A Conspiracy of Bones (Temperance Brennan #19)(59)

“Now what?” I asked.

“First, I tag and bag your bone and drop it by the lab.”

“It’s probably nonhuman.” Locking eyes with Slidell. He got my meaning.

“So the ME don’t need to be involved. Then I pry a judge away from his Sunday-night gin—”

“We absolutely have to get into that bunker. Fast.”

“Don’t get your skivvies in a twist. Assuming I score a warrant, and that’s a big-ass assumption, I’m not about to go off half-cocked.”

“I’ve left a message with a Realtor who specializes in these abandoned military structures.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I’ll ring him again. And I’ll do more cyber-research.”

“I’ll run Kimrey to ground. Meanwhile, I want you—” Slidell pushed to his feet, head wagging glumly. “Why do I even bother?”

“Call me the minute you find him.”

“Yeah. You’re topping my dance card.”

After Slidell left, I showered, shampooed, and dug sooty mud from under my nails. The bruise on my left side was congealing like the thunderheads before Friday’s storm.

Cleaner, and decidedly more fragrant, I defrosted a Stouffer’s spaghetti dinner and ate while googling Timothy Horshauser. His story was given less attention than many child disappearances. But the circumstances were painfully familiar.

On May 22, 2014, nine-year-old Timothy John Horshauser vanished while waiting for a school bus in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Horshauser’s parents were divorced. Janelle Horshauser was an RN raising her son solo. Paul Horshauser was an auto mechanic, remarried and living in upstate New York. “Timmy” went missing while under the care of his maternal aunt, Brigitte England.

As was their routine, England made breakfast for her nephew so her sister could leave for a morning shift at the local hospital. Just past seven a.m., England drove Timmy to the bus stop, then continued on to her job as a seamstress at an alteration business.

Timmy was the first to arrive at the stop. No one recalled seeing him boarding or riding the bus. He did not appear at school that day. He was never seen again.

A massive search turned up neither the child nor his remains. The usual persons were investigated—known sex offenders, teachers, family members, coaches, bus drivers, everyone in the boy’s life. No suspect was ever identified or charged.

The clipped article had appeared in the Uniontown Herald-Standard. Outside the kid’s hometown, there had been minimal statewide and no national coverage.

I sent an email to Slidell, sharing what I’d learned. And reminding him about the papers from the trench-coat lining that he’d forgotten to take.

Next, I researched iPhone blackouts and poor battery life. Found numerous opinions that the poor performance might be resulting from inadequate memory due to storage of too many images. I checked. My geriatric device was juggling 33,207 stills and 297 videos. Pure laziness. I didn’t need memories of Halloween 2002 at my fingertips.

But what to do? Put everything in the cloud as most cyber-nerds were suggesting? Many of the photos were of sensitive case material, including several still in litigation. Were my pictures more secure in cyberspace or on my laptop, which I alone controlled? Not knowing the legal restraints concerning image retention, I’d done no cloud backups.

Uncertain about the answer, and wanting to be totally safe, I transferred everything to my laptop for temporary storage. Then I googled instructions on how to delete all data in my phone’s library. With great trepidation, I carried them out.

That done, I turned to the newly stored images on my Mac. I didn’t really expect to hear from Slidell. Still, every few minutes, I glanced up to check the time.

With my mobile in camera mode, I’d been unable to use the flashlight app while under the camo netting. Shooting blind hadn’t gone well. Many images were badly framed, out of focus, or too dim to make out the subject. But now and then, I’d nailed it. An empty Campbell’s tomato soup can. A crumpled Doritos bag. A child’s neon-pink sneaker.

Uptick in my pulse.

Focus.

Maybe because my movement was constricted by the size of the opening. Maybe because the light from my flash was trapped inside the bin. The objects in the dumpster were captured with crystal clarity, still-life trash in an inky sea.

I was working through that series when my eyes fell on a tangled washcloth flaring white amid the jumbled fill. Stitched across it was a line of blue script.

DeepHaven.

The logo or name of a towel manufacturer? A place? Maybe a resort or hotel?

Google produced links to several possibilities. A town in Minnesota. A mortgage company. A family camp in New Hampshire. A series of romance novels.

I explored the camp. Followed links to every business in Deephaven, Minnesota. Looped through Zillow listings of real estate on Deephaven Courts, Deephaven Lanes, and Deephaven Roads across the country. Nothing seemed promising, But repetition has its rewards. Seeing the name over and over triggered memories of my foray down into the dark web.

DeepHaven. On a facecloth in a bunker near the creek where Felix Vodyanov’s mutilated body was found.

DeepUnder. Vodyanov, Yates Timmer, and Nick Body together at an MKUltra and mind-control conference in 2010.

I don’t believe in coincidence.

Switching to the TOR browser, I took another plunge down the DeepUnder vortex. This time, instead of choosing one of the tabs, I typed Nick Body into the search box beside the black-and-red banner.