Bone Music

by Christopher Rice

  “Not quite. He was accepted to Harvard University, where he pursued a concentration in chemical and physical biology before graduating with honors. Then he went on to get his PhD.”

  “Concentration?” Marty asks. “I thought they were called majors.”

  “Really?” Luke asks. “That’s where your focus goes right now?”

  Kayla seems pleased by Luke’s remark, which pleases Luke. He’s not interested in trying to win somebody else over today.

  “What’d he get his PhD in?” Luke asks.

  “Neuroscience. Shortly thereafter he was hired by a company called Graydon Pharmaceuticals. Ever heard of them? It doesn’t matter. You’ve probably been prescribed at least two of their drugs in your lifetime.”

  “I knew a drug company was behind this,” Luke says.

  “What’d he do there?” Marty asks.

  “Nothing,” Kayla says, as if she doesn’t believe her own answer. “Brilliant guy. Gorgeous. Hired out of Harvard. A veteran of Special Forces. I mean, drug companies are all about marketing, and this one hires Superman in scrubs and then never lets him appear at a public function on Graydon’s behalf. You’d think they would’ve made him the face of something.”

  “Or he was working on something they didn’t want anyone to know about,” Luke says.

  “Sounds about right,” Marty adds.

  “What about before then?” Luke asks.

  “Before Graydon?”

  “No, before the marines.”

  “That’s when I got called off,” Kayla says. “So what do you think? You think this intel’s good enough for a drop-in even though she didn’t want me digging?”

  “For your own safety,” Marty points out.

  “That’s not why she called you off today,” Luke says.

  Kayla’s eyebrows go up. Marty gives him a similar expression.

  “I mean, maybe it’s part of it, but it’s not the only reason.”

  If Charley’s refusing help from someone this smart and capable, maybe letting Kayla and Marty in on her plans is for her own good.

  Yeah, and remember what she did the last time you tried to do something you thought was for her own good?

  “I’m listening,” Kayla says.

  “So am I,” Marty adds.

  Sorry, Charley.

  “She’s cutting you out so she doesn’t have to tell you what she’s planning to do.”

  A little while later, they’re all seated inside Marty’s trailer, and Charlotte’s looking at him like she wants to punch a hole through his chest the way she did that truck’s grill.

  Is the three-hour window thing for real, he wonders, or was she just trying to ease his rattled nerves?

  At Luke’s request, they’ve powered off their cell phones and placed them inside Marty’s mailbox at the mouth of the driveway. A skilled hacker, he explained, could use their handheld devices to listen in on everything they’re saying. Kayla didn’t disagree, Charlotte didn’t have a strong opinion since she was still without a new cell phone, and Marty, whose bookshelf includes titles like Alien Conspiracy, Secrets of the Trilateral Commission, and Loch Ness Unchained, already had a little piece of paper taped over the camera on his desktop computer. He still shut the thing down and powered off his Wi-Fi network as well.

  “I don’t get it,” Marty says for the second time. He’s leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest, nicotine gum forgotten in one corner of his mouth.

  Is he acting dumb? Maybe he’s just in shock. Charley couldn’t have been any clearer.

  “What’s not to get?” Kayla asks. She’s on one end of the love seat, bent elbow braced against the arm, resting her face in her open palm as if it’s the only thing keeping her head from falling apart.

  “The plan,” Marty says. “What’s the plan? I mean, it’s one thing to want to go after this guy. But how are you going to find him?”

  “That’s your brother’s job, right?” Kayla asks Luke.

  “You think your brother’s going to be able to find out who’s killed those women with just a few keystrokes?” Marty asks.

  “No, I don’t,” he answers.

  “And why not?” He’s touched ice blocks warmer than Charley’s voice.

  “He’s good, but he’s not that good.”

  “Says who?” Charley asks.

  “Says me.”

  “He found a white-collar criminal living under an assumed name in Australia and he hacked a satellite to do it.”

  “Fundamentally, he knew who he was looking for,” Luke responded, “and he exploited a back door in a telecommunications company, a back door the company has since publicly acknowledged and closed.”

  “Sounds pretty skilled to me,” Kayla says.

  “Everything about this is different. Back then, he had his target’s height, weight, everything about his mannerisms, physical appearance, and tics. It may sound irrelevant, but that’s all pivotal in a hack because it allows you to predict what passwords they pick, how they might try to move money. Possible aliases.”

  “Who’s the expert in hacking again?” Marty asks.

  “I looked into it some because I wanted to know how my brother had destroyed his life.”

  “You don’t know he’s destroyed his life,” Marty says. “He could be in Tahiti covered in swimsuit models right now.”

  “Yeah, ’cause he was always a big hit with swimsuit models. The point is, the only way Bailey’s been able to pull off something like this is when he had a body of knowledge about a specific individual. He doesn’t have that here. He’s got a ghost, just like the cops. Whatever methods he does use to try to find the Mask Maker, there’s no reason to believe they’ll be any better than what LAPD’s using right now.”

  “They could be faster,” Kayla says, “given that he won’t have to deal with warrants and all.”

  “The best he’ll be able to do is hack LAPD and get you as much of the case file as he can. Maybe the BSU profile on the guy if there is one.”

  “Well, that’s super illegal,” Kayla mutters, but she’s staring at the floor vacantly, as if strict concepts of legality don’t mean as much to her as they did the day before but she’s still obligated to reference them now and then.

  “BSU?” Marty asks.

  “Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI,” Kayla says. “They deal with serial killers.”

  “They try to deal with serial killers,” Charley says.

  “What does that mean?” Luke asks.

  “It means two agents from BSU probably flew to LA on the taxpayer’s dime and spent a few days in their hotel rooms using trendy pop psychology to write some superficial ‘profile’”—she mimes air quotes—“based on a shallow reading of the crime scenes. Now the local cops are leaning on that profile instead of doing their jobs, which is actually investigating the evidence they have. In the process, they’ll eliminate way too many potential suspects so they can trim their workload and the ‘profile’”—she fires off another set of air quotes—“will give them permission to do it.”

  “That’s a lot of air quotes there, Trigger,” Marty says.

  “And a pretty rash dismissal of an esteemed unit of the FBI,” Luke says.

  “Really?” Charley asks. “You’re going to start defending the FBI?”

  “Look, I get it. You’re mad at me for telling them you want to—”

  “No, I’m sick of people getting tingly over BSU because of Clarice Starling, OK? Have any of you ever read the FBI profile of the Bannings? A crystal ball would have been more help.”

  “I heard they used those, too,” Kayla says.

  “Charley,” Luke says, “FBI profiling is a very valid—”

  “The profile ruled out all women, for Christ’s sake. It was a female serial killer.”

  “To be fair, she was working in conjunction with a male sexual predator, who connected up with many of the points made in the profile,” Luke says.

  “And he wasn’t committing the murder
s. She was. And by ruling out all women, the profile blinded the local cops to something they should have seen before.”

  “Which was what?” Kayla asks.

  “There were no signs of struggle at most of the abduction sites because the victims, mostly women traveling alone, trusted their abductor. More than they would have trusted any lone man traveling on a back road or hiking through the woods. And they trusted him because he had a woman with him. If the profile had been right, and Daniel Banning, or some sick freak just like him, was acting alone, there’s a chance my mother never would have rolled down her car window so fast.”

  “You don’t know that, Charley,” Marty says. “Come on. She had a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, and she was with a baby. She needed any help she could get.”

  “And what about the two girls they beat in their motel room?” Kayla asks.

  “Yeah, you mean the ones who didn’t think twice about telling the Bannings which cabin they were staying in because a woman was asking?”

  Luke thinks Charley might be fighting tears, but he can’t tell. She’s like a different person now, and it’s been that way ever since she showed him what she could do. Surly and embarrassed, as if he’s seen her naked and she didn’t want him to.

  She didn’t want you to see what she could do, genius. You forced her to show you when you tried to call Mona.

  “The Bannings were an exceptional case,” he says. “By any standards.”

  “So’s the Mask Maker,” Charley says. “And I don’t need an FBI profile to find him.”

  “Well, good, because I think it’s the best Bailey’s gonna be able to do. That and the case files from LAPD.”

  “Fine,” she says.

  Luke knows he should take a breath. Maybe a few. At his house. With a beer. But instead he hears himself say, “What do you mean, fine? I mean, what does that even mean here?” He sounds like he used to when he was eight years old and his mother told him he couldn’t have a third Coca-Cola.

  Only when he sees the way everyone’s staring at him does he realize he’s shot to his feet.

  “Yes, Luke. Fine. If that’s all Bailey can get, I will find the guy on my own. Alone, if I have to.”

  “And then what?” Marty asks. “You gonna burst through the walls of his house like the Kool-Aid Man, or Kool-Aid Girl, or whatever?”

  Kayla says, “Shut up, Marty.”

  “It’s a good question,” Luke says.

  “I don’t disagree,” Kayla responds.

  “She just likes telling me to shut up,” Marty says.

  “The answer’s no,” Charley says. “I am not going to burst through his walls like the Kool-Aid Man.”

  “What are you going to do?” Luke asks.

  “I’m going to make sure he never kills again.”

  “How?” Luke says with such anger in his voice it makes something wild dance in Charley’s eyes.

  So she has a plan, he realizes. She’s not flying blind, with desperation as her driving wind. She knows exactly what she wants to do; she doesn’t think he can handle it.

  “Oh my God,” Kayla says softly. “You’re gonna do it just like the bar, aren’t you? You’re gonna bait the guy. You’re gonna try to get him to take you, just like one of his victims.”

  Charley’s answer is in her silence.

  “You’re out of your fucking mind,” Luke says.

  “And you’re free to go at any time.”

  “Oh yeah? Now that you’ve got my brother working for you.”

  “Give me a break. He agreed to help me because he wanted to. You didn’t talk him into anything.”

  “And you could be sending him after these people, not using him to work with them.”

  “I am not working with these people. And if you really think your brother, by himself, is going to be able to take on a corporation the size of Graydon Pharmaceuticals and whoever they can afford to hire, you’re the crazy one.”

  She gets to her feet and moves into the tiny kitchen. Marty steps out of her way, riveted, it seems, by the confrontation building before him.

  “This is just crazy, and desperate. You’ve got no idea what you’re doing or why you’re doing it.”

  “Oh, really? I thought you knew exactly what I was doing. I’m out to prove to the world I’m not a serial killer. Still! Wasn’t that what you said back at the library?”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “It is what you said. It’s exactly what you said. And if you didn’t mean it, maybe you’re the desperate one right now. What happened to the guy who wanted to help me no matter what?”

  “He’s still trying.”

  “Oh, bullshit. You’re freaking out because you can’t handle what I can do. I never should have told you or shown you any of it.”

  “You’re not doing anything, Charlotte. The drug is doing it. Dylan’s drug is doing it. And you’re choosing to take it again for reasons that are certifiably insane. Am I the only who feels the need to weigh in here?”

  “Weighing in is what we’re calling this?” Kayla asks.

  “All right, fine, so it’s gonna be all about my tone then! Or how I’m not saying it in the right way.”

  Charley answers by turning her back on him and opening the refrigerator door. Is she actually looking for something inside or is it just an act?

  “So tell me, Charley. Trina. Whatever it is. Tell me why you’re going after the Mask Maker.”

  She slams the refrigerator door shut with enough force to shake the trailer. Luke can feel the pulse of terror that moves through all three of them, the fear that maybe the drug isn’t out of her system, or maybe this is some new episode. Charley either doesn’t notice or she doesn’t care.

  “Because I want to. That’s why. Because if these people are going to force me to be their guinea pig, then by God, I’m going to use what they’ve given me the way I want. I’m gonna find the man who did that to those women, and I’m gonna look right into his eyes when he realizes that I am the end of him. And I will not spend another second justifying that to some prick who’s on an apology tour because his life has hit the skids and he’s just now realizing he’s too big of an asshole to make any friends.”

  Marty winces.

  Kayla swallows.

  Her words strike a blow to his gut, and the pain that radiates outward, while phantom and fleeting, fills him with a bewildering urge. It feels almost like a craving, this acute desire to return to that moment in his Jeep when he reached for her because he thought she was about to lose it, the moment when his hand made it no farther than the gearshift before she rested hers atop it.

  Why would he think of that moment now, when her words have slugged him this hard? It’s like his brain’s convinced there’s something he can squeeze from the memory and apply to his wounds like a balm.

  Oh, shit, dude, he thinks. Oh, shit. He’s familiar with this voice in his head, the voice that warns him away from serious risks. The voice that sounds just like his freshman-year roommate, Reggie, who had a particular, steady way of pointing out when things were about to go seriously off the rails. Like when he realized the hot girl visiting their room was about to turn psycho, or the coffee they’d been drinking out of the bottom of the pot had been sitting there for days. Oh, shit, dude. You are totally falling for—

  The words fly from him before Reggie’s voice can finish his sentence.

  “Well, shit. You didn’t just rent Dylan a space in your head. You bought him a house there. Good luck with your treatment, Burning Girl.”

  “Get out.”

  “Works for me,” he answers. But there’s a tremor in his voice. Kayla cocks her head to one side, sympathy flashing in her eyes. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep all your crazy secrets. And if Bailey doesn’t find a way to get in touch with you himself, I’ll let you know. If, you know, you’re not off hunting terrorists by then because it’s what you want.”

  He’s moving so fast he’s startled by the sound of his own footsteps punching t
he wooden steps out front. Startled to suddenly be speeding downhill toward the valley, holding the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip.

  He keeps swallowing, but nothing gets rid of the lump in his throat. And that look Kayla gave him, the one that seemed surprised by the level of emotion in his voice, replays on a loop inside his mind.

  He can feel the cold, analytical parts brushing off their spectacles and preparing to lecture him the way he just tried to lecture Charlotte. Preparing to explain away his bewildering mixture of hurt and embarrassment, his acute sense of rejection.

  On the one hand, it’s probably shock. Some people—most people—would have full-on lost their minds once they saw what that drug can do. So all things considered, maybe he’s doing pretty well, thank you. And who’d be surprised to learn that one afternoon of friendly conversation and criminal conspiracy wasn’t enough to put all the years of ill will between him and Charlotte at bay?

  But there’d been a moment back there on the porch, after he’d managed to steady his hands, around the time he and Marty had started to shoot the shit, when he’d felt more settled inside his own skin than he’d been for weeks. Months, even. When he’d felt like a part of something. Included.

  Well, that’s gone now, isn’t it?

  Get out, she’d said to him.

  Can’t get any clearer than that.

  Yeah, and she said it because you jumped down her throat, lectured her, and then, when she disagreed, you told her how to think.

  And those final words. God, they hurt.

  They hurt because she is right.

  He doesn’t have any friends, and he’s not sure how to make any. This only became clear to him once he was separated from his ambitions. Scratch that. This only became a problem once he was separated from his ambitions.

  There’ve been times since he returned to Altamira when his loneliness has felt like a weight on his chest. He knows it’s too heavy to remove on his own, but on most days, he’s too proud to ask for help. So he lies to himself and says tomorrow will be the day. Tomorrow will be the day he’ll go someplace and just sit and see who talks to him first and hope that the first stirrings of chitchat with a stranger might reveal the seeds of a new life. A new life with new friends, and a new vision for his future he can be proud of.