Truth in the Bones

by Vickie McKeehan

  Elizabeth eventually had to leave the kitchen to join them down at the beach. But she’d left her sandals behind and ran around after Sierra in bare feet. “Running around in the sand like this, I feel like a beach bum.”

  Skye snickered at Elizabeth’s description. “Lizzie, you’re jogging around in the wind with perfectly coiffed hair that doesn’t even move a strand out of place. You look like you could be a cover girl for Vogue. You make the rest of us look like ragamuffins.”

  “I never did like to get dirty,” Elizabeth admitted.

  Harry laughed at his wife. “Lizzie’s idea of roughing it is a discounted room at the Hyatt.”

  Skye patted Elizabeth’s knee. “Don’t mind us. We’re just trying to talk about anything but serial killers tonight.”

  Elizabeth’s smile widened. “Oh, I know that. Look at this gorgeous baby girl. You might think about putting Sierra on the cover of a magazine one day.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Josh said, cringing at the thought. “She’s a long way off from the days when her focus will be on lipstick and make-up.”

  “Those teen years will get here sooner than you think,” Elizabeth cautioned. “My sister’s girls are all grown up now but I remember them at Sierra’s age. Time flies by fast.”

  With the banquet of food and drink, covering just about every taste in fish or beer, they happily congregated around the table to sample and savor each delectable bite. The wine flowed and with each glass poured they got farther away from discussing murder.

  But it didn’t last for long. And it was Harry who cut through the pretense. “So did you tell Winston about the Monopoly piece at the Henderson murders?”

  Winston put down his corn on the cob in mid-bite and let the information soak in. “If only we could find Dr. Ebert’s resting place and one or two remains of the other missing people, we could blow the lid off this entire case.”

  Reggie nodded. “That’s all we’d need to bring down this rush to judgment by the police. Bodies. The truth would be in finding the missing, just like it happened with Christy.”

  Judy agreed. “A bullet to the head would validate they were murdered along with the rest of their family. Sad. But a true element of each case that couldn’t be easily explained away.”

  Skye held up her glass of wine. “Listen to you guys. You make me proud. We’ve spawned a team that’s the best in the business. But then I’m totally biased.”

  Josh picked up his beer. “To our team, the best minds with the biggest hearts. Can’t beat that combination.”

  Later, Skye cornered Zoe and found the opening she’d been waiting for. “Zoe, would you like to help me give Sierra a bath?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. If I do, can I buy your car?”

  “Don’t be a brat. I need to talk to you about something. Now’s as good a time as any.”

  “What?”

  Skye toted Sierra into the mudroom and stripped off her clothes saturated with sand and dirt. The toddler was a grubby mess. Despite that, Skye turned her attention to the conversation at hand. “Look, you know I adore Winston. He’s one of my favorite people in the whole world, but he’s way too old for a sophomore in high school. Sixteen is a time when your world should revolve around your own crowd, not an adult like Winston. You have to stop texting him so many times a day.”

  Zoe’s mouth fell open. “He ratted me out. That jerk! I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him.”

  “Oh, stop being so dramatic. He didn’t rat you out. But he knows there can never be anything between you two except friendship and he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  Zoe covered her face with her hands. “Oh, my God, I’ve totally embarrassed myself with him.”

  Skye zipped up the back stairs to the bathroom to run Sierra’s bath water.

  Zoe trailed after her in an exasperated show of humiliation.

  “Stop it. You’re overreacting. Winston adores you, but as a friend, when we all get together you’re an asset to the team. He respects you for your contributions. But he’s too old for you, Zoe. It’s just that simple. Isn’t there anyone at school you like, even a little bit?”

  “All the boys there are assholes.”

  “Ath-holes,” Sierra repeated.

  Skye glared at Zoe. “See why you have to watch your language around her. She repeats everything like a parrot.”

  “Sorry. But they are. What do you want me to do, lie? All those guys want to do is make out and stuff. I went to the movies two weeks ago with Hollis Zander and all he wanted to do was stick his tongue down my throat.”

  “Eww. I could’ve gone all night without that image in my head. Okay, definitely not a good idea to be hanging around this Zander guy. Here’s a thought. Don’t incorporate boys into your life just now. How about that? Be yourself, hang out with your girlfriends and focus on having fun with them instead of chasing after a grown man.”

  “But their boyfriends are all seniors.”

  Skye opened her mouth to say something clever but realized times had changed a lot just in the ten years she’d been out of school. She wasn’t sure when eighteen-year-old boys preferred going out with immature sophomore girls, but she couldn’t argue with the dynamic. “I think maybe going your own way would be my best advice. I wasn’t popular so it’s difficult to identify with what you’re experiencing. I didn’t go out much. Wow, that’s an understatement. My aunt and uncle were religious nuts and didn’t let me do a whole lot of anything, except go to church and maybe go to the library. So basically, I just wanted to get done with school and get out of the house so I could move back to Seattle. I spent my high school years mostly in my room plotting for the day I’d be free of Yakima.”

  “You had it rough,” Zoe said, easing into sympathy mode. “But not all guys are like Josh, or

  Winston. Winston’s nice. He talks and listens to me. He acts like I’m important. Those other guys, not so much.”

  Once Sierra started splashing around in the water, Skye put a hand on Zoe’s shoulder. “There’s a guy out there for you, you just have to be patient. Don’t act like it’s such a big deal. So you won’t have a steady guy until you’re seventeen? So what? Make yourself happy. Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you. Get involved with the things you want to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “You like solving crimes, right?”

  “Sure. Who doesn’t?”

  “Then get more involved with the Foundation. Pick one of our missing persons cases—God knows we have way too many to pick from—and run down leads. Visit the family. Let them know they haven’t been forgotten.”

  Zoe threw her arms around Skye’s neck. “That’s a great idea. I’m gonna do that. Cool.” The teenager turned to Sierra. “Hear that, I’m gonna be just like your mom one day.”

  ***

  Josh and Skye had snuggled in for the night when the house grew quiet though the rooms were filled to the brim with overnight guests.

  Only Harry and Elizabeth had chosen to go back to their own home on the mainland. All the others had picked a room, and were now, blessedly tucked under the covers, probably fast asleep.

  “You’ve hardly said twenty words to me all night,” Skye accused, slathering cream on her arms. “But I refuse to go to bed mad at you. We need to talk about this.”

  Josh ran a hand through his hair and dropped down on the mattress. “I haven’t said much because I’m not sure how to deal with your stubbornness. The right thing to do is stay here with Sierra.”

  “And let you go out there without backup? I’m not doing it.” She told him about the visit from the Great Spirit. “For the first time in days, I’m calmer, back to my old self. The Great Spirit reminded me that shirking my duties to the tribe is not an option. Neither is staying behind.”

  Josh’s head fell back on the pillow with a sigh. “Emmett said all we have to do is find this guy and the FBI would do the rest. I’ll find this guy and you won’t have to go.”

  “Pardon my skept
icism but I don’t exactly trust Emmett or the FBI. And if that’s all there is to it—locating this guy and getting them to do the dirty work—then what am I so afraid of? If it’s that simple then we should stick together like the team we are and go about business as usual.”

  He rolled over to cover her body with his, ending up an inch away from her mouth. “With you, it’s never business as usual.”

  “I take it we aren’t talking about our killer?”

  “No. And I don’t want to fight about this guy anymore. It’s bad enough that we have to let these kinds of people intrude on a night like tonight. I’m fed up with doing it.”

  She stroked a hand down his chest. “Then let’s think about something else.”

  “Yeah? I get to pick?”

  “If you stop being so pigheaded. Maybe. Isn’t that the word you used to describe me? Pigheaded?”

  “Shh. Let’s not think about that now.” He nibbled down her throat. “Besides, you’re so cute when you’re glaring at me.”

  Twenty-Three

  Saturday morning

  The doorbell rang early at the farmhouse, before seven o’clock, before most had indulged in a cup of wake-up juice. A few guests were still upstairs sleeping. But most had ventured down to help with breakfast chores.

  In the kitchen, Josh and Skye were busy manning the stove, taking turns flipping pancakes and scrambling eggs. Lena had volunteered to work the juicer while Travis cut up fresh melon and served the slices on a wide platter. They had hungry people waiting for a meal. But it was Josh who left the lively group to answer the door.

  “It’s Harry,” Josh called out from the doorway. “Long time, no see, like eight hours ago. Why didn’t you and Elizabeth just spend the night last night like everyone else?”

  Harry sauntered in, sniffed the air, grumpy and sleepy-eyed. “I haven’t had coffee yet. If you people lived on the mainland like normal people I wouldn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to take the ferry.”

  “What’s so important that you had to deliver news in person?”

  “Nothing much, except the lab found a wealth of evidence in the Chevy. The killer must’ve made a mistake and taken off his gloves at some point because one of the techs was able to lift a partial fingerprint off the steering wheel. It matched up to the full set of prints found on Christy Maldonado’s backpack. There’s more. The techs got enough DNA off the girl’s backpack to come up with a profile.”

  Skye handed him a mug of coffee and pushed the sugar bowl toward him. “But did they get a hit?”

  “I wouldn’t be standing here if they didn’t. The fingerprints came back to a guy named Michael Smith. His prints were compared to the Armed Forces Repository.”

  Reggie nodded and stepped up to the coffee pot. “Not many people realize that the military started collecting DNA in 1992 with the first Gulf War. The practice was originally used to identify remains when the government thought body bags were gonna start piling up from the war. They wanted to make use of this newfangled technology and began what the Army called its ‘genetic dog tag’ program.”

  Harry looked pleased with himself after several sips of coffee. “Yeah. Well, law enforcement is grateful that they didn’t quit the practice after the war was over. They kept collecting DNA samples from each soldier. In fact, it’s a court martial offense if you refuse to provide a sample.”

  “That’s right,” Reggie went on. “As of 2002, there were 3.2 million on file. And that was fifteen years ago. So just imagine how many DNA profiles are in there now. When Bush was president—the second one, not the first—he signed a bill into law that overrides the original Pentagon policy which stated the DNA samples were to be used solely for the purpose of identifying troops killed in combat. Nowadays, it’s commonplace among cops to use those samples to solve crimes.”

  “All I know is Michael Smith joined the Army after completing his third year of college. Believe it or not it was a seminary school.”

  Winston pumped a fist in the air. “Skye called it early on, he does have military experience.”

  “Yep. Decorated,” Harry said, draining his mug.

  Travis shook his head. “How could a guy like that leave a trail of bodies across the country? What did these families and kids ever do to him?”

  Leo had been listening as he picked up a slice of cantaloupe. “Ever heard of Timothy McVeigh? The Oklahoma City bomber was awarded the Bronze Star. And one of the first mass shootings in the country occurred in Texas back in 1966 at the University of Texas, a former Marine by the name of Charles Whitman, a former Eagle Scout. Sixteen people died in one day. It’s unfortunate, but disgruntled military vets are out there, trained and deadly, ready to pop if the stressors line up just so.”

  Harry held up a fat file of information and slapped it on the counter. “In the case of Smith, he was a highly touted theological scholar headed to the priesthood.”

  “The priesthood? That’s new,” Josh added.

  Skye held out her hands. “Guys, focus. That’s great and all, but I’m not interested in his pissed-off state of mind or his alumni affiliation. I don’t care what school he went to. What is he doing now? How does he pay the bills? What’s his last known address? How do we find this Smith guy?”

  Harry opened the manila file folder and handed her a printout. “Here’s everything we know about him so far. He grew up in a Catholic boys’ school in rural Tennessee. Never knew either his mother or his father. Since his stint as an Army Ranger ended, he makes a six-figure salary working as a survivalist specialist, teaching people to survive in the wild. He’s a speaker, holds seminars six times a year that sometimes attract a crowd of two hundred or more.”

  Harry smacked a photograph down on the table. “Here’s what we’re dealing with, a blond, blue-eyed, muscle-bound, all-American, fitness freak.”

  Skye picked up the photo, studied it, before going on to read the handout, skimming the documents for where he lived. “His last known address is Nashville.”

  Josh took the info out of her hand. “You’re kidding? Nashville? How close is that to Brunswick, Georgia, where he started out?”

  “Looks like less than a two-hour flight, less than five hundred miles to drive it.”

  “Hard to believe he struck so close to home.”

  “The first time he tested the waters, he probably wouldn’t veer too far from home base,” Josh pointed out. “At some point, he must’ve decided to combine business with pleasure and stick to places where he’d get the company to pay for the trip.”

  Skye nodded. “Okay. The DNA links Smith to the Maldonado murders. But what about the rest?”

  “That’s trickier. Seattle PD is running the fingerprints through AFIS as we speak, hoping to get a hit in at least one other murder. But until they do, Smith is their prime suspect in the Maldonado murders.”

  “What happens now?” Skye wanted to know as she dished up scrambled eggs onto a platter. Knowing her guests had to be hungry, she got out bread to toast.

  Harry marveled at how she’d taken the information in stride. “I guess I expected a bigger reaction than this.”

  “Why? We aren’t even sure what it means for us. The guy’s clear across the country. What are we gonna do from Seattle until we know more?”

  “You want more? Okay, here goes. Nashville PD went to his address this morning, some fancy Colonial-style house that backs up to a golf course. They sent me a satellite image of the street. Smith wasn’t there. In fact, they found a groundskeeper mowing the yard who said that he went out of town on business.”

  Skye traded glances with Josh as her interest tipped toward action. “Then this is it. This is the weekend he plans to attack again. It has to be, right? But where? How do we find out where he’s gone?”

  When the timer dinged on the oven, she took the bacon out, crisp and crunchy. “Wait. If he’s traveling he either had to drive to where he’s going or fly, right? We should check to see if he had airline tickets out of Nashville.”
>
  Winston darted up the back staircase to get his laptop. “I’m on it. Save me some bacon and eggs though.”

  “No problem. Take your time,” Zoe reassured him, scooping up a plateful of eggs and setting it aside. The teen met Skye’s eyes and lifted a shoulder. “I’m just being nice. I’m not totally gaga over him. But still…I can’t just…you know…all of a sudden…start acting mean and nasty.”

  “No one’s asking you to do that.” Skye stuck a glass of orange juice in her hand. “Here. Go. Take his breakfast up to him before it gets cold.”

  Zoe responded with a wide grin and dashed up the stairs.

  Skye glanced at Lena. “I hope that was okay.”

  “Zoe’s right. We can’t change her into someone snotty overnight. Besides, Winston seems level-headed enough to handle her crush just fine.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Skye ushered everyone around the table. “Eat before it gets cold.”

  Twenty minutes went by before Winston and Zoe reappeared. Winston carried a tablet filled with notes. “A Michael Smith flew out of Nashville Thursday around noon. He had a two-hour layover in Denver before going on to Bozeman, Montana, jumping on a smaller regional jet to make the trip. He got there late Thursday night. But I can’t find where he’s checked into any hotels in the area, not even a dump along Interstate 90.”

  Josh rubbed his eyes. “Wonder why that is?”

  “He is a survivalist,” Skye pointed out. “He could be camping out in the woods, waiting for his chance. Did Smith rent a car?”

  Winston nodded. “A gray Chevrolet Equinox he drove out of the airport. Here’s the pertinent information including the vehicle’s license plate number.” He handed off the data, but when Skye reached to take it, he held on. “I’d like to go after this Smith with you guys.”

  “I wish. Maybe someday.” She took in his face, filled with rejection. “Look, we need you here. It’s that simple. Your expertise is obtaining information fast and furious. Don’t blame me because you’re so good at what you do. But thanks for the offer.” Skye looked around the table until her eyes landed on Harry. “You gonna call Emmett?”