Bone

by George C. Chesbro

  Bone clutched the plastic-wrapped locket even tighter as he watched Perry Lightning once more reach down into the paper bag which for him had become a sack of horrors. The detective slowly drew out four enlarged, glossy, color photographs, slowly and deliberately set them down one by one on the sheet next to Bone's thigh.

  "Oh, Jesus Christ," Bone said, his voice a kind of distorted groan as he stared in revulsion and horror at the photographs. He gazed, transfixed, at the pulped and ragged flesh, the pooled and spattered blood, and tried to link the obscenity of what he saw to . . . himself. Tentatively, like a man reaching out to see if a grill is hot, he probed the stranger's mind—but almost immediately withdrew, afraid to sear the tender flesh of the only mind he now possessed. He no longer wished to enter the stranger's mind to any great depth, for he was very much afraid of what he would find there. If this was the work of the stranger . . .

  Finally, he managed to tear his gaze away from the photographs. He forced his fist to unclench, and the locket dropped to the sheet, landing on top of one of the photos with a sharp smacking sound. "Did I do that?" he asked in a voice that had suddenly grown very hoarse.

  "You tell me, Bone," Lightning replied, his own voice just above a whisper.

  Bone could only shake his head.

  "Are you saying you didn't do it?"

  "Don't . . . know."

  "Now, why would anybody want to butcher an old man and an old lady like that?"

  Bone brushed away tears with the back of his hand, sighed deeply. He felt so tired, so burdened, that he could hardly keep his eyes open. Then he remembered Lightning's remarks about some criminals wanting nothing more than to be caught and to sleep, and he struggled to keep his eyes open, his mind alert, "It's insane," he said softly. "If I did that . . ."

  "Did you?"

  "I don't know; I can't remember."

  "Come on, Bone. Tell me about it. It's what you really want to do, and that's what all this hunkering down in the mud and amnesia bullshit is all about. What did you do with the heads? You couldn't have carried two bloody heads very far in New York, even in the middle of the night."

  Bone's jaws ached. "Lieutenant," he sighed, "I just can't remember. I'm not saying I didn't do it; I'm saying I don't remember doing it. Obviously, I can't explain the locket or why I was wearing it around my neck, because I don't remember anything before waking up in the meadow."

  "We know you did it, Bone. You're right when you say that anybody who'd slaughter helpless people, cut off their heads and cart them away is insane. That will be taken into account by the courts. The part of you that's sane—and decent—had to find a way to stop the madman, and you did. But you've only gone part of the way; you exposed yourself to us so that we could lock you up, which is good, but you're going to feel a whole hell of a lot better when you stop playing these other mind games with yourself. You'll remember when you let yourself. So tell me the details, and tell me what you did with those people's heads."

  Bone took a deep breath, then looked directly into the other man's eyes. "I told you I can't explain why I was wearing the locket, Lieutenant—but just because I had it doesn't mean that I killed either of those people."

  Perry Lightning snorted derisively and made a dismissive gesture with his left hand as he once again leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. "You started your mud-squatting routine on the same morning those two old people were killed, and only a few blocks from the murder site."

  "Even that doesn't—"

  "You had traces of blood on your pants and shirt cuffs, Bone. There were two blood types, and neither was yours. The blood on your clothes belonged to the old people slaughtered on those church steps."

  These last words, somehow made even more powerful by the casual manner in which they were delivered, had the effect of a series of brutal physical blows that threatened to beat away the last of his resistance to guilt and his tenuous attachments to the stranger. Now he loathed the stranger, feared him. He felt like he was drowning in horror. Now he was ready to make the leap to memory the detective insisted was within his capability; he was willing to remember killing an old woman and an old man and hacking off their heads, was willing to condemn the stranger—and he couldn't. He felt nothing but revulsion at the acts of murder and mutilation, but, try as hard as he could, he could not remember ever doing such things. The close proximity in both time and place between the murders and his squatting in the field, the locket and the blood on his clothes, certainly seemed to indicate that he was guilty, but he could find no evidence of it in his mind. Before awakening in the rain and wind-swept park there was—nothing.

  He was not aware of time passing, but when he looked down at the bed he realized that he must have been thinking for some minutes, absorbed in his nightmarish search for the memories that would condemn the stranger; there were more photographs, and they were strewn all around him, turning the sheet into a garish patchwork of color. Of blood. The photographs showed more headless corpses, of all sizes and shapes and races, of both sexes, dressed for the most part in rags.

  "These, too?" he asked in a voice he did not—or would not—recognize as his own.

  "These, too."

  "How many?"

  "Don't you know?"

  "How many, Lieutenant?"

  "Twenty-eight, counting the old man and old woman you killed last week. The first murder and decapitation occurred roughly just around the same time I'm told you showed up on the city streets—which is another factor I think you'll agree smacks of a good deal more than mere coincidence. Also, there haven't been any killings in the past nine days—since you came in from the cold, so to speak. You've been a busy beaver, Bone, since you came from wherever the hell you came from, and I can tell you that you've sold a lot of newspapers and scared the shit out of a few million people. There are lots of different sorts of homeless people on the streets of the cities these days, but your victims were always those who were worst off: hopeless cases who couldn't even begin to help themselves, and whom nobody seemed able to help. For the past ten months—after the first six killings—thousands of our homeless have gone to city shelters, at least at night; people who'd never set foot in a shelter before headed for one when the sun went down. But not your victims. You've been killing the psychotics and the stone-gone alcoholics who couldn't even tell you if the sun was shining, people who were slowly dying out there anyway, but whom nobody could reach. In a very real sense, I think it can be said that what you did were acts of mercy—although I'm not sure your victims would have felt that way. What I'm saying is that even your crimes show that there's a basic decency in you, and it's that basic decency that finally made you stop. It was probably that decency that kept you from being caught—until you wanted to be caught. From what I'm told, nobody ever would have guessed that this clean-cut young man—obviously troubled, or he wouldn't be in that situation, but not harming anyone—walking the streets during the day was killing people at night and cutting off their heads. You want to tell me about it now, Bone? If you start by telling me what you did with the twenty-eight severed heads, it would help. You can understand that the families of these victims, where there are families, would feel a lot better if the heads were given a proper burial along with the rest of the remains. You can start atoning right now for what you've done by telling me what you did with those heads."

  "If I did those things, I'm grateful that you've got me locked up where I can't harm anybody else," Bone said in his tortured stranger's voice. "But I still don't remember. It seems I'd have nothing left to lose now by remembering—but I don't. I'm sorry, Lieutenant. I really am."

  Perry Lightning pursed his lips and shook his head, then stood up and began collecting the photographs, putting them back into the paper bag along with the locket. Only the tape recorder, which continued to run, remained on the bed.

  "I'm sorry too, Bone," the detective said with what sounded like sincere regret in his voice. "We know that you did it—but now I think we also know
that you're a very sick man. Maybe the doctors here can help you get well, and then someday, maybe, you'll be free to try to build a new life. But that's going to take a long time. Certainly, I might venture an opinion that you weren't responsible for what you did. But the first step in the healing process is to get all this other shit behind you. The way you do that is to remember, and then to tell the police all you know. You'll feel better when you do that; I want it for you. I was hoping you were ready."

  He was lost, Bone thought. There was nothing he could say for himself—the himself that was in his eyes, the himself that could not remember. He was alone.

  But . . .

  The stranger whose body he inhabited was alone, too. And the stranger had no voice other than his own. Everything he had been saying had been on behalf of himself—the eyes, ears, voice and consciousness that were only slightly more than a week old. Who would speak for the stranger?

  He sat up straight, pointed to the shopping bag which the detective had picked up and was holding in the crook of his left arm. "The people in those photographs you showed me certainly weren't beaten to death with a bone," he said in a voice that was much stronger than he'd thought it would be. "Twenty-eight heads weren't cut off with a bone."

  "A razor, or a large, very sharp knife," Lightning said, cocking his head slightly, as if to view Bone from a different angle. His tone had changed, for the first time betraying an edge of genuine surprise and uncertainty. "I'll be damned; you really don't remember, do you?"

  Bone met the other man's steady gaze, sighed. "No. Thank you for believing that, at least."

  "Hey, Bone, I don't need to be told that anyone who squats in a field for two days in the cold and rain obviously doesn't have all his marbles. I've got a pretty good bullshit antenna, and that antenna tells me that you may be telling the truth on that point—you can't remember. Now. But you will. It's inevitable. You can't suppress the memories forever, because you really don't want to. You wouldn't have stopped and put yourself in the Sheep Meadow unless you wanted to be found out and stopped for good. You trust me on that; I know what I'm talking about."

  "You want me to confess to incidents I can't remember, Lieutenant?"

  "No. I want you to start concentrating on one thing at a time.

  Why don't you begin by trying to remember where your stash is?"

  "Stash?"

  "Where you keep your personal belongings—odds and ends that you don't feel like carrying around with you. Almost every homeless person has some kind of stash, somewhere, even if it's just in a shopping cart."

  "But how do you know that I have a stash?"

  "Because you were sighted wearing different sets of clothes at different times, and the only thing you always carried with you was that bone. It means you had to be keeping your extra sets of clothing somewhere—maybe near water, since you always seemed to be fairly clean. You'll have slept close to your stash; it could be somewhere in Central Park. That could also be where the twenty-eight missing heads are. When you remember where your stash is, a lot of other things will start coming back to you, if only in bits and pieces. I'll take the bits and pieces. You tell me what you remember, and then we'll get this all cleared up so you can start getting it behind you. There are some pretty good mental hospitals in this state, and you'll find it a hell of a lot more comfortable in one of those than on the streets. The people there will understand."

  "Lieutenant, you're patronizing me. Are you guaranteeing me that I'll be sent to a mental hospital if I remember the killings and confess to them?"

  The detective reddened slightly, darted a quick glance at the tape recorder on the bed. "No," he said tightly. "I can't guarantee that. But I do have your best interests in mind. I know that deep down you want to get those terrible things off your chest."

  Defend the stranger, Bone thought. Speak for him. Give it your best shot. "Your concern is touching, Lieutenant. I'd very much like to talk to anybody—everybody—who's seen me on the streets over the course of the past year."

  "No," Lightning replied curtly. "Not yet."

  "Why not? What harm could it do? Maybe someone who's seen me knows where my stash is."

  The detective shifted the bag to his other arm, turned slightly and gazed out the window. "First let's see what you can remember on your own, Bone. Let's not complicate things with other people's memories or ideas. It won't do any good to have a lot of people putting things into your head before even you know what's there."

  "But it's all right for you to put things into my head, isn't it, Lieutenant?" Bone said, suddenly feeling an odd sense of exhilaration as he realized that something was bothering the other man. Doubt? "It seems I have a pretty good bullshit antenna of my own, and it's sending me very strong signals right now. You've had a week to check me out, talk with people who knew—or at least had contact with—me during the past year. If any of those people knew where my stash is, you wouldn't be asking me these questions. Well, what harm can there be in letting me talk to them? Maybe you're not as certain I'm the killer as you pretend to be. Could you be trying to get me to confess to things even you're not certain I did?"

  Perry Lightning, his face flushed and his jaw muscles knotted, abruptly stepped back to the bed, set down the bag and shut off the tape recorder. A film of perspiration glistened on his shaved skull. "Who else could have done it?" he said tersely. "You had traces of blood from both the man and woman on your clothes, and you were wearing the old woman's locket around your neck."

  "What about my hands? Did I have blood on my hands?"

  "Two days of rain would have washed the blood off your hands."

  Bone put a gnarled hand to his forehead, pressed his thumb and forefinger into his temples. The stranger could think, but he had to do the talking, had to defend as best . . . there was something . . . "Fingerprints," he said suddenly, dropping the hand. "You must have fingerprints from the scenes of all the killings. Do any of them match mine?"

  Anger and frustration glinted for a moment in the other man's dark eyes, then was gone. "You don't have any fingerprints, Bone," Lightning said in an oddly flat tone of voice. "They've been worn away."

  Bone slowly turned his large and powerful but strangely scarred and ruined hands over and examined the tips of the crooked fingers. It was true; they were all hard, thick callus and scar tissue. There were no prints.

  Peel off!

  There was a scene, a fleeting image of . . . Bone reached for it, and it was gone. It was all right, he thought. It was there; it would come back, but he must be patient and not try to force it. For now, he must defend the stranger against a dangerous opponent who wanted to put him away in a place and situation where he might never be able to find what he had lost.

  "What could have caused this?" he asked, thrusting out his hands.

  Lightning shrugged. "Beats me."

  "What do the doctors say?"

  "What do you say? They're your hands."

  "Come on, Lieutenant!" Bone snapped, experiencing a rush of anger, a positive sense of outrage, that felt good. "Now that we've dispensed with the bullshit about you being my good old buddy who's just trying to help me clear all these terrible things off my conscience, why don't you at least give me a little cooperation?! You want to put me away so you can say you've got all the murders solved? Go for it. But at least be good enough to share some information with me. Who knows? Maybe I'll end up hanging myself with it. Now, what do the doctors say about my hands?"

  Lightning's thin smile almost, but not quite, reached his eyes—eyes that reflected a newfound respect. "They say lots of different things could have caused those injuries, including masochistic self-mutilation."

  "I don't feel masochistic, and I wouldn't call my hands mutilated. I feel like I have a lot of strength in them."

  "Agreed. What I'm saying is that they don't really have the foggiest notion how you managed to do that to yourself. You've got scars in funny places all over your body, but it's only your hands that are really beat
up like that."

  "You say you found blood from the two people who were killed at the church on my clothes. What about the twenty-six other victims, Lieutenant? Any traces of their blood on my clothes?"

  "You could have been wearing other clothes."

  "Which means that maybe you can tie me to the scene of the one crime, but not the others. What about the traces of blood and hair you found on the bone?"

  It was some time before Perry Lightning answered. "There are only so many blood types, Bone," he said at last. "And the traces they found on the femur were microscopic samples."

  "Which means that it's impossible to tell."

  "Well, let me tell you about something else the lab people found in the cracks of that femur," Lightning said evenly.

  "They found traces of powder which they're almost certain is dried aqueous humor."

  "What?"

  "You hashed out somebody's eye with that thing, Bone."

  For a few moments, Bone was shocked into silence. Then, using this new information as a kind of psychic digging tool, he began to tentatively probe the stranger's mind. Since there was no doubt that the stranger had carried the femur for a year, there seemed no doubt that the stranger had put out somebody's eye with it. He didn't know the circumstances, and he would continue to defend the stranger until it was proven beyond a doubt that he was a crazed mass murderer, but he was not certain that he wanted to remember destroying somebody's eye. And he didn't.

  "Have you checked reports of missing persons for the past year?" he said at last.

  "For the past two years—from all over the country. That's a lot of time and territory to cover, and not every police department has the complex facilities we do, so we're still working at it. So far we haven't come up with a physical description that matches you."