Bone by Bone

'You mean this?' She slapped a copy of a recent e-mail on his desk. It bore the letterhead of a high-ranking politician, who instructed her to step away from the double homicide. She damned the luck that made this an election year for the office of State Attorney General. The top dog of the Justice Department had based his campaign on strong local authority.

Power to the people, my ass.

'I won't ask how you pulled that off,' she said. 'I don't think you did. Now who's behind it?'

'Your own outfit, the California Bureau of Investigation. They made the final call on jurisdiction.'

'The grave is on state land.'

'Not anymore. Evelyn Straub just granted a petition of relief on that hundred-year lease. I guess she felt bad about ripping off the taxpayers. Those mineral rights weren't worth a nickel when she sold them to the state.

'No,' said Sally 'I don't think that's quite it. Years would go by before that petition worked its way through ten layers of bureaucrats. So I'm guessing Mrs. Straub just filed an intention to quit the lease. Good try, though.'

She dragged a chair to the other side of the desk and sat down next to Cable Babitt. 'Well, now,' she said in the friendly tone of sharing gossip over a wash line, 'I heard you made some headway on identifying that dead tourist, the woman who died with the Hobbs boy. That's the rumor at the CBI down in Sacramento. Is that what you told them? And some solid citizen gave the Justice Department the funny idea that I might be hampering the investigation. Oh, you know-covering the same ground twice, getting in the way and such.'

'Nothing personal, Sally, but there might be some truth to that. If you like, I'll get back to you when we have a name for that poor lady tourist.'

'I already identified her.'

Well, that wiped the smile off his face. The man shook his head in disbelief.

'It's true,' she said, as if he had been unable to find the words to accuse her of lying. 'I got the woman's name and address from a missing-person report on file with the SFPD. Took me an hour.'

'No, I ran all of those reports,' said the sheriff. 'I checked them myself.'

'I'm sure you did.' She knew he was lying, but tact forbade laughing out loud. It was certain that this man had never bothered with anything beyond a cursory search. 'I guess that poor woman didn't have any friends. It took a long time for someone to notice that she was missing.'

Sally pulled the missing-person report from her purse and laid it on the desk in front of him. 'It's dated three and a half months after Josh Hobbs disappeared.' She gave the incompetent bastard her warmest smile. 'Our lady tourist didn't have a day job. New in town, they tell me. And she'd never spoken to the neighbors. They say she only talked to the plants on her balcony. She liked plants a lot. People-not so much. So it took the landlord a few overdue rent checks before he reported her missing. And he only did that so he could legally sell her stuff to cover what she owed him. I backtracked the rental application to her last address and found her dentist. His X rays matched up with our victim.'

'My victim,' said Cable Babitt. 'But thanks for all your help, Sally.'

'Oh, I'm not done.' Her neighborly grin spread wide. 'I plan to go on helping you.'

'This is my case.' He used a tone more properly reserved for a child's sandbox brawl. 'The State Attorney General said so.' And this was a variation of I'm telling Mom.

'But you can't complain, can you, Sheriff? You don't even know the area code for the Attorney General's phone number.'

The small lounge in the Straub Hotel was best described as a toy bar, only room for three stools, and two of them were occupied this morning. The waitress, who doubled as bartender, was busy with guests in the dining area.

Dave Hardy sipped his beer from a coffee cup. Oren drank actual coffee as he gathered slow details of the days before his brother disappeared. His drinking companion was inadvertently accounting for his time.

'God, I hated that old bastard,' said Dave.

'I barely remember Millard Straub.' Oren kept his eyes on the mirror behind the small bar, lest the Widow Evelyn should wander into the conversation.

'Well, I had to look at his ugly face every day.'

'Right, I forgot.' Oren had forgotten nothing. 'You used to do chores here after school. So how did those two get along, him and his wife?'

'Mrs. Straub was the only one who ever liked Millard well enough to call him Honey. But she got past that. Then the two of them settled into pet names like Filthy Whore and Dickhead Bastard.' Dave lifted his beer. 'And those were their good days.'

'You think that old man might've wanted his wife dead?'

Dave's cup hovered in midair for a moment as he considered this. 'I'd say it was the other way around. He used to pay me extra to taste his food. I had to come by real early every morning to check his breakfast. And he wouldn't eat one bite of lunch till I got out of school.'

'He thought Mrs. Straub was trying to poison him?'

'I wouldn't have ratted her out if she had. But old Millard died of a heart attack. That's what I heard. I was long gone by the time he croaked. I couldn't wait to get out of this town.'

'But you came back.'

'Yeah, I got a letter from the sheriff. He wrote to tell me my mother was dying. That was eight years ago. I'm still waiting.'

Oren set his coffee cup down on the bar. 'I haven't seen your mother since the last time we were sent to the principal's office. Remember that?'

'After the fight in the gym. Yeah, Mom was in good form that night. Did you know she's got a tumor as big as a basketball?' He finished his beer. 'Maybe bigger-maybe she's just one big ol' walking, talking tumor. Bitch. But your dad and Hannah, they were aces. I still remember Hannah's cooking.'

'I don't think you had another meal at our house after that fight.' And now, back on point, Oren continued the pretense of catching up with an old classmate. 'You never did say why you slammed my brother into that gym locker.'

'Oh, hell. I didn't know the coach sent Josh in there to take pictures for the yearbook. I thought the kid was just being a creep. Sorry, man. No offense.'

Oren's hands tightened around his coffee cup. 'Before that night… did Josh ever follow you around? I know he did that sometimes-following people with his camera.'

Dave mulled over the question between slow sips of beer. 'No, I don't think so. But I noticed him watching me in the locker room when I was changing my clothes. I wondered if Josh was queer or something. I guess that's what creeped me out. So, that night when he took my picture- I just snapped.'

Oren's eyes were on the wide mirror behind the bar when Evelyn Straub walked into the lounge.

She seemed unhappy to see him sitting here with Dave Hardy. This had been a mistake. He should have run the deputy down in someone else's bar, for now she must realize that Hannah had given up Dave as the source of leaks from the County Sheriff 's Office. The housekeeper had thrown him this bone as a consolation prize. On the subject of missing photographs and dates, she had pleaded amnesia.

Evelyn Straub sat down on the third barstool. 'Hello, boys.'

The deputy lifted his beer in salute.

'Oren,' she said, 'give Hannah my regards.' The light note of sarcasm was an instruction to also convey that she was pissed off. 'Are you going to the birthday ball this year?'

'I never go,' said Oren.

'You went to the first one,' she said. 'Not your finest hour.'

'I remember that,' said Dave. 'Shit, we were still in elementary school that year.' With great goodwill inspired by beer before breakfast, he slapped Oren's back. 'I heard the Winston girl beat the crap out of you the other day.'

'I saw the whole thing,' said Evelyn, never taking her eyes off of Oren. 'Payback's a bitch.'

'Call me Sally.'

William Swahn could think of other things that he might call this woman, and some were vaguely criminal. The CBI agent and her goons had crossed a line today.

Sally Polk sipped her tea and nodded toward his untouched cup. 'Is that too hot?'

He could place her country-western accent in Bakersfield, a unique part of California where some migrant families had kept their transplant drawls from other states and passed them down through the generations. 'Am I under arrest?'

'No, dear. But thank you for coming in.'

'It was hard to refuse the state troopers. They took my cane when they opened the rear door of the car.'

'Oh, those boys.' With a light wave, she brushed off this bad behavior of children with guns. 'You're a guest. You're also the only criminologist for miles around. Do your friends call you Will or William?'

'The Highway Patrol doesn't need a criminologist. In this area, a speeding ticket might be the high point of a trooper's day.'

'I'm with a different agency.'

'The CBI. I know. And I also know the Coventry homicides were taken away from you.'

'Oh, my, doesn't news travel fast? I only found out myself an hour ago. |So I'm guessing you have some idea who pulled the strings to change jurisdiction. You and Oren have the same lawyer. Isn't that right? Was it Addison 's plan? Or does Judge Hobbs still have that kind of influence?'

Swahn pushed his teacup away. 'I can only repeat what my cleaning lady said. Most of her gossip is very reliable.'

Smiling sweetly, so motherly, the agent held up a color portrait of young Joshua Hobbs. The boy was posed against the ersatz blue-sky backdrop used by school photographers. 'He was a fine- looking boy, wasn't he? Maybe a bit on the delicate side. No interest in sports, I hear-not quite like the other boys.'

'The real boys? Your bias is showing, Agent Polk.'

'Call me Sally, just plain old gay-basher Sally.'

He almost smiled. He almost liked her. 'For a year after Josh Hobbs went missing, there were three teenage girls haunting the sheriff's office like widows. You still need a criminologist's point of view? Fine. The boy was rampantly heterosexual.'

'But you're not. You can't claim to be straight at this late date. If you did, you might have to give back all that lovely settlement money. The police down in Los Angeles might say it was paid out under false pretenses. As an agent of the Justice Department, I might have to look into that.'

'Apparently, the LAPD is holding to the terms of our nondisclosure agreement. Clearly, you've never been privy to any details. So you're blowing smoke. Is this your interrogation style? You just throw out a few lines of garbage and see what sticks?'

'I wonder which client Addison worries about the most-you or Oren Hobbs. I know the sheriff took a real hard look at you when Josh disappeared. Now why is that? You'd have to run naked in the streets to get Cable Babitt's attention. And then there's Ad Winston. If he's your attorney, I know you did something wrong.'

William leaned on his cane, preparing to rise. There was no acrimony in his voice when he said, 'You'll have to excuse me now.'

'So you don't want this case solved, either. That doesn't speak well for innocence.'