Sacred Burial Grounds (An FBI Romance Thriller (book 2)) (4 page)

Doctor Wolman was once an outsider and
not trusted. Many looked at him with suspicion, but time worked in his favor and they began to accept him. When they realized he wasn’t going to leave, they welcomed him and allowed him to blend in seamlessly. It had been his mission to help the Native American Indians living in poverty and sickness, and instead of just helping them, he fell in love with one of them.

What came next was a lifetime of dedication to the health and wellbeing of the tribe’s inhabitants. In the grand scheme he was now one of them, despite the fact that he practiced the white man’s medicine. Getting the call from Callen Whitefox
meant a great deal to him. It meant he was integrated into their community and finally one of them.

“What do you say, Doctor?” asked Whitefox, hoping that at any second the doctor was goin
g to tell him he had bird or squirrel bones.

The older man looked up at him and put his glasses on the top of his head. “Callen, this is something odd and strange.”

“Are they human? I can deal with odd and strange at a later time, once I figure out if they’re human remains.”

The older man held the bone up to the light. “I do believe they’re human,” he said, hesitating and staring at the bones in his hand.

“But?”

“The thing is,
” he paused. “They’re still soft and look at the size. I would say almost miniature in stature.”

Whitefox didn’t like where this was heading
. Already, he felt that knot in his stomach at the idea that these were miniature human remains, and that was disturbing. It could only mean one or two things. “By miniature, do you mean a very small person in stature? Are we talking about a very small adult?” The only other option was making his insides twist into a giant knot. There was this burning feeling in his gut, as the bile almost wanted to climb up into his throat.

“I think these are the bones of a child. Babies have three hundred bones in utero. As they develop they change from cartilage to bone, fusing together and forming the standard two hundred and six.”

Yeah, that’s pretty much where he thought it was going, and he was horrified. “These are the bones of a child?” he tried to keep his voice down. The last thing he needed was the officers behind him hearing and then catching the panic. Word travelled fast on the Rez, and his men could be the spark that ignited it.

“I
don’t think it’s a child Callen. I believe it’s a baby. I may be wrong, but an anthropologist could confirm either way. My professional assessment is that we have infant bones.”

“Well shit
, and here I am all out of Indian Reservation anthropologists at the moment, and I haven’t a clue where to dig one up.”

Doctor Wolman ignored the sarcasm and continued on with the information, “I have more bad news, son.”

He was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear it, especially if the news was worse than it being infant bones. “I don’t know how this could possibly go from bad to horrific news. It’s pretty awful as it is, Doc,” he whispered, glancing over his shoulder at the closest deputy.

“Look at these,” he said
, holding four identical bones in his hand and rolling them over with his index finger. All four matched. They were the size of his finger and nothing more.

“I see four bones, and they all look the same to me.”

Doctor Wolman nodded and continued, “What we have here are the femur bones.”

Whitefox tried to figure
out where he was going with it and then he understood. “That’s two bones too many, right?” Oh yeah, Doc was right. Now he saw where this was heading, and it had definitely gone from bad to worse.

“I don’t think you have the body of one child,
Callen. I believe you have the remains of two at least, and if you look at these bones in the circle there seems to be quite a few duplicates.”

“Well
, now this just makes it an even shittier day all around.” Whitefox knew that with one body they could call the neighboring sheriff, and they would step in and take over the investigation. Most sheriff departments were better equipped than the Rez. They lacked a tech department to gather the forensics and work on the crime.

More than one body, and it was a federal domain
and that meant one thing. There would be FBI jurisdiction over the crime. Today was a very bad day to have a hangover; his headache was going to be much worse in a few hours. Now the FBI was going to be involved on reservation land. All he could think of was how ugly this was going to become, as they swooped in and took over. Yeah, the Natives were going to be restless, pissed off, and just plain resentful. He knew that outside police would be an irritant, but the FBI was just going to anger the masses. FBI and Natives didn’t mix on a good day, but toss in bones of a child and it was going to escalate into one colossal mess.

“Doctor, I need you to keep this quiet for now. Can you do that for me? I have to see my grandfather and the Indian Council, and then go from there. I don’t want every tribe member out here rooting through the bones telling me how to handle this.”

Doctor Wolman nodded, dropping his voice to a whisper, “Go talk to your grandfather. I’ll stay here with the officers, and make sure no one disturbs the scene until you get back.”

“Thank you, Doc,” he said, walking towards his truck. Once inside he dialed his grandfather’s house. What he had to say wasn’t going to be something he wanted traveling fast through the reservation. He hoped to keep it quiet for as long as
possible. He heard his grandfather’s voice, and it immediately brought him some comfort. When there was trouble his grandfather would advise him wisely.

“Granddad, we have a big problem.”

“What is it my boy?” asked the old man. “It isn’t like you to call on your old man this early in the day. There must be something troubling you.”

“We have some bones out by the campground, and they aren’t animal. Doctor Wolman just checked them out, and he believes they
’re the bones of an infant child. Correction let’s make that infant children- as in the plural.”

“This is very bad. We must handle this carefully and quietly my boy.”

“If they’re are human this is now a federal issue; I have no choice but to contact outside authorities, because we don’t have the facilities to handle this investigation.”

Timothy became very quiet on the line. “You have to do what you have to do, Callen. Who do you plan on calling?”

“I know a man at Quantico, and I worked with him once before when I was a deputy. He told me to call him if I ever needed him, and I think this is exactly what he meant by ‘need’.”

“Is he the kind of man that will respect our people, Callen?” asked his grandfather, hoping that the intrusion of the outsiders wouldn’t be as bad as it usually seemed to be in the past. He trusted the judgment of his grandson completely. He loved his heritage, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to stomp all over the people he was protecting.

“His name is Gabriel Rothschild, and he’s the boss
there. He gave me his card with his private number a few years ago. He always was honest and played fair with everyone. I respect him, Granddad.”

“Do you still have the card, Callen?”

Whitefox put his head back on his seat and closed his eyes. “Yeah, I still have it, Granddad.”

“Then you need to take care of this. Meanwhile I’ll contact the rest of the council and explain that our hands are now tied. If we have a killer on the reservation
, then we need to stop this and soon. Just make sure the FBI respects our beliefs. We don’t need to end up on the nightly news in a gun fight. History doesn’t need to be repeated my boy.”

“I wish there was another way,
Granddad, but we don’t have the resources to run a full investigation.”

“I know, Callen. It is how it is, and now we need to put it out into the universe
. If we allow the spirits to guide us and bring us the answer that we now seek, it will work out. Trust in your spirit guide, and you will be led down the path you are meant to follow.”

Whitefox just let his grandfather ramble on, knowing that it was going to be an ugly thing when the FBI rolled into their reservation
. Spirit guide or not, he just had a really bad feeling about it.

Timothy hung up the phone with his grandson and finished his tea. He wasn’t surprised that the boy had called him; he had just roused from a meditative dream state, and it had scared and terrified him beyond any he had ever had before. He saw the reservation that he loved covered with blood and death. The stench of decay had permeated his senses and choked him, threatening to push him from the trance. There was no shock that this was coming. He felt the horror in the vision, and it would most likely come to fruition.

There was only one hope now, and it was the two black ravens walking through the blood as if unfazed by it all.  It gave him peace and reassurance,
since they felt familiar and safe. If he was envisioning the raven, it meant only one thing. His other boy was coming home, and the call from the younger of the two speaking of the FBI had confirmed it. Now all that remained was to decipher what the second bird symbolized in the dream. The smaller bird stood protectively over the bigger bird, watching with unblinking awareness and an innate fierceness.

There was the hope that Ethan Blackhawk was returning to the nest, and curiosity as to whether he was coming alone, or bringing someone with him. 

                                 *   *   *

Gabriel Rothschild sat in meetings all morning, and all he accomplished was managing to get a bitch of a migraine headache. The opening of the FBI West building was supposed to be smooth sailing, but unfortunately as it always seemed to happen
, they were running into personnel issues. The whole site was supposed to be the Quantico of the west, with the same labs, tech staff, and advanced facilities. Two facilities allowed the teams to have dual points of contact out in the field. It was supposed to be a governmental break through, and all it was right now was a pain in his ass.

When he
discovered that he needed to staff the agency, he immediately pushed for Ethan and Elizabeth Blackhawk to oversee the job. He didn’t trust anyone more to follow the guidelines, and they ran it above the law for him. They were hand-picked for the task, and he knew no one else would work as hard as they would to make it happen.

At one time
, Elizabeth had worked under him. She was a wild card, but one of the very best agents he had ever had the privilege to work with in his life. She saw things in the details that others seemed to miss. Her gift was putting together the puzzle, and making the connections to find the criminal.

Ethan Blackhawk was the o
ther half of the equation. His role in their team was that of profiler. He was able to get into the mind of the killer, giving his partner an unprecedented look at who they were hunting. As long as he had known him, there was just a sixth sense in the man that made him very good at his job. The criminal mind had always been so easy for him to slip into. It was his forte, and he excelled at it.

Together they made one hell of a team.

Gabe trusted them completely. Both had come together over a serial killing, and barely survived to tell about it. He made a promise to them, and when he offered them the position, it would be in-house only. The offer of office jobs would keep the Blackhawks off the street and alive.

That was his plan.

If he kept them together, he could repay them both with some good karma, while they healed from the last serial killer that almost took their lives. Even though they excelled as a team they were his family, and he would sacrifice a strong field unit to keep them alive. Sometimes personal superseded professional and this was a prime example in his book. 

Now
, he had a huge dilemma. The staffing report was in from Elizabeth; all the agents they had hired in the last few weeks were out on assignment. FBI West was a big hit. The only downfall was that they weren’t able to staff it to fill demand. Many of the agents in Quantico didn’t want a transfer. They had a life on the east coast, calling Georgetown home. The ones that would transfer had lives to close up here, before beginning the move west. Hiring seemed like an easy thing, but with the government in a state of stagnation, it was making it a big ball of red tape.

It was now just those two
left in house and his fear was that one more assignment coming in would mean one, or both, were going out into the field. That made him nervous. Not because he didn’t trust them, because they were quintessentially the best. He just was afraid for the Blackhawks. When apart, they attracted bad like a magnet, and he could only imagine the trouble they would draw together.

All he could do was cross his fingers and hope the personnel ready to be sent to FBI West would be going soon. He banged out an email on his smartphone, pushing for the recruiter to get him more personnel and fast. When his personal cell rang his heart skipped a beat. Only a few people ever called this line, his wife being one of them and
the Blackhawks the others.

“Hello, Rothschild.”