Bone by Bone

Apparently, her new party frock made quite an impression on him, though it was nothing stylish, just something grabbed off a rack in haste, and chosen only for its color. Maybe her bright green dress reminded him of some errand left undone, for now he was moving toward the door. She walked after him, taking her own sweet time, yet relentless in the click of high heels dogging him.

Can you hear me coming, Cable?

30

A suitcase lay open on the bed, and two more stood by the door. Isabelle slammed a bureau drawer and opened another. 'This is because of him, isn't it?' Her hands balled into fists as she turned to her mother. 'It always ends like this!'

The hired car would be here any moment-so little time left. Sarah Winston stood by the window, dividing attention between her child and the driveway below. 'Belle, you can't stay here and watch over me every minute. I want you to have a life of your own.'

Isabelle held a blouse in her hands, absently twisting it into a rope. She dropped it into the open suitcase. Eyes full of tears-finally-for these tantrums always ended with tears, she crossed the room, reaching out to her mother.

Sarah opened her arms to an embrace and kissed her daughter's hair. Turning her eyes to the window, she saw the approaching headlights of the limousine. 'The car is here. I'll tell the driver you're almost ready. You'll be back in London soon.'

Isabelle would not release her hold. 'Don't make me leave. Please, Mom. I won't fight with him anymore. I'll be good.'

Sarah held her daughter tightly. So little time-this moment only. Better to be stabbed with a knife, better that than to hear this old refrain from the first time she had sent Isabelle away-and the second time-and the tenth. Both mother and child knew all the words to this ritual parting and how it must end.

'I love you,' said Sarah. 'It's time for you to go.'

The caterer's staff had been sent away and told to return in the morning. The lodge was still dressed in its gala finery. The debris of a thousand guests, their glassware and dishes and even their rented chairs, remained. Only the ice sculptures had been removed, taken outside to melt on the grass.

Addison Winston stood before a glass wall in the tower room. No need for a telescope tonight. He watched the headlights turn into the driveway down on Paulson Lane. The twin beams vanished under the boughs of trees and reappeared at William Swahn's front door. Time was allowed for the man to limp into his house, more time for a slow elevator ride upstairs to the study. There a lamp was switched on in keeping with habits of the past few nights. Addison counted off the usual ten seconds, long enough for Swahn to fetch a pair of binoculars from a desk drawer. And now that distant light was extinguished. Sarah's devoted sentry preferred to keep watch on the tower from a darkened room.

Addison never heard the barefoot steps behind him; he heard the clink of ice cubes in Sarah's glass as she entered the circular room.

The lawyer's smile was in place.

Showtime.

He turned around to face his wife, who seemed startled to find him in her sanctuary at this time of night. 'So Belle is gone?'

'Yes.' She closed her robe and belted it in an act of modesty, as if they had never been married, never shared a bed. Sarah tilted her head to one side, regarding him as a stranger here in Birdland, this other country at the top of the house. She took a long draught of her whiskey glass, draining it as she sank down in a chair.

'I'm not surprised that Belle left in such a rush.' Addison uncapped a bottle he had discovered tucked behind the journals on the bookshelf. He leaned down to pour more whiskey into her glass. 'You'll need this. Someone we know has been digging behind the stable.' He picked up his wife's hand and kissed it. 'Belle found Josh's camera.' He stared down at his wife's shattered eyes, and he caressed her face with one hand. 'Don't worry. She put it back in the hole and covered it up again. What a good girl. She'd never have done that to protect me.'

Sarah shook her head, unable to make sense of this. And then she closed her eyes. She understood.

'That's right,' said Addison. 'Belle knows you're the one who buried that camera. I can only imagine what's going through her mind right now. Maybe she's thinking that I'm not the only monster in Birdland.'

William Swahn held the binoculars to his eyes and watched Addison feed more booze to his wife. This could be construed as the slow poisoning of an alcoholic, nothing as graphic as battering, but just as deadly. Sarah was clearly pained by something her husband was saying.

William did not underestimate the killing power of words.

The telephone rang, and he knew who the caller would be before he picked up the receiver. 'Hello, Belle… Are you crying?… Yes, I'm watching her now.'

By their poor connection, he realized that Isabelle was calling from a cell phone, and that would place her well outside the town. 'Where are you?… You're leaving?… What about the maid? Is she still in the house?'

The call ended in the middle of a word, and he guessed that Belle's cell phone had failed her in this corner of the world where wireless lines of communication were hit and miss.

He resumed his watch on the tower room. Though he disliked the idea of spying, a promise was a promise. He had never been able to say no to Isabelle.

Sarah was more pliant when she was drunk, and Addison almost preferred her this way. When he took her hand, she obediently rose from the chair. How he loved her-he loved her to death. He led her to the sliding door that opened onto the deck.

The night was warm and all the winged rats had gone to sleep-so quiet now, only the soft applause of leaves slapping one another as the wind rushed through them. Man and wife were about to pass through the open door when Addison turned to the opposite wall of glass and smiled for his audience, the watcher in the dark. He waved.

William Swahn was startled-a voyeur caught in the act. He watched Addison kiss his wife. It appeared that the man was sucking air and life from Sarah's body. She went limp and staggered onto the deck, supported by her husband's arm about her waist. The two of them disappeared behind a solid portion of the circular wall.

This stroll in the sky would certainly make their watcher anxious, and so Addison was slow to lead his wife around to that part of the deck that could be seen from Swahn's window. The lawyer, a showman and consummate actor, delighted in dragging out the other man's tension. As they walked, he said to Sarah, 'I saw you bury the camera… and the Hobbs boy.'

She stopped, but failed to make a stand.

He led her onward, for they could not keep Swahn in suspense all night. Around the deck they went, and now they were in full view of the house on Paulson Lane. It was time to jack up the fear in Sarah's eyes. 'When I borrowed one of your journals-I needed the sketches for the ice sculptors to copy-I couldn't help but notice that some of them were missing from the shelf. They covered the year when Josh died. Did Belle take them with her by any chance?'

'No.' Sarah turned her head toward the ocean view, perhaps looking there for inspiration. And she found it. Her eyes were too bright when she turned back to him, saying, 'I threw those books into the sea.'

'Excellent.' Did he believe her? Of course not. But he had read every one of her birder logs and pronounced them all insanely delusional. 'So you just tossed them off a cliff. Now why couldn't you have done that with Josh's camera? Why drag it home and bury it behind the stable? What were you thinking?'

Was that the day your mind snapped?

Easier to recall that night when he had lain awake, waiting for his wife to come to bed. He remembered the sliver of light under their bedroom door. He had seen the shadows of her footsteps pausing there, then moving on to make her bed elsewhere.

Dating back to early days at eastern boarding schools, Isabelle Winston had spent most of her life grieving over a death that had not happened yet. And tonight she was still longing for a ghost mother who had not yet-not entirely-died.

The limousine driver pulled into the local airport. The commuter plane could be seen near the small building that passed for a terminal. Soon the aircraft would be loading passengers bound for San Francisco and connecting red-eye flights to points all over the world.

The ticket to ride was in her hand.

Every time she left her mother, all but pushed out the door, Isabelle felt the same sense of fear; it always escalated to panic when she saw these airport lights. And each time she had reached a distant shore, all she had ever wanted was to go home again.

A lifetime of longing.

Enough.

She leaned toward the driver and said, 'Take me back!'

Addison took Sarah's hand and twirled her in the turn of a waltz step until she was dizzy and in danger of falling. 'I know you still have that photograph of you and Swahn.' She could only stare at him.

He prompted her recall. 'It's been a while-more than a quarter of a century The picture was taken back in LA-at a graduation ceremony for police cadets.'

Sarah nodded. 'I ordered that print from the photographer. When it came in the mail, I showed it to you. And you knew I was going-'

'To see an old friend. So you said. The boy in that photograph was barely twenty-one-hardly an old friend, Sarah.'

He held her at arm's length, and together they whirled around the deck, faster and faster, in and out of the sights of Swahn's binoculars. They stopped once again to stand on that portion of the deck overlooking Paulson Lane. Still in the dancing mode, Addison dipped his partner over the rail, her long hair dangling, her face contorted in fear. He turned his head to smile for the man who sat in the dark.

'Yes!' William Swahn yelled at the civilian aide who had answered the phone at the sheriff's office. 'Yes, it's a damned emergency!'

'I don't think I like your tone.' The girl's voice was painfully young and slightly bruised. 'Why didn't you call nine-one-one?'

'The operator would've sent a deputy from Saulburg. The sheriff's house is right here in Coventry.' But Cable Babitt's home telephone was unlisted. 'You have to call him and-'

'What is the nature of the emergency?'

Oh, bloody Christ. He imagined her reading lines from a script. He gripped the telephone receiver tighter, and he was calmer when he said, 'Call the sheriff's house. Tell him I think Ad Winston is going to murder his wife.'