Bone by Bone

32

Evelyn Straub escorted her visitor into the crawl space beneath the cabin, where two ancient television sets had been running for a day and a night, scanning years of seances.

The back wall of shelves had once been filled with videocassettes. Now there were wide gaps where some of the tapes had been pulled out and stacked on the floor between two wicker chairs. Evelyn held one in her hand, hesitating to play it. The younger woman's grief was only days old- still raw. 'Are you sure you want to see this?'

Isabelle nodded.

Evelyn fed the old cassette into the slot below a TV screen and then depressed the play button. The two women sat down to watch the image of Sarah Winston taking a turn at the Ouija board. Sarah had been the first of the players to raise a question of murder.

'Any day now,' said Evelyn, 'Sally Polk will get a search warrant for this cabin. I thought you might want the tapes of your mother… to keep them… or burn them.'

Late last night, Oren Hobbs had stressed the option to burn this evidence of guilty knowledge, and Evelyn had wondered why. 'Just being tidy,' he had said to her then. And what else had he done to thwart the CBI agent's investigation?

Isabelle leaned closer to the television set, as if to climb inside the glowing box with her dead mother. Her fingertips touched the barrier glass.

On screen, the late Sarah Winston was crying as she posed a question for the lost boy. 'Did you suffer?'

Isabelle waited out the string of letters chanted by the players around the table, and she strung them all together to whisper Josh's reply. 'All day long.'

Over the rims of coffee cups, Hannah and the judge discussed the long-overdue burial of Horatio. They turned to the kitchen window as Oren rode by in the open cab of a small yellow tractor. Extending out from this noisy machine was a long metal arm with a mechanical elbow and a dangling bucket with jaws and teeth.

Henry Hobbs frowned. 'I believe that backhoe belongs to the cemetery.'

'I'm sure he'll give it right back,' said Hannah.

'Remember the good old days-when we buried our pets with shovels?' The judge kept his eye to the window. 'Where's the boy going with that thing?'

'I thought we'd bury Horatio down by the garden shed. And Oren's not a boy.' She smiled at the yellow stray waiting in the open doorway, still hesitant to enter any room except by invitation. 'Why don't you name the dog Boy?'

'Come here, Boy,' he said, and the dog ran to him to be petted and scratched behind the ears and to lick the old man's face. 'Boy it is.' The judge looked out the window, following the backhoe's progress toward the shed. 'That grave should be on higher ground, closer to the house. The water table rises after spring rains.'

'I'll mention that to Oren.' The housekeeper handed over the car keys.

'Can you drive to the bakery in Saulburg and pick up a special-order cake? It's got Horatio's name on it.'

That made him smile. 'Nice touch. I'll be back in an hour or so.'

Oh no, you won't.

'There's a few more things I need.' She tacked on a grocery list for the Saulburg supermarket and other errands that guaranteed long waiting lines.

When the judge's car was safely down the road and the noise of the backhoe had also died off, she made a telephone call. Then, after taping a note to the front door, she went down to the garden shed, where the dead Horatio had been waiting patiently these past two days.

The backhoe was nowhere to be seen and neither was Oren. The opening in the ground was roughly squared. She would judge it to be maybe three feet wide, a tad more in length-and insanely deep if one only wanted to bury a dog. The mound of excavated dirt was almost as high as she was tall. Hannah looked over the edge of the hole to see her muddy reflection at the bottom. But Oren had not struck underground water; a garden hose with a dripping nozzle lay coiled by the shed.

The yellow mongrel padded down the path to join her. He stood by her side and licked her hand in a show of worship for the giver of food. Dog and woman raised their heads at the sound of the approaching vehicle. It rolled up the driveway and disappeared behind the house. The engine died. The driver would need time to climb the porch steps and read the note on the front door. Hannah watched the second hand crawl around the face of her wristwatch.

The dog was also waiting-anticipating-every muscle tensed, sniffing the air, sampling a breeze and catching the scent of a man.

The deputy rounded the side of the house. This was his day off-no uniform, no star, no gun. 'You weren't real clear on the phone, Hannah.' Dave Hardy was unshaven and surly for being called out of bed on a morning when he had planned to sleep late. Eyes hidden behind dark glasses, he walked down the path and stopped at the edge of the freshly dug hole. 'What're you up to?'

'Oh, I thought we'd bury Horatio today.'

He turned toward the two animals, the red Irish setter, the dead one stuffed in a pose of sleep, and the live yellow dog drawing close to Hannah's side. Dave inclined his head to look down at the gaping hole. 'You could toss ten mutts down there.'

'It is deep. That surprised me, too.' She cocked her head to one side. 'Now that I see it, I think maybe Oren dug this pit for you.'

The deputy stiffened. Like a man made of wood, all of one piece, he turned around to face the house, no doubt checking the back windows. He slowly revolved to take in the meadow and the surrounding woods. When he looked her way again, the housekeeper could see herself, two tiny Hannahs reflected in his dark lenses.

'Oren knows you killed his brother.' And now she repeated the words she had said to him on the telephone. 'How fast can you run, Dave?'

The man forced a smile. 'The way I heard it, Josh died because he saw Ad Winston murder that lady tourist. Ad just killed the wrong woman is all-a woman with the same color hair as his wife.'

In the spirit of a helpful correction-no anger-she said, 'You murdered the wrong woman.' Her hands dipped into the deep pockets of her denim dress, and her fingers wrapped around old photographs. 'Millard Straub paid you to kill his wife.'

Dave stood up a bit straighter and rolled back his shoulders. 'Nobody could've mistaken that tourist for Mrs. Straub. Her hair was the wrong color.'

'That tourist could've been bald for all it mattered. She wore a yellow rain slicker. The hood covered her hair when you came up behind her and caved in her skull with a rock.'

The deputy's head snapped back, as if she had slapped him.

Hannah pulled a photograph from her pocket. It was only an old shot of Horatio in his puppy days, but it would do for a prop. She stared at this image and focused on the memory of another photo destroyed long ago. And then she told her first lie. 'This is a picture of you, Dave.'

He removed his dark glasses, wanting her to see his eyes, and there was a warning note in his voice. 'Don't tell me that came from the film in Josh's camera.' Oh, no, said his smirk-he knew better.

'You mean the roll Josh shot in the woods-the day you killed him? No, you ripped out that film. You had to jerk it free from the spool… and you tore it.'

He lost his smirk. The sunglasses dropped from his hand.

The yellow dog was deadly quiet, lips drawing back to show his fangs.

Hannah held up the photograph, only showing Dave the back of it. 'This one's from a roll Josh finished before you murdered him. I found it hidden in his sock drawer. Oh, that boy and his secrets.'

Dave stood on the lip of the pit, legs bent, ready to jump it, but the dog crouched low to change his mind. Then Hannah startled him with magic, the minor trick of a second picture finding its way out of a pocket to materialize in her free hand. 'This one's a shot of you following Evelyn Straub at a street fair.' She fanned out the back sides of three more photographs, and-more magic-the three became one. 'Here's a picture of you turning around to see Josh with his camera pointed right at you. And don't you look mad? The boy was following you. So you couldn't kill Evelyn then. Not that day.'

With no sudden movements to set off the dog, Dave edged along the side of the pit to get at her. His sunglasses were crushed underfoot. His right hand was on the rise.

To rob her or beat her?

The deputy froze. His eyes were on the crouching dog, its bared teeth. So quiet. There would be no bark of warning. 'Hannah, I was just a kid that summer. Nobody's idea of a hit man. Why would-'

'You were perfect for the job, a bully all your life. And there's nobody in this town who hates women more than you do. Who would know that better than Millard Straub? You worked in his hotel every day after school. He was a lot like your father-the meanness, the cruelty-almost like a second daddy'

'I hated that old man.'

'But you loved his money. He paid you to spy on his wife, didn't he? That's how he knew she was cheating on him. But Millard never tried to cut Evelyn out of his will. No need. He just hired himself a killer-a boy who'd work cheap.'

'Nobody paid me to-'

'I bet you would've done it for free, but you were paid. Millard kept a wad of cash in the hotel safe. That money disappeared when you left town. Evelyn thought you stole it, and that's what she told the sheriff, but Millard dropped the charges that same day.'

More pictures appeared in her hands, and Hannah spread them like playing cards. She stared at them but did not see them. She was calling up memories of other photographs. 'Here's one Josh took in the locker room the night you went after him. My, you look angry. You didn't want him following you around anymore. You had places to go, a woman to kill.'

Dave folded his arms. His smile was twitchy. 'Hannah, those pictures are worthless.'

'You think so?' She shook her head. 'The first time I saw them, I wanted to burn them.' And she had burned them-all but Oren's homecoming present. She had not been able to part with the photograph of the two brothers. 'It's all here,' she lied, thumbing through her pack of props like pages in a book. 'Like a story. The boy only had one reason for following people. Josh wanted a shot of your secret, and that's all his brother ever needed to know. When Oren was a boy, I was so afraid he'd see these pictures and beat you to death. He almost killed you back in high school- that fight in the gym.'

She stuffed the photographs in her pocket and sighed. 'Well, the damage is done. He's seen them all… and now he's crazy dangerous. I tried to warn you.'

'Hannah, where is Oren?'

'Behind you.'

There was no time for Dave Hardy to turn his head. A shove to his back sent him sprawling, arms waving, falling.

He landed on his feet, crouched knee-deep in water, shoes sloshing and sliding. The close sides of the pit were slimed with mud. Dave reached up to grab a wet tree root, and it slicked through his fingers. Footing lost, he slumped down a muddy wall, legs folding until his kneecaps were higher than his chin and poking out of the brown water. His clothes were soaked, his face and hair splattered. Looking upward, all he could see was a crude square of blue sky, and he yelled, 'I could've broken my damn legs!'

Oh, God, the water was cold. His teeth clicked, his body shook.

Rising to his feet was slippery work in this dank, narrow space, and the wet blue jeans weighed him down. Twice, his shoes shot out from under him before he managed to stand. Flattened back against a wall, he craned his neck. All he could see was the high mound of earth piled near the hole. He stretched out both hands but could not reach the top. He jumped for the edge, and the mud sucked off his shoes and socks. But he had glimpsed the back of Oren Hobbs as the man steeped a shovel into the dirt pile.