The Bone House (15 page)

    He
drove to the very end of Port des Morts Drive, where he parked in a sheltered
turnaround. He got out of his Tahoe and walked up a muddy dirt driveway toward
Peter Hoffman's log home. It was a small house on a large lot that was thick
with mature oak trees. Pete had lived there since he and Reich returned from
Vietnam together. His friend kept it impeccably maintained; the house was his
hobby and his passion. There was not much else in Pete's life, not since the
loss of his wife to cancer seven years ago. Not since his retirement.

    Not
since the fire.

    Reich
rang the bell, but the quietness of the house told him that Pete had left for
his morning hike. He knew where to find him. He got back in his truck, retraced
his path for a quarter-mile, and turned toward the water at Kenosha Drive,
which led into the county park. Toward the end of the short road, he could see
the bay through the grove of towering spruce trees, and under the dark sky, the
water was so blue it was almost black. He parked in the dormant grass, where
remnants of snow clung to shaded patches of earth. Ahead of him were two gray
benches, angled toward the water. Sitting on one bench was Peter Hoffman.

    Reich
climbed down from his truck. He could see his breath. The morning was cold,
with a gusty breeze that had tossed the island ferry like a whale heaving up
and down through the waves. Even in summer, it was cold here, but he never felt
the cold himself, or if he did, he shut it out of his mind. At sixty years old,
he woke up every morning with a bone-deep aching in his limbs, but he didn't
let it stop him from the chores of the day: shoveling his island driveway,
splitting and chopping wood for the fireplace, or lifting weights religiously
in his basement gym. As far as Reich was concerned, he may as well have been
forty-five.

    He
wore a brown sheriff's department uniform, which fitted perfectly and was
pressed into sharp creases. He hadn't gained a pound in years. His badge
glinted like gold on his chest, and he shined his boots to a high polish every
night, cleaning off the grime of the job, which took him into muddy, dusty
corners of the county. His white hair was cropped to a half-inch length and was
as flat as it had been in his Marine days. He wasn't tall, about five feet
eight, but he had fought and beaten men who were thirty years younger and fifty
pounds heavier over the years. He figured he still could.

    Reich
watched the water with a grim expression. You could live here your whole life,
as he had, and find something different in the colors of the waves every day.
On the horizon, he saw the rocky outline of Plum Island and, beyond it, the low
shelf of Washington Island, where he'd bought his home in the 1970s and stayed
there, alone, unmarried, ever since. He felt a kinship with the island and the
rocky passage to the mainland, but he was no romantic about it. Every season,
they fished out the bodies of those who underestimated Death's Door.

    Not
saying a word, Reich sat down on the bench opposite Peter Hoffman, who didn't
look at him. Tree stumps dotted the clearing around them. Spidery shadows from
the birches made a web in the grass. Pete drank coffee from the plastic cup of
a Thermos, and Reich could see steam clouding above the mug. He could also
smell whiskey on his friend's breath.

    'Pretty
early for the sauce, Pete.'

    Pete
held out the Thermos. 'You want some?'

    Reich
shook his head. He liked to drink, but never on duty and never when he was
flying or driving. And not at nine in the morning.

    'You
heard?' Reich asked.

    Pete
swallowed his doctored coffee and wiped his mouth. His eyes were focused way
out in the bay. He nodded, but he didn't say anything.

    'Glory
Fischer,' Reich murmured. 'Like that little girl didn't suffer enough.'

    Pete took
a loud, ragged breath. Reich thought his friend might cry. He was worried about
Pete and had been for the better part of a year. When they'd served together,
Pete had been just like himself, a hard nail you could pound and never bend its
shape. That had stayed true for most of their lives. Both of them were natives,
which made them a rare breed in Door County. They could practically see each
other's homes across the four miles of the passage. They'd hunted, fished, and
gotten drunk together more times than Reich could count. They had identical
values about God, life, and evil that had stayed rock solid while the rest of
the world went to hell.

    But
this was not the Pete he knew. The old man drinking on a bench in the early
morning. Letting himself go. Drowning in his sorrow. Limping around his empty
house, thanks to the bullet he'd taken when he stepped in front of a rifle
aimed at Reich in 1969. His rigid bearing had begun to slump, and only his
hair, which was still oddly black, resembled the man who had been Reich's best
friend for his entire life. Pete was eight years older, and he looked as if he,
like the water, was at death's door.

    'I
talked to Delia,' Reich told him. 'She's been in Florida with Tresa and Troy
Geier for a couple days, trying to get the local cops off their asses. She'll
be home today. Tresa's not going back to River Falls this term. She's staying
here.'

    'Good
thing,' Pete rumbled.

    'Delia
and the cops think it was that son of a bitch who was banging Tresa,' Reich
added. 'The teacher. Mark Bradley. He was down there at the hotel. The cops are
pretty sure he was on the beach with Glory.'

    Pete
turned to him with bloodshot eyes. 'Is he going to get what he deserves this
time?'

    'If I
have anything to say about it, you're damn right he will.'

    The
two men sat in silence. The wind roared between them, waking up the trees.
Early-season birds chattered in agitation. Peter Hoffman pushed himself off the
bench, and his body swayed unsteadily. Reich made a move to help him, but Pete
waved him away. Pete leaned against a tree stump and overturned his Thermos,
letting the coffee splash into a puddle in the dirt. He straightened up as well
as he could and looked down at Reich with immense sadness.

    'It's
going to come up again, isn't it?' Pete asked. 'The fire.'

    'I
imagine it will.'

    'I
really thought we were done with it. I thought it was over.'

    Reich
said nothing. He knew the fire wasn't the kind of event that was ever really over.
No matter how much you tried to lock the past in a cellar, it found a way to
get out. That had been true for Pete since it happened, and it was hard to
blame him. He'd lost his oldest daughter. Two of his grandchildren. All of
that, the year after his wife succumbed to a slow, horrible disease. It was
like having his whole life leveled to the ground with napalm.

    'I
guess the fire got Glory after all,' Pete went on.

    Reich
shook his head fiercely. 'This has nothing to do with the fire or with Harris
Bone. Mark Bradley is the one who did this to Glory, and I'm not going to let
him throw up a smokescreen.'

    Peter
Hoffman shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the sky through the
tangle of trees. 'Harris Bone,' he said fiercely.

    Reich
found himself getting angry with his friend. 'We can't change the past, Pete.
This is about getting justice for Glory. OK? We owe it to that girl. We were
the ones who found her.'

    
It
was over before anyone knew.

    It
was over before there were sirens and lights and before a single high-pressure
fire hose blasted water over the super-heated remains. By the time a neighbor
near Kangaroo Lake awoke in the middle of the night and smelled the sharp aroma
of burning wood in the air, and called 911, the Bone house was gone, its walls
consumed into ash, its roof caved in over scorched Sheetrock and stone. The
fire was complete in its destruction.

    That
night, Felix Reich and Peter Hoffman had been playing poker with two of Felix's
deputies in a farmhouse east of Egg Harbor. The air had the deadness of summer,
humid and warm. Mosquitoes and moths clung to the screens. Their T-shirts were
wet with sweat. They were on County Road E, only three miles west of the home
where Pete's son-in-law lived. Harris Bone was married to Pete's daughter
Nettie, father to his grandchildren Karl, Scott and Jen. That was the man's
only redeeming quality in Pete's eyes.

    Reich
knew that Pete had little time for his son-in-law of seventeen years. Harris
had taken over his mother's liquor store in Sturgeon Bay after she passed away,
but it had failed when a larger competitor opened in town. Since then, he had
spent most of his life on the road, scraping together money as a vending
machine salesman around the state of Wisconsin. Even when he was home, there
was no peace. He and Nettie tore into each other like feral cats. It was a
house painted over with thick coats of bitterness and bile.

    In
truth, Reich knew that Nettie was no prize, but you didn't say that to a friend.
He'd listened to her pick apart her husband for years. Harris was a failure. He
wasn't religious enough. He wasn't successful enough. He didn't know how to
work with his hands. He was always wrong. Reich, who'd never wanted a wife and
never missed having one, felt the tiniest sympathy for Harris every time he was
in the house, listening to the man's ego get chipped away by this tiny,
overbearing woman, who dominated his life from her wheelchair. The boys had
begun to pick up the same habits, running down their father to win their
mother's approval. For Harris, being home in that house must have felt like
being in a cage.

    Reich
knew they would never divorce. Godly couples didn't do that. He had just never imagined
where it would all lead when Harris finally snapped.

    
He heard the call on his radio as the poker game was winding
down. The report of the fire. He jumped in his truck to respond, and Pete,
who'd driven with him to the game, joined him for the ride. They had no
address, but the closer they got to Kangaroo Lake, the more the smoke guided
them, until they spotted a black column above the trees that was even darker
than the night sky. It had never occurred to either one of them where the fire
might be, and it was only when they turned down the road leading to the lake,
where Pete's family lived, that Reich began to get a sick feeling. He drove
faster, and the loose gravel made a roar under his tires.

    He
could sense it in Pete, too. The fear. The horror.

    When
they were half a mile away, he saw the glow of the fire, but it was too late.
He parked on the road, and both men got out and ran, but the flames were
already smacking their lips, popping and belching as they picked over the remains.
A hundred tiny fires glowed throughout the wreckage, spreading across the
wooded lot. Reich felt the heat on his face. He coughed violently as he inhaled
smoke. He smelled gasoline and wood, and above all that he recognized a foul
odor he hadn't smelled in decades and had hoped he would never smell again.

    Burnt
human flesh.

    Next
to him, Pete began to disintegrate. His eyes widened in terrified disbelief, as
if he'd been ushered into the belly of Hell to witness the conflagration. He
moaned his daughter's name and the names of his grandchildren. He crumpled in
the driveway and then ran, stumbling, directly for the fiery core where the
house had been. Reich chased after him, knowing that Pete wouldn't stop; he
would run into the fire and let it kill him. With a shout, he threw himself on
his friend's back and drove Pete into the earth, holding him down while he
cried and beat the ground. Reich winced, listening to the primal agony
screeching out of Pete's throat, hearing it devolve into whimpers of despair.

    When
Reich got to his feet again, covered in dirt and ash, he saw Harris Bone.

    Harris
stood thirty feet away, silent, motionless, watching the work of the fire. His
Buick was parked in the grass. Sparks flew around him like fireworks, landing
in his hair and making black burn marks like cigarette holes on his clothes. He
seemed oblivious to the presence of Reich or to the tortured desperation of his
father-in-law. Reich approached Harris carefully, and as he did, he realized
that the man reeked of gasoline, and his face was streaked with soot. Harris's
eyes, reflecting the fire, were blank and devoid of emotion.

    'What
happened here, Harris?' Reich asked.

    Harris
Bone shook his head and murmured, 'I'm sorry.'

    'Were
they inside? Was your family inside?'

    'I'm
sorry,' he repeated, continuing to watch the fire as if it were something
distant and detached.