Sixteen
Harry puffed out a breath and tossed two thick file folders on Skye’s desk.
After taking two days off, she was now back at work with everyone else. She frowned at the size of the folders. “What is this?”
“I’m glad you asked, glad you’re sitting down. Do you remember a case three years back in Issaquah? A couple in their late sixties by the name of Minnie and Aemon Sullivan.”
“Vaguely.”
“The Sullivans were gunned down in their driveway, in front of their huge four-thousand square foot house. An unknown assailant shot them down at seven-thirty in the evening.”
“Okay. I remember seeing it on the news. What’s it got to do with this case?”
“Let me get there. Like everything else about this case, it takes filling in the gaps. Fast forward two years. There was another couple, mid-fifties, found shot and killed in their garage in Redmond. Stuart and Evelyn Beatty were on their way to church on a Sunday morning. Never made it. For about six months after the murders, the cops thought the son did it. But there was never enough evidence to make an arrest. Now we know different.”
“All right. You’ve got my attention. I’ll play. So, I’ll ask again, what do these murders have to do with our case?”
“First, Bayliss’s team appreciates the list you sent them.”
“Sure, they do. I’ve got an email from Bayliss himself that says otherwise, more like leave me alone.”
“That was before. The team of forensic pathologists up from San Francisco recovered a bullet in one of the bodies at the first dumpsite, one of your older missing teens, a nineteen-year-old sophomore at UDub named Eric Jefferson.”
Skye’s eyes grew wide. “One of the African American kids on that list was buried at Ames Lake? For real? I gotta say that was a longshot, Harry. I was just covering the bases like normal. Wait a minute.” Skye swiveled her chair around so she could open her credenza, dug through her files, then shuffled through papers to uncover Eric’s missing person flyer. “It says here Eric went missing in 2018 after attending a party in Capitol City. It was on a Friday night. He left around midnight and headed back to campus to study all weekend for a test. He never made it back to his dorm room. Eri has never seen after that.”
“That’s the one. You can remove Eric’s name from the missing person list to the murder files. Somebody shot Eric in the head, then put him in the ground, not that far from Cassie Arnett. These doctors from San Fran are organized as hell. They have a chart they use to keep it all straight.”
“You saw the chart? Maybe you could recreate it for us.”
“Sure. I got it up here,” Harry said, tapping the side of his head. “The bullet from Eric Jefferson still had dried tissue on it, enough to get DNA to match with his family. Not only that, but that bullet had stayed in his skull at the back.” Harry brought his hand around so that he could demonstrate with his own head. “Right there at that indented spot. As Eric’s body decomposed, the brain sort of held onto the bullet. And because the weather stayed on the cool side, decomposition slowed down. That’s the explanation Dr. Giles gave me. Good thing, too. If it hadn’t happened that way, we might not have been able to trace it back to the other cases. Two cases, Skye. The bullets recovered from the Sullivan murders matched the bullets from the Beatty murders.”
“How is it they didn’t know that?”
“Beats me.”
“So Eric’s killer also shot and killed four other people? My God, Harry, our killer is a mercenary for hire.”
“You got it. Forensics is one-hundred percent certain that all the bullets had the same striations pattern. It’s like ballistic fingerprints. Those bullets came from the same weapon, a 9-mm, more specifically a Russian MP-443 Grach, military-issued.”
“Wow.” Skye leaned back in her chair. “If I had doubts before about the hitman theory, ballistics clinched it. Let that sink in. He’d have to import bullets or somehow get his hands on an ammo source that stocks a supply for that specific gun. Through gun shows, maybe? Am I correct?”
“Yeah. Which might be why he started using another type of weapon at some point. Maybe he ran out of his preferred stock.”
“And why he resorts to strangulation like he did with Cassie and Emelia. Instead of shooting them execution-style, he’s using whatever fits the situation. Josh is right. Not every hit goes off as planned.”
“Or like you said before, he could just get off on strangulation, especially with women. We’ve seen killers morph before, change their methods all the time to fool law enforcement.”
“Interesting. What about the other victims? Is this special team moving closer to IDing any of the others yet?”
“Honestly, I didn’t want to press. Dr. Giles has been more than cooperative with me when she didn’t have to be. I don’t want to strain that relationship. I know she’s as disgusted as we are in the two dumpsites. She knows this is a high-profile case, and she’s taking it slow for a reason.”
“So you’re saying don’t rush the coroner’s office. I get it. There’s a lot of victims to ID. But there’s something I don’t understand. Our killer murders a couple in their driveway, another in the garage in what amounts to broad daylight, leaves them lying there, makes no effort to conceal them at all. But a guy like Eric, he takes out into the woods and buries in a shallow grave. Why? What’s the difference in the killings?”
“Don’t forget, removing the thumbs. I got a theory.”
“Don’t keep it to yourself.”
“I think this guy gets paid to make certain people disappear. He didn’t get paid to make the Sullivans or Beattys disappear, so he left them there where someone would find them and be able to collect the insurance.”
“Okay, that makes sense, cynical but logical. I guess. Then there’s Emelia. He did make her disappear. And then Dani did a one-eighty. She panicked and had to get us involved to locate the body.”
“Which makes sense when you realize that this gal probably had a financial gain in mind all along. That was the motive from the start. This Dani person didn’t kill over some other guy. I’d go so far as saying she doesn’t care what happens to Tony. She proved that when she sent her little lapdog on an errand to your house.”
“You’ve been talking to Brayden.”
“No, Leo.”
“Let’s take this into the conference room. Did Leo explain it all to you, this thing with Tony?”
“Yeah, and I can tell you this much, I wouldn’t have let the little snake go.”
Skye shoved out of her chair. “They had to let him go. Otherwise, Dani wouldn’t have anyone to talk to back home. We’re missing something here, Harry. I feel it in my bones.”
In the hallway, she lowered her voice. “I haven’t told the others yet but Tuesday night while we were in Everett, we had a visitor, chased him down into a dry creek bed before he jumped on a motorcycle and took off.”
“You think it was our killer?”
“No question.”
“What precautions are you taking?”
“Travis has it handled. But like the guy showed up at the house to deliver that box, I think he wanted to let us know he’s not intimidated by us or anyone else.”
“I don’t think that’s it. He’s fuming about you uncovering his two special hiding places. That’s the message. The box came after it hit the papers that you’d discovered the Ames Lake site. Same thing happens two days after you find the other one. It’s not a coincidence.”
“The worst of it is I believe this guy has more sites. Who knows how many. Until the coroner’s office IDs all those victims we found, there’s no way to figure out when he started killing.”
“Look, sometimes that’s an impossible task even after you catch ’em. You know that as well as I do. Because these guys rarely tell the truth. It’s believed Bundy started at fifteen with his uncle’s nine-year-old piano student. He didn’t want to talk about killing a kid, so he didn’t. It’s impossible to know the exact mo
ment these scumbags decide to become monsters.”
“Maybe. But it always helps to know the beginning of the story.”
“You heard any more from Jaynes?”
“No, but Quade called me yesterday. He wants out of Idaho. Too many ghosts around him that won’t leave him alone.”
“Looking for a job?”
“What do you think?”
“And?”
Skye leaned into Harry and elbowed him in the ribs. “I told him Seattle could always use another good detective.”
“What did he say?”
“Too urban for him. Quade needs a place to ride his horses, like Travis,” Skye reasoned as she walked into the conference room where programmers sat busying themselves on laptops doing double-duty for Ander All Games.
Harry’s phone rang before Skye could get started. He stepped back out into the hallway to take the call. When he came back into the room a few minutes later, his face had turned ashen gray.
“What’s wrong?” Skye asked.
“Another ID. Dental records. One of the older ladies found at the first site. This time it’s so far outside the realm of logic I question whether we’re headed in the right direction.”
“What? Spit it out. Who is it?”
“According to Giles she’s been at the Ames Lake site for at least four years maybe longer. You’ll recognize the name. Remember the Barbara Holder disappearance?”
Skye’s jaw dropped.
Zoe stared at Harry, then back again at Skye. “Who’s Barbara Holder? You guys are starting to freak me out.”
Skye finally shook off the shock. “Barbara was a beloved Seattle schoolteacher in her early fifties. If I remember right, she was fifty-two. Everybody loved her. So when she disappeared four years ago from Ballard, no one could figure out why. She wasn’t married, didn’t seem to be into anything sordid. But one afternoon, she left school, went home like always, ate dinner, graded papers for a while, then vanished from her house. The police looked at neighbors, former students, dug into her past relationships only to come away without a single suspect. Her disappearance left everybody scratching their heads. Barbara had no reason to leave. There was no sign of forced entry. Her car was still parked in the garage. Until now, it was one of the biggest mysteries in Ballard.”
“Now we know somebody wanted her gone,” Harry noted.
Brayden closed out of one browser and shut down his laptop, giving the topic his full attention. “What are you guys talking about?”
Harry began to connect the dots for the rest of the team, rehashing the details about the other murders. “It’s a good bet those two couples were killed for money. It could be a business partner or a family member who wanted them dead. But I say some of his kills might not have been for financial gain. I wouldn’t discount the revenge-driven murder because no insurance company will pay out without a body, not without waiting for several years. We’ve established that the people buried in those shallow graves like Barbara Holder and Eric Jefferson, were killed for a different reason, maybe that includes Cassie, too. Someone hired this guy to make Barbara and Eric and Cassie disappear. It wasn’t for money. There had to be another reason rather than financial gain. Who did they piss off enough to want them gone? That’s the question.”
“Like Dani did with Emelia,” Brayden added.
“No, we figure that Dani killed the cousin for money,” Skye began. “But she and the killer got their wires crossed somehow. He grabs Emelia, takes off with her when he’s supposed to kill her right there on the sidewalk in front of her apartment.”
“And leave her there where the neighbor could find her and report it to the police,” Zoe finished.
“But he messes up. That’s why Dani asked me for help,” Brayden concluded with a nod. “Makes sense now. All of it, everything she’s done since. Dani expected Emelia’s body to be there in plain sight. And when it wasn’t, she formulated a plan.”
“We’re starting from scratch beginning now,” Skye muttered as she erased everything on one whiteboard, then the other. We’ll do this according to the victims we know about, see if we can come up with an intersecting line.”
Leo turned his chair around to face the front of the room. “Well, we know whoever hires this guy uses a chatroom to contact the killer. Right now, Dani’s still waiting to hear from this guy, to see if he’ll bite on her offer to take out Brayden.”
Skye chewed the inside of her lip. “You’re sure there are no other means of communicating? We are talking about Brayden’s life here.”
“Pretty sure,” Leo said. “I have alerts on four more chatrooms ran by mercenaries who reside outside the U.S., but so far there’s no activity on any of them from Dani. It’s gotta mean our guy is local.”
“Or maybe somewhat local,” Skye muttered, beginning to write down the names of the victims they knew, putting them in order. Barbara Holder, 2013. Aemon and Minnie Sullivan, 2017. Cassie Arnett, winter 2018. Eric Jefferson, fall 2018. Evelyn and Stuart Beatty, fall 2019. Emelia Navarro, summer 2020.”
Josh walked into the room and plopped down. “What did I miss? Wait. Where’d all the names of the girls go?”
“It’s called starting from ground zero,” Harry said, taking a seat next to Josh. “We got more names of victims now.”
“What about the eight missing girls we had?”
“Until we know for certain that those girls fell victim to our mercenary and ended up in dumpsite one, or dumpsite two, they remain a separate case.” When the team started to grumble, she shook her head and added, “It’s the only way to approach this. Think about it. The older women found at dumpsite one. The men found there. We knew three days ago we weren’t dealing with any of the victims from our boards. So far, our information is not leading us toward the girls. I’m not saying there isn’t another dumpsite somewhere. I believe there is. But until a body surfaces or we find something tangible to go on, we stay on this course with our known victims. There are still bodies that haven’t been identified. Harry finds Dr. Giles easy to work with, so he should take the lead, act as the liaison to the coroner’s office. Let’s wait for the results of all the postmortems before we go back to the missing. Right now, it’s critical to get the names of the dead victims.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” Josh stated. “It makes sense. Go with what we know. Try to intersect one of the victims to the others.”
“All right,” Reggie said. “What’s our next step, then?”
Skye pointed to Judy, who wore a pair of high-quality headphones over her ears. “Judy’s still monitoring anything of importance that comes out of Dani’s apartment. Leo’s keeping an eye on the chatroom. Brayden, you should check to see if Dani might have a burner phone that we should know about. Which makes me wonder if the killer already knows how to contact Dani outside the chatroom.”
“Using the burner phone?” Zoe asked, a shriek lodged in the back of her throat. “But that would mean we might miss their hooking up to make plans to do in Brayden.”
“We could get Brayden killed,” Reggie put forth. He glanced over at Brayden. “It’s a risk we’re taking. You better hope you locate Dani’s second phone.”
Zoe slapped Reggie on the shoulder. “That’s not funny. He could be in real danger. What if we screw this up? I don’t think it’s one bit amusing.”
“I’m on it,” Brayden declared. “But if Judy could make sure she doesn’t miss any of Dani’s conversations or movements, I’d appreciate it.”
Judy grinned. “I’ve been listening to that woman since eight this morning. That’s when she rolled out of bed. The only thing I’ve picked up so far is that she and Tony had a huge argument before he left for the fire station. It was so loud it hurt my ears.”
Skye’s ears perked up. “What was the argument about?”
“In a nutshell, I’d say those two are not getting along. The blowup this morning was because Tony texted his mother about Emelia’s funeral.”
“Now, why woul
d Dani object to Tony’s mom coming to the funeral? That seems harsh, even for a first-time killer.”
Zoe chose her words carefully. “Could Tony’s mom have something on Dani? I’ll volunteer to go talk to her, see if she has anything to offer up.”
“Okay. Track down her address. But do a background check before you go. I don’t want you walking into a nutcase scenario.”
“I’ll go with her,” Winston advised. “I’m picking Jenny up later. We could all three go to Mrs. Ferretti’s and ask about what she knows.”
Once everyone had turned back to their assignments, Skye and Josh walked down the hallway to her office and closed the door.
“What’s the matter?” Josh wanted to know. “Your face says it all.”
“Okay, here it is. Not two nights ago, we caught a stranger, the guy we think is responsible for all this, not two hundred yards from the ranch house spying on us. The deeper we get into this, the muddier it becomes. It seems it goes in a hundred different directions. We have to be missing one key element that ties it all together. Something. We need one thread that unravels everything. Otherwise, we’re spinning our wheels, running in ten different directions.”
“I agree. We need to go over everything again and uncover that thread. We’ve missed a critical piece of evidence.”
Seventeen
The Magnolia house swirled with activity. Only Harry and Deborah had opted to spend a quiet evening across town at home by themselves. Everybody else showed up to pitch in and prepare the evening meal.
Winston and Jenny stood at one counter, taking turns making meat patties for burgers while Zoe peeled potatoes. She let the peeler fly as she described their meeting earlier in the day with Mrs. Ferretti. “I can tell you the woman does not like Dani. Although she claims she adored Emelia. Mrs. Ferretti actually admitted that when it comes to Dani, she described her as the bitch from hell. Her words, not mine. She also said that Dani was a schemer, always envied everything Emelia had.”
Down Among The Bones Page 21
