Bone by Bone

Oren watched the streets crawl by his passenger window.

Before the library had become a town joke, Josh had often walked this same route with him, and they had made better time on foot. In Coventry, time and distance were not quantified or qualified in terms of as the crow flies, but by the saying If only snails had wings. Oren would rather have spent this evening reading Sarah Winston's cryptic journals in privacy, but he was on a mission to mollify the little woman behind the wheel.

The old Mercedes rolled past the church, and Hannah sighed. 'I miss the Reverend Pursey's sermons. You haven't forgotten that crazy old fool, have you?'

'I remember him.' Oren was not likely to forget Amos Pursey-ever. The minister had worn his Sunday robes seven days a week to fly around town, waving his arms and ranting about the end of days. 'He must be the black bat in Mrs. Winston's drawings.' Oren had been a month shy of seventeen when that old madman had accosted him on the street and proclaimed him to be an archangel appointed by God to smite the town-

It was a revelation that Hannah had heard any of the minister's sermons. 'You went to church?'

'I used to-now and then.'

'But why? You're an atheist. No-wait. You told me and Josh that God was an atheist.'

'No, I said a real smart god would be an atheist. Who needs the pressure of being perfect? I favor the kind of Creator who drinks beer now and then, someone you can talk to. Now the Reverend Pursey-crazy old bastard-he fancied a miracle worker with a hit-man angel.'

'Hannah, why does this place attract so many loonies?'

'Tolerance. It's Coventry 's finest quality. So, despite what Amos Pursey thought, no god would ever smite a town that sheltered that nutcase preacher.' Hannah brought the car to a stop in front of the library. 'My other theory is that we all take turns being the lunatic.'

'It's after hours,' said Oren. 'No lights in the windows.'

'She's there.' Hannah glanced at her wristwatch. 'Mavis is always there, day and night. Has been for years. Nobody knew about it for the longest time.'

Oren dared not speak the reason: Because no one in Coventry ever goes to the library. But Hannah hushed him anyway.

'Dave lives in his mother's house.' Hannah nodded at the library. 'And Mavis lives in there.'

'That's insane,' said Oren. 'Why didn't Dave do something?'

'He tried. He wanted to get her locked up in a state mental ward, where they drug people senseless and stack 'em up like cordwood. The judge stopped him. Your father doesn't believe in God, but he's got the concept of hell down pat. He thinks she's better off in the library, and so do I.' Hannah rolled up the right sleeve of her sweater, and then, with a wave of her hand, she said, 'Let there be light.'

And there was. The bulb over the door clicked on, and every window shade turned bright yellow.

The last time Hannah had done this trick, Josh was only six years old, and his eyes had popped. The little boy had been disappointed to learn that Mrs. Hardy was simply a creature of habit. With no regard for the seasonal position of the sun-or the moon-the library lights came on at the same time every evening.

How could he have forgotten that?

Hannah patted his hand. 'You'll be glad you came. Mavis knows all the best stories, and she knows birds.' The housekeeper picked up the small stack of journals and tucked them under one arm. 'She knows Sarah Winston, too. They go way back. You might learn something without getting shot by Isabelle.'

'You held out on me? You knew Mrs. Hardy went to school with-' He was talking to himself. Hannah was out of the car and moving up the flagstone walkway. The librarian opened the door wide to greet her. Oren had no memories of Mavis Hardy ever smiling this way. Even in her saner days, long before killing her husband, she had always been the saddest woman in town.

In the course of his travels from bar to bar, Dave Hardy drove his pickup truck past the library to check for lights, a sure indication that his mother was not yet dead. The judge's Mercedes was parked out front, not an unusual sight, but Hannah Rice wasn't the only visitor. The third silhouette on the window shade had to be Oren Hobbs.

Dave's hands tightened around the steering wheel as he sped up to a record of twenty miles per hour while still inside the town limits. Out on the coast highway, he drove at real-world speeds. He was on the way to an anonymous saloon on the outskirts of a distant town, a small biker bar, where no one was ever friendly enough or sober enough to ask his name. It was a place where he could hunker down and do some serious drinking- drink after drink after drink.

Tonight, the library did not smell. That was different.

All the windows had been opened prior to the visit. Mrs. Hardy had even washed her hair for this occasion, and it was still damp when the three of them sat down at the reader's table. They were twenty minutes into the visit, and the woman had yet to utter any profanity. She looked so tired. And Oren noted other signs that this semblance of sanity was wearing on her-the grinding teeth and rigid body.

The librarian handed a few sheets of paper to Hannah. 'I printed this up from that file you started the other day.' She turned to Oren. 'Hannah's been doing research on the Internet.'

'So I heard.' In these familiar surroundings, it was easier for him to remember Mrs. Hardy in pre-monsterhood days, stripped of bulk and muscle, a time when a thin, fragile woman had guided the Hobbs boys through their changing phases of westerns and science fiction, steering them into the better writers of each genre that took their fancy. Tonight, he recognized the effort she made only to smile at him and make simple small talk.

Hannah was absorbed in her computer printout. 'I just love hard science.' She folded the papers into the pocket of her dress and winked at Oren. 'It'll come in handy later on-when you tell me I'm wrong about how the witchboard works.'

'Poor Sarah.' Mrs. Hardy resumed her perusal of the birder logs. 'I've never seen these books before, but that's her handwriting.' And now she answered an earlier question of Oren's. 'We both went to UCLA. But I can't say I really knew her then. In my younger, skinnier days, I almost wasn't there. I swear I could walk between raindrops. A good-looking boy like you never would've noticed me-and neither would someone like Sarah.

We met at the university library. That was my work-study job when I was in school. Sarah wanted books on ornithology. Well, that was my hobby. I told her about some rare sightings in Coventry, birds that haven't been seen in fifty years. So she came to my dormitory for a look at my notes. It was like visiting royalty-the way people stared at that beautiful girl when she came in the door. That day we talked for hours and hours. I never spoke to her again, not on campus… My fault. I was shy. But Sarah always waved every time she saw me. I wasn't invisible anymore. At the end of that semester, I heard she got married and left school.'

'What about William Swahn? He went to UCLA.'

'I never met him, but I knew who he was. Always saw him walking around with Sarah and little Belle. He tended to stand out even on a campus the size of a city. He was thirteen, maybe fourteen years old, and he looked younger. Geeky little kid. Big feet, big brain.'

'Mrs. Winston was in her twenties then,' said Oren. 'Why would she hang out with a little boy?'

'I thought I just explained that. Sarah was very kind to freaks. Like him. Like me.' Mavis Hardy's voice held no rebuke. 'And years later, when that little boy was all grown up, I'm sure it was kindness on Sarah's part to have Addison represent him. That was a nasty business with those cops down in LA.'

Hannah was right. Mrs. Hardy knew all the best stories. It had taken Cable Babitt years to learn this much. 'So Mrs. Winston stayed in touch with Swahn after she left school? Maybe they exchanged letters?'

This gentle trap brought out no response. The woman only shook her head and shrugged to say she didn't know. Even with the evidence of the post office photographs, he could not be certain that she was lying.

'After I graduated, years went by before I ran into Sarah again.' The librarian looked down at the open journal in her hands. The drawings in this early one had a light and fanciful touch. 'I've got the hang of it now. She pointed to a sketch. 'That grouse hen must be me. It's a bird that puffs itself up when it's frightened.' She turned a few more pages. 'And this one seems to be frightened all the time-silly old thing.' With a half-smile, she gently closed the journal and opened another. Mrs. Hardy did not look up from the pages when she said, 'Here I am again-in the woods with my binoculars. And this pale yellow songbird must be Sarah. The clue is the fledgling redbird. Who could that be but little Belle? So Sarah told you about our field trips. I never told anyone.'

Field trips? Hannah's surprise was more obvious, and Oren signaled her to keep still. He waited for the librarian to fill the silence.

'Sarah used to visit Coventry years before Addison built the lodge. This area is birder heaven. She'd drive up on the weekends and stay at the Straub Hotel. I wasn't so much changed in those days, still skinny as a rail, and she recognized me on the street. I took her into the deep woods where the trails don't go and showed her some nests I'd found. She kept coming back all the time after that, longer visits. Sometimes she brought Belle along. Then Addison built her that log mansion.'

'And all you two ever talked about was birds?'

'Oren, what else would we have in common?' She spread her arms as an invitation for him to look at her life, to see her as she was in those days-and these days.

'You said that Swahn and Mrs. Winston were friends in college. I thought his name might've come up in conversation.'

The librarian shook her head. 'I think I was the first one to mention William Swahn. That was a long while ago, more than twenty-five years. I saw his name on a list in a newspaper article. I told Sarah that he was graduating from the police academy. That made her happy. She said it was always his big dream to become a policeman. A year later, William moved to Coventry, and he wasn't a policeman anymore. That's when Sarah told me he'd been wounded down in Los Angeles.'

'So she saw a lot of him after he moved here?'

'Well, he used to have dinner at the lodge once a week. That stopped after maybe five years. I never knew why. Around that same time, Sarah gave up our field trips in the woods. I lost interest in birds after that.' Mrs. Hardy shook her head as she looked down at a drawing of monsters. 'I guess Sarah stopped bird-watching, too. I don't see a single creature here that matches up to an actual species.'

Oren was hardly paying attention anymore. He was doing the math on Mrs. Winston's long-ago estrangements from Swahn and the librarian.

Mrs. Hardy flipped backward through the pages, then stopped and stabbed the heart of a drawing with one finger. 'Here,' she said. 'The dead lark seems to mark the beginning of the change in Sarah.'

When Dave Hardy entered Peck's Roadhouse, a cluster of patrons was gathered at one end of the bar and watching another repeat of the news. The volume was loud. One more time, he saw the film of Sally Polk and the reporters. This version was cut to make it look like a formal press conference-more like Polk's own idea instead of a media ambush.

The voice of a studio guest rode over the action on film, and this celebrity author profiled a child killer for the viewing audience. The bones of the female victim were never mentioned. Dave supposed a young boy made a more sensational story.

The camera cut to a photograph of Josh Hobbs as he was in life, that silly grin. The guest author was also smiling. 'As you can see,' he said to the anchorman, 'Joshua was delicate-almost pretty, if you get my meaning. I believe he attracted a predator who couldn't handle a boy with more muscle.'

The anchorman was professionally livid. 'So we can't rule out a pedophile who might be handicapped in some way.'

And the next shot was predictable, the old clip of Swahn, branded by innuendo and editing, limping past Highway Patrol cars in the Saulburg parking lot. Sally Polk's voice could be heard riding over the film, saying, '-a person of interest.' This was followed by the rerun of reporters in a frenzy as they surrounded the man, and Sally Polk's voice was once again clipped off to say, '-a person of interest.'