BoneMan's Daughters (8 page)

Ryan’s world faded for the second time in the last six hours. Blood coursed through his veins, pumped by a heavy beat. His
chest tightened to restrict his breathing, and his eyes, though open, stopped seeing for a moment.

He’d suffered panic attacks once in Turkey for no outwardly good reason at all. The doctor had said they might be related
to diet.

Everything in him suddenly wanted to scream out in rage. But giving in at this point would only undermine any chance he had
of beating Kahlid at his own game.

Slowly his vision returned.

The boy was chattering through tears. Three words drummed through Ryan’s mind: Manipulation. Escape. Suicide. In that order,
if possible.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said.

“I’ve already offered a deal. It’s the only one I’ll consider.”

“Did I say my deal was different than yours?”

The man cracked his neck slowly. “You are not in a position to be clever, Kent. By now you’ve considered every possible outcome
of this scenario and you realize that the only option that makes sense is for you to do as I say. That is my only deal.”

“Then I’ll agree to your deal. I’ll give you the name and address of my wife.”

Kahlid arched his brow. “Really? To save this one boy?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

He would give an entirely false address, of course, one that he knew didn’t exist. A street in San Antonio that he knew ended
in the 1200 block. Celine and Bethany had moved to Austin when he’d shipped out for this last tour. He didn’t want Kahlid
anywhere near them.

“No, I said wife and child. Not wife.”

The demand was unexpected and Ryan hesitated. And in that hesitation he knew that he’d made a critical mistake. He’d just
informed the man that he indeed had a child.

Kahlid smiled. “Thank you. I was hoping you had a child. And I need both.”

“If I give you one I’m giving you both, aren’t I?”

Kahlid walked behind the boy, ripped gray duct tape off a roll, and strapped it around his quivering lips, eyes on Ryan.

“I’m tempted to let you hear him scream, but I don’t think I could stand it.”

“I’ll give them to you!” Ryan snapped, losing himself.

“Emotion. That’s good, Kent. Because I need more than just the name and address of your wife and daughter… it is a daughter,
isn’t it?”

“None of your business.” His fingers were shaking now.

“Better.” He nodded at the men, who came over and knelt down on either side of the boy. “I need you to look into the camera,
give your true name and your rank, and then beg that I kill your wife and daughter for the sake of this child. I need the
world to see it all.”

“I’ll give you their names and—”

“Now, Kent. What is your real name?”

His world started to dim again, and he began to shake. It was involuntary and he made no effort to still himself. He had to
keep the man talking.

“Okay. You win. You sick pig. Captain Frank Barnes.”

“Address?”

“1400 Houston Way.”

“City?”

“San Antonio, Texas.”

Kahlid withdrew a radio from his pocket and spoke the address into the mouthpiece.

The men forced the boy to kneel beside the metal chair, positioning his forearm over the edge.

Nausea swept through Ryan’s gut. His mind quickly ran through his remaining options.

Escape was out of the question at this moment.

Suicide would take too much time now, assuming he could really go through with it.

The radio crackled. Soon. Only seconds had passed. They’d planned this down to the last detail.

“The address doesn’t exist,” a voice said in Arabic.

“Please… okay. Just give me a minute!” Ryan cried the words without intending to yield to emotion.

“Watch! I want you to watch what you have done. You can’t hide your head in the sand like the rest of your country! Watch
what your decision does!”

“Please…”

Kahlid shifted his eyes to one of his men. “Break his bones.”

Something snapped in Ryan’s mind. He could feel it break loose and fall away like curtains dropping to the stage.

The chains that held him gave him a mere six inches of play, but he didn’t care about that. He had to do something, anything.
So he lunged forward with all of his strength, screaming a wordless protest.

His backside barely cleared the seat before the chains stopped him.

He heard the boy screaming through his tape. And above the scream he heard the sound.

It was only a soft
pop
of bone breaking within flesh, but it was a sound that would haunt even the coldest heart.

The pop chased Ryan into darkness and he slumped into unconsciousness.

WHEN RYAN’S MIND drifted back into the dim light, the first thing he discovered was that the metal chair that had been occupied
by the boy Ahmed was empty. He looked left and right and saw no one.

So then he’d imagined it? A flash of relief was immediately followed by reason.

No. He’d heard the pop. Kahlid had simply removed the boy. In what condition, Ryan refused to consider.

An overwhelming sense of remorse flooded his mind. Remorse for the boy, Ahmed, yes. But even more, remorse for his own daughter.
For Bethany.

He now knew with very little uncertainty that at the end of this ordeal, Bethany would be either dead or fatherless, and he
was surprised by the pain he felt at the latter possibility. Not because he feared death; and in truth he was dead. But because
now he realized that Bethany already was fatherless.

He’d abandoned her already.

What had he been thinking?

And Celine? Yes, his wife as well! How could he blame her for needing love if her own husband wasn’t close to love her?

Suicide was his only option now. He had no choice but to take his own life and end this madness. It was the only way to save
his family and any more children like Ahmed, whom the butcher named Kahlid put before him.

Something else had changed. His arms.

Ryan looked down and blinked. They’d bound his arms in towels and strapped them tightly to the sides of the chair. His first
thought was that they intended to break
his
bones.

But then he saw that they had taped his legs to the chair as well. They had immobilized him. Crude but effective means to
keep him from cutting his wrists on the chains.

They’d put him on suicide watch.

A knot formed in Ryan’s gut. Kahlid knew his psychology. He’d trapped Ryan in a predicament that could not end with an escape
into his own death.

A soft whimper sounded behind him. He twisted his head around and saw two things that etched a bitter chill down his neck.
The first was Ahmed’s dead, badly bruised, and twisted body on the floor just behind his chair.

The second was a teenaged girl hog-tied in the back corner, staring at him with brown eyes through long stringy hair.

Miriam.

Dear God. Dear God, forgive me…

RICKI VALENTINE SLOWLY paced along the two tables on which she’d carefully organized the reams of reports and photographs
from BoneMan’s files. Laid out in seven columns, one for each case, in the order they’d been investigated. A map of Texas
faced her from the wall behind the tables, showing the path of death BoneMan had carved from El Paso to Austin.

Four days had passed since Kracker asked her to dive back into the case that had consumed her two years earlier, and she’d
spent half of that time pacing. Running her hand along the table, examining each piece of data, each field report, each photograph,
with the intent of extracting even a whiff of evidence they’d missed before.

Her task was a simple one: Keep Switzer behind bars, because they all knew that Switzer was BoneMan. Save the DA. Prevent
a killer from breaking another bone.

Convince the evidence to tell her something new.

But the evidence wasn’t cooperating.

Mark Resner, her partner on the case, leaned against his desk ten feet to her left, sleeves of his white shirt rolled up,
tapping a pencil on his palm as he watched her.

“The lioness stalks,” he said quietly.

She looked at him and saw that he was smiling.

“Is that what I am? I feel a bit more like a snake at the moment.”

“Now there’s an image.”

“Snaking through all this slimy mess.”

“Give it a break, Ricki. We’ve both been over it a hundred times; there’s nothing new on that table.”

She shifted her gaze to the black picture window. They were three stories up, facing a large brick building that cut out the
city’s night lights. Her reflection stared back. Haunting. Her black hair was absorbed by the night, leaving only a face with
brown eyes gazing at her.

To think that the fate of BoneMan was held in the grasp of this petite thirty-five-year-old woman. An odd thought.

“Mind closing the blinds?”

Mark walked to the window and lowered the white blinds.

It was more than just BoneMan’s fate. It was the fate of other victims, should BoneMan strike again. Of the DA, should Switzer
go free. The people when the realization that the killer who’d terrorized Texas was not behind bars.

“I think you’re right, Mark,” she said, turning her attention back to the stacks of files. “There’s nothing new here.” She
walked to the end of the table, picked up one file marked Blood Lab, and headed back the way she’d come, drumming her fingers
on the file.

“I can’t help but thinking…” But she wasn’t sure quite how to put it.

The thought had run circles through her mind all afternoon and into the evening, but she’d refused to give it much attention,
because her task was to find
new
evidence, not rehash old.

“Blood?” Mark asked, eyeing the file. “The blood work’s been verified in three separate lab workups.”

“I know, Switzer’s blood, both samples apparently from the original sample.”

“But not conclusive.”

“Not conclusive in our way of thinking. But the margin of error is so small, we both know the judge will probably allow the
new evidence and declare a mistrial. That’s why we’re here.”

“But…” Mark said expectantly.

Ricki took a deep breath and eased to the middle of the room, eyes on the table all the way. She stopped, held out the blood
file, and released it.

The manila file landed on the carpet with a soft
plop
.

Ricki put her hands on her hips and nodded at the table. “What do you see?”

Mark joined her and stared at the stacks, the map, all that was BoneMan in the FBI files.

“You’re saying Switzer isn’t BoneMan?” he said. “I know how it looks, but—”

“No, Mark. Just tell me what you see. What do you know about the files on that table?”

“They meticulously detail BoneMan’s work in seven murders. Crime scene investigation reports, lab work, evidence gathered
and analyzed, interviews, behavior profiles, photographs. You want me to go on?”

“You see BoneMan.”

“I see BoneMan.”

“Do you see Switzer? Just what’s on the table, do you see Switzer?”

“I think I do, yes.”

“Well, I’m not sure I do, Mark.” She paced to her right, propping one arm on the other, turning the silver cross on her breastbone
absently. “Standing back, two years after the fact, if I really do pull out the blood work, I just can’t say for sure that
the killer on that table is the man we have behind bars.”

“Well, that’ll go over. The killings stopped.”

“Wouldn’t you stop the killings if you learned that they had blamed your work on someone else?”

“Not if I were a serial killer, I wouldn’t. You know killers like BoneMan feed off the game. He would find the opportunity
to show off his handiwork irresistible, particularly after the public had sighed in relief at his supposed capture.”

“So it would seem. But pysch profiles are only educated guesses. They’re hypotheses about criminals. Isn’t it at least a possibility
that BoneMan, a killer who isn’t necessarily taking pleasure in his killing, is smarter? Having killed seven, the number of
completion in many religious circles, he’s fulfilled his obligation to God
and
gotten away with it. Or maybe he’s still killing but burying the bodies, waiting for the day to go public again.”

“Possible. But with the weight of evidence—”

“Take away the blood”—she walked over to the table, lifted a thick file, and tossed it on the carpet—“take away the psychobabble.
Now what do you see?”

“This isn’t new territory, Ricki. We thought we had the right guy before the blood turned up.”

“Just follow me. Do you see Switzer on the table now? Separating out the psych and blood?”

“He’s white, hundred and ninety pounds, size thirteen—all things we know about BoneMan.”

“So are a couple hundred thousand other Americans.”

“There’s also his refusal to deny.”

“Not an admission.”

“Dead cats—”

“Not dead girls.”

“No alibi for any of the murders.”

“Not exactly a Polaroid of him leaning over the bodies.”

He frowned, but there was a sparkle in his blue eyes. She’d dated the blond-haired agent from Mississippi long before the
BoneMan case, but they’d decided that a romance would only complicate their relationship in the office. He’d since married
Gertrude, a pretty brunette from his hometown, Biloxi.

Ricki had drifted in and out of a dozen casual relationships over the past ten years, but not too many guys were strong enough
to handle an “agent with tunnel vision,” as Mark put it. She was admittedly preoccupied. Not that she didn’t want a serious
relationship; she just wasn’t the type to go hunting for a man unless he’d committed a federal offense and deserved to spend
the rest of his time behind bars.

Not the best of bedmates.

“You really buy all that?” he said.

“I’m just saying.” Ricki walked up to him, turned to face the table, and crossed her arms. “We’re not necessarily looking
at Phil Switzer. We may be. We may not be.”

“You think that’s the way a jury would see it?”

“Depends on the attorney. But I think the judge will see it that way.”