Sacred Burial Grounds (An FBI Romance Thriller (book 2)) Read online

  Whitefox shook his head, some things just couldn’t be put back together, and this was one of those things. They parted with acrimonious words, violence and the promise of never being family again. What he would give to turn back time.

  The crunch of gravel alerted him to a visitor. Looking at his watch, he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be good news. Nothing good came before eight a.m. on the reservation. In fact, pretty much everything was dead at eight a.m. thanks to the tavern. The tribe was still sleeping off the night before, and only those who worked off the reservation milled about heading off to make a living in the outside world.

  He opened one eye as his co-worker bounded up the steps with a grim look on his face. All he could hope was it wasn’t a booze related accident. They turned his stomach, and he hated to be the one that had to tell the families. It was a day killer, and he found he didn’t have the stomach for it as of late. Pushing down the feelings he was having regarding the job, he forced himself to keep thinking of the obligation he had taken on as chief of police. Hopefully it would get him through the day.

  “Callen, you’ve gotta come with me. We have a big problem, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

  Whitefox looked at his officer, and hoped he wasn’t yanking his chain. It was too early to be stressed out with something that was just going to be paperwork and hours of tedium.

  “Define big problem, Chet. I’m in no mood today to be run around the lands like a maniac chasing imagined issues. I have a hangover, and I need the next hour in absolute silence to start my day. If no one’s dead then come back later.”

  Chester Briggs stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I’m serious Callen. We have a huge problem, and you have to come now!” His boss as of late was starting to act bored with the job, as if it lacked luster in his eyes anymore. The tell-tale signs were there in the drinking and the lackadaisical attitude towards the people he was sworn to protect.

  Whitefox stood and stretched, basically glaring at the man. “Chet, again just tell me what the problem is and stop making me think. I’m not on shift for another hour, and today I could really use it. I’m hung over and cranky.”

  “While I was out patrolling this morning, I found something that just creeped me out. You have to come with me, and tell me what to do about it.”

  Whitefox laughed, mildly entertained that his officer, a grow man was using the phrase ‘creeped out’. Nothing ever happened on the reservation that wasn’t domestic, or alcohol related. “What creeped you out, Chet?” he asked, as he moved back into his cabin, his officer following closely.

  “I found bones.”

  “Probably an animal,” he grinned now, amused by the serious look on the man’s face. “We do have them out here in the woods.” Yeah, he was being sarcastic; it was the mighty hangover speaking, and his growing boredom with the reservation police job. It was the same thing over and over…

  Chester Briggs was a good cop, or at least he thought he was anyway. Granted, the police force on the reservation was all of four men, but he still took every incident serious. When he was a boy all he ever wanted to be was a cop, and to this day he would do it right or not at all. His boss’s attitude was pissing him off.

  “Oh well then, I guess you don’t give a shit that there’s red symbols drawn all over them in what looks to be blood. I’ll just head into the station and forget that I found them all together, because you have a hangover. I’ll let someone from the tribe come across them and take them to your grandfather.” That should get his attention and drive the point home.

  “Wait, are you shitting me? There’s blood and symbols drawn on the bones?”

  Chester Briggs stopped. “I didn’t just drive like a maniac all the way out to your house to screw with you Cal. I know what I saw, and you better get your ass moving and fast.”

  Callen Whitefox was caught a little off guard. “Where are these bones?”

  “They’re out by Little Rock Road at the outsider site. I was patrolling the camp ground out there, and saw something smoking. I thought we might have had a camper using the grounds, and possibly they lit a fire off the allowed site. I was going over to put it out before it caught the whole forest ablaze.”

  “Okay you have my attention so far,” he said, pulling on his jeans and shirt.

  “There was a smoldering fire and as I got closer there were bones around it. White ones with symbols painted on them.”

  Whitefox was staring at him. He was still torn between the man screwing with him and being genuine about what he claimed to find. The men he worked with liked pranks, and this would be right up their alley. This just sounded so far-fetched that it had to be a way to mess with him while he was hung over.

  “I’m not kidding,” Chester Briggs pulled out his cell phone. “Look,” he said handing it to his boss so he could see for himself.

  Whitefox scrutinized the pictures and stared at the circle. He definitely wasn’t kidding. It was exactly what he said it was, a circle with bones and red painted symbols. They meant absolutely nothing to him, but it did give him goose bumps.

  “I thought I should get a picture or two in case someone touched them before we got back there. You know, preserve the scene.” He’d heard the terminology on TV and was proud he could use it on the job. After all, being a reservation police officer was his life. There was a big part of him that was disappointed that Callen Whitefox wasn’t about the job too.

  “Good idea,” he said, grabbing his shotgun from the rack beside the door. “Show me where you found them, Chester,” he pointed, motioning to his truck outside.

  “Not a problem, Chief.”

  The ride out to the campground seemed to take forever. It was normally a four mile drive, but in his mind, that anticipation and fear made it seem like a cross country trek. Callen Whitefox didn’t know what to think. The bones in the picture looked ominous. He knew that they were probably nothing more than just animal bones that some kid put there to screw with someone.

  The camp grounds were a big make out location; the young braves would bring out the younger ladies, and trying to get some action. He should know, since he and his brother had done the same thing twenty years ago. Unfortunately, they usually failed miserably. Yet something about the red symbols sent chills up his spine and made him shiver. It just seemed ominous to him. It was one thing to scare people, but the details in this looked more like they were meant to terrify. In his book that was crossing a line. Someone’s ass was going to get kicked over this one; he’d deter this bullshit and fast, before it caused an uproar.

  Whitefox parked behind his officer, stepping out into the cool air of the forest. He could see the smoldering fire from where he stood, and so far Chester had been right. It did look like someone was camping off the camp ground and dangerously close to the forest. That was a big no-no on reservation land. One spark and the whole damn place would go up.

  “Chet, you and the boys aren’t screwing with me are you?” he inquired again, as he made his way to the circle. He would give them one last chance to own it and stop this farce before it got way out of hand. “I promise that I won’t fire anyone if you come clean now.”

  “Callen, I swear to you, this isn’t us yanking your chain. Someone did this and we had nothing to do with it. Trust me, none of the guys are this creative. You’re giving them way too much credit. Plus you were out drinking with them last night. You think any of them were sober enough to be this meticulous?”

  Whitefox held his shot gun a little tighter just in case. Something about all of this rubbed him the wrong way, and he knew that it wasn’t going to be a good thing. Chester was right. The other deputies weren’t exactly creative when it came to pranks. They usually just left dead road kill on each other’s windshields, and they called it a night. Out of all of his men, none of them would be able to seamlessly pull off this prank.

  The whole day was starting shitty, and he didn’t expect it to stop now. As he approached the smoldering fire, he
could see the bones sticking up out of the dirt. They looked small, and delicate almost like they would crumble if touched.

  “They look like bird bones,” he said, crouching beside them. There was a familiarity for him with bones. His grandfather was the tribe shaman, and many times as a boy he watched him grind up the bones of an animal to practice his old world beliefs and healing. He’d helped him, wanting that connection to his ancestry. Many times he watched in awe as a boy, at the idea that magic and mysticism did indeed exist, and it ran through his veins. His grandfather made it very alluring as a child. Now things like this just made him wary, and he had no use in his life. Magic didn’t exist. Truth was found in cold hard facts of life.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  Whitefox took in the entire scene of the grotesque circle, knowing he’d seen something very much like it growing up.

  This was a medicine wheel, or a sick perversion of one. There was a circle of stones and in the center a smaller one, housing what once had been the fire. Four main rocks pointed out the elements. Each coded with a compass direction, and between the points on the man-made compass, sat all the bones. Some were tipped with red and symbols, and some with nothing on them but ash. Trying to decipher the symbols was almost impossible. They were smudged and coated with carbon, ruining any chance at seeing what they were trying to convey. Yeah, the hair on his arms and neck stood. This wasn’t something that you saw every day, not with the blood. Maybe they were animal bones, but something just felt off about the entire thing.

  “What should we do?”

  Whitefox didn’t even look up. “I’m going to stay here with the bones. I don’t think we should leave them alone. I need you to go back to town and get the doctor. Before I get the council worked up, I want to know what kind of bones these are, and Doc should be able to help us. If they’re human bones, I’ll contact the council, and we’ll see what they want us to do about it. Also, send one of the guys out to the burial grounds, and see if any of the tribal graves have been disturbed. These bones, if human, had to come from somewhere. No one just has a stash of bones in their basement to create something like this.” Not sane people, anyway.

  “Okay, Callen. Try and be careful out here. I’ll be back as fast as I can,” he said, practically running to the patrol car. He was so glad his boss sent him. He didn’t want to hang out with the bones. It was beyond creepy. The chief had a set of brass ones to sit there with their discovery, alone in the forest. More power to him at his lack of self-preservation.

  Whitefox could hear his officer pull away fast, and he couldn’t blame him. Now he needed to just stay calm, observe the area, and take in everything around him. The campgrounds were a pretty isolated area, used during camping season, and mostly when the local schools came out to the reservation to learn about Native American Indian heritage.

  Other than that, the entire reservation technically was a campground. Trees and forest were everywhere. The residents didn’t hang out in the woods, especially when you lived in them daily. There were the random underage drinking parties and sex romps, but rarely did you see someone from the reservation out camping. No tribe member was going to come here to commune with nature, or search for food. All hunting was done in the forest across the reservation near his grandfather’s domicile. The tribe didn’t hunt where outsiders camped and frolicked. For one, no one wanted to accidentally shoot an innocent person and deal with the consequences. Then there was the main reason, outsiders were avoided as much as possible, unless they were acting as tourists and buying the tribe’s wares. The mighty greenback would open up doors and make the Natives tolerate what they normally wouldn’t entertain.

  Listening to nature around him, he could hear the cawing of the birds and the slight rustle of the trees. The deer and other animals began their foraging for breakfast to beat the stagnant heat of the day. Other than that, there was nothing but silence. When his phone rang, the stillness of the forest was broken, and a flock of nesting birds took to the air. Their screams of displeasure were evident, and it had his own heart echoing loudly in his ears. Great, now it mimicked the pounding in his head from the hangover.

  “Whitefox,” he hissed into his phone.

  “Callen, I found the doctor. He said he’ll be right out, and I called in the guys from the night shift. They’re swearing up and down, they had nothing to do with this. I’m driving through the burial grounds right now, and nothing appears to be disturbed. All’s quiet over here. Thank God. If anyone starts digging here, the Natives will be very restless. There will be hell to pay if the grounds are being screwed with and remains touched.”

  “Thanks Chet, if these are human bones, we’re going to have to keep the area guarded. You know that word is going to travel fast, and before you know it we’ll have an audience. If this is a crime scene, we have to preserve it as best as we can, until we can get someone outside the reservation to check it out.”

  “Do you need me to bring anything back to you?” He was desperately trying to not get excited, but this kind of thing never happened. The mere idea of playing investigator had its appeal.

  “Yeah, bring the camera, gloves, and tape to cordon this whole area off.”

  “You think they’re human?” asked Chester.

  “I don’t know what I think,” he answered, and honestly he didn’t. All he knew was that he was suddenly was off balance about the entire thing. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up and he wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with the bones in the medicine wheel, or the sense that he was being observed by someone he couldn’t see.

  “Don’t worry, Cal. What are the chances anything exciting is going to happen on the reservation?”

  Callen Whitefox hung up, and sincerely hoped his officer was right. The last thing he needed was this kind of excitement.

  * * *

  He watched from the distance, lying on his belly, on the dew covered forest ground. The scope of his rifle trained on the law man. There was barely any time to escape into the brush before the reservation police stopped to investigate. Right now, the fox was circling his medicine wheel, investigating his offering to the spirits.

  The anger rushed through him, as he had to abandon his ritual to the man. He didn’t get to finish, and that pissed him off. It was a waste of his time and bones. This spot was specifically needed, it was the North point on his reservation circle and now it was all ruined.

  What a colossal waste of his precious bones. Those had been spectacular bones too- a set of twins, harvested from one of his sacred stashes. When he dug up the decaying woman, what a surprise it had been to find she had two sets of bones, nestled deep within her body. He could still see them curled into some ying and yang symbol in her womb. Now it was going to be disturbed by the hands of another, ruining his offering to the spirit world.

  Damn it!

  As he watched the man, he weighed his options. One shot and he’d be dead. One quick bullet to the head, and the man would be on the ground and, he could swoop in and collect his treasured offering and escape into the forest. Then he weighed the consequences. A murder on Indian land would bring outsiders, and the FBI. Once they came there would be no stopping them. They would tear his reservation and hunting grounds apart and possibly find the truth. That he couldn’t let happen. All he could hope was that the fox would be incompetent, and write it off as a medicine wheel created with animal bones and nothing more.

  He made the choice for now that the Indian police chief would live, but only because he couldn’t risk the outsiders coming. He only hoped the spirits would forgive him for the tarnished offering, giving him another chance to rectify his bungled gift.

  * * *

  Callen Whitefox and his officers cordoned off the area as the only reservation doctor came in and inspected the scene. Deep down, inside he hoped the man would start laughing at any moment, telling him that they all were out of their minds. He kept waiting for that laughter to come, and yet nothing of th
e sort was happening. Now the tendrils of unease were beginning to choke him and he was feeling more and more edgy as time passed.

  He pulled on a pair of gloves, and instructed the men to do the same. “Pull your hair back, and then glove up if you're touching anything here. We can’t compromise this scene with our own DNA,” he warned, just in case. He’d had experience on one or two crime scenes where there were remains. His stint as a deputy gave him some experience. Enough that he could instruct his men, and ensure they didn’t make this any harder on whoever had to work and investigate this mess after them.

  The doctor knelt beside the circle, carefully checking the smallest bones. Gently he turned them over in his gloved hands, checking the joints and the markings. Holding them reverently, he tried to not smear or touch the red symbols. Never had he seen anything quite like this before in his life. This was completely new to him, and he’d been living on the reservation for many years, since marrying one of the women who called the tribe home.

  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.