Dance of the Bones

The next scanned page revealed the cover sheet of what I easily recognized as an SPD murder book. In the middle of the page was a struck--through John Doe. Written in pen next to it was another name: Kenneth Myers a.k.a. Kenneth Mangum. The next page, the one listing the names of investigating officers, was the one that stopped me cold. Three names leaped out at me: Detective S. Danielson; Detective P. Kramer; and Special Homicide Investigator M. Soames.

Sue Danielson is someone I see often because all these years later she still haunts my dreams. We were working as partners when she died in a shoot--out with her estranged husband. Realistically I know that her death was an act of domestic violence and that it was not my fault. Still, that doesn’t keep me from blaming myself and torturing myself with questions about what I could have done that would have meant the difference between Sue’s living and dying.

Phil Kramer was and is a jerk—-a brownnosing, butt--kissing clown, whose undeserved—-as far as I’m concerned—-promotion to captain shortly after Sue’s death was the catalyst that caused me to pull the plug on my career at Seattle PD.

Then, of course, there’s Mel. She’s my wife, but one of the jobs she was tasked with on Ross Connors’s Special Homicide Investigation Team was searching through multistate missing persons files and trying to match those reports with unidentified homicide victims in Washington State.

Ignoring my coffee, I performed my first duty as one of Ralph Ames’s TLC volunteers. I settled in to read.

AGAIN GABE AWAKENED IN DARKNESS. This time, the first thing he realized was that the truck wasn’t moving. Then, somewhere nearby, he heard a strange buzzing sound. It took a moment for him to recognize what it was—-the sound of a cell phone buzzing because the ringer had been turned off. It wasn’t his phone. If it were, he would have felt it. That meant the phone belonged to the other prisoner. He still didn’t know for sure if his fellow inmate was Tim. What was important was that someone was calling—-someone was trying to reach them, but neither of them could answer. Moving closer, he was able to touch his companion’s pocket and feel the phone through the cloth. Before he could extricate it, the phone gave one last buzz and fell silent.

Frustrated and helpless, Gabe resumed his former position. “Are you awake?” he attempted to mumble through the tape. What actually came out of his mouth was nothing more than a garbled moan, but an answering moan told him that his companion wasn’t sleeping.

That was when Gabe realized that he needed to pee, desperately, and there was nothing for it but to do it, letting the wet warmth run through his underwear and puddle around his butt. When the urine encountered the entrance wounds from the cactus, it hurt like hell. Surprisingly enough, that shocked him out of his strange lethargy.

If he’d been Lani, he might have tried singing a song just then, a song to Elder Brother asking for help, but he doubted I’itoi would be listening. Gabe needed help that was closer at hand.

Then he remembered something important about his friend Timmy. Tim was actually several months older than Gabe. For Tim’s birthday, just after Christmas, Carlos and Paul had given their little brother his heart’s desire—-a switchblade knife. The school campus was, of course, a weapon--free zone. There were signs on every door that said so. That didn’t mean, however, that any of the kids paid attention. Timmy, who liked to carve his initials on trees and to whittle little figurines out of pieces of mesquite, took his knife to school with him every day, wearing it tucked inside his sock.

It occurred to Gabe that if Henry Rojas hadn’t been smart enough to take his prisoner’s cell phone away, maybe he had failed to go looking for a possible weapon as well.