The Devil's Bones

by Larry D. Sweazy

  “That's what it said,” Jordan said.

  Spider shook his head. “Pig could mean cop. Nobody says that anymore. But they used to.”

  Jordan nodded. “But Holister's not dead.”

  “You don't know that for sure. It's not Holister I'm worried about. The shooter took a shot at you, too. Shot at two cops. Two dead pigs. Fucker's not going to stop until you're both dead,” Spider said.

  “You might be right. Maybe I really was a target. Maybe the shooter was after me, too. I thought after reading the letter that they just wanted to shoot Holister. For whatever the reason, that's the way it seemed to me,” Jordan said, settling back into the seat, letting the thought sink in for the first time.

  Spider pulled the accelerator back and the engine wound down, coughing with relief. “OK, maybe you were a target,” he said. “But why?”

  “I wish I knew,” Jordan said. He sat silently for a moment, thinking. “I think me and Ed Kirsch are going to have another talk,” he finally said.

  “I'll be there with you this time.”

  Jordan nodded in appreciation.

  The road curved and the fields gave way to woods on both sides, edging along the river on one side and floodplain on the other. A police cruiser sat crossways in the road ahead. Red and blue strobes flashing. Johnny Ray was sitting on the hood.

  Spider pulled back on the accelerator. “You do have a plan, don't you?”

  “Yes.”

  Beyond Johnny Ray's cruiser, more strobes flashed. Two ambulances. A fire truck. Jordan could only imagine what the scene in the parking lot looked like. He was glad there weren't any news trucks around. But he wasn't real glad to see Johnny Ray.

  Spider pulled to a stop just short of the cruiser, gravel crunched under the tires. Johnny Ray bounded off the hood with his hand out. Halt!

  “Wait here,” Jordan said, climbing out of the van. “Don't fuck with Johnny Ray too much. If Hogue takes me in, I'll need you to come and bail me out.”

  “No problem. You gonna take this?” Spider picked up the .38 and held it out.

  “No.”

  “You're a more trusting man than I am,” Spider said as he put the gun back on the console.

  “You can't park there,” Johnny Ray ordered. “This road's gotta be free of obstructions.”

  The vibrato at the end of the sentence made Jordan cringe. Johnny Ray was sweating heavily. The cheap black dye he bought at the drug store ran down the back of his neck. Basketball-size circles dotted his armpits.

  “He'll move it,” Jordan said.

  “What are you doing here, Mac?”

  “I need to talk to Hogue. I've got some information for him,” Jordan said.

  “He doesn't want to talk to anybody right now. That's what he said when I relieved the deputy who was here.”

  “He'll talk to me. Radio him. Tell him I'm here.”

  “I don't think that's a good idea, Mac. There's some shit going on—”

  “I can see that. Radio him.”

  Johnny Ray shook his head. “He wants to talk to you at the office. I already told you that.”

  Before Johnny Ray could raise another objection, Jordan reached in quickly and snatched the radio off his belt.

  “Hey, give that back,” Johnny Ray demanded.

  “Hogue, this is McManus. Permission to come down to the site?” Jordan said into the radio.

  Static hissed and crackled as Jordan played keep-away with Johnny Ray, tossing the radio from one hand to the other while Johnny Ray grabbed at it like a child who'd lost his favorite toy.

  “Damn it, Mac. You're gonna get me in trouble again.”

  Spider was laughing in the van, muffled like the distant squeal of pigs.

  “Come on down, McManus,” Hogue's voice boomed over the radio. The radio hissed again. “Johnny Ray, don't let anybody else down here.”

  Jordan tossed the radio to Johnny Ray.

  “Yes, sir. 10-4,” Johnny Ray answered. He wiped sweat from his brow and the back of his hand turned black.

  Jordan walked around the cruiser toward the ambulances. Sam Peterson sat in the driver's seat of the first ambulance. He waved to Jordan as he veered off the road and onto a newly blazed trail that led down to the pond. Jordan waved back, not surprised to see Sam. Charlie Overdorf was probably in the passenger seat, waiting for who knew what.

  The trail had been a game trail, deer traveling from the pond across the road to the woods. Jordan immediately wondered if the shooter had used it for their escape route. Hogue would have thoroughly checked it already, gleaned any footprints if there had been any on the loose dirt before allowing anyone to use the trail.

  Stinging nettle swiped at Jordan's arm, making him itch. Most of the low-lying jewelweed was trampled. A mockingbird flushed ten feet ahead of him, flying from one low-hanging limb to another a few feet up. It chattered at Jordan—sat there curiously staring at him. He whistled at the gray bird. It answered back, singing a long song that sounded just like an orchestra of police sirens as he pushed through the weeds, heading back to where everything had started.

  CHAPTER 20

  August 22, 2004, 11:15 A.M.

  The pond was almost completely dry, the bed fully exposed with the exception of a murky pool of emerald green water on the south end, just in front of the concession stand. It looked like a big hole in the ground, twenty-five feet deep, the openings to the limestone caves covered in thick green moss, drying out in the sun, filling the air with a stench Jordan had never smelled before—it was worse than the pigs. A loud hum was coming from a pump that had been set up to drain all of the water into the river. A huge black plastic pipe snaked out of the pond and into the high, brittle bluestem grass of the wetlands and disappeared into the woods. Two open canopies had been erected directly on the pond bed, white plastic tents with no sides, and several unfamiliar people milled about, taking very little notice of Jordan as he walked out of the woods.

  He stopped at the end of the trail and took in the sight, fighting off the memory of the shooting, the sight of Holister wheezing, gasping for air. His own throat was dry. The sun was directly overhead, like an interrogation lamp pointed straight into his eyes. He didn't know what to expect, what he'd see, but this scene was the furthest thing from his mind. A forensic investigation that seemed to reach far beyond the shooting and the discovery of the skeleton was obviously under way. The magnitude of it was something Jordan had never seen, had never dreamed possible in his own backyard, in his own town.

  One of the canopies was over the skeleton Holister found by the big sycamore, another was near the center of the pond, a few feet from the slide. Three more canopies were erected in the wetlands beyond the NO TRESSPASSING sign, one next to the other, lined up in a perfect row.

  Yellow tape was everywhere, rounding the perimeter of the pond. Little pink flags were stuck in the pond near the first tent, marking shell casings from Jordan's gun. More pink flags hung limply in the woods along the spring.

  Rotted soil and previously undisturbed leaves released a strong, sour odor that hung in the air, along with huge swarms of no-see-ums and mosquitoes. Jordan batted the invisible gnats away as he swept the area looking for Hogue, looking for some sign that he was in the right place.

  Everything had changed so quickly . . . Kitty's house was nothing but ashes, his battered and bruised face was almost unrecognizable in the mirror, and now Longer's Pond was gone, nothing left but stinking earth and skeleton fingers reaching to the sky.

  A helicopter flew over the tree line and hovered overhead, the thump, thump, thump of the blades dispersing the smell, and creating a heavy breeze that caused the canopies to regimentally snap against their metal poles and the pink flags to rise and flap in the wind. Voices were strained, unintelligible, but there didn't seem to be a sense of panic, an impending sense of doom, or an immediate threat. Three people occupied the canopy over Tito's bones, or the bones Jordan and Holister had assumed were Tito's, all on their knees, digging and b
rushing material away from the skeleton, focused and intent, methodically going about their business as if they were on a science class field trip.

  Jordan thought he heard music somewhere, but it could have been the helicopter or the pump ringing together, creating a consistent beat. A line of deputies walked along the opposite bank of the pond, four brown uniforms staying even, prodding the ground with thin metal poles. Charlie Overdorf stood under another sycamore and watched the deputies; waiting for some sign, it appeared, to move into action. He did not see Jordan, or if he did, he didn't let on that he had. Charlie was talking into a radio, his EMT bag a few feet away.

  The largest crowd was gathered among the three tents in the wetlands. A constant stream of deputies, firemen, and normal-looking kids, college students, traversed from the tents up and down the trail that led to the parking lot. It looked as if they were all attending a picnic of some kind, a lazy summer day when there was no hurry to be anywhere or do anything important.

  Jordan could not help but search the tree line for unusual movement. He was sure the site was secure, but the dead pig was still fresh in his mind. The message tumbling over and over inside his head like the song he thought he'd heard. It was stuck in his ear and would not go away. Two dead pigs. Two dead pigs . . . Two . . .

  He took the threat very seriously.

  The other canopy in the middle of the pond was empty, save a white sheet anchored securely in the middle, and Jordan began to understand what he was seeing. A thought entered his mind that had never occurred to him until now, until he was standing on the edge of Longer's Pond, expecting one thing and finding another.

  There were more bones than what he and Holister had initially found.

  More skeletons than just Tito?

  “McManus!” Sheriff Hogue hollered as he stepped out from the first canopy in the wetlands. “Over here.”

  Without thinking, Jordan waved. Sure, he thought, as he headed toward Hogue, he's real happy to see you since you're both long-lost buddies. But oddly, Jordan was glad to see the sheriff at that moment, glad to see a familiar face.

  Hogue met him halfway, walking directly across the pond, his boots squishing in the rotted leaves. The sheriff swatted away a swarm of gnats that hung over his head and coughed. “I'm glad you came out. We need to talk.” Hogue extended his hand for a handshake.

  Jordan reluctantly shook Hogue's skillet-sized hand. He'd heard those words before—he hadn't noticed until that moment how much Bill Hogue and Ed Kirsch sounded alike.

  The sheriff did not look overwhelmed and was barely sweating. For a big man, he moved with ease through the oppressive heat.

  A thousand questions were forming in Jordan's mind—a million cautionary flags shooting into the air, each one warning him not to trust Hogue. He had an idea what the sheriff was up to and the smile on his face telegraphed his intention. Jordan didn't like it. At the moment, he had no choice but to play along.

  “I've been stuck here all day, and it looks like I'll be here for a good while longer,” Hogue said.

  “What's all this?”

  “Bones and more bones. It's a fucking graveyard. Five skeletons so far. And I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't more. We started finding them as we swept the area looking for evidence of your shooter. One, then another, and another, and another. . . . The one Holister found is a kid, can't be more than ten or eleven years old. See that lady over there?” Hogue pointed to the first skeleton, Tito, the spot where Holister was shot. “She's a forensic anthropologist from Indianapolis University, Katherine Shead. Says she's never seen anything like it. Goddamned, if she isn't acting like a kid on Christmas morning. She seems to think this has more to do with the Mexicans than it does a serial killer or something like that. Thank God. She's just surprised nobody found anything before now,” Hogue said.

  “There's never been a drought like this,” Jordan said flatly. “The woods get more traffic than the wetlands these days—especially since Buddy Mozel bought the land and closed down the swimming hole.”

  “I think that's interesting, too,” Hogue said, staring at the anthropologist.

  Jordan followed Hogue's gaze. Katherine Shead looked to be in her early sixties, her thick, wiry, gray-streaked hair pulled back in a long ponytail, dressed in khaki pants and a short-sleeved linen blouse, a white floppy straw hat at her side. A pair of glasses dangled from her neck, and her movements were swift, akin to someone thirty years younger. Her face was deeply lined with wrinkles, no doubt from spending a lot of time outdoors, practicing her craft, digging in the field. She looked like a walking encyclopedia of knowledge, and she immediately reminded Jordan of Kitty.

  “What do you mean five? All kids?” Jordan asked after a long silence, scratching his shoulder.

  Hogue shook his head. “That one,” pointing to the other tent in the pond, “is a baby. The others up there are all adults.”

  Jordan let the words sink in. Something sparked in his memory, told him he shouldn't be surprised. He thought of the night José came to the door with blood on his hands, and then it flittered away, overcome by the immediacy of what he was seeing, what he was hearing. He took a deep breath. “The one Holister found? Is it Tito Cordova? Can they tell?”

  “Nope,” Hogue said and then grew quiet, eyeing Katherine Shead curiously, watching her every move.

  Jordan cast his eyes at the sheriff expectantly, waiting. The silence bothered him. Hogue's demeanor bothered him. The truth of what he was hearing was too hard to grasp.

  “The lady, the professor, I guess, says that's impossible. The bones belong to a female,” Hogue finally said. He pulled a toothpick out of his front pocket and started picking his teeth.

  “A girl?”

  “Yes. Has something to do with the pelvis. She says there's no mistaking the fact. It was a little girl. So, there's no way those bones can belong to Tito Cordova. Holister's theory doesn't hold up. I think he just wanted it to be that boy. He'd mention it every once in a while to me. We all have cases that haunt us. Tito Cordova was Holister's. We're running checks on missing girls in the last twenty years. Haven't come up with anything yet, though.”

  “I wanted it to be a boy, too,” Jordan said. “I wanted it to be Tito.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you. I'd still like to take a look at the Cordova file. You know where it's at?”

  “No,” Jordan said. “Any idea who that skeleton might really be?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Jordan wiped sweat from his brow. His heart was beating rapidly. A girl? The skeleton didn't belong to Tito. Jesus, who could it be? The bigger question forming in his mind had to do with the note and the medallion. Why was the letter sent to Holister if the bones weren't the remains of Tito Cordova? What did the St. Christopher's medal have to do with all of this?

  “You're looking a little pale, McManus. Let's go up and sit in my cruiser and get us some air-conditioning.” Hogue led, walking toward the trail to the parking lot.

  Jordan hesitated. He wanted to talk to Katherine Shead. He wanted to know how she could tell for certain that the bones belonged to a girl. He still wanted to believe the skeleton he had touched was Tito Cordova. Finally found. But he followed Hogue. He didn't come to the pond to talk to some anthropology professor. He came to get his gun back. And to tell Hogue about the pig.

  “I got five skeletons and a nearly dead local marshal shot in the back, McManus,” Hogue said over his shoulder as they passed by the tent with the girl's bones. “And no goddamned answers. The press is a having a heyday with this. I'm trying to find José Rivero. I got some questions for him, too.” The sheriff stopped and turned to face Jordan. “You seen him?”

  Not since last night, Jordan thought. “No, I haven't,” he said, looking to the ground.

  “Well,” Hogue hesitated, “I do have at least one answer for you.”

  “What's that?” Jordan asked, turning his attention to the inside of the closest tent. The skeleton was free of dirt an
d mud, lying in a hole as if someone had gently placed it there on purpose. A tall college student said something about transport to another student who was brushing dust off the skull.

  “Preliminary ballistics came back on your gun,” Hogue said.

  The bones looked brittle, butterscotch yellow in places and black in other places. Jordan had tried to put Tito's face on the skeleton, build a body of flesh and blood in his imagination, but he could barely remember what Tito had looked like when he tried. Now, there was no face, no skin to put on the bones. It was a simple skeleton, the only remains of a person who could not tell their own story. A girl? It's a girl. . . . Who are you? What happened to you?

  The memory of José at the door came back stronger . . . the baby had died, and José had argued with Kitty about the burial. Was one of the skeletons the baby? If so, he'd been right all along—he needed to talk to José. And something told him he better find José before Hogue did, or there wouldn't be any talking to him.

  But what about the girl? Rosa. She had a deep cough, looked sickly in the truck, predicting the devil's arrival. Had she died, too? Did José bury her at the pond along with the baby?

  “I'm sorry, what'd you say?” Jordan asked. Pain rippled through his body, and he wished Kitty was still alive so he could ask her some questions about the Mexicans, about José.

  “Come on, let's go to the car.” Hogue turned and bounded up the trail.

  Dazed, Jordan followed, keeping the skeleton in sight as long as possible. The parking lot was full of Carlyle County cruisers, all lined up, polished but covered in a thin coat of dust. Roll call. Two more fire trucks sat idling, blocking the lane. A third of the way down, yellow tape had been strung between two trees. Two deputies stood sentry against the crowd that had gathered beyond. In the distance, Jordan saw television vans with their satellite antennas reaching high into the air. The helicopter buzzed away, the thump of the rotors growing dim like a fading heartbeat.

  “Fucking vultures,” Hogue said as he climbed inside his cruiser. He hit the ignition and turned the air-conditioning on full blast.