“Lemme go!” screeched Doreen. She broke out of Floyd’s grasp and took another swing at her husband.
This time Lincoln ducked, which only made his wife madder. She got in one more swing before Lincoln and Floyd managed to get her arms secured.
“I hate to do this,' said Lincoln. “But you’re just not being reasonable today.”
He snapped the handcuffs on her wrists. She spat at him. He wiped his sleeve across his face, then patiently guided his wife into the backseat of the cruiser.
“Oh man,” said Floyd. “You know we’re gonna have to book her.”
“I know.” Lincoln sighed and slid in behind the wheel.
“You can’t divorce me, Lincoln Kelly!” said Doreen. “You promised to love and cherish!”
“I didn’t know about the bottle,” said Lincoln, and he turned the car around.
They drove at a leisurely speed toward town, Doreen cussing a purple streak the whole time. It was the drinking that did it; it seemed to pop the cork off her bottle of demons.
Two years ago, Lincoln had moved out of their house. He figured he’d given the marriage his best effort and ten years of his life. He wasn’t by nature a quitter, but the despair had finally gotten to him. That and the sense that, at forty-five, his life was racing by, joyless and unfruitful. He wished he could do right by Doreen, wished that he could recapture some of that old affection he’d felt for her early on in their marriage, when she’d been bright and sober, not bubbling over with anger as she was now. Sometimes he’d search his own heart for whatever trace of love might still linger, some small spark among the ashes, but there was nothing left. The ashes were cold. And he was tired.
He had tried to stand by her, but Doreen couldn’t even see clear to help herself. Every few months, when her rage boiled up, she’d spend the day drinking. Then she’d “borrow” someone’s car and go for one of her famous high-speed drives. People in town knew to stay off the roads when Doreen Kelly got behind the wheel.
Back at the Tranquility police station, Lincoln let Floyd do the booking and locking up. Through the two closed doors leading to the cell, he could hear Doreen yelling for a lawyer. He supposed he should call One for her, though no one in Tranquility wanted to take her on. Even down south as far as Bangor, she’d worn out her welcomes. He sat at his desk, flipping through the Rolodex, trolling for a lawyer’s name. Someone he hadn’t called in a while. Someone who didn’t mind being cussed out by a client.
It was all too much, too early in the morning. He shoved away the Rolodex and ran his hand through his hair. Doreen was still yelling in the back room. This would all be reported in that nosy Gazette, and then the Bangor and Portland papers would pick it up because the whole damn state of Maine thought it was funny and so very quaint. Tranquility police chief arrests own wife. Again.
He reached for the telephone and was dialing the number for Tom Wiley, attorney at law, when he heard a knock at his door. Glancing up, he saw Claire Effiot walk into his office, and he hung up.
“Hey, Claire,” he said. “Got your safety sticker yet?”
“I’m still working on it. But I’m not here about my car. I want to show you something.” She set a dirty bone down on his desk.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a femur, Lincoln.”
“What?”
“A thigh bone. I think it’s human.”
He stared at the dirt-encrusted bone. One end was splintered off, and the shaft showed the gnawings of animal teeth. “Where did you find this?”
“Rachel Sorkin’s place.”
“How did Rachel get it?”
“Elwyn Clyde’s dogs dragged it into her yard. She doesn’t know where it came from. I was over there this morning, after Elwyn shot himself in the foot.”
“Again?” He rolled his eyes and they both laughed. If every village had an idiot, then Tranquility’s would be Elwyn.
“He’s okay,” she said. “But I guess a gunshot wound should be reported.”
“Consider it done. I already have a folder for Elwyn and his gunshot wounds.” He gestured to a chair. “Now tell me about this bone. Are you sure it’s human?”
She sat down. Though they were looking directly at each other, he felt a barrier of reserve between them that was almost physical. He had sensed it the first time they’d met, soon after she’d moved to town, when she had attended to a prisoner suffering from abdominal pain in Tranquility’s three-cell jail. Lincoln had been curious about her from the start. Where was her husband? Why was she alone raising her son? But he had not felt comfortable asking her personal questions, and she did not seem to invite such intrusion. Pleasant but intensely private, she seemed reluctant to let anyone get too close to her, which was a shame. She was a pretty woman, short but sturdy, with luminous dark eyes and a mass of curly brown hair just starting to show the first strands of silver.
She leaned forward, her hands resting on his desk. “I’m not an expert or anything,” she said, “but I don’t know what other animal this bone could come from. Judging by the size, it looks like a child’s.”
“Did you see any other bones around?”
“Rachel and I searched the yard, but we didn’t find any. The dogs could’ve picked this up anywhere in the woods. You’ll have to search the whole area.”
“Could be from an old Indian burial.”
“Possibly. But doesn’t it still have to go to the medical examiner?” Suddenly she turned, her head cocked. “What’s all that commotion?”
Lincoln flushed. Doreen was shouting in her cell again, letting fly a fresh torrent of abuse. “Damn you, Lincoln! You jerk! You liar! Damn you to hell!”
“It sounds like somebody doesn’t like you very much,” said Claire.
He sighed and pressed his hand to his forehead. “My wife.”
Claire’s gaze softened to a look of sympathy. It was apparent she knew about his problems. Everyone in town did.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Hey, loser!” Doreen yelled. “You got no right to treat me like this!”
With deliberate effort, he redirected his attention to the thigh bone. “How old was the victim, do you think?”
She picked up the femur and turned it over in her hands. For a moment she held it with quiet reverence, fully aware that this broken length of bone had once supported a laughing, running child. “Young;’ she murmured. “I would guess under ten years old.” She lay it on the desk and stared down in silence.
“We haven’t had any missing children reported recently;’ he said. “The area’s been settled for hundreds of years, and old bones are always turning up. A century ago, it wasn’t all that unusual to die young.”
She was frowning. “I don’t think this child died from natural causes,” she said softly.
“Why do you say that?”
She reached over to turn on his desk lamp, and held the bone close to the light.
“There,” she said. “It’s so crusted over, you can barely see it through the dirt.”
He reached in his pocket for his glasses-another reminder of the years’ passage, of his youth slipping away. Bending closer, he tried to see what she was pointing at. Only when she’d scraped away a clot of dirt with her fingernail did he see the wedge-shaped gash.
It was the mark of a hatchet.
2
When Warren Emerson finally regained consciousness, he found he was lying next to the woodpile and the sun was shining in his eyes. His last memory was of shade, of silvery frost on the grass and bulging pockets of soil, heaved up from the cold. He’d been splitting firewood, swinging the ax and enjoying the sharp ring it made in the crisp air. The sun had not yet cleared the pine tree in his front yard.
