Bones: An Irene Kelly Mystery
By Jan Burke
4/5
()
About this ebook
Only one person knows where Julia Sayre is: her killer. Four years ago, the young mother of two disappeared, a story that soon became a personal mission for Irene Kelly. But the search for Julia proved fruitless. Now on death row for unimaginable acts of torture and murder, inmate Nick Parrish is plea-bargaining for a life sentence, promising to lead investigators—and Irene—into the dark isolation of the Sierra Nevadas, where they will discover what really happened to Julia Sayre. But Parrish has other terrifying secrets and plans, and now his deadly focus is on a new potential victim—Irene Kelly.
Jan Burke
Jan Burke is the author of a dozen novels and a collection of short stories. She is the founder of the Crime Lab Project and is a member of the board of the California Forensic Science Institute. She lives in Southern California with her husband and two dogs. Learn more about her at JanBurke.com.
Read more from Jan Burke
Flight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disturbance: An Irene Kelly Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Goodnight, Irene Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kidnapped: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dear Irene,: An Irene kelly Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hocus Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sweet Dreams, Irene: An Irene Kelly Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Remember Me, Irene: An Irene Kelly Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Caught Red-Handed Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiar: An Irene Kelly Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bloodlines: An Irene Kelly Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Case Closed Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tried Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Convicted Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Messenger: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Justice Done Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsApprehended Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to Bones
Related ebooks
Dear Irene,: An Irene kelly Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Now That She's Gone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Try to Stop Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bloodlines: An Irene Kelly Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Case Closed Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Liar: An Irene Kelly Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Remember Me, Irene: An Irene Kelly Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sweet Dreams, Irene: An Irene Kelly Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Badger Games Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hocus Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fred Carver Mysteries Volume One: Tropical Heat, Scorcher, and Kiss Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Binding Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Justice Done Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Max Freeman Mysteries Volume One: The Blue Edge of Midnight, A Visible Darkness, and Shadow Men Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Apprehended Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Twist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Messenger: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tried Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Nine Lives: A Gripping Mystery Thriller Full of Twists Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Perfect Alibi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Peace, No Quiet: A Crime Thriller Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In For The Kill Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Likely to Die Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eighteen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Harbor Lights Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Past Tense Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Unspeakable Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Convicted Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInmate 1577 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Mystery, Thriller & Crime Fiction For You
Five Little Pigs: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Deja Dead: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death on the Nile: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And Then There Were None Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Island: A Short Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story Of A Doctor Who Got Away With Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Four: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Murder at the Vicarage: A Miss Marple Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death Du Jour: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Daughter of Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poirot Investigates: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nine Tailors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gaudy Night Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hercule Poirot's Christmas: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5But I Trusted You: Ann Rule's Crime Files #14 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mrs. McGinty's Dead: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pale Horse Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death in the Clouds: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tuesday Night Club: A Miss Marple Short Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Curtain: Poirot's Last Case: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5At Bertram's Hotel: A Miss Marple Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Partners in Crime: A Tommy and Tuppence Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grave Secrets: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Five Red Herrings Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Murder Is Announced: A Miss Marple Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dumb Witness: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Bones
147 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Burke does a pretty good job of maintaining the suspense of Bones, although I found the Ben Sheridan character more interesting than the protagonist Irene. This is a killer-showing-the-cops-where-the-bodies-are-buried thriller, with the standard turn-around of the villain stalking someone in that group.
The book is easy to read, and you can hurry through it. There are a couple of twists, some predictable. But the bad guy is creepy enough, and the main characters intriguing enough, that you want to finish the book. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Synopsis: 'journalist Irene Kelly is part of the investigative team on the hunt for serial killer Nicholas Parrish's many victims. Their graves are in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, and Parrish, having entered a plea bargain, is there too, leading the team to the women's corpses in exchange for a life sentence instead of the death penalty. But Parrish has planned a surprise or two. When a grave explodes, most of the team are killed, Irene flees, and the killer escapes. Back home, Irene continues to work at the behest of Gillian Sayre, the daughter of one victim. Her hunt for Parrish is made considerably easier by his growing obsession with her.'Review: This is a scary book; the bad guy is really bad. However, the ending is a bit questionable and unbelievable.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book won an Edgar but I was thoroughly unimpressed. I didn't care, first of all, for the way the book jumped between first person for Irene Kelley's perspective, and third person for others, such as the psychopathic serial killer of the tale. (Nor did I like the prologue entirely in italics--I don't like how authors use that font to throw a piece of gauze over their prose--pretentious and hard to read.) I thought how the plot unfolded and the way the killer's mind was portrayed was utterly predictable. The one thing I did love was the cadaver dog, Bingle. I found him a lot more memorable and fascinating than the killer, Nicholas Parrish, or Irene Kelly, the heroine of the tale. Unfortunately, there's not enough of him to redeem this 500 page novel.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Pretty good, but a little predictible. She uses shock factor to keep you involved in the beginning, which is probably necessary because Irene has had so many struggles to survive that they no longer pack the punch they did in earlier books. Not my favorite Irene, but fairly enjoyable.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The book had some interesting angles, such as the use of forensic tracking dogs, but I found the behavior of the characters unrealistic. I found myself frequently skimming large portions of the text and, although I did finish the book, it would not make my list of books I would recommend to others--there are far too many other books I would recommend before this one.
Book preview
Bones - Jan Burke
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
THE NEW YORK TIMES • USA TODAY
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES • THE DENVER POST
Jan Burke has soared onto bestseller lists nationwide!
Acclaim for Jan Burke’s Irene Kelly novels—crime
fiction in a first-rate series
(The Washington Post) that
is a purebred addition to the American mystery canon
(Texas Monthly)
BONES
Edgar® Award Winner, Best Novel
Anthony Award Nominee
One of Library Journal’s Best Books of the Year
Alternate Selection of the Mystery Guild
A gem . . . packed with unrelenting suspense.
—San Diego Union Tribune
Spine-tingling, nerve-fraying, breath-suppressing suspense . . . feverishly paced. . . . A breakthrough novel . . . in the mystery pantheon with Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton, Robert B. Parker, and John Sandford.
—The Tennessean
A lethal game of the hunter and the hunted . . . chilling . . . unforgettable.
—Library Journal
The brilliant Jan Burke . . . attains the level of a Thomas Harris.
—Midwest Book Review
Burke has outdone herself. I absolutely could not put this down.
—The Pilot (Southern Pines, NC)
Electrifying suspense. . . . Before you sit down to relish this terrifying thriller, make sure your doors and windows are firmly locked.
—Romantic Times (Top Pick)
Taut and suspenseful.
—Kirkus Reviews
KIDNAPPED
Enthralling. . . . Jan Burke again shows her boundless energy in ratcheting up suspense while keeping a center of realism.
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Enough twists to fill a bag of pretzels. . . . [A] terrific novel . . . smart and beautifully plotted.
—The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
A well-crafted novel of suspense. . . . The many plot twists should keep readers turning the pages.
—Publishers Weekly
BLOODLINES
Superb. . . . A literary triumph. . . . An extremely satisfying work.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Truly a masterwork . . . A spectacular achievement. . . . A book that could only be written by an author at the top of her game.
—Mystery News (highest rating)
A brilliant exhibition of what the crime genre can offer.
—The Baltimore Sun
An ambitious thriller . . . a sprawling tale of murder.
—Texas Monthly
"Rich storytelling. . . . Burke’s skills reach a zenith with Bloodlines."
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
More praise for Jan Burke’s Irene Kelly novels
The suspense is high and the characters complex. Jan Burke is on the fast track.
—USA Today
One of my favorite guilt-free pleasures.
—Janet Evanovich
Gripping . . . compelling . . . Jan Burke doesn’t come up for air until every detail is nailed down.
—Michael Connelly
Deft, witty, wise, and very well-crafted.
—James Ellroy
A tense tale of drama and revenge. . . . A story that will grab you on page one and just won’t let go.
—Robert Crais
An excellent series. . . . Tense and thoughtful . . . sharp and sardonic.
—Chicago Tribune
She raises the emotional ante with each book.
—Los Angeles Times
ALSO BY JAN BURKE
The Messenger
Kidnapped
Bloodlines
Eighteen
Nine
Flight
Bones
Liar
Hocus
Remember Me, Irene
Dear Irene
Sweet Dreams, Irene
Goodnight, Irene
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by Jan Burke
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Pocket Star Books paperback edition June 2009
POCKET STAR and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Jill Putorti
Cover design by Jae Song; photo of bone image © Dirk DE KEGEL/stock.xchng; photo waterstream image © Patrick Nijhuis/stock.xchng.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN: 978-1-4165-9608-0
eISBN: 978-1-45165-599-5
The author and the publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission to use an excerpt from Parzival: The Quest of the Grail Knight by Katherine Paterson. Copyright © 1998 by Minna Murra Inc. Used by permission of Lodestar Books, an affiliate of Dutton Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Notes and Acknowledgments
To Judy Myers Suchey and Paul Sledzik
and the AFIP Forensic Anthropology Faculty
for their compassionate work
and for teaching me to see more than bones
and
In memory of Shadow and Siri
The gate was open and the drawbridge down.
He galloped across, but when he got to the end of the drawbridge, someone yanked the cable so abruptly that Parzival was nearly thrown, horse and all, into the moat.
Parzival turned back to see who had done this to him. There, standing in the open gateway, was the page who had pulled the cable, shaking his fist at Parzival. May God damn the light that falls upon your path!
the boy cried. You fool! You wretched fool! Why didn’t you ask the question?
What do you mean?
Parzival shouted back. What question?
PARZIVAL: THE QUEST OF THE GRAIL KNIGHT
by Wolfram von Eschenbach,
as retold by Katherine Paterson
He paid cash for the book, as he had all the other books on this subject. He spoke to no one, did nothing that would make him memorable to a clerk or customer.
There were many customers in the store when he made the purchase; he always chose times when he knew the bookstore would be busy.
Even if the store had been empty, he would have had little to worry over. When he chose to hide his powers, he was a nondescript man in a world full of people who could seldom describe more than what they saw in the mirror each morning.
Oh, perhaps they could also describe close friends, their own children, their spouses, people they worked with every day. At a stretch, their neighbors. But not quiet strangers in bookstores. Not a stranger who had never been there before, who would never come in again.
He found mild excitement in buying these books, knew this was how some men felt when buying pornography. Seeing it sitting in the bag on the car seat on the way home, he knew the book’s subject matter would arouse him. Not as much as the real thing—nothing ever excited him as much as the real thing.
This one was about Dahmer.
We don’t share the same appetites, he thought to himself, and was hard put to control a little fit of hilarity at the joke he had made.
When he had finished reading and rereading the book, he would place it with all the other books about his brethren. Books about Bianchi and Speck and Bundy; about earlier ones—Mors and Lucas and Pomeroy—and others; books about killers and their minds, about killers and their victims, about killers and those who hunted them.
At first, he had read the books because he wanted to understand the drive, the need that he feared would consume him. But now it was merely entertainment of a sort. By now, years after he had begun his little library, he knew he understood all there was to understand: he knew that only a man of his genius could cope with the demands of his desire.
He did not lack daring or creativity. Every new aspect, every heightening of the experience, merely confirmed what he already knew: he was unique in history.
Thinking of this, he was a little sad that he wouldn’t be caught, because he knew he was going to miss that one additional thrill—the only one that eluded him. The acknowledgment.
Notoriety beckoned. He dreamed of it, fantasized about it almost as much as the killings.
Why did he kill?
Everyone would want to know.
Why did he kill?
Everyone would ask.
And he would speak—quietly, and with authority—and all would hear the answer.
1
FOUR YEARS LATER
Monday Afternoon, May 15
The sensation of being watched had been almost constant on this journey, and now I was feeling it again. I tried to ignore it, to concentrate on the paperback I was reading, but my efforts were useless. I lifted my eyes from the page and looked toward the prisoner, three rows up, expecting to see him staring at me again. He was asleep. How he could manage it over the loud drone of the plane’s propellers, I’ll never know. How Nicholas Parrish could sleep at all—but I suppose that’s one of the advantages of being utterly without a conscience.
So if Parrish wasn’t the one eyeing me, who was?
I glanced around the cabin. Most of the men—even those who were not sociopaths—were sleeping. Two of Parrish’s guards were awake, but not looking at me. The other two napped. I turned to look behind me. Ben Sheridan, one of the forensic anthropologists, was looking out the window. David Niles, the other, sat across the aisle, reading. There, sitting next to him, was the starer.
He wasn’t staring so much as studying, I decided. No hostility there. Actually, of the all-male group with me on the small plane, he was the only one who didn’t object to my presence. While most of the others snubbed me, he had taken an immediate liking to me. The feeling was mutual. He was handsome, intelligent, and athletic. But then again, nothing excited him more than discovering a piece of decaying flesh.
He was a cadaver dog.
Bingle—named for his habit of crooning along whenever he heard his handler sing—was a black-and-tan, three-year-old, mostly German shepherd dog, trained to find human remains.
And that was what this expedition into the mountains was all about: finding human remains. A very specific set of them.
I looked into Bingle’s dark brown eyes, but my thoughts had already turned to a blue-eyed girl named Gillian Sayre; Gillian, who had spent the last four years waiting for someone to find whatever remained of her mother.
Four years ago. One warm summer day, the day after her mother failed to come home, Gillian was waiting outside the building which houses the Express. I was with a group of coworkers on our way to lunch. I saw her right away; she was tall and thin and her hair was cropped short and dyed the color of eggplant. Her face was pale; she was wearing dark brown lipstick and lots of eye shadow, which only accentuated the nearly colorless blue of her eyes. Her lashes and brows were thick and dyed black and her left brow was pierced by a small silver hoop. Seven or eight pierced earrings climbed the curve of each ear. Her pale, slender fingers bore silver rings of varying widths and designs; her fingernails were short, but painted black. Her clothes were rumpled, her shoes clunky.
Are any of you reporters?
she called to us.
Never slow to grasp this sort of opportunity, my friend Stuart Angert pointed at me and said, Only this lady here. The rest of us just finished an interview with her, so she’s free to talk to you.
The others laughed, and the words call for an appointment
were on my lips, but something about her made me hesitate. Stuart’s joke had not gone over her head—I could see that she was already expecting me to disappoint her, and she looked as if she was accustomed to being disappointed.
Go on,
I said to the others. I’ll catch up to you.
I put up with another round of chiding and some half-hearted protests, but before long I was left standing alone with her.
I’m Irene Kelly,
I said. What can I do for you?
They won’t look for my mother,
she said.
Who won’t?
The police. They think she ran away. She didn’t.
How long has she been gone?
Since four o’clock yesterday—well, that’s the last time I saw her.
She looked away, then added, She went to a store. They saw her there.
I figured I was talking to a kid who was doomed to learn that her mom was throwing in the towel on family life. But as I let her talk, I began to feel less certain of that.
Julia Sayre was forty years old on the night she failed to come home. Gillian’s father, Giles Sayre, had called his wife at a little before four that afternoon to say that he had obtained a pair of coveted symphony tickets—the debut of the symphony’s new conductor was to take place that evening. Hurriedly leaving their younger child, nine-year-old Jason, in Gillian’s care, Julia left the house in her Mercedes-Benz to go to a shopping mall not five miles away from her affluent neighborhood, to buy a slip.
She had not been seen since.
When he came home that evening and discovered that his wife hadn’t returned, Giles was more anxious about the possibility of being late to the concert than his wife’s whereabouts. As time went on, however, he became worried and drove over to the shopping center. He drove through the aisles of the parking lot near her favorite store, Nordstrom, but didn’t see her blue sedan. He went into the store, and after questioning some of the employees in the lingerie department, learned that she had indeed been there—but at four o’clock or so—several hours earlier.
When Giles Sayre reported his wife missing, the police gave it all the attention they usually give an adult disappearance of five hours’ duration—virtually none. They, too, looked for Julia Sayre’s car in the shopping center parking lot; Giles could have told them it wouldn’t be there—he had already made another trip to look for it.
Sometimes, Gillian—
I began, but she cut me off.
Don’t try to give me some bullshit about how she might be some kind of runaway, doing the big nasty with somebody other than my dad,
she said. My folks are super close, happily married and all that. I mean, it would make you want to gack to see them together.
Yes, but—
Ask anybody. Ask our neighbors. They’ll tell you—Julia Sayre only has trouble with one person in her life.
You.
She looked surprised by my guess, but then shrugged. She folded her arms, leaned back against the building, and said, Yes.
Why?
She shrugged again. You don’t look like you were some little sweetcakes that never stepped out of line. Didn’t you ever fight with your mom when you were a teenager?
I shook my head. No, my mother died when I was twelve. Before I was a teenager. I used to envy the ones—
I caught myself. Well, that’s not important.
She was silent.
If she had lived,
I said, we probably would have fought. I got into all kinds of mischief even before I was a teenager.
She began studying one of her fingernails. I was wondering how my memories of my mother might have differed had she lived another five years, when Gillian asked, Do you remember the last thing you said to her?
Yes.
She waited for me to say more. When I didn’t, she looked away, her brows drawn together. She said, The last thing I said to my mother was, ‘I wish you were dead.’
Gillian—
She wanted me to watch Jason. She wanted me to cancel all my plans and do what she wanted, so she could go to the stupid concert. I was upset. My boyfriend was upset when I told him I couldn’t see him—so I yelled at her. That’s what I said to her.
She may be fine,
I said. Sometimes people just feel overwhelmed, need to take off.
Not my mom.
I’m just saying that she hasn’t been gone for twenty-four hours yet. Don’t assume that she’s—
I stopped myself just in time. Don’t assume that she’s been harmed.
Then I need you to help me find her,
she said. No one else will take me seriously. They’re like your friends.
She nodded in the direction Stuart and the others had walked. Think I’m just a kid—no need to listen to a kid.
I pulled out my notebook and said, You understand that I don’t get to decide if this story runs in the paper, right?
She smiled.
* * *
Once I argued my editor into letting me pursue the story, I drove over to the Sayres’ home, a large two-story on a quiet cul-de-sac. Giles answered the door after scooping up a yapping Pekingese. He handed the squirming dog off to Gillian, who took it upstairs. Jason, he told me, had been taken to stay with his grandmother.
When I first approached Giles Sayre, I thought he might resent Gillian’s recruitment of a reporter for help with what could turn out to be an embarrassing family matter. But Giles heaped praise on his daughter, saying he should have thought of trying to enlist the Express himself.
What am I going to do if anything has happened to Julia?
he asked anxiously.
Like Gillian, he was tall and thin and had pale blue eyes, but his hair was a much more natural color, a dark auburn. He had not slept; his eyes were reddened from tears which, by this point, could come easily, and which he didn’t try to hide.
He hurried to hand me several recent photographs of his wife. Her hair was dark brown, her large eyes, a deep blue. An attractive, self-possessed woman, she appeared to be perfectly groomed in even the most casual photographs. Gillian did not resemble her so much as her father, but Jason, I saw from a group photo, took a few of his features from each—her dark hair and aristocratic facial structure, his pale blue eyes.
Which of these is the most recent?
I asked.
Giles selected a photograph taken at a Junior League event.
Can I keep it? I can try to get it back for you, but I can’t make any promises.
No, that’s all right, I have the negative.
This level of cooperation continued throughout the day. He met my involvement with a sense of relief, anxious to do whatever he could to help me with the story. The benefit was mutual—I gave him a chance to take action, directed some of the energy that up until now had gone to pacing and feeling helpless; his help made much of my job easier. It occurred to me that his anxiousness to spread the word was not something you’d be likely to find in a man who fears he has been cuckolded.
So I talked to neighbors and friends of Julia Sayre. I talked to other members of her family. The more I heard about her, the more I was inclined to agree with her daughter—Julia Sayre wasn’t likely to disappear of her own volition. Julia seemed fairly content with her life, content with just about everything except her relationship with her daughter. The universal opinion on that matter was that Gillian’s hellion phase was bound to come to an end soon—according to friends, no one was more sure of that than Julia.
If she was conducting an extramarital affair, Mrs. Sayre had been extremely discreet about it. I still hadn’t ruled out the possibility that she had left Giles Sayre for someone else, but it was no longer my pet theory.
I asked Gillian to tell me again what her mother had been wearing. A black silk skirt and jacket, she said. A white silk blouse, a pair of black leather pumps and a small black leather purse. Her only jewelry had been a simple gold chain necklace, a pair of diamond earrings, and her wedding ring.
Not her wedding ring, really,
Giles said. On our fifteenth anniversary, we had new rings made.
He held his up. Hers is gold, like this one, and it has three rubies on it.
He drove me to the mall where she had last been seen. With his help, I got the Nordstrom manager to look up the time of the transaction. Julia had used a MasterCard to purchase a black slip at 4:18 P.M. the previous afternoon. We thanked the manager and left. Giles called the MasterCard customer service number on his cell phone as we walked from store to store in the mall, showing Julia’s photo to clerk after clerk, none of whom had seen this lady yesterday. Eventually, he got his answer from the MasterCard customer service rep, and asked her to repeat the information to me. She confirmed that Julia Sayre hadn’t used the credit card since making the Nordstrom purchase.
I called an overworked missing persons detective in the LPPD and told him I was writing a story about Julia Sayre’s disappearance. He wouldn’t comment for the story, but—off the record—told me he’d try to get some action on the case.
When Julia Sayre’s Mercedes-Benz was first spotted on an upper floor of the Las Piernas Airport parking garage, the two patrolmen who found it thought the woman might have decided to escape her marriage after all. But then the detectives called to the scene made a discovery, a discovery that had my editor—overjoyed that we had beaten the competition to the story—praising my instincts, while it tied my stomach into knots.
Julia Sayre’s left thumb was in the glove compartment.
2
Four weeks ago, when the Kara Lane story first broke, I had expected another of Gillian’s try to find out
calls. Over the years following Julia’s disappearance, I had heard from Gillian whenever certain events were reported in the Express. If a Jane Doe was found, Gillian calmly asked me to try to find out if the unidentified body might be her mother’s, never failing to recite the details of her mother’s height and coloring and clothing and jewelry. Was the victim a blue-eyed brunette? Was the victim wearing a gold ring with three rubies?
If a man was arrested for killing a woman, she wanted me to interview him, to try to find out if he had killed her mother, too. If a suspected serial killer was arrested in another state, she wanted me to try to find out if he had ever been in Las Piernas.
I quit the paper once, and went to work for a public relations firm. She tracked me down and called me there—O’Connor, my old mentor at the Express, was a soft touch for a missing persons case, and told her where to find me. When I told her that she should ask O’Connor to follow up on these stories, she quoted him as saying it would be good for me to remember what it was like to have a real job.
I could have refused her, of course, but even at an observer’s distance, I had allowed myself to become too close to the Sayres’ misery over those years.
I seldom saw Giles, and never away from his office; he apparently worked long hours to distract himself from his grief. His mother moved in with the family to help care for the children. Two months after Julia disappeared, Giles told me that he didn’t know whether or not to hold a memorial service for her. I don’t even know what’s involved in having her declared dead,
he said. My mother says I should wait, that people will think I was happy to be rid of her. Do you think anyone will think that?
I told him that he should do what he needed to do for his family, and to hell with everybody else. It was advice he seemed unlikely to take—the opinions of others seemed to matter a great deal to him.
Jason got into trouble at home and in school on a regular basis. His grandmother confided to me that his grades had dropped, he had quit playing sports, and had become a loner, having little to do with his old friends.
Only Gillian seemed to continue on with her life. She gave her grandmother as much grief as she had given Julia. She dropped out of high school, moved out and got a small apartment on her own, supported herself by working at a boutique on Allen Street—Artsy-Fartsy Street, my friend Stuart Angert calls it. And spent four years quietly and persistently reminding the police and the press that someone ought to be looking for her missing mother, her determined stoicism shaming us into doing what little we could.
On the day the Kara Lane case first made headlines, Gillian waited for me outside the Wrigley Building, home of the Express. She seemed to me then as she had seemed from the first day I met her: no matter how likely it was that she would meet with disappointment, Gillian simply refused to acknowledge defeat. This affected me more than tears or hysterics. Nothing in her manner changed; she was often brusque, but she was never weak. Her clothing, hair, and makeup styles might be a little extreme, but her feelings—whatever they were—were not on display.
So I made calls, I followed up. There was never any progress. Until Kara Lane disappeared.
By then, I wasn’t allowed to cover crime stories—a result of my marriage to Frank Harriman, a homicide detective. But my marriage is more than worth the hassles it causes me at the Express and Frank at the LPPD.
As it happened, Frank was part of the team that investigated the Lane case. I learned details about it that I couldn’t tell the paper’s crime reporter, let alone Gillian. But before long, almost all of those details became public knowledge.
Kara Lane was forty-three, dark-haired, blue-eyed, a divorced mother of two teenage daughters. She had gone to the grocery store at eight o’clock one evening, and when she had not returned by eleven, her daughters became concerned. Too young to drive, they called a neighbor. By midnight, after a search of local store parking lots, the neighbor called Kara’s ex-husband. After another search of the stores, the ex-husband called the police. The search for Kara Lane began in earnest early the next morning.
Several factors caused the police to search for her more quickly than they had Julia Sayre: Kara was a diabetic who needed daily insulin injections—and she had not taken her medication with her; she had never before left her daughters alone at night; and during the morning briefing, Detective Frank Harriman noticed that in height, age, build, and hair color Kara Lane resembled Julia Sayre—a woman whose daughter pestered his reporter wife every now and then. He suggested to his partner, Pete Baird, that they take a look at the Las Piernas Airport parking lot.
Kara Lane’s aging VW van was parked in exactly the same space where Julia Sayre’s Mercedes had been left four years earlier. Not long after they called in their discovery, the van was carefully searched. Kara’s left ring finger was found in the glove compartment.
At this point, the department called Dr. David Niles, a forensic anthropologist who owned two dogs trained for both search and rescue and cadaver work, and asked him to bring them to the airport. The results were remarkable—so remarkable that when Frank and Pete told me about it that evening, I was fairly sure they were exaggerating.
One of his dogs—Bingle—is so smart,
Pete said. He can find anything. I mean, he makes these mutts of yours look retarded, Irene.
Wait just a minute—
I said, looking over at Deke, mostly black Lab, and Dunk, mostly shepherd, who were sleeping nearby.
Our dogs are smart,
Frank said, trying to head off an argument, but Bingle is—well, you’d have to see him to believe it. And he’s highly trained—
And don’t forget Bool,
Pete said. His bloodhound. He works with two dogs. If one acts like he’s found something, he gets the other to confirm it.
Bingle has even located bodies underwater,
Frank said.
How is that possible?
I asked. You put him in a little scuba outfit?
Very funny,
Pete said.
The dog can do it,
Frank said. It’s not as miraculous as it sounds. The bacteria in a decomposing body cause it to give off gases. The scent rises through the water, and the dogs smell it when it reaches the surface. They can take Bingle out in a boat and cross the surface of a lake, and he’ll indicate when he smells a body below.
All right,
I said, that makes sense. But—
Let us tell you what happened,
Pete said.
The gist of the tale was that Bingle led a group of men at a fast clip over a weaving trail out of the parking structure and across the grounds of the airport. Then he headed toward an airplane hangar.
He went bananas,
Pete said, moving his hands in rapid dog-paddle fashion.
He was pawing furiously at one of the back walls,
Frank explained.
It took the police some time to get a warrant, and to locate the owner of the building, but they gained access. At first, nothing seemed amiss. The hangar was leased by Nicholas Parrish, a quiet man, the owner said; a man who paid his rent on time, never caused any problems. An airplane mechanic. The police ran Parrish’s name through their computers—he had no outstanding warrants. In fact, he had no criminal record at all.
David Niles brought out Bool and let the bloodhound sniff an article of Kara Lane’s clothing. Bool, who needed this pre-scenting
in order to track, traced a path almost identical to the one Bingle had followed.
Frank suggested getting a crime scene unit to check the hangar with luminol, a chemical capable of detecting minute traces of blood, but the skeptics in the group were starting to grumble, especially Reed Collins and Vince Adams, the detectives in charge of the Lane case.
Collins is starting to make remarks about wasting precious time and his partner is making noise about wild goose chases,
Pete said, when all of a sudden, Bingle lifts his head and sings.
Pete crooned a single high note that brought both of our dogs to their feet, heads cocked. David gives another command and the dog takes off again.
This time the dog headed across the Tarmac, to a field beyond the nearest runway. When he stopped, he pranced and bounced around, pawing furiously at the earth, crooning again—actions which Pete, getting into his story, performed for us. Quite a workout.
David moved ahead, to the place where Bingle had alerted, and called back, I think he’s found her.
The others soon caught up. They saw the shallow grave, the freshly turned earth, and a woman’s shoe protruding from something shiny and green—plastic sheeting. Frank got on the radio, telling the officers in the hangar that they should secure the area, call out a crime scene unit, and put out an APB for Nicholas Parrish.
The whole time he’s on the radio, I’m moving a little closer,
Pete said, and I see what the dog was digging at, what he uncovered. It’s her hand—you know, the left one, the one that’s missing the finger.
I looked at Frank. Gillian Sayre will—
You can’t tell her yet,
he said firmly. Nobody. Not any of this. Not yet.
But by the next morning the Kara Lane case had made the front page, and Gillian was standing outside the newspaper, looking a little more anxious than usual. When I was within a few feet of her, she held up a creased copy of the Express and pointed to Parrish’s photo. He’s the one who took my mother.
It looks as if the cases have a lot in common,
I agreed.
No. I mean, I know he’s the one. He used to live on our street—a long time ago.
What? How long ago?
Before my mom disappeared.
Have you told the police?
She shook her head. I wasn’t surprised. Whatever faith she might have once had in the police had been damaged when the LPPD delayed searching for her mother, and was utterly destroyed when they had failed to find her. Gillian and I shared a dislike of Bob Thompson, the Las Piernas Police Department homicide detective who handled her mother’s case. Once or twice she had talked to other homicide detectives when a Jane Doe was found, but usually she relied on me to make contact with the police on her behalf.
I thought maybe you could tell your husband,
she said now.
Yes, sure,
I said, still reeling. Parrish lived there alone?
No. I think his sister owned the house.
You ever see anything strange going on there?
No, not really. They were quiet. She moved away—don’t remember exactly when. I don’t know where she lives now. She wasn’t friendly.
Was he?
She shrugged. He kind of kept to himself. I guess he was nice to everybody—you know, smiled and waved. But he used to stare at my mom.
Now, as I held fast to the armrests of my seat while the plane jolted in the choppy air above the southern Sierra Nevadas, I watched the killer awaken not far from me. It was not difficult for me to imagine Nicholas Parrish stalking his prey, staring at Julia Sayre as she left the house to run errands, or as she worked in her garden, or came home from the store. Staring at her, while she imagined herself safe from harm.
Staring at her, much in the same way he was staring at me now.
3
MONDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 15
Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains
After a bouncy landing on a rough patch of ground that served as the airstrip, there was a wait before we were allowed to disembark. Bob Thompson addressed one of the guards as Earl
and muttered some order to him. Earl was the first to exit; he returned shortly and, giving an all clear,
worked with the other three guards to remove Parrish from the plane. Thompson was next, followed by a quiet young man who seemed to be his assistant—though not his partner. Thompson and Phil Newly, Parrish’s attorney, were the only members of the group that I had met before that day. A few years back, I had covered some crime stories, and had seen Newly around the courthouse.
Thompson and I had known each other for close to ten years. The contempt was both strong and mutual.
I figured that made me the show horse in the race to capture the hostility of the other passengers. Parrish was first by a length, followed by Newly. As a member of the press, I was a distant third.
Newly and Bill Flash
Burden, an LPPD crime scene photographer, stepped off after the guards; then the pilot came back into the cabin and stood in the aisle. Rest of you wait until they get Parrish settled,
he said, then left the plane. Minutes passed.
Do you know who’s meeting us from the Forest Service?
I heard David Niles ask.
J.C.,
said Ben Sheridan, the other anthropologist. Andy is coming up with him.
Andy who?
I asked.
Sheridan eyed me coldly, then turned back to the window, frowning. After a moment’s silence, David Niles said, Andy Stewart, a botanist who works with us sometimes.
Thank you, Dr. Niles.
Call me David.
Sheridan sighed loudly. This only seemed to amuse David, but he didn’t say more to me. I had known that we would be meeting a couple of people at this airstrip; men who were being flown in from another location, but Thompson had only said they were part of Sheridan’s team.
Okay, folks,
Earl called. I stood, but gestured to David to let Bingle—fidgety since the landing—lead the way. Thanks,
he said, then followed the dog. That left me with Ben Sheridan, who was still frowning as he gazed out the window.
Listen,
I began. I don’t want to—
I’m not leaving you here to snoop around on the plane,
he interrupted. Go on outside.
I felt a flare of temper, checked it, and left the plane without saying another word to him.
I stretched at the bottom of the steps, taking in the view before me. We were in a long meadow, near the center of a narrow valley that was already shadowed and cooling. The scent of pine from nearby woods mixed with the fragrance of late spring blossoms in the meadow, of grass and earth. When I saw the slender mown strip where we had landed, I felt new respect for the pilot.
A base camp would be set up here.
Bingle, once he had relieved himself, began cavorting wildly through the meadow, not so much running as bouncing through it, stopping now and then to try to lure his handler into playing with him. But David, Sheridan, and everyone who wasn’t involved in guarding Parrish was busy unloading gear from the plane. I gathered my own, then moved to help the others. I had only taken a few steps when a voice from behind me asked, Are you the reporter?
I turned to see a lean, golden young man smiling at me. I guessed him to be in his mid-twenties. His hair was short and spiky. He was tanned and had the kind of calf muscles a person can only get by moving his feet over long distances, on a bike or running or hiking. He wore a closely trimmed beard and a single earring in his right ear.
Yes,
I said, setting down my backpack and extending a hand. Irene Kelly.
Andy Stewart,
he said, with a firm handshake. I’m the botanist for the team. J.C. and I got here at noon. We’re all set up. Can I give you a hand with anything?
I can manage this, but it looks as if Dr. Sheridan still has some gear in there.
He grabbed another canvas bag and continued to chat with me, telling me that a Forest Service helicopter had brought them in earlier.
Forgive me for asking, but why is a botanist needed for this search?
Well, whenever anybody like Mr. Parrish comes along and digs a hole, drops what will ultimately amount to a big chunk of fertilizer in it, and then covers it up again, nature doesn’t let that pass unnoticed. The plants he dug up, the new ones that begin to grow, the surrounding soil—he’s created a disturbance in the existing system. With enough practice, a botanist can learn to see the signs of that disturbance.
So you’re paid to look for changes in plant life?
His face broke into a grin. Paid? No, none of us are paid. Ben, David, and I do this forensic work voluntarily. I’m a grad student in biology; Ben and David teach in the anthropology department. David also pays for all of Bingle’s training and equipment. Even J.C. doesn’t get any special pay for coming along, although he’s on the Forest Service payroll while he’s here.
He paused. If you don’t mind my asking the question you asked me—what’s a reporter doing here?
Good question. There are any number of folks, here and at home, who’d tell you I have no business being here.
I paused, trying to shut out the memory of the fight Frank and I had before I left.
I don’t want you up there with him, no matter how many guards he has on him.
I don’t want to be up there with him, either, but I can’t get out of this one, Frank.