Bone by Bone

Hannah's head leaned into the bright blue square above, and her voice was fearful. 'You should've run. I warned you.' She drew back as a spade of earth rained down on him.

'Hey!' Dave brushed loose dirt from his clothes. The rest turned to mud in his wet hair. He raised his face to yell again, and another load from the shovel filled his mouth with soil. He spat it out and wiped his eyes. 'Knock it off!' Hands raised to ward off the next spray, he had his first look at Oren's face-so cold. What lifeless eyes-eyes of a machine that could lift a shovel and-

Ploff.

The deputy lost his barefoot traction. Sliding down the slick wall and landing hard on his backside, he clenched his teeth on grit. Shaking-so cold-he hugged his knees and lowered his head when the shovel appeared in the sky-blue opening. Dirt crumbled down from his hair to melt in the water when he lifted his face to the light and yelled, 'Hannah! Call him off!'

Or turn him off. Switch off that thing with the shovel.

'I tried.' She reappeared, head and shoulders, to lean over the hole. 'No use.' Her fingers curled over the edge. 'Oren knows that Josh and the tourist died close to Evelyn's cabin.'

'What? The grave was in the clearing. Nowhere near that cabin.' Dave saw the shovel too late to duck his head. He gagged on the dirt, and his breakfast beer came stealing up his throat for a second tasting. Above him, the mute shoveler worked with an easy rhythm. Steep and lift, and ploff went the dirt.

'Josh and that woman died on the old hikers' trail.'

Before he could ask how Hannah knew this, she read his mind and said, 'Oren told me. He's been watching videotapes of the witchboard people- all day, all night-no sleep.'

Dave looked up at her, his eyes wide in a mask of mud. 'The witchboard people? Are you crazy?' More dirt hit his face to blind him and fill his mouth. He vomited up his last liquid meal, and the hole reeked of beer and bile. When his eyes were wiped clear, Hannah was gone. 'No!' he called out to her. 'Don't leave me!'

Don't leave me here with Oren, crazy Oren.

Scrambling to raise himself, Dave braced his ice-cold hands on the slippery walls. He could see her standing beside the man with the vacant eyes, lunatic Oren, who worked like a robot to fill his hole. Steep and lift and-

Hannah squinted, as if trying to see the mechanical man more clearly and from a great distance. 'I don't think Oren can hear me anymore.' Ploff

She hunkered down at the edge of the pit. 'The witchboard people knew everything-bits and pieces here and there. Oren put it all together.'

'Help me!' A downdraft swept his wet body with cool morning air. His teeth clicked. His hands trembled. 'Hannah, I know you don't believe in that seance crap.'

'Oren does.' She looked down at him with such pity. 'He knows you went up to the cabin that day. You waited awhile-just to make sure Evelyn was alone. It was raining when you saw a woman leave by the back door-a woman in a yellow slicker. You thought you were following Evelyn.' She backed away and disappeared as more dirt came down. 'Hannah!' he screamed.

'Josh was following you.' Her voice was behind him now. He whirled around, bare feet slipping in the muddy water. His fingers raked grooves in the wall of dirt as he was falling- splash!-into freezing water. He looked up to see Hannah's face framed in the square of blue sky.

'Josh saw you kill that poor woman. But Oren says the boy didn't take a picture of the murder. Is he right, Dave?'

The sound of shoveling stopped.

Hannah crouched low to peer at him, as if her answer might be written on his face. And then she nodded in a knowing way. 'You didn't know Josh was behind you-not yet. The boy could've backed off and saved himself and run. My Josh could run so fast. You never would've caught him.'

Dave twisted his head to look behind him. Above the edge of the pit, he could see the handle of the shovel as it was lodged in the mound of dirt, and there it stayed. Oren, the robot, was also listening to Hannah.

'It took time for Josh to set up the perfect shot,' she said. 'The boy was so quiet while he looked down at his camera to line up the little numbers on the lens. And then he looked up to focus, and he waited… You rolled the body over… and saw you'd killed the wrong woman. The look on your face, a rock in your hand, the dead woman's eyes staring back at you. Josh just couldn't help himself. It was his nature to catch that moment. No power on earth could've stopped him… You heard the camera click.'

Ploff. Steep and lift. Ploff

Dave's voice was pleading, breaking. 'Hannah, call for help.' Where was she?

Oh, Christ, don't leave me.

She came back to him and leaned over the edge. 'I told you-Oren's seen the witchboard tapes. The year you came back to Coventry -that's when you went to your first seance in the woods. Everybody in town went to at least one. At the time, I didn't think anything of it.'

'The sheriff sent me out there to check up on the psychic.'

'That's what Evelyn thought-just Cable's silly idea of an undercover cop. But Oren says you didn't act like one. You never joined the players. You stood at the back of the room, hiding in the dark, listening. Were you scared that a message from a dead child would give you away?' Hannah smiled, but there was no mistaking her expression for happiness. 'Scared now?'

Ploff.

'Hannah!'

'I tried to help you,' said her disembodied voice. And then her face appeared again, but her eyes were raised to stare at the madman with the shovel. 'You should've run. Oren knows that Josh died slow.' Hannah lowered her gaze. 'You dragged out that child's pain all day long.' She drew back from the edge.

'Hannah, don't leave me!' He struggled to gain his feet. Half bent, he held up his arms to ward off the next spadeful of dirt. If he could not stand, he would die in this stinking hole. Every shovelful of earth thickened the water, and he could not climb upon mud to save himself; he could only sink. How long would he be able to lift his feet before they were encased in mud? He screamed, 'Hannah!'

The walls seemed closer now, suffocating, and he looked up with the mad idea that the square of blue light was growing smaller-farther away-closing up. Mud from his hair dripped into his eyes. The light went out.

The yellow dog looked over the edge, ears flattened down and snarling.

Oren smelled piss and shit and vomit. The dog smelled fear.

The man in the hole rallied, rising to a stand and reaching high to grab the tree root. His bare toes dug into the muddy wall, scrambling, frantic for purchase. Dirt caved in all around the root, and the deputy fell, legs folded under him and covered over by the small avalanche. Dave Hardy raised his head and rubbed his eyes. He looked down at the place where his limbs should be. Oren watched the deputy twist and strain, but Dave Hardy could only free his arms; he could not move his buried. legs. Panicked, manic, as fast as he could scoop the dirt away, Oren piled on more.

Ploff, ploff, ploff.

He lowered the shovel and stood back as Hannah leaned over the hole.

'My memory is long,' she said to the deputy. 'The proof was in your hands. Your knuckles were red and raw… from doing murder in woods.'

'That happened in a fight with Oren.' Dave's voice was weaker, and his words came out like a whine. 'You saw it, Hannah. You were in the gym that night.'

'Oh, I'll never forget it. Every punch belonged to Oren. All those people in the bleachers-they all remember Oren's bloody fists… your bloody face… not one bruise on your knuckles. But Cable Babitt got the story secondhand. He didn't see that fight. If he had, he would've arrested you twenty years ago.'

Ploff

The dirt from the caved-in wall had thickened into mud all around the deputy's body, and he ceased to struggle. He only shivered, and his words were halfhearted. 'Make him stop? Please, Hannah?'

'I'll try.' She stole a glance at Oren, and then turned her face down to the deputy. 'But he's got this idea in his head that you raped his brother before you murdered him.'

Oren lost his rhythm with the shovel. He turned to stare at her.

'No, no, no!' Dave's voice was breaking, his head shaking. 'I wasn't queer for Josh. I never-'

'You broke that child's bones. His jaw, his arms-half his ribs.' There was no recrimination in her voice, only sadness. 'And then… his fingers… You broke them one by one… Oren says only sex perverts do sick things like that.'

'I'm no pervert!'

'You hurt that child all day long.' Hannah's voice faltered and cracked. 'And then when Josh was broken and helpless, you took off his-'

'I'm not a pervert!' Dave's voice was growing stronger, louder. His hands were raised fists when he yelled, 'I killed the woman for money! The wrong woman, all right? But what I did to Josh-that was payback!' His fists slowly lowered. He was deflating, losing air and will. In a smaller voice, he said, 'Payback for that beating I took from Oren… that night in the gym… the whole town watching.'

The shovel dropped from Oren's hands. His head moved slowly from side to side, lips shaping the word payback, and his eyes rolled up to the sky. Payback.

The door of the garden shed creaked open. Oren turned around to watch the CBI agent retrieve a microphone from the ferns near the hole. He had not agreed to that.

Sally Polk nodded to him and mimed the words, Good job.

Their deal was done, the bargain kept-on his end. He had broken a suspect without using his fists. That had always been his way, and once it had been a source of pride, but not this time-not for a long time.

The voice from the pit was faint. 'Make it stop,' Dave begged, as if dirt still rained down on him.

Agent Polk led Oren out of earshot and then opened her purse to pull out a small recording device. 'My tape starts with the splash-him falling into the hole.' Smiling, she shook her head. 'That clumsy boy. So all I've got is his voice and Hannah's. Nothing to prove you were ever here.'

'You can't use that tape.' He had agreed to break Dave Hardy, to take him naked to a place where posturing was ludicrous-half the battle, only that and nothing more.

'I need this.' Her hand closed on the recorder. 'You laid out a good case, but it's all circumstantial evidence and hearsay. Though I did like that part about the money missing from the hotel safe. Now, just in case his lawyer gets picky-when I get the deputy cleaned up, will I find any defensive wounds-anything to back up a fight?'

'You can't use a coerced confession in court.'

One hand on her hip, she nodded toward the pit. 'You call that coercion?'

No. He would call it torture. He always called it by its name. Over the past few years, he had, once or twice, thought to look down at that line he would never cross-as if he could still see it. He could, at least, remember it, but now the only salvage of any value was this one rule of evidence-a law that he could keep.

'Erase the tape,' said Oren. 'It'll come back on you if you don't. That's a promise.'

The set of her jaw and the pugilist stance told him she was taking this as a threat. Good.

Oren turned around to face the pit. 'After you pull Dave out of there, when he's wearing dry clothes and drinking tea-when he's chewing one of your damn brownies-that's when you tell him you'll