Skye Cree 03: The Bones Will Tell

by Vickie McKeehan

  After making do with what they had on hand for breakfast, they headed to Pike Place Market to remedy the bare cabinets. They bagged fresh fruits and vegetables, hunted down the best fish possible, and picked out the prettiest batch of gerbera daisies. They even sampled tamales from a man who promised them a genuine “south of the border” flavor.

  But like other trips she’d taken here, as they made their way through the vast array of merchants, Skye had a hard time stopping at picking up produce. There were too many pots of herbs to pass up, too many shiny things that caught her eye.

  They ended up hitting the jewelry booth, picked out a sterling silver, charm bracelet for Zoe’s upcoming birthday and decided on a plum tourmaline necklace for Lena as a little reward for being Lena.

  They stopped to eye the pottery display and ended up buying several pieces of bright red stoneware that would look good in their new white and blue kitchen. While Josh browsed through the comic book shop, she snuck in several hardbacks on gardening and growing organic veggies under the bottom of his stack.

  When that was done they took everything back to the loft to put away and then went furniture shopping. It didn’t take long to discover they had different tastes in style and fabric. It took them several hours of back and forth before they were able to settle on a plump-cushioned, contemporary design in a durable, honey-color fabric.

  By the time they got back home, Skye looked at Josh and grinned. “After all that I’m too tired to get dressed up in a fancy dress to go out anywhere. How about I grill the fresh salmon we picked up for dinner instead?”

  Put on a suit and tie or stay home? No man he knew in his right mind would push for wearing formal attire unless he had to. When the opportunity to lounge around in a comfy T-shirt and jeans was thrown into the mix, he went with the prudent thing. “Whatever you want to do is fine with me.”

  They stayed in, ate the fresh fish they’d grilled and watched a movie, a romantic comedy that got their minds off murder. The light and silly film made them laugh and feel as though they were like any other couple spending a Saturday night under normal circumstances instead of tracking a serial killer in their spare time.

  Sunday was spent packing for the move to the new house. As they jammed to hard-hitting classic rock, they stuffed whatever went to the farmhouse into boxes or bags.

  Neither one was allowed to go near their laptops. But as afternoon approached they decided to wander out and ended up eating lunch at Country Kitchen. It was the first time back for them since Willa’s body had been discovered. It was painful to walk inside and know Willa wasn’t coming back.

  Their upbeat weekend pretty much ended there. The same way as all the other days had since the box of bones had shown up. The realization the killer was still out there, doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to whoever he felt like targeting. And no one seemed to be able to find a way to stop him.

  Chapter Twenty

  By Monday evening, Josh was ready to sit down and have a beer, maybe watch a replay of the Mariners preseason game from Arizona. He pulled his Fusion into his parking space about the same time Edna Grossman did hers.

  Edna wasn’t yet ready to give up the job she’d had for a quarter of a century. At sixty-seven her brown hair might be almost completely gray but she still got up every morning to go to work five days a week at the marketing company she’d founded twenty-five years earlier.

  Her husband had died the previous year of cancer, leaving her with a sizeable estate as well. But Edna wasn’t one to trot out her bank account. Other than the ten-year-old Mercedes she drove and the prestigious loft address, she much preferred downplaying her lifestyle. A testament to her thrifty nature was the fact she still wore the same coat she’d bought in 1998.

  Glad to be home after a long day, Josh grabbed his briefcase from the passenger seat and started for the elevator. When Edna joined him in the wait for the car, he nodded at her in polite fashion and asked, “How’s it going?”

  “Did you hear about Selma Tolliver?”

  Josh’s radar went off. The hair stood up on the back of his neck. “What about Selma?”

  “She went out Friday night with friends, never made it back home. No one’s seen Selma since she left that bar over on Pike where they were partying.”

  “Maybe she met up with someone, went back to his place.” But even as he tossed the theory out there, he didn’t believe it.

  “And not call anybody the entire weekend, especially her sister, Suzanne?” Edna leaned in toward him. “You don’t know those two women. Suzanne spends almost as much time here with Selma as she does back in Sammamish.” Edna shook her head. “No, you don’t know Selma at all if you think she’d get lucky at a bar on Friday night and not tell Suzanne first chance she got on Saturday.”

  Josh had to admit he’d lived in the building for years and hadn’t done much to get to know any of his neighbors, let alone the perky brunette he’d only met a few weeks ago. “What do the police say?”

  When the elevator doors dinged opened, Edna let out a harrumph. “Don’t know their asses from a doughnut hole if you ask me. With all these murders and abductions of young women in the news, you’d think the cops would do a whole lot more than blow smoke up the family’s ass.”

  “Is that what they’re doing?”

  “Oh, the police eventually found Selma’s Lexus parked on Valiant this morning—two days later. That’s seven blocks from here, but right around the corner from the bar. They told Suzanne that maybe Selma had car trouble and someone gave her a lift.” Edna made another noise in her throat. “Selma’s Lexus was less than a year old, not a thing wrong with it.”

  “When did the sister call the cops?”

  “Suzanne came in from Sammamish Saturday afternoon, went through Selma’s apartment herself to see what was what. That’s when she got scared, when she knew Selma hadn’t made it back to the apartment.”

  By the time Edna stepped off on the fifth floor, Josh was doing a checklist in his head of all the coincidences since that box of bones had showed up. Vanessa Farrington, Maggie Bennett, Willa Dover, and now Selma—all people connected to them in one way or another.

  As soon as he got to his penthouse, he dropped his briefcase and went in search of Skye. He found her in the kitchen layering noodles in a pan to make deep-dish lasagna.

  “Were you aware that Selma Tolliver vanished Friday night and hasn’t been seen or heard from in two days?”

  Skye stopped what she was doing long enough to look over at Josh. “Your neighbor? The one from the lobby? No, I hadn’t heard.”

  “Our neighbor,” Josh corrected. “And yeah, the woman who was heading out the door that night and found the second package. This guy’s hitting us close to home, Skye. Too damn close to home.”

  “And doing a damn good job of it,” she groused.

  “Neither of us has bothered touching base with Dawson Hennings the last few days. I think it’s time we rattled his cage.”

  Inside the Artemis Foundation, for the first time, Skye had volunteers. Zoe, Lena, and Velma were joined by Karen Houston and her daughter, Shawna Langley. Today, they were all hard at work stuffing flyers into envelopes. To accommodate them she’d had to borrow chairs from Ander All Games to make sure everyone had a place to sit.

  When the door opened Skye looked up and was surprised to see Dawson Hennings standing in the doorframe with another man she didn’t recognize. Dawson was his usual awkward self, but Skye got the sense that the man he’d brought with him was anything but.

  “After getting your message last night, I thought about returning your call this morning to let you know what we found over the phone.” Dawson looked around the room. “But I wanted to see this place for myself. As it turns out, so did Kevin Holt, the forensic geologist I mentioned. So here we are. Kevin, meet Skye Cree.”

  Skye stood up, shook the sandy-haired man’s hand, made the introductions all around to the others. “As you can see, we’re mailing flyers complet
e with pictures of the missing along with information packets about the Foundation. Businesses from Vancouver to San Francisco will receive them in an attempt to get them more active within their own neighborhoods. We hope to get owners to agree to put up flyers in their front windows or near the cash register on a regular basis, get them more involved. That way, we keep a higher profile across the western states, maybe increase visibility and awareness.”

  She spread her arms out wide. “So what do you think?”

  “That it’s an incredibly good idea,” Kevin concluded. “But you know there’s bound to be some who get the letter and just toss it out with the trash.”

  “I’m sure they will,” Skye agreed. “But if we get even fifty percent participation, it’s more than we had before.”

  “I didn’t expect so many people here,” Dawson confessed.

  As the phone jingled on the desk, Skye looked on proudly as Lena stopped what she was doing to pick it up. “We’re growing,” Skye proclaimed. “Lately it seems like all at once. We’re still taking baby steps though. I’m sure we’ll stumble along the way somewhere.”

  Dawson adjusted his glasses. “Is there someplace we could talk? We have some news. And I think you’ll be interested in what we have to say.”

  “Sure, let’s go in the kitchen.” The small coffee bar area was a little crowded with three people but Skye felt determined to make them feel at home. “How about coffee?”

  “I never say no to caffeine,” Kevin proclaimed.

  After she’d filled up three mismatched cups she’d brought from her apartment and passed them off, she motioned for the two men to sit down at the little round ice cream table she’d used on her balcony.

  “Kevin here, identified the dirt particles on the bones you were sent.”

  “And?”

  Kevin took a taste of the hot liquid before putting down his mug. “The soil contained microscopic traces of Camassia quamash, a perennial herb that predominantly grows in marshy areas. Quamash is actually a Nez Perce term for the bulb at the end of the stem that’s edible. It tastes similar to a sweet potato. But I guess you probably knew that.”

  Skye sent him a grin before she sipped from her own mug. “I did but it’s good to know you’ve done your homework. If you’re about to disappoint me, Kevin, I need a disclaimer. I’m not sure I can handle any bad news today.”

  “Understandable. But there’s much more to what I have to say than about the quamash. Most people don’t realize you can log a lot of interesting stuff, minerals and chemicals and particles, out of the smallest amount of a dirt sample. Dirt can tell us a helluva lot more than just the organic nitrogen and carbon makeup.”

  “Okay.” Maybe she’d misjudged Kevin. He seemed as nerdy as Dawson. But what he said next, proved her wrong.

  “The government has even started making the most of the data. Geologists launched the U.S. Geological Survey Project in 2001. Ever since then, there’s a lab in Denver that maintains a database with a collection of soil samples taken from one end of the country to the other. Like your Foundation, the database is small, but growing.”

  “You’re a fascinating guy, Kevin.”

  “I try to be. Forensic science is just now beginning to recognize the importance of dirt. Like the bones you were sent, if a victim has dirt under the nails, it can tell us a lot. Was the person killed there or were they dumped?”

  “You’ve got my attention.”

  “Good because I’m not trying to confuse you. No, I’m trying to lead up to what I think is very good news. As for the Camassia quamash, or camas as they are commonly known, the only problem with the plant is that it’s found growing from British Columbia down the coast of Washington, in abundance. On that alone, it would be almost impossible to pinpoint a precise location of where exactly those bones rested for all this time.”

  “But you found something else?” Skye asked with hope rising in her chest.

  Kevin grinned. “Oh yeah, something significantly identifiable. The soil tested positive for traces of BTEX, an acronym we use for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene—all four make the components in aviation fuel. Wherever those bones were buried, the ground was contaminated with the stuff. If you take into account the traces of quamash, I’d look for an airport or military installation near marshland. BTEX will take the path of least resistance until it finds a water table. A marsh or wetland area has a very low water table. That’s why I sent what I found off to Denver. I’m encouraged that my results may help you solve this case or at the very least, lead you to a location.”

  Hope went from resting on the bottom of the floor to a blast of optimism. She felt like hugging Kevin. Instead, she said, “Encouragement is putting it mildly. For the first time in weeks, we have something solid to follow up on.”

  “Then I hope it helps. I realize you might consider it like looking for a needle in a haystack at first, but if you stick to the parameters I’ve outlined, I think you’ll be surprised. Besides, I’ll send you more data as it comes in to help you narrow the area down more.”

  As soon as the men said their goodbyes, Skye snatched up her case binder and took the elevator upstairs to Ander All Games.

  As usual, when she strolled inside the busy office, she saw programmers with their heads down. Each seemed chained to their laptops until they polished up the beta application of the new game. She spotted Leo hanging out with Winston and Reggie. Their heads buried together comparing lines of code.

  With that dedicated attitude, Skye had no doubt they’d stay on schedule for a Christmas release.

  Once inside Josh’s office, she slapped down the binder on his desk. Everything Kevin Holt told her came tumbling out. “You know what this means, right?”

  “Joint Base Lewis-McChord has an airstrip.”

  “You bet it does. But we shouldn’t rule out the area around Sea-Tac Airport either.”

  Josh scowled into his coffee mug. “That’s a lot of ground to cover, Skye.”

  “I know. So we narrow it down. I wonder…”

  “Might as well lay it all on the table.”

  “In the not so distant past, I read that sections of the base had an overabundance of abandoned buildings. They’ve demolished a lot of them but not all. Maybe this nutcase has specific knowledge of the region and has found one he utilizes for his sick torture chamber.”

  “On base? I don’t think so. But he is familiar with the lay of the land. Maybe he snapped up a tract of it when the government sold off part of the base to individuals.”

  “We have to figure out a way to check out the area without raising suspicions. How do we get near a military base without anyone charging us with trespassing?”

  “We don’t necessarily have to get on the base.” Josh went to his laptop, brought up a map of the area. “And neither does our killer. He could take advantage of almost a hundred thousand acres of vast space including the lowlands near the hiking trails that wind back all the way into the canyons here.”

  He pointed to the topography. “This is what I was talking about earlier. There’s a creek that runs through all kinds of wetlands, a perfect growing place for quamash. It drains into Puget Sound. A trading post used to be here, as well as several missions. There was even an old fish farm located here once.”

  “Are you up for a little exploration?”

  “Why not? The only question is when is the best time, day or night? We go out there at night, it’s a fact one of us has trouble seeing.”

  “I might not be able to see as well as you do but I’m game. Although I’m not even sure Lewis and Clark would brave the area at night, so I guess the sooner the better. We still have five hours of daylight left.”

  “Then let’s make the most of it.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It took them an hour to grab what they needed. They stuffed a backpack with essentials—a map of the area, water bottles, power bars, flashlights, matches—anything they might need on the trail.

  After cr
ossing over into Pierce County, they picked an isolated spot where they could leave the car. Sunshine broke through the gray floating clouds overhead as they started up the narrow trail.

  Sniffing the air, Kiya went first through the dense brush.

  For now, they stuck to the lush creek corridor where mossy red alder and big leaf maple mingled with tall Sitka spruce. Bog birch and red-stemmed dogwood hugged the ground, home to families of squirrels and cottontails. Pacific wax myrtle crowded the creeping spikerush.

  Josh pointed to a jungle of maidenhair fern. Nestled among its fan-tailed branches was the flowering quamash. Its blue buds reminding them spring wasn’t that far off.

  “We must be in the right area. Should we take soil samples for Kevin?”

  He chuckled. “Don’t tell me you actually packed baggies?”

  “Of course, why wouldn’t I? Kevin said he’d continue inputting the data to narrow down the area as much as possible.”

  “The dirt may very well be contaminated, even though corporations have done their best to clean up the land as far back as the 1970s.”

  “Progress. It ran off the Native American population.” She glanced around at the lush greenbelt, home to a variety of deer and rabbit. “It’s still a beautiful spot though. How far are we from the base?”

  He took out a pocket GPS. “By my calculation the nearest gate is south southeast about two miles from where we’re standing.”

  “The good news is we’re here in broad daylight. We blend in with all the other hikers and runners.”

  “The bad news is in order to find a lair of a serial killer we need remote and secluded, away from the public eye, somewhere he could do his business, undetected.”

  With that in mind they hiked down another ravine, climbed up an embankment full of bitter cherry. When the trailhead ended they veered off into a creek bed covered in what looked like poison oak.

  She tugged on Josh’s sleeve. “Don’t go near that stuff or you’ll be itching all night.”