  Harry came up to stand next to him. “I got a whiff of decomposition just now. Do you smell that?”

  “You’re about to find out the reason,” Josh promised as he followed Skye deeper into the heart of the forest. Across the rutted fire road, a grove of fifty-foot-tall evergreens towered like a protective fortress over a small clearing, no more than twelve feet in diameter. In the center stood a huge tree stump, likely cedar. The place looked like an altar where the killer could sit and admire his handiwork, no doubt reliving the adrenaline rush of what he’d done to each of his victims.

  Kiya surveyed the ground before leaping into the middle of the stump.

  The dumpsite reminded Skye of a stone circle, but instead of rocks, it was bones that littered the ground in what could only be described as a ring, a ring of death. The stench of decomposition stopped Skye in her tracks. Horrified to take another step, she surveyed the scene from where she stood, doing her best to process the gruesome terrain.

  Without saying a word, Josh wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

  Even though she felt like throwing up, she forced herself to do the job. “I count eight bare skulls, a few with hair. But I don’t see Emelia among these…remains.”

  Josh grimaced. “No, it doesn’t look like she’s here. That victim before Cassie, though, what was her name?”

  Skye glanced at the nude, sticky corpse decomposing in the hot summer sun. The flies were thick around the remaining flesh. Doing her best to remember what she’d read in the file folder just that morning, her mind flicked with memories rushing like a flood through her brain. As she stood there, the morning seemed a lifetime ago now.

  “Anne Harding,” she choked out. “The pretty kindergarten teacher. Twenty-two. She’s been out here since March. The animals have gotten to her. Better tell the techs to check back in those woods for more. Harry? Where’s Harry?”

  Josh pulled Skye back a few steps.

  Harry was standing behind them, fumbling with his phone. “Dan Tennison. He’s my source. Calling him now.”

  “And we should probably call Foley,” Josh noted. “We promised him an update. He needs to know to keep looking for Emelia.”

  “So do we,” Skye muttered, her hand still resting on her stomach, trying to keep her breakfast from coming back up. “Give me a minute. Why don’t you talk to Foley?”

  Recognizing the significance of the moment, Brayden shooed the others back across the dirt road. As he did so, he wondered what the hell he would tell Dani about Emelia. Maybe he had been trying to impress her. But now, with no news about her cousin, he somehow wished he’d never dragged the people he cared about into this hellish nightmare.

  He’d only gotten a glimpse of the circle, but what little he’d been able to make out had been enough to sicken him. When he noticed tears trickling down Deborah Mack’s cheeks, he went over to her even though Jenny was already trying to comfort her mom. “Hey, don’t do that. At least, Skye and Josh found them. These people aren’t missing anymore. Think of what that means to their families.”

  Deb gripped her daughter’s hand. “I know you’re right, but this brings back so many memories when I waited—what seemed like an eternity—to hear any news about Jenny.”

  Jenny wrapped her mother tighter in her arms. “Brayden, would you tell Harry that I’m taking mom back to the car?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll go with them,” Winston offered. “Anyone else want to head back to the car?”

  Leo wiped the sweat from his brow. “Yeah. I’m not needed here. And this place gives me the willies. Judy, what about you?”

  Reggie reached in the pocket of his khaki shorts and handed a set of keys off to Judy. “Go ahead. Take everyone back home. I’ll stay here with Skye and Josh until the crime scene people get here. I’ll catch a ride with Josh.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “No. Go.”

  Judy leaned over and kissed Reggie on the mouth before turning back to Deb. “Come on, I’ll take you guys home. Let’s get out of here.”

  “I came along because I really didn’t think we’d find anything,” Jenny explained. “I should’ve known better. Skye and Josh are amazing.”

  Judy managed a smile. “Never underestimate them. They find people all the time. I just wish we could’ve found Emelia.” Hope rising in her voice, Judy went on, “Maybe that means she’s still alive.”

  “I hope so,” Deb said, wiping the tears from her face. “Harry will understand why we didn’t stay, won’t he?”

  Judy dangled the keys in her hand. “Harry will be busy for the next couple of hours. Skye and Josh, too. They wouldn’t want you hanging around anyway. Anyone who wants to get out of here, let’s go.”

  Brayden and Reggie stayed. The two men stood side by side, watching for any sign of activity on the old fire road.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Brayden asked.

  Reggie nodded. “Probably. We came in the back way, didn’t we? This road has to loop back to Ames Lake somewhere south.”

  “Yeah. Let’s go walk it and see what kind of shortcut it is.”

  “Let me mention where we’re going to Skye.”

  But before Reggie could do that, it was Skye who approached him. “Josh and I want to go check out this road, see where it leads. Harry will stay behind and wait for his friend. Did everyone else head back?”

  “Yeah. It was too much for Deborah, Jenny, and Judy. Leo and Winston went with them.”

  “Good,” Josh said. “I have a feeling though they took the long way around to where we left the cars. If they’d stayed, I’m sure this road is the shorter way back. That is if you can call it a road. It has to connect back to where Cassie was left eighteen months earlier.”

  Brayden checked his GPS. “It’s not on any maps, that’s for sure. We’ll need to walk it and see for ourselves.”

  The first quarter mile of road was rough. They encountered potholes of various sizes along with large gaps of busted concrete. It was like that until it evened out to an old blacktop artery with weeds growing through the asphalt, weeds so high they came up to Josh’s knees. Despite the overgrown vegetation, the road was undoubtedly drivable if you had
the right 4-wheel drive vehicle with a high enough undercarriage designed for off-roading.

  They continued to follow the blacktop as it curved around and turned to chunky gravel. Despite the big rocks, it did eventually reconnect to an old farm-to-market road that dumped out right in front of the Ames Lake neighborhood where Cassie’s remains had been discovered.

  All along the pathway, Josh could tell that the thick underbrush had recently been flattened, probably months earlier. Tire tracks at the entrance seemed to indicate that a large vehicle had barreled through there mowing down the canary grass. The crop of yellow archangel had somehow managed to remain untouched. “Looks like he hasn’t been back here since March when he dumped Anne Harding.”

  Scratching his head, Reggie looked around. “Okay, those look like tire tracks from a big SUV all right. But it still doesn’t explain why he left Cassie in the ravine instead of back there where we found Anne’s remains.”

  “Maybe it does,” Skye stated. “Maybe he thought someone had followed him out here. Stands to reason he might spook because he did have a dead body in his vehicle.”

  “Or,” Josh began. “He didn’t think whatever vehicle he used to transport Cassie’s body could make it down that rough road we just walked.”

  “Oh, my God,” Skye blurted out. “You’re right. That’s why he steals SUVs. Big ones. He needs a vehicle high enough off the ground with the capability to go off-road. That’s why he left Cassie at the ravine. Whatever vehicle he used to kidnap her couldn’t get him where he wanted to go. He simply couldn’t get to his dumpsite, so he made do by throwing her in that ditch.”

  “Ah, now it makes sense. He had every intention of coming back and adding Cassie to his collection,” Brayden summarized. “When you think about it, that’s brilliant.”

  Brayden took out his phone. “I’m checking the weather to see what conditions were like the February night Cassie disappeared.”

  “No need,” Skye noted with grim reality. “I remember what was in the file. It was raining and cold. We’d had record lows for two weeks. When Cassie went out to the airport parking lot, her tire was flat. A woman alone in the freezing cold, desperate for a ride, maybe someone offered her one.”

  Josh nodded. “Might be someone with connections to the airport.”

  Deep in thought, Skye glanced over at the rough terrain. “Maybe. But I think he might’ve been there and got off a flight himself. It was a spur of the moment abduction. Never underestimate a serial killer’s opportunistic ways. But things went wrong from the start. Cassie was the first major mistake he made.”

  “Then we’ll need to go back and read the police reports, see if he stole other types of SUVs after Cassie. Maybe that event caused him to change up his choice of wheels. In some of those cases, vehicles were picked up on CCTV circling the victims. I didn’t even give it a second thought about what type of cars were picked up on surveillance. But he found that a four-wheel-drive vehicle was a must. And that little nugget is a viable piece of the puzzle.”

  Reggie shook his head. “It’s for damn sure the guy doesn’t want his personal wheels showing up on CCTV. How did he get to be such a good car thief?”

  Skye noticed Brayden’s long face. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sad about Emelia. I really did think we’d find her here. Do you think it means she’s still alive or is she probably…you know…already dead?”

  Josh slapped the kid on the back. “I’m sorry to be blunt. But what that back there tells us is…”

  “That he has another dumping ground,” Skye put in. “It’s the only explanation. And we need to find it sooner rather than later if we want to find Emelia alive.”

  Brayden sucked in a breath. “You guys really do know your stuff. Because now we know that our killer is local to the area. There’s no way he stumbled on that fire road by accident. He’s familiar with this neighborhood, the woods, the lake, and everything around it. Either he lived here at one time, grew up here, or still has some connection with Ames Lake. In fact, think about it. He could be watching us right now.”

  Reggie pointed back toward the ravine. “The only people watching us right now are Judy and Jenny. And maybe Deborah and Winston dragging up the rear.”

  “How did you guys beat us back?” Judy exclaimed, out of breath. She ran up to where Reggie stood and realized right away that they’d found a shortcut. “How did we miss this?”

  “We weren’t looking for a crappy road that led straight to his dumpsite,” Skye explained. “Would you want to drive your car into a bunch of weeds like that?”

  “No, but then I’m not a cold-stone killer.”

  “Exactly.”

  About that time, squad cars began to show up, some sedans and a few SUVs. Josh motioned for them to roll their windows down. “Which one of you is Tennison?”

  A young detective around thirty stuck his head out of the first car. “That’s me.”

  “Harry’s waiting for you back at the site. You might want to take this shortcut to get there quicker. But it’s only accessible with an SUV. A sedan won’t be able to make it.”

  Tennison studied the rudimentary road. “Is this on the level? You want me to head into a patch of weeds?”

  “Well, it’s either that or go all the way around to the Snoqualmie River footbridge and come in from the east. That’s what we did originally. If that’s the approach, then you’ll need to walk in about six hundred yards from the shoreline. You’ve got a GPS, right? I can give you the exact coordinates.”

  Tennison looked nonplussed. “Okay. But are you sure a regular car won’t make it?”

  “Up to you. But I wouldn’t risk damage to the undercarriage, even if it is a county car. You take anything in there without four-wheel drive, and you’ll likely be filling out paperwork until September.”

  “Great. Just what I need. Don’t any of you go anywhere. I’ll need statements from everybody after I see what we’ve got.”

  “I hope you have a strong stomach,” Josh said. “The most recent victim from March is a mess. We think it’s Anne Harding.”

  “The kindergarten teacher?” Tennison asked, his face looking pained. “Jeez. I was hoping she’d taken off with a lover and headed to Belize.”

  Skye cut her eyes at the detective. “If you believed you had a serial killer, why didn’t ‘we the public’ hear about it before now? You had files on nine missing women and only one body. Sticking your head in the sand about the problem and hoping the other eight would magically materialize isn’t an answer.”

  “Harry already read me that same speech, on the phone,” Tennison retorted. “I don’t need outside help from a mouthy—”

  “Apparently you do,” Skye snapped. “My team found this place. We’re the ones out here, boots on the ground, looking, searching. It ripped us up that place existed at all.”

  “What I intended to say was that I don’t have to listen to the same speech a second time. Now, if you don’t mind, I have—”

  “Nine dead women on your conscience,” Skye shouted. “And Emelia Navarro makes number ten. You’ll need to notify all those families connected to these bones before they hear it on the news. How long have they been waiting to hear about their missing daughters or sisters? And I hope you don’t send out underlings to do it for you, either. If I find out you did, I’m contacting your lieutenant and filing a formal complaint.”

  “About what? I haven’t done anything yet.”

  Skye took a step closer to Tennison’s car. “Exactly. And my first question to your superior will be why no one alerted the public that an active serial killer has been hunting down women for five years. Five years! If that’s your idea of keeping the public safe, it doesn’t mesh with mine. And if you need a statement from me or a member of my team, you know where to find us. Harry’s waiting for you down that road. Talk to him. Take a statement from him. Because right now, my team has better things to do. We refuse to stand around and wait for you to catch up. Now, if you’ll e
xcuse me, we have an eighteen-year-old missing teenager to find.”

  With that said, Skye spun on her heels and headed to the minivan, leaving Detective Tennison with his mouth agape and members of her team trailing after her.

  Five

  They were trespassing on his domain. He’d found it. That spot belonged to him. He’d taken great care to clear the land, cutting down each tree himself to create a circle. It had taken him years to do the work. Now, he watched as cops trampled all over his private sanctuary, ripping bodies out of the ground, desecrating what he alone had made.

  This intrusion would have consequences.

  Although he could look on the bright side—it had taken more than five years for anyone to discover his playground. It had taken that long for anyone to uncover his secrets, to reveal his deepest, darkest side to the world. It wasn’t easy to hide that part of himself. In a way, the pressure was off. That need that lived deep inside him required regular feeding. Now he didn’t have to suppress it. He could be himself, out in the open, show the world his real face.

  As long as they didn’t know about the other location, the beginning, he was okay with it. They didn’t have a clue who they were dealing with or the complete decline into the abyss. No, he had to be okay with it. He’d watch while strangers pawed in the dirt ridding the world of his castoffs, once and for all.

  That was okay.

  He’d get more.

  He would force himself to delay gratification for as long as it took. But he already felt the hunger building, that desire to go after his next victim. It always gave him the thrill of the hunt. But first, he needed to enjoy his latest triumph for as long as he could. The next victim was always out there. Waiting. That was the easy part.

  He knew it was all about the chase, the adrenaline rush, the need to prove himself. Although he took pride in a calm outward demeanor—he didn’t often let anyone experience his rage deep down—because once it flared, he couldn’t always pull it back. This was his hobby, his outlet, his therapy, the only thing he’d ever found success at, and rewarded for it.