Bone by Bone

by Carol O'Connell

  Oren pressed William Swahn’s doorbell, but there was no sound. Evidently the loud ringer had been disconnected for the sake of peace. He knocked and then banged on the door with his fist.

  The small square panel opened behind the grille. This time, the householder was the first to speak. ‘You’ve got ten seconds of my time.’

  ‘Josh Hobbs was my brother.’

  ‘I already knew that. You look like him.’ The panel closed. The ten seconds were gone.

  Oren shouted, ‘My brother’s bones were found today!’

  He heard the click of a lock being undone, a bolt drawn. The front door opened wide, and Oren was ushered inside with the wave of a silver-handled cane.

  This sunlit house was far from the cave-like hermitage he had once imagined for the old woman who had died here when he was a boy. At the far end of the vast foyer, a marble staircase tapered up to the second-floor landing, where a large window framed blue sky and treetops. On the parlor floor, the rooms had pairs of ornate wooden doors built to the scale of giants.

  Oren saw only the back of William Swahn’s denim shirt and jeans as his host led the way in stocking feet. The man was tall with a slender build, the iron gray hair of middle age – and that cane was no prop. He leaned heavily on it and walked with a gait slightly out of control, as if his house pitched and tossed upon a roiling sea. This stirred an old memory in Oren, but he could not connect that signature limp to a face. Perhaps this man was someone he had, once or twice, seen around town and then only from a distance.

  They entered a corner room, large and airy, filled with light from tall, arched windows, and it housed more books than could be found in the town library. The built-in shelves lined every bit of wall space. More volumes lay open on an antique writing desk, and others were stacked up on the floor.

  William Swahn turned to his guest and used his cane to point to an armchair. ‘Sit down, Mr Hobbs.’

  Oren remained standing, staring, unable to look away.

  EIGHT

  Oren had come face-to-face with the subject of his brother’s finest photographs. This was the Letter Man. The scar was not gruesome, but faint, and just as Josh had described it – a jagged A carved into the left cheek. The scar had not been visible in pictures taken of the man’s profile, for Josh had captured the ordinary side of William Swahn. None of his brother’s work had ever been titled, and so it had been the boy’s secret pun to sell the Letter Man portraits to the postmaster.

  ‘What fascinates you, Mr Hobbs? Could it be my mutilation?’ Swahn’s dark eyebrows arched with anticipation, probably awaiting the guilty shift of feet or the blush of a gawker caught in the act.

  ‘No, sir. I recognized you from the photographs in the post office.’ Oren wondered if that trio of pictures was still hanging there after all these years. ‘My brother never knew your name, and neither did I – until just now.’

  Swahn settled into an armchair and laid the cane across his legs. ‘I understand you’re with the Army’s Criminal Investigations Division.’ This was said with contempt, a virtual announcement that the two of them would never be close friends, for a cop was a cop, and this man’s hatred of police was old and very precious to him.

  ‘No, sir. I left the Army.’ Oren stared at the cane, the symbol of a life derailed – all that they had in common.

  ‘I’m told that CID agents wear street clothes during an investigation, and they don’t have to salute superior officers. That must ’ve given you quite a sense of power.’

  ‘Mostly, I just liked the idea of wearing my cowboy boots on duty.’ And now the pleasantries were officially over. ‘I know you investigated my brother’s disappearance. The sheriff thinks my father hired you.’

  ‘Judge Hobbs?’ A puff of air escaped Swahn’s lips in a mild show of incredulity. ‘How much sense would that make?’

  ‘None at all. He would’ve hired a first-rate agency before he ’d use an ex-cop with only one year on the job. For all I know, my father did hire somebody, but it wasn’t you.’

  Swahn’s nod was almost imperceptible, the small acknowledgment of a glove thrown down, a contest begun. ‘Judge Hobbs never hired an investigator. I would’ve noticed that kind of activity in a small town. And he never asked for help from the state Justice Department – even though he had the political pull to call them in.’ The man addressed the handle of his cane. ‘Don’t you find that odd?’ He raised his eyes to Oren’s. ‘By that, I mean your father’s lack of interest.’

  ‘Josh was a missing person. There was no evidence of foul play.’

  ‘Of course there was.’ Swahn’s tone said, Liar. ‘Everyone knew that boy didn’t run away. Your brother had a bank account, but he left his cash behind. He didn’t take any clothes, either. And we both know he wasn’t lost. This town has a wonderful reputation for finding people who lose their way in the woods. They always found you, didn’t they?’

  Oren ignored the question, knowing better than to fall into this old trap of turnabout, the interrogation of the interrogator. He had to wonder about Swahn’s inside information; no newspaper account would have mentioned an abandoned bank account. And how would this man know that Josh had not packed any clothing? His brother’s knapsack had never been found.

  ‘Now,’ said Swahn, ‘if I wanted to bury an investigation, I’d do what your father did. I’d leave it in the hands of the County Sheriff ’s Office. That department is a joke, and I’m sure that made it easier to whisk you out of town – out of the sheriff ’s jurisdiction.’ He raised his cane to point it toward Oren’s chest, his heart. ‘When Judge Hobbs sent you away that summer, did he suspect you of killing your brother?’ The tip of the cane settled to the floor, and Swahn rested both hands on the silver handle as he leaned forward. ‘Or do you think that venerable old man murdered his own child?’

  The next shot belonged to Oren. He sat down in an armchair and leaned back into the plush upholstery. Outwardly, he was unrattled, a man in repose and almost drowsing. ‘Hard to believe you were a cop.’ He let that settle in as a blunt insult and then added, ‘You don’t talk like one.’ His adversary’s accent made him a transplant from the world of upscale Bostonians, possibly uprooted in childhood, for the geographical marker was faint. This and the advanced college degrees would have been enough to alienate William Swahn from his brother officers; he was so obviously not cut from the same blue cloth. ‘You sound more like a college professor.’

  ‘I’m a guest lecturer at Berkeley. My area is criminology, but I’m sure the sheriff told you that.’

  What else had Cable Babitt failed to mention about this man?

  ‘How well did you know my brother?’

  ‘I never met him.’

  This could be true despite the evidence of the Letter Man photographs in the post office, three shots taken at close quarters. His little brother had been a thief of sorts, stealing people’s images and running off with them. Sometimes a subject would hear the click of the camera and turn to see an empty space where a boy had been standing.

  Oren rose to his feet and turned to the shelves, pretending interest in the titles on the book spines, while he considered the source of Swahn’s inside information. ‘Let’s talk about your client.’

  ‘I told the sheriff – several times – no one paid me to—’

  ‘I didn’t ask who paid you.’ Oren faced Swahn, wanting to see the man’s eyes when he said, ‘Hannah Rice was the client.’ Satisfied with the reaction, he pressed on. ‘Hannah couldn’t afford the day rate of a PI, but then – you’re not a licensed investigator.’ He turned back to the shelves and trailed one finger from book to book, as if this matter meant very little to him. ‘And you don’t need money, do you? That’s why she picked you.’ He glanced back over one shoulder. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Maybe you thought she came here because you were so smart?’

  Swahn’s eyebrows rose in a subtle touché, and the man almost smiled with approval – almost. ‘I don’t pretend to know how Miss Rice ’s mind works. She
’s the only walking enigma I’ve ever met. And there’s something about her speech. She ’s not from this part of the country, is she? Sometimes, when she ’s tired, I think I hear the ghost of a southern accent.’

  That touch of the Southland in Hannah’s voice had begun to die off in the early years of Oren’s childhood, along with idioms and odd words. He shrugged and splayed his hands and said, ‘As far as I know, Hannah’s always lived in Coventry.’

  This evidently passed as truth, for the older man seemed disappointed.

  When billeted in the state of Tennessee for the duration of a manhunt, CID Agent Oren Hobbs had gotten a taste of the food and the regional dialect. He had realized then that Hannah Rice must have hailed from there, and this had led to another revelation: He knew every vital statistic in the life of the runaway soldier he hunted; he knew nothing about the woman who had raised him.

  As a boy, he had been comfortable with the notion that the housekeeper had sprung to life on the day his mother was buried. At the age of three, Oren had been too young to remember Hannah’s arrival in Coventry, but he knew the story told a hundred times: The judge had laid his dead wife to rest in the family plot and returned to his house in the company of neighbors, whose extra arms were needed to carry casseroles and baby Joshua. Oren had played the little man that day and walked everywhere on his own two toddler’s legs, bumping into everything, ‘—blinded by tears, and batting away every hand that offered comfort.’ Those were his father’s words.

  Judge Henry Hobbs had always told the tale in the same way, word for word. ‘So we come back from the cemetery, and there’s young Hannah – a stranger and a trespasser – standing on my front porch like she owns the place.’ The story had been repeated until the children’s eyes had glazed over, and this segment of oral history was burned into their little brains. ‘Real brassy for a runt housebreaker,’ the judge would always say.

  The young stranger, Hannah Rice, had greeted the funeral party and served them a feast made from scratch materials found in the pantry. Her bite-size bits of finger food – with three flavors apiece – lingered for years in the memories of all those present on that long-ago afternoon, but the fine coffee had been enough to ensure Hannah’s legend in the neighborhood.

  Her suitcase had been unpacked in the upstairs guest room hours before her future employer had even known of her existence, and the judge still had no idea who she was at the close of the funeral supper. That evening, while she cleaned up after the mourners, the judge had thought to ask for her name. Days later, they had come to terms on a salary, but he had never pried into her past.

  That would have been rude.

  Apart from a core of third- and fourth-generation lifers, there had always been a coming and going of residents. Some were attracted by the raw beauty of the coastline; others sought the privacy of in-country woodlands. One abiding charm of the place was the whole town’s lack of curiosity about the outside world – as if a citizen’s life had not begun until they set foot in Coventry. A fair number of outsiders had come here to hide themselves away until they could reinvent their lives or rest up from a chase. After a month or a decade, some of these people would decamp with no word of goodbye or forwarding address, but others stayed long enough to be buried in local ground. After thirty-four years, Hannah appeared to have staying power.

  Oren had become curious about her past, but he loved that little woman dearly, and he would never ask for her story, nor would he betray the fact that she had surely been a fugitive.

  Henry Hobbs spoke to his housekeeper’s back as she pulled down two coffee mugs from the cupboard. ‘Why did you do it, Hannah? I know you convinced the boy to come home. Why now of all times?’

  ‘You have to stop calling him boy.’ It was her custom to deflect every rebuke with one of her own. ‘I know how you hate change – oh, don’t I know it – but boys will grow into men.’ She set the mugs on the table and turned to the window that looked out on the meadow. ‘At least the reporters are gone.’ She sighed. ‘That’s one small mercy. They’re all following Ferris Monty. He took them on a walking tour of Coventry.’

  ‘My idea.’ Addison Winston’s voice preceded him down the hall, and now he materialized in the doorway. A puff of smoke and a whiff of sulfur would not have surprised Hannah.

  ‘Don’t worry about Oren,’ said the grinning attorney. ‘After all this time, there can’t be much of a case against him.’

  The judge rose from his chair, knocking it over in his rush to make a stand. ‘There ’s no case – period!’ He pounded the table to bring this point home. ‘There never was a case against Oren.’ The old man stomped out of the kitchen, though the effect of this angry exit was somewhat blunted by the crepe soles of his sandals.

  Addison Winston’s professional smile never faltered. He stared at the old-fashioned coffeepot percolating on the stove, and then he turned to Hannah, willing her to offer him a cup of her wonderful brew. Hands on hips, her eyes narrowed to tell him that this was not going to happen.

  He handed her a business card. ‘You never know when you might need a lawyer. The pressure’s on. The sheriff will have to arrest somebody.’

  She never glanced at his card, but let it hang there in the air. ‘How many years have I known you, Addison? I’ve got your number.’ She had taken this man’s measure long ago. ‘And I know what you do.’ Nothing good.

  Far from taking umbrage with her tone and a double entendre or two, his eyes lit up, and he was laughing when he left her.

  ‘So the sheriff found Josh’s body.’ Swahn tapped his cane on the floor for punctuation. ‘Of course, it’s murder. If there were any possibility of an accident, you wouldn’t be here, Mr Hobbs. So there was an obvious cause of death. A bullet wound? A blow to the head?’

  Oren shrugged, allowing the other man to believe that he had not yet seen his brother’s body. ‘The coroner hasn’t made a finding yet.’

  ‘That should be interesting. Our new county coroner used to be a dentist.’

  ‘I’d like to see all your interviews with the locals,’ said Oren. ‘The sheriff won’t let me read his.’

  ‘Perfectly understandable. You’re his prime suspect.’

  ‘And yours, too?’

  Swahn was deaf to this question, or maybe he thought a countering jab just too easy. He reached out for the telephone by his chair and placed a call. The person at the other end of the line must know the sound of his voice, for all he said was, ‘The judge’s son is here.’ After listening for a moment he said, ‘If you wish.’ He hung up the phone and rose from his chair with a grimace of pain. ‘I’ll get my files.’

  No need to ask who had given the instruction to play nicely with Oren.

  Thank you, Hannah.

  The older man limped across the room, opened a narrow door and stepped into the cage of a small elevator. The gears clicked and whirred and carried him upward. The ironwork of the cage dated it back to an era long before Swahn’s purchase of the house. This conveyance on the premises must have been a great selling point. Climbing stairs would pose a problem for a man who winced as he walked. But an elevator could also be a technology trap for a hermit.

  When the former owner was alive, she had two small boys to keep track of her. Who was looking after Swahn?

  Oren had his answer when he ran one finger over a tabletop. Not a day’s worth of dust had collected there, and the wood floor around the area rug had the shine of fresh waxing. Swahn’s wealth and his handicap were two more indications of a full-time cleaning lady on the payroll, and that woman might be worth an interview.

  The passing minutes were spent reading book titles in earnest this time. Many were familiar. Most of them related to the field of criminology, an interesting choice for a man whose natural enemy was the police. The sound of gears signaled the return of the elevator. It slowly settled to the floor. The man in the iron cage stood beside a carton piled high with file holders and envelopes. Oren was quick to cross the floor and help with the
unloading.

  ‘I hope you plan to stay awhile,’ said Swahn. ‘None of this material leaves my house.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Oren lifted the box and carried it to the center of the room.

  With both hands gripping the cane, Swahn lowered himself to the floor and sat down in an awkward pose, one leg drawn in and the twisted one sticking out, unable to bend at the knee. The two men emptied the contents of the carton to cover the surrounding carpet with manila folders, large envelopes and banded bundles of paper.

  Oren leafed through a stack of typed interviews. Each one was clipped to a photograph. ‘My brother took these pictures.’ Some of these same compositions were framed on the walls of the judge ’s house. ‘But Josh didn’t make any of these prints.’

  They lacked the crisp perfection that Josh had achieved by manipulating his negatives. The boy’s attic darkroom had been a place with a language of its own, words like dodging and burning to play down bright lights and coax lost details from areas of gray. Other things came back to Oren, a memory of that room bathed in red light and the array of bottles, some of them intensifying chemicals. And there were special grades of paper and filters to push the contrast of every picture into the darkest shadows, the brightest highlights.

  Almost magic.

  He looked down at the print in his hand. This was – ordinary.

  ‘It’s a bad job, I know,’ said Swahn. ‘Miss Rice loaned me the negatives, and I ordered these prints from the drugstore in town. No comparison to Josh’s work. He was gifted in a dying art form. I don’t think he would’ve cared for the age of digital cameras.’

  Oren picked up a photograph of a birthday ball. In this shot, the stout hotelier, Evelyn Straub, was in her thirties, still lean and fine, her short skirt showing the endless long legs of a former Las Vegas showgirl.