Bones

“Listen, before we end up in a fight over this—”

“I don’t blame you for getting angry. He’s trying to control you and manipulate you, trying to make you feel afraid. He wants to be in charge. Do I think you should whimper in a corner? No. But standing up for yourself is one thing, and issuing an out-and-out challenge to the guy is another.”

“I didn’t file the story.”

He sat back. “What?”

“Lydia gave you a copy of it, didn’t she?”

He admitted it.

“Well, I didn’t file the story. I have it on a floppy disk. I haven’t made up my mind about it, but I guess I’m leaning toward not filing it.” I held a hand up as he started to speak. “Don’t — please don’t say it’s the smart thing to do, because probably it’s also the cowardly thing to do.”

Wisely, he didn’t say more on the subject.

Gillian lived over a garage, in a small wooden one-bedroom apartment built during the housing shortage of the late 1940s. The garage was at the end of a long driveway and was detached from the large Craftsman house that occupied the front of the lot; the house had been converted into a duplex.

From the foot of the stairs we could hear her stereo; the Boomtown Rats singing “I Don’t Like Mondays.” An oldie. We climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. The stereo went off. Gillian greeted us wearing jeans and a bright yellow top; her hair was currently very short and black, her nails purple, but also much shorter than the last time I had seen her. Frank had briefly met Gillian once before, when she had inquired about a Jane Doe case he had been working on. She remembered him, though, and the specific case as well, although she must have asked about several dozen such cases over the past four years.

As they talked briefly about that investigation, I glanced around the interior of the apartment. It was oddly blank and austere for someone who dressed so colorfully; the walls were white and bare, the chairs and sofa were plain, and other than her stereo speakers and a potted palm, there were no other objects in the room. The stereo itself must have been in the bedroom. Nothing in this room to distract a guest from the host.

She politely asked us to have a seat, politely offered us something to drink, politely thanked me again for talking to her so soon after I had returned from the mountains. She said she was glad I hadn’t been too scared by the bones in the van and asked if I was back at work yet.

Beneath these good manners was a not-so-concealed level of disinterest in us that made me wonder how she prevented herself from yawning in our faces.

I asked how she had been doing. She had been doing fine.

I expressed surprise at learning of her father’s remarriage. She said she really didn’t know Susan, but her father could do whatever he pleased with his life.

“Jason doesn’t seem very happy.”

“You talked to Jason?” she asked, showing the first sign of real attention to anything I had said.

“Yes,” I said, “earlier in the week.”

She spread her hands before her, palms out, and studied her nails. She looked up from them and said, “I don’t have much to do with my dad or my brother now. I like it that way. They have their problems, I have mine.”

I excused myself to use her bathroom, which was as plain and unadorned as the rest of the place. When I came back out, I was surprised to hear her laughing. I realized that it was the first time I had ever heard the sound of her laughter. It was an uninhibited, childish giggle. She was holding a folded piece of paper in her hand, extending it back to Frank with a smile.

Frank glanced back at me with a look that had guilt written all over it. He took the paper back from her and handed it to me.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I let her read your article about Parrish.”

“Not at all,” I said, but Gillian’s smile had already faded.

We left not long after that. In the car, Frank said, “I’m sorry, I should have asked you first.”

“Are you kidding? You’re brilliant! I’ve never heard that kid laugh. I’m really glad you let her see what I wrote — maybe it helped relieve some of that burden she carries around — at least for a few minutes, anyway. She’s usually so serious and remote.”

“And here I thought the low-affect routine was just for me.”

“It wasn’t you,” I said. “She’s always like that around me, too. That’s why hearing her laugh was so great — usually, nothing seems to get through to her. Jason says she’s cold. I think it’s her way of coping with everything that’s happened. She just withdraws. And she’s had plenty to deal with lately — after all this time, her mother has been found, but it’s not exactly a happy ending.”

“I don’t underestimate what she’s been through, but” — he gave a mock shiver — “I’m with Jason.”

“I don’t think you can go much by this act she puts on.”

“I guess not. But you have to admit she’s a little weird.”

The whole family is strange, I thought. “You know, I’ve been thinking about Giles. I wonder if he was having an affair with his secretary before Julia was abducted. When Gillian first came to me, I focused all my attention on whether or not Julia was having an affair.”

“Most likely, Bob Thompson took a look at him. A wife disappears, we usually look to see if the husband wanted her gone.”

“Would it be hard to find out?”

“I think Reed Collins picked up the Sayre case — one they gave him after Bob died. He closed it out when the ID came in on her body. He probably has the file. They’re using it for the task force on Parrish, and it still has to be prosecuted, of course. Reed will let me take a look at it.”