Skye Cree 02: The Bones Will Tell

by Vickie McKeehan

  The trio entered a large overgrown backyard with shrubs and vines that didn’t look like it had been trimmed or cut back for years. Bugs and spiders hid in the knee-high weeds and underbrush as they pushed their way through to get to more hedges and dense undergrowth.

  They finally came to an open area where a lagoon-designed swimming pool took up at least half the lawn. The concrete hole hadn’t seen water in at least a decade. But algae residue left behind told them what they already knew. The entire property had fallen to neglect and hard times a long time ago.

  And nobody had seemed to care.

  Getting inside the house though proved easier than they had originally thought when Josh located a bedroom window with the screen already removed and a faulty lock that didn’t catch because the metal had been worn down.

  “Isn’t that odd? Maybe someone’s already used this window once before to enter when they weren’t supposed to be here,” Skye suggested.

  “That makes no sense. Why would Frank need to break into his own house?”

  “Who said it was Frank? Someone could’ve suspected something years earlier, came in through this way to check it out.”

  “That’s a scary thought,” Leo tossed out. “How many bodies are we looking for anyway?”

  “Let’s hope none. But we at least need to check this place off the list first, and see if we can find out what happened to Elena and Frank Senior? Right now, that’s what we think. The couple is here—somewhere.” Josh pushed up the glass, and went through the frame first. A dank, musty smell hit him almost immediately. “Stay here while I go unlock the back door.”

  “Not me,” Skye said. “Where you go, I go,” she reiterated as she leveraged herself up and Josh pulled her the rest of the way through the window.

  Leo reluctantly followed by crawling through the opening.

  After dusting off her jeans, Skye looked around the room at the lime green and gold décor that looked like it hadn’t been upgraded since the 1970s. “Wow, talk about retro.”

  Josh went over and opened the closet door. “Women’s clothing, men’s suits, still on hangers.”

  Skye pulled open a couple of dresser drawers. “Same with the underwear and socks. Wherever they went, they traveled mighty light.”

  “They never packed. A seven-piece set of matching Samsonite is still stored here in a layer of dust covering the leather,” Josh said before picking up a man’s Rolex still on the nightstand. “This watch must be twenty years old, ran out of battery life a long time ago.”

  “That’s a brand-new mattress on this bed,” Skye pointed out. “It looks as though it’s right off the showroom. Come on. We need to check out the rest of this crypt because I’m beginning to think your hunch is right on the money.”

  With that, Skye left the bedroom and progressed down a long hallway, checking out each room as she went.

  But while the three of them took the tour around the rambling single-story home, a foul odor kept nagging in the air as strong as solid waste. As soon as they reached the back part of the house, the smell grew worse.

  The stench was so overpowering, Skye looked around to see Leo’s face turn green right before he looked like he wanted to puke.

  “Look guys, I hate to bail on you but I can’t take this smell. I’ve always had a weak stomach. I’ve gotta have some fresh air,” Leo mumbled.

  “Head outside then,” Josh told the kid. “You might as well use the front door. We’ll take it from here.” Josh turned to make sure Skye was okay with that. “Right?”

  She nodded as she watched Leo take off for the front of the house and all but scurry outside. “I might want to gag but I’m not leaving you in here alone. You getting anything?” she wanted to know.

  “Oh yeah. That disgusting odor is the same as in my vision, the one I had that night after the sweat lodge. I’ve never gotten past the way Kiya made sure I could recognize the scent.”

  “There’s something evil here,” Skye determined after taking in another shallow inhale of the fetid air. “Let’s get this show on the road. Kiya, where are you? Take us to what it is you want us to see.”

  About that time the wolf began to take shape and then shifted into a physical animal. Kiya sniffed the air and trotted toward the area just off the kitchen, stopped when she reached a door. The wolf pawed at the wood first, and then sat, waiting.

  “Please tell me that doesn’t lead down to the basement,” Skye uttered with a certain amount of dread gathering in her throat making it difficult to speak.

  “You mean the bunker,” Josh corrected as he turned the handle. The door creaked back to bump the wall. The odor of decomposition hit him in such measures that it devastated the sinuses. Josh eyed the look on Skye’s face, the sick green color that matched Leo’s. “You want to stay up here? It’s fine by me.”

  “At the risk of being labeled a wuss, I believe I do. But like I said before, I’m not letting you do this alone. Kiya, you take point. We’ll follow.” Skye hefted the flashlight and said, “Let’s go.”

  Josh sucked in a breath as Kiya took off down the stairs. “Any presence down there has more than likely had the life drained out of it a long time ago.”

  “That’s certainly making me feel better, Josh. Not.”

  “Sorry. Let’s just get this over with.”

  Josh followed Kiya, then Skye trailed behind both of them, shining the light as she went. But about halfway down, something made her stop. It wasn’t that the stairs were scary or that the smell made her gag. That ship had already sailed. But the farther down she went into the darkness, the image from her vision flashed into her brain. She knew then, with one hundred percent certainty what lay within the walls, somewhere in that basement. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to be a part of it.

  Ahead of her, Josh got the same sense and held up his hand. He waved her away. “I get you. Now go back, Skye. This is totally unnecessary for you to do this. This is what Kiya wants me to see. For a reason.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. Now head back upstairs.”

  “Okay. But Josh?”

  “What?”

  “Be careful.”

  “You know I will. I’ve got Kiya.”

  Grudgingly she dashed back up the steps. As soon as she reached the top, she yelled back down, “Just because I’m not down there with you though doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel free to give me the play-by-play.”

  But Josh had already disappeared into the cavern of the basement and whatever loomed in its dark belly.

  Josh followed Kiya into an open area that could only be described as opulent survivalist style. Oak flooring was the first clue. The computer station complete with desk was the second. An eating area consisted of a table with six chairs accessorized in leather seats. Something one didn’t always expect to see in a shelter built for the end of the world.

  A generously-sized kitchen had been outfitted with all the home appliances needed during an apocalypse. Storage bins held every variety of canned goods along with a supply of military MREs enough to last a year and maybe beyond through any major natural disaster.

  After checking out two bathrooms with working toilets, one on each end of the length of the house, Josh veered off the main room to where three separate sleeping areas had been partitioned off by thin walls for privacy. Each contained comfy queen-sized beds.

  Circling back to the living area, Josh noticed a TV set covered with cobwebs. It had once been designated for double duty—one to get news of the impending doom to come—and two to act as a security monitor.

  Outfitting the entire bunker had to cost a cool million, Josh decided as he turned to Kiya. “Where do we look? Show me where you want me to start.”

  The wolf trotted over to another supply room off the kitchen. In the back beside a crapload of medical supplies, Josh spotted a wire rack. An assortment of animal heads lined the shelves. Some were stored in jars. “No doubt Frank’s personal trophy room as a child. Okay, now we’re g
etting warmer.”

  Kiya suddenly reversed her course though to head over to an area Josh had missed. She pawed at a newly plastered section of sheetrock next to a generator and a washer and dryer. This time, Josh could tell it was fresher than the rest of the wall because no one had bothered slapping paint here.

  He looked around for anything he could use to bash in the drywall. A sledgehammer would’ve come in handy right about now, he thought. When he found nothing but a broom, he simply kicked through the gypsum with his foot. It didn’t take long for him to realize it was a phony wall. It took him a few minutes longer to completely knock away all the plasterboard.

  Behind the jagged panels were three sets of mummified remains, complete with grotesque-looking skulls similar to those one might see in a horror movie.

  The skulls stared back at him just like in his dream.

  At one time, the bodies had been propped up inside their tomb in a space no larger than five feet across and back. What clothes Josh could make out were in tatters. One body with longer auburn hair still attached, a female by the look of the hair, appeared to be wearing a flowing, blue night gown. A white shirt and blue jeans hung loosely on the bones from the second set of skeletal remains in the middle. The third skull had graying black hair still visible, a pair of pale blue pajamas draped over the bones.

  There was enough difference in the decomposition of the man placed in the middle so that Josh could tell he’d been added well after the other two.

  On closer inspection, when Josh leaned his head into the opening, he spotted the bullet holes in each skull. Cocking his head, he noticed a crumpled piece of paper, wadded up next to the feet of the woman. Gingerly, he stuck his hand in and snatched up what was now as brittle as parchment.

  Carefully Josh unfolded what looked like a legal document. Reading over the words, paragraph by paragraph, it explained a lot.

  Fifteen long minutes went by and had Skye pacing at the top with her shirt covering her nose and mouth. All this time, she’d heard nothing except the house settling. Nerves edged up, starting at her fingertips and ran along her arms. Finally she inched toward the dimly lit landing again. Still met with an eerie, hollow silence, she finally shouted down into the vast darkness, “Josh, come on, answer me.”

  Skye held her breath, her hand over her nose, trying to deal with the stench that seemed to get worse all of a sudden. As she continued to peer into the basement, she saw no movement, not even a shadow. “Come on, Josh. Don’t make me come down there.”

  “You sound like my mother,” Josh finally returned as he climbed the stairs with Kiya in the lead. “Stop right where you are. You don’t want to come down here, Skye.”

  “What’s wrong? What is it?”

  “Frank’s own personal hellhole.”

  Josh guided Skye out of the house and onto the front porch, describing what he’d seen as he went. “Someone walled up Elena and Frank Senior. Looks like they didn’t offer much in the way of resistance. By the looks of their clothes, I’d say they were shot in their sleep. Who the other guy is though, is anyone’s guess?”

  “The bones will tell,” Skye muttered. “Something definitive, something tangible, that links directly back to Frank. That’s what Kiya wanted us to know.”

  Josh nodded. “Those bones tell us exactly what we needed. Frank’s a sick bastard and has been for a very long time.”

  “How do we explain being here, Josh?”

  “I’d like to know that myself,” Leo added from the bottom step, his face only a slightly lesser shade of green than it had been an hour earlier.

  “The only way we can. We call the Monterey County Sheriff’s office, tell them we were looking for the De Palos and suggest they call Drummond in Seattle. Hopefully Harry will be able to talk us out of this mess.”

  “Sounds like a plan. But Harry’s gonna be pissed when he finds out we held back coming here.”

  “I love it when you use ‘we’ at a time like this. But since I’m the one who did the holding back, I’ll take the heat for all of it.”

  “And I love it when you offer to do that. But if Harry doesn’t know us both by now, if he doesn’t trust us to do the job we’re getting paid to do then we have a problem with him in the future. We need to know it now. You saw this, didn’t you, Josh? All of it.”

  “Yeah, I did. But this is all still very new to me, Skye. I needed to experience this, the stuff that came to me in the dreams, the visions, for myself, up close and personal. It’s a validation. It’s what Kiya wanted me to know from the beginning. Just like she did to you each time you saved one of those girls. Besides you, who would’ve believed me?”

  “I know exactly how you feel.”

  About that time, Josh looked around at just how far the house was from the nearest neighbor. He took out his cell phone only to see he had no service. “Anyone have a signal?”

  “Nope,” Leo said. “At one point, I even walked down to the gate. Still nothing.”

  “Nor me,” Skye echoed, checking her phone. “What now?”

  “Then I guess we haul ass out of here and call the cops as soon as we get one.”

  “I don’t understand,” Skye asked the first sheriff’s deputy on the scene, a thirty-something guy named, Vince Hogue. “Why didn’t anyone in San Caruso bother to look for Elena and Frank De Palo Senior before now? How is it no one knew they were dead years earlier? You guys didn’t even know they were missing.”

  The deputy narrowed his eyes. “There are reasons for that. For one thing, they were reclusive. After Frank left for college, they stayed out here away from town, never came into San Caruso much. I’ll be honest, that was fine with most people. Over the years their attitude had managed to wear pretty thin on folks. They were known to feud with just about everyone in town at one time or another over some silly dispute. Frank Senior even took it a step further a time or two and sued. That caused hard feelings up and down Main Street. In some instances, it caused the townsfolk to lose their paychecks to millionaires who didn’t care about anyone else but themselves.”

  “So we aren’t talking about people who were missed?” Josh said.

  Hogue nodded. “That’s right. To my way of thinking, it was an out of sight, out of mind kind of thing. If Frank Senior and Elena stopped coming into town at some point, I guess no one really cared, hence no one bothered making the trip out here to see what was going on. Besides, if anything was wrong, Frank should’ve let us know. Now, we understand why he didn’t. I think the only other person who ever asked about them over the years was some tax attorney out of San Francisco—a guy who showed up here out of the blue one weekend nosing around.”

  Josh cocked a brow. “You might want to check to see if he ever made it back to the Bay. I’d bet money he didn’t.”

  “Come to think of it, I do seem to remember getting a call that said he’d gone missing. I just assumed he’d run off with a woman or something. Never heard another thing about it, so I thought he turned up. You know those tax attorneys like to live off other people’s money. They eventually have to go on the run for some reason or another.”

  “Maybe this lawyer is the one who broke into the house and used that window we found where the lock had been tampered with,” Skye pointed out. “Maybe Frank caught this guy snooping around and killed him, too.”

  Josh turned to Hogue. “I know Frank got into some trouble when he was sixteen after beating and raping a cheerleader. Do you know if there are any unsolved murders of other young women in the area that go back to say, when De Palo lived here as a teen?”

  “We don’t get many murders around here,” Hogue objected in a defensive tone. But then he cocked his head as if considering the town’s history. He scratched his jaw. “Wait a minute, now that I think back to when I first joined the sheriff’s department some thirteen years ago, seems to me we do have a couple that remain unsolved. One was a ten-year-old by the name of Cheryl Wittingham. Someone took a baseball bat and bashed in her skull. Volunteers found
her the same night her parents reported her missing. She’d been left in a culvert over on Jackson Street. The other was fourteen-year-old Denise Holland. A seasonal fruit picker found her body ‘bout a mile from the old winery outside town. She’d been beaten around the face and strangled. Hey, you don’t suppose Frank De Palo could’ve killed them, do you? He’d’ve been just a kid when those murders happened.”

  “Did he know either girl?”

  Hogue rubbed his chin. “Seems like I remember the report mentioning Frank might’ve known the Holland girl in school. And little Cheryl lived down the street from the De Palo family on Lawnview.” Hogue looked around. “Not this house out here, one of the other De Palo houses they owned in town close to the middle school. Holy cow, wouldn’t that be something if we could solve two fifteen-year-old homicides.”

  About that time it looked as though the entire Monterey County Sheriff’s Department pulled down the dusty lane and headed straight for them. Skye watched as several vehicles came to a screeching stop.

  Skye, Josh, and Leo stood off to one side and watched law enforcement descend on Frank’s childhood home, or one of them.

  “If it’s been eight years since the parents were alive, that was about the same time Frank lived in Portland, gainfully employed, I might add,” Leo pointed out.

  “Which means what?” Skye asked. “Josh and I already figured he’s probably good for killing Bianca and Lisa while he lived there.”

  “You might want to include a woman by the name of Meaghan Riddick in that,” Leo suggested. “Frank’s co-worker?”

  “Go on,” Skye prompted.

  “Meaghan ended up dead while Frank lived there. Co-workers said she often went head to head with Frank over projects they shared together.”

  “This guy’s body count is giving me the willies,” Skye reiterated. “How did Meaghan die?”

  “In Meaghan’s case, the coroner said she killed herself, had a lethal dose of meth in her system. Her death was ruled a suicide so it didn’t show up, officially, in any police reports you might’ve found, Skye. But her friends and family refuted the fact that the scientist ever cooked meth let alone ingested it.”