Chapter Two
Cully felt the slam of emotions that she always got when examining skeletal remains. The excitement tangled with the sickening dread. The bones were new puzzles to solve, but no way could she forget that these were once living, breathing human beings.
And they’d been murdered.
She couldn’t officially confirm that yet, of course, but there were obvious signs of trauma to the two remains that had already been exposed. She couldn’t yet see enough of the skulls of the others to know if they’d met a similar fate.
The two that she could see though had clearly been shot, and judging from the dark colored bloodstains that had seeped into the wood behind them, they’d either been already dead and bloody when entombed here or else they’d bled out and died shortly thereafter.
At least Cully hoped it was shortly thereafter.
It sickened her to think they might have possibly lingered on while trapped in a death pit.
“How many more bodies?” Declan asked, snapping her attention back to him.
Cully certainly hadn’t forgotten about him. Not a chance. It would have been easier to forget how to breathe or blink. Whenever Declan was around, he had a way of monopolizing her brain and a good deal of the rest of her, too.
Later, she’d need to talk to him, to try to suss out if he could deal with her moving back. With her encroaching on his life. But for now, the remains had to take priority, and Declan would know that.
“Two more bodies, I think,” Cully replied. “Though it’s possible there’s another one beneath them.”
She stepped back just far enough to examine the wall itself. Cully hadn’t noticed it when she’d toured the house with the Realtor, but this wasn’t up to par with the rest of the interior.
“Your contractor said the wall’s makeshift, covering up what he thinks might have once been a closet door or a recessed area,” Declan provided, no doubt noticing what had snagged her attention.
“A closet or storage room is my guess,” she murmured. “Maybe about eight feet wide and about three or four feet deep. Closets were the norm for when the house was originally built, but it could have been added later.”
Looking at it now, Cully could see how this would have all played out. The killer could have stashed the bodies in the closet and then walled it in. With some tests and by examining the remains, she might be able to determine the timing of that.
“I have some protective gear and equipment in my car,” she said to no one in particular. “Let me get it, take some photographs, and then we can see about getting the wall down. How far out are the CSIs?” she asked Owen since they would want to be part of this initial assessment as well.
Owen took out his phone. “I’ll find out. Declan and Shaw can help you with your gear.”
She didn’t refuse their help, not because it was heavy, but because there was a lot of it, and it could take her a couple of trips to bring everything inside. What she had on hand in her vehicle would be just a start, too. She’d eventually need some other equipment when it came time to remove the bones.
“In the meantime, have Clayton check for any other makeshift walls,” Cully suggested. “I don’t want him to tear them down. I just need to know if there are possibly…others.”
“Hell,” Shaw spat out. “I’ll talk to Clayton.”
That left Declan, and Cully and he exchanged a long, intense look before they left to go outside to her car. Thankfully, she’d driven separately from Owen, mainly because she had wanted the gear in case this turned out to be a worst-case scenario. At least four sets of remains qualified as the worst.
She tried not to think any more about what might have gone on here. Best to go into this with an open mind. But she could use this time to maybe start that air clearing with Declan.
“I had planned on calling you today to let you know that I’d accepted Owen’s job offer,” she started, unlocking the trunk and pulling out a pair of protective coveralls. “I would have let you know, too, that I’d bought the house…for my mother.”
Declan had already opened his mouth to respond, but he paused and seemed to rethink what he’d been about to say.
Some of the tension dissolved from his expression. Maybe because he’d heard the gossip. Maybe also because he still had a soft spot for her mom, Alice. Of course, Cully had more than a soft spot for her as well. Her mother had been her rock, raising her solo on a waitress’ salary after Cully’s father had ditched Alice for another woman.
And taken most of the money in their joint accounts with him, leaving her mom and Cully flat broke.
That’d happened when Cully had been in high school, and since Declan’s father had walked out on their family, too, it had bonded them in a way. That bond had no doubt contributed to the mistake they’d made by becoming lovers and getting married.
“Your mom’s moving back here?” Declan asked, his question tearing through her little trip down memory lane.
Cully nodded and stepped into the overalls. “She had early stages of Alzheimer’s, and she doesn’t want to go into assisted living.”
“She’s kind of young for that, isn’t she?” he asked. “Both the Alzheimer’s and the assisted living.”
“Youngish. She’s sixty-three. Unfortunately, some people get Alzheimer’s even earlier than that.” She gathered her breath and attempted to tamp down some nerves as well. “When I asked my mother where she wanted to live, she said here, in this house. So, I bought the place for next to nothing in a county auction, fully expecting to burn a small fortune on the reno.”
One of Declan’s dark eyebrows rose, and his surprised reaction was similar to one she’d had when her mom had spelled out her wishes. “Why here? Why not get a house in town?”
Cully shrugged. “Apparently, she has fond memories of the place. Before she got married, Thaddeus used to have these big costume parties three or four times a year, and he always sent Mom an invite since they knew each other.”
Declan made a sound that could have meant anything. “I got it wrong. I figured Thaddeus was a recluse to want to live all the way out here.” He glanced around at the unkept, overrun grounds. “The place must have made an impression on your mom,” he muttered.
Cully shrugged. “Either that or it’s something that’s still clear in her memories.” She paused, sighed. “I’m not sure she’ll want to move here though once she hears about these remains.”
Personally, it wouldn’t bother Cully once all were laid to a proper rest and she’d learned their fate. But her mom wasn’t a forensic anthropologist so she might have a different notion about living in a place where bodies had been entombed.
“Did your mom know Noah?” Declan asked.
“If she did, she didn’t mention him, but I’ll talk to her about that when I see her…” She trailed off since she had no idea when that would be. Sometimes, investigations like these could take a while.
If her mom was having a good day, she’d remember that, she’d remember that Cully might not come home for a week or more. If she was having a bad day, then at least Alice had a live-in caretaker to fill in when Cully couldn’t be with her.
“After I finally started making a decent income,” Cully went on while putting the plastic booties on over her shoes, “I moved Mom to San Antonio with me, but she’s never really been happy there.”
And Cully very much wanted her to be happy. Her mother had been through so much in her life, and if she wanted this house, this town, Cully would try to give it to her.
She looked up when she heard the sound of an approaching engine, and she spotted the CSI van. A brand new one that she’d heard was stocked with the best equipment that money could buy.
That was thanks to Owen.
When most of the Outlaw Ridge police force had been murdered in a horrible massacre earlier in the year, Owen had not only stepped up to take over as temporary sheriff, he’d refurbished the police station and upgraded everything. That included bringing in some of his Strike Force operatives as deputies.
Like Declan and his brother Shaw.
Their skillsets meant they were likely way overqualified for small-town deputies, but Owen had indicated they were both staying on. Unlike Owen. Once he found a replacement for the sheriff’s position, then he’d be returning to run Strike Force full-time.
The CSI van door opened, and three investigators got out. She recognized one of them, Harris Mendoza, someone she’d known in high school, and he gave her a friendly wave. The two with him were young, probably only in their mid-twenties, but since Owen had hired them, Cully knew they’d be good.
“Declan, Cully,” Harris greeted as he and his team suited up, and they both nodded in return. “Owen said there are three sets of remains.”
“At least,” Cully provided. “If you and your team could go ahead and do your initial assessment, then I want a better look behind the wall.”
“Will do,” Harris assured her. “Any idea yet who they are?”
“Not yet, but one is possibly the previous owner, Noah Kincaid,” Declan explained. “I’ll be searching through the missing persons database though, once I’ve helped Cully take her gear inside.”
Declan began to haul some of that gear from the truck, and that was obviously Harris’ cue to get moving. He led his team inside the house.
“What the heck is this thing?” Declan asked when he hoisted up a large metal case.
“It’s a Fido, the nickname for an analyzer to detect remains and decomposition. We can use it to scan all the walls in the house for other remains.” Cully grabbed another bag of equipment as well, and Declan and she started back toward the house. “Look, I’ll totally understand if you don’t want to work with me—”
“I’ll work with you,” he interrupted. He stopped, huffed, and turned to her. “Water under the bridge. We aren’t nineteen and stupid. We’re adults with jobs to do, so let’s get it done.”
With that, he gave the Fido case an adjustment and went on inside. Cully figured that wasn’t the last of the air clearing, but it was a start.
And speaking of starts, when they made it back to the living room, she saw that the CSIs were already doing their thing. One was photographing, well, everything, and another was searching along the wall seams and baseboards. Harris was peering in at the remains.
“This wall is about to come down,” Harris let them know. “There are only a couple of nails holding the whole thing in place.”
So, a shoddy job. Or maybe the killer just hadn’t had a lot of time to conceal the bodies.
“Missing persons from twenty years ago,” Declan muttered. He’d stopped next to Shaw, had already set down her equipment and was now using his phone, no doubt to check the database. “Noah’s on here, but there’s no one else from the area. I’ll broaden the search to five years in either direction and make it countywide.”
Good. Maybe once she nailed down possible dates for the remains, they could try to match them. She hated not knowing their names. It was the names that would give them back a small piece of the life that’d been taken from them.
Cully turned at the sound of the footsteps and saw Shaw making his way toward them. “No other makeshift walls upstairs,” he let them know.
Good. That was something at least. Still, she’d use Fido on them to be sure since the killer might not have gone the shoddy route up there. For now, she moved toward the end of the wall that was still fully intact, and she instantly saw what Harris had meant. There was a small gap where the faux wall had come loose from the original one.
“I want to try to move this out about an inch more,” she explained. “But I need someone to hold onto it in case it starts to fall.”
Owen, Declan, Shaw, and Harris all stepped over to assist while Cully gloved up and put on a hard hat fitted with a flashlight. She took hold of the edge of the faux wall, and it barely took a nudge before the gap widened even further.
She waited a moment, just to make sure it was stable, before she moved in for a closer look. Cully didn’t gasp, but she got a bit of jolt when she realized that one of the skulls was right there. Right in her own face.
“Two sets of remains at this end,” Cully relayed to everyone once she’d steadied herself. “Both have head trauma.” She panned the light lower. “Both with some remnants of clothes, shoes. And I don’t see any other remains beneath them.”
She didn’t exactly take a breath of relief about that. After all, four dead was still plenty.
“One of them has a wider pelvis and smaller thorax,” Cully went on. “So, a female. The other is male.”
“Two men, two women,” Declan muttered. “That’ll help with the missing persons’ search.”
Yes, it would if all had gone missing and been killed at the same time. At this point, it was impossible to tell though.
Since the angle of the flashlight on her hat was wrong, she took out a penlight from her gear bag and used it to illuminate the area beneath the remains. And Cully immediately saw it.
“There’s a man’s wallet,” she let them know.
She traded the penlight for a small camera and captured some photos of it before Cully stooped down until she was eye-level with the wallet. It appeared to be leather and was covered with dust, but it was at least partially intact.
“Everyone okay with me trying to retrieve it?” she asked.
There was a chorus of agreements so she slid her hand through the narrow gap and took hold of the wallet. Cully kept her grip as light as possible since she didn’t want it to disintegrate in her hand.
“Can someone lay out a plastic evidence bag for me?” she added.
Harris did that, placing it right next to where she was now stooped. The moment Cully eased the wallet through the gap, she placed it on the bag so they could all look at it. Though there truly wasn’t much to see. It was a plain, nondescript brown wallet. No fancy etching or initials to distinguish it.
Using just the tips of her gloved fingers, Cully gently opened it. There was some cash along with some credit cards tucked into slots, and the driver’s license was still encased behind the plastic screen. The plastic had turned yellow and cloudy so she gave the edge of the license a soft tug. That barely budged it so she tugged some more. Until the license slid out.
And Cully’s heart dropped to her knees. She nearly did as well from the shock of seeing the photo on the license. Not a stranger.
Derrick O’Banion.
Her father.