The Haunted Bones (3 page)

"Practice." He unlocked his car and threw
his bag inside. "I played baseball in high school and college. I've
been working on keeping my aim sharp. I'll stay here 'til you get
to your car."

With a glance at him and a fast-beating
heart, she crossed the street and got inside her car. Once it was
locked, she cranked it and watched as Mr. McNally drove away.

She looked at the business card in her hand
before she pulled out and headed home.

Three

I dismissed the strange visitor about half
an hour after leaving the old bar. I had a thousand other things
crowding out trivial meetings, one of them being Myra's phone call
and her job offer for the Chief Of Detective's daughter's wedding.
It was a bad idea. I knew it was a bad idea. Everything about it
screamed, Bad Idea!

So…why was I actually considering it on the
drive home?

Home these days was a brownstone I'd bought
in Chamblee after the divorce. Three stories and a basement, it was
a good price because it sat in front of a MARTA rail for the city's
transportation system. After a few months, you get used to the
noise. And it was nice having the actual station a short walk away
for those times I needed to head downtown for a job and didn't want
to worry about parking.

The alarm chirped when I punched in the
code. I locked the door behind me, tossed my rain-soaked blazer on
the couch, dropped my bags on the desk in the living room, and
headed upstairs for a shower. My stomach echoed in the bathroom
afterward. I couldn't remember if I'd bothered with breakfast. So
if I did, it wasn't a memorable one.

First order of business after dressing in a
light shirt and loungers was a quick meal. I figured I would just
eat at my desk while I took a closer look at all the shots I'd
taken of that wall. I wanted to check them out right after I took
them, but I wanted to do it in private, and not with a strange
woman hanging around.

I started a pot of water and grabbed a jar
of some on-sale sauce. It was Thursday—so on Thursdays I made
Italian. Fridays were my order-in night—Chinese, Mexican, Indian.
Saturday, leftovers. And on it went. It was a way for me to pull
some kind of control, some kind of order into my life. It's amazing
how being shot by someone can rob you of your idea of control. When
someone tries to take your life, it's the ultimate in power. One of
the things I learned while becoming a detective was to always build
trust with the victim's family. Empathize with them. The instructor
said the closest members of the family or friends, if not suspects,
would and should cooperate better with the details of the victim's
life if they felt the police were on their side.

But no one ever
taught
us
how to
survive being a
victim
.

There's no manual for life after death.

After I woke in the hospital, my body hooked
to more machines than I could count, unable to move, my life wasn't
my own. I slept when they drugged me, I woke when they made me. The
doctors, the nurses, the hospital, all of them controlled every
aspect of my days and nights before I came off the machines—and my
wife controlled everything after that.

Susan hated the Captain, my peers, all of
them. Their constant questions, their whispers. They wanted to
question me about what happened. They needed to know if what I had
seen matched what the witness said happened. To keep us honest, she
and I were kept apart. They were patient when I couldn't speak or
move. They were patient when I showed improvement but my speech was
still slow. They were patient when Susan told them to give me a
full six months in rehab before the interviews started.

When I could finally get out of bed on my
own, talk on my own without prompting, get dressed on my own, I
convinced Susan it was time. She still didn't want me to talk about
it…because she knew the truth.

She knew I couldn't remember what they
wanted me to.

I told them what I knew before the shooting.
Yes I received a call with an electronic voice, telling me they had
the witness. No he didn't identify himself as the Senator's Aide,
Mason Ferrell. No I didn't see him there. No, he never said he
killed the senator's son. No, I didn't see the witness, Llse
Wallace. No, I didn't see Jimmy get shot.

No…I never saw who shot me.

Things just spiraled out of control after
that.

They wanted to know why Ferrell shot two
detectives, spared the witness, and then shot himself. For ten
months they hinged their case on the hope I would give them better
detail than Llse Wallace had. I received reports through nurses and
Susan that Ferrell's family filed a wrongful death suit against the
department, claiming their son would never have killed himself if
he hadn't of been hounded and harassed. They accused me of killing
him and then shooting myself.

Luckily the doc proved their claim bogus and
the suit was dropped.

Then the real reason for
their questions surfaced. Everyone, including my wife, believed I
slept with Llse Wallace because she
told
them we did. In court. Llse
testified Ferrell had been in love with her and killed Chad Padeaus
because he believed she and Chad were having an affair. And when
Ferrell discovered our affair, which never happened, he came after
me and Jimmy was caught in the middle.

They took everything after that. Susan said
they came into the house and took it all. Warrant in hand. My
computer, my notes, my journals, my collections of photos I'd taken
on vacations with Jimmy and his wife Julie. I never saw any of it
again and wasn't allowed to. Getting out of the hospital became the
same as starting over. Susan was helpful, if not put out because of
it all. Being a lawyer herself, she understood the why of what they
did, but not the soul of it.

So I was finally free of the bonds of the
medical machine, only to be bitten by the jaws of divorce. Susan
had all she could take, and when I needed her the most, she
abandoned me. I knew it was because she believed Llse and not me.
She was a good lawyer. She could read people. And no matter how
many times I protested and assured her I'd never slept with that
woman, she knew I was hiding something.

Maybe I was. I just didn't know what—until I
found my notebook.

She paid to have my things moved—the stuff
they didn't take. Susan had my dad's things brought in from storage
to finish out the place—no sense having her ex-husband, the poor
schmuck who got his head shot, live in squalor. It was a month
after that I found my notebook in the bottom drawer of the bedroom
dresser.

When I say notebook, I do mean the small
flip-top I carried around with me to take notes on cases. A lot of
the detectives I'd met were learning to type on their phones. But I
liked it old school. I didn't know why it was in the drawer, and I
didn't remember putting it there, but I do know it was one of the
things my Captain specifically asked me about. Since the storage
unit had been in Susan's name, they couldn't get access to it.

Had I known this before? Had I put the book
there before I stupidly went to the warehouse? I wished I could
remember.

I wished…

I wished I had never found that book. In it,
in my own detailed writing, was the truth about the affair with
Llse. Every terrible day of it. Only…I hadn't been the one sleeping
with her.

Her lover had been Jimmy Herndon. My
partner. My best friend. Julie's husband. I couldn't bring myself
to share this with Susan. That's what I was hiding and no matter
how hard I protested my innocence, no one really believed me. I
mean…why believe the guy with a bullet in his brain?

Yeah…I probably forgot to mention the bullet
was still there.

Llse stayed away from the hospital. Never
texted. Never spoke to me again until after I was settled. She took
a leave of absence to get away from the paparazzi and the police,
none of whom believed her claim that she didn't see anything that
night because she was locked in a room and handcuffed. She only
heard the shots.

Three of them.

Three bullets.

Jim, me, and Ferrell.

Now I was a photographer, eking out a
living. I'd dabbled in picture-taking in high school, and then in
college, but never took it up seriously until my doctor suggested I
rekindle a hobby as part of my therapy. Turned out I had a knack
for it.

I had just dumped a handful of pasta in the
boiling water when the doorbell rang. I wiped my hands on a towel
as I shuffled down the hall and looked at my surprise visitor
through the door's side window.

A smile pulled at the corners of my lips as
I opened the door.

Detective Julie Herndon stood just outside,
an umbrella in one hand, and a bottle of wine in the other. "It's
Thursday."

"Meaning?"

"You always cook Italian on Thursday, and
I'm starved."

I invited her in and shut the door. After
taking her umbrella and coat and hanging them on the hall tree, I
followed her to the kitchen, where she made herself at home with
the wine opener and then tasted the bubbling sauce with a wooden
spoon. "Oh my…that is good."

I swatted at her hand and took the spoon.
"Drain the noodles and I'll check the bread."

After draining the delicate angel hair
pasta—the only kind I used—she dumped it in a ceramic bowl she
grabbed from beneath the cabinet, poured in the sauce, and started
stirring it all together as I removed the bread and set the hot,
flat pan on the small counter.

"Talked to Myra today."

I grabbed the bread tongs from a bowl of
kitchen utensils. I didn't say anything.

"Devan…it's a great opportunity. And you'll
get to see some old friends."

"Jewels." I lifted a large serving bowl from
the overhead cabinet as she ducked under me and grabbed two wine
glasses. "I'm really not in the mood to talk about this." After
that, I irreverently slung the bread into the basket and handed it
to her before I grabbed the bowl of spaghetti and took it into the
dining room. I slammed it on the table. I didn't mean to do that,
but I was suddenly pissed again.

My display of anger didn't phase Jewels. It
never did. She brought the wine to the table with the two glasses
and then went back for the bread. "Not dropping it," she muttered
as she went back and grabbed plates and forks.

I poured the wine and sat
down as she set the plates. After she was seated, I dumped out the
noodles into our plates and then got up to grab the cheese. I was
trying to calm down, trying not to get myself worked up. And the
truth was, I really didn't know why I was so…
mad
.

That's the last thing I remembered before I
woke up on the kitchen floor with Jewels hovering over me. She had
a cold, wet towel pressed to my forehead and a worried expression
on her face. But somehow, she managed to smile.

"Only five minutes that time. You're getting
better."

"Five minutes is still too long for a cop to
be on his ass." I didn't try to get up just yet. I knew better. The
blackouts started after I began physical therapy. The first one put
me back in intensive care for a day when they couldn't wake me up.
But as the months went by and I got stronger, their frequency went
from four or five of them a week to one or two. And now, two years
since the shooting, they were maybe once a twice a month and their
duration shorter.

But they still happened. The only
explanation the doctors could give me was the bullet. That somehow
it interfered sometimes. High emotions, stress, it was never the
same trigger. One minute I would be working.

The next I'd go down on my ass.

Jewels had suggested a companion for a
while, thinking I shouldn't live alone. What if I went out while
walking down the stairs?

And don't think that thought didn't scare
the shit out of me. Because it did.

After counting to fifty, she helped me to a
sitting position. I was shaking and she handed me a glass of water.
I drank all of it and then grabbed the fridge to help pull myself
up.

Now I was
really
hungry.

I didn't protest as Jewels helped me back to
the chair, then grabbed the cheese. We ate in silence. We were good
enough friends that we didn't need anything else.

But then, "Senator Padeaus will be
there."

I slurped a few noodles in and licked my
lips. "Good. Then I can shoot him proper."

Four

Before I was shot, I shared everything with
Jewels.

Back when I was investigating the senator's
son's death, I told her my suspicions and apparently she was the
only one who agreed with me—before the warehouse fiasco. We didn't
connect for a long while after my recovery and subsequent
self-imposed banishment from the squad.

But when she did show up at my new house,
after the doctor released me, the first thing she asked was if I
remembered what she and I talked about the night before Jimmy died.
Jewels was the only person who believed as I did: that Ferrell did
not kill Chad Padeaus, no matter what Llse said. And that he didn't
shoot Jimmy, or me.

"You know, I never could figure out why she
lied." Jewels sat back on the well-worn corduroy couch of my
childhood. She had her socked feet on the coffee table, the same
table I'd carved my initials in when I was eight. She held her
third glass of wine in her hand.

I was in the kitchen,
finishing up the dishes. Apparently before I got a bullet in my
brain I'd been a slob; now I was a neat freak. I don't think it was
the need for things being neat, but having had to stammer my way
through so many rounds of questions, eventually I wanted to be
prepared. And having things in order was a way I could take control
and
be
prepared.