Bones ik-7

by Jan Burke

  When I got home, for the first time since I had returned from the mountains, I took out my larger-scale topo map. Even though the features of the terrain were shown in finer detail than on Newly’s map, I wasn’t as upset by this view of the area as I had thought I would be. It made me a little nervous to see where I had marked off the cave, the coyote tree, the graves. But again, it was from a distance.

  Considering distance, I realized I couldn’t see the ranger station on my map. I felt a knot tightening in my stomach. Distance. How did Parrish cover that distance?

  It was a question I normally would have asked myself months ago, I realized. But for the last few months I had made a conscious effort to avoid all thought, all reference to what had happened during the week of May fourteenth. I helped Ben, I worked long hours, and exercised three large dogs. I did my best to end the day too exhausted to worry or dream. I tried to forget that I had ever boarded that plane.

  Oh, it worked like a charm. I saw Nick Parrish leaping out at me everywhere I went. I had horrific nightmares about the meadow. I threw computers through glass walls.

  And I didn’t ask questions I should have asked.

  So I called Ben Sheridan. When I got him on the line, I asked him for J.C.’s phone number.

  “I’ll give it to you,” he said, “but J.C.’s right here.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “Sure.”

  I exchanged greetings with J.C., then asked, “How long did it take you to get to the meadow from the ranger station?”

  “Driving?”

  “You could drive the whole distance?”

  “No. I took a dirt road — a mud road, at that point — part of the way, and hiked the rest. Let’s see, I left about an hour after dawn and got to the meadow in the early afternoon. It was foggy when I left; I drove as fast as I dared under those conditions, which was not all that fast.” He paused, then said, “I wasn’t really thinking very clearly that morning, Irene, so it’s hard for me to judge time. It seemed like forever. Once I reached the end of the road, I think I hiked for about four hours, but again, I’m not sure. Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve just started wondering about a few things. You and Ben have dinner plans?”

  “Not yet.”

  “If Ben can stand our company again, why don’t you come over for dinner? I have a theory to talk over with you. Tell Ben to bring Bingle, too.”

  They agreed to come over at seven. I called Frank.

  “Hi,” he said. “Must be ESP. I just talked to a friend of yours. Gillian Sayre called.”

  A wave of guilt hit me. I hadn’t contacted her since the day she came by the Express, asking about her mother’s remains. “Gillian? Why were you talking to her?”

  “She was trying to reach you at the paper, but I guess your voice mailbox is full and the Express isn’t telling anyone anything about your leave of absence. She even waited outside the building for you, but when she didn’t see you for a couple of days, she decided to give me a call.”

  “Oh.”

  “I told her you were just taking a much-needed vacation.”

  “Thanks, Frank. I know I should have called her before now, but . . .”

  “She wasn’t calling to nag you. She saw the articles about the Jane Doe in the trash bin and was worried about you. And she said she never had a chance to thank you for talking to her on the day after you got back.”

  “I’ll call her,” I said again. “I haven’t even tried to get in touch with her or Giles since those first days back.”

  Frank knows me too well not to have heard my reluctance. “Take it easy on yourself,” he said. “You’ve had a lot to cope with. This might not be the best time to talk to the Sayres.”

  “Maybe you’re right. I just don’t know. I don’t want to cower.”

  He laughed. “Like you cowered before Wrigley?”

  “Look what that got me.”

  “Yeah — a few days off for yourself, instead of running your ass ragged for the paper. Wrigley’s had the work of three reporters out of you lately, and he knows it. By the way — how’d things go with Newly today?”

  “Fine,” I said, “which reminds me why I called.” I warned him that I had destroyed his chances of a peaceful evening at home.

  “I get the sense that this is a meeting, not a dinner. What’s on the agenda?”

  “I think someone helped Parrish, Frank. I’m almost sure of it.”

  “So are we. He couldn’t have managed to get out of that area unless someone gave him a ride. Idiotic thing for the driver to do, but that was undoubtedly before Parrish’s name and description were all over the news.”

  “No, I don’t mean that a stranger gave him a lift. Why would he plan everything else out and leave something like that to chance?”

  There was a silence, then he said, “I’m sure they’ve considered that.”

  “I know you aren’t allowed to work on any cases that have even the vaguest connection to me—”

  “Which is every case in those two meadows,” he said.

  “Yes, but you talk to the other guys, right? The ones who are working on them?”

  “As much as possible. To be honest, our resources are strained at the moment. All of Bob Thompson’s cases had to be picked up by other people; since I can’t work on the mountain cases that are connected to Las Piernas — and those are plentiful — guess who gets most of Thompson’s other cases?”

  “You.”

  “We’re all running around ass-deep in alligators, as Tom Cassidy might say, and I don’t hear as much about the Parrish cases as I’d like to. But let’s talk about your theories tonight — if I can’t get anyone to buy them, Ben might be able to — he’s consulting on some of them.”

  So I was able to talk to Frank, Ben, and J.C. that night, which is why I had my husband and two friends with me when I received a gift from my not-so-secret admirer.

  42

  TUESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON,

  SEPTEMBER 12

  Las Piernas

  In preparation for the evening’s gathering, I drove downtown to a map store. I purchased several topo maps of the area Parrish had used as a burial ground. Coming out of the store, just as I reached the van, I saw the green Honda again. It was speeding away.

  I don’t know what made me feel so sure that it was the same car I had seen outside Phil Newly’s house. I couldn’t make out the license plate or clearly see the driver, but as the car turned left onto Elm, a one-way street clogged with traffic, I decided to settle the matter by following him.

  I might have lost him already, of course. He could have turned down an alley and doubled back, or reached another intersection and turned, or pulled into a garage and parked.

  I had to know. I had to at least try to find that car.

  As I drove, I became convinced that I could smell bones; that the scent of bones was somewhere in the van, that if I looked in the rearview mirror I would see skeletons stacked like cordwood behind me, drying marrow their last perfume.

  I watched the road, but I broke out in a cold sweat.

  Find the Honda. Don’t think about . . . but I smelled bones.

  Stop the van. Call Jo Robinson. Tell her to reserve a room with rubber walls for you.

  How could there be bones in the van? I asked myself, gripping the wheel. There couldn’t be, could there?

  It was possible, an inner voice argued.

  I might not have locked the van; in fact, the more I thought about it, the more certain I became that I had not locked the van when I bought the maps, that Parrish had been inside it, that he had put the bones of some of his victims in the van.

  Up ahead, I saw a flash of dark green and drove faster.

  Bones.

  I felt ill. I rolled down all the windows. There was not enough air.

  I forced myself to look in the rearview mirror.

  I saw the camper fixtures — cabinets, the small sink, stove and refrigerator, a fold-up table and seats that could b
e made into beds. I stared and stared, but there were no bones.

  It was a huge relief and no relief at all.

  I looked back at the road just as an old man with a hat on pulled his Dodge Dart out into my lane without looking; I swerved and narrowly missed him. He had the nerve to honk at me.

  What the hell did I think I was doing? Even if it was Parrish in the Honda, what was I going to do? I wasn’t armed.

  I’ll see if it’s him. If it is, I’ll get the license plate number.

  Fine.

  There! In the far left lane, stopped at a light and two cars back from the intersection, a dark green Honda Accord waited. I couldn’t see the driver. The light turned green, but I was delayed by a driver trying to turn left. The Honda was getting away!

  Finally the car turned and I sped to the next intersection. I put the van in park, opened the door, and stood on the door frame, trying to get a look at the green Honda’s driver. A man — a man who could be Parrish. I couldn’t see the Honda’s plates.

  The driver of the car behind me honked and flipped me the bird. The light had changed. More horns honked. I got back inside the van and moved forward, signaling a lane change, trying to get over to the left lane, desperate to keep track of the Honda.

  But the driver in the lane next to mine was the fellow who had given me the finger. Still angry at me, he refused to let me pass. Red-faced, he shook his fist at me, and promptly rear-ended the car in front of him, which then came into my lane. I slammed on the brakes.

  I was boxed in.

  Through my open windows, I heard the red-faced finger flipper shouting that it was my fault. When I looked for the Honda again, it was gone.

  Ignoring Red Face, I asked the guy who had been rear-ended if he was okay. He was. He turned to Red Face, told him to shut the hell up, and to my surprise, was obeyed.

  The story provided amusement over dinner — that is, the part of the story I told, which was very little of it, after all, and had nothing to do with Hondas or bones.

  The subtle scent of bones had plagued me even after I reached home. I took a long, hot shower, and my thoughts returned again and again to the events of the afternoon.

  There could be bones in one of the cabinets inside the van. There were many little cubbyholes and crannies to search, I thought.

  But what if I searched and there weren’t any bones?

  If you’re scared and there’s nothing to be scared of and you prove to yourself that there’s nothing to be scared of and you’re still scared . . . Added to vanishing Hondas and false Parrishes, ghostly bone scent became too much to contemplate. If there were no bones, I really was crazy.

  The longer the warm water washed over me, the more it seemed to me that a search itself would be the act of a truly crazy woman. I made a vow to ignore the scent.

  So somehow I made the story of buying maps and the red-faced man and a rear-end collision funny, and if my own laughter was a little brittle, no one but Frank seemed to notice.

  When I saw that Frank also noticed the trembling of my hands when I spread out the topo maps, I hoped that he ascribed it to the area shown on the maps, and not what happened when I had purchased them.

  I focused on the maps. It required concentration. My mind cleared.

  Beginning with the largest-scale map, we tried to find the fastest and easiest routes a man could take from the cave — where evidence of Parrish’s stay had since been found — to the ranger station and Helitack unit.

  There were other ways to get in and out of the ranger station without using the dirt road, but J.C. had definitely chosen the quickest method of reaching us.

  “The road you took looks closer to the meadow than the airstrip,” I said.

  “It is, but the hike in and out is rough and steep.” He showed us the route he had taken. “It would be extremely difficult to carry a body out over it, and I’m not sure every hiker in that group could have managed that trail.”

  “We had lots of different levels of experience,” I agreed. “If he hadn’t set the trap, your idea of sending a helicopter to the meadow would have been the best one.”

  He made a harsh, low sound, as if I had hit him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Instead,” he said bitterly, “my brilliant idea got David and Flash and the others killed.”

  “What?!” Ben and I said in unison.

  He told us his version of how decisions had been made on the ridge near the coyote tree. He felt sure that everyone would have continued safely to the plane if he had not suggested using the helicopter.

  Ben and I countered with our claims that other factors, and not his offer of the helicopter, had led to the decision to look for the second grave.

  He seemed unconvinced, until Frank said, “By the time you were all standing on that ridge, I think Parrish had Bob Thompson’s number. If not everyone else’s as well.”

  Seeing he had our undivided attention, he went on. “I can’t get over the feeling that Parrish planned even more thoroughly than we’ve said he did — that he anticipated the reactions of certain key people in this scenario he devised. I think he knew he could get someone to take him up there, sooner or later.”

  “You mean that he intentionally allowed himself to be caught?” I said. “Yes, I think everyone agrees that he left Kara Lane’s body where it would be found.”

  “Exactly. The trap was already waiting by the time he was taken into custody. He might not have known who would be on the trip up there, but once he started spending time with all of you, he studied you, figured out how to push your buttons. I suppose I shouldn’t speak ill of Bob, but it was never hard to figure out where he was coming from.”

  “Ambitious,” Ben said.

  “Right.”

  “J.C.,” I said, “have you ever stopped to think that you saved Andy’s life?”

  “Saved Andy’s life?” he repeated blankly.

  “Yes. Parrish undoubtedly wanted all of us to be down there. I think he planned to have me survive to — to chronicle his greatness.” For a moment, I couldn’t say more; there was an invisible nine-hundred-pound weight on my chest. Frank reached over and took my hand; I held tightly to it. “By separating from us,” I went on, “you saved two lives, J.C. — yours and Andy’s. It undoubtedly upset Parrish to have you spoil any part of his perfect little plan.”

  J.C. was quiet, staring at the maps. After a time, he said, “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “You probably had him worried that you’d have a helicopter in there taking him back to prison before old slow-digging Ben here uncovered the body. You nearly ruined his whole setup. The rain was the only thing that allowed him to get away with it — otherwise, your helicopter would have picked us up.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” J.C. said quietly.

  “So let’s look at these maps and try to see if Parrish had time to disable those helicopters,” Ben said.

  There was one other unpaved road that ended within a few miles of the far end of the meadow, but this road came into the forest from a different direction. J.C. would have had a much longer drive from the ranger station just to get to the road itself; from there he would have been doubling back in the same general direction he came from, and once he parked the truck, the hike from that road to the meadow would have been worse than the one he made from the other road. It would have been almost entirely uphill and over steep terrain.

  “You were in the Forest Service truck,” Frank said. “Parrish was on foot. It’s ludicrous to think he would have hiked that longer, steeper route to and from the ranger station.”

  J.C., much more familiar with the area than the rest of us, said, “I agree. And I think Irene is right about his having a partner. It’s not impossible that he sabotaged the helicopters alone, but think about it — he would have been hiking in a downpour, after dark. He would have been risking some really nasty falls.”

  “Parrish is an experienced hiker,” Ben said. “But he isn’t in the kind of shape you
’re in, J.C. — you can cover ground faster than any of us, including Andy. He’d have had to hike quite a distance overnight in the rain, disable the helicopter, hike back, and then have the energy to chop down a tree that next day.”

  “That reminds me,” I said. “Was anyone in our group carrying an ax up there?”

  “Yes,” Ben said. “There was one in the camping gear the police brought.”

  “Oh.”

  “You seem disappointed,” Frank said.

  “I hadn’t seen anyone use it,” I said. “If it wasn’t in our group’s gear, that would argue for an accomplice — someone who brought the ax to Parrish.”

  “Who would help a man like Parrish?” J.C. asked.

  “His lawyer,” Ben said.

  “His lawyer was injured,” Frank said.

  “Unable to drive?” Ben countered.

  Frank shook his head. “No, he could walk if he needed to. But Phil had nothing to gain and everything to lose if his client escaped.”

  “Did Parrish call anyone while he was in custody?” I asked.

  “No,” Frank said. “If we’re right about this, though, he didn’t need to make calls. He provided the destination for the group, so his partner — or partners — would know where he was going. And the date of departure was well publicized.”

  “Don’t serial killers usually work alone?” J.C. asked.

  “Usually, but not always,” Frank said. “The Hillside Strangler — Kenneth Bianchi — and his cousin, Angelo Buono, tortured and killed together. In Houston, Dean Allen Coryll killed at least twenty-seven young men with the help of two friends — they knowingly brought his victims to him.”

  “Killers don’t have to be loners,” Ben agreed. “And apparently some women are excited by the idea of being with a killer. There’s even a matchmaking Web site now where women can ‘meet’ the prison inmate of their dreams.”

  “But that’s different, isn’t it?” I said. “A woman who marries her prison pen pal after he’s caught isn’t necessarily in the same league as someone who’d help him torture and murder his victims.”

  “No,” Frank said, “but there are plenty of examples of couples who’ve worked together before capture. Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka teamed up for torture, rape and murder — the first time, she helped him rape and kill her own sister. In Nebraska, Caril Fugate went along with her boyfriend for a monthlong killing spree that started with her parents and her two-year-old sister.”