Dead To Life (Sara Mason Mysteries Book 3)

Book summary

"Dead To Life" unfolds as Sara Mason and Huxley Keane unravel a mystery entwined with love and loss. Armed with a war-torn key, they search for Emma Ellis, whose secrets threaten their lives, revealing shocking truths that challenge their perceptions of sacrifice and devotion.

Excerpt from Dead To Life (Sara Mason Mysteries Book 3)

Death threats and attempts on her life were not something Sara Mason anticipated when charging into her new career of solving cold cases. Two of her past cases made her wary. She needed to be. The cases involved violent serial killers who set their sights on her when they suspected she was on to them.

The deadbolts were locked on the entry doors of her home. The noise from outside was a caution. Someone had driven down off the levee and onto her gravel driveway, but she heard nothing more. Silence had become one of the best warning signals she knew.

Must be someone using my driveway to turn around.

The Sacramento River Delta levee roads, two narrow lanes and sometimes just one, left no room for turning to reverse directions. In many places, there were no soft shoulders. The asphalt was laid to the levee edges to widen the lanes. It was fairly common for a driver to pull into a random driveway. Deltans knew and understood why, but by now, she should have heard gravel crunch as the driver returned to the levee.

One of the past cases involving murder victims’ remains found on and near her property in Courtland, California made Sara alert to many things people took for granted. She was instrumental in capturing the Delta serial killer, almost at the cost of her life as she acted as the Sheriff’s decoy.

She had returned to her childhood hometown to fulfill a lifelong dream of owning a Victorian home along the Sacramento River. When she learned of the serial killer, and that he had his sights set on her, it forced her into a whole new awareness for safety. Serial killer profilers had difficulty pin-pointing a Modus-operandi. He didn’t stick to one type of person to victimize. Not tall slender blue-eyed blondes like her. Not model-type dark-eyed brunettes like her cherished friend, Daphine Whelan. Not prostitutes, nor young or old women. His victims included men too.

Not until after his capture, did they learn that this psychopath victimized anyone he thought had wronged him, including his parents, as was later learned. Sara had resisted his advances when they first casually met and that ticked him off. That case is what drew Sara and Huxley Keane into an all-encompassing love for one another. After becoming involved in solving cold cases created by this killer, Sara and Huxley joined forces to search for missing persons.

During three Spring seasons, Sara accompanied Huxley and a team of Veterans on an MIA search in the Vietnam jungle. His brother, Rocky, was among the missing, as was Betty, the daughter of their mutual friend, Esmerelda Talbot. Much younger and stronger, Huxley was both motivation and a morale booster for the older veterans. During the last trip when Sara went along, a couple of years earlier, more meager remains were found. Huxley had returned to the States to get them identified.

Before returning to the states, Sara stopped for a rest on Kauai where she nearly fell into the purchase of a second home. There she became involved in a new cold case of a missing six-year-old girl. Twice there, she narrowly lost her life to the killer. The one person no one suspected. Those experiences proved that killers can be close by. It was a hard lesson about taking proper precautions and about keenly protecting herself.

I hope I never again come that close to dying.

She listened for other sounds in the driveway. The silence sent a warning stream of adrenaline through her system.

More recently, while Huxley was in Oregon spending time with his family, she had worked a couple of missing teenager cases in the Sacramento suburbs. Those cases hadn’t been threatening in any way. She wondered why teens ran away so much in these modern times. The teenagers were returned home. The emotional reward helped restore Sara’s desire to get involved in a new search. Huxley suggested one. This new case involved finding a person close to family.

Sara listened, keen to every tiny noise. No other sounds came from the driveway. Past experiences stayed fresh in her mind and drove home the value of life.

The windows in her monstrous house were locked with some simply made not to open. She also had a state-of-the-art alarm system installed back when she was being stalked. She was glad no stranger could easily get inside the house.

She was upstairs in Daphine’s art studio in the spacious attic of her refurbished old Victorian. She had been cleaning up after installing a dedicated heating and cooling system for Daphine’s comfort. It was a busy morning, but she had lots she could accomplish on the property before this day was over.

At night, she stayed indoors most of the time unless with friends. Night-time was when activity ceased at her property and provided uninterrupted time to create her DVD games for children, which continued to produce copious amounts of income.

The rural levee roads along the Sacramento River were not lit with streetlights the way major streets were illuminated in most small local towns. The closest neighbor was nearly half a mile away. Daphine and her art gallery activities taking place at the house helped Sara feel secure. After the big Victorian was refurbished and livable, Sara installed a spa and a 20x60 foot swimming pool which was used by local community groups teaching children to swim.

Sara patiently listened for other sounds but heard only passing traffic on the levee in front of her home. Ranchers and crop hauling trucks made use of every passable farm road. During summer and fall, the river levees were normally glutted with trucks and vehicles hauling freshly picked produce and fruit. Pleasure-seekers towed boats to and from launching ramps. Pockets of diesel fumes hung in the air everywhere. Asphalt pavements melted and sizzled and sent up dancing waves of heat. Crop picking and harvesting was now well underway and would proceed into October. It was a scorching July that sometimes made it difficult breathing.

Unfamiliar faces were everywhere, either working the crops or enjoying water sports on the river. The interior Delta farmlands from Sacramento in the north to southern California were crawling with migrant workers. Still others preferred not to work but to wreak havoc in people’s lives. Their criminal activities took advantage of the influx of newcomers to hide among and victimize. The crime rate rose dramatically during the summer months.

Sara listened. The person using her driveway hadn’t left.

Better sneak a look… hope that’s not another prowler casing my place… and in broad daylight too.

Out in the driveway, a car door slammed suddenly. The hair on the nape of her neck stood up. Sara eased down the stairs, bypassing the second floor, and quietly waited at the landing above the next staircase. It would lead down into the dining room just off the kitchen.

Someone opened the screen door off the back porch and fumbled with the door lock. Sara’s heart raced. She didn’t need to deal with yet another prowler. Did she have time to run to her bedroom and get her gun? Her bedroom was right over the kitchen. Someone breaking into the porch then entering the kitchen might hear her above them.

The screen door flapped shut as the porch door opened. She heard nothing more. Who had made entry? Tripp Unwin, the serial killer who left bodies throughout Sacramento and the Delta, including her property, was the only person she knew who could pick a lock that easily. Surely, he couldn’t be out of prison… or escaped? Having admitted to over thirty murders, he should have received the sentence of lethal injection, but California had long ago stopped the death penalty.

She touched the cell phone hanging on her waistband. She would go back into the attic and bolt the door and call 911. She heard only silence. Just as she turned to climb back up into the attic, the door between the porch and kitchen opened.

“Sara! Sara! Where are you?”

She expelled a forceful breath and nearly collapsed from relief. He must have paused on the back porch to check the alarm system in case he needed to disarm it before it sounded. She had left the alarm system off this morning since the contractor needed to come in and out. She quickly descended the staircase and met him at the bottom.

“Hux! You told me you’d be here tomorrow.”

“Got away early.” His smile beamed. His blue-topaz eyes held their constant sparkle. How could he look so fresh after the flight from his home in Oregon? His dark hair was mussed. He preferred fresh air, regardless of the heat, and always drove with the windows down.

Huxley could wear everyday clothes and still look like a model. His checkered teal and orange flannel shirt over a teal T-shirt fit in with the local faded vibe. So did his light brown Urban Shepherd boots and denim jeans rolled at the ankles. Then how he could re-invent himself with a suit and tie was amazing. A man for all seasons. Just a tall, broad-shouldered, better than average looking guy, with eyes that made her melt.

She finally calmed. “You’re not driving your truck.” He looked at her curiously and waited for her explanation. “I always recognize the sound of your pickup, the door slam, too, but something’s different.”

He dropped a 12x12x8 inch sealed cardboard box with airlines carry-on tags onto the little breakfast table that stood in the middle of the kitchen. He shed the flannel shirt and hung it on the back of a chair, then smiled and nodded as if pleased she noticed. Noticing such small details was critical in the cold case searches that they investigated.

“Had a blow out. My cell is dead. Left my truck in Elk Grove and got a loaner.” He thumbed toward the outside.

“Elk Grove? That’s a short drive up the road. You could have borrowed a phone. I’d have picked you up.”

He feigned disappointment at the scolding as they stood beside the table. “Sorry… wanted to surprise you.”

“Ha! You did!”

They stood smiling at each other. Then they rushed into a tight embrace. Sara raised up on tiptoes as the six-foot Huxley took her into his strong arms. He was muscular and Sara always felt safe when he wrapped her in his arms. They kissed lovingly.

“Missed you. Couldn’t get here fast enough.” He breathed deeply.

Sara always put on a spritz of her favorite Balahe perfume every morning, no matter what. Huxley reveled in the scent of it. Somehow a tantalizing scent seemed to seal their wants during hugs.

The tire problem was unexpected, but for Huxley to allow his cell phone power to run down was unheard of. Usually, he was astute about everything. Yet, recent developments, or lack thereof, in the search for his MIA brother’s remains was pulling his thoughts in too many directions.

Sara pointed at the box. “The letters… from your mom?”

“Many letters.” He sighed and sank into a chair. “And some photos.”

“You open. I’ll make coffee.”

“Not on your life.” He took his hands away from the box. “Make the coffee. We’ll open together.”

She pulled a coffee can out of the cabinet. Huxley was tough about a lot of things, but the thought of reading old letters from his long-missing brother left him feeling helpless. He needed her at his side. She loved him. She would be there for him, wherever this current search took them, no matter what they might find.

The coffee made and hot mugs sitting on the table, Sara produced a knife to open the package. Huxley slit the strapping tape on the box and laid the knife aside. He didn’t open the flaps right away. He sat with his hands clasped flat together and pressed them against his lips. Information in this box would provide some of the most defining clues leading to verifying the key found in the Vietnam jungle. He believed the key belonged to his brother, Rocky.

Sara had not accompanied him and the veterans on their most recent trek through the jungle. Huxley’s purpose for that trip was to receive the key. Then he had been taken to a suspected remains area the team had not known about till that time.

The key and letters were much discussed by Huxley and his family, as Huxley previously related to Sara. Rocky’s fiancée, Emma Ellis, had given him the key to the apartment she shared with her sister, Evelyn. In case he should return to San Francisco unexpectedly, he would have a place to stay.

For years, Huxley and a search party of veterans had scoured an overgrown trail and peripheral areas for remains of the Navy nurses. They were forced by the Viet Cong to hike through the jungle. The group was kidnapped outside the NSA Hospital in Da Nang in 1972. Rocky, one of the nurses, was reported missing in August.

Sara and their mutual friend, Esmerelda Talbot, had been allowed to join Huxley and the veterans on several of the searches. During Sara and Esmerelda’s last trip, the remains of Esmerelda’s Navy nurse daughter, Betty, had been located and returned to her.

This, especially, deepened Huxley’s desperate longing to find his brother. His strain and disappointment lurked under the surface of the facade of motivation. He had been the one to present Esmerelda with her daughter’s remains. It wasn’t only because they were close friends. It was because Huxley needed the feeling of completion, the experience of being rewarded for years of trekking through that desolate poisoned jungle. If he couldn’t present his parents with his brother’s remains, presenting Esmerelda with her daughter’s remains helped him feel the release that came with knowing her search was over.

Then Huxley learned of a young Hmong boy in a jungle village. He wore a key on a string around his neck. His aging uncle gave it to him and told him that someone may come looking for the key. He was to give it to them because it belonged to them.

Huxley’s veteran search team was invited to join JPAC out of Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. Instead of following the former trails the veteran’s team searched, a separate JPAC group would scour that area again. Another JPAC group, including Huxley and several of the veterans, broke away and went directly north to the area where the key was found. There they searched for additional remains.

They learned that the young Hmong boy’s uncle who found the key had long since passed away. He had, however, taken the boy to the spot where the key was found. The boy, now a grown man still wearing the key, then led the team to an overgrown spot far north along the disappearing trail. Forest detritus nearly hid the pathway, but the narrow footpath was being used again by the local Montenyards, the Hmong people of the jungle. Some were daring to return to their jungle homes even though, after nearly fifty years, the ground was still contaminated with Agent Orange.

As with the previous searches, former Honolulu policeman turned forensic dog trainer, Thanh Van Thuy and his two German shepherds, Iwi and Laka, accompanied the search party. The search was made over a wide area away from the path because of the location of the key off the trail. Rocky may have made a run for it. Maybe he hadn’t, but they needed to assure no remains were missed.

Huxley unclasped his hands, looked up suddenly, and found Sara eying him lovingly. “I’m alright.” Yet, his expression was distressed. “Was just remembering what it was like being in the area where Rocky may have died. Trying to feel what may have happened to him.”

Sara took his hands in hers. “Like Esmerelda digging in the dirt, trying to find more of those gold chain links, or the other half of the dog tag.”

“And not knowing till later that she was sitting on the very spot where her daughter died. Those few bits we found were her daughter’s only remains.” Huxley seemed to cave in momentarily. Finding remains and identifying them seemed the only event that could test his emotions. He straightened in his chair. “Maybe I walked on the same spot on this earth where my brother met his end.” He shook his head as if denial might make Rocky’s death untrue. Huxley’s blue-topaz eyes held a distant look.

Sara waited, knowing she needed to allow him to talk, to voice his feelings and frustrations. “Is there a chance they could find more?”

“If this key matched, if it belonged to Rocky, I’d like to go back to the spot where he died, just sit there a while. And… maybe I could do something for those Hmong people who protected this key all those years.”

Sara hurt for him. “We have to verify the key first.” She knew it was a long shot. So did Huxley. Rocky was listed as an MIA in 1972. Tracing Emma Ellis over the decades seemed futile.

Huxley motioned to the box. “You ready for this?”

She nodded, sat, and drew her chair alongside him. As she got to know him, when he felt uncertain, she noticed he liked to feel her close to him. Now she moved her leg to touch his and left it there. She slipped out of a shoe and placed her bare foot on top of his shoe. She loved Huxley with all her heart and had cried with him over his missing brother. His elderly parents needed to know their son’s whereabouts or receive something of his remains before they, too, passed away.

Huxley reached for his wallet and removed the old silver key. He ran a thumb over it and finally laid it on the tabletop. The groove the bullet made told a harrowing story of its own.

The key was a Yale 1960s apartment key with a manufactured hole in the round head. It also contained what was judged to be the markings of a bullet that had hit the key and ricocheted. It could mean that Rocky had been shot and the bullet ricocheted off the key and possibly hit his heart or lungs.

According to Palmer Dane, a Marine accidently nabbed with the Navy nurses and who later escaped, the Viet Cong used AK-47s, 7.62x39mm, which were made in Russia. Since the key was found in the ground a few feet off the trail, Rocky may have run but was shot while escaping. Whether shot from close range or running, Rocky never knew what hit him. Unless his killer faced him or stood nearby, he may have seen it coming. If the bullet ricocheted as was thought, Rocky didn’t have a chance.

Huxley was only eight years old when Rocky went into the Navy in 1970, ten years old when Rocky went missing in 1972. Once grown and committed to the searches, Huxley had a lot to learn.

“JPAC hasn’t sent word of any new findings so far, but they’re still out on this year’s trip. I hope they don’t make this their last trip for our group.” He took a breath and expelled it in frustration. “Emma may be our only chance to verify this key belonged to Rocky.” His gaze became pensive again. “If we find the match, then we can assume my brother died in that forlorn jungle, even if they don’t find dog tags or bone fragments in that acidic soil.”

He had run ads in the San Francisco newspapers, continued to scour the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and numerous other sites to find Emma or her sister, Evelyn, but to no avail. Despite his numerous government agency connections, he remained a civilian and not allowed to secure information about their Social Security accounts. Whether or not they were presently being used, and where, could have the potential to tremendously shorten their search efforts.

“What if we find Emma and she kept her key, but the keys don’t match?”

“Then Rocky’s still an MIA or worse.” Huxley slowly shook his head. “He could to this day be held in an undisclosed prison camp or died there. It’s been forty-seven years. He’d be seventy years old now. If he was held in a prison camp, he could have died from malnutrition or disease.” Huxley grimaced, surely not wanting to believe any of it. He reached for the key but stopped himself. “This key may be all we have left of my brother. Emma is our only hope.”

“Even though she may have moved on with her life.”

“Wait till we read the letters.” Huxley finally opened the flaps of the box. “Mom and I read most of them together when I was in my late teens. I guess I asked her too many times about Rocky, so she filled me in. That’s when I decided I’d search for him. We need to glean as much new information from this mail as we can. The way Emma spoke of Rocky; he was her one and only. I’m praying that no matter where life took her, she kept a matching key.”