Bed of Bones (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Five)

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  He watched me glance around the room.

  “The old building didn’t have surveillance. This one does. As you can see, I learned my lesson.”

  “Wasn’t she questioned?” I asked.

  “By a Detective Cooper, yes.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “You find him as engaging as I do, I see.”

  Engaging. Never a word I’d use for Coop. Crude, insensitive, and brash, but never engaging. I appreciated Butch’s sarcasm nonetheless.

  “Did Detective Cooper know you thought she did it?” I asked.

  “He was aware of my suspicions, and she was questioned, but there was no evidence to support my argument.”

  “Where is she now? Does she still work here?”

  “I may not have been able to get her convicted of the crime, but I was able to coax her into quitting of her own free will.” A look of satisfaction settled on his face. “A few write-ups, followed by a demotion, did the trick.”

  “Can you give me her name?” I asked.

  “Karin Ackerman.”

  I jotted it down in my head, shelved it for later.

  “Why would anyone, after all these years, want to take up the cause again?”

  He shrugged. “Why does one do anything? We are unpredictable creatures, all of us. I will say this…I’ve given it a lot of thought over the years, and I believe it would be near impossible to get the ladies down the shaft alone.”

  “You think he had an accomplice?” I asked.

  “I do. I think someone helped him get those bodies down the shaft.”

  It made sense. An accomplice would require complete trust, someone who shared in his beliefs. Not an easy combination to find.

  “What about his wife?”

  “It’s possible, although I’ve seen her in photographs. I don’t think she could have managed the weight of anything more than a newborn baby.”

  “He could have done all the heavy lifting,” I said.

  “Even if he did, and even if Pearl had helped him, they’re both long gone now.” He flung his arms in the air. “It doesn’t matter how many years have passed, I’ve always wondered if I was right. Guess I’ll never know.”

  “You said Chester killed his victims over several months. He wasn’t in a hurry.”

  “Probably wanted to make sure he got it right.”

  This time it was different. These women were taken within a matter of days. They all shared a common bond—the movie. It gave me the sense someone was trying to complete the ritual fast, get it over with. Maybe this person had watched the women for months—years even—waiting for the festival to begin, the perfect time to strike.

  “Can you show me the mine?” I asked.

  He stood and turned, opening a drawer behind him. “Sure, I have a map of all the mines in the area.”

  “Not on paper,” I said. “I want to go to the exact location the women were found.”

  “Even if we did, the mine is sealed now. They’ve all been sealed for years for safety reasons. The only thing I could show you is a mountain of snow. You’d never even know anything happened there.”

  “I still want to go. I need to see it for myself.”

  “You can’t. Not on foot. We’d need snow machines to get out there this time of year.”

  There had to be a way.

  And then it came to me.

  “What are you doing right now?” I asked.

  He gave me a look like he knew what was coming. “Why?”

  “I have an idea. And Butch…I’m going to need you to send me the attachment of the movie—the one you couldn’t open.”

  CHAPTER 28

  It took a lot of convincing to lure Carlo away from the station, but he trusted me enough to follow up on a good lead when I promised one, and once I backed it up with a brief explanation of my conversation with Butch, he decided it was worth his time The three of us met at a small air strip in Heber, where we chartered a private helicopter owned by the Luciana family. Probably owned by Giovanni himself.

  While the chopper was being fueled, Carlo pulled me to the side. “I had to do a lot more than twist a few arms to be here.”

  His eye twitched like he was having second thoughts. I could have soothed him, come up with some witty female comment to make him feel a lot better about putting his job on the line if anyone found out what we were doing, but I didn’t. I played the honesty card.

  “I can’t guarantee what we’ll see out there.”

  “Then why are we here, Sloane? I don’t have time for anymore false leads.”

  “As opposed to having time for what? You don’t have to be here.”

  “Don’t get all worked up. I have a right to ask a question.”

  And I had the right to refuse an answer.

  The pilot signaled to Carlo. We were ready to go.

  I placed my hands on my hips and stood, waiting. “Are we doing this or aren’t we? If you don’t believe in me, shut it down. Shut it down right now. I’ll find a way out there without you.”

  He gave me a look like he could stronghold me into the car, haul me off to the station if he wanted.

  I’d like to see him try.

  Sensing the tension between us, Butch backed away until his shoulder collided against a chain-link fence behind him. He stared at the air strip, pretending like he wasn’t privy to our conversation.

  For a minute I thought it was a bust. Carlo was hard to read. Even harder than Giovanni. The pilot waved again, like maybe he thought Carlo hadn’t seen him wave the first time. Carlo gave him a look: flail your arms again and I’ll sever them from your body. The pilot put his arms down.

  “Let’s do this and be done,” Carlo said through gritted teeth. He walked toward the plane, leaving me standing there. When he realized I wasn’t by his side, he looked over his shoulder, but kept walking. “Now, Sloane. Now.”

  I had paused not just because Carlo doubted me…I doubted myself. What if he was right? What were we doing? A gentle nod from Butch propelled me toward the plane. Even over a blanket of snow, I had to see the original crime scene.

  Once we were in the air, no one spoke at first. Butch sat on one side, Carlo and I sat on the other. Butch was quiet and observant, seemingly pleased to be along for the ride. It felt peaceful floating on air, seeing the clouds dot the skyline. Then my phone rang. Shelby.

  There were no pleasantries, no hello, nothing to suggest we’d bonded the night before. Back to square one.

  “I got bored, I’m sorry,” she began. “Don’t be mad, but can I get a ride back to your place?”

  “Shelby, I asked you not to go anywhere. I was very clear. Didn’t you talk to your dad? You know he’s coming today.”

  “I know, but I got tired of sitting there.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Well…umm…”

  “Shelby, I don’t have time for this right now. Tell me where you are or you can find your own way back to the house.”

  I didn’t mean it, but under the watchful eye of Carlo, I didn’t know what else to say.

  “I’m at the police station.”

  “You’re where?” I asked.

  “I got busted tryin’ to get a ride into town.”

  “By who?”

  “I dunno. Some old guy. I called him Officer Grandpa. He didn’t like it. Now I’m here.”

  She yawned as if it was nothing.

  “You expect me to believe he hauled you in just for hitching?” I asked.

  “I kind of had my skirt pulled up at the time. Not a lot, just a little bit, I swear. You couldn’t see my panties or nothin’. The cop gave me some lecture about what could happen to me, and I mouthed off. Then he shoved me into the back seat of his car and cuffed me. He cuffed me, Sloane. Can you believe it?”

  There was one thing I did believe—I wasn’t cut out to raise a teenager.

  “Does the officer who arrested you know you’re talking to me right now?” I asked.

  “Doubt it. He passed
me off to some other guy who says he knows you. I think he’s your friend.”

  “What friend?”

  “Your friend.”

  “Chief Sheppard?”

  I wanted to groan aloud.

  “No, your other one. His badge says Cooper.”

  “Coop?” I asked.

  “Yeah, him.”

  Double groan.

  “I told him I was staying with you.”

  “And?”

  “He just laughed.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “He’s standin’ next to me, but, ahh, he’s still laughin’.”

  “Just put him on please.”

  The phone was passed off. A wheezy guffaw streamed through the air. I tolerated it for several seconds, and when he still couldn’t bring himself to talk to me after I’d said hello a handful of times, I practically broke the glass on my cell phone with my finger to end the call. I dialed Cade. Whatever insults Coop had planned for me, they could wait.

  “Your kid is going to send me to an early grave,” I said. “If she was a child, I’d advise you to spank her until her ass drew blood, and I’m not even a supporter of physical what-you-call-it. Not when it’s a kid. She may, however, be the one exception.”

  It sounded like he was laughing too, but he managed to get out, “What did she do now?”

  “Tried to hitch a ride into town, got picked up by an officer.”

  “Maybe we could convince him to hold her for a while.”

  We?

  “I’m kinda in the middle of something,” I said. “How long until you get here?”

  “An hour at the most.”

  “Call the station, let them know who you are, and tell them you’re on your way. I’ll meet up with you as soon as I can.”

  Carlo shook his head, indicating his displeasure. At least he didn’t say anything.

  While I’d been on the phone, Butch directed the pilot to our destination. We were almost there.

  “What we’re looking for is going to be right through those trees,” Butch said.

  I peered through the glass, seeing nothing but magnificent pines and miles of white.

  “Don’t know what you’re expecting to find,” Butch continued. “I don’t even think we’ll be able to—”

  He stopped mid-sentence.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  His face paled, the fleshy color turning a somber shade of ash.

  I placed a hand on his shoulder, tried to look past him. “Butch?”

  It was like he couldn’t hear me.

  I looked out my window. I saw nothing. Carlo dashed from his seat, crossed to the other side, trying to glimpse what had caused Butch to clam up. Carlo hovered over Butch, his head pressed against the glass. “No, it can’t be. Melody.”

  “Carlo—what’s going on? What do you see?”

  He turned, gripping the vinyl seat to keep his balance. “Sloane, they’re dead. They’re all dead.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The killer may not have been able to descend the opening of the shaft given the iron-sealed door and the mountain of snow piled on top of it, but he’d still found a way to carry out the ritual with his own unique flavor. Melody Sinclair, Brynn Rowland, and Victoria Broderick had been laid on top of a section of plowed snow. It looked like it had all been done by hand, hours of work slaving away in the intense cold to make sure it was just right. Then replowing with each snowfall.

  The killer had begun to form a circular pattern with the women’s frozen corpses. Feet near the center of the circle, the bodies were about two feet apart, arms crossed over chests, heads tilted upward, facing the sky. The bodies reminded me of points on a star. I imagined the killer standing in the center circle formed by the women’s feet, pivoting as he cast his eyes downward, observing them one by one.

  Crosses fashioned out of what looked like two-by-four pieces of lumber had been staked to the ground about one foot behind each of the bodies. I reached into my bag, extracted a pair of binoculars, zoomed in, focusing on the words on the grave markers. They weren’t carved or etched into the wood, they were written, with a thick marker of some kind. Melody Sinclair’s cross displayed the words LYING TONGUE. On Brynn Rowland’s: SHEDDER OF BLOOD. What blood had she shed? I angled the lenses, searching for the words behind Victoria Broderick’s body. Since I had never seen her before, I could only assume it was her. On her cross it said: FALSE WITNESS.

  Carlo held out a hand. I inserted the binoculars onto his palm, keeping my hand on them at first. “Maybe you shouldn’t,” I said. “Maybe you should wait.”

  “I’ll see her sooner or later, Sloane.”

  He stared through the lenses, his face tight, fist balled up like he wanted to strike. I didn’t blame him. Butch’s arms were crossed in front of him, his head down, body rocking. He chanted something under his breath, trying to self-soothe.

  Carlo made eye contact with the pilot. “Get us out of here. Now.”

  We’d interrupted the killer’s process, stumbled upon his dump site. He was only halfway through the kill process. How would it change things once he found out the ground he considered sacred had been tainted, his precious bodies extracted from the scene?

  What would he do now?

  Where would he go?

  The pilot whisked us away. Carlo frantically made one phone call after another—one to the chief, another to his fellow agents, informing them of our macabre discovery. Once we touched down, Butch and I would be expected at the station, briefed on what we knew, grilled just like everyone else. And the latest crime scene would be yet another one I’d be shut out from.

  I glanced at Carlo. His jaw was locked, face petrified, like carved stone. Melody was dead. I wondered if he blamed me in some way for not finding her sooner. I didn’t know whether to offer him some kind of comfort or to keep my mouth shut. I imagined neither would matter. It wouldn’t give him the solace he needed. It wouldn’t bring her back.

  CHAPTER 30

  I sat through an uncomfortable debriefing at the station, during which Carlo admitted his relationship with Melody Sinclair to the class of investigators, agents, higher-ranking officers, and the chief who’d come up with a name for the guy they were looking for: The Sundance Killer. It lacked creativity, but caught on fast.

  No longer a suspect, Carlo behaved like he had no reason to withhold his past any longer. His hiring me, in his words, was “totally justifiable and not to be questioned.” I sat beside him, hands in my lap, quiet. Not having anything to say wasn’t my usual MO, but the daggers I received from my fellow classmates pierced my soul. And I simply didn’t have the will to take them all on at once.

  In the middle of what felt like an interrogation process, a kid the chief referred to as Kenny came in with information on the tracks found at the scene. He was tall, lanky, preferring eye-glasses to contact lenses. His hair was short but stuck out like he’d tossed and turned in bed the night before, not bothering to brush his tangled locks this morning. He probably didn’t have a girlfriend and didn’t assume anyone would care. And with that kind of attitude, he wouldn’t have a female companion anytime soon either.

  The grin on Kenny’s face changed from a confident smile to a look of awkwardness as he approached his waiting audience. I attributed it to the multitude of stressed-out stares coming at him from every direction across the police round table.

  At least they’d stopped looking at me.

  “Well,” the chief flicked a couple fingers in the air, “get on with it.”

  Kenny coughed and a sound erupted like the last trickle of water filtering down the drain in a bathtub. “Tire manufacturers make several different lines in their tires, all with their own tread design, each in various sizes.”

  I thought I detected a bit of a speech impediment in his tone, a possible lisp he’d corrected over the years.

  “Tell us something we don’t know,” Carlo added. “This isn’t our first day at Police Academy.”

  Under his
breath, Coop said, “Oh, I don’t know—it might be for Sloane.”

  Coop refrained from further comment when Carlo began to rise. The chief leaned over, whispered something to Coop then looked at Carlo like he’d taken care of it. Carlo sat back down.

  As the meeting continued, photos sporadically filtered in from the crime scene where investigators were racing to process as much as they could before dark. Judging by the size and shape of the tracks, the women had most likely been transported to the place of their death on a snowmobile of some kind. Whether they were still alive at the time was anyone’s guess at this point. Visible tracks led to and from the crime scene, coming to a snow-packed road. It was a road less traveled making it easy to spot tracks made by an SUV or a pick-up truck. This is where the new information came in. Kenny said three-dimensional impressions had been taken and then cast using Plaster of Paris. Given we didn’t have a suspect vehicle, I hoped we were all about to get lucky, at least matching the model of tire from the tread pattern.

  “When analyzing the tracks, we found the tires were different,” Kenny said. “The one on the left didn’t have the same pattern as the one on the right. Both had a low amount of tread remaining on the tire. We ran the tracks through the TreadMate database and matched one of the two tires. I have the manufacturer as well as the model if you want to see it.” He held a sheet of paper out, glancing around the room like he wasn’t sure who he should give it to.

  Carlo and the chief both held up a finger at the same time. Kenny walked over, put the paper into the chief’s hand. The chief glanced at it then passed it to Carlo.

  “Give us a minute, all right?” the chief said to Kenny.

  Kenny folded his arms, leaned against the wall behind him.

  “I’ll need you to leave the room, Kenny,” the chief said.

  Kenny’s face reddened. He bowed his head and walked out.

  The chief glanced around. “We done here with this one for now?” He thumbed in my direction.

  “For now,” Coop said.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” the chief scolded. He looked at a federal agent opposite him. The agent exchanged looks with Carlo and then gave a slight nod.