The Bones of Others

by Vickie McKeehan

  Josh sat up straighter in his chair. “You think Hiller is responsible for all the missing girls?”

  “Not all, no. But at least the ones in the last five months.” She pulled a piece of paper from her coat pocket. “Here’s the list I managed to put together on my own. Nine missing girls in all, ranging in age from ten to sixteen, went missing recently.”

  “I see I’m not the only one good at solving puzzles. Nine, huh? One’s too many.”

  “True. According to public records, reports filed by his parole officer, Hiller was a follower behind bars, which makes him prime once he’s released to seek out his own kind. Otherwise how’s he going to have access to young girls on his own? He isn’t allowed to go around kids, so somehow, someway he hooks up with Whitfield, maybe uses the Internet to connect in one of those porn chat rooms you discovered. My theory is Hiller’s merely an underling. One of several Whitfield pays to do his dirty work.”

  At the frown that creased her brow, he asked, “What else is troubling you?”

  “I’ll say one thing for you, Josh. You are observant. I’m beginning to see what Harry might’ve been trying to tell me all this time. I’ve been committing a cardinal mistake here in my thinking—with everything. In fact, in less than ten minutes you just proved I might’ve been able to find Whitfield all this time if I’d bothered checking something as simple as utility accounts in the area. I never even thought of that.”

  “No one was sure he was in Tacoma, Skye. And even with what I uncovered it still doesn’t prove Whitfield himself is anywhere near that property let alone living in that cabin.”

  “No, but a check of the place will take care of that little detail. Anyway, hear me out. Up to this point, my narrow focus has been on Whitfield instead of trying to figure out how he’s running a sex-trafficking ring and keeping such a low profile. That’s the big picture here, Josh, the sex ring using underage girls. And the one I’ve been missing completely. There’s no other explanation but…Whitfield has to be sending his minions out to do his dirty work. It’s the only thing that makes sense. But that’s not the worse part.”

  “We need to change that. There’s a worse part?”

  “There is. I think we might be dealing with a cop involved in all of it.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Wow! You’re kidding? No wonder Harry went ballistic that day at the diner and was in such a pissy mood.”

  “Harry went ballistic over the fact I discovered the information about the missing girls. He didn’t share that with me, not once in all these months. I got upset about that. I was ready to knock heads with him over it when you walked up.”

  “Go on.”

  “What if—” It was difficult for her to even say it but she’d been thinking about this angle for more than a week now and it might explain a few things. “I’m thinking if…this cop turns a blind eye so he clears the way for Whitfield to get the girls out of the country en masse for parts unknown who would be the wiser? Who would care?”

  “I can see why Harry went over the edge. A cop involved changes the game.”

  “You could say that. But I didn’t share this with Harry. He was on edge anyway over the Donofrio girl. It’s not like he wanted to accept that she was dead at that moment in time. I made a mistake that day. It was too soon to share that with him. I should’ve held it back, kept it to myself. I have a tendency to do a quick draw on the phone with Harry when it comes to sharing what I suspect. That upsets him. It has for years. Sharing the first thought in my head after I find out another girl’s disappeared isn’t the way to go. I should know by now that cops live by a different set of rules. They need hard evidence, a tip from a concerned citizen, something. And that’s where it goes south because I certainly can’t tell Harry that my spirit guide is the one that gave me the inside track about all of this.”

  “Those same rules don’t apply to us.”

  “That may be but that list you’re holding says nine girls are unaccounted for in five months and that’s—unacceptable. As you can see by the list, Elena Palomar is the youngest at ten. Heather Moore and a hooker named Lucy Border are the oldest at sixteen. We have to find those girls, Josh. We have to put a stop to how Whitfield uses these girls, enslaves them, and then ships them out of the country to be used…for years to come.”

  “And makes a fortune doing so,” he finished her thought. “Then we hit the ground running. I think it’s time we take a look around the Whitfield property. Together.”

  “Sounds like a plan, but I’d like to go talk to the Palomar family and stop by Heather Moore’s place first.

  “Sure we can go talk to the two families but I’d say the sooner we take a look around Whitfield’s place, the better. I just have one question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Where do you keep your equipment?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Skye? That night in the alley you had an expandable baton made of hardened steel. Where do you keep your other weapons?”

  She huffed out a breath. “You saw the war room. There’s a faux panel on the side wall.”

  “And?”

  “I have several Colts to choose from. A .45 my dad carried in the military and a lighter, smaller .380 with less kick.”

  “Good. Then we won’t be walking in there unarmed.”

  Later, while the fingers of Lake Washington rose up in front of them as they crossed over the bridge to Bellevue, Josh voiced his unease.

  “Have you ever done this before, gone to the home of a missing child to ask the family questions, to get further details?”

  “Yes. I won’t lie, it won’t be easy. In fact, it’s tragic.”

  “What exactly are you hoping to learn?”

  “Anything that isn’t already in the public domain. Things like when they were last seen, the time of day, what they were doing last, what activity, any of their habits we can glean out of the conversation, that sort of thing.”

  “I take it Harry Drummond would be furious if he knew you were doing this.”

  “Oh yeah. But Harry is in Seattle, we’re going outside his jurisdiction.”

  While their first stop at the Palomar home didn’t yield a whole lot of anything new, the parents did verify what Skye had read online, plus offered up a few little-known tidbits.

  Elena Palomar had been last seen playing down the street with a neighbor, Tara English, a playmate from the same fifth-grade class. Tara told the police that when her father had called her in to get ready for a family outing that night, Elena had headed home to her house five doors down. The little brown-haired, brown-eyed girl never made it home. Elena had disappeared in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon, two weeks ago. There were no eyewitnesses, no reports of a stranger in the area, or a car, no leads, nothing.

  Elena Palomar had simply vanished off the streets of a middle-class section of Bellevue leaving behind a family, heartbroken and anguished.

  In Kirkland, at the upscale home of Heather Moore, the girl’s mother, Janie, was more than willing to talk and led them into a spacious living area chocked full of photos of her eldest daughter dressed in her snappy blue and gold drill team uniform. Heather hadn’t been heard from since the afternoon she’d walked out of school after practice was done with and had never made it home. Her car, a light green VW bug, had been found still parked in the school parking lot.

  “I’m sorry to bother you like this, Mrs. Moore,” Skye began. “And I appreciate your agreeing to talk to us but—”

  Heather’s mom interrupted her. “It isn’t a hardship to get an opportunity to talk about my daughter. If you or you,” she said, nodding at Josh, “or anyone else can help bring my daughter back to her family, I’d talk to the devil himself.”

  “It’s just that we’re curious about a couple of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Namely, whether or not Heather’s friends reported her walking out of practice by herself? Did they report seeing anyone hanging around the school that day? Hang
ing around her car maybe? Was she…?”

  Again Janie Moore didn’t let her finish. “The lot has security. No one can just get into the parking lot unless they’re supposed to be there. At least that’s what I was told. And before you ask, my Heather doesn’t have a wild streak. I’m sure that’s what all parents say. But Heather is dependable, calls me even if she’s going to be late getting in from a date, even calls me from the mall if she’s decided to go look in another store for something else. Both my kids are like that. My son, Heather’s little brother, got lost in a department store once when he was three. Heather was there. We were frantic for more than an hour before we found him in the women’s dressing room, playing with a stack of hangers.” Janie dabbed at her eyes. “Heather knows how I worry. She would never do this on purpose.”

  “What exactly occupies Heather’s time? I mean does she spend a lot of time on the computer?” Josh asked.

  “What teenage girl these days doesn’t spend half her life on the phone texting or sitting in front of that damned desktop,” Janie Moore replied. “I should’ve unplugged that thing a year ago and thrown it in the trash. There was a time her father wanted to, but I intervened. Oh yes, I convinced my husband it wouldn’t do a bit of good since Heather has a two-hundred-dollar phone we’d bought her for Christmas when she turned fifteen that she could use for the same thing. How is a parent supposed to make sure every single person their child comes into contact with on a daily basis can be trusted? Answer me that. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare is what it is.”

  Skye reached over placed her hand on top of Janie Moore’s. “I know. I’m sorry to have to be here and ask all these questions, dredge it up again but—”

  Janie waved her off. “No, no, it’s okay. I like keeping her case in front of the media. I don’t want them forgetting about her. But as time goes on, the news crews leave and don’t come back unless…they find a…” With that thought, Janie’s voice trailed off. “As to what my Heather likes to do in her spare time. That girl’s wanted to be in drill since she first started taking dance lessons when she was four years old. She never missed a practice. That’s all she ever talked about was getting to dance professionally after high school, maybe down in Los Angeles. Now…” Janie wiped tears from her cheeks.

  “And none of her friends were able to offer a good explanation as to who she might have left school with? A boyfriend maybe? Someone she’d met online?” Josh ventured.

  “Heather goes out off and on with a boy she met last summer. They aren’t exclusive and Ryan was questioned extensively. He was at work that afternoon. I made calls to every single one of her friends, so many I made a nuisance out of myself. Heather would not have left on her own, that much I know. Someone took that girl. I know they did. That’s what I told the police, too.”

  “Who is in charge of Heather’s case?” Skye wondered.

  “Detective Talbot. Allen Talbot. He’s been nice enough without really offering us any hope though. He’s made up his mind that she ran off, that she’s a runaway and she’ll come back when she’s ready. Poppycock! I tried to convince him how wrong he was. We had words over it. Have you any idea what it’s like when a child goes missing?”

  Without really waiting for an answer, Janie Moore went on, “It’s horrifying. My Heather is a good girl. Heather wouldn’t have just up and gone off without letting me know where she was headed. Why? Why would a girl who’s reliable all of a sudden decide to leave her car behind?” She started to tear up in earnest and had to reach for a Kleenex from the table. She wiped at her eyes again. “I want my girl back. That’s all I want is for Heather to come home. Her brother’s birthday is in ten days. She’d already saved her money and bought him a video game he’d begged me for. I want her back home so she can give him his present herself. She’s a good girl,” Janie repeated.

  It broke Skye’s heart to have to listen to the same refrain she’d heard from other anguished parents before. Would the heartbreak ever stop?

  By the time Janie Moore walked them to the door, it was well after dark.

  As they got into the car, Josh speculated, “I don’t get it. We talked to two sets of heartbroken parents, understandably upset and worried. What exactly did we learn we didn’t already know?”

  “For one thing.” She ticked off the points using her fingers. “Elena was taken in the afternoon. So was Heather. So was Erin Prescott. Two out of three after school. The only difference being Elena’s abduction happened on a Saturday.”

  “And that means what?”

  “The guy has plenty of time on his hands. His afternoons are free, Saturdays are free. Probably means he’s unemployed.”

  “You couldn’t get all that from the Internet?”

  “It’s a theory and validation. Glass half full, half empty kind of thing. Look at it this way, it’s more than we knew beforehand.”

  Once they got underway, Josh admitted, “Talking to the parents took a lot out of me. It makes you respect all they go through and have to deal with when their child goes missing.”

  “It breaks my heart.”

  “Your parents went through that same gut-clenching fear.”

  “For three days they were terrified they’d never see me again. And the guilt…I don’t even want to consider how a parent lives with that.”

  “Your parents felt guilty because Whitfield took you right out from under their noses.”

  She nodded absently, thinking back to another place, another time.

  Josh squeezed her hand to get her attention. “I do have one question, something’s been bothering me. Why kill Jenna Donofrio? I mean, that’s what you think happened, right?”

  “I know that’s what happened.”

  “Then why? Can you tell me that much?”

  “My guess is Erin Prescott got away, escaped. I could feel guilty about that but…in saving one, I lost another. He wasn’t done with Erin. I broke his rhythm, pissed him off. The urge hadn’t completely played out so he had to find another one and this time—”

  “He doesn’t want to leave a witness behind that would surely ID him the same way Erin did.”

  “Erin didn’t ID him. His DNA, his fingerprints were all over that nasty room. The stupid son of a bitch ramped up because the urge overwhelmed him and he got desperate.”

  “Look, don’t get upset, but I’m not sure making that trip to Tacoma tonight is a good idea.”

  “Especially when we’re both drained. I agree. We need to be at our best.”

  He linked his fingers with hers, brought the hand to his lips. “Twenty-four hours won’t make much difference in the grand scheme of things, Skye. We have to believe that.”

  Looking out over the Evergreen Point Bridge, a dread moved through her. “I don’t know. We should’ve gone to Whitfield’s first maybe. For some of these girls, Josh, tomorrow may be too late.”

  “We don’t know that.” He cocked a brow. “Unless you have some…insight…you haven’t shared with me.”

  She shook her head.

  “Then at first light tomorrow, rain or shine, we’ll head out.”

  “I just hope it won’t be too late.”

  As soon as they got back to the loft, Josh mapped the area to and from the cabin and because he was a bit anal to a certain extent when it came to preparing for the unknown, he went a step further and rechecked the lay of the land thanks to an aerial view he’d blown up as large as he could get. He hit print for a hard copy.

  While Skye simmered Bolognese sauce on the stove to toss over pasta, while oregano and Italian spices floated on the air around them, they familiarized themselves with the terrain.

  Peering over his shoulder, Skye had to concede, “Okay, you were right to wait. It’s been almost a year since I’ve been out there last. June to be exact. And I’ve always made the trip during the daylight hours. I never actually got out of the car. Instead, I waited and watched from the roadway. One day for about three hours I sat there, used my binoculars to keep an eye on that t
railer. Took a few photos. There’s a gate located right about here,” she added, pointing to a small clearing. “Who knows what’s beyond it? But my guess is that he doesn’t want anyone getting past this point for a reason.”

  As he considered how remote the property was, he couldn’t believe she’d done this alone. He decided it must’ve taken her a good deal of courage to prepare for the whole thing each time she went. “I’d say that’s a fair guess. Did you see anything of significance on your other trips?”

  “Nothing. There was no activity around that damned trailer at all. Not a car went by on that dirt road either. I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just a place that looked deserted. Now that I think about it, I’d forgotten just how wooded and spooky this place would be after dark.”

  “Even for you?”

  “Even for me. Not only that but we’d need my night vision goggles to see our way around.”

  Josh turned his head to stare. “To think I actually know someone who owns night vision goggles. That is so cool. ”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it cool but they do come in handy when you’re walking a dark alleyway at three in the morning. I should’ve had them with me when I went after Erin.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not perfect, Josh. I’ve made a few mistakes out there on the streets.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like getting pulled into disagreements between two homeless people fighting over a lousy, filthy blanket, or caught in the middle of two rival gangs trying to settle their differences with nine millimeters.”

  “Well, at least you have the courage to do something. That says a lot about the person you are.”

  She scraped her fingers through his hair. “I’m pretty sure you’re biased.”

  “I know I am. But this time you won’t be alone. What about the weapons, which Colt do I get?”