Skye Cree 03: The Bones Will Tell (24 page)

“
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.”

I
t 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
crossing 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, t
hey 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 t
hey 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.”

“
There’s the tunnel and the railroad tracks. The rails are supposed to lead to a dock.”

A different time and she would have liked to explore the tunnel with its colorful graffiti and rusted railway from a forgotten era.
“Out here? Don’t we need water and a shore for that?”

“
Due west.”

“Too bad we’re headed east.”

A salamander chose that moment to run across her boot. To her credit, she didn’t shriek out an expletive. Instead, she charged ahead through the yellowcress that dotted the slope surrounding them. Even though they’d left the paved path some time back, they surveyed the jagged landscape looking for anything out of the ordinary.

“Kiya hasn’t picked up anything since we got here.
What about you?”

“
Only that the land has seen its fair share of bloodshed.”

“
Historic or more recent?”

“Both.”

“Are we in the wrong area?”

Josh shook his head. “Just because we haven’t found anything yet, doesn’t mean it isn’t here.”

When they
came upon one of the empty buildings Josh had mentioned earlier, they went on alert. Standing outside the copse of sturdy western larch and Douglas fir guarding what used to be a train station.

“We have to check this place out,” Skye whispered.

“We’ll circle around back.”

The wood frame still had a faint trace of paint
on it that had to go back decades. Since no one had bothered to board up windows or doors, they were able to get a look inside. Nothing remained, except a lopsided floor, rotting and unsteady. The last owner, whoever it had been, had left the place to the elements and the wildlife. Once they deemed it was only a shell and that it hadn’t been used for anything other than a marker for hikers, they moved on.

A mile later t
hey decided to rest near a shallow basin. Skye sat down on a rock and dug into her backpack for a bottle of water. She chugged down half before handing it off to Josh who drained what was left.

“
Kevin Holt was right. This is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Why do you let me do these crazy things?”

“Because hunting is what you do. It’s in your blood.”

“God, I love you. Who else would put up with this insane life we lead, or more to the point, put up with me?”

“Right back at ya.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We
head back home and go through the case binders, again. Look for a better place where this guy could set up shop,” Josh decided, drawing in a tight breath. “What else can we do?”

“
Then I guess we’d better start back. We’re losing the light.”

He took her hand, brought her closer. “
The realtor called today to tell me we close on the house tomorrow. Are you ready for this?”

“I’m more than ready.
I want this new start, mainly because my brain feels like mush. If we don’t solve this thing soon, I think I’m looking at burnout, Josh, full-scale burnout. For the first time in eight years, I feel exhausted, both mentally and physically.”

“Me too.
Maybe it’s because we aren’t getting enough sleep.”

“We might need to
cut back on the nights of the week we hit the streets, consider taking a break from all this. Maybe it’s just too much. Sometimes I think what we need is an army instead of just two people.”

“We have troops,
” Josh declared. He thought of the stellar team he had back at work and Skye’s eager new recruits. “We just need to utilize them better.”

Through binoculars, he
watched the pair’s movements. He wasn’t afraid or worried. He’d never been that. The fact that Skye Cree and her bumbling partner had gotten so close might have rattled a lesser person. But it didn’t bother him. After all, getting close wasn’t the same as
finding
. He had to remind himself that the inept couple hadn’t been successful on much of anything. Let alone their jaunt from their swanky penthouse in the city to where the common man lived and worked.

He wasn’t
ashamed of who he was, even though he’d slid out of a meth addict. He’d never known the bastard who’d fathered him. His mother had become a painted whore who’d sold herself for pittance. She’d overdosed a week before his fourteenth birthday. If he’d followed in mommy’s drug-addled footsteps, he’d more than likely be dead by now, too. So he’d carved out a better life for himself by recognizing opportunity and seizing his chances.

That’s why h
e didn’t intend to spend two minutes of his time worrying about the Cree woman and her sidekick or how they had ended up so near his turf.

He
told himself he wasn’t getting sloppy. He knew where sloppy got you.

Letting his hands drape from his sitting position, he took in the view
of the pretty valley below. Remembering another time, another place, a bad place, he’d sworn to never go back there again or anyplace like it. Nothing they could do to him could make him go back there again. Ever. If he had to, he’d fight to the death if that’s what it took to stay out of jail. Recalling his time spent in that depressing, closed-in space was his salvation. A person had to want to crawl up through shit to get out of the sewer.

He’d climbed kicking and screaming through the waste of his life.

He’d been young and foolish the first time. He wasn’t either of those things now. Youth and foolishness rarely garnered accolades unless there was a special talent involved. He had a special talent. It was that reassurance that had him getting his priorities straight.

Glancing to his right, he brought the
dark-haired woman into the curve of his arm. Ignoring the fact that Selma was naked, cold and battered, he stroked the top of her head, patting her like a dog.

Without
preliminary, he unzipped his pants, picked up her stiff hand and stuffed it down into his crotch and began working her fingers around his shaft.

And remembered
back to the time he’d been seventeen.

He
’d been horny as hell then, too. He also remembered being head over heels in love with Margo Jamison. At the memory of how his youthful heart used to race each time he saw Margo in the hallway between classes, he smiled.

He recalled how he’d stood like
the weak dumbass he’d been at the time, waiting for Margo to show up at her locker.

If he
was honest with himself it was during that time with Margo that had made him what he was today. If the bitch had just given into him sooner, given him what he’d wanted then, he’d never have had to travel down this road in the first place.

Probably.

He
smiled at himself and his soppy mood. What was it about getting older that made a man reminisce about their misspent youth? After all, he couldn’t keep his mind wandering so much in the past, revisiting his every flaw or the times he’d messed up. That was for fools.

“I can’
t keep you, baby,” he proclaimed, placing a kiss on Selma’s cold, blue lips. For some reason, I can never keep the ones I truly care about. But I promise to put you some place real nice. You deserve real nice.”