Bone Secrets 03 - Buried

shit.”
    Mason smiled, showing all his teeth. “I’m all cop. Now pretend I’m your best friend and tell me everything you know about Hinkes.”
    Fielding shifted on the metal stool, his black brows coming together. “Fucker fell off the face of the earth. He went to Shutter Creek for his time.”
    “In Eastern Oregon?” Mason had never been to the medium-security prison.
    “Yeah. I’d get a letter now and then. Then mine started coming back to me. I tried to find out if he’d been released or transferred. He was only supposed to be in for nine months, I think.”
    “That’s it? Accessory to murder and he got nine months?”
    “Naw, it was for breaking probation and something else. I don’t remember. I’ve searched for him online but can’t figure out where he went.”
    “Online?” These guys get Internet access? “I bet you were looking at dating sites, right?”
    Fielding didn’t even blink. He kept rambling, his eyes focused on a spot on the table as he thought about Hinkes. “He’s probably dead somewhere or locked up somewhere else. He couldn’t keep his hands to himself.”
    “What does that mean?”
    Now Fielding looked up. And grinned. “He liked it. He liked getting it from anyone. The rougher, the better. A lotta pain involved, all the better. Men, women, didn’t matter.”
    Mason froze. Every neuron in his brain firing at once.
Bingo.
    “Where is Hinkes?”
This is our guy.
    “I just told you that I don’t know. I’ve looked. Nothing else to do in here. I figure he served his sentence and got out. Who knows what the fuck he’s up to, but asses like that don’t change. It’s in his blood. I’ve never seen anyone who likes the pain along with the sex so much.”
    “Fucking pervert.”
    Fielding just nodded. “Gary fit most pervert descriptions.”
    “What’d he look like?”
    “Gary? Oh, he was a freak. One of those white-skinned guys. You know, the genetic shit? Albinos? But he dyed his hair. Used the cheap crap…it always looked like shit. He wanted colored contacts but couldn’t afford them. Had some pretty amazing tattoo work done. Don’t know how he paid for that…I can guess, though. His back looked like a piece of oriental artwork. Fucking amazing.”
    Blood was pounding in Mason’s head. He strained to hear past the noise. “Did he have tattoos on his wrists?”
    “No, his upper arms were tattooed. Not his wrists. That could have changed. He had a serious addiction to tattooing.Loved them. I never understood. That shit fucking hurts.” Fielding pulled up his sleeve to show a small phoenix on his upper arm. “I did one. That was enough.”
    Mason stared at the small figure. “Why a phoenix?”
    Fielding looked away and pulled down the sleeve, rubbing at the fabric over the tattoo like he could wash it off. “Stands for new beginnings. Change.”
    Mason snorted. “Maybe someday, eh?”

    “How can he just vanish?” Mason asked. He was seriously frustrated. His best lead, the name from Lee Fielding, was hitting a stone wall. After his prison interview, Mason had called Ray, pointed him in the direction of searching for Gary Hinkes, and sped back to the office, hoping Ray would have fantastic news by the time he’d arrived.
    Ray shook his head. “It’s crazy. I went to records to pull the file. Everything is still on paper from back then. The whole file on Hinkes is missing. The only info I can get is from Fielding’s file. And I swear, there’s shit missing from there.”
    “There’s no record of Hinkes’s arrest and sentencing?” Mason didn’t like this one bit.
    “There is. I can find that he was arrested. I can find that he was sent to Shutter Creek. But that is it. Everything else is flat gone.”
    “What about previous arrests? Fielding said he’d broken probation, so there has to be something previous.”
    “Nothing.”
    “What? How can that be?” Mason tapped his desk with a pencil and then spun it in his fingers, mind churning. Noting theslightly blunted tip, he thrust the pencil into the electric sharpener and let the noise clear his brain. He added the pencil to the other perfectly sharpened dozen pencils in a mug on his desk.
    “What about pictures? There’s got to be at least one photo of the guy somewhere. One we can show to Jamie Jacobs.”
    “Nothing,” Ray stated again. The cuffs of his white dress shirt had been sloppily rolled up to his elbows, and the lines between his brows hadn’t left his face since Mason had