The Quiet Bones Read online

  Wren laughed. “Oh, big talk, Reilly, but—”

  Someone at the door cleared her throat.

  Reilly and Wren both turned.

  Maliah was there. “I got the IP address.”

  “Great,” said Wren.

  “The what?” said Reilly.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you about this,” said Wren. “She can track the person who uploaded the video. So, you know, my profile? Totally unnecessary.”

  “Not exactly,” said Maliah. “I tracked it, but it’s not great news. The IP address was connected to the Frederick city-wide Wi-Fi. So, it’s not on a private computer or anything. The way IP addresses work, they’re assigned randomly whenever you connect to the Wi-Fi, unless you set up a static IP. Anyway, I can’t get much more specific than that, but I do have an address.”

  “Frederick?” said Wren. “That’s where it was uploaded?”

  “That’s getting a little out of our jurisdiction,” said Reilly.

  “I went to high school in Frederick,” said Wren. “My dad and I lived there for years, but he moved after I graduated.”

  “Your dad,” said Reilly. She never talked about her family. Admittedly, her family was screwed up… Then again, Reilly never talked about his family either. They were screwed up, too, but for different reasons.

  “Yeah,” said Wren. “Anyway, I know the area. We should go to this address, though, right?”

  “Right,” said Reilly. “Yeah, we should check it out, see if there’s anything there.”

  “Great,” said Wren. “So, can we stop for coffee on our way out?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The address in Frederick wasn’t in a great a part of town. Wren remembered when larger swaths of Frederick were dicey, but now the city had undergone quite a bit of gentrification. All the older apartment buildings had been turned into trendy, chic places for commuters to rent. This was one of the few dicey places left.

  The building was abandoned. It used to be apartments, but now, all the windows were boarded up and there was a big padlock on the door.

  Wren and Reilly walked around back, where they found that one of the windows had the board pried up, and they followed someone else who was climbing inside.

  They emerged into a room with some ratty couches, lit by camping lanterns.

  “Hey,” said the kid they’d followed. “What the hell? I didn’t do anything. Why are you following me? You going to arrest me?”

  Wren shot Reilly a look. “It’s you,” she said. “You just have that ‘cop’ look about you.”

  “I do not,” said Reilly. He crossed the room to the kid. “We’re not here about you. We’re here because a video from a serial killer was uploaded at this address.”

  The kid’s eyes widened. “Say what? No, man. I ain’t got nothing to do with that.” He held up both his hands.

  “Yesterday morning?” said Reilly. “Were you here? Did you see someone in a hooded sweatshirt?”

  But the kid turned and darted away, off into the building.

  Reilly turned to Wren. “Do I really have a ‘cop’ look?”

  She nodded.

  “Is it the suit?” He lifted his tie and looked it over.

  She laughed. “Come on, let’s look around.”

  It didn’t take long before they found the backdrop for the video, the brick wall that had been sprayed with graffiti. It was unmistakable.

  They stopped and surveyed it.

  “Well, this is the place where he made the video,” said Reilly.

  “What are the odds he’s still around?” said Wren. “Pretty low, right?”

  They had been looking in on various rooms in the place. It seemed that people were squatting here. They’d brought in camp stoves and old mattresses. They’d partitioned off doorways with holey sheets.

  Wren shoved her hands in her pockets. “You think he could be sleeping here?”

  “You’re the one who’s supposed to be coming up with a profile,” said Reilly. “Could he be sleeping here?”

  Wren considered. A homeless serial killer? Maybe, if he was the disorganized kind. But if he was homeless, how was he getting access to plastic gloves and bleach wipes? Did he steal that stuff? “Could be,” she said. “Probably not, but could be.”

  Someone came out of one of the rooms and into the hallway where they were standing. It was a woman with long, sandy colored dreadlocks. “Hey,” she said, and her eyes didn’t quite open all the way. She was probably stoned. “You guys talking about that guy who was here yesterday morning?”

  “You saw him?” said Reilly, heading over to the woman.

  “Sure,” she said. “I got his phone.” She held it up.

  “That’s his phone?” said Wren.

  “He was making a video on it, and then he finished up and just left the phone lying on the ground. I wasn’t going to let it go to waste, so I picked it up. He didn’t put any minutes on it, though, just data, and it’s practically gone now. Too bad, really.”

  “We’re going to need that phone,” said Reilly.

  “What?” said the woman. “No freaking way.” She ducked back into the room she’d come from and yanked the door closed.

  Reilly grabbed the doorknob, but there was a sound of a bolt being dragged into place, locking the door. Reilly tried to the door, but it wouldn’t open. He banged on it.

  “Hey, police, open up!” Reilly shouted.

  Wren folded her arms over her chest. “You think we’d get backup from the local department if we called them in? I mean, the task force doesn’t really extend quite this far, but maybe they’d help out.”

  Reilly banged on the door again. “We’re on our own.”

  The task force was mostly meant to help with rural police departments in the tri-state area. It helped them to pool their resources, or to use resources from other places if one of the departments didn’t have access to something others did.

  Abruptly, the door opened.

  A man was standing there. “What?” he said.

  “There was a woman with dreadlocks,” said Wren. “She went in here.”

  “We need the phone she has,” said Reilly.

  “Yeah, I know who you’re talking about,” said the man. “She ran out one of the windows.”

  “Damn it,” said Reilly.

  * * *

  “So,” Wren was saying as they were driving back, “he ditched the phone on purpose, don’t you think?”

  “Sounds like it,” said Reilly.

  “The woman said that he put data on it, but no minutes. Probably one of those burner phones you can buy at Wal-mart for like forty bucks.”

  “You know a lot about those kinds of phones,” said Reilly.

  “Well, yeah, people on the compound have them,” said Wren. “Anyway, there’s no way we’re going to trace that.”

  “Probably not,” said Reilly. “Guy was smart. He bought a cheap phone, filmed it on there, and then uploaded it to YouTube. Then he ditched the phone and ran.” He paused, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “Why do you think he did it in Frederick?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wren. “But maybe that works. Because if he’s close to Lingandale High School, then it’s not that far to Frederick. Not a lot to do in Brunswick, where the school is. Most people would go to Frederick instead. When I was a kid, people would hang out at the mall and stuff, but I guess malls aren’t a thing anymore.”

  “You’re making him sound like a teenager,” said Reilly.

  “Could be,” said Wren. “I mean, his first target is a teenage girl, so he could be a teenager too. I said this, didn’t I? I said anywhere from sixteen to—”

  “Yeah, you haven’t given me a profile at all.”

  Wren sighed. “It’s making even less sense to me. All this planning with the phone, it’s the opposite of the crime scene.”

  “Right,” said Reilly. “So, all we can conclude then is that he’s purposefully making the crime scene look sloppy.”

  �
�Why would he do that?”

  “To throw us off?”

  “Well, that’s criminal-genius-level thinking,” said Wren. “That’s not a teenager. Besides, I don’t know if a serial killer that smart would be able to do it, to make the scene look sloppy, because it would be an ego blow to them. They take pride in setting up their scenes a certain way.”

  “Yeah, and this guy takes pride in setting up the scene to look like it wasn’t planned out.”

  She rested her head back against the headrest. “Maybe? I don’t know.”

  “Come on, admit it. I am out-profiling you on this case.” He grinned at her across the car.

  She narrowed her eyes. “You angling to get rid of me, Detective?”

  “What? No way. I was teasing, Wren, come on.”

  “No, I know.” She smiled back, and then she turned to look out the window. “I have to admit that I do feel a little out of my depth here. I didn’t finish at Quantico, you know? I’m not a real profiler or anything.”

  “Stop putting so much pressure on yourself,” said Reilly. “You’re going to figure it out.”

  * * *

  Reilly popped his head into Wren’s office at the end of the day. “Did you figure it out yet?”

  She looked up from her desk. “What?”

  “The profile.”

  She glared at him. “Oh, my God. You think asking me every three seconds is going to help?”

  He shrugged. “I just like giving you shit.” He pointed at her. “Look, you go home and get a good eight hours tonight. No staying up all hours at Billy’s. You need beauty rest to figure out that profile, you know?” Billy’s was the local bar. It was actually right across from the coffee shop.

  “Oh, that so? What are you doing tonight? You going to Billy’s?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “I’ll stay in if you stay in.”

  He laughed. “I don’t have a profile to figure out.”

  “No, but you’re the head of the task force, so you need to be worried about solving this case too.”

  “Who said I wasn’t worried?” said Reilly. “I’m worried.”

  “So, stay home, then,” said Wren. “Get your beauty rest.”

  Reilly scoffed.

  His phone rang.

  He reached into his pocket to look at it. It was Janessa. He held up a finger to Wren and answered the phone. “Hey, what’s up? Everything okay with Timmy?”

  “Hi there, Caius,” said Janessa, too brightly.

  “Hi,” he said. Was there really a point in all the pleasantries? They didn’t get along, and they both knew it. They had one thing in common now, that was their son. So, she needed to get down to it. “Timmy?”

  “Is fine,” she said. “Thanks for watching him last night.”

  “Not a problem,” he said. “He’s my son. I’m happy to have extra time with him.”

  “When you’re not busy with work,” she said.

  He rolled his eyes. The amount of time he worked had been a source of contention in their marriage. “Is this why you called?”

  “No,” said Janessa. “No, I’m sorry, I… I guess I don’t really quite know how to tell you this.”

  “Tell me what?” Reilly walked down the hall, away from Wren’s office. This was starting to sound like a longer conversation than he had expected.

  “I don’t have to tell you at all, but it’s not as if Timmy will tell you, and I figured you might as well know, and it would be easier if I gave you the news, so I’m just calling to do that.”

  “What news?” said Reilly.

  “Well, it’s, um, it’s good news. I mean, I don’t know what you’ll think about it, but it’s good news for me.”

  “Okay?”

  “I’m, um, I’m getting married.”

  Reilly felt his stomach twist.

  “Caius?”

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I’m getting married,” she said. “I wanted you to hear it from me. It shouldn’t affect things much with our schedule, but I may need to have Timmy a little extra during the wedding, but then you can take him when we go away for the honeymoon—”

  “How are you getting married?” he said, and his voice didn’t sound right. The pitch was off. “We barely got divorced, Janessa.”

  “I know it’s quick,” she said. “But, well, this is just how things worked out. I didn’t plan for it, I swear.”

  He was quiet.

  “Well, that’s all I called to say.”

  “When did you meet him?” said Reilly. “What’s his name? You’re going to be living with him? My son is going to be living with a strange man—”

  “Calm down,” said Janessa. “I didn’t think you’d be like this. You almost sound jealous, and we both know you don’t give a damn about me.”

  “When did you meet him?”

  “It was… recent,” she said. “It’s been a bit of a whirlwind, I admit.”

  “Admit it. You met him while you and I were married. You gave me so much shit about my affair, but you were having one too, and—”

  “No, that’s not true.” She was sharp.

  “Bullshit,” he said. “I know you, Janessa, and you would never get involved in a whirlwind romance and get married this quick. That’s not you. And honestly, I wouldn’t even care, except you screwed me out of so much in the divorce because of infidelity, and now I find out that you were being just as unfaithful—”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Admit it.” He gripped the phone tight, and now he had raised his voice, and Maliah poked her head out of her office, which was at this end of the hall. Damn it.

  “I didn’t have to tell you this, Caius,” said Janessa. “I was trying to honor what we used to have together, to honor the fact that you are my son’s father. But I don’t owe you anything. And I think I’m hanging up now.”

  “You think you can get this by me?” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I am a police detective, Janessa. I’m going to find proof that you were unfaithful, and then we’ll just see if we can’t revisit some of those agreements you bullied me into.”

  But Janessa didn’t say anything. Because she’d hung up.

  Reilly glared at his phone. He shoved it into his pocket and tried to steady his breathing. He could not believe this.

  This morning, he’d been thinking good thoughts about how she was moving on, but this took the cake. He didn’t care that she was getting married, of course. He couldn’t give a fuck about that. It was just that she’d obviously lied to him. She’d been having an affair too.

  When he’d asked Janessa to marry him, she’d insisted that they wait another year before the ceremony because they’d only known each other for a year and a half at that point, and she wanted to “make sure” that they fit.

  Not that waiting had helped, of course.

  They’d gotten married way too young. They’d been kids. Everyone else their age had been going to bars and sowing wild oats, and they’d been getting pregnant. They should have waited longer.

  Of course, he couldn’t really regret it, any of it, because all his past experiences had made him into the man he was, and he wouldn’t change that.

  Anyway, there was no way that Janessa would consent to marry someone she’d known for barely two months. She’d been with this guy for longer, and that meant it stretched back into their marriage.

  He was going to prove it, too. He hadn’t been lying about that.

  Maliah came out of her office. “Are you sleeping with her?”

  “What?” sputtered Reilly, who couldn’t believe he’d heard the question right. “No, she’s getting married.”

  “What?” said Maliah. “To who?”

  “Well, she didn’t tell me,” said Reilly. “Maybe she would have, but I got pissed, and then she hung up the phone.”

  “Oh,” said Maliah, shaking her head. “No, not…” She pointed at Wren’s office. “Are you sleeping w
ith Delacroix?”

  Reilly’s eyebrows shot up. “No. What the hell?”

  “You probably wouldn’t tell me if you were.”

  Reilly spread his hands. “How’s Jax, Maliah? Hmm? How’s your husband?”

  Maliah gave him the finger.

  He stalked down the hallway.

  Wren called after him. “Hey, Reilly, what was that about?”

  Damn it, had she heard Maliah’s question? It made Reilly feel twitchy to think of her hearing that. “Nothing, personal shit,” he called back. And then he hurried out of the building before one of the uniforms could come out of the bullpen and start asking questions.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The next morning, Reilly was at headquarters before the sun. He was waiting when the uniforms showed up. They were on loan from the department in Martinsburg this week, which meant they didn’t have a long commute to get there.

  He sipped his coffee and went through the paperwork they were working on until they showed up, and then he started asking questions.

  “What do we got on the ballistics of the gun?” said Reilly.

  “Well, they’re pretty sure it’s a handgun,” said one of the uniforms, “but the bullet we have isn’t in great shape. Can’t determine much more from it than that. No shell casings were found on the scene, which could mean it’s a revolver.”

  “Right, because the casings stay inside,” said Reilly. “But couldn’t the killer just have pocketed the casings?”

  “Yes,” said the uniform.

  Reilly rubbed his hands together. “Handgun. Hell, this is Maryland. That means we got a database of handgun owners. They don’t require registration for other kinds of guns, but it’s better than either West Virginia or Maryland, where there’s no registration at all.”

  “One step ahead of you,” said the other uniform. She held out her hand. “Margery Jaid.”

  Reilly shook hands with her. “Nice to meet you, Jaid. What do you mean, you’re a step ahead?”

  “Well,” said Jaid, “we’ve been going through the database. We have a list of people who would have had access to a handgun, and it includes her boyfriend, the janitor at the school, her history teacher, and the school principal.”