Page 8 of Canyon Killer
“I don’t think these caves were visible before that mudslide a few weeks ago,” Ian said. He pointed at the slide path, still evident above and below the cave opening. “This whole section of the cliff sheared off in that slide, revealing these caves. This is the largest, but there are two others.”
“Have you looked in them?” Gage asked.
Bethany gasped. “Do you think there are more bones?”
“We didn’t look in them,” Ian said.
“Aaron, check out the other two caves,” Gage said.
Her brother moved past. The rest of them focused on the skeletons once more.
“If this was all covered by rock and dirt, how did the bones get here in the first place?” Gage asked.
“Maybe there was a smaller opening?” Bethany speculated. “They could have climbed in and gotten trapped.” She shuddered at the thought.
“There are holes in both skulls.” Ian pointed. “I didn’t get a really good look, but I thought I saw something metallic in the skull on the left. Like a bullet.”
Gage moved nearer, keeping close to the cave wall until he was beside the bones. He shone the light on the skulls. Now Bethany could see a small, round hole in both—above the temple in one, in the middle of the forehead in the other. Gage nodded. “I think there is a bullet in there.”
Bethany looked at Ian. “You didn’t say anything about a bullet before.”
“I didn’t want to upset you.”
“Ian. I work search and rescue. I’ve dealt with more upsetting things.” A child in pain was a lot tougher to deal with than these dry, long-dead bones.
“Sorry,” he said.
Aaron returned. “The other two caves are empty,” he said. “Neither of them are as large as this one.”
“Let’s go back down, and I’ll call the coroner and we’ll get your statements,” Gage said.
Back at the trailer, Gage made a phone call, then sent Aaron to take Ian’s statement. He turned to Bethany. “Tell me what happened.”
“Ian rented a Jeep from us,” she said. “I agreed to deliver it. He offered to show me around, so we decided to hike around the area. We found the caves, looked inside and there were the bones.”
“Whose idea was it to go into the caves?” Gage asked.
“Mine. I don’t think he’d noticed them until I pointed them out.”
“What do you know about Ian Seabrook?”
What did she know? He was good looking. He drove a Porsche. He seemed to like babies, and he seemed to like her. “He’s planning to build a via ferrata here in the canyon, and I guess that’s upset some people in town,” she said. “His father is a billionaire. And I guess he’s a really experienced climber?”
Aaron emerged from the trailer, where he had been interviewing Ian. “We’ve got to wait for the coroner,” Gage said to him. “Take your sister home, then come back here.” He tossed Aaron the keys.
“Come on,” Aaron said and headed toward the SUV.
Bethany looked back to the trailer. “I should say goodbye to Ian.”
“We have to go.” He slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. She was tempted to return to the trailer and refuse to leave, but she wouldn’t have put it past Aaron not to pick her up and put her into the SUV, which would be beyond embarrassing, so she climbed into the passenger seat.
Aaron didn’t wait until they were out of the canyon before the grilling began. “What are you doing with that guy? You don’t know anything about him. For all you know he murdered those two people,” he said. “You should have waited and had Carter or Dalton deliver the Jeep. It’s dangerous for a woman alone with a strange man. Don’t you have any sense?”
“If you think Ian had anything to do with those two people who probably died a hundred years ago, you need to go back to Law Enforcement 101,” she said.
“You still don’t know anything about him. You shouldn’t have come out here alone.”
“If I’m never supposed to be alone with a man, how am I going to date?”
