Disembodied Bones (57 page)

“About what?” Gideon leaned forward and she
said into the phone, “Shoot.”

“Kid was born in the right time frame. To
Amanda Dolby.”

Sue repeated it to Gideon.

Scott said, “What kid?”

“There was a riddle on Whitechapel’s crypt,”
Gideon explained. “Although most people wouldn’t have paid too much
attention to it. It was added years after he died, by someone who
was connected to Monroe Whitechapel and what got George Ogden
curious. Ogden was an investigative journalist who found out a
little too much and got warned off. But the someone was who Leonie
didn’t know about because he wasn’t missed by someone. She told you
that-they have to be missed by someone. Truly missed.”

“Huh?”

“Ask Rosy who the father is,” Gideon
said.

Sue asked.

Roosevelt said to Sue, “How does he think we
found the name? His name is James Allen Dolby. At least it was when
he was born.” There was a brief hesitation. “He’s Monroe
Whitechapel’s son.”

“His son?”

Gideon explained to Scott, “The riddle on the
crypt said, ‘Dawn’s away, the day’s turned gray, and I must travel
far away. But I’ll be back and then we’ll track the light of
another day.’”

“Huh?” Scott said again, feeling incredibly
stupid all of a sudden.

“Whitechapel taunted his victims with
riddles. Just like the riddle on Olga. Just like the one in the
backpack. He told us that if we could solve the riddle, he’d let us
go. He must have done the same with his own son. Someone he could
play with until he got tired of, without fear of being caught by
the police.” Gideon sat back in the seat and sighed. “His own
son.”

“That’s the answer to the riddle?” Scott
deducted. “Not son. Not S-O-N, but S-U-N. Some kind of twisted joke
on his father. A last little dig. No pun intended.”

Sue was saying, “Uh-huh. Really. That makes
sense.” She put the phone down for a moment and said, “Yep, Monroe
Whitechapel’s only son. Not recognized in his will, but apparently
there’s more. Amanda Dolby went missing about a year ago. She was a
waitress in Bossier City, living with her third husband. Your
deputy chief of police says he recognized the name as soon as they
saw it because there was a crime scene at her house. Enough blood
in the garage to indicate death, but they never found the body.
Don’t even have a suspect.”

“The son again?” Scott said. “Why go after
the mother?”

“She gave him to Whitechapel,” Gideon said.
“I bet she sold him to his own father. Maybe she didn’t know what
he was going to do, but she took the money and ran, never looked
back, and eventually he decided to get even with everyone who
wronged him.”

“Wronged him how?” Scott asked. “You’d think
he’d be grateful that Leonie killed the man who abused him.”

“We think that he was kept somewhere, some
kind of secret compartment, where Whitechapel intended to put me,
once he disposed of his son. Whitechapel didn’t like his victims
once they got too old for his tastes. When he took me, it was the
death knell for James Allen Dolby. When Leonie killed Whitechapel,
we condemned the son to a slow death, because the police searched
every part of the house and the grounds and they never found it,
because they didn’t know it was there. Starvation? Maybe
dehydration? Being alone in some rotten hole would have been enough
to send anyone over the edge.”

“Jesus,” Sue breathed. “But you think he
escaped somehow.”

“Yeah, escaped, managed to get some of
Whitechapel’s money, and grew up with a thirst for revenge. I was
just part of the big picture. Olga and Keefe were secondary to get
to Leonie. She’s the one he hates the most.”

“And Elan Carter or James Dolby, whichever,
didn’t count on you two having this bond, or whatever you call it?”
Scott said incredulously. “It sounds like a story from the Syfy
Channel.”

“Yeah, is that it?” Sue said, half-listening
to the phone, half-listening to Scott and Gideon. “Thanks, I think.
I guess you can go to the supermarket now, huh?” She disconnected
and folded the phone up, passing it back to Scott. “The deputy
chief said to be careful.”

Gideon looked at his hands. The thumb still
throbbed faintly, the swelling had gone down. He suspected in a few
hours that it would be gone altogether.
What would happen to
me,
he wondered with some shock,
if Leonie died
? He
swallowed convulsively.
What if she’s not there? What if it’s
the wrong place?

No
, he thought, rejecting
indecision
. I can feel her. We’re getting closer to her. She’s
still alive. Frightened, but still alive. It isn’t too
late.

•

“How about a riddle, Elan,” Leonie called. “A
riddle from me to you. If you answer it, then I’ll let you live,
what do you say, Elan? Is that really your name? Or just a persona
you affected to make sure I was gullible to fall for your act?”

Darkness surrounded her, engulfed her like a
cold blanket. A faint gurgle of water bubbling up was the only
noise she could hear. She cocked her head so she could listen
better. Elan was being as silent as possible, trying to gain an
advantage. She wanted him in this room. She wanted him to be as mad
as possible. She wanted his fury to simmer up inside him like a
volcano’s lava fighting to explode out of the earth.

“How about something simple, something that
Whitechapel would have appreciated greatly? He would have laughed
at your efforts. Not as sophisticated as his. It took the police
years to catch him, and you, you’ve put yourself into the open.
People have seen your face. They know what you look like, and
you’ve probably left a thousand fingerprints behind. If they don’t
catch you soon, it’s only a matter of time.” Leonie shrank into the
wall and was comforted by the cold concrete blocks roughly
caressing her back.

Nothing. Nothing answered her. Not even a
hesitant creeping noise that would indicate Elan moving closer to
her. Doubt assailed Leonie for a moment.
Could I have killed
him? Could he be still attached to the razor-blade wall, slowly
bleeding to death? And oh,
Dieu
, how am I going to force
myself to go look and see?

“Here it is, Elan,” she called again. She
made her voice deriding. “A simple one. A child could answer it. A
child as young as you were once. When is a door not a door? Did you
hear me, Elan? A stupid little child could figure it out because
it’s as obvious as the nose on your face, it’s as plain as an ugly
woman, it’s as clear as crystal. When is a door not a door?”

Leonie paused and listened. Nothing. Not a
hint of sound. No movement at all.

There wasn’t even a sliver of light that
would indicate that Elan was approaching with the flashlight.
Either he was coming in darkness or he wasn’t coming at all.
Judging by how much Elan seemed to hate her, Leonie bet that he was
coming in darkness.

And it was very, very dark.

•

“This is it,” Sue said, pointing to a sagging
fence. The property was fairly isolated. A hundred odd acres of
land sprawled before them. Once it had been used for growing
cotton, then Sue related that the owner had gone off to Korea and
came back with mental problems. He hunkered down on his property
and fired a shotgun at anyone who came on the grounds. He let the
house decline. He let the fields grow wild and it was a thick
growth of woods now, almost sixty years’ worth, with nothing left
but a barn. A few years after he’d died, the house had been struck
by lightning and burnt to the foundation, leaving nothing but a
storm cellar. The smoke hadn’t been seen until the following day
because of the storm and the veteran’s few relatives didn’t care
about the property, other than selling it to the person who would
pay most for it. “So it finally sold to…a child kidnapping
lunatic.”

Driving through a badly rusted gate hanging
limply on its hinges, Scott turned onto a dirt trek that led into
thick woods of pine, juniper, and oak. It was similar to Gideon’s
property, but the road didn’t curve. It went straight back, echoing
the lines of former cotton fields. Finally the county car came into
a cleared area. Two acres of land had been forced to grow only
grass and knee-high weeds. The trees and shrubs had not reinstated
themselves in this area.

In the middle of the area was a simple barn,
two stories high. In its heyday it would have held bales of cotton
and equipment with which to till the soil and harvest the crops. It
might have held some hay for various farm animals, but this had
been no ranch.

“There’s no house,” Gideon said with
shock.

“I told you,” Sue said. “Burned down five
years ago.”

“But it was exactly like Whitechapel’s house.
The long hallway, the doors, the attic. It was the duplicate of his
house. And his house was burned down not too long after he was
killed.” Gideon’s voice was overloaded with guilt and dismay. He
had gambled and lost, but oh, what a price he would have to
pay.

“No house,” Scott said, pulling up to the
barn. “But we might as well look in the barn.” He pointed. “Unless
I’m mistaken, someone’s put up new hinges on those doors. They’re
stainless steel and the rest of the hardware is flaking with rust.
Someone’s been out here. There are ruts in the road from the last
rain.” He glanced back at Gideon. “The very least, we should look
inside.”

But the unlocked doors opened up to reveal
nothing but a truck. A Dodge Ram with a crew cab and a camper was
parked there. Black and shining, it appeared as though someone had
driven it there only a few minutes before. Scott noted the license
plates and called it in.

“I thought Leonie’s Explorer might be here,”
Gideon said quietly.

“Why would he bring it here?” Scott asked
rhetorically. “It would just point to himself. Maybe he dumped
somewhere it wouldn’t be found soon. But if he was at your place to
plant something and she was there too, at the wrong time, then he
couldn’t have taken it very far.” He scratched his chin. “Probably
not far from your house somewhere.”

Gideon stared at the truck for a long
time.

Sue came in from the front. She had walked
around the barn and said to Scott, “Nothing around here. No bloody
shirts. No evidence to show they’ve been here at all. Certainly
nothing here that will get a judge to sign a warrant.”

Scott’s phone rang. He answered it and spoke
to someone for a minute. When he disconnected, he said, “Truck’s
registered to the Sphinks Developing Company. We’ll tie it to Elan
Carter before long and then prove Elan Carter is James Dolby. It’ll
give us enough for any warrant.”

“But they’ll be dead by then,” Gideon said.
He stared at the truck.

Sue stepped outside the open doors and
scanned the horizon. “You know, it used to be a real big house,
too. The family had a parcel of kids and the father had a good
cotton crop for over thirty years, even right through the
depression. So the house he had built was a big one. Five bedrooms
and a bunch of other things. It looked Victorian, although it
wasn’t. It was late Queen Anne style. Gabled roofs, decorative
metal crestings, large verandahs, fluted and capped chimneys, and
an onion dome on one side. But the parents died in a car accident.
The kids died off one after another, a few in World War II. One in
Korea. One died of malaria in Africa doing missionary work. That
left the one man, also a Korean vet. But I saw the house years ago
when the guy shot at a social services worker. It could have been a
real beaut.”

Scott rolled his eyes. “Is there anything you
don’t know about the architecture in this county?”

Sue considered. “Not much. Your house, for
instance. A ranch built in 1958. Nothing special about it.”

Gideon joined them and looked around as well.
“If there was a house around here, where’s the foundation?”

“It’s,” Sue started to point. Her brow
furrowed. “It’s…hey. It’s gone. There was a huge basement that was
used mostly for preserves and as a storm cellar. Gone.”

Gideon pointing to a line of new electrical
poles that came to a halt behind the barn with wires strung along
each. “And if this is just a barn, what does it need electricity
for?”

•

Leonie heard something. It was a whisper of
movement, cloth moving over flesh. A set of fingers trailing over
rough cement blocks. Her heart began to thunder in her chest. Elan
was in the room with her. She waited, trying to hear above the roar
of her anxiety. She would have to draw him out. She would have to
let him know exactly where she was in the chamber. “When is a door
not a door, Elan?”

Her own harsh whisper startled her and she
jumped, inadvertently brushing her broken thumb against the wall.
Leonie wasn’t sure of anything. Elan could be anywhere. He could be
behind her, in front of her, laughing at her inability to follow
through. He could be standing next to her, his breath tickling
tendrils of her tangled hair. She forced herself to stop and
breathe evenly.
Losing it now won’t help me.

“I don’t know the answer to that one,
Leonie,” came his discordant reply. Elan was in the room with her.
She turned her head and tried to see through the dark to where he
was. She positioned him as being on the opposite side of the pit,
the gurgling water in between them.

“I’ll give you that one, Elan, just for old
time’s sake,” Leonie said carelessly, calculating distances.
Has
he lost the flashlight? No, it was on when she’d fled. He couldn’t
have missed it.
“When it’s ajar. Get it? When it’s a jar.”

“Does that mean you’ll kill me then, like you
threatened?” Elan’s silky reply made a shiver race the length of
her spine. “I’m going to strangle you and when I’m done, I’ll find
a way out, just like I said before. And I’ll leave the child down
here to rot. Just like you left me.”