“You got a sheet, Sam. I want to make sure Holister's all right before I deal with this. And if you don't mind, I'd rather neither of you said anything to anybody about the skeleton until I get things sorted out,” Jordan said.
Word would get out that there was a skeleton at the pond soon enough. It would spread like wildfire through town. He knew there'd be speculation that the skeleton was Tito Cordova as soon as everybody heard what had happened. But there was no way of knowing that the skeleton was Tito. The letter was mailed from Dukaine, so the shooting sure did seemed linked. As far as Jordan was concerned it was not a random act—just like Holister's theory about Tito, which did not escape his attention. Somebody in Dukaine was behind the shooting. But why? Why now? After all these years?
“You're not in any shape to deal with anything, Jordan, except for a ride to the hospital,” Charlie said evenly.
Jordan tried to relax, but couldn't push the regret he was feeling away. Maybe if he'd ignored Ginny's call, none of this would be happening. Maybe if he'd trusted his gut a little more, he wouldn't have felt the need to climb into Ginny's bed again. Or if he would've paid more attention to his ex-wife, Monica, maybe she wouldn't have slept with her boss. . . . There were too many maybes to think about, and Jordan knew none of them mattered at the moment. The shooting had nothing to do with his personal life. Whoever was behind the shooting had lured Holister to the pond—for whatever reason, the marshal was the target, not him.
Two Carlyle County Sheriff's deputies appeared, weapons drawn. They stood guard fifteen feet from the EMTs, silent, eyeing the tree line in opposite directions.
The deputies' appearance relieved Jordan, but he was not calmed entirely. The shooter had remained phantom-like, and for the first time since the shooting had ended, he began to question whether or not there was more than one of them.
A familiar feeling began to rise in the back of his mind; a certain knowledge of events, a knowledge that life can change in an instant, a storm can rise from nowhere and catch you unaware in its path, through no fault of your own. And then nothing would ever be the same. He was in the midst of another storm, and no matter how hard he tried, he would not be able to get the life back he had a few hours ago. He was angered by the crack in his perception of himself, his own desire to be a person that could end the storm for others. For as long as he could remember he wanted to be the one to extend his hand and say, “I'm here to help.”
He'd found a way of escaping his own darkness, his own uncertainty, by becoming a calm force in a moment of chaos, by righting wrongs and putting everything back where it belonged. Regardless of Ginny's, or anyone else's, opinion, Jordan knew there was more to his life, to his badge, than being a lowly gopher for Holister.
But he had failed to save the marshal from harm, a man that he loved like a father, and he knew he would replay the shooting over and over, questioning what he could have done differently.
“Charlie's right,” Sam said. “Look, I'm sorry about punchin' you, I wasn't expecting it.”
“Not a problem, don't worry about it, man. I was . . .” Jordan said. He couldn't finish the sentence, bring himself to admit aloud to Sam Peterson that he was scared.
Instead, he wanted to argue with Charlie and Sam about going to the hospital. He started to say he was fine, that he was going to catch whoever shot Holister and beat them till they begged for mercy, but he knew Charlie was right. He was in no shape to deal with anything. He was lucky to be alive.
A chill swept over him again and he began to shiver. His skin felt like it was swelling, and he itched all over. He was drenched with sweat and covered in muck. The rancid pond water smelled even worse now that he was sitting downwind. A north breeze drifted over the pond, churning the mugginess of the air but doing nothing to cool it. The pond smelled dead. Not the rotting stink of a roadkill raccoon but more like a vacant slaughterhouse where death attached itself to the cobwebs and dust piles. It was an old smell, almost like the blood meal Kitty used in her garden to keep the rabbits out of her petunias.
The sky was dotted with small puffball clouds that held little promise of rain. Jordan felt sick to his stomach and immediately leaned over and threw up a mass of nervous bile. “I hate fucking hospitals,” he said, catching a breath of air.
“See, I told you you needed lookin' after,” Sam said.
“I'm all right,” Jordan said. “Take care of Holister, I'm gonna need him.”
Sam nodded, flipped his radio off his belt, and called to check on backup.
“Get down here, Sam,” Charlie ordered. “I'm losing him. We need to bag him now.”
“Shit, Charlie, you know I'm no good at that,” Sam said, staring nervously at Holister. “I've just done it on that mannequin in training class.”
“I'll do it,” Charlie answered. “But I'll need your help.”
Sam scurried to Charlie's side, following Charlie's orders at every move.
Jordan's radio was buzzing with voices. The Carlyle County Sheriff's department had blocked off Huckle Road and three cars were patrolling the roads surrounding Longer's Pond. Bill Hogue, the sheriff, was arriving at the parking lot, and Johnny Ray Johnson was on his way.
Louella was calling every other minute, checking on Holister's condition. Sheriff Hogue finally had to tell her to stay off the frequency.
Two more EMTs pushed by the deputies. Sheriff Hogue was two steps behind them.
“Damn,” Hogue whistled. “You all right, McManus?”
“I won't be singing at the Christmas party anytime soon.”
“Why did I know I wasn't going to get a straight answer?”
“I'm a predictable person, Hogue, haven't you figured that out by now? It's not me we need to worry about,” Jordan said, shedding the blanket from his shoulders. He tried to stand, but immediately sat back down.
The world started to spin in opposite directions. Bill Hogue looked like a man standing in front of a circus mirror, the kind that shrank the head and inflated the belly. The blurred image wasn't much of a stretch. On a normal day, Bill Hogue looked like a bowling pin dressed in a brown sheriff's uniform. Take the Smokey the Bear hat off his head to expose his smooth bald head and he was a dead ringer for a tenpin.
“I can see that,” Hogue said. He turned his attention to Charlie Overdorf. “Is Holister going to be all right?”
“Doesn't look good,” Charlie said as he inflated the bag in Holister's mouth.
“What about him?”
“From the looks of it, it's a flesh wound,” Charlie answered. “A few stitches, and he should be as good as new.”
“You up to telling me what happened, McManus?”
“He's going to the hospital,” Sam Peterson said.
“I can tell you,” Jordan answered, ignoring Sam.
CHAPTER 7
August 21, 2004, 7:22 A.M.
Jordan took a deep breath and tried to regain his senses. He needed to stop and think, make sure he knew what he was dealing with. Having a conversation with Bill Hogue was like playing one-on-one basketball on a hot summer day; you never had time to catch your breath, and the man was smart, always two steps ahead of you. Jordan was never any good at one-on-one, and he was even worse when it came to talking to Bill Hogue.
He could give a shit about Hogue's position. Any authority over him belonged to Holister and the Town Board, not the sheriff's department. Maybe it was Hogue's disregard for all of the small-town deputies in the county, much like the INS agents, or maybe it was something more—like the fact that Bill Hogue was Ed Kirsch's uncle. Either way, Jordan didn't like the unsettling feeling Hogue's presence always seemed to evoke, especially now.
Bill Hogue was first and foremost a politician. He was in his first year of a four-year term, but it was Hogue's third term as sheriff. He was deeply entrenched in the structure of the county law-enforcement community. Hogue had been elected eight-and-a-half years ago as an alternative to a corrupt one-term sheriff who was presently on the waning end of
a tax evasion and attempted murder sentence. The Carlyle County Sheriff's department had been clean of scandal ever since the then fifty-year-old Hogue took office, and no one questioned the iron-fist policies that kept it that way, or Hogue's political abilities to make sure he attained whatever goal he set for himself.
Jordan was well aware of the rumors that Hogue was considering a run for the Morland mayoral seat when that election came up in two years. So, there was no question that he was intent on taking charge of the investigation to bolster his image. He didn't fault Hogue for that, and Jordan also knew there was no way that he or the Dukaine Police Department could handle an investigation of this magnitude. But he intended to be involved as much as possible, to be in the loop, to be in the hunt for the shooter.
“I'm going to need a full report on this, McManus,” Sheriff Hogue said.
Jordan ignored the demand. He wanted to ask the sheriff if he thought he was a fucking idiot, but he already knew the answer. He watched as Sam Peterson and Charlie Overdorf tried to lift Holister onto the gurney. Hogue turned away, surveying the landscape, pushing the toe of his boot into the dry dirt.
Holister was limp, as heavy as a dead horse, and the other EMTs from Carlyle County joined in to help. They had to tilt him sideways to completely lift him up onto the gurney.
“You need to come with us, Jordan. That arm needs to be looked at,” Sam said.
“I'm fine, really. The sheriff and I need to talk first.”
“After I get Holister on his way, I'll be back down for you,” Sam said. “What about that?” he asked, pointing at the skeleton.
“Don't worry about it. There's nothing you can do.”
When Jordan turned back to Bill Hogue, the sheriff was staring at the skeleton.
“That's part of what happened,” Jordan said.
“I noticed. You better start from the beginning, and don't leave anything out. You've never been in a situation like this before. Probably don't know your ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to investigating a shooting.”
Jordan took a deep breath, ignored Hogue's supercop attitude the best he could, and told the sheriff everything that had happened from the moment he'd got the call from Holister.
Everything except the letter Holister gave him. He wasn't sure why he felt the need to filter information, especially information concerning the shooting. It was a gut feeling, a reaction to Hogue's arrogance—and the fact that Hogue had family in Dukaine, too. The sheriff's sister was Ed Kirsch's mother. Ed's father, Lee, was the real rounder of the bunch, a small-time crook who'd served two years in prison in the early seventies for burglary. After fathering nine children, Lee ran off with another woman, leaving Ed's mother to fend for herself. Jordan didn't know how tight Hogue was with Ed or any of the Kirsch kids—he'd seemed to distance himself from Dukaine and his family once he started to climb the ranks in the department. But Jordan still didn't trust the connection.
“Ginny and Celeste are going to take this hard,” Hogue said, casting Jordan a glance that penetrated his heart.
The comment left Jordan speechless, even more on guard.
“Let's go have a look,” Hogue continued without missing a beat. “If you can.” It was not a question of concern; it was an order. Hogue didn't wait for an answer. He headed straight toward the skeleton. Jordan nodded yes and made his way through the cattails close behind Hogue.
They edged along the bank of the pond and stopped about ten yards from the skeleton.
“The first shots came from over there,” Jordan said as he pointed to the big sycamore tree. Horse nettle and ragweed surrounded it, rising about six feet tall against the trunk of the tree. There were scrub trees in front of the tall trees, and even with the sun bright overhead there was a shadowy world of withering vegetation beyond the pond banks. A few game paths wound through the weeds about twenty feet from the sycamore, apparent only to a hunter or someone who knew the ways of deer and raccoons. Jordan guessed that the shooter had used the trails, at least initially, to navigate and hide among the weeds.
“We need to check those trails,” Jordan said, making sure Hogue was aware of them.
“You don't need to worry about that. I got boys all over the place, checking every trail, every path in and out of here. Just like I got to do.”
Jordan's arm throbbed and he felt light-headed. The blaring sun hurt his eyes and he had a pounding headache, but he tried to ignore the pain, tried not to show Hogue any weakness.
Holister's .38 lay on the ground a few feet from the skeleton. Hogue pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and picked the weapon up to examine it. “This Holister's?”
Jordan nodded.
“The damned old fool never would change, would he? If he'd been carrying a Glock things might've turned out different,” Hogue said.
“He didn't trust plastic.”
“I don't know that I'd trust a fifty-year-old weapon.”
“It shoots just fine.”
Hogue looked at Jordan oddly and smirked.
Jordan walked away from Hogue, restraining himself from striking out, and took his first close-up look at the skeleton. The butterscotch brown bones were covered with dried mud, but everything looked intact; the rib cage poked out of the ground perfectly, even the fingers were still attached. Flies had lost the opportunity to lay their eggs in the flesh long ago; there were no signs of insects anywhere, except the ever-present cloud of mosquitoes that swarmed over the pond. It looked like the bones had been there for a long, long time, hidden under the water and muck. At its normal level, Longer's Pond would have been about five feet deep where he stood, and Jordan wondered how the divers could have missed the skeleton when they searched the pond.
The skull bothered Jordan the most. He hesitated, and then reached down and touched the top of the head. It was warm from the sun, and he recoiled quickly. The skeleton was real. Just like the blood on his shirt.
He had never seen anything like it. The only skeleton he could recall ever seeing was in his eighth-grade biology class, and it was made out of plastic. It felt strange standing in an open grave, exposed by the lack of water and the erosion of time. All sorts of images flashed through Jordan's mind: Halloween decorations dancing in the wind; a faceless little boy struggling to breathe, sinking deep into the water, stuck in the mud; and finally, fish and snapping turtles picking flesh off the bone as if it were bait, an unexpected feast.
A siren blared in the distance. The ambulance with Holister was pulling away, heading toward St. Joseph's Hospital in Morland. Jordan glanced up, then returned his gaze to the skeleton. “Are you really Tito Cordova?” he asked silently.
Hogue gently returned the .38 to the spot where he found it. “Doesn't look like he had time to get a round off,” he said.
“No, he didn't.”
The sheriff didn't immediately respond—it looked like he was thinking, plotting out his next question. “Hard telling how long it's been here,” Hogue finally said, easing up next to Jordan, looking down at the skeleton.
“Holister seemed to have a good idea. Pretty close to twenty years, if he's right.”
The sheriff looked at Jordan curiously.
“Holister thought the skeleton belonged to Tito Cordova.”
“Why in the hell would he think that?”
Jordan started to tell Hogue about the letter, again, but remained quiet. He would put the information in his report, turn in the medal and letter as evidence, once he was certain Hogue was going to allow him to be involved in the investigation, once he saw where things were going from here. “Holister was obsessed with the Cordova disappearance. We reviewed it every year. I think he really wanted to solve that case before he retired.”
“These bones could belong to anybody.”
“That's what I thought,” Jordan paused. “Do you remember when Tito Cordova vanished?”
“I'd just started with the department when that happened. Nothing but a greenhorn looking for a way to show myself off
to old Ben Gunther, the sheriff back then,” Hogue said with a nod. “I sure as hell remember it. Things like that just didn't happen around here. Kids disappearing with no trace. I was over here every day walking through fields, checking every nook and cranny in the SunRipe plant. If it would've happened during harvest, I would of thought one of the Mexicans was responsible, but they were gone.”
“All of them except José Rivero and Tito's mother, Esperanza,” Jordan said, watching Hogue closely. “But Holister talked to José and ruled him out from being involved because he'd been away when the kid disappeared. If I remember right he left a few days before, and returned a few days after the search ended. Everyone Holister questioned led to a dead end. I don't think he ever accepted the idea that Tito was abducted by a stranger, but that was the final word.”
“Well,” Hogue said. “That's the way it looked to me, too. If something like that happened now, I might look at it the same way Holister did. I'm going to want to see Holister's original report. I'm sure our department's report is still on file, too. I need to refresh myself on the details.”
“I know where the report is. I think,” Jordan said. Holister's office looked like a rat's nest. Piles of unread papers covered his desk and his filing cabinets were ancient, burgeoning with faded manila folders and old newspapers. Holister hated doing paperwork, and no matter how much Louella goaded him and tried to keep him organized, he resisted, almost like a teenager staking his ground, not cleaning his room. But the Cordova file was special to Holister. So special, he kept it hidden in the false bottom of a briefcase he kept secured in the gun locker. Jordan never understood why, and never asked. He wished he would have now.
“The way it looks now, the boy might've just wandered in here and drowned. It might not have been a crime at all,” Hogue said.
“The Cordova place was on the other side of town. That would've been a five-mile walk. Somebody would've surely seen him before he got here.”
The Devil's Bones Page 6
