Skye Cree 02: The Bones Will Tell Read online

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  also by Vickie McKeehan

  The Evil Secrets Trilogy

  JUST EVIL - Book One

  DEEPER EVIL - Book Two

  ENDING EVIL - Book Three

  The Pelican Pointe Series

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  HIDDEN MOON BAY

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  Skye Cree Novels

  THE BONES OF OTHERS

  THE BONES WILL TELL

  THE BOX OF BONES

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  The Bones Will Tell

  A Skye Cree Novel

  VICKIE McKEEHAN

  The Bones Will Tell

  A Skye Cree Novel

  Copyright © 2013 Vickie McKeehan

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  Excerpt from The Box of Bones copyright 2013 by Vickie McKeehan. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Published by

  ISBN-10: 0615862934

  ISBN-13: 978-0615862934

  Printed in the USA

  Cover design by David C. Cassidy

  Used by permission.

  www.davidccassidy.com

  Wolf designed by Jess Johnson

  Visit the author at:

  www.vickiemckeehan.com

  www.facebook.com/VickieMcKeehan

  www.twitter.com/VickieMcKeehan

  For Gene, who knows all my faults,

  but chooses to love me anyway.

  “If the blue meanies are going to get me they’d

  better get off their asses and do something.”

  The Zodiac

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Bones Will Tell

  A Skye Cree Novel

  VICKIE McKEEHAN

  Prologue

  Six months earlier

  Seattle, Washington

  His first taste for killing happened when he was eight. On a visit to his grandparents’ farm, he’d snared a rabbit in a trap he’d built himself. He’d taken out his trusty Swiss Army knife then and there and slit its throat right before he’d skinned it.

  But that had been twenty years ago. Since then he’d graduated to bigger and better rabbits. He chuckled at his own joke as he made another pass on foot, past the house where the blonde lived who he’d been spying on for the better part of a week.

  He’d already been inside her townhouse. He knew her name was Carrie Bennington and that she lived alone, except for the occasional men she brought home for pleasure and companionship, always on the weekends. He smiled. Carrie didn’t have to worry too much longer about whether she would be alone or not, or how she spent her time, or how dedicated she was at her job as an administrative assistant.

  Because the clock ticked and the Grim Reaper waited for Carrie like a long lost friend, or maybe it was a nice friendly labradoodle. Either way, he’d picked Carrie after she’d caught his eye at the marketplace and he’d followed her home. That had been a week ago last Saturday. He’d waited until that Monday morning after she’d left for work before he’d picked the lock on her sliding glass door and slipped inside. That had been the first time, the neighbors none the wiser. So much for the neighborhood watch program.

  Because he was good at climbing, athletic and lean, he didn’t let things like a two-story apartment building dissuade him from getting at his quarry, not if he really wanted to get inside. He’d been a long distance runner in high school and still kept in shape. But even so, he liked to keep it simple. He preferred it when his victims had the good sense to own their own homes. Like Carrie who lived in a stylish two-story townhouse with an undersized courtyard.

  He’d spent hours there going through her closets, her dresser drawers, even her refrigerator. He’d used her bathroom. After all, when the urge to take a dump hit a guy, he had to go.

  Every day this week he’d spent some time in Carrie’s home. He’d watched. He’d waited. That’s how he knew what time she left for work each morning, what time she unlocked her front door every evening, and where she picked up men during happy hour on Friday and Saturday nights.

  He knew she kept a vibrator in her nightstand, the one on the left hand side of the bed. He knew which store she’d purchased her last pair of underwear from.

  It excited him that he could come and go as he liked. He touched the ring he carried inside the pocket of his hoodie, the ring he’d taken from her jewelry box, some dime-store trinket he’d known when he took it that she’d never miss. The ring kept him focused, had for a week. Not that he needed incentive or purpose to think of what he wanted to do to Carrie. But the ring was a reminder that he could come and go in her things, get inside the place where she should’ve been the safest whenever he needed or wanted.

  Standing under the light from a street lamp, he watched as Carrie’s bedroom light went out right on schedule. Ten-thirty. He shook his head. One thing about Carrie, she was dependable. He walked to the end of the block, sliding into the shadows of the alley behind her co-op. When he reached the six-foot fence, he took the time to stretch on a pair of gloves. He had help vaulting over the barrier by using crates he’d had the forethought to stack along the alleyway beforehand.

  In the backyard, he took out his penlight. He went over to the little outdoor shed Carrie used as a greenhouse, found
the metal pipe he’d spotted there a week earlier. He hefted the weight onto his shoulder and stepped to the sliding glass door. He didn’t need the tool to break the glass. Only amateurs made too much noise. And he was no novice at B & E or killing. No, he had another use in mind for the heavy rod. From the inside of his pocket, he took out his mask, pulled it down over his head. He pulled out his picklock and went to work on the door he’d already breached once before.

  Inside the living room, he scanned the area using the beam of light. Even though he had familiarized himself with the location of the sofa, the coffee table, the bookcase—which wall held the flat-screen television, which side of the room had the fireplace—he still took his time until his eyes adjusted. But knowing the layout made it easier for him to make his way to the staircase in short order. He managed to avoid the steps that creaked along the way up and kept to the path that allowed him the art of surprise.

  When he stepped into Carrie Bennington’s bedroom and stood over her sleeping form, he paused long enough to appreciate her golden hair, her soft skin, her long neck. By the time he placed his hand over her mouth it was too late. He thrilled at the terror he saw reflected in her green eyes. Not only that, but it excited him to know his face would be the last one she’d ever see.

  Chapter One

  Present day

  Seattle, Washington

  In the whole of her life Skye Cree would never get used to how brutal one human being could be to another. If given the opportunity and the motivation, man or woman could be one cruel, sick beast.

  She’d taken that one thing as fact for a dozen years or more. It’s what drove her to hunt down the monsters, those who preyed on others, who set their sights on the most vulnerable and attacked, at times without reason or logic.

  Skye took in the crime scene, the bedroom belonging to the young brunette lying dead on the hardwood floor not two feet away. One thing that caught her attention and stuck fast was that even though the killer had brutalized the victim, evident by the cuts all over her body, even though he’d used a knife, he hadn’t been overly messy.

  He’d managed to somehow contain the blood splatter so it was kept to a minimal area around the body. She also thought he’d spent some time here with the victim.

  Skye considered both significant. She took a second glance around the room.

  Since the victim had shared the home with her longtime boyfriend, there was plenty of evidence to indicate that. Both nightstands held the usual clutter. One spoke female with its collection of body lotions, a box of Kleenex, a bottle of water, and a few odd pieces of jewelry.

  The other table held all the guy stuff, the TV remote, a pump bottle of lubricant, a stack of sports magazines, a cell phone charger, and the clock radio.

  The body hadn’t, in fact, been discovered until said boyfriend had flown home a day early from his business trip to Dayton, Ohio. He’d been gone three short days. During that time a killer had managed to gain entrance into the house and taken the life of Sylvia Waterston. According to the BF, the only way he’d been able to conclusively ID the love of his life was the one-carat diamond engagement ring he’d given her not three weeks earlier. The rock was still wedged on the third finger of her left hand. According to her Washington State driver’s license, Sylvia had yet to see her thirtieth birthday.

  From the looks of the damage to Sylvia’s pretty face, her loved ones would more than likely have to opt for a closed casket.

  Skye shook her head at that gruesome thought. In her mind, if a person could get used to dealing with this kind of vicious cruelty on a regular basis, she didn’t believe he was right in the head.

  She’d seen death before, had come close to it herself a time or two. If she counted the dreams that came to her in the night, visions that wouldn’t leave her be, she’d seen and experienced quite a bit in her twenty-six years. But right this minute Skye had to wonder exactly what the lovely Sylvia had done to have pissed someone off enough that he’d left her naked, battered beyond recognition, especially the face, and posed her on the floor for the most possible humiliation factor.

  He’d taken the time to do all that while he’d all but set up shop in her bedroom—which meant he’d spent an inordinate amount of time admiring his handiwork—and making sure Sylvia made a statement, or rather her body did.

  Skye stepped closer so she could get a better look at the red marks, the distinctive fingerprints he’d left around Sylvia’s throat where he had choked the life out of the young woman with his bare hands. Had he strangled her before he’d taken some type of blunt object and smashed her pretty face in? Skye wondered. And when exactly had he taken out his knife and started slicing?

  That determination she’d have to leave to the medical examiner. At this point, she couldn’t even tell which method had ended Sylvia’s life. She chewed her bottom lip and tried to figure that out for herself. She’d already taken a tour of the adjoining bathroom and hadn’t spotted a visible trace of blood anywhere there. But then they were just getting started. The crime scene people hadn’t yet worked their magic. No doubt they’d earn their stripes on this one.

  Looking at the stone-cold, grayish corpse though, Skye began to regret ever answering the phone two hours earlier.

  She scanned the room a second time, hoping to pick up…something. She’d already determined the killer had obviously enjoyed being with Sylvia. Skye noted he’d rifled through the woman’s things because he hadn’t completely pushed each dresser drawer into its slot. He’d left all nine drawers open about an inch from closing. Each drawer was left exactly that same distance. Could the killer have anal-retentive tendencies? With a gloved finger, Skye wedged open what looked like Sylvia’s lingerie drawer. The sparse amount of underwear and teddies left inside said to Skye the killer had pilfered a few souvenirs to add to his war chest.

  The victim’s jewelry boxes had been gone through. Earrings had been paired up with the wrong mate. Which meant only one thing—he’d wanted them to know—it was the only thing that made sense. His intent to mix up the bracelets and necklaces had clearly been a deliberate act. That explained the odd pieces left on Sylvia’s nightstand. He’d taken what he wanted as a memento, not to steal to feed any type of habit, but to make sure he remembered Sylvia.

  Because he hadn’t taken anything of value, like the diamond solitaire on Sylvia’s left hand, Skye took a quick inventory. A Movado watch, not exactly worth a fortune, but something a petty thief would’ve keyed in on and grabbed, remained in plain view on one end of the dresser. But then a petty thief would have left a cluttered, disorganized mess behind. This guy had not. It was as if he’d wanted, no needed, to savor his time to meticulously go through Sylvia’s personal items one by one. He hadn’t been in a hurry.

  In Skye’s mind he hadn’t been afraid of getting caught.

  Skye crossed over to the walk-in closet. Here, designer dresses and tops had purposely been slid off the hangers to litter the floor. She couldn’t help but wonder if Sylvia Waterston had known her killer. Otherwise why would a rapist even think to rummage through his victim’s outfits like this, tossing them here and there? Had she invited him into her home with the boyfriend conveniently out of town and things had turned ugly between them? It was something Skye would put in her mental data bank to check later.

  Because of that she turned to her friend of more than a dozen years, Seattle police detective Harry Drummond. For the first time since she’d arrived at the woman’s townhome, Skye took the time to give Harry a sidelong glance to study his face, his attitude, his demeanor. The man she’d known for half her life looked tired. He’d lost weight. Puffy bags under his eyes looked as though he carried around a couple of extra pounds in his face and showed a serious lack of sleep. He looked as though he’d aged ten years since she’d last seen him. How had Harry gotten that old in such a short amount of time? Skye wondered.

  Finally she wanted to know, “Why am I here, Harry? What is it you want from me? Even though the Farmer’s M
arket’s nice and all, Queen Anne isn’t my usual haunt. And you know that?” Skye locked eyes with Harry’s. Her violet eyes bored holes in his. She watched him lift a brow.

  Before Harry answered he couldn’t help it, he took in Skye’s high cheekbones, the raven-black, shoulder-length hair she hadn’t bothered pulling back today. It fell around her shoulders.

  He remembered the first time he’d seen Skye Cree as a twelve-year-old, a terrified little girl who had spent three days in the clutches of a sexual predator.

  Now he stared at the woman with the Native American cinnamon skin, the wide mouth that never seemed to have a problem giving him hell about something. “This is number five, Skye. Within a twenty-mile radius of where we’re standing. Five. Attractive. Single women. Random order. So far we’ve been unable to establish a connection other than the obvious. The first one had been bludgeoned to death with some sort of metal object and left a bloody mess in her bed. Two were strangled but they also had their throats slit. The last two, and now Sylvia, had additional knife wounds to the body. All of them had been raped. The DNA he left connects one guy to the first four, of that I’m certain. I’m pretty sure when we get Sylvia’s lab work back this will be his fifth.”

  Skye angled her head, chewed the inside of her jaw. “So why haven’t I heard anything about these women on the nightly news? Nada on the Internet.”

  “Because we’ve managed to cap this for the press. But after this one—” Harry’s voice trailed off before he nodded his head toward the body on the floor. “I don’t think it’s possible.”

  “So let me get this straight, you’ve got a serial killer and you haven’t yet warned the public? That isn’t right.” Skye rocked back on her heels and studied the windows, one on each side of the bed. She crossed over to the closed drapes, pulled the fabric back with her latex-gloved hand.