The Bone House (35 page)

    'Listen,
there's a name I want to run by you,' Hilary said. 'Someone who may have been a
coach or teacher at the school a few years ago. Gary Jensen.'

    Pam
was silent on the phone for a long while. 'OK.'

    'Do
you know him?'

    'I
remember him, sure.'

    'How
long was he there?' Hilary asked.

    'Three
or four years, as I recall.' Pam was oddly close-mouthed.

    'What
do you remember about him?'

    'Why
do you want to know?' Pam asked. 'Is this in conjunction with some kind of
employment application?'

    'No,
nothing like that. It's personal.'

    'Oh.'
She sounded relieved. 'I have to be careful what I say, Hilary. It's too damn
easy to get sued.'

    'You
know me, Pam. This goes no further.'

    'Let's
just say we weren't unhappy when he left us to go to Green Bay. That was about
four years ago.'

    'What
was wrong with him?' Hilary asked.

    'We didn't
have any real evidence,' Pam said. 'It was just rumors.'

    'Rumors
about what?'

    'Sex
with students,' Pam said in a clipped tone. 'We investigated but couldn't prove
anything. The law says we can't talk about unproven allegations in a reference
check, so there wasn't anything we could say to the folks in Green Bay. But it
was solid enough that his wife divorced him.'

    The
second wife wasn't so lucky,
Hilary thought.

    'What's
going on?' Pam asked. 'Is Jensen in trouble again?'

    'I
don't know.'

    'Well,
you said it was personal. I assume you're not involved with this guy?'

    'God,
no.'

    'Good.
I never heard anything bad about his work as a coach, but if you ask me, he was
creepy.'

    'I
appreciate the information, Pam.'

    'How's
Mark?'

    'Great.
Just great.'

    'Tell
him I said hi.'

    'I
will.'

    Hilary
hung up the phone. She didn't know how to interpret what she'd found. Pam knew
Jensen from his years in Fargo, which overlapped with the timeline of the fire.
That meant one thing: Gary Jensen was not Harris Bone.

    So
who was he?

    Amy
and Pam had both used the same word to describe him.
Creepy.
If Pam was
right, the coach also had a history of sexual relationships with underage
girls.

    Like
Glory.

    Hilary
stared at the fuzzy image of Gary Jensen in Amy's photograph. She wished that
the phone call with Amy hadn't ended so abruptly.

    She
wished she knew where Amy was.

    Amy
awoke to find that her senses had been stripped. She opened her eyes and saw
nothing. She tried to scream, but her mouth was stuffed with a wadded-up cloth
that made her cough and choke. When she moved, she found that her wrists and
ankles were tightly bound. She was on her back on what felt like a soft
mattress. When she turned her head, her brain was still dizzy with pain. She
tried to piece her memory together, but her mind was blank, and she struggled
in confusion and panic before she remembered Gary Jensen.

    He'd
done this to her.

    He
handed her a glass of wine, and she drank. That was when it all started, when
she'd become disoriented. He'd put something in her wine. Stupid, stupid,
stupid. She'd heard all the stories about date rape drugs, but she had taken
the wine without even thinking about it. She wondered what he'd given her.
Ecstasy. GHB. Whatever it was, the effects lingered. She kept feeling her head
float away.

    
Think.

    She
had no sense of time or how long she'd been lying here. It could have been
night or noon outside. She breathed through her nose and tried not to think
about the saliva gathering in the back of her throat that made her want to gag.
The aroma that she smelled was of flowers and dust. It was the same Victorian
home smell from last night, and she realized that she was still inside Gary
Jensen's house.

    Amy
heard the noise of the furnace and felt warm air from a vent near the bed.
Outside, as the wind blew, a ghostly rattle scraped across the roof above her.
She was upstairs. The noise was caused by tree branches rubbing on the metal
gutters. Inside the house, below her, she thought she heard voices. It might have
been the radio or television, but she felt the floors shudder, and she knew she
wasn't alone. Gary was still in the house with her. She didn't know how much
time she had before he returned.

    There
was no way to free herself. Pulling at the tape on her wrists and ankles only
seemed to make it tighter. She tried to spit out the scratchy cloth in her
mouth, but tape on her face held the gag in place. The only noises she could
make were stifled, guttural groans, and she was afraid the effort would cause
her to vomit and choke. In frustration, she squirmed frantically on the bed,
struggling against her restraints, and she felt the whole structure lift off
the ground and bang on the floor.

    
Shit.
He'd heard her.

    Footsteps
moved below her, coming closer. She heard him on the stairs. In the hallway.
Outside the door. As he came inside, she lay completely still, playing possum
with her eyes closed, but she knew she wasn't fooling him. She could sense his
presence looming over her. She heard him breathing and smelled the musk of his
cologne. He switched on the bedroom light, and she reacted involuntarily,
opening her eyes and squinting.

    'Hello,
Amy,' Gary said. His voice was hushed and sounded almost sad. 'I'm glad you're
awake.'

    She
struggled, desperate to escape.

    'I'm
going to take off the gag now, so we can talk,' he continued. 'Don't scream. No
one's going to hear you, and I'll have to get mean, and I really don't want to
do that.'

    She
felt his fingernails on the side of her face, digging under the tape. 'It's
better if I do this quickly,' he said. In the same instant, he ripped the tape
from her face, and she moaned with the pain of her skin tearing away. He pulled
the long ribbon of cloth from inside her mouth, and she gulped air. Her cheeks
burned, and she tasted blood in her mouth.

    
'You
fucking bastard
!'
she screamed. 'Let me go
!'

    His
palm flew across her face, shocking her into silence with a stinging slap.
'Please don't make this harder than it has to be, Amy.'

    'What
the hell do you want?' she demanded, squirming against the restraints.

    Gary
dragged a wooden chair from the opposite side of the room and sat down near
her. They were in a guest bedroom, dark and brooding like the rest of the
house. 'I like you, Amy. I really wish you hadn't put yourself in the middle of
this.'

    'The
middle of what?' Amy asked.

    He
didn't answer. The back of his fingers caressed her face and under her chin.
She turned her head to get away from him, but she couldn't. He touched her
lightly with the fingertips of one hand, making a line between her breasts and
then following the slope to her right nipple.

    'Stop
it,' she hissed.

    He
let his palm rest on top of her breast. 'I have to tell you, you were one of
the girls I fantasized about. I dropped hints, and I always hoped you'd take me
up on it.'

    'Dream
on.'

    'Was
it because I was older? A lot of girls seem to find that exciting.'

    'I'm
sure you were a pervert when you were twenty-one, too.'

    His
fingers tightened until she gasped in pain. 'Be nice, Amy.' He released her
from his grip, and she breathed heavily.

    'What
do you want?' she asked.

    'I
have some questions for you. Mainly, I just want to know who you told.'

    'Told
what?'

    'For
starters, you saw me with Glory Fischer in Naples. Who else knows about that?
Who did you tell?'

    Amy
froze. Her roommate's face flashed in her mind.
Katie.
He was going
after her. She also remembered - or thought she remembered - making a phone call
to Hilary before she collapsed. Oh, God, what had she done? She'd put them both
in danger.

    'The
police,' she said. 'I told the police.'

    He
chuckled. 'Nice try.'

    'It's
true. I have a friend who's a Green Bay cop. I told him I was coming here, just
in case you did anything.'

    'Really?
What's his name?'

    'You'll
find out when he knocks down your door, asshole.'

    'That's
clever, but he's not coming. You didn't call the police. I want to know who you
did tell.'

    Amy
sighed. 'OK. You win. I didn't tell anyone. No one knew.'

    'I'd
like to believe you, but I don't.'

    'I
didn't tell anyone else. I didn't even know I was right, you idiot. You could
have lied, and I would have believed you. You didn't have to do this.'

    'The
hard part is, I know you, Amy,' Gary said. 'I've seen you practice and perform.
You're determined. You don't let go of something until you get it right. It
doesn't matter what I told you. You wouldn't quit.'

    'So
tell me why you killed Glory.'

    'It
won't make you feel better to know what happened, Amy. Believe me. Glory
Fischer was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. She saw something that
it would have been better for her never to see. And, like you, she wasn't going
to keep the secret. Sooner or later, she was going to tell someone. So let's
try this again, Amy. Who did you tell? Do you have a roommate? Do you have a
friend on the team?'

    'No
one else knew.'

    'I'm
only going to ask once more. Who knew you were coming to see me last night?'

    'Nobody.'

    'God,
I hate to do this, Amy.' He took his hands away from her body. Sharply,
fiercely, he hit her again, his fist nearly breaking the bones in her face and
wrenching her neck sideways. She heard him wince himself from the force of the
blow. Her cheek and eye throbbed, and she started crying involuntarily.

    'Stop,'
she begged him.

    'Let's
go another way. Who did you call? What did you say last night on the phone?'

    'I
don't remember,' she sobbed. Her emotions soared between helplessness and fury.
Her head spun with pain.

    'I
have your phone. I know the number you called. Who was it?'

    'I
don't remember making any call.'

    'I
heard you talking in the bathroom. What did you say? Did you mention my name?'

    'You
drugged me. I didn't know what I was doing.'

    Gary
sighed. 'You could make this a lot easier on yourself, Amy.'

    'I
don't remember anything.'

    But
she did remember. Through the haze of the drug, she remembered the sound of
Hilary's voice, and she remembered telling her about Gary. And Glory. She hoped
that Hilary hadn't written off the call as drunk ramblings from a former
student; she hoped that she would tell someone, send someone. That was the only
thing she could pray for. Help.

    Katie
would wonder where she was. Hilary would try to reach her. One of them, both of
them, would send the police here. She had to stay alive until then, and that
meant not giving Gary what he wanted.

    It
was as if he could read her mind.

    'Rescue's
not coming,' he told her. 'If that's what you're hoping for, give it up. By the
time you're missing long enough for the police to care, this will all be over.
I don't want to be ugly. Sooner or later, you'll tell me the truth, so you're
only hurting yourself the longer you wait.'