The Bone House (26 page)

    'This
makes it a hell of a lot harder to do that,' Cab told him. 'The more
connections between the Bones and the Fischers, the more a jury might wonder if
Glory really did see Harris at the hotel that night. It gives her an extra
reason to want to see him captured. And to be afraid of him.'

    Reich
scoffed. 'These families were neighbors. They lived across the street from one
another. Their kids played together. That's all it was. Glory was too young to
understand that her father's death had anything to do with Harris. Even Delia
didn't blame him. They'd all been drinking.'

    Cab
wasn't convinced. 'Go on,' he said. 'What about the fire?'

    'What
do you want to know? You want me to psychoanalyze the son of a bitch? He set
the fire and then watched it burn like it was some kind of backyard barbecue.
Nettie and the boys died. If it wasn't for Delia, Jen would have died, too.'

    'What
do you mean?'

    'Jen
spent the night with the Fischers. Delia knew how bad it was for the girl at
home. All the fights. It wasn't just Harris and Nettie, it was the boys, too.
They picked up the poison from their mom. Delia took pity on her, and it's a
good thing. Pete still sends Delia flowers every year to thank her.'

    Cab
didn't say anything for a long time. Finally, when he sensed Reich's
impatience, he said, 'This is ugly, Sheriff. You know how ugly this is.'

    'I
do.'

    'I
came here ninety-five per cent convinced that Mark Bradley killed Glory
Fischer.'

    'Trust
your instincts,' Reich told him.

    'That's
the problem. My instincts don't like this one little bit. If Glory saw Harris—'

    'She
didn't.'

    'Sometimes
you bump into your past at the worst possible time,' Cab pointed out.

    'You
said you have a witness. Bradley and Glory were kissing on the beach.'

    'I
still don't like the coincidence.'

    The
sheriff leaned forward with his elbows on his desk. 'Detective Bolton, I'm not
going to tell you how to do your job. This is your case, not mine. My only
interest is making sure that Delia Fischer doesn't have to grieve for her
daughter without seeing her killer punished. I'd hate to see the ghost of
Harris Bone getting in the way of that.'

    'So
would I.'

    Reich
turned his head sideways. With his index finger, he pointed to a two-inch
jagged line on his skull where the hair didn't grow. 'You see that scar?'

    Cab
nodded. 'Looks bad. Did you get it in Vietnam?'

    'No,
I got it in a field about forty miles south of here. That's where Harris Bone
cracked my head open with a rock when I let him out of the car for a piss as I
was getting ready to dump him in Supermax for the rest of his stinking life.
When I woke up, he was long gone. So you know what, Detective? Part of me hopes
I'm wrong, and you're right. I hope Glory really did see that son of a bitch in
Florida, and I hope you find the rock he's hiding under, and I hope you bring
him here and leave me alone with him for five minutes. That's all I want, five
minutes. Harris Bone and I have unfinished business.'

    Amy
Leigh sat on a bench near the trails of the Cofrin Arboretum, unwinding after
her run. Beside her, Katie wore sweats and a T-shirt adorned with the school's
Phoenix logo. Despite the frigid morning, sweat trickled from her bobbed black
hair down the line of her jaw, and her shirt was stained with a triangle of
sweat too. Her glasses kept slipping down her nose. Katie lit a cigarette. She
always smoked after the two of them jogged, which Amy hated.

    Cars
came and went on the circular drive around the perimeter of the campus. The
school was perched on a bluff a few miles outside downtown Green Bay. The city
was gray and industrial, haunted by hard-scrabble, beer-drinking cheeseheads
who worshiped at the shrine of Lambeau Field, but the university itself was an
enclave of green athletic fields and brick academic buildings ringed by the
lushly wooded nature preserve.

    The
two girls stretched out their legs and relaxed. A bright red cardinal flicked
among the bare branches of the trees and sang to them.

    'You
still going to Gary Jensen's house tonight?' Katie asked.

    'Yeah.'

    'You
want me to go with you?' 'No, I'll be OK.'

    'I'm
still not sure what you think you're going to accomplish.'

    'I
just want to see how he reacts,' Amy said.

    'What,
you're going to blurt out, "Hey, Gary, did you strangle that girl on the beach
in Florida?'"

    'No,
don't be stupid. I want to drop some hints and see what he says. I'll know if
he's lying.'

    Katie
shook her head. 'Some liars are pretty good at it, Ames.'

    'We'll
see.'

    Her
roommate shivered as the cold air began to overtake the warmth of the run. 'I
did a little poking around on my own.'

    'About
Gary?'

    Katie
nodded. 'I had coffee with a secretary in the PhyEd department. I said it was
for a follow-up story on the dance competition in Florida, but we did a little
gossiping, too. Mainly about Gary's wife.'

    'What
did she tell you?'

    'Well,
the rumor is he was having an affair. Hot and heavy.'

    'You
mean before his wife died?'

    'Yep.'

    'Who
was the other woman?'

    Katie
shrugged. 'Don't know. It may not even be true.'

    'I
can't believe no one told the police.'

    'People
aren't going to call the cops about hunches and suspicions. That's all you've
got, you know. I haven't found anything to link Gary to Glory Fischer. You saw
him with a girl who may have been Glory, but maybe not.'

    'I
heard him coming back to his room late, too.'

    'Are
you sure? My room was a couple doors down, and I didn't hear anything.'

    'It
was him,' Amy insisted. 'I heard his door open and close.'

    'It doesn't
prove anything.'

    'I
know.'

    'Did
you talk to your old coach about any of this? Hilary Bradley?'

    'Not
yet. I don't know if I have anything to tell her.'

    Katie
stood up and tugged her damp shirt away from her chest. She stubbed out her
cigarette on the ground. 'Well, don't make an ass of yourself.'

    'Yeah.'

    'You
coming back to the room?'

    Amy
shook her head. 'I'll do a couple more miles.'

    'Jeez,
you're extreme. I'll see you later tonight.' 'OK.'

    Amy
watched Katie head across East Circle Drive toward the dorms. She got up and
stretched her legs, which had begun to tighten in the cold morning air, and
then she followed the path back into the arboretum. The asphalt was slick, and
she walked rather than risk twisting an ankle. Fifty yards later, she came to a
T-junction where the path ended at a soft trail made of bark, moss, and dead
leaves. The trees grew over her head, and the trail was dim and narrow, as if
she were disappearing into a train tunnel. Where the trail curved, she couldn't
see round the next bend.

    She
took a few tentative steps, but she stopped with a strange sense of discomfort.
The down on the back of her neck stood up, as if the little hairs were iron
filings drawn by a magnet. She felt eyes following her from somewhere in the
forest.

    'Hello?'
she called.

    Amy
turned round slowly. She was alone, but the trees were big and wide enough here
to hide someone. Those were crazy-making thoughts; she was letting herself get
paranoid. She inhaled, smelling nothing but mold and the dewish sweat of her
body. She didn't hear anything. '

    She
waited. Everything was still.
There's nobody
, she told herself.

    Amy
shook off her fears and jogged. She got into a rhythm as she ran, enough to
crowd out other thoughts. Running was pure escape for her, in which she was
conscious of nothing but the noise of her breathing and the vibrations as her
feet hit the ground. She made two loops round the east section of the
arboretum, following the border of the escarpment. It added almost two miles to
her route, and when she finished the circle for the second time, she slowed to
a walk as she cooled down. Her face was flushed. Her blond curls were frizzed.

    She
wasn't far from the trail that led back to the perimeter road when she felt it
again. Eyes. Like a voyeur watching her.

    She
was sure she wasn't alone.

    'Who's
there?'

    Behind
her, a male voice growled the way a bear would, and Amy spun with a choked
scream. Twenty yards away, a student she knew from one of her psychology
classes giggled as she fended off animal kisses from a bearded, long-haired
boy. They broke apart as they saw Amy and heard her squeal. They were innocent.
They were nobody. Amy wanted to laugh in relief, but she was breathing too
hard.

    'You
OK, Amy?' the girl called.

    'Oh,
yeah, fine. You startled me.'

    'Sorry.'

    Amy
smiled at them, the couple out for a kissy stroll. She wished she had a
boyfriend of her own for that kind of hike. It made her think she should find
someone to ask out on a date, but there never seemed to be time with classes,
work, and dance. She knew that was a crock, though. She just didn't want all
the hassles of a relationship.

    She
left the two of them alone. At the junction, she turned back toward the campus
road. It was time to get back to her dorm room. She needed a shower, and she
had a class in less than an hour.

    Kinesics.
Learning to read body language.

    Amy
was almost at the bench where she'd sat with Katie when she heard a car engine
on the shoulder of the road. She emerged from the trees in time to see a Honda
Civic hatchback make a fast U-turn off the grass and head toward the Bay
Settlement entrance to the campus.

    She
only caught a glimpse of the side of the driver's face, but she recognized him.
It was Gary Jensen. He'd been in the woods with her.

    Mark
Bradley painted on the bone-white rocks jutting out into Lake Michigan. He'd
been standing in front of his canvas for an hour, and his fingers were numb and
raw. It was late morning on Thursday under a cold, weak sun. The wind off the
lake drowned out every sound except the screech of gulls, which flocked near
the beach and dove into the water for fish. When he looked at the sky between
brushstrokes, he saw the rusting white tower of the Cana Island lighthouse
poking above the tops of the dormant trees.

    He
didn't mind that Cana was the most over-photographed, over- painted landmark in
Door County. What he created never looked much like the original subject. His
work was dark, with swirls of primary colors and blurry images of angels
against black skies. He wasn't a religious man, unlike Hilary, and he didn't
know why his brain told him to paint angels. Even so, he didn't question it.

    His
family and friends had never understood his art. He was an athlete, and that
meant his interests should have ground to a halt at the last page of the daily
sports section. One of the qualities that drew him to Hilary was that she
didn't put him in a box or maintain a preconceived notion of who he was. She'd
never believed he could be one thing and not another.

    Mark
turned his head, and his neck stabbed with pain. His left shoulder was tender
where the seat belt had locked against his torso in the accident. The doctor at
the island's medical clinic had suggested that he and Hilary take a day off to
recover, but with no serious injuries, they'd both declined. Mark had replaced
the tires on his Explorer and taken the two of them across the passage on a
mid- morning ferry. Their friend Terri Duecker had offered to lend them a car.