Billy's Bones (29 page)

“A cabin?”

Kevin sighed and finally spoke. “It was small. Red, I think, with green trim. At the end of a long dirt driveway. And it was boarded up for the winter or something.”

His mother had lifted her cup to take a sip of coffee, but she hesitated, the cup poised at her lips. “You couldn’t possibly remember that cabin.”

“Obviously, I do,” Kevin snapped.

Mrs. Derocher took a slow sip of her coffee and then carefully set the cup down on a coaster before once again addressing Chief Burbank. “The last time Kevin was at that cabin, before it was sold, was when he was only five years old.”

“Whose cabin was it?” Burbank asked.

“Ours,” she replied. “My husband bought it the year Kevin was born. It seemed a nice idea at the time, but neither of us really enjoyed spending our vacations that far out in the woods, especially with a young child to look after. It might have been different if it was on the lake, but it was too remote. We used it now and then, but eventually we just stopped going, and it sat there boarded up for years until we finally sold it.”

“When was that?”

“Just before Kevin’s father passed away. In the fall of 1988, I believe. Jack put the money into a mutual fund for me.” She paused and took another sip of her coffee. “I think he already knew… what he was going to do… and he wanted to make sure I was taken care of.”

“Where is the cabin located?” Burbank asked.

“Nowhere now,” she replied, and Tom thought he detected an odd note of triumph in her voice. “It was torn down by the new owners.”

But Chief Burbank was growing impatient with this dance. “Where
was
it, then?”

“It was near Christine Lake. But as I said, not very near the lake itself.”

Burbank pulled a notepad and pen out of his jacket pocket and sketched something. When he placed it on the coffee table between them, Tom could see that it was a rough map of Christine Lake with Percy Road and Stark Highway running parallel to each other in the southeast, and a road skirting the northern half of the lake which he’d labeled “Summer Club Rd.” Tom was vaguely familiar with the lake since he’d gone fishing there as a boy. It was less than a half hour away from the Derocher house.

“Can you point to where the cabin was?” Burbank asked Mrs. Derocher.

“I can’t recall.”

“Just the general area.”

“It was a very long time ago.”

“Mom,” Kevin practically snarled, “stop being difficult.”

For the first time since their arrival, Mrs. Derocher turned to look directly at him, her eyes smoldering. “Difficult? For refusing to cooperate in slander? I’m not stupid. You’re trying to link this boy’s disappearance to your father. As if that wasn’t the most
ludicrous
…. It’s not enough that you refused to give him the respect he deserved when he was alive. Now you’re determined to drag his name through the mud—”

“The respect he deserved?” Kevin asked incredulously. “The respect he
deserved
?”

“Don’t you raise your voice to me, young man. Your father gave us a good home and—”

But Kevin had apparently been pushed too far. He jumped to his feet and shouted at her, “What he
deserved
was the goddamned electric chair!”

“Get out!”

“That son of a bitch started fondling me when I was five years old, Mom.
Five
years old!”

“I said ‘get out’!” Mrs. Derocher called out, “Sarah!”

“Kevin,” Tom interrupted, “perhaps we should—”

“Then he raped and murdered an eleven-year-old boy!”

“Shut up!
Shut up
! You
vile
—I won’t hear any more of your lies!”

“
That’s enough
!” Chief Burbank’s deep voice reverberated in the tiny sitting room and startled mother and son into silence. He’d jumped up from his chair and suddenly seemed much taller than Tom remembered. “You two,” he commanded, pointing to Kevin and Tom, “go outside. Now!”

Sarah burst into the room in a panic. “What’s happening?”

“It’s under control,” the chief told her. “Kevin and Tom are on their way out. And Mrs. Derocher… you’re going to tell me where that cabin is, or I’ll book you for obstructing a police investigation. Is that clear?”

“I
CAN
’
T
fucking believe her!”

Kevin was pacing in front of the squad car, oblivious to the looks he was getting from people driving by. Tom couldn’t blame him. His mother’s willful blindness about what had happened to him as a boy was sickening.

“They barely spoke the last few years of his life,” Kevin went on. “She spent all her time in that fucking shed, potting flowers and shit because he wouldn’t give either of us the time of day. And all that time, she was working right where—” He broke off, unable to complete the sentence. “But now that he’s dead, he’s a fucking saint!”

“Perhaps she’s remembering the way she wishes it was,” Tom volunteered.

“Don’t defend her!”

“I’m not,” Tom said. “Really. I wanted to shout at her myself when we were in there.”

That managed to get a faint smile out of Kevin. “Now
that
would’ve been something. My boyfriend versus my mom—the battle to end all battles.”

“You always get annoyed with me when I act protective of you.”

“Yeah,” Kevin agreed, “but some things are worth it for the entertainment value.”

Tom started to say something, but he noticed Chief Burbank heading for them, so instead he raised his voice and asked, “Any luck?”

Burbank held up the crude map he’d drawn. There was a small circle on the northwest side of the lake. “Kevin, your mother is….”

“A bitch?”

“I was looking for a more polite term.” He opened the door of his cruiser and said, “I know the general area she described. There aren’t too many back roads in those woods. So let’s go see if we can find it.”

Twenty-Seven

I
T
WAS
late afternoon by the time their caravan headed down Summer Club Road—three cars in all, since another cruiser had pulled in behind Tom’s car as they pulled onto Percy Road. At least Tom assumed it was part of the caravan because it didn’t flash its lights for him to pull over and continued to dog him, even when Chief Burbank led them onto a narrow dirt road and on into the forest.

At one point, Burbank pulled over as far as possible to the right and stopped his car so a pickup truck could squeeze by on the left, heading toward the lake. After the truck passed, the chief got out of his car and walked back to stick his head in Tom’s window.

“Kevin, does any of this look familiar to you?”

Kevin looked out the window at the stretch of dirt road with forest on either side and shrugged. “About as familiar as any dirt road in the back woods of New Hampshire.”

Burbank chuckled and glanced up the road. “Yeah. That’s about what I figured. Your mom said—under duress—that it was somewhere along this road, about three miles in. Keep your eyes peeled for a driveway on the right. It’ll probably be overgrown and nearly invisible.”

T
HEY
drove for about a mile more before Kevin said, “There!”

Tom had to restrain himself from slamming on the brakes. When he did come to a stop, the cruiser behind him practically ramming up his exhaust pipe, he couldn’t see any sign of a driveway. Chief Burbank pulled up about a hundred feet ahead of them. Tom and Kevin climbed out of the car while Burbank slowly backed his cruiser up. Tom recognized the police officer who got out of the other cruiser as the one who’d been with Burbank the night they pulled Kevin over at Recycle Road.

“What is it?” the officer asked.

Tom shrugged, but Kevin started walking back the way they’d come, searching the forest. A minute later he shouted, “Here it is!”

Burbank joined them, and all three walked to where Kevin was standing, pointing at something in the brush.

It was a wooden sign. After all these years, the green-and-red paint had nearly flaked away, and the exposed wood was now a weathered gray, but the name on the sign was still there.

Derocher
.

“Well,” Tom said, “isn’t
that
fucking creepy?”

The driveway was nearly indistinguishable from the forest on either side of it. Fast-growing birches and aspens had claimed the space as their own, probably decades ago, and the ground between them was overrun with witch hazel and high-bush cranberry. The sign itself was nearly hidden behind one of the birch trees. Tom doubted he ever would have seen it if Kevin hadn’t spotted it.

Without preamble, Chief Burbank pushed his way into the brush, and the officer went after him.

“Are you okay?” Tom asked Kevin, worried by how pale he looked.

But after a muttered “I’m fine,” Kevin seemed to steel himself before following the two policemen into the woods. Tom had little choice but to go along unless he wanted to stand in the road by himself.

As often happened in New Hampshire forests, the brush was densest near the road and opened up a bit farther in, perhaps because it was dryer than the soggy ditches that tended to parallel roads—Tom had no idea. But the forest floor was dry and carpeted with dead leaves, leaving plenty of room to walk between the trees and clumps of brush.

The original path of the driveway wasn’t hard to discern there since it was marked by deep gullies on either side. Where the cabin must have been were square holes, partially filled in with years of accumulated debris. Chief Burbank skirted it, telling Kevin, “Your mom said she heard that the new owners left the cabin boarded up for so long, the roof fell in. They probably tore it down to prevent kids from climbing around in the wreckage and getting themselves killed, but it doesn’t look like anybody’s done anything here for years.”

Kevin was barely paying any attention to him. His face was pale, and Tom could see the muscles twitching in his clenched jaw as he searched the forest for any sign of the well. They all fell silent, watching him rotate slowly to get his bearings. “I’m not sure…,” he murmured to himself, as if unaware of his audience.

He seemed to make a decision and began walking away from the cabin, deeper into the woods. After a short distance, he hesitated and looked around, then headed off in a slightly different direction. Tom and the two policemen trailed after him.

This went on for so long that Tom began to worry they would all end up lost in the forest. But he glimpsed the ruins of the cabin through the trees off to his left, and that reassured him. Kevin wasn’t leading them too far away from it. Instead they were skirting it in a wide arc.

The sun was setting, turning the white bark of the birch trees orange, when Kevin muttered, “Goddamn it! I can’t remember!”

“They wouldn’t have put the well too far from the cabin,” Burbank commented.

Kevin’s face was screwed up in frustration. “It all looks the same!”

It did. Just birch and aspen as far as the eye could see, with white pine interspersed. Closer to the ground, clumps of hemlock, witch hazel, and other shrubs obscured any possible well covers. Kevin had said the well was buried within one of these, so they peered into them, but it was impossible to tell one from another without any other landmark.

They doubled back for a bit and tried to find patches they’d overlooked, but as the orange of sunset gave way to gray twilight, all four men were growing frustrated.

Then Tom kicked something in the leaves. It was partially embedded in the ground and came loose as his foot dragged across it, sending up a small spray of leaves and dirt. He bent down to pick it up, and a chill went through his entire body.

It was a jackknife.

It had obviously been there for a very long time since most of the metal had rusted away. But the plastic pieces on the sides, molded to look like bone, were still intact, though weathered and brittle from years of exposure to the elements.

“I found something!” Tom shouted.

The others came running, and he held the knife up for them to examine. “It was stuck in the ground right there.” He pointed.

Kevin held out a shaky hand, and Tom dropped the knife into it. With an audible exhalation of breath, Kevin rubbed his fingers over the fake bone surface on the knife handle, rubbing dirt off it. “Yeah… I think this might be it. I only saw it that night, but….”

Abruptly he handed it to Chief Burbank. “Here. Use it as evidence or something. I don’t want to touch it anymore.”

Burbank took the knife and examined it. “Does this mean we’re near the well?”

“Maybe. I don’t know when that fell out of my father’s pocket.”

But they were standing not ten feet from a cluster of witch hazel. While Kevin and Burbank discussed the knife, Tom moved closer to the bushes, a sick feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. He brushed aside the broad leaves and felt the skin prick up on the back of his neck. “Oh Jesus….”

The cement ring of the well didn’t rise up from the ground more than a foot, and the wooden cover was half hidden under a layer of dead leaves and twigs. The boards had nearly rotted through, and the entire thing sagged in the middle under the weight of the debris.