“The good news is your list is shrinking.”
“It wasn’t that big to begin with.” And he had to get back on the plane.
Wy’s phone rang as they arrived at the airstrip, Prince all over it with “Sexy MF.” Wy looked up to see Liam smirking at her. She rolled her eyes and showed him the screen. It was Tim. “Hey,” she said. “How’s my guy?”
“Is that Liam I hear laughing?” Tim said.
His voice sounded deeper and more confident than the last time she’d spoken to him, although that might be her imagination. The boy hiding from his birth mother under the porch of their shack in Ualik was a distant memory. Or so she hoped. “Ignore him. How are you?”
“Are you in Blewestown yet?”
“Got here Monday. Gorgeous weather, I could have been here in time for lunch, but I took the scenic route.”
“The new house okay?”
“Yeah. Unbelievably it’s as nice as advertised, and we’ve already had our first house guest.”
“I bet that’d be the one, the only Jo Dunaway.”
“You’d win that bet.”
“So annoying,” he said. “I wanted to be your first guest.”
“You can be our second,” she said, trying not to sound too needy.
“She stopped by to say hi on her way down.”
“She said. Said you looked like you were doing good.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I was thinking of driving down next weekend. Or, no, the weekend after that, I’ve got a big ass test coming up the Monday after next weekend.” He hesitated. “Okay if I bring someone with me?”
Liam saw Wy come to attention. “A guest would be fine,” she said, elaborately casual. “Anybody we know?” He mumbled something. “I’m sorry, what?”
“It’s a friend,” he said at better volume, and this time she could clearly hear the embarrassment.
“What’s her name?” Liam’s eyes widened and he made a jerk-off motion with his hand. She pretended she didn’t see.
“I didn’t say she was a girl.”
“You just did.”
He grumbled. “You think you’re so smart.”
“What’s her name and where is she from?”
“Anna Barnes. She’s from Cordova. She’s studying for an A&P certificate, too.”
“Well, tell Anna we’d be happy to have her come visit,” Wy said, trying not to purr. “Will you require one room or two?”
“Mom!”
“Hey, just being a good hostess.” She dropped the teasing note. “Can’t wait to see you, kid. I love you.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll text when we leave.”
“Okay.” She clicked off and beamed at Liam. “He’s coming and he’s bringing a girl with him.”
“I heard. I’m glad the guest bedrooms are on the other side of the house.”
“Liam!”
They taxied up to the tie-down in Blewestown twenty minutes later. Liam’s phone rang as he got out (Britney Spears and “I’m a Slave 4 U”). It was Hans Brilleaux, the medical examiner, in Anchorage. He was just glad it wasn’t Barton. “Hey, Brillo,” he said.
“WHAT KIND OF CRAZY FUCKING ASSHOLE DOES THIS, CAMPBELL?”
Liam yanked the phone away from his ear. “Jesus, Brillo. Dial it down, wouldya? I’ve only got two eardrums and Barton’s already taken out one.”
There was a heavy exhale. When Brillo spoke again he had dialed it down but Liam could hear the hard edge of rage as plain as if Brillo was in his face like the wire-haired terrier he was, teeth bared and sharp enough to draw blood. “I want to know what kind of sick, sorry, sadist does this kind of thing. And then I want you to shoot them.”
“What kind of thing? Is this about Erik Berglund?”
A silence, where Liam got the impression that Brillo was working at containing his anger and not succeeding very well. “No,” he said very precisely. “It is not about Erik Berglund. It’s about the skeleton you dropped on me along with Erik Berglund.
“All of his long bones are broken in multiple places, humerus, ulna, radius, femur, tib/fib. The feet were broken at the joints. The spine half a dozen times. And the skull… Jesus, Liam. It’s like someone tried to pulverize it.”
“His?” Liam said.
“It’s a boy. I’d say about ten years old.”
“How long has the body been there?”
“Thirty years, give or take.”
“Jesus.”
He thought about the cave behind the cave and the limited access between them. And then he realized what must have happened. Someone had deliberately broken the bones of the body of the ten-year-old boy into pieces small enough to fit through the crack, which was so narrow no one would ever find it, or if they did, think to look for anything inside it.
Except maybe another ten-year-old kid. It was why the bones were so close to the crack, he realized. The killer couldn’t shove them in any farther because the crack was so narrow. He hadn’t been able to get his arm in past his bicep. “Brillo, can you tell if the injuries were pre- or post-mortem?”
“I’m pretty sure the fracture on the left side of the skull was the killing blow. If he wasn’t dead he would have been unconscious or comatose when the rest of his body was broken into bits and pieces. Do you know who did it, Liam?”
“Not yet.”
“Find him.”
This wasn’t professional, Brillo’s rage, it was personal. Child killings brought out the vengeful god in everyone. “What about Erik Berglund?”
He heard keys clicking. “Oddly enough, Berglund’s injuries were similar if not as extensive. There was a blow to the left side of his head, and his left elbow and clavicle are cracked. He’s also got a hell of a lot of cuts and bruises, and his hands are all torn up. Was there blood at the scene?”
“Not a lot, no.”
“Could he have fallen after he was struck?”
Liam thought of that sidewinder of a trail leading to the dig. Erik could have been struck at the signpost. “Yes.” And then fallen all the way down it, and at the bottom crawled to the tent and into the cave. And he had then tried to make a call on his dead phone.
He remembered the wear and tear
