The Bone House (29 page)

    'I
heard you got a witness who can help you nail Mark Bradley,' Troy told him.

    'Who
told you that?'

    'Mrs
Fischer talked to the sheriff.'

    'Well,
we've still got a lot of work to do,' Cab said. 'In the meantime, I need to
clear up a few things with you, Troy.'

    'Like
what?'

    'Like
the argument you had with Glory on Saturday night.'

    Troy
moved his jaw as if he was chewing gum. 'I already told you, it was stupid. I
wanted Glory to come back to the room with me, and she wouldn't go. So I left.'

    'I
heard it was more than that,' Cab said.

    'What
do you mean?'

    'I
heard Glory was coming on to other boys in the pool.'

    'It
wasn't like that.'

    'No?'

    'No,
Glory was playing games. She wasn't serious.'

    'If
my girlfriend was grabbing cocks under the water, I think I'd be pretty mad,'
Cab said.

    Troy's
face reddened. 'She didn't do that!'

    'We
talked to a girl who said you were so mad you were ready to go off like a
bomb.'

    'I
was just - that's not what happened. I told you, Glory had been acting weird
all day. I was frustrated. It was our last day, and she was ruining it.'

    'So
you left her at the pool with the boys.'

    'She
wasn't doing anything crazy. She was just being Glory. I was mad at first, but
I calmed down.'

    'Did
you go straight back to the hotel room?'

    Troy
nodded. 'I watched a movie. I already told you that.'

    'Then
what happened?'

    'I
fell asleep. That's it. I got up when Tresa woke me in the morning and said
Glory wasn't in the room.'

    'What
did you think?' Cab asked. 'Did you think she was with another boy? Did you
think she'd spent the night with someone?'

    'No!'

    'Are
you sure you didn't wake up overnight and realize Glory was gone?'

    Troy shook
his head fiercely. 'I didn't.'

    'Would
you have gone to look for her?'

    'I
don't know. Maybe. I don't know. That's not what happened.'

    'What
if you saw her on the beach with Mark Bradley? That would have made you mad,
wouldn't it? Particularly if you saw them kissing.'

    Troy
crumpled the collar of his T-shirt in his fist. 'Glory wouldn't let him touch
her.'

    'But
what if she did? What if you saw her?'

    'I
didn't! You're trying to make it out like I killed her, and I would never hurt
her, never.'

    'I
hear you, Troy. I do. You can help us prove it.'

    'How?'

    'Someone
from the sheriff's office is going to pay you a little visit and stick a cotton
swab in your mouth.'

    'What?
Why?'

    'To
get a DNA sample to match against Glory's fingernails. We think she scratched
the person who killed her.'

    Troy's
eyes widened. 'Yeah, but she was my girlfriend. I don't know, what if she
scratched me accidentally that day?'

    'Did
she?'

    'I
don't think so, but I don't know. I don't remember.'

    'Give
us a sample. We'll check it and see.'

    He
hesitated. 'Yeah, I guess. But it doesn't mean—'

    'Troy!'

    Cab
heard a shrill voice from the side door of the bar, which hung open. Delia Fischer
stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. Her face was worn, with
suspicion etched in her bloodshot eyes. She shouted again. 'Troy, your dad
wants to know where the hell you are.'

    'I
have to go,' Troy said.

    'Sure.'

    Troy
looked relieved to have an escape. He jogged for the bar and squeezed past
Delia, who stepped outside and closed the door behind her. She waited for Cab.
Her bottle-blond hair hung limply at her shoulders. She wore a roomy polo shirt
with the bar's logo on her breast and an apron tied round black jeans. She
looked like a woman who had shrunk over the years and was growing smaller.

    'How
are you, Mrs Fischer?' Cab asked.

    'How
do you think I am?'

    'I'm
sorry, I know how hard this must be.'

    'What
do you want, Detective? What are you doing here?'

    'I'm
doing everything I can to find out what happened to Glory,' he told her.

    Delia's
hands were damp, and she dried them on the apron. 'Why were you talking to
Troy?'

    'I just
had some more questions for him.'

    'What
kind of questions?'

    Cab
shrugged. 'It's routine.'

    'The
person you should be talking to is Mark Bradley,' she snapped.

    'Mr
Bradley isn't talking.' He added, 'It looks like people around here are trying
to take matters into their own hands. Someone tried to kill him and his wife.'

    'Am I
supposed to feel bad about that?'

    'If
something happens to Mr Bradley, we'll probably never know the truth about
Glory's death.'

    'People
will do what they do. I don't care. That's the sheriff's problem, not mine.'

    Delia
wore her bitterness like a shroud around her tense shoulders. He knew there was
nothing he could do to change how she felt. Her mind was made up. She'd settled
on one explanation for her grief, and that explanation was Mark Bradley. He'd
become the symbol of every wrong turn in her life.

    'Do
you work here?' he asked, nodding his head at the bar.

    'Yes.'

    'You
wait tables?'

    'That's
right. I wait tables, and at home I sell metal jewelry. I scrape by.' She eyed
Cab's expensive suit with disdain. 'I guess you don't know what that's like.'

    'You're
right, I haven't lived that kind of life, but I respect it.'

    'I
don't need your respect or your pity. Some Door County natives, they do pretty
damn well. They bought up land decades ago when it was cheap. My parents
weren't able to do that. I was just lucky that they paid off the mortgage on
their house, so I have somewhere to live. Then I lost my husband, and he didn't
have any life insurance, so it was just me and the girls. Now it's just me and
Tresa.'

    'How's
Tresa holding up?' he asked her.

    'Why?
Do you want to interrogate her, too? Do you think she killed her own sister?'

    'I
just wanted to make sure she's OK.'

    'That's
my business, Detective, not yours. I wish you'd do your job. Instead, you seem
to be looking at everyone except the man we both know is guilty. You're
badgering Troy, who wouldn't lift a finger against Glory. You're even chasing
ghosts.'

    'You mean
Harris Bone?'

    'Yes.'

    'I
have no reason to think Harris Bone has anything to do with this case, but I
can't ignore the possibility.'

    Delia
shook her head. 'Listen to yourself. You're doing exactly what Mark Bradley and
his wife want you to do. You're playing their game. If Harris was in Florida,
someone would have recognized him.'

    'Maybe
someone did,' Cab said gently.

    'You
mean Glory? If she saw him, she would have called the police. Or she would have
called me.'

    Cab
cocked his head with curiosity. 'She didn't call you, did she?'

    'No.'

    'But
you knew Harris Bone pretty well, right?'

    'Of
course.'

    'I'm
a little surprised that you stayed friends with him after the car accident that
killed your husband.'

    Delia's
mouth tightened, and her lips turned white. 'Harris wasn't to blame for what
happened any more than the rest of us. We were stupid. It was a tragedy.'

    'Were
you surprised by what he did to his family?'

    'I
was sickened. Wherever Harris is, I hope he sees the faces of his family every
time he tries to sleep. I hope he sees Glory's face, too. But that doesn't mean
I believe he was in Florida.'

    'I
understand how you feel,' Cab told her. 'Mark Bradley is the prime suspect, but
he's not the only suspect, and if I disregarded other theories of the crime,
I'd make it easier for him to get an acquittal at trial. I don't want that to
happen.'

    Delia
pressed the heels of her palms against her forehead, as if she was fighting a
migraine that throbbed inside her skull. 'I know how it works, Detective. He'll
walk away. The people from the city, the ones with money, they hire lawyers,
and they get off.'

    'Not
if I can help it,' Cab said.

    'I've
heard it before, Detective,' Delia told him wearily, 'so don't waste your
breath trying to convince me it will be different this time. I'm not waiting
around for justice. The police don't do anything. The prosecutors don't do
anything. The guilty walk free.'

    She
turned and went back inside the bar and slammed the door.

    Peter
Hoffman parked at the end of Juice Mill Lane, where a rusting metal gate
stretched across the old road that led into the forest. He was on the border of
Newport State Park, which sprawled across the eastern edge of the NorDoor and
jutted into Lake Michigan like the profile of a monster's chin. He still owned
several acres of undeveloped land here that had been passed down from his
grandparents to his parents over the course of half a century. He rarely
visited now. Coming here carried too many memories of time and people passing
away.

    He
was drunk. He knew he shouldn't have been driving, but no one was around to
stop him, and the vacant land was only a few miles south on Timberline Road
from his own home on the northern coast. He got out of his car. Around him, he
saw nothing but winter fields and the tangle of forest behind the gated road.
The sun was almost down. The world was getting darker minute by minute.

    Hoffman
took his half-empty bottle with him. He squeezed past the gate with its No
Trespassing sign and limped down the old logger's road. A ridge of dormant
grass made a racing stripe between the tire ruts, but no vehicle had traveled
this road in years. There were Private Property signs posted on tree trunks
every twenty yards or so. He'd nailed them there himself. He didn't want hikers
in the park drifting on to his land and getting curious.

    When he
reached the trail that led to his grandfather's hunting cabin, he tried to
remember when he'd last been here. Three years, at least. The shack was hidden
behind an army of hardwood trunks that were green with moss. He'd spent
countless nights and early mornings inside, before the walls had rotted and the
roof had caved in during a snowy winter. He'd tasted his first beer there. He'd
listened to his grandfather rail against Kennedy. He'd smelled the blood of
animals they'd killed. He'd toasted dead friends with Felix in the years since
the war.

    He'd
taken Harris and the boys here once for a man's night in the woods. That had
been more than a decade ago. He remembered how content he had been with his
life then, surrounded by family, with a wife he loved at home, in a beautiful
part of the world, where he had history and friends.

    It
was all gone now.

    He
stared at the ruins of the cabin in front of him, and it felt like the ruins of
his life. The wilderness was reclaiming it year by year. The windows had long
ago been punched out by vandals. Its wooden beams were warped and popped, and
the frame, which his grandfather had built by hand, would collapse altogether
in another season or two. He didn't plan to be around to see its final demise.
It was already a haunted place, and he was ready to become one of the ghosts.