Buried (Bone Secrets, #3)(27)

“Fuck you.”

Callahan laughed. “I’ll interview Jamie. Hear what she has to say.”

Michael wasn’t done. “She thinks he was in his late forties, maybe early fifties. That’d put him at the right age to pull that shit twenty years ago.”

“I’m not saying he didn’t. Christ, Brody. I’ll follow up. Right now I’ve got a stack of children’s autopsy reports on my desk. I take a break from reading them every fifteen minutes to go punch the wall, I get so pissed. After I get through those reports, I have a smaller stack from the pit with the adult remains. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll swap jobs with you. You read, and I’ll drive around town in the sun, getting a tan and sticking my nose into other people’s business.”

“I get it, Callahan.”

The detective’s voice lowered. “I’ll get to her, Brody. I want the bastard as bad as you do.”

“Impossible,” Michael muttered.

“Too bad he’s so average looking. Nothing really stands out visually.”

“What?” Michael stood straighter. “Didn’t they mention the tattoos?”

“Tattoos?” Callahan asked sharply.

“Tats on the backs of his wrists. Jamie got the impression they went a lot farther up his arms.”

Callahan’s swearing made Michael pull the phone away from his ear.

“What?” Michael said when Callahan stopped to catch a breath. “What the f*ck is up with the tats?”

“We’ve got pictures.”

“Pictures? Pictures from what?”

Callahan had turned away from his phone and was urgently talking to someone in the background.

“Callahan. What pictures?” Michael spoke through clenched teeth.

“Lusco’s pulling them up. Fucking pervert.”

“Lusco?” Michael could hear the other detective’s voice in the background now.

“No, Jamie’s attacker.”

Michael was ready to strangle the detective. “What the f*ck are you talking about?”

Callahan cleared his throat. “We found pictures in the bunker. Old Polaroids. Sick Polaroids. They weren’t even hidden. They were just left on one of the shelves for anyone to find.”

Michael’s stomach turned to pure acid. Daniel?

“The creep took some nasty pics of those kids. His hands, or someone’s hands, show in some of them. There’re tats on the wrists.”

“His wrists?”

“Yeah, they don’t look like they go up his arms. Forearms are clear. It’s just a few Asian characters on the backs of the wrists. Pretty big, though. About an inch and a half in diameter.”

“You can’t see his face?” Michael asked. His head suddenly felt weightless. He leaned on his elbows on his hood, head down.

“Not of him. Just the kids. Nothing else shows of the adult.”

Michael didn’t want to know any more. No details. His brain was supplying too many details of its own.

“What’d Jamie say the tattoos looked like?” Callahan asked.

“She didn’t say. She’s working on some sketches with the cops. I don’t know if she saw specifics. She said there were a lot of them.”

“He could have added to them.”

“Hang on, Callahan.” Michael strode over to the lawn where Jamie sat. “Hey, princess, you come up with any images yet?”

Jamie gave him a weak smile. “Don’t call me princess, please.” She looked down at her paper. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t picture them.”

“I told her to start with just colors,” the cop next to her said. “Then add stark lines or shapes.”

“Let me see.” Michael held his hand out for the paper.

It appeared she’d traced her own hands and wrists for the outlines. She’d made muted multicolored swirls that started at mid-forearm and spread nearly to the knuckles. The colors intensified on the backs of the hands. Blues, reds, greens.

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?”