BoneMan's Daughters (35 page)

The faintest hint of gray edged the eastern sky as he left Fort Davis in his wake and brought the car back up to speed.

By the time he hit the dirt road that led into the ranch, the horizon was brighter, unquestionably so, but he still needed
his lights to see the road ahead. BoneMan had said first light, or was it dawn? Either way, this was neither dawn nor first
light. This was predawn.

Ryan slowed when he crossed under the arching Crow’s Nest Ranch sign—he’d made it this far undetected. Just a few hundred
more yards. And now he began to worry in earnest that he really was too late.

He drove the car into the same camp he’d used two days earlier, turned off the engine and the lights, and stared into the
darkness.

He opened the door and stepped out into the dirt, between the door and the car. Faint night sounds, crickets, breeze, a lizard
or two. The car’s engine cooling.

But the night sounded vacant to him, and the memory of his previous long wait pushed him into a sudden panic. He rounded the
car and stared at the camp’s perimeter.

“Hello?”

Nothing but silence answered him.

“I’m here.”

But BoneMan was as unlikely to step out and take his hand as he was to release Bethany for good behavior. What was he thinking?

“Hello? I’m here, for the love of God!” His voiced carried into the night and a lizard took flight to his right, but nothing
else seemed to take note that he was even there.

Ryan loosened his fists and walked to the same tree he’d sat under the last time he’d waited. He stood there and looked around,
mind ragged after being battered for over twenty-four hours without sleep.

There was nothing else he could do now. Nothing.

So he slowly sank to his seat, rested his arms on his knees, and sagged, exhausted. He took several deep breaths in an attempt
to calm his frayed nerves, but nothing seemed to still the palpable throb in his hands and arms.

Nothing would except sleep, and he didn’t dare fall asleep now. The man had said first light, and first light was approaching.
Then it would grow warm and he would be alone again, at the whim of a man who might very well be watching at the moment, or
might decide not to come for another day or two or never.

And what would Ryan do then? Whom would he confide in? What brilliant decision would he make except to wait, and then wait
some more until finally, a day later, a week later, he finally accepted the terrible truth that Bethany was gone? Or had been
found.

No father could do this. No mind could withstand this much…

The blow came then, like a locomotive from the night. It struck his head from behind with enough force to jerk the light from
his mind and drop him to the ground like a side of butchered beef.

Eden, Texas

ALVIN FINCH PULLED the Ford F-150 pickup truck into the barn and hauled both doors closed, shutting out most of the light.
He stood there for a moment, collecting his thoughts, grateful for his fortune.

But it wasn’t just fortune that had brought him to this place of such unprecedented opportunity. Luck had little to do with
the fact that the FBI hadn’t come sniffing anywhere near him yet. It wasn’t chance that he’d just driven a third of the way
across Texas in broad daylight without being stopped.

He was here in the musty old barn with the father of lies because of meticulous planning and he was here because he was Alvin
Finch who had become Satan for this day.

Even he hadn’t understood it all until that moment, standing before the girl, Bethany, while she placed her hands on his chest.
When the final knowledge had come he’d begun to shake, an uncommon reaction for him.

The girl who would be his daughter was the most beautiful creature he had ever shared space with, a perfect specimen of unblemished
flesh, a pristine vessel that contained everything that was desirable in life.

Bethany was a perfect creation and Alvin hated her more than he’d hated anything in his life, including his mother, whom he’d
hated very, very much. However beautiful Alvin was, he’d seen that she was far more than he could ever hope to be. The realization
had forced him to bring the last reserves of his control to bear for fear that he would reach out and snap her forearms as
she tried to seduce him.

Only the fact that she was going to be his daughter stopped him. And now he wanted more than ever to win her undying love,
her complete devotion.

He must be her father! She had to be his daughter. It was the only thing that could possibly satisfy him now.

There were two things that Alvin loved; three that he would kill for. The adoration of a girl who would be his daughter. The
unflinching devotion of that daughter. The opportunity to share a jar of Noxzema with a daughter who would rather die than
upset him.

He knew that these truths were all wrapped up a metaphorical mess that mind-prodders would call mad, but wouldn’t they also
call Satan mad?

The thought brought a flutter of contentment to his belly. Although his was often a tortured existence, there were some fringe
benefits that came along with being Satan.

He lowered the tailgate and eyed the prone form he’d wrapped in the blue tarp. The father was conscious inside, but immobilized
by the drug. It was important that he be fully aware of just how terribly he had failed.

Alvin pulled off the tarp and pulled the man out by his heel. But the boot tore free, leaving only a brown sock to cover the
man’s foot. He grabbed the heel and tugged him.

He paused when the body was halfway out, struck by the feel of the heel in his hand. The calcaneus. He’d never broken a heel
bone before, preferring instead metatarsals in the toes. The heel would require a hammer blow. Holding Ryan’s heel, Alvin
decided that this would be where he started.

The man’s eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, and his eyelids fluttered once. The drug was wearing off.

Alvin lowered the foot with both hands and dragged him out of the bed. The body landed on the old barn’s straw floor with
a thump. No grunt, no snap because the man wasn’t able to use his vocal cords and the fall was too small to break bones.

He leaned over the man’s face, knowing that the wide eyes could see. “They call me BoneMan,” he said. “But I’m really Satan
and I have your daughter.”

He offered the man a smile, but the man did not return it.

Alvin picked up the body and slung it over his shoulder and grabbed the fallen boot. He walked out of the barn without checking
to see that they were alone. The old farm that his mother had left him was ten miles off the nearest paved road and visited
only by the occasional hunter who ignored the NO TRESPASSING signs that Alvin had erected around the eighty-acre lot.

Cypress trees formed a natural boundary around the barn and house and an acre of brown, long overgrown lawn. After burying
his mother in the back over twenty years ago now, he’d locked the property down and left for the cities. He hadn’t bothered
to keep the house up and it had become virtually unlivable for a man of his tastes. He now used the house only for its basement,
where he’d perfected his craft.

He stopped halfway to the house and turned around, studying the perimeter. They could be out here for a year and no one would
know. All around Texas they were looking for BoneMan, and here he was, twenty miles south of Eden, in the basement with the
father and his daughter.

Alvin entered the house and walked down the hall to the door that blocked off the basement. He’d carefully scrubbed the kitchen
and the bathroom and the smell of bleach filled the house still. As soon as he placed the man in his own room, he would take
a shower and clean himself. It was best to be clean before he talked to his daughter again.

He left the door open and descended the concrete stairs. The electric power to the farm had been cut off a dozen years ago,
but oil lamps suited the place. They hid all the dirt.

Alvin stopped at the bottom and looked down the hall to his daughter’s door, which remained locked. He wondered what she was
doing now. Had the lamp burned out? Was she wondering how she might please him? Or was she examining the cross he’d fixed
to the wall?

His breathing thickened and he turned away. The door to the second room, the one in which he’d kept the girl for the first
few days, lay open to the darkness beyond.

Alvin shifted the body on his shoulder and walked down the hall into the room. He dumped the man on the bed and left him as
he landed, with one arm across his neck and the other under his back, staring up at the ceiling.

He considered talking to the man but decided it would be a waste of time. The basement room was dimly lit by daylight that
entered through several cracks in the foundation at the corners. The sedative would wear off soon and the man would discover
his room. He’d proven to be quite resourceful.

But they had plenty of time. It might be days before he talked to the man on the bed. His fate now hung in the balance of
the daughter’s mind.

Alvin Finch, aka BoneMan, who was really Satan, stood over the bed, lost in thoughts of the daughter again. Again his breathing
thickened.

He wanted to drag her into this room now and break her bones as the man who would be her father watched. Snap her arms and
legs using his knees as a fulcrum as he had on occasion. The sudden break would likely tear through her flesh and ruin her
skin, so he wouldn’t, but he wanted to.

He wanted to break their bones because the bones of every human who’d ever been crucified had always been broken. Every human
except for one, that one who’d been pierced. They’d messed up the crucifixion then; he’d do it right now. He thought about
doing it right this time every time he dreamed about breaking bones.

Filled with sudden rage, he bent down and slugged the man in his face. He may have broken his nose, he didn’t know, he didn’t
care. Before this was over, a broken nose would be completely forgotten.

Then he walked out of the room, locked the door, and retreated to the upstairs bathroom to take a shower and apply lotion.

THE SCENT OF camphor lingered with the oily smell of lamp oil from a flame that had burned out many hours ago. Bethany lay
in a curled ball on the sagging mattress, staring at the thin cracks of light that cast a gray hue through the cell.

She could just see the strange wood blocks that formed a large Y with a cross member on the wall and she absently wondered
about the crosslike structure. But her mind wasn’t putting the pieces together with ease any longer.

How long had she been in the basement? Five or six days? Maybe longer. At least a day since Alvin Finch, the BoneMan, had
introduced himself to her. She’d been alone with her fear for what felt like an eternity since he’d left, battling the certainty
that it was only a matter of time before he began breaking her bones, one by one.

Funny thing how one incident can turn your entire understanding of life on its head. How one week you’re planning on going
to New York to smile for the camera and the next you’re thinking that anyone who would waste even a moment of their lives
trying to impress anyone for any reason is a fool.

But aren’t you interested in impressing Alvin?

Well, if you called trying to survive in Alvin’s world trying to impress him, then yeah, maybe she would try to impress him.

The thought crawled through her mind and then left and she tried to get it back, but it was gone. Something about trying to
impress Alvin.

Yes, that was right, she was interested in impressing Alvin. Or Satan or BoneMan or whatever he wanted to be called.

The one thing Bethany had learned as she waited in the dark without food or a pot to piss in was that she was powerless down
here. Completely, utterly worthless and unable to change a thing about it.

No contract from New York could save her.

No FBI would rescue her.

No father to come to her salvation.

No mother to do anything but scream at the world about how they weren’t doing enough to find her little model who was going
to be famous, for heaven’s sake! Still, Mother was the one person she owed her life to and she missed her. What she would
give to hear a cynical, cutting remark from her now.

The idea of worrying whether or not she would miss cheerleading practice felt like an obscenity in her mind, a little cockroach
that scampered around the edges of her reality, offering her nothing but pointless distraction.

She watched a roach climb up the wall.

Another thing Bethany had learned was just how much her father’s failure bothered her. She might even say she hated Ryan more
than anyone she knew for not adequately occupying the role of her father. She could only have one father. Where was he when
she needed him? For all of his talk about how he wanted to be her father, where was he?

Her father was about as helpful as God.
I’ll be there, I’ll be there, I’ll be there, I’ll be there
, but never, never, never there. Not even the theology professor at school really expected to serve a God who would actually
rescue her from a bad day, much less Satan’s pit.

What she would give to be able to rely on a huge, wonderful God who would reach down and swat Alvin aside and scoop her up
into his chest. What if there was such a thing? Where a paternal father failed, there would be God to rescue her.

The thought choked her up with desire and she even whispered a prayer to the ceiling.

But the roots that had snaked their way into the darkness were the only thing she saw. No thunder. No one who loved her. No
father.

No, the truth of the matter was that Alvin Finch was the only one who had any power to save her skinny, worthless neck. Alvin
Finch and Bethany Evans, they were the only two who mattered now.

This was the reason she found him strangely attractive. In Alvin’s world, Alvin held all the cards. And the only way to win
in Alvin’s world was to play Alvin’s game and win some of those cards for yourself.