The Bone House

Gary sat down near the driver and glanced back down the dark aisle of the bus and saw Amy watching him. Something in her expression obviously made him uncomfortable. Normally, she had warm blue eyes and an easy, infectious laugh, but not now. He looked as if he were about to come toward her again, with a question on his lips. Instead, he turned away and sank into his seat.

'What is it?'

Amy glanced at her roommate, who had awakened and was staring at her. It's nothing, Amy told herself.

But she didn't think it was nothing.

'I saw Gary talking to the girl who was killed,' she murmured.

'Gary? Are you sure? When?'

'Last night. Late, around eleven o'clock. I saw them on the terrace of the hotel. At first, I thought it was one of the Green Bay girls, but then I realized it wasn't.'

'Did you hear what they were talking about?'

'No, but Glory looked upset.' Amy shook her head. 'If it was really her. I just don't know.'

'All the coaches talk to the girls from different schools,' Katie reminded her.

'But this is Gary.'

'I know you don't like him, but that doesn't mean anything. I profiled him in the paper last year. He didn't seem like such a bad guy.'

'What about the thing with his wife?' Amy asked.

'Wasn't that an accident?'

'There were rumors.'

'I think you're getting paranoid.'

'There's more,' Amy said. 'There's something else.'

'What?'

Amy could see the back of Gary's head. A reading light bounced off the pate of his skull. It was almost as if he could feel her stare, because he looked up into the driver's mirror. She saw his pupils glow the way a cat's eyes shine at night, and she felt a shiver of fear as their eyes met. He reached up and turned off the light above him.

'My room was next to his,' Amy said.

'Yeah, so?'

'I couldn't sleep last night. I was awake sometime after three in the morning, and I heard footsteps in the hallway. I didn't look out, but I heard Gary's door. He was going back into his room in the middle of the night.'

Chapter Eight

Cab sipped a Starbucks iced latte through a straw and watched Tresa Fischer and Troy Geier behind the window of the interview room. It was late afternoon on Sunday, and the police headquarters building on Riverside was uncomfortably warm, the way it usually was. The counselor who had been with the two teenagers for most of the day had departed ten minutes earlier, leaving them alone. Cab had received word that Delia Fischer, Glory's mother, had landed at the Fort Myers airport, and he wanted a chance to sit down with Tresa and Troy individually before Delia arrived. He knew that once the victim's mother was in the building, the two kids would be more guarded with their answers.

He took his coffee into the interview room, where Tresa and Troy waited in silence, ignoring each other. Tresa sat at the interview table and drank a can of Diet Sprite. Troy, who was a fleshy sixteen year old, drank root beer and leaned against the wall. To Cab, the silence between them felt hostile. They weren't friends.

'Your mom's on her way,' Cab informed Tresa. 'She'll be here in an hour or so.'

Tresa didn't look happy with the news. Cab guessed that the girl would bear the brunt of guilt and blame when Delia arrived. As the older sister, she'd failed. I trusted Glory with you, and now she's dead.

'Troy, I'm going to ask you to wait outside,' Cab told the boy. 'Hang around, though, because I need to talk to you, too. Ask one of the officers to fix you up with some chips or a sandwich if you're hungry.'

Troy grunted and pushed himself off the wall. He put down his empty bottle of root beer and left the room without a word. Tresa's eyes followed him, and Cab thought his first impression about the two of them was correct. Tresa didn't like her sister's boyfriend.

Cab sat down at the interview table opposite Tresa and gave the girl a reassuring smile. At nineteen, Tresa still had a naive way about her that made her look younger than she was. She was extremely skinny for her height, which made Cab wonder if she had an eating disorder. She played with her straight red hair between her fingers and stared vacantly at the wooden table. Her pretty blue eyes were rimmed in red, and her face was marked with streaks of tears. Talking with her earlier, Cab had found her to be painfully shy, a loner without a support network of friends. He'd offered to ask some of the other dancers from River Falls to stay behind with her, but Tresa hadn't given him a single name of someone who was close to her. It was also obvious in her answers about her family that her sister Glory got most of the attention from their mother. Tresa, who was clearly artistic and smart, had been left to live in her own world.

'I know it's been a long day,' he told her. 'I appreciate you being patient with us. It probably seems like we cover the same stuff over and over, and you know what? We do. But that's usually how we find the details that help us figure out what really happened.'

'Do you have any idea who did this to Glory?' Tresa asked. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper.

'I wish I could say yes, but we don't, not yet,' Cab admitted. 'I'd like to make sure that we haven't missed anything important. OK?'

Tresa nodded without enthusiasm. 'OK.'

'You came down on a university bus from River Falls with the rest of your team last Monday and Tuesday, is that right? And Troy and Glory drove down from Door County on Tuesday and Wednesday?'

'Yes, they took turns and drove straight through,' Tresa answered. 'They got here around ten o'clock Wednesday morning.'

'Did anyone else from Door County come down at the same time?'

'No.'

'Did Glory and Troy bunk with you in your room?'

'Uh huh.' She added quickly, as if her mother were already listening, 'Glory and I shared the bed, and Troy took the couch.'

Cab noticed the girl fidgeting. She was hiding things, and she wasn't good at it. 'Tresa, I need to know who your sister was, even if there's stuff that wasn't so good. Understand?'

Her eyes narrowed. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean, teenagers do things that their parents don't always know about. I don't care about that. I just need to know if Glory was involved in anything that might have gotten her into trouble. See?' 'Yeah, I get it.'

'So it doesn't matter to me who slept in what bed, but I would like to know if Glory and Troy were having sex while they were here.'

Tresa hesitated. 'What difference does that make?'

'Maybe none at all,' Cab admitted, 'but I need to get the whole picture.'

'OK, yes.'

'You know that for a fact?'

'Yeah, I came back from practice once, and they were in bed together.' Her tone was pinched and unhappy.

'You sound like you didn't approve,' Cab said.

'It wasn't any of my business.'