BoneMan's Daughters (27 page)

He pulled out the blue note and wedged it into the seam above the radio.

FATHER OF LIES.

MENARD–7 MILES SOUTH

WEST–2 MILES

BENEATH THE CROWS

I’LL BE WATCHING, FATHER.

Highway 29 intersected Highway 83 just south of Menard, and they made the junction at just past two in the morning. The two-lane
roads were deserted and the rain had long ago tapered off to hardly more than a mist.

Ryan turned right on Highway 83, away from the tiny town of Menard, Texas, and headed south into the darkness.

No streetlights out here. No stars to light the sodden ground. Just his headlights, and as he approached the seven-mile marker
headed south, he felt conspicuous, so he turned off the headlights as well.

Now he rolled along the asphalt in a quiet darkness that he found even more disturbing. He turned up the radio. The soft,
melodic voice of Karen Carpenter singing “Bless the Beasts and the Children” sliced the silence.

He scanned the fields on either side. The man who they called BoneMan had Bethany out here in a hole somewhere, but no one
driving by would ever guess it. The world didn’t like to look at the dark underside very often. But that didn’t change the
ugliness; it only ensured that those who perpetuated the ugliness were left alone to kill and maim and rape.

The melancholic sounds of the Carpenters suddenly struck him as obscene and he turned off the radio and drove on in silence.

He stopped the Ford Taurus at the seven-mile marker. A dirt road headed directly east into the field on his right. The green
sign that hung at a slight angle said it was called Landers Lane. He could just see the white letters by the light of a moon
that was now trying to gleam past the breaking storm clouds.

Ryan held the car at the intersection for a few long breaths. He wiped his palms on his pants and looked over at Burton Welsh,
the man who’d seduced his wife while he was in the desert.

The gravel under his rubber tires popped as he turned and rolled down Landers Lane. Cornstalks rose on either side. The road
veered left—south—and he followed it with one eye on the odometer. But there was no need because the huge switching station
rose from the earth at about the right distance, and Ryan knew immediately that he’d arrived.

The crows would perch themselves on the high-voltage lines that ran into the switching station. And under these lines somewhere
there was a room. An old storage room that had sat unused for a long time while it waited to be occupied this night.

Then he saw it, a board on the fence that surrounded the switching station. A crudely marked red arrow pointed to the right,
where a large mound of gravel stood against the dark sky.

He angled the car for the hill and saw that the ground dipped into a large pit beyond. This was a switching station, but it
was also an old gravel pit. Or a mining pit.

The storage facility was built into the side of the hill. He could see that it sat closed on the face of the concrete, and
on this wood door was the rough outline of a bird.

A crow.

RICKI VALENTINE JERKED upright with dreams of a sunny day in Saint John, Virgin Islands, still ambling through her head.
She’d spent two weeks there after the apprehension of Phil Switzer, basking in the careless sun as far from the hot Texas
summer as possible. She spent the time wandering the beach and visiting small establishments that catered to tourists by selling
overpriced trinkets and water-sporting opportunities, and all the while her mind had returned to the BoneMan only a few times.
Amazing how a change of geography could jar the mind out of its deep, dark trenches.

The clock on her nightstand read 2:43 AM in large red letters. Her phone was still chirping. She wasn’t in the Caribbean now
and BoneMan wasn’t behind bars.

“Hello?”

Mark sounded like he’d been up for a while. “Sorry for the hour, Ricki. We have a development. Burton Welsh’s house was broken
into and he seems to be missing.”

The data swirled through her mind.

“Seems to be?”

“Well, he lives alone and the neighbors say he has a habit of coming and going at all hours, so the police can’t be sure he
isn’t shacked up somewhere else.”

“But?”

“But his door shows signs of forced entry and his bed was slept in. His car’s still in the garage.”

Ricki stood from the bed. “So he was taken. When was this?”

“Almost three hours—”

“What?” She hurried to the bathroom, flipping on lights as she went. “You’re just now being told?”

“Evidently the man was a bit of a womanizer and someone down at the department has been sitting on a theory that this is woman
trouble, nothing more. You go public only to learn that Welsh left with a jilted lover and… well, you get the picture.
He’s an elected official.”

“Okay, text me the address. I’m on my way.”

“You gotta hand it to the guy, he’s got a set.”

That he did. If this was Ryan Evans, and Ryan Evans was indeed the killer, he’d come back to take the man whom he perceived
as being the spoiler of his family. BoneMan had never taken male victims that they knew about, but the circumstances provided
the perfect opportunity.

There was a kind of ironic beauty to it, Ricki thought. And then she scolded herself for such a crude thought.

“He’s breaking his own pattern and escalating. You realize what this means, Mark.”

“That the daughter is still alive.”

“That’s right. He’s involving Welsh. We find Welsh, we find the girl. No obvious leads.”

“A police cruiser remembers a black Ford sedan on Highway 71 as he responded to the call. Not too many cars on the road at
that time.”

A black Ford Taurus had been flagged as stolen and put into the search grid along with another hundred possible vehicles Evans
could have used for his escape.

“Nothing else?” She pulled on her jeans, cradling the phone between her shoulder and ear.

“They’re running prints from the door now. Nothing else.”

“Find that Taurus. Flood the airwaves with it. Anyone who drives a dark-colored Ford Taurus gets pulled over.”

“They’re on it. We could use some light; he couldn’t have picked a better night.”

“We may not have the time to wait for light.”

RYAN SAT IN the car as it ticked, cooling still after a full fifteen minutes of sitting in the quarry. Beside him, Welsh was
still slumped up against the window, dead to the world. The clouds had just started to break up, allowing starlight to cast
a cool glow over the barren depression into which he’d driven. The hum of high voltage from the nearby wires reached past
the sealed car.

And ahead there, on the side of the hill, that concrete wall with a painted door. Other than the one arrow on the fence and
this crow on the door, there was no sign of BoneMan.

But he was watching. Just as sure as he’d watched Ryan sitting under the tree at the Crow’s Nest Ranch, he was watching now,
from the cracks between the boards in the door. From behind one of the boulders that lay around the quarry or from the rim
above them.

He stared at the door, fixed to the seat like a skeleton long robbed of life. Bethany was either behind the door or she was
not.

If she was behind it, then BoneMan intended for them both to face their greatest fears in the hours to come.

If she wasn’t behind the door, then he would be forced to face his greatest fear, which was that his daughter was still in
the killer’s grasp somewhere, and Ryan would be left to do whatever BoneMan required in order to rescue his daughter.

For this reason Ryan found himself immobilized as he stared at the door.

And for what lay ahead of him pertaining to the DA. However guilty Welsh was of countless sins, he was not deserving of what
lay ahead any more than the children in the desert were deserving of Kahlid’s hammer.

On the other hand, Ryan didn’t necessarily have to kill the man. Not yet. There had to be another way.

The thoughts ran in circles, but they did not bring any relief. These facts remained: The night was quiet. The night was dark.
A captive man lay to his right. The wooden door was shut.

He had to enter that door and do what BoneMan demanded before morning.

Ryan pushed his door open and blinked at the obscenely loud buzz that cut through the air. He collected himself, then stepped
out onto the gravel.

If there was any moment in his life he’d been born for, it was this one. No ordinary man could shut down his emotions and
do what must be done the way he could. Hadn’t he proved that?

So then he would simply move through this situation in a cold, calculating fashion, without lingering long enough on any moment
to allow his nervous system time to react with those chemicals that spawned emotion.

This wasn’t about him or, for that matter, about the man who’d sworn to uphold the law, his captive, Burton Welsh.

This night was about Bethany.

Ryan took one very deep breath, crossed in front of the car, and opened the passenger door. No longer supported, Welsh’s body
slipped halfway out. His hands dangled onto the gravel—by all appearances, lifeless.

Ryan checked his carotid for a pulse, found one, and took both of his hands in his. He tugged the man out of the car and managed
another ten feet before the man’s weight became too much to manage without slipping.

Removing his belt, he tied Welsh’s arms behind his back as tightly as he could manage. It took only a few sharp slaps on the
man’s cheek to rouse him.

Another minute before the man was coherent enough to get his feet under his weight and stand, and Ryan took advantage of the
time to shove a paper towel he retrieved from the car into his mouth.

The man made a feeble attempt to protest, but one poke of the gun barrel in his ear shut him up.

“Move.”

The man lumbered forward, up to what Ryan now thought of as a toolshed. It could have been built to house fuses or some other
high-voltage parts that were best kept cool underground, or it could have been used to store machinery necessary to operate
the quarry back in the day.

None of this mattered to Ryan, but he drew some comfort from the fact that he was able to think clearly enough to make simple
deductions. The last thing he should do was react impulsively to whatever greeted him beyond that door.

That unlocked door.

He reached around Welsh, keeping the gun on his neck, and pulled the door open. Orange light from an oil lamp that hung in
the middle of the room spilled out.

So then BoneMan had been here. Or was still here.

He used the barrel to propel Welsh into the room ahead of him, then closed the door behind them.

They stood in a room, perhaps twenty feet square, poured from concrete, with three large timbers to support a wood ceiling.
The lantern hung from a hook on the center beam.

One glance around the room told Ryan that neither BoneMan nor Bethany was in this place, and he nearly ran back out to search
the hillside for another door, another room, anyplace in which they might be hiding.

But there were drawings on the walls and these drawings made the purpose of his invitation here clear. BoneMan had used to
chalk to draw dozens of medical diagrams showing the human skeleton. Large circles served as insets that magnified the form’s
bones, marking joints and specific points on each.

Instructions were written by each inset, detailing the correct amount of force to use so the bone wouldn’t break with enough
force to cut through the skin.

Along one wall sat a metal-framed bed. And on the bed lay several piles of four-by-four wooden blocks. A neatly folded stack
of towels and several coils of string had been set at the head of the bed.

Atop them lay a large sledgehammer and vise grips.

At first Welsh just stared, as did Ryan. But when the meaning of what this room might hold for him formed in Welsh’s mind,
he protested with a wide-eyed grunt.

He bolted across the room before Ryan could stop him and spun back, tugging at the hasty restraints that held his arms behind
his back.

“Stop it!” Ryan pointed the gun at his head, but Welsh showed no signs that he intended to stop anything. He was now yelling
into the makeshift muzzle, attempting to spit it out.

“Stop it, I’ll shoot!”

But Ryan knew that he couldn’t shoot because the largest letters on the wall made this fact painfully clear.

Break his skin and he’s no use to me.

Break all of his bones and she goes free.

Father.

The complete absurdity of his predicament struck Ryan broadside for a moment. That he was seriously considering following
BoneMan’s instructions felt at once sickening and compulsory. He wouldn’t kill Welsh. He wouldn’t do what Kahlid had done
in the desert, no matter what was at stake. He couldn’t kill an innocent man even if it meant saving his daughter.

Or could he?

Because he couldn’t
not
save his daughter! He couldn’t not do whatever was humanly possible to keep Bethany from death. If he stopped now, Bethany
would die, he was certain of it. And so, though he knew he would not, could not kill this man, he could not stop now. Not
yet.

A way would come. A ram from the thicket to spare the innocent man. The FBI, BoneMan himself, Ryan’s own death—anything to
spare him from abandoning his daughter, no matter what the cost.

Ryan did what he knew best to do. He shut down the emotion and kept the gun trained on the DA.

Welsh didn’t appear concerned that he might take a bullet. He jumped up on the bed and kept pulling at his arms.

He’d chewed up the paper towel enough to spit most of it out and now his voice howled through the storage room.

He tried to protest with cries, but it sounded more like a wounded wolf baying straight from its throat. The sound more than
the fear that Welsh might actually escape pushed Ryan into immediate action.

He leapt for the man.

Welsh had the high ground and he feigned first to his right, then to his left. Ryan jumped in both directions, following him
with the gun.