Bone by Bone

by Carol O'Connell

  Swahn leaned over to glance at it. ‘Your brother was probably ten when he took that one, and I’m not just guessing by Mrs Straub’s age. It’s the perspective of a child looking upward. That angle changes subtly as he gets taller.’ He looked down at the other pictures spread out on the rug. ‘Even though Josh doesn’t appear in any of these pictures, it ’s like watching the boy grow up.’

  Oren noticed that only his brother was referred to by his given name. Even Hannah, a longtime acquaintance, was always called, more formally, Miss Rice. Was Swahn only comfortable with the dead, or had he lied about never meeting Josh?

  ‘I think your brother knew his killer.’

  The photograph fell from Oren’s hand.

  ‘According to your housekeeper, the boy was carrying a camera the last time she saw him.’

  ‘He always took one of his cameras when he left the house.’

  ‘But this one wasn’t his pocket camera,’ said Swahn. ‘It was the old Canon FTB, the heavy one. Why would he carry that dead weight on a hike in the woods? The boy wasn’t a nature photographer. Look at these images – only people. That was his subject. Did he take pictures of you that day?’ ‘No.’ Oren saw no need to mention the picture Josh had taken before they left the house, the portrait of two brothers that Hannah had framed in silver.

  ‘Miss Rice said she packed a lunch in Josh’s knapsack . . . but nothing for you.’ Swahn waited a moment for the explanation. It never came. ‘I understand that you and your brother went your separate ways after a while. So Josh had his own plans for the day. And he obviously intended to take pictures in the woods – but the boy only photographed people.’ Swahn allowed the import to settle in for a moment, and then he said, ‘Beer?’ Without waiting for a reply, he slowly rose to his feet, using the cane as a climbing pole, and limped out of the room.

  Oren emptied a bulky envelope containing pictures that had not been married up with interviews. Nowhere in this lot was a standard print of the photograph that Hannah had enlarged for his homecoming present. Every detail pictured in that silver frame was fixed in memory, and it brought to mind the interview with Cable Babitt shortly after Josh had gone missing.

  ‘Talk to me, son,’ the sheriff had said to him then. ‘I need to account for your time.’ The judge had answered for Oren, saying, ‘Cable, you can’t expect the boy to know where he was at this hour or that hour. What teenager wears a watch on a Saturday?’

  In the silver-framed portrait of two brothers, Josh had been wearing a wristwatch.

  Swahn returned with two bottles. He leaned down and handed one to his guest. Oren accepted the cold beer, but hesitated to pop the cap and drink with the man – given his errand in this house. He stared at the telephone, as if this would make it ring.

  ‘Expecting a call, Mr Hobbs? Oh, shot in the dark, a call from Sheriff Babitt?’

  One casual wave of Oren’s hand took in the surrounding paper storm. ‘Did you share all of this with the sheriff?’

  Swahn set his own bottle on a table by a chair, but he remained standing. ‘I gave him everything that might help with the investigation.’

  ‘But not everything, right? You held out on him.’

  ‘Is that what Babitt told you? I suppose this means I’m on his shortlist.’

  ‘I’m sure you are.’ Oren glanced at the phone. How long did it take the sheriff to make a simple call? He chose his next words carefully, aiming to rattle and topple a cripple. He studied the man’s face, hoping for giveaway tics and other tells when he said, ‘A cane makes a good weapon.’

  Swahn never blinked, nor did he miss a beat. ‘That it does.’ He leaned his walking stick against a small table and made an effort to stand up straight, though it caused him pain, and he could not quite achieve it. One shoulder was lower than the other because of one leg twisted inward. The hand that had held his cane was empty but still frozen in a curl. Beginning with the scarred face, all the damage ran down the left side of Swahn, a man broken by half. ‘You thought I might do a lot of hiking in the woods?’

  ‘If my brother’s grave is near a road – you’ll make my shortlist.’

  The man retrieved his cane. ‘So Josh was buried . . . and Sheriff Babitt said more than you let on.’ The atmosphere of the room had changed; the air was charged. ‘He also passed along some old rumors, didn’t he?’ The tip of the cane rose in a warning. ‘Please don’t deny it. I’m aware that he ’s been digging into my past. So now you think you know all about me.’ Swahn lightly touched his scar, the jagged A a show-and-tell exhibit for AIDS. ‘And you’ve just got to know – in addition to my other crimes – rampantly fucking men and spreading disease – was I also in the habit of diddling young boys in the woods?’

  ‘Were you?’

  The telephone rang, and Swahn ignored it, though it sat on a small table only inches from his hand. ‘I believe it ’s for you.’

  On the third ring, Oren rose from the floor and approached the phone, skirting the man. He picked up the receiver and said, ‘Hobbs.’ After listening to the sheriff for less than a minute, he answered the only question. ‘No, that ’s not a case of cops being tidy.’

  Hanging up on Cable Babitt, he turned to his host. ‘About those old rumors. It surprised the hell out of your ex-partner when he found out you were gay. Jay Murray heard that rumor during his interrogation by Internal Affairs – after you were attacked. So tell me if I’ve got this right. You believe a whole precinct full of cops conspired against you for being a gay man with AIDS.’ Oren splayed his hands. ‘But your own partner never heard that rumor? How is that possible?’

  ‘I can’t discuss this with you.’

  ‘Of course not. You signed a nondisclosure agreement with the LAPD. Lots of money at stake if you talk.’ Oren sat down on the couch and stretched out his legs. ‘You and Jay Murray rode together for a year. All that time, and it never occurred to him that you were gay. He just took you for an overeducated geek, an awkward kid who had no shot with women. You don’t believe that? You were a rookie. So your first partner would ’ve been an older guy, a mentor. I bet Murray gave you more advice about women than police work. Am I right?’

  He was right. He could see the first fault line in Swahn’s composure. Gears were shifting behind the man’s eyes as he considered this one true thing.

  ‘You were set up that night.’ Oren raised his beer bottle and took a swig. ‘You were just wrong about everything else.’ He pointed at the scar on Swahn’s face. ‘Cops had nothing to do with that.’

  Ah, this was heresy. Was the man gripping his cane a little tighter with that damaged hand? Yes. But Swahn said nothing. Continued silence was worth millions, and Oren was counting on that. He could bang away at his leisure and never have to dodge a counterpoint.

  ‘Your ex-partner made some cash for calling in sick that night. I’ll tell you how I know. According to Murray’s tax records, he left the force without a pension. He was terminated right after you were ambushed. That’s what the sheriff called to tell me. So there was no time for a formal department hearing. That ’s how I know Jay Murray lost his pension in a plea bargain. He was looking at jail time for taking a bribe, and there had to be solid evidence. Detectives probably tossed his place and found the payoff money. You think Murray knew what was going to happen to you that night? Give me a break. Calling in sick was like painting a target on his own chest. So what’s left? The dispatcher, who conveniently disappears before she can make a sworn statement – a civilian dispatcher. And that’s how I know – when you called in for help that night – you got the same woman who sent you into that ambush.’

  Oren knew that he had guessed right when the man’s eyes flickered with new interest.

  ‘Swahn, you can’t believe that cops passed the hat around the station house for the dispatcher’s go-away money. Maybe you think they killed her?’ Could he be more sarcastic? No. ‘Cops are not that stupid.’ He stared at the scar on Swahn’s face. ‘And whoever did that to you is smarter than you are. Th
at’s one case that ’ll never be investigated.’

  He saw confusion in Swahn’s eyes, fleeting – gone now.

  ‘The dispatcher never relayed your call for help. Those cops you hate so much, they never knew you were in trouble. If they had, they would ’ve turned out for you that night. And they would’ve turned LA upside down to find the guy who hurt you. But you closed the case yourself – the day you took the settlement, the hush money.’

  The older man’s stance was weighted to one side, and it seemed that the breath of one more word might knock him down. But no.

  Resurrection time.

  ‘Old business,’ said William Swahn, too cavalierly dismissing a quarter-century of hatred for every cop ever born. His lips pressed together in a line of new resolve – fresh anger. Oren would not be allowed to get away with attacking this very personal mythology. That much was in the man’s face.

  Payback was coming.

  ‘Let’s return to the case at hand . . . your dead brother. Poor Joshua.’ Swahn settled into the nearby chair and stared at his cane, hefting its weight in one hand and paying special attention to the heavy silver handle. ‘You’re right. This is a good weapon. And, since you favor the idea of death by bludgeoning, that tells me there were no bullet holes in Josh’s remains. Too bad. You see . . . the seclusion factor always troubled me. Privacy for a murder can be had in any enclosed space. Why would the killer pick a meeting place in the deep woods? Obviously, he wasn’t worried about the sound of gunfire. No gun. Maybe he didn’t want anyone to hear the screams. Some murders, the cruelest, the most perverted kind, require more privacy – more time. I was hoping it was a quick death. Apparently . . . it wasn’t.’

  First blood from a master of retaliation.

  Oren settled to the floor and sat there – very still. His own scream was an interior noise that only he could hear.

  And Swahn was not done with him yet.

  The man was leaning toward Oren and into that range for exchanging ugly little secrets, almost whispering when he asked, ‘Did your brother seem apprehensive that day? Josh asked you to come with him, didn’t he?’

  No. In fact, it had been Oren’s idea to go along on that hike.

  ‘So you started out together that morning,’ said Swahn. ‘And then you left your little brother. You left him there all alone in the deep woods. I always wondered why.’

  Oren closed his eyes. He was not remembering it; he was reliving it. From the moment they entered the woods, Josh only wanted to get away from his older brother.

  ‘Miss Rice wouldn’t allow me to question you when you were a teenager.’ Swahn leaned closer to his guest, too close. ‘You were in very bad shape in those days. After Josh disappeared, you were always running off into the woods. Sometimes it took days for the townspeople to find you. What drove you, Mr Hobbs? Was it guilt? Didn’t you just want to die?’

  That part was true – still true.

  A second pot of coffee had been delivered to the tower room by the maid, Hilda.

  Sarah Winston eyed it with chagrin. She opened the drawer in her bedside table and pulled out an empty bottle. Turning to the open door, she called out to her daughter. ‘This was full when I went to bed last night. You poured it out, didn’t you, Belle?’

  Isabelle Winston stood outside on the deck with a telephone in hand, its long cord trailing a few feet beyond the doorway. She barely paid attention to her mother. The phone’s receiver was pressed to one ear, and she could not listen to both of her parents at once – not with the other distractions of hummingbirds hanging in the air, dive-bomber starlings and the piping whistles of orioles. She ended the call when her mother joined her outside.

  A bird came to light on the older woman’s shoulder, a common enough occurrence, but her daughter always marveled at it. Sarah turned her face to the lark and mimicked its short song of flutelike notes. The bird sang back to her and took flight. Isabelle was the one with an ornithologist’s credentials, but her mother was so well acquainted with these wild things that they bid one another hello and goodbye.

  ‘They never come to me.’ Isabelle stretched out one hand to a nearby feeder. Wings unfurled and flapping madly, the birds flew off to the next seed holder farther down the railing. ‘They never light on me.’

  ‘And they never will,’ said Sarah Winston, as if they had not held this conversation many times. Endlessly patient, she said to her only child, ‘But this is a good thing, Belle. You’re so animated, so alive. No bird would ever mistake you for a tree limb or a post – a lifeless thing.’ Never spoken were the final words, like me.

  Yet Isabelle always heard them.

  ‘Did your father tell you who was taken away in that coffin?’

  And now Isabelle realized that her mother knew nothing about the bones. There was no radio in the tower. There never had been. Her mother only listened to the birds. ‘The coroner’s van came for Josh. They found his remains.’

  ‘At the judge’s house?’

  ‘Yes. Someone’s been leaving the bones on the old man’s porch late at night.’

  The coffee cup crashed to the deck. Birds flew off in alarm, screaming. And her mother screamed.

  NINE

  ‘I found out what they want.’ Dave Hardy stood at the door to the sheriff ’s private office. He raised his voice to be heard above the noise from the street-side window. ‘That maggot, Ferris Monty – he told them you arrested Oren Hobbs.’

  Traffic in Saulburg was snarling, horns honking. The parking lot was full, and latecomers double-parked in front of the building. One reporter brazenly pulled up onto the sidewalk. Cable Babitt stood at the window, frowning. ‘I suppose it would be wrong to shoot them.’ He glanced back at his deputy. ‘Son? Just make them all go away.’

  ‘How?’

  Cable joined him at the door and pointed to another deputy in the outer room. ‘Take John with you. Go out there and ticket the crap out of all those cars and vans. Then you can just let it slip that Oren’s gone somewhere else – anyplace that ’s not Saulburg.’

  Outside on the street, while writing tickets and slapping them on windshields, the new recruit, Deputy Faulks, flirted with the pretty woman who tagged after him, microphone in hand. When they were within earshot of two other reporters, he answered her twice repeated question. ‘My guess? Hobbs is probably hiding out in the Coventry Library.’

  The newswoman tilted her head to one side. ‘You’re kidding, right? Why would he go there?’

  Her colleagues were turning their heads, staring at the deputy, and he called out to them, ‘It’s the perfect hideout! Nobody in Coventry ever goes to the library!’

  Three reporters raced for their cars. Others in the pack picked up the scent and followed. But one camera was still filming when Deputy Faulks turned around to receive a bloody nose from Dave Hardy’s fist.

  ‘Cop fight!’ yelled the cameraman.

  The radio was tuned to a local jazz station. The delivery boy had come and gone. And civility was provisionally restored at William Swahn’s house.

  Oren sat on the floor, eating a slice of hot pizza and drinking a second cold beer with his host. He had not given up any details of the sheriff ’s case, not a word about finding the bones of a second victim. For now, the prospect of a multiple homicide was only a rumor on the radio during the newsbreak.

  Swahn appeared to give the idea no weight. ‘Next, they’ll be saying there ’s a serial killer in the neighborhood.’

  ‘Not likely.’ Oren drained his beer bottle. ‘There might be thirty serials at large in a country of six million square miles.’

  ‘Right. What are the odds of one finding his way to Coventry? Although,’ said Swahn, in the tone of an afterthought, ‘Josh could’ve been killed to conceal another murder.’

  The man was left to make what he could of the silence. Oren had not come to this house to collaborate with a suspect. After reading the last interview, he laid it down among the others scattered on the floor all around him. ‘I don’t
pull motives out of thin air. I like facts.’

  ‘Anyone with a secret could have a motive for murder.’ Swahn opened another envelope and pulled out a thin stack of photographs. ‘Take your secrets for instance.’ One by one, he laid out the glossy prints like cards dealt from a deck.

  Oren looked down at pictures of himself at the ages of fifteen and sixteen. In one print, his hair had only covered his ears. In the next, it grazed his shoulders. Each one showed him walking down one street or another, oblivious to the stares of middle-aged women turning his way.

  ‘Now I’d say those ladies looked a bit hungry.’ Swahn laid out more pictures in a march across the carpet.

  Oren’s hair grew longer as he turned seventeen. This succession of snapshots had been taken inside the Water Street Café. The pictures were ganged together to represent ten seconds of time passing frame by frame. In the first image, Oren saw his younger self walking near a table of matrons. The next shot focused on one of them, a pretty woman in her forties. Evelyn Straub had just raised her head to look up at him. In the last photo, teenage Oren turned her way for only the click of a camera, and this photograph had captured a clandestine passage, something said in a glance that went unnoticed by the other women at the table. Only lovers had these conversations of the eyes. Only Josh had seen it.

  And William Swahn.

  ‘I’m sure Mrs Straub thought she was being discreet,’ said Swahn. ‘Have I made my point? Maybe Josh stumbled on a bigger secret and sold the negatives with the prints. How do you see your little brother as a blackmailer meeting a mark in the woods?’

  ‘No way. He was a decent kid.’

  ‘I agree. According to your housekeeper, Josh didn’t care anything for money. The boy was only a passionate collector of small dramas.’

  Oren looked down at the carpet and its covering of Swahn’s old interviews with the people of Coventry. There were interesting omissions. ‘You never questioned Addison Winston. He ’s a criminal defense attorney – a man with lots of secrets. And what about his wife? Mrs Winston was a bird-watcher. She was always out in the woods with a pair of binoculars. But you never talked to either of them.’