The Bone Track, page 1
Thank you for downloading this Sourcebooks eBook!
You are just one click away from…
• Being the first to hear about author happenings
• VIP deals and steals
• Exclusive giveaways
• Free bonus content
• Early access to interactive activities
• Sneak peeks at our newest titles
Happy reading!
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2022 by Sara E. Johnson
Cover and internal design © 2022 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by The BookDesigners
Cover images © Croisy/Shutterstock, Kamila Bay/Shutterstock, nicemonkey/Shutterstock, Olegro/Shutterstock
Internal map by Jillian Rahn
Internal images © Denny Fachrul Rozzy/Getty Images, Dikobraziy/Getty Images, FrankRamspott/Getty Images
Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Johnson, Sara E, author.
Title: The bone track : an Alexa Glock forensics mystery / Sara E. Johnson.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Poisoned Pen Press, [2022] | Series:
Alexa glock forensics mystery ; book 3
Identifiers: LCCN 2021023601 (print) | LCCN 2021023602 (ebook) | (trade paperback) | (epub)
Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3610.O37637 B659 2022 (print) | LCC PS3610.O37637
(ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023601
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023602
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Map of Fiordland National Park
Prologue
Thursday
Chapter One
Friday
Chapter Two
Saturday
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Sunday
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Monday
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Tuesday
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
One Week Later
Chapter Forty-Seven
One Month Later
Chapter Forty-Eight
Excerpt from The Bones Remember
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
For my sister, Jennifer
Prologue
She gripped the cold metal handrails—they vibrated as if alive—but her feet wouldn’t budge. The swing bridge taunted her. Cross me if you dare. She believed people should be able to control fear: simply put mind over body. But her body was betraying her. The medical term for fear of bridges was gephyrophobia, and this one-person-wide catwalk over the river gorge gave her the classic symptoms: racing heart, sweaty palms, trouble breathing.
The river was so far down and the wooden slats so flimsy-looking. A thunderous waterfall churned the water, blocking all sound, and the rain made everything blurry. She turned and squinted to see if the others were coming. She didn’t want her fear on display.
The trail was empty. She’d better hurry.
“One, two, THREE,” she yelled and rushed forward.
Halfway across, one of her hiking poles snagged the safety netting where the handrail sagged lowest, barely waist-high. She wobbled, jerked the pole free, and rushed across the remaining undulating planks. On the far platform, her victory shout was drowned by the waterfall.
She descended three steps to firm earth and stood still, regaining her composure. Composure was important for a medical professional. Composure and control. Slowly, ecstasy replaced fear; she was proof a person could overcome adversity. She’d done it her whole hungry life.
And look at that. The rain had stopped.
She walked across a clearing and stared into the deep woods where the trail picked up. She sensed watching eyes.
Nonsense.
She leaned her poles against a tree, slid her backpack off, and stuffed her raincoat into it. The waterfall, picture-perfect in a shaft of sunlight, cascaded in white membranes over three ledges. She retrieved her phone and walked to the cliff’s edge for a clear view. Who could she send a picture to? She thought of the young man she’d met at the Queenstown pub. His deep-brown eyes and baby-soft hair. His beard against her cheek, his hot breath in her ear. She’d lowered her guard. Let the pressure and drive and strife dissolve in his attention.
Had she given him her mobile number? No. She’d said the battery was dead. He wrote his number on a scrap and slipped it into her pocket. His fingers rustled about, probed, and played.
She would cut back on alcohol as soon as she got home.
Her boot dislodged a pebble. It rolled off the precipice, bounced, and disappeared in froth.
She’d take a selfie and send it to him when she had service. She turned her back to the cliff, leveled her chin downward, held the phone at a flattering angle, and tilted her head. Click. She’d add filters later. Satisfied, she faced the river again, soaking up sunshine. No one was crossing yet; she would still be the first to reach the lodge. She liked being first. Deserved it. She sensed movement behind her. A dark-winged force. Sensation stabbed into her back, pushing her into the air, her legs and arms flailing, the phone flying from her fingers.
Thursday
Chapter One
Nine bodies. That’s how many were excavated three days ago on the coastal road near Wellington, New Zealand.
Alexa Glock stepped around someone’s outstretched legs in the airport waiting area and continued pacing. Nine times 206, the number of bones in a mature skeleton—more, if the remains included children. She hoped children weren’t involved.
She imagined the driver’s face as his bulldozer lifted the bones. “What the hell?” he probably said. He would have cut the engine, jumped from the cab, hoping and praying the bones weren’t human.
The skull, its large eye sockets leaking dirt, brought the road construction to a halt.
“Stared right at me,” he told the project’s archaeologist.
A loudspeaker announced the arrival of an Air China flight. Alexa was waiting for her younger brother, Charlie. His plane was an hour late. He had left North Carolina twenty-four hours earlier. He didn’t know that tomorrow morning, on the way to the hiking trip they were taking, they’d make a pit stop so Alexa could meet with the archaeologist who was keeping the location of the bones secret.
“We don’t want stalkers and gawkers,” she had said.
The bones would probably be historic remains of the country’s indigenous people, the Māori. They were being stored until she could get there. The local iwi, or tribe, would take guardianship if they were historic.
But what if they weren’t old bones? Alexa’s specialty—teeth—would tell the tale.
I’m here. What’s for dinner?
Alexa panicked. Buying the food for backpacking was enough, wasn’t it? She hadn’t prepared anything beyond that. And why was Charlie talking dinner? It was ten o’clock in the morning.
Weet-bix, she texted back. She had tried some of her Kiwi roommate’s cereal, doused it with milk. It had turned to mush.
She was apprehensive about seeing Charlie, who was four years younger than her thirty-seven, and married with two little boys. They weren’t close. She was apprehensive about the hiking, too. Except for running, she wasn’t outdoorsy. She preferred analyzing bite-marks or blood spatter to communing with family or nature.
She downed the last of the coffee and stood by the swinging doors. A gaggle of teenage girls tussled over who would hold a homemade poster that said “Kia Ora,” the official Kiwi greeting, like aloha in Hawaii.
Dazed passengers emerged. Charlie, in wrinkled khakis and a plaid flannel shirt, backpack over his shoulder and dragging a wheelie suitcase, was last. He stiffened when Alexa bear-hugged him.
She let go and stepped back. “You made it! How was the flight?”
“Long. I’m starved.”
“We can stop at McDonald’s on the way to my apartment.” She took the wheelie suitcase from him and started walking.
“McDonald’s? I didn’t fly halfway across the world to eat at McDonald’s.”
“They have different things on the menu. Georgie Pies.”
“I don’t want pie.”
God almighty, he was still a pouty kid. Alexa dodged a mother who had her toddler on a leash—was that legal?—and headed for the exit. “They’re meat pies.”
“Is Milford Track open?”
That was the hike they were taking—the Milford Track. “What do you mean?” Alexa waited for Charlie to evade the leashed tot and catch up. Crow’s-feet around his eyes startled her.
“They had a perfect storm—thirteen inches of rain in one day, more the next—and it closed down the track. Hundreds of people had to be evacuated by helicopter. Don’t you listen to the news?”
Auckland, where she lived, was on the North Island of New Zealand, and Milford Track was way down on the South Island. “When was the storm?”
“Two weeks ago. I’ve been following it. I can’t believe you haven’t heard.”
“I’ve been busy. I have to get to work today.”
“Work?” Charlie stopped walking. “I’ve only got two weeks. You’re working?”
“Just a bit.” Alexa kept walking. “I have reports to finish. I figured you’d want a shower and a nap,” she called over her shoulder.
The reports turned out to be routine, except for the final one. That’s where Alexa lost track of time. A woman claimed a man attacked and robbed her in a parking garage. In the struggle the attacker bit her arm. A close-up photo showed the bite-mark—a shallow puncture of the skin—above the woman’s left wrist. Alexa compared it with a photo of the alleged victim, who had a noticeable gap between her top incisors. “It looks self-inflicted,” Alexa told her boss Dan Goddard at Forensic Service Center. “We’ll need her dental X-rays to confirm.”
They stared at the side-by-side photos. “Why would someone do that?” Dan asked.
“Could be a response to pain or to keep from screaming,” Alexa said. “Or she could have made up the attack.”
She didn’t get home until seven. She unlocked the door and found Charlie reading a Milford Track guidebook on the sofa.
“So much for ‘I won’t be long.’”
He had called twice, and each time she had begged for another hour.
“For your information,” he said. “The Milford Track reopened two days ago. We’re lucky.”
“That’s good.” She stepped around his bulging backpack. “What all do you have in there?”
Charlie ignored her. Alexa set her laptop and tote on a kitchen chair and scuffed out of her Keds. “Did you get a nap?” She could tell he had taken a shower but hadn’t shaved. His sandy-brown-colored hair was short on the sides with a quiff on top. The trendy cut was probably his wife’s idea.
“I went out for an early dinner with your cop roommate before she left for work.”
“You went out to eat with Natalie?” Alexa hadn’t ever done that. She rarely saw Natalie, who worked the six p.m. to six a.m. shift four days a week and spent her off time at her boyfriend’s. This made her a perfect roomie—or flatmate as Kiwis said—for someone who didn’t want one. Housing prices in Auckland were double compared to Raleigh, and she was making half the money she had at her old job at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.
“We ate at a restaurant called Lord of the Fries.”
Alexa laughed. “Did Frodo serve you?”
“Did you know Natalie and Trevor split up?”
Alexa was stunned. She didn’t even know her roommate’s boyfriend’s name. “I suppose you know Natalie’s hopes and dreams, too?”
Hazel eyes were the single physical characteristic the brother and sister shared. Charlie’s sharpened. “Some of them. She’s nice.”
Alexa bit her tongue and put leftovers in the microwave. While the electromagnetic waves zapped the Thai curry, she popped them each a Speight’s beer.
“Smells good,” Charlie said. “I’ll have some, too.”
She laughed again. Charlie had a good appetite like she did. She dished up the curry and told him about the bones. “They’re storing them near the site. It’s probably a burial ground. We have an early flight to Wellington. An archaeologist is picking us up. I’ll examine the bones, and then we’ll fly to Queenstown.”
“So you’re working tomorrow, too?”
Charlie loved his job as a geotechnical engineer. He was a rock and soil geek. One of his main duties was analyzing sites to see if they were right for construction projects. “They’re building a road,” she placated. “Maybe you could dig around or talk with the site manager.”
He crumpled his beer can. “Maybe.”
Friday
Chapter Two
Dr. Ana Luckenbaugh, who was around Alexa’s age, drove with one hand on the wheel and used the other to fiddle with her thick, dark hair. Her scuffed work boot was heavy on the gas pedal. She had whisked Alexa and Charlie away from Wellington Airport, promising to have them back for their two p.m. flight to Queenstown. En route to examine the bones, she explained her involvement. “I’m an archaeologist for Beckett & Associates in Auckland. We specialize in cultural heritage remains.”
“I live in Auckland, too,” Alexa replied brilliantly. She had made sure to get the front seat, relegating Charlie to the back of the RAV4, squeezed next to a monstrous child-restraint seat. Riding in the back made her carsick.
“The roadwork has halted, and now the construction company is seeking permission to continue.”
“From whom?”
“New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, a historic heritage agency. If this is a Māori burial ground, the road will have to be rerouted. We think teeth are the key. That’s why you’re here.”
There were plenty of cultures that held negative beliefs about disturbing remains. Alexa shifted in the seat.
Cook Strait, which separated the North Island and South Island, lapped a rocky shore out the window. The wind off the strait tried to wrestle the wheel from Dr. Luckenbaugh. She chuckled. “Wellington is the world’s windiest city, eh?”
“Really? Did you know that, Charlie?” Alexa turned around. Charlie was slumped against the car seat, asleep.
They talked about their jobs. Alexa loved conversing with fellow professionals. From the evidence in the back seat, this one had a child. “You don’t mind the traveling?” Dr. Luckenbaugh asked.
“No. I like it.”
“Traveling gives me a break from my she-devil daughter. She’s four. But I miss her.”
Alexa noted the archaeologist wasn’t wearing a wedding band but knew that didn’t mean much. Charlie wasn’t wearing one either. She supposed she should ask something about the kid, but she didn’t know what. “Have you ever done work with the police?”
“Occasionally.” Dr. Luckenbaugh didn’t elaborate. “The kōiwi are being cared for by a representative of ngā hapū iwi.” She turned onto a steep road.
