The Bone House (43 page)

    With
any luck, no one would have discovered Mark Bradley's body by then. He'd be
free to escape back to the mainland.

    Troy
climbed the beach to the edge of the trees and followed the curving shoreline
to the east. Heavy rain continued to dimple the half- moon of harbor water,
causing overlapping circles. The wet rocks scraped under his feet. He was wet
and frozen, but he was determined. He checked the silver revolver under his
jacket. It was heavy in his hand. He'd found the gun a year earlier in one of
the abandoned barns that he and Keith explored in the off season. Something
about having a weapon made him feel strong. He'd cleaned the revolver as best
as he could, oiled it, and tested it. A few times, he and Glory had slipped
into empty fields and fired at pop cans placed on barbed wire fences. She liked
the power of the gun too. She said it turned her on.

    Troy
reached the beach road that led from the water to the island cemetery. There
was a park here, which was crowded with picnickers during the summer. Now, in
the rain, as night fell, it was deserted. He chose a bench and sat down to
wait. He was only a few hundred yards from Mark Bradley's house, and he could
travel along the beach and arrive through the trees. No one would see him. He
could creep up next to the house where he had a good shot and squeeze the
trigger. That was all it would take. A split second to get justice.

    Beyond
the trees, on the beach, it rained and rained. It would be dark in minutes.
When he had the cover of night, he would move.

    Hilary
was near the city of Green Bay on Highway 57 when Katie called her.

    'I
wanted to make sure you were still coming,' the girl said. 'Are you getting
close?'

    Hilary
squinted through the windshield at the highway signs. The road was slick, and
visibility in the driving rain was poor. She'd already had a near-collision
with a deer bounding across the highway lane. 'I'm about five miles from the
university. Where should I find you?'

    There
was a long pause. 'I'm not actually on campus right now,' Katie admitted.

    'Where
are you?'

    'I'm
parked across the street from Gary Jensen's house.'

    Hilary
tensed and almost dropped her phone. 'What the hell are you doing there?'

    'I'm
sorry. I needed to do something, so I followed him. I'll explain when I see
you.'

    'Stay
where you are, and I'll meet you. Where is this place?'

    'If
you're close to the university exit, you can't be far. You can take a right
turn off the highway toward Wequiock Falls Park. That's where I am. Jensen's
house is diagonally across from here.'

    'I'll
be there soon,' Hilary said.

    She
saw a sign for the county park two miles later, and she braked and turned
sharply right. One long block from the highway, five roads came together at an
intersection like a giant starburst. Telephone wires criss-crossed the sky
overhead. The land around her was open; she was at the flat summit of a hill
above the bay. A cornfield was on her left. The dead-end road into the park was
on her right. On the opposite side of the intersection, she saw a two-story
red-brick house shrouded by mammoth trees.

    Jensen's
house.

    Hilary
turned into the park and spotted a red sedan parked off the grass in the
shelter of an oak grove. She pulled in behind it. When she got out, she peered
through the rain-streaked driver's window and saw nothing inside. Her heart
leaped with concern.

    'Hey.'

    Hilary
heard a hushed call. Near the intersection, under the shelter of one of the
trees bordering the crossroad, she saw a girl waving her arms. Before Hilary
could move, the girl jogged across the wet grass and joined her by the cars.

    'Katie?'

    The
girl nodded. Her short dark hair was plastered to her skin, and her glasses
were dotted with rain. She was medium height and bony, with a nervous twitch to
her limbs. She wore a black jacket zipped to her neck and black jeans. She
smelled of fresh cigarette smoke.

    'You're
soaked,' Hilary said. 'Let's sit in the car.'

    They
got into the Taurus, which was warm. Hilary swung into a U-turn leading back
toward the road that led to Highway 57. When she found another break in the
trees on the shoulder of the park road, she pulled to her left and stopped. The
car was mostly hidden by trees, but they had a view diagonally across the
intersection to the brick house.

    Beside
her, the girl's fingers jerked in a nervous rhythm. 'Do you mind if I smoke?
I'm so keyed up.'

    'Put
the window down,' Hilary said.

    Katie
did, and she extracted a damp cigarette pack from her jacket and lit up. She
blew the smoke out the window. She calmed down as she inhaled, and she closed
her eyes briefly.

    'I'm
so glad you came,' she said.

    'What's
going on? Why are you here?'

    Katie
tapped ash outside the car. 'I couldn't sit in the dorm and do nothing. I'm a
reporter, so I figured I'd follow the story, you know? I went to the athletic department
to find out if Gary was at work today.'

    'Was
he?'

    The
girl shook her head. 'He called in sick.' 'And you still haven't heard anything
from Amy?'

    'No,
I've called and texted her, but nothing. I think he's got her, the bastard.
Jeez, I was stupid.'

    'How
did Amy get involved in this?'

    'We
were in Florida with the dance team. Amy found out about the girl who was
killed down there. She said on the bus that she saw Glory and Gary together, and
she heard Gary going back to his room late the night she was killed. There are
a lot of rumors around town about Gary's wife, too. She died in an accident,
but some people aren't sure it was an accident. Anyway, Amy got it in her head
that Gary may have been involved in Glory's death.'

    Hilary
nodded. 'Were you in Florida with Amy?'

    'Yeah,
I snuck along for the ride, but I didn't see anything weird down there. I hung
out with the dancers during the competition so I could write a story for the
paper.'

    Hilary
stared at the house tucked among the trees. She couldn't see lights inside.

    'You
said you knew Gary was inside,' Hilary said. 'Have you seen him?'

    'Yeah,
I told you I checked out the athletics department, right? He was sick? Well, when
I got back to the dorm, I saw him coming out of the front door at Downham.
That's
our
building. He didn't look sick.'

    'Did
you talk to him?'

    'Sure.
I played dumb, because I'm not sure if he knows that I'm Amy's roommate. I
mean, I know him, and he knows me, because of my job at the paper, but that's
it. At least I was able to ask him why he was at the dorm.'

    'What
did he say?'

    'He
had a good excuse. Like he'd been working on it. He said Amy came over to his
house to talk about dance strategies, but she said she wasn't feeling well, and
she left right after she arrived. So he came by to see if she was OK.'

    'He
could be telling the truth,' Hilary said.

    'Yeah,
or he could be giving himself an out.'

    'Did
you spot her car?'

    'No,
I drove around and looked. It's not here. He could have ditched it somewhere.
Or maybe it's in his garage.'

    Hilary
frowned. 'Let's go to talk to the police, but I'm not sure they're going to do
anything. Not yet.'

    'We're
running out of time,' Katie told her, grabbing Hilary's arm as she placed it on
the wheel, if Amy's alive, we need to do something now.'

    'What
do you mean?'

    The
girl flicked her cigarette out the window into the wet ground. She took a deep
breath and coughed into her sleeve. 'After I saw Gary at the dorm, I followed
him. He made one stop, and then he came back here. That was an hour ago. If you
didn't get here soon, I was going to go over there myself.'

    'Don't
be crazy,' Hilary said. She looked at Katie's face and then added, 'Where did
he stop? What did he do?'

    'He
stopped at a hardware store,' the girl told her. 'He bought a large roll of
plastic sheeting and a shovel.'

    Delia
grew nervous when Tresa didn't come home.

    She
dialed her daughter's cell phone number, but there was no answer. She called
the store in Egg Harbor where she'd sent Tresa for groceries, and the manager
told her it had been more than an hour since she left. Tresa should have been
back long before now. It wasn't like her to be late without calling.

    Delia
stood outside on the porch, watching the empty driveway and the rain falling on
the unkempt yard. She struggled with a horrible sense of anxiety. Part of it was
her grief over Glory, which triggered an immediate, irrational fear when Tresa
was overdue. Part of it was guilt, as she wondered what awful chain of events
she had set in motion because of Troy.

    Vengeance
was so seductive. She was tired of the world taking things from her and
offering no retribution. Mark Bradley deserved no mercy, not after what he had
done to her and her family. Troy killing him would be a way to right the
scales. One man would finally pay the price for the others who had escaped.

    It
was a simple thing, but she knew it wasn't simple at all. She could hardly
breathe. Her mind cascaded through all the things that could go wrong before
this was over. Troy was a fool. He would be caught before or after he'd used
his gun; he'd go to jail for years. Or he'd be killed in the attempt. She
didn't want the boy's life on her conscience. Too many people had died already.

    Delia
made a decision. She dialed Troy's phone. Wherever he was right now, on the
boat or on the island, she had to get a message to him:
Stop. Don't do this.
She needed to end this craziness before it started, but her call went nowhere.
Troy had switched off his phone or he was without signal. It was already too
late; the wheels were grinding forward, and she couldn't stop them. She was in
the middle of it now, leaving an electronic fingerprint that tied her and Troy
together.

    Her
phone rang.

    'Thank
God,' Delia murmured. She assumed it was Troy calling back. Or it was Tresa.
Either way, she felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe she could put the demons back in
their box.

    'Yes,
hello, who is it?'

    'Oh,
hi, is this Delia? Delia Fischer?'

    The
voice was familiar, but she didn't recognize it. 'Yes, that's me.'

    'Delia,
hello, this is Bobby Larch. You know, up in Ellison Bay? Our daughters went to
school together.'

    Delia
sighed and grew impatient. People were always calling about community
activities. School meetings. Fundraisers. Right now, she didn't want to have
anything to do with anyone. 'This isn't a very good time, Bobby.'

    'I'm
sorry to bother you, but this has been weighing on my mind. I'm a parent like
you, and I figure I'd like to know if my daughter was doing something like
this. It doesn't matter how old they are, they're still our kids, right?'

    Delia
was distracted, and she had trouble following his words, but then her brain
caught up with him.
Tresa.

    'What
is it, Bobby? What are you saying?'

    'I
work up in Northport at the ferry dock. The thing is, right as the five o'clock
ferry was getting ready to go, your daughter Tresa came racing up, saying it
was an emergency and she had to get on the boat. I suppose if I'd been
thinking, I would have said no, but I let her drive on. It may not be anything
important, but I also know that Mark Bradley's wife left the island on the
previous boat, so the more I thought about it, the more I figured it was
something you should know about, what with everything that happened last year
and all. I know you'd want her to be safe.'