Bone Music

by Christopher Rice

  “I’d like to talk to her.”

  “Why?” Marty’s full-on pissed now.

  “Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure if I apologize to you for what I did to Trina, you’re just gonna tell me it doesn’t mean anything unless I say it to her face. So I’m trying to save us both some time. Is she still around? I mean, I know Luanne’s store is gone but . . .”

  So much of this day has been about Marty having the upper hand on him; Luke is stunned to see the man so visibly thrown off his game.

  “She’s all right, isn’t she? I mean . . . she’s alive, right?”

  “And why would you care?”

  “I just told you why, Marty.”

  “All right, well, let me tell you something. Apologies aren’t worth shit. Apologies are a string of words people put together so they can off-load their guilt in five minutes.”

  “You didn’t have a problem accepting the one I gave you.”

  “That’s still pending. You go back to being the little son of a bitch I remember, it won’t be worth horse dung.”

  “OK, well, maybe Trina should have that opportunity, too. Horse dung and all.”

  “She doesn’t want it!”

  It’s not exactly a shout, but it’s loud enough to draw the attention of the waitress, and it embarrasses Marty enough to turn his face red and make him reach for his fork even though his plate’s only got bits of pie crust on it.

  “Look,” Marty says, once he’s caught his breath. “I appreciate you coming over and—” The man’s cell phone rings, and Luke figures he’ll ignore it. But maybe that’s not a luxury you can afford when your vocation is talking fragile drunks away from the bottle. Whatever number Marty sees flashing on the caller ID, it drains some of the recent color from his face.

  He looks up at Luke, confusion in his eyes. It’s like he thinks Luke might have something to do with whoever’s calling.

  “I gotta take this,” Marty says.

  “You want me to go?” Luke asks.

  Marty shakes his head, slides out of the booth, and gets to his feet. He takes the call and brings the phone to his ear. “Give me a second,” he says to the person on the other end. Luke watches as he peels a twenty out of his wallet and drops it on the table.

  He’s a few steps from the table when he seems to realize he’s left Luke sitting there without much of an explanation. He turns.

  “Later, Deputy Prescott,” he says.

  14

  The last time Charlotte slept this deeply, anesthesia was involved, and she’d woken up with her wisdom teeth removed. The shrill beeping that calls her out of slumber now is almost as unpleasant as regaining consciousness with bloody gauze in her mouth.

  Almost.

  The shades are drawn, but around their edges, she can see it’s almost dark outside. As Kayla walks toward the front door, she looks just as put together as she did that morning, which makes Charlotte feel like a drunk emerging from a blackout.

  “Don’t be mad,” Kayla says, as if the prospect barely frightens her. An electronic peephole viewer is attached to the wall next to the door frame, about sixty bucks from an appliance store. Charlotte priced them out for her house before she found a system that came with cameras included.

  Kayla studies the small monitor, sees whatever she’d hoped to see, and sends a text in response. Whoever this visitor is, she doesn’t want him to just walk up to the front door and ring the bell. Or she’s told him she won’t open the door for anyone who doesn’t also have her phone number.

  A minute or two later, Kayla turns the knob.

  Charlotte gets to her feet. She’s not sure whom she’s preparing herself for, but she’s sure she should be prepared.

  When he steps inside the house, Charlotte’s breath leaves her with a startled grunt, the kind of sound you make when you almost knock over a water glass. Maybe it’s just the sight of him that does her in. Maybe it’s the smell of his Old Spice aftershave, familiar and nostalgic at the same time, wrapping her in a cocoon of such vivid, comforting memories she feels like it might keep her standing even if she let her knees go out from under her.

  They’re fragmented, but her earliest memories of him are still vivid.

  The memory of his face among the many others in that dull conference room where the psychiatrists brought her a few weeks after her rescue. The way he’d stood behind her grandmother’s chair with one hand resting firmly on her shoulder as Luanne cried softly into a Kleenex. They’d both tried to let her father lead the conversation, even though it was clear, even then, that her father was treating her like an alien being, a creature irreparably changed by her time on the Bannings’ farm.

  The way he’d taken her hand and walked her down the stairs to the beach in Altamira during those first early visits to her grandmother’s after she was rescued.

  Had there ever been a man in her life she could trust more than Martin Cahill, her grandmother’s on-again, off-again boyfriend? And what had she done? Turned her back on him because her love for him reminded her too much of her grandmother. Practically banished all thoughts of him because they summoned her grief. Now the sight of him, his snow-white hair brushed out over his back, his denim shirt perfectly pressed, his smile warm and welcoming and eager, it’s exactly what she needs to break the hard shell of shock that’s grown around her over the past twenty-four hours.

  “Heya, Charley,” he says softly.

  That he can manage to say her new name with such warmth, it makes her vision wobble.

  At last her knees buckle. And when she tries to say, Hi, Uncle Marty in response, all that comes out is a deep, wrenching sob. With an arm around her waist, he guides her back to the sofa.

  Kayla follows from a short distance. Before Charlotte collapses against Marty’s chest, she glimpses Kayla watching them from the doorway, her expression grave but relaxed, as if Charlotte’s breakdown is proof that calling Marty was the right choice.

  15

  “Arizona?” Marty asks. “What the hell’s in Arizona?”

  “It’s beautiful,” Charlotte answers.

  “Yeah, if you want to live on Mars.”

  “Never been so I can’t compare.”

  “Seriously, though. Arizona?”

  Marty shakes his head, sips from the coffee Kayla just brought him before disappearing into the kitchen.

  “I thought it’d be safe out there,” she says.

  “From what? We took care of the Briffel kid the one time he showed up, didn’t we?”

  Not well enough, she wants to say, but she knows that’s unfair. Jason never would have found her again without Dylan’s help. Marty and his buddies deserve credit for scaring him off her scent for a good long while.

  “There are other Jasons out there. Message boards, websites about the Bannings. All kinds of stuff.”

  “Tell me you’re not reading that crap.”

  “How much did Kayla tell you?” Charlotte asks.

  “That Jason paid you a visit. That it didn’t end well. That’s all.”

  “I should have called you.”

  “Well, it’s not like I would have been able to make it to Arizona in time.”

  “No, sooner. I mean, in general. I should have . . .”

  She’d managed to peel herself off his chest a few minutes before, but there’s only about a foot of distance between them on the sofa now. He reaches across it to smooth her bangs back from her forehead.

  “You don’t owe me anything, kiddo. That’s not how it works.”

  “How what works?”

  “Family.”

  Real family, is what he seems to be saying, unlike your father, who didn’t treat you like family.

  “Maybe not, but I shouldn’t treat family that way.”

  Marty shrugs. He agrees with her, but he doesn’t want to rub it in. Not when she’s like this.

  And he came as soon as Kayla called. That means more to her than anything in the world.

  She’d had lots of plans when she sta
rted her self-imposed exile: to get an online degree, to work up the courage to live in a big city again. Or maybe even to move back to Altamira once her grief for Luanne lost some of its darkness. All she needed was time, she’d thought. Time to gather confidence. Time to let her new name sink in and her terrible fame dissipate.

  On some days she’d thought it would be as simple as letting herself age to the point where no one recognized her anymore, when the resemblance she bore to the young woman her father used to trot in front of crowds was a passing one. But would that come at a price? With each year it took to gather confidence and anonymity, would it become even harder to bring Marty or Luanne’s other friends, or anyone from Altamira, back into her life again?

  After she’d fled to the desert, these questions tormented her. Now the answer seems clear. Marty’s right here beside her, and he came at a moment’s notice.

  “How’s everyone?” she asks.

  “Same. Pissed, though. Some developers said they were gonna open a big lodge out on PCH. Turned out to be bullshit. Couple folks went under because of it. Mona Sanchez is sheriff now.”

  “That’s good. I liked her.”

  “Copper Pot’s still going strong. Still got the best pie in California. What else?”

  Marty focuses on the blank white wall behind her. She figures he’s debating whether or not to share some other piece of hometown trivia, something she might find troubling.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Nothing. So you want to tell me what got you to leave Arizona?”

  Kayla appears in the doorway with a suddenness that suggests she’s been eavesdropping.

  It’s not going to be easy, telling the story again now that she knows Kayla doesn’t believe a big chunk of it. But at least her lawyer isn’t trying to bias Marty one way or the other. Instead she rests one shoulder against the door frame and studies Charlotte intently.

  Charlotte looks at the floor and starts to talk.

  Occasionally she glances up at Marty to find he’s gone as still as a statue, his eyes saucer-wide, his mouth set in a grim line. He’s a smart man with no patience for the bullshit he believes defines most human interactions. But he can also spend a solid hour explaining how alien infiltration has taken place at the highest levels of the American government, and he can do it with the conviction of Kayla arguing a case before the Supreme Court of California. So maybe Marty’s having less trouble believing all this than another person might.

  By the time she finishes, he’s gone pale.

  “You believe me?” Charlotte asks. “Kayla doesn’t.”

  Kayla walks toward her, holding her mobile phone out in one hand. It takes Charlotte a second to realize she wants her to look at what’s on the screen.

  It’s from the website of the Phoenix-based NBC affiliate. The accompanying photograph is a helicopter shot of sheet-draped bodies lying in the middle of nowhere. The bus sheds have been obliterated, leaving her to wonder if they were the source of the explosion.

  The headline: BLAST AT OUTLAW BIKER WEAPONS STOREHOUSE KILLS 11

  It’s a rush TV news article, short on details, designed mostly to support the slide show of helicopter shots capturing the scene. Eleven killed, speculation it might be related to the takedown of a Vapados storehouse in California the week before, which had forced some members of the gang to relocate into rival territory. A possible battle between Hells Angels and Vapados suggested but not confirmed. No mention of a victim who seems to be out of place. A victim like Dylan Thorpe.

  “He did it,” Charlotte says.

  “This Dylan guy?” Marty asks.

  “Or the guy who calls himself Dylan,” Kayla says. “Did you read all the way to the end?”

  “No.”

  “Read all the way to the end.”

  She does. That’s where she finds the quote from an anonymous law enforcement source speculating that not all the bikers were killed by the blast; several were found with close-range gunshots to the head.

  Marty gestures for the phone. She hands it to him, then gets to her feet.

  It seems rude, but she turns her back on them anyway, closes her eyes, tries to imagine the man she talked to month after month going from biker to biker, putting bullets between their wide, terrified eyes. Using his powers of manipulation to lure Jason to her house, to convince her to take his crazy drug—those talents belong to one skill set, close-range executions to another. Was that the point of the explosion? Not to provide cover for his escape, but to incapacitate those bastards so he could execute them one by one?

  And when it comes to executing outlaw bikers, is she in any position to judge? But she was defending herself. Defending herself with the power of a drug she’d been tricked into taking. A shot between the eyes—that’s a different story.

  That takes a very special kind of person.

  A person who’s been trained to kill.

  “You believe her now?” Marty asks.

  “Look, I never said I didn’t believe she’d been drugged or that this Dylan guy’s a class-A psychopath.”

  “But you think she was hallucinating everything else?” Marty asks.

  “Possibly, yes.”

  “Fifteen years I’ve been in AA, I’ve seen folks detox from all kinds of shit. Guys so nuts they’ll meet you for lunch and apologize for the warlock who followed them into the restaurant. None of those folks had it as together as she does right now.”

  “Charley,” Kayla says, “we’ve got a more pressing issue to discuss.”

  “What in Christ’s name could that be?” Marty asks.

  “Your car, Charley. The SUV you were driving when the bikers ran you off the road. If it’s close to this crime scene, then—”

  “Maybe he got rid of it,” Charlotte answers.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. He blew up their damn storehouse. Maybe he threw my car on the pile. I don’t even know who this guy really is, much less what he’s capable of.”

  “You really think this guy was just carrying around the kind of explosives that could trigger a blast like that?”

  “Or he used whatever he found on-site. Maybe he found something with all those weapons that he used as an explosive.”

  “You think he has that kind of training?” Marty asks.

  “He said he was going to take care of eight bikers. Take care of them. On his own. And he said it like it was nothing. And it looks like he did.”

  “And the Briffel kid?” Marty asks, a catch in his voice.

  They fall silent. She wonders if, like her, they’re both imagining Jason dying of thirst on the floor of her kitchen.

  “There’s no way,” Charlotte says.

  “No way what?” Kayla asks.

  “There’s no way Dylan did that to those bikers and just left Jason there.”

  “Maybe he threw Jason on the pile along with your car,” Marty offers.

  “That’s a big maybe,” Kayla whispers.

  “He said he’d take care of him. No maybe about it.”

  Charley could be imagining it, but Kayla’s expression seems to have changed, softened a bit, become less skeptical. She wonders if that’s going to be the key; that with each passing minute she doesn’t change her story, or lose her grip on the details, or do any of the other things that suggest someone suffering from a delusion or advancing a lie, Kayla will come to believe her.

  “I want you to see a doctor,” Kayla says. “If you won’t come into the city, I’ll find one in Modesto or Fresno. But you need to—”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “I’m not talking about a psychiatrist, Charley. I’m talking about an internist. You were given a strange drug. You need to have blood work done. Get your vitals checked. Everything.”

  “I don’t feel sick.”

  “You don’t know what you are because you don’t know what’s in these pills! It might not be a good thing that your bruises from the car wreck are healing so fast. There could be something wrong with your
blood. Maybe it’s not clotting properly. There’s just too much you don’t know about this drug right now, and the only way to learn is to put yourself at this psycho’s mercy again.”

  “What’s some random doctor going to be able to tell me about the effects of a drug that shouldn’t exist? Unless I tell them about the drug. Which would be reckless.”

  “So you’re not interested in finding out how this drug really works?” Kayla asks.

  “Oh, I am,” she says.

  Marty stiffens, studies her closely.

  “In the field,” Charlotte says.

  “I’m sorry.” Kayla’s voice is a strained whisper. “The field?”

  “A test. Look at it this way. You’ll get to find out if I’m delusional or not.”

  “And how exactly are you going to conduct this test?”

  “Jason was a trigger. That’s how Dylan described him. Zypraxon is a drug that converts fear into strength, but it needs a trigger. A strong one.”

  “It converts your fear into strength,” Kayla adds. “If we believe this story that you’re the only one to take it and live.”

  “Right. So to do another test, I need another trigger.”

  She thinks back to those terrifying moments before the drug took effect. Knowing someone else was in the house wasn’t enough. Otherwise she would’ve torn the toilet paper dispenser off the wall while she was peeing. Knowing someone was approaching her from behind wasn’t enough, either. Otherwise the Diet Coke can she’d been holding as she stood at the sink would’ve exploded in her grip. Was it the stark terror of finding herself face-to-face with Jason? Or was it being attacked?

  Maybe it was all of it in combination—a destination she can reach after mounting a staircase of increasing fear. There’s only one way to find out for sure.

  Marty clears his throat. “Why don’t I just try to run over you with my car and see if you end up tearing the grill off with one hand?”

  “I’m open. But the first time the bikers surrounded me during the drive home, it wasn’t enough to trigger me. It was Jason breaking into my house and attacking me when I tried to run that did it. So I’m thinking we’ll need to find something . . . similarly terrifying.”