Buried (Bone Secrets, #3)(78)

“Right now we’ve got to find Jamie. I know the Ghostman grabbed her,” Chris said.

“Who?” Spencer scowled.

“I called him the Ghostman. Same guy who held me captive as a kid. Freaking ghostly, white-skin-colored *.”

“Covered in ink now,” Michael added.

“Mr. Tattoo is the Ghostman. Got it.” Spencer’s expression said he thought both of them were slightly nuts. “Who the f*ck is he really?”

Michael shook his head. “Dunno.”

Hove stepped forward. “According to your Detective Callahan, he’s a former sexual predator known as Gary Hinkes. But the guy has vanished from the face of the earth. There’s no driver’s license, no tax records, nothing. He was arrested in the late eighties for some sex crimes, but no one can find any records. He was also arrested in conjunction with a murder of a Portland woman but went to prison on a lesser charge. There hasn’t been a peep from him since he got out.”

“Where are the records from the trial?” Spencer asked.

“Gone.”

“And from his time in prison?”

“He was there for two months. Any scrap of paper relating to it has vanished.”

Chris looked at Michael. “How does that happen?”

Michael’s stomach thrummed. “Someone knows someone with the right connections.”

“Well, the people who interacted with him shouldn’t have disappeared…I hope. What about the warden from when he was in prison? He remember him?” Spencer crossed his arms on his chest.

Hove shook his head. “Retired. And he was only there two months. No one can tell us shit.”

“How about the judge at his trial? Or his lawyer or prosecutor? Someone has to remember something besides Fielding. It was a f*cking murder trial.”

“The detectives in Portland are looking into that and some other possibilities. They’ll find someone who knows what he’s doing these days. Now, what do you got inside?” asked Hove.

“Absolutely nothing,” Michael answered, but he waved the cops into the bed-and-breakfast. Michael was ready to crawl out of his skin. Standing around and waiting for the police wasn’t how he operated. He liked action. He craved action. He needed to DO something.

But right now he had no f*cking information to move on.

Chuck greeted the group of men and then watched them pound up the stairs. Spencer’s deputy stayed back to question Chuck. Hove and Spencer made a quick survey of the bedroom and bathroom, identical to Michael’s sweep. Hove scanned the backyard.

“Where’s the gate go?” he asked Michael.

“Alley behind the property.”

“Look in the alley?”

“No.” Michael’s mouth dried up. Shit. He started to dash out of the room.

“Hold up. We’ll all go.”

The three men marched through the bed-and-breakfast as Michael fought the urge to sprint ahead. Why hadn’t he checked the alley?

Spencer pointed at the back door to the yard. “That been unlocked all day?” He directed the question to Chuck, who nodded.

If it hadn’t been in the high nineties still, the backyard would have been inviting. The sun had nearly set, but the sky was still very light. Michael focused on the wood gate. It was open slightly into the alley. The hedge on either side had to be close to ten feet tall.

“Sucker is tall,” muttered Hove, eyeing the hedge.

Spencer pushed the gate open, and the three men stepped into the empty alley.

Michael’s heart plummeted. What had he been expecting?

The cops split up, one heading left and one to the right. Michael tailed Spencer. The alley was surprisingly clean. The other properties bordered the alley with wooden fences, hedges, or nothing. A few garbage cans stood in the alley but nothing else. Spencer peeked through a few gates and then turned around to head back to the bed-and-breakfast. Hove was doing the same from the opposite end.

“Pretty clean for an alley,” said Spencer. “Won’t find this in a big city.”

Chris stepped through the gate into the alley. He nodded at Michael and scanned the alley both ways.

“Where’s Brian?” Michael asked as the men regrouped at the gate.

“Got distracted by the bird feeders.” Chris gestured behind him.

“There’s some trash down that way.” Hove gestured behind him. “But nothing else caught my eye.”

“Trash?” Michael frowned. “Our end of the alley was clean enough to eat from.” His legs started moving toward Hove’s end. Up ahead, he could see some plastic cellophane litter next to the hedge. He drew closer and couldn’t help but smile.

Some kid somewhere is gonna be upset.

The packages hadn’t even been opened. At least a dozen Twinkies littered the concrete. He snorted. As a kid, that would have killed him to see all those go to waste. Too bad—

Michael whirled around when Chris violently retched into the hedge.



Mason barreled into the office. The traffic had finally let up. He’d passed a nasty-looking accident between a semi and one of those tiny Smart cars. The site had been crawling with cops and emergency personnel, so he hadn’t stopped, but he’d done as much rubber-necking as all the other vehicles, adding to the slowdown. It was one thing to rubberneck at a simple fender-bender on the side of the freeway, but this was a sight he hadn’t seen before.