Buried (A Bone Secrets Novel 03) (13 page)

Directly on the wrists, over the colors, she’d drawn thick black crisscrossing slashes, like pound signs.

Acid from Michael’s stomach burned up his esophagus.

“It’s him,” he said into the phone. “We’ll be downtown in thirty minutes.”

At the police station, the young woman in front of Mason looked like she’d been brutalized, but she held her chin up, her stance solid, her back straight. Jamie Jacobs was tough, and he admired that. Looked like Brody was admiring her, too. Mason hadn’t ever seen him hover over a woman like this before. He’d been plenty protective of that little dentist, Lacey Campbell, but that was in a big-brother type of way.

Mason caught his partner’s gaze, and Ray Lusco nodded with a wry smile, agreeing. Looked like the reporter had been hit in the head with a love stick.

The bandages on her face pissed him off, and Mason knew she had more under her light pants. She was agitated, trying to reach someone on her cell who wasn’t picking up.

“Are you sure it’s the right number?” Brody asked her.

“Yes! It’s in my contacts and in the call history. I know it’s right, but it’s been disconnected.”

“Has he ever left you without a way to reach him before?”

“Never. There’s always been a phone number. Sometimes he doesn’t get right back to me, but he’s never done anything like this before.”

Mason interrupted. “You’re talking about your brother?”

Unusual light green eyes looked to him.

Holy crap. No wonder Brody’s smitten.

“Yes, and no, I don’t know where he is. But he’s always left me a number to call in the past. Maybe someone got to him…like that guy got to me today.”

Brody carefully took her hands, getting her to look at him. “Jamie, you’ve told me how smart your brother is. I think he’s well aware that someone from his past could one day seek him out. I think that’s part of the reason he left and why he doesn’t let you know how to find him. I have no doubt he’s gone deeper into hiding.”

Mason raised a mental eyebrow at Brody’s soft and reassuring tone.
Yep. He’s in deep.

Jamie stared at Brody for a few seconds and then nodded. “We need to warn him, though. He should at least know what happened to me today.”

Mason cleared his throat. “Let’s talk about that.” He waved a hand at two chairs. “Have a seat.”

Ray tactfully and thoroughly led Jamie through the events of the day. Surprisingly, Brody kept his mouth shut but watched everyone in the room like a hawk.

Mason only interrupted once, directing a question to Brody. “You traced his call?”

“Yep.”

“How?”

Brody said nothing and just looked back at Mason.

“Okay. Fine. I suppose you’re still planning a trip to find him?”

Again, Brody just looked at Mason and then asked a question of his own. “Tell me about the tattoos in the pictures.”

Mason noted he didn’t ask what else was in the pictures. He only wanted to hear about the tattoos.

Mason moved Jamie’s sketch of hands and wrists to the center of the table. “There’s a lot more color and detail here than in the pictures. Possibly, he’s added ink.” Mason pulled out four hazy close-ups of wrists that they’d created off the Polaroids. The pictures weren’t the greatest, but anyone could see that the tattoos in the pictures were in the exact same position and same size as the black marks on Jamie’s drawings.

Jamie stared at the close-ups. “Those are them. They’ve been enhanced with design and colors. It must be the same person.”

Mason shook his head, but Ray spoke up first. “No, we have to keep open the possibility that two people could have the same black tattoos. Maybe they’re associated with each other. Maybe some sort of private, sick club.”

Brody snorted.

Mason agreed with Brody’s sentiment, but he knew better than to jump to conclusions. “We know it’s unlikely to be two different people, but we won’t rule it out. Yet. I’ve passed the Polaroids and drawing to a detective in the gang unit. No one knows more about tattoos than this guy. And if nothing jumps
out at him from the images, then he knows who to ask and where to look.”

“I doubt it’s gang related,” Brody argued. “We’re talking about a white guy with tattoos from twenty years ago. To me that makes the tattoos sound more military related or foreign.”

Mason nodded. “Agreed. Obviously this guy isn’t a gangbanger, but the people who work with them are our tattoo experts. They’ll know where to turn next. It’s our best lead so far.”

“Why would someone leave something so incriminating as pictures in that place?” Jamie asked. “You said you haven’t found fingerprints anywhere, but you found photos? That doesn’t sound like the same person. This”—Jamie paused, eyebrows narrowing—“crook…murderer…isn’t being consistent if they’re not leaving fingerprints but are leaving pictures.”

“Agreed,” Lusco said. “We might be dealing with more than one person.”

“Someone else had to take the pictures,” Brody added.

“One of the other kids could have been behind the camera.” As Mason spoke, he saw Brody imperceptibly flinch. “Not willingly, of course,” he added.

Jamie’s face flushed. “I’ve seen a lot of child abuse in my position. I do what I do because I want to help kids better their lives. Nothing makes me sicker than a defenseless kid.” She met Mason’s gaze straight on. “My brother was horribly abused, and I’ve sat back, thinking I was letting him heal and doing the right thing by not pushing for answers. It was how my parents handled him, and I continued it. Now I think it’s time for him to actively help. The man who attacked me could still be hurting kids. I don’t care if my brother claims he remembers nothing, I’m gonna drag him to every therapist and hypnotist in the
country until he gives you something to help find who killed those children, before this person hurts more.”

She turned to Brody. “I’m ready to go with you to find Chris.”

It was evening by the time Jamie and Michael drove into the outskirts of the dry, beige town of Demming, Oregon. The trip east had taken six hours, and Michael drove the entire stretch. Jamie had offered to take a shift, but he’d turned her down.

“I get antsy if I’m sitting in the passenger seat. Driving helps me focus.”

Their conversation had been minimal. If Michael wasn’t on the phone with an editor or co-worker, his music was blasting through the SUV. His taste was eclectic, ranging from traditional rap to the most heart-stirring classical she’d ever heard. She’d relaxed and simply let him drive, taking the time to study his profile and the world outside.

The scenery changed as they moved east. Dryer, browner, flatter. Once they’d left the Portland metropolitan area and passed through the Cascade Mountain Range, it was as if they’d entered a different state. More pickup trucks, longer stretches between towns, and less greenery. The fir trees were few and far between, while the cowboy hats grew in number. Gun racks started to appear in the back windows of the pickup trucks. Bumper stickers told politicians to keep their change to themselves and keep their laws off their guns.

They were now on the red side of the blue-voting state. By the square mile, the east side of the state was nearly twice as big as the west, but much lower in population and income. Oregon
was a state divided in half by the Cascade Mountains, economics, and politics.

Jamie suddenly craved a handcrafted iced cappuccino and knew she wasn’t going to find one. The self-service machines at 7-Eleven didn’t count.

“The sheriff is expecting us, right?” she asked.

“Yes, but I didn’t tell him exactly when we’d get in. We’ll stop at his office in Demming, see if he’s available to talk a bit. He wants to give me better directions out to your brother’s. I guess it’s hard to find. Also cautioned me to not sneak up on anyone. People in these remote areas have a tendency to shoot first, ask questions later.”

“Chris wouldn’t do that.”

Michael raised a brow at her. “He’s hiding from something. That’s the only reason for a man to live like he does and not introduce his son to his sister.”

Jamie looked out her window. The words stung deep. “He doesn’t like to be around people. After he recovered…he avoided everyone. He has burn scars on his face.”

“I’ve known plenty of people with disfigurations who operate just fine.”

Jamie was silent for a few moments. “What were you doing that day?”

Michael didn’t ask what day she meant.

She saw him swallow hard and then run a hand across his forehead. He kept his gaze forward on the road.

“I’d stayed home sick from school. I knew there was a field trip to the state capitol building scheduled that day, and to me nothing was more boring.” He snorted. “Daniel was pumped. He had a freaky fascination with politics.”

“Your father was a US senator at the time, right?”

“Yes, the junior senator. He’d just started his second term.”

“Your father liked Daniel’s interest?”

“He was thrilled. He had Daniel’s political future mapped out.”

“That’s insane. What kind of pressure does that put on a kid?”

Michael laughed. “The Senator and Daniel used to talk about it for hours. Where he could go to law school, where was the best school for undergrad—”

“And you? What were your plans?”

“I had no plans.” His voice went flat.

A small stab of sorrow touched Jamie’s heart. She’d seen too many kids in her school ignored by their parents. “That didn’t mean he had no reason to love you.”

Michael twisted up one side of his mouth. “I know my parents loved me. It just didn’t feel like they
liked
me. I wasn’t the type of kid they’d planned to have. I wasn’t interested in school. I just wanted to skateboard and ski. I used to pay high school kids to take me along when they skipped school and went skiing. I got caught over and over, but I didn’t care.”

“How’d your parents know you went skiing?”

“You know what raccoon eyes are?”

Jamie laughed. “You didn’t know to use sunscreen when skiing?”

“Naw, sunscreen was for wimps.”

Was he trying to avoid her original question by distracting her? “So were you really sick that day?”

He shook his head. “Not at all.”

“When did you find out?”

“Phone calls started coming in. Daniel wasn’t home from school, the bus never returned to the school, no one could locate
the bus driver. The Senator was in Washington DC and immediately flew home. My mother didn’t go back to the hospital for three days. I’d never seen them so panicked.”

“Of course they were. Their son was missing. They would have reacted the same way if you’d never come back from skiing.”

The wry look on Michael’s face said he doubted her words.

She sat straighter in the SUV’s seat. “You think they would have simply brushed it off if you vanished? That’s ridiculous. No parent reacts like that!”

Michael tried to control the expression on his face. The absolute indignation on Jamie’s was killing him. His parents had never been the same after Daniel disappeared. Before DD—long ago Michael had divided up his life into
Before DD
and
After DD
—he’d simply thought his parents connected better with Daniel, as if they understood the chemical wiring in Daniel’s brain versus the ricocheting impulses that bounced through Michael’s.