Forgotten Bones Read online

  “No idea,” Judy answered. She sent up a friendly wave in the direction of the teen. “Are you traveling out here with your parents? Do you belong to that RV we saw parked in the first slot?”

  The girl shook her head.

  The simple gesture sent a chill through Judy. From the bottom of her spine all the way to her neck, she felt a sudden coldness that hadn’t been there before. “Are you lost?”

  The girl closed the distance and stood less than five feet away. In the firelight, her eyes sparkled brown. Her dark hair fluttered wildly in the night breeze. But she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off Judy.

  Judy bounded to her feet, causing Reggie to drop his beer bottle in mid-sip. She took a step toward the girl. “What’s wrong? Is something the matter? Are you hurt? You must be freezing in those shorts.”

  “I’ll get another chair,” Reggie offered as he scrambled to accommodate their visitor. “And a blanket. It is chilly out here.”

  “Is there anyone we can call for you?” Judy asked, wondering if the teen might be in shock. “We have a cell phone.” When the girl just stood there without saying anything, Judy started to ramble. “My name’s Judy, and this is Reggie. We’re from Seattle, heading back from Yellowstone Park. We spent the last few weeks there. What’s your name? Are you camping nearby with your family? You surprised us, spooked us is more like it. We didn’t know anyone was out there…in the woods. You want something to eat?”

  With her hands held out, the teen moved closer to the fire as if she couldn’t get enough of its warmth. She stared into the flames as if she saw something far away and needed to join it there.

  Reggie came back with another canvas chair and a thick, wool blanket. He unfolded the chair and handed off the wrap to the girl.

  She’d started to shake as she lowered herself into the chair as if she had no strength left in her body to stand.

  The stranger made no attempt to use the blanket, though, so Judy did it for her, draping the layer of warmth around the girl’s shoulders and tucking what remained around her body. After making sure she’d done all she could to get the girl warm, Judy set a bottle of water in the chair’s cupholder. “You look like you need to hydrate.”

  “I’m so cold. I feel like I can’t get warm enough. Do you mind if I sit here for a little while?”

  “Of course. Make yourself at home.” Judy turned back to Reggie. “Go make her a sandwich from that leftover ham and cheese that’s in the fridge.”

  She watched Reggie disappear inside the RV before angling back toward the stranger. Dragging her chair closer, Judy leaned toward the teen. “Your parents must be worried sick. Are you a local? Are you from around here? What’s your name?”

  Judy couldn’t help herself with the questions. They just kept rolling out of her mouth. For a few minutes longer, she peppered the girl without getting her to talk. “Do you want me to go call your parents? Are they nearby? Are you hurt? Won’t you please say something? Please. Tell us your name. Is that so hard?”

  The girl slowly tore her eyes from the fire and turned her head to meet Judy’s. “My name is Sara, Sara Grayhawk. I live here, on the land that belonged to my forefathers.” She looked back into the flames as if to draw strength from the blaze itself so that she might continue with her story. “I’ve been lost for a long time. Maybe you could help me find my way home.”

  Judy put a hand on the blanket where the girl’s arm shook underneath. “We’ll help. Don’t you worry about that. We’ll get you back home.”

  Reggie came back with the sandwich and tried to hand it off to the girl. “Sorry, but we ate all the hot food. And there were only two hamburger patties.”

  But Sara seemed not to care about eating. “If I could, I’d like to just sit here by the fire. I’m so cold and tired. I’ve been walking a long time.”

  “No problem. You’re probably lost, got turned around. It’s easy to do out here,” Judy began. “You sit right there and take all the time you need. The food will be here when you’re ready to eat it. I’ll send Reggie out to gather more wood for the fire, make it nice and toasty for you.”

  Judy traded looks with Reggie as he began to clean up their supper dishes. She pulled him out of earshot. “I think someone might be after her. She acts like she’s scared to death.”

  Reggie glanced over at Sara and noticed the teen had begun to rock back and forth in the folding chair. “I don’t know, but she could be a runaway, running from an abusive life back home.”

  “Could be, but I didn’t see any outward bruises, none on her arms and legs anyway. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t sexually abused, though.”

  Reggie nodded. “Tell you what. I’m going to walk back up the road and ask if anyone knows the name, maybe try to make a few phone calls if I can get a signal.”

  “Don’t take too long. This is starting to give me the creeps. I’ll keep a close eye on her until you get back.”

  Reggie leaned in to give Judy a hug and a kiss before starting off. “Are you okay with that? Me leaving you alone with her?”

  “I’m fine. Just make that call and hurry back.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Reggie came walking back to the campsite. He plopped down beside Judy, who was still watching a now sleeping Sara. “Did she say anything else?”

  “Not another word. She just kept gazing into the fire as if her life depended on it. A few minutes ago, she drifted off. Did you find out anything?”

  Reggie kept looking at his phone. “No one knew her. But get this, not a single person in this campground could get their cell phone to work. Not one. I mean, no one could get a signal. It’s as if we’ve found a big, black hole and fell in. I did find out where the Tribal Police Station is located.”

  “And?”

  “It’s about an hour down the road. I think that would be the best place to go for help after breakfast in the morning.”

  “Great. I already tried to get her to sleep in the RV, but she wouldn’t budge out of that chair. I dug out more blankets because I’m not leaving her alone out here, Reg.”

  “We’d planned to sleep under the stars anyway, I just thought, you know, in a sleeping bag on the ground.”

  “Sleeping upright in the chair is okay with me as long as I can keep an eye on her.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll build up the fire.”

  “Don’t go too far,” Judy cautioned. “I don’t like this place much.”

  “No worries. I won’t have to. There’s plenty of wood within range that’ll get us through the night.”

  After tossing more logs on the fire, Reggie moved his chair closer to Judy’s and snuggled under the layers of bedding to wait for morning.

  Reggie fell into a deep slumber almost immediately. But Judy couldn’t drop off. She stared into the glow of the fire, listening to the crackle of the wood, the pop and sizzle. The flames were like a mesmerizing hypnotic dance. Every now and again, she’d glance over at Sara, who seemed to finally stop shivering.

  Judy tried to let the same kind of tranquility override her anxiousness. She closed her eyes to the sound of far-off drumbeats cascading like a thunderous waterfall. Just when the tempo would slow, she imagined flutes picking up the beat. Soon the melodious rhythms had her nodding off where she sat, slumped against Reggie’s shoulder.

  Dawn came early.

  The morning sun shining in his face broke Reggie’s snooze fest. The last faint trails of smoke from the fire floated away into the mountain air as he jerked more fully awake.

  Rubbing his eyes, he looked over to see Sara’s chair empty. Before he could alert Judy, she squirmed uncomfortably in her chair and bolted upright.

  “No need to panic, but I’m afraid Sara’s gone.”

  Judy got to her feet and started looking around for the girl. “Sara, Sara, where are you? Maybe she went into the RV to go to the bathroom.”

  But a quick search inside the motorhome revealed that Sara wasn’t there. They looked around the clearing but found no trace of he
r. “Reggie, we need to call the police.”

  “Still no signal. Let’s just pack up and get on the road. We need to report this to the Tribal Police.”

  Once they were able to find the ramp that led back to the highway, Judy was able to get a signal. Her first call went to the highway patrol where they politely told her that the incident had occurred on the Reservation. That made it a matter for the Tribal Police to handle.

  By the time they arrived at the Tribal Police Station, Judy was fed up with the runaround. Even when they were ushered into an interview room, she was still worked up.

  After waiting for another half hour, a tall, dark-haired Native American man opened the door carrying a file folder and introduced himself. Dressed in dark jeans and a white cotton shirt, the man had high cheekbones that went with a serious look. In his thirties, he wore his long, coal-black hair in a single braid down his back.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Captain Quade Grayhawk.” He didn’t shake hands, nor did he bother taking a seat in one of the chairs.

  “Grayhawk is Sara’s last name,” Judy intoned, eyeing the man for some kind of reaction. “Why are we just sitting here wasting time? We’re talking about a frightened teenage girl who’s out there lost. Aren’t you the least bit concerned for someone who’s obviously a relative of yours? Why aren’t you doing more to help find Sara? Aren’t you concerned about the girl’s safety? She’s out there, wandering around in the woods. She could be anywhere by now.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed into fiery slits. “Let me be blunt because obviously, you’re both dense as a stump. I don’t take kindly to tourists calling in crank calls, but when they’re about my sister, I get extremely suspicious.”

  “Sara is your sister? Why didn’t the man at the front desk say so? And I resent being accused of placing a crank call,” Judy insisted, beginning to get worked up for real. “Sara, or a girl identifying herself as Sara, stayed with us last night at our campsite. We didn’t make her up. She’s not a figment of our imagination.”

  “That’s bullshit. Sara’s been missing for ten years, so either someone has played a bad joke on you, or you’re trying to pull a fast one over on me. Either way, I could charge you both for making a false police report.”

  Sitting across the table, Reggie cleared his throat. “Look, this teenage girl walked into our camp not twelve hours earlier and claimed to be Sara Grayhawk. We didn’t make up the name. How could we? When we woke up, the girl was gone. So, you tell us what’s going on here, okay? Is this some sort of tourist funny business you guys try to pull before your busy season, hoping it brings in more tourists to the area? Maybe that’s it. You pretend to do your jobs by locking up innocent people passing through the Reservation?”

  Judy sensed things could get heated fast and jumped in, “Do you have a picture of your sister?”

  Grayhawk looked insulted. Without a word, he glared at her before opening the file folder he’d brought with him. He took out a worn-out photograph along with a dated missing persons’ flyer and slid the picture and the piece of paper across the table toward Judy.

  Judy’s eyes went wide before she passed both pieces over to Reggie. “That’s the same girl who walked into our camp last night, right down to the identical clothing she had on.”

  Reggie nodded in agreement. “Yep, that’s her.”

  Still standing, Grayhawk slapped his hands down on the conference table with enough pressure that his knuckles turned white. He leaned across for emphasis and whispered, “I don’t know who you saw or what your game is, but it wasn’t my sister.” He reached over and jerked the flyer out of Reggie’s hand before picking up the photograph.

  Judy was at a loss for words, but Reggie was not. “All she wanted was to go home, back to the people who loved her. She wanted us to bring her back home.”

  With that, Captain Grayhawk cleared his throat and stated in a low voice, “Get out of my police station. Now. Go back to wherever you came from and never speak of this again.”

  The cop spun toward the door, but just before he turned the knob, the man growled, “And don’t ever call here again.”

  Grayhawk let the door slam behind him without bothering to soften the noise.

  A few seconds later, an older Native American sergeant opened the door and motioned for them to get up. “Follow me, please. I’ll walk you out.”

  “That man was beyond rude,” Judy began in a low voice.

  “I apologize. You’ll have to forgive the Captain. He should be used to this by now. You see, every year about this same time, someone invariably shows up here reporting the same thing, telling the same story about Sara. Over the years, there have been other sightings like the one you reported, going all the way back, oh, nine years or so now. At first, we took the reports to heart and called in the search dogs. We’ve been all over that campground with cadaver dogs more than once. We’ve covered every single inch of ground for five miles around that place. But so far…”

  Judy was beginning to get the gist. “I see. This is like that story, ‘The Lady in the Lake’ tale. Am I right? People report seeing the same girl, this Sara, and then she disappears. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

  Midway down the hallway, the sergeant stopped in front of a large bulletin board behind a glass case that had maybe fifteen pictures of missing teenage girls tacked up to it. “This is our Wall of Shame.”

  The sergeant waved his hand toward the photographs. “I believe in the old ways. I think Sara’s spirit is trying very hard to find its way home again and, for whatever reason, cannot.”

  “Maybe you should tell Captain Grayhawk that,” Reggie suggested.

  “The Captain already knows it. He just doesn’t want to admit to it.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Reggie said, pulling out his phone. “Do you mind if I take a few pictures of this? We know someone back in Seattle who might be able to help.”

  The sergeant seemed surprised at that but remained stoic. “I doubt that. The FBI was called in every single time one of these girls went missing, so was the BIA, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the State Police. No one’s found a trace of them. Most agents these days choose to chalk them up to runaways.”

  “But you don’t think so?” Judy said, picking up on the hopelessness in the man’s voice. “The thing is, we really do know a special person who loves a challenge like this. She’s had success finding a solution to this kind of thing. So can we take the photos on your board?”

  The sergeant’s eyes brightened. He glanced down the hallway and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’ll do you one better than that. How about if I email the photos to you with a synopsis of each case? I obviously can’t send you the files, not that there’s much info there. But to my way of thinking, we could use whatever help we can get.”

  “How’s your boss gonna take to that?” Judy muttered.

  Without answering the question, the older man simply said, “Some things are greater than one person. These girls need to be found. Families need answers. Someone needs to bring them back home.”

  One

  Present Day

  Memorial Day weekend

  Seattle, Washington

  The runup to the start of summer had hit an unexpected snag. Crosstown gridlock wasn’t the issue, although being stuck on the Magnolia Bridge on a Friday afternoon couldn’t have come at a worse time. Two hours ago, a cold front had hit the Emerald City of green and dropped enough rain to flood the streets and make the commute home messy and slick.

  The downpour put a damper on making a quick stop at the market to pick up anything for dinner, especially with a cranky toddler in tow. Once Skye Cree decided ordering a pizza would suffice for supper, she told herself it would be the perfect thing for a rainy night spent in front of the TV, curled up watching a movie.

  That is if she ever made it off the bridge.

  At that frustrating moment, she had to admit motherhood wasn’t the piece of cake she’d dreamed about. Sh
e could handle tracking serial killers and catching human traffickers. No problem with catching societies’ dregs and getting them off the street. But dealing with a headstrong three-year-old, day in and day out was proving to be a challenge.

  As she sped past the congested parking lot at the neighborhood grocery store, she decided to use the online feature and have supplies delivered, enough to get them through the weekend without venturing out into mind-numbing mobs of traffic, let alone the nasty weather. These days, dragging a crabby Sierra up and down the aisles anywhere didn’t make much sense. There were times of late that her adorable, precocious daughter had been driving her crazy. Today had been one of those days.

  After winding her way through a tree-lined neighborhood, Skye pulled off Magnolia Boulevard into an alleyway. She hit the remote and pulled their minivan into a spacious garage that held her beat-up, old Subaru on one side.

  Home was now a contemporary Craftsman built on two acres by a prominent Seattle architect back in 1968 in the days when social unrest was the highlight of Walter Cronkite’s newscast every night. The fifty-year-old home hadn’t lost its style or its elegance. The lot sat on top of a hill with views of Puget Sound and Elliott Bay, capturing the natural beauty of the coastline. Today, tall evergreens swayed in the breeze, their treetops disappearing into the low-hanging rain clouds.

  While unbuckling Sierra from her car seat, Skye’s cell phone rang.

  “I’ve just been talking to Reggie and Judy,” Josh informed her.

  Gripping the device between her ear and shoulder, Skye struggled not to let the phone slip out of the awkward grasp. “I thought you were across town with Leo. I thought he was dropping you off at the house.”

  “We were, and he is. But we stopped by the office to pick up a flash drive for work, and that’s where we bumped into Reggie and Judy in the elevator as we were leaving. I invited them over for dinner. Leo’s staying, too.”