BoneMan's Daughters (19 page)

He knew then, thinking about the landscape around him, that he really was finding himself again. On several occasions he wished
he had a cell phone so that he could call up Father Hortense and inform him that he had turned the corner, more so than they
had realized even yesterday, but he didn’t have another cell phone yet.

San Antonio was pretty much the way he remembered it. He headed to the east side and took his time driving through neighborhoods
near Fort Sam Houston. Knowing that he wouldn’t be staying long if he did come, he looked for monthly rentals—common in this
area. He didn’t really care how nice the neighborhood was; he would be going it alone this time.

It was seven o’clock that evening before Ryan Evans pulled the Toyota Camry into the parking lot of the Howard Johnson off
I-35, checked in for one night, and retired to his room to watch a pay-per-view movie, something he hadn’t done in over two
years.

He fell asleep in the first ten minutes.

RYAN WOKE TO a housekeeping call at his door the next morning. He pulled his sheets off and informed the maid that he wasn’t
ready.

Ten o’clock? He’d slept as though dead.

Standing and stretching, he felt an unusual calm. Sunlight flooded the room when he ripped open the green curtains. A new
day awaited and there was no way it could disappoint him; he’d already lived through the worst life could bring his way.

Not even death, he thought. He’d faced death and no longer feared it.

He spent the next two hours taking a long, luxuriously hot shower and relishing each bite of his bacon-and-eggs breakfast
at the Denny’s next to the hotel. He finished his fourth cup of coffee, paid the cashier sixteen dollars and an extra five
for tip, then headed back out to his Toyota Camry.

Two nearby apartment complexes were to his liking and he took applications from both and told the managers he’d be in touch.
No hurry, but both had several vacancies that they were eager to fill immediately.

The drive back to Waco was uneventful, except for the driving rhythm, which provided for an excellent environment to think
clearly now that he was once again capable. Celine was in the hands and arms of another man.

Bethany was growing into a young woman with a bright future who would thrive in this self-indulgent landscape called North
America.

He, on the other hand, was an outsider, with neither lover nor bright future in a place he was neither needed nor wanted.

The thought did pain him some, but he was now healthy enough to understand that some emotion was good, so long as it didn’t
interfere with sound reasoning.

His apartment off University was no worse off for sitting vacant for two days. He flipped the lights on, tossed his keys on
the counter, and took another shower. Few realized the benefits of raising one’s skin temperature roughly an hour before sleep
through a hot shower. The body compensated by slowing itself down to cool, and this often resulted in drowsiness and sound
sleep.

He pulled on a pair of gray sweats and a black Nike T-shirt, then sat down to scan the cable feeds. Nothing jumped out at
him. Unless the terrorists had knocked over another tower, he wasn’t interested in the news. The evening soaps, as he called
them, no better. He settled on the Science Channel, which was running a program on how technology was changing forensics and
crime scene investigation. CSI.

This he found utterly fascinating. But when the show ended fifty minutes later, it was followed by a less interesting program
about the building of the
Titanic.

Feeling drowsy from his hot shower, Ryan clicked the TV off, poured himself a glass of water, and headed off to bed.

He’d pulled back the covers and was about to climb under the cool sheets when it occurred to him that he hadn’t checked the
answering machine for messages. He’d gone days and even a week without checking the messages, something that Hortense had
chided him for.

Not that it would matter at ten in the evening. He would check the machine when he woke.

Ryan slid into bed and sighed deeply. He’d slept a lot over the past two months but those times of lapsed consciousness had
been a mental retreat from reality. The sleep his body demanded now came from a healthy, even overactive mind.

The next morning came too soon for his tastes, thanks to the shrill ring of his phone. He rolled from the bed and lurched
for the kitchen, noting that it was already a quarter past eight. But the phone stopped ringing while he was still in the
living room.

Time to get up anyway.

Whoever it was didn’t bother to leave a message. He walked into the kitchen, started the coffeemaker, and filled the pot with
filtered water. The little red light on the answering machine was blinking.

So he did have a message?

He looked closer.
4 messages
.

Four? He’d received maybe a total of five messages since taking the apartment. Setting the pot he was filling back in the
sink, he wiped his hands and pushed the playback button.

The first message was from a gravely concerned Father Hortense. “Please, Ryan, if you’re there, pick up the phone. It’s urgent
I talk to you.” A small stretch of silence. “Check the news. Call me as soon as you can.”

The news? He’d never heard Hortense speak with such urgency.

Ryan let the machine run, a second message from Father Hortense, demanding he call him immediately. He hurried into the living
room and tuned to CNN.

Football scores.

FOX was no better, some story about a bear that had taken a swipe at a photographer who—

Headline News.
Sports again. But the headlines ran across the bottom in a ticker tape.

REBELS STRIKE MILITARY BASE IN SOMALIA, KILLING 34 U.S. TROOPS…

STOCK MARKET GAINS 312 POINTS ON NEWS OF HOUSING REBOUND…

KILLER KNOWN AS BONEMAN TAKES ANOTHER VICTIM AFTER TWO-YEAR HIATUS…

CHINA…

But Ryan’s mind was locked on the story that had just rolled off the screen. The BoneMan had struck again. Either because
the man they’d released from prison had indeed been BoneMan or because the killer no longer wanted to hide behind the wrong
man.

Father Hortense was calling him to talk it through with him so that he wouldn’t overreact.

He let out some air. Hortense didn’t realize just how far Ryan had progressed these last few days. He not only cared very
little about this whole BoneMan connection to his torture in the desert but he had released the guilt that had kept him bound
to the experience.

He’d let Bethany go.

Headline News
was talking about Michael Jackson. Ryan watched for a minute, waiting for the ticker tape to roll back around to news of
the BoneMan, just in case he’d missed something.

The third message was from Hortense, yet again, left yesterday afternoon. Same thing. He would have to call the man back and
set his mind to rest.

There it was again, rolling across the bottom:
Killer known…

The fourth answering machine message began to play, a soft, low voice from the kitchen. “Hello, Father. I have the girl you
think is your daughter.”

Ryan spun his head in the direction of the kitchen.

The voice continued after a brief pause. “Her name is Bethany and she is mine now. It took you seven days to make her, now
I’m giving you as much time to save her. If you think you can catch her, follow me where the crows fly, alone, Father.”

Click
.

FOR WHAT FELT like several minutes but could only have been a few seconds, Ryan found that he could not move. He just stood
in his living room, arms spread slightly by his sides, eyes peeled at the kitchen, mouth gaping. Frozen like a stone pillar
in the dead of winter.

The photographs that Kahlid had pinned to the wall filled his mind. The sound of Ahmed’s breaking bones.

BoneMan had Bethany. The knowledge felt distant, only vaguely relevant because it couldn’t be true, not in its entirety. He
was missing something. A mistake had been made. It defied all reason.

Ryan had allowed other children to suffer to protect his own daughter. This wasn’t Kahlid because he’d killed the man. And
yet by escaping Kahlid he’d still condemned his own daughter? BoneMan had stumbled upon the story, maybe talked to Burton
Welsh after Ryan had rubbed the BoneMan in his face for effect.

Was it possible that he’d actually attracted the BoneMan’s attention?

His heart pounded like a steam piston. His mouth felt like it had been stuffed with powder; waves of heat rolled over him,
but he was fully aware and fully in control, because he knew that his mind was in a delicate place and could be thrown back
into disorder, driven by irrational emotion. He had to stay calm!

Ryan’s eyes jerked to the television screen. The woman anchoring
Headline News
was now talking next to bold letters that read BONEMAN STRIKES AGAIN. A photograph stared at him from beneath the letters.

A beautiful, smiling young woman with flowing brown hair and bright blue eyes who looked nineteen, not sixteen. Bethany.

Ryan knew that he was losing control before the shakes came, but he was powerless to stop them. He felt as if a giant hand
had reached down his throat and ripped out his heart and, now hollowed, his chest was reacting violently with the rest of
his body before dropping into a pile, dead.

But he didn’t drop dead and was no longer only shaking. He was sprinting. Racing into the kitchen, stabbing at the play button,
fighting a full-tilt panic.

Father Hortense’s voice came on, asking him to—He erased the message, and the next, and the next, and then BoneMan’s voice
crackled over the machine’s tiny speakers.

“Hello, Father. I have the girl you think is your daughter. Her name is Bethany and she is mine now. It took you seven days
to make her, now I’m giving you as much time to save her. If you think you can catch her, follow me where the crows fly, alone,
Father.”

He slammed his fist down on the machine and screamed.

“Mail box empty,” the device announced.

He had to think… .

Think, think!

Stay calm, Ryan. Just stay calm.

How had the BoneMan known to call him?
Father
, as if Ryan was the BoneMan’s father? As if BoneMan were some kind of sick Satan who had taken a daughter and wanted her
father to play God?

Come and get me, Father
.

Ryan grabbed the phone and punched in Celine’s cell number, pacing as it rang.

“Come on, Celine. Please pick up.”

“Leave a message,” her cheery voice announced.

He quickly entered the home phone, missed a digit, retried, and hit the connect button.

This time it was Bethany, and Ryan’s world blurred at the sound of his daughter’s voice. “Hello, you know the drill. If you
want me, call me. If you want Celine, call Celine. Don’t bother with this machine, no one checks it.”

Click
.

“Celine?” His voice sounded frantic. “Celine, for God’s sake, pick up the phone!”

Silence.

“Celine?”

But she wasn’t answering. He stood breathing hard for a moment, then tried all the numbers that might connect him with someone,
anyone, who could tell him what was going on. He had to know why? When? How long had she been gone? Had they found her?

He frantically spun through the handful of contacts that might connect him to Celine. Her cell again, the home phone again,
the DA’s office, which connected him to another voice mail.

Why hadn’t Celine contacted him?

He tried the priest’s line, but again, no live connection.

The apartment walls felt like they were closing in on him, toppling over, pushed from the outside to crush him.

Did the FBI know about the seven days BoneMan had given them? Or was it just him? Had this been a private challenge only for
his ears?

Angel, my angel, dear God please, please don’t let her be hurt.

But he knew that it was too late. No matter what the outcome now, Bethany, his sweet little girl who was the very essence
of his life, would be scarred for life.

He had to know what was happening!

Ryan snatched up his car keys, ripped the answering machine from the wall, and ran from the apartment.

It took him an hour, most of it doing ninety miles an hour in a cool, steady sweat, to reach Capitol of Texas Highway. Another
twenty minutes to reach Celine’s neighborhood, all of it regretting that he didn’t have a cell phone yet.

The moment Ryan pulled up to Celine’s house, he knew that BoneMan had taken Bethany from this house. A squad car sat in the
driveway, along with two unmarked sedans—likely FBI. Yellow tape cordoned off the sidewalk that ran around the house to the
backyard.

Rather than march in through the front door and demand answers as he’d intended all along, he parked his Camry on the street
and angled around the house toward the backyard.

Only then did the restraining order occur to him, but the thought did little more than slow him down. Clearly, a restraining
order meant nothing in the face of what had happened.

He stumbled forward, legs wobbling beneath him like Twizzlers. An extension ladder rose from the ground to the upper balcony,
where it rested against white railing in need of a fresh coat of paint.

Ryan pulled up hard, locked down by the sight. A slight breeze was blowing lazily through the trees. Behind him, car tires
rolled past on Barton Creek Boulevard. High overhead a jet roared as it clawed higher.

But none of the sounds swirling around Ryan were as pronounced as the stillness of the ladder BoneMan had used to access his
daughter’s bedroom.

It was the stillness of utter emptiness and it hit Ryan’s chest with enough force to rob him of breath for several long beats
of his heart. The crime scene had already been processed a full day after the crime. The yellow tape served as a reminder
that forensics investigators had been and gone and enough time had passed for any trail to have gone cold.