The Bone Chamber Read online

  “No. Why would you think that?”

  “Thought I saw someone out on the trails. It’s a big base. Suppose it could’ve been anyone.”

  His gaze flicked to the expanse of windows, then back to her. “I’d like you to finish as soon as possible.”

  “That makes two of us.” She set an apple, juice, and yogurt onto her tray, then stopped for coffee. “You bring that autopsy photo?”

  “You can eat downstairs while you work,” he said, ignoring her question.

  “Or you can try drawing it yourself,” she replied, choosing a table at the far end of the hall near the windows. She opened her juice and took a sip. “The photo?” she asked again.

  “It’s en route. Do you really need it when you have the other?”

  “Maybe not,” she admitted. “What branch of the government do you work for?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “So this case is not a sexual assault? Or are you investigating some senator committing heinous serial murders on prostitutes that he’s paid for with federal tax funds?”

  The slightest of smiles from him, and she thought: Not just a sense of humor, but a warped sense of humor. She was tempted to make a joke about looking for bugs in her room, but decided now wasn’t the time, and so she finished her yogurt, drank down her juice, then took her coffee and apple with her. “Ready when you are.”

  He gave a slight tip of his head, then held out his hand, indicating she should precede him.

  Down in the basement hallway, their footsteps echoed. She stopped at the door, waited for him to unlock it, stepped in, moved directly to her sketch while he secured the door behind them. And finally she had to ask. “Why all the secrecy?”

  He leaned against the door, crossing his arms, saying nothing. Which was when she noticed that unlike her, he was armed.

  “Wait, I know,” she said, picking up her pencil, eyeing her sketch. “If you told me, you’d have to kill me.”

  “Actually,” he said, “if we told you, someone else might kill you.”

  She looked up to see if he was joking.

  Apparently he wasn’t.

  4

  Sydney examined the sketch pad, the nearly finished drawing. She’d been sitting in this damned room for the last couple of hours, and the autopsy photo had yet to materialize. Still, Sydney doubted she’d need it. The original crime scene photo contained the necessary elements such as the hair, and she made a rough sketch on a separate sheet of paper. She’d complete it from that-wanted to complete it from that, as anything was better than looking at the crime scene photo, the memory of which was bound to stay with her far too long.

  Her cell phone vibrated. Thinking it was probably Tasha returning her call, she pulled it from her belt, saw her ex, Scotty Ryan’s number showing on the screen, then looked over at Griffin to see if he would object.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  “My boyfriend. He’s an agent out of HQ,” she said, figuring Griffin was in the business, and undoubtedly knew she meant the Washington, D.C., office.

  “I was under the impression the two of you had broken up.”

  “Delving a bit on the personal side, aren’t you?”

  “This is a sensitive case.”

  “So what do you know about me?” she asked, ignoring Scotty’s call for now.

  “You’re thirty-three, five-nine, brown hair, blue eyes-”

  “Besides the obvious?”

  “You were a cop in Sacramento for eight years before joining the Bureau four years ago. According to SAC Harcourt, you’re one of the best forensic artists the Bureau has. You transferred from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco when you and your boyfriend broke up, and you were recently looking into your father’s murder, which took place twenty years ago. His murder case is why you took the transfer back to D.C.”

  “Maybe I should have asked if there was anything about me you don’t know.”

  “Red wine or white.”

  His answer surprised her, and she was tempted to quip that apparently he hadn’t seen her and Tasha drinking the other night, or he’d know it was red. Instead, she merely stared at him, noted there was actually a spark of amusement in his previously unreadable gaze, and it wasn’t until her phone vibrated again that she was able to look away. “I need to take this call. Scotty’s a little on the possessive side. But then you probably already know that if you’ve done a complete background.”

  As quick as that spark appeared, it was gone. “Nothing about this case.”

  Sydney ignored him, flipped open the phone. “Hey, Scotty.”

  “I called your mom’s house, and she said you were already back at Quantico. Are you okay?”

  “Just a crime sketch. I’m flying back to my mom’s this afternoon.”

  “I mean about Tasha.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The hit-and-run.”

  Sydney stilled, felt her heart beat several times as she absorbed what she was hearing. “What?”

  “I figured you knew, why you flew back to D.C. It was in the papers. She was crossing the street and-”

  “Oh my God,” she said, since that was all she could think to say.

  “I’m sorry, Sydney. I know you were good friends.”

  “I can’t believe it…”

  He was quiet for a moment, then, “Call me when you’re done. I’ll pick you up, and you can decide what you want to do.”

  “Thank you…”

  He disconnected, and she closed her phone, staring at it, unable to believe any of this was real. They’d just gone out drinking…

  And then it hit her. That’s why Griffin had handed over a set of notes that weren’t included in a finished report. Tasha had been killed before she’d been able to complete it. It was also why Tasha wasn’t present, because she would’ve insisted on being here.

  What was it Griffin had said to Sydney, why they’d refused to tell her what was going on? Because someone would kill her if she knew…

  She spun around in her chair, looked right at him, very much aware that he’d heard the entire conversation, knew that she knew. “How dare you keep me in the dark about my friend’s death.”

  “This case takes priority.”

  “Was Tasha killed because of it?”

  “At this time, we have no proof that there is any connection.”

  “And being that it’s a hit-and-run, how would you know?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She turned away in anger and disgust, closing her eyes against the pain and confusion. Was it her fault her friend was dead? Sydney had recommended Tasha. She was-had been-one of the best forensic anthropologists on the East Coast. But if she was killed because of the case, then it stood to reason that anyone Sydney might have recommended would have come to the same fate…“Were you aware of the danger in this?”

  “Not all of it.”

  It was said with such quiet conviction, that she believed him. “Then why keep it from me?”

  “Because we had to reevaluate. If Dr. Gilbert was killed because of this case, then we had to protect anyone else we had working on the identification. You think you were followed on your run this morning? If you were, it was by someone who can gain access to these grounds. Someone who knew we were bringing the skull to Quantico. You can understand why I didn’t want to involve yet another artist. And why we let you go home to San Francisco to preserve the illusion that you were not connected to the case at all.”

  “Hence the private jet to bring me back?”

  “Exactly.”

  And that she could appreciate. Because if someone came after her, they could certainly do it while she was visiting her family. “I need a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”

  Griffin hesitated. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  She nodded, waited until she heard the door close behind him, then stared at the skull through a blur of tears, wishing that Tasha had left for her dig in Italy a week earlier.

 
; By the time Griffin returned about fifteen minutes later, she had composed herself enough to attempt finishing the Jane Doe sketch. Pencil poised over paper, she suddenly doubted herself and her hurried sketch of the victim’s hair. “I need to see the crime scene photo one more time before I finish.”

  He picked up the briefcase, unlocked it, removed the folder, set it on the table in front of her. She opened the folder, tried to force her gaze past the woman’s visage to the surroundings, everything she needed to remember. It was not an easy task. Look at any photo of a person, and one’s gaze is drawn to the face. Look at a photo where the face has been savagely removed, and it’s just as hard not to stare at where the face is supposed to be.

  But do it she must. An ID of Jane Doe was imperative, assuming that Jane Doe’s killer had also killed Tasha. Eyeing the photo, and making a few tentative strokes on the paper, Sydney tried to mentally take in everything from the obvious to the not so obvious. She noted what the victim wore, blue jeans and a zippered sweatshirt. She noted the ground, the neatly manicured lawn, and more importantly the absence of snow, which, if the murder had occurred in this area, meant it was at least a week or more ago. To the right of the victim was what looked like the base of an old-fashioned streetlamp, black iron, and beyond that the corner of a building made of massive blocks of hewn stone that, other than the reddish color, reminded her of the historic brownstones seen in the New York area.

  “How much longer?” he asked.

  “Almost done.”

  She finished up the hair, another ten minutes to get the basics, try to emulate the style she presumed the woman would’ve worn, judging from what she could tell in the photo, what wasn’t matted in congealed blood. Brunette. She’d been a brunette. After that it was simply shading to give the sketch depth and realism. An hour later she was done.

  “All yours,” she said, eyeing the sketch of the young woman she’d drawn, and then the skull. She lifted the vellum from her sketch pad, the drawing of the skull beneath it, then held up the vellum sheet with the actual sketch on it, to size up the real skull behind her rendering. It fit. When she held up the sketch pad so that Griffin could view the drawing, he looked at it. And had she not been watching his face, she might have missed the flash of emotion. Guilt, maybe even pain. He knows this girl, she thought, but just as quickly as that look appeared, it was gone, and she couldn’t help but wonder who the girl was, where she had been found.

  And who killed her?

  Sydney knew better than to ask. Instead, she handed the sketch on vellum to the agent, and then the skull drawing from her sketch pad.

  “I’ll need the entire sketch pad,” he said.

  She didn’t bother to ask why. She knew. They were taking no chances that she might be able to reproduce the sketch at a later date using any sort of technology that might enhance what was compressed on the pages beneath. She simply flipped through the sketchbook, made sure there was nothing written on the other pages, then handed that over to him as well.

  “You worried about the pencil?” she asked.

  “Feel free to keep it.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “But I’ll need the notepad.”

  She slid the yellow lined tablet next to the crime scene photo and the skull. “All yours,” she said, dropping her pencil into her drawing briefcase, which, unlike his, didn’t lock.

  She phoned Scotty the moment she was out of the basement and up in her room, keeping the call brief. She was finished, and he could come pick her up. She packed, took her overnight bag and briefcase, turned in her key, retrieved her gun from the guard, then looked at her watch. Scotty wouldn’t be there for another forty-five minutes. So instead of sitting patiently in the reception area waiting for him, she walked to the outdoor range, trying to stay in the sun where the snow had melted and the path was clear.

  The range master put her at the end of a group of recruits who, judging from the coins atop their weapons as they stood poised to fire, were honing their breathing and trigger-pull skills. The coin would be knocked off with the recoil of each shot. But it also meant the range master had loaded the magazines with one or two dummy rounds somewhere in the fifteen live rounds, and the recruits had no idea what order. If the recruit was firing with proper trigger pull, breathing, etc., when he reached the dummy round, whether it was the first, third, or fifteenth round, the penny would remain atop the weapon when he pulled the trigger, quite simply because no shot had been fired. More often than not, the coins jumped, because the recruits anticipated the shot and recoil, then jumped themselves-one of the primary reasons for bad shooting.

  Sydney focused on her own target hanging at twenty-five yards. She needed this after working on the Jane Doe sketch. It was mentally taxing enough doing a drawing under ordinary circumstances, but there was nothing ordinary about this case. Her friend had been killed, quite possibly because of this case. And beyond that, there was a young woman with a triangle carved where her face was supposed to be. A young woman who was nameless, who could no longer tell anyone what had happened. In concert with the other investigators, Sydney’s job as a forensic artist was to speak for the dead, give them the voice to help discover who they were, and in the case of homicide, who had killed them. The sketch of her Jane Doe was so clear in her mind. Maybe too clear, perhaps because of Tasha’s death…Anger surged through her about being kept in the dark over that, and she knew she needed to expunge it if she was to think with a clear head. Just breathe in the cold air. Calm. Right now she needed calm.

  Calm and some damned answers, she thought, firing off two rounds, then deciding the other thirteen needed to go as well. She emptied the magazine, reloaded, then concentrated on her target, knowing it would do her more harm than good to let any anger get the best of her. The target swayed slightly as the other recruits shot, but Sydney stared ahead, raised her weapon, and cleared her mind. There was something meditative about outdoor range practice, focusing your gaze on the front sight and aligning it with the target. Evening out your breathing, then gently pulling, pulling, hearing the slightest of clicks before the gun went off. And if you did it right, you barely heard the report of your weapon, or any other weapon out there. Nothing but you, the target, and the slow, even pull of the trigger. Just breathe in the cold air. Calm.

  But there was no calm for her. She had to know if Tasha’s death was related. And to do that, she thought as she walked to the cleaning station to begin the process of field stripping her weapon, she had to know who Jane Doe was, and then who killed her.

  She was wiping the cleaning oil from each piece, reassembling it, when who should walk up but Mr. Federal himself, Special Agent Griffin. “We have a plane available to take you home.”

  She glanced at him, deciding it would do little good to unleash her anger on him. “Not going home yet,” she said, holding out the barrel of her semiauto so she could look down inside, make sure there was no residue, before dropping it in place. “My ex is picking me up. But feel free to take the plane yourself. You could use a vacation.”

  “Your ex can’t make it.”

  She looked at him. Saw he was serious. “And why not?”

  “Bank robbery. Suspects are holed up in the surrounding area, may have hostages.”

  She decided that he was telling the truth, dismissed the absurd thought he’d set up the robbery as part of some plot to get her on that plane. “Guess I’ll catch a ride into the capital and wait for him to get off. Sometimes you have to go the extra mile for a chance at true love.”

  “And sometimes love is really, really blind.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve met your ex. He’s not your type.”

  She laughed. Not kindly, either. “And how would you know?”

  “Your plane is waiting.”

  “To hell with the plane. I’m not getting on it.”

  “That your target?” He nodded at the bull’s-eye on the table next to her. Every round but one was in the Ten X
.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I beat you, you get on the plane.”

  She said nothing, merely finished the reassembly. “And if I beat you?” she asked, pointing her weapon into the clearing barrel, slapping in a fully loaded magazine and pulling the slide back to load it.

  “Then I’ll take you where you need to go.”

  “Sorry. I don’t play games. But have fun.” She holstered her weapon, smiled, and walked off.

  He followed her back to the main building’s reception area. She ignored him, until he said, “I’m driving past your place, if that’s where you’re headed.”

  “Actually, I’m going to wait for Scotty at his place.”

  “I’m driving past there, too.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I’ll bring the car to the front.” He walked off, and the only reason she didn’t stop him was that one could learn quite a bit when sequestered in a car together. Assuming she could get him to talk.

  Ten minutes later, Sydney saw his gold Ford Crown Victoria pull up. She walked out into the bracing cold, carrying both her briefcase and overnight bag. A dark-haired man stood off at the distance, smoking, well away from the building per government regulations, his arms tucked close as though warding off the chill. He watched her walk over to the car until a group of young female recruits strolled past, giving him something better to look at apparently.

  Zachary Griffin got out, walked around and opened the rear door, allowing her to put both her briefcase and overnight bag in the back, then opened the front door for her.

  “A gentleman after all.”

  “There are a few of us left.”

  Once they’d driven past the marine stationed at the gate, she said, “I’m assuming you know where he lives?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “You mind filling me in on why all the secrecy? The background?”

  “The case is important. We needed to know that everyone involved could be trusted.”

  “Thought that was why the Bureau did the backgrounds before they hired us.”

  “People change.”