‘Dave lives in his mother’s house.’ Hannah nodded at the library. ‘And Mavis lives in there.’
‘That’s insane,’ said Oren. ‘Why didn’t Dave do something?’
‘He tried. He wanted to get her locked up in a state mental ward, where they drug people senseless and stack ’em up like cordwood. The judge stopped him. Your father doesn’t believe in God, but he ’s got the concept of hell down pat. He thinks she’s better off in the library, and so do I.’ Hannah rolled up the right sleeve of her sweater, and then, with a wave of her hand, she said, ‘Let there be light.’
And there was. The bulb over the door clicked on, and every window shade turned bright yellow.
The last time Hannah had done this trick, Josh was only six years old, and his eyes had popped. The little boy had been disappointed to learn that Mrs Hardy was simply a creature of habit. With no regard for the seasonal position of the sun – or the moon – the library lights came on at the same time every evening.
How could he have forgotten that?
Hannah patted his hand. ‘You’ll be glad you came. Mavis knows all the best stories, and she knows birds.’ The housekeeper picked up the small stack of journals and tucked them under one arm. ‘She knows Sarah Winston, too. They go way back. You might learn something without getting shot by Isabelle.’
‘You held out on me? You knew Mrs Hardy went to school with—’
He was talking to himself. Hannah was out of the car and moving up the flagstone walkway. The librarian opened the door wide to greet her. Oren had no memories of Mavis Hardy ever smiling this way. Even in her saner days, long before killing her husband, she had always been the saddest woman in town.
In the course of his travels from bar to bar, Dave Hardy drove his pickup truck past the library to check for lights, a sure indication that his mother was not yet dead. The judge’s Mercedes was parked out front, not an unusual sight, but Hannah Rice wasn’t the only visitor. The third silhouette on the window shade had to be Oren Hobbs.
Dave’s hands tightened around the steering wheel as he sped up to a record of twenty miles per hour while still inside the town limits. Out on the coast highway, he drove at real-world speeds. He was on the way to an anonymous saloon on the outskirts of a distant town, a small biker bar, where no one was ever friendly enough or sober enough to ask his name. It was a place where he could hunker down and do some serious drinking – drink after drink after drink.
Tonight, the library did not smell. That was different.
All the windows had been opened prior to the visit. Mrs Hardy had even washed her hair for this occasion, and it was still damp when the three of them sat down at the reader’s table. They were twenty minutes into the visit, and the woman had yet to utter any profanity. She looked so tired. And Oren noted other signs that this semblance of sanity was wearing on her – the grinding teeth and rigid body.
The librarian handed a few sheets of paper to Hannah. ‘I printed this up from that file you started the other day.’ She turned to Oren. ‘Hannah’s been doing research on the Internet.’
‘So I heard.’ In these familiar surroundings, it was easier for him to remember Mrs Hardy in premonsterhood days, stripped of bulk and muscle, a time when a thin, fragile woman had guided the Hobbs boys through their changing phases of westerns and science fiction, steering them into the better writers of each genre that took their fancy. Tonight, he recognized the effort she made only to smile at him and make simple small talk.
Hannah was absorbed in her computer printout. ‘I just love hard science.’ She folded the papers into the pocket of her dress and winked at Oren. ‘It’ll come in handy later on – when you tell me I’m wrong about how the witchboard works.’
‘Poor Sarah.’ Mrs Hardy resumed her perusal of the birder logs. ‘I’ve never seen these books before, but that’s her handwriting.’ And now she answered an earlier question of Oren’s. ‘We both went to UCLA. But I can’t say I really knew her then. In my younger, skinnier days, I almost wasn’t there. I swear I could walk between raindrops. A good-looking boy like you never would ’ve noticed me – and neither would someone like Sarah.
‘We met at the university library. That was my work-study job when I was in school. Sarah wanted books on ornithology. Well, that was my hobby. I told her about some rare sightings in Coventry, birds that haven’t been seen in fifty years. So she came to my dormitory for a look at my notes. It was like visiting royalty – the way people stared at that beautiful girl when she came in the door. That day we talked for hours and hours. I never spoke to her again, not on campus. . . . My fault. I was shy. But Sarah always waved every time she saw me. I wasn’t invisible anymore. At the end of that semester, I heard she got married and left school.’
‘What about William Swahn? He went to UCLA.’
‘I never met him, but I knew who he was. Always saw him walking around with Sarah and little Belle. He tended to stand out even on a campus the size of a city. He was thirteen, maybe fourteen years old, and he looked younger. Geeky little kid. Big feet, big brain.’
‘Mrs Winston was in her twenties then,’ said Oren. ‘Why would she hang out with a little boy?’
‘I thought I just explained that. Sarah was very kind to freaks. Like him. Like me.’ Mavis Hardy’s voice held no rebuke. ‘And years later, when that little boy was all grown up, I’m sure it was kindness on Sarah’s part to have Addison represent him. That was a nasty business with those cops down in LA.’
Hannah was right. Mrs Hardy knew all the best stories. It had taken Cable Babitt years to learn this much. ‘So Mrs Winston stayed in touch with Swahn after she left school? Maybe they exchanged letters?’
This gentle trap brought out no response. The woman only shook her head and shrugged to say she didn’t know. Even with the evidence of the post office photographs, he could not be certain that she was lying.
‘After I graduated, years went by before I ran into Sarah again.’ The librarian looked down at the open journal in her hands. The drawings in this early one had a light and fanciful touch. ‘I’ve got the hang of it now.’ She pointed to a sketch. ‘That grouse hen must be me. It ’s a bird that puffs itself up when it ’s frightened.’ She turned a few more pages. ‘And this one seems to be frightened all the time – silly old thing.’ With a half-smile, she gently closed the journal and opened another. Mrs Hardy did not look up from the pages when she said, ‘Here I am again – in the woods with my binoculars. And this pale yellow songbird must be Sarah. The clue is the fledgling redbird. Who could that be but little Belle? So Sarah told you about our field trips. I never told anyone.’
Field trips? Hannah’s surprise was more obvious, and Oren signaled her to keep still. He waited for the librarian to fill the silence.
‘Sarah used to visit Coventry years before Addison built the lodge. This area is birder heaven. She ’d drive up on the weekends and stay at the Straub Hotel. I wasn’t so much changed in those days, still skinny as a rail, and she recognized me on the street. I took her into the deep woods where the trails don’t go and showed her some nests I’d found. She kept coming back all the time after that, longer visits. Sometimes she brought Belle along. Then Addison built her that log mansion.’
‘And all you two ever talked about was birds?’
‘Oren, what else would we have in common?’ She spread her arms as an invitation for him to look at her life, to see her as she was in those days – and these days.
‘You said that Swahn and Mrs Winston were friends in college. I thought his name might’ve come up in conversation.’
The librarian shook her head. ‘I think I was the first one to mention William Swahn. That was a long while ago, more than twenty-five years. I saw his name on a list in a newspaper article. I told Sarah that he was graduating from the police academy. That made her happy. She said it was always his big dream to become a policeman. A year later, William moved to Coventry, and he wasn’t a policeman anymore. That’s when Sarah told me he’d be
en wounded down in Los Angeles.’
‘So she saw a lot of him after he moved here?’
‘Well, he used to have dinner at the lodge once a week. That stopped after maybe five years. I never knew why. Around that same time, Sarah gave up our field trips in the woods. I lost interest in birds after that.’ Mrs Hardy shook her head as she looked down at a drawing of monsters. ‘I guess Sarah stopped bird-watching, too. I don’t see a single creature here that matches up to an actual species.’
Oren was hardly paying attention anymore. He was doing the math on Mrs Winston’s long-ago estrangements from Swahn and the librarian.
Mrs Hardy flipped backward through the pages, then stopped and stabbed the heart of a drawing with one finger. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘The dead lark seems to mark the beginning of the change in Sarah.’
When Dave Hardy entered Peck’s Roadhouse, a cluster of patrons was gathered at one end of the bar and watching another repeat of the news. The volume was loud. One more time, he saw the film of Sally Polk and the reporters. This version was cut to make it look like a formal press conference – more like Polk’s own idea instead of a media ambush.
The voice of a studio guest rode over the action on film, and this celebrity author profiled a child killer for the viewing audience. The bones of the female victim were never mentioned. Dave supposed a young boy made a more sensational story.
The camera cut to a photograph of Josh Hobbs as he was in life, that silly grin. The guest author was also smiling. ‘As you can see,’ he said to the anchorman, ‘Joshua was delicate – almost pretty, if you get my meaning. I believe he attracted a predator who couldn’t handle a boy with more muscle.’
The anchorman was professionally livid. ‘So we can’t rule out a pedophile who might be handicapped in some way.’
And the next shot was predictable, the old clip of Swahn, branded by innuendo and editing, limping past Highway Patrol cars in the Saulburg parking lot. Sally Polk’s voice could be heard riding over the film, saying, ‘—a person of interest.’ This was followed by the rerun of reporters in a frenzy as they surrounded the man, and Sally Polk’s voice was once again clipped off to say, ‘—a person of interest.’
Dave Hardy had grown to loathe that woman.
The volume of the TV set was turned up, the better to hear the questions shouted out from the crowd of reporters. ‘Does Swahn have a criminal record? Does he like little boys? He’s a homosexual, isn’t he?’ But the only sound bite from Sally Polk was, ‘No, he didn’t take a lie detector test.’ Cut from this new version was her statement that Swahn had never been asked to take a polygraph exam.
The current image was a studio shot that Dave had not seen in the earlier viewing. A psychiatrist was pointing out that the overwhelming number of pedophiles were heterosexual. And furthermore—
No one in the bar could hear the rest. Riding over the voice of reason, a chorus of voices shouted obscenities. A beer bottle hit the television screen.
The bartender, a man of many tattoos and a short temper, reached under the bar and pulled out a shotgun, yelling words to the effect that the unruly patrons should take their business down the road – or die.
Following the judge’s instructions, Mrs Winston’s birder journals had been left behind on the library shelves, where they would be safe from Sally Polk’s warrants.
Hannah started up the car. ‘If you give Mavis some time with those books, she might be able to tell you more about this town than you wanted to know.’
‘I’d like to know why she kept her relationship with Mrs Winston a secret.’ The librarian had not been willing or able to tell him. ‘Swahn went to dinner at the Winston lodge – but not Mrs Hardy.’
‘Oren, I think you can figure that one out. You’ve spent enough time with Addison.’ She steered the car away from the curb. ‘Maybe Sarah and Mavis had something in common besides birds.’
‘You think Ad Winston beats his wife?’
‘No, that ’s not it.’ Hannah craned her neck to see over the wheel. ‘You should come to the birthday ball this year. You’ll never see a man more in love with his wife. But he’s a controlling bastard, isn’t he? I’m guessing Sarah’s only contact with Mr Swahn was at the dinner table – with Addison. He might not want her to have a friend that she could talk to alone.’ She turned a wide smile on her passenger. ‘Do you still shoot pool like a hustler?’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘And do you still hustle the tourists?’
‘I get my fun where I can.’ When they reached the edge of town, she decided on the mountain route, arguing that the coast highway was too tame. ‘And away we go.’
The old Mercedes was not an automobile to Hannah; it was an amusement ride. Up and down they went, around and around, and at one point he believed that she could make it fly. Oren averted his eyes from the speedometer, though he knew the needle would never reach forty miles an hour. This road was treacherous at thirty, and every curve that blinded them to oncoming cars was an opportunity to crash and die.
After passing through two towns, then traveling awhile on a stretch of unpaved road with no helpful signs, they pulled into the crowded parking lot of the Endless Bar, a saloon that could not be found unless one knew the way.
Inside the establishment, nothing had changed. The music was loud and country, and this same song might have played on the jukebox when Oren was too young to legally walk through the door. Most of the patrons were corralled inside a revolving circular bar. It was rumored that some of the regulars never left; blind drunk, they could not find the hinge to the outer rim, where a patron could lift up a plank and escape. When people went missing for days and days, this was the first place their loved ones looked for them. The unloved were remembered on the hall-of-fame plaque for those who had died on their barstools. It was positioned well above the line of sight to avoid the problem of a cautionary tale for paying customers.
Oren and Hannah walked past the bar, heading for the pool tables in the back. The little woman nodded and waved to acknowledge hellos from large, hairy bruisers, who no doubt belonged to the gang of motorcycles in the parking lot. How they smiled to see her coming. It was easy enough to read those wide grins, the shake of heads, saying, No, not this time, old lady. You ain’t gettin’ my money – not another dollar.
Every table had been booked. Not a problem. Two men gave up their game so that Hannah could play, and they nodded to Oren with something approaching condolence, taking him for one of her patsies.
The tiny woman was on her toes and grinning when she leaned over the table to rack up the balls in triangular formation. ‘Let’s make this interesting.’ She aimed the tip of her stick at the white ball and sent it slamming into the tight cluster. Balls of stripes and solid colors spread out on the green felt, slow-rolling along in their separate directions. ‘Loser buys the first round.’
‘Deal.’ Oren was a happy man. The last ball had come to a stop, and Hannah had failed to sink any of them into the pockets. He owned a spread of easy shots.
‘One condition,’ she said. ‘We’re not playing eight ball. You have to run the whole table in one turn with one hand behind your back.’
‘Nothing easier.’ He would not even need a brace to steady his stick. Every shot was a gimme, and a half-bright child could not lose. It reminded him of his very first pool game. It was almost as though she had set up the table this way. Later, this thought would cross his mind again. But now, with no suspicion at all, he lined up the first shot and took aim.
Before he could follow through, Hannah leaned in and touched his arm, saying, ‘The stick will shake.’
‘Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘Nice try.’ Smile widening, he completed his shot – and – he – missed – it.
‘In case you’re wondering,’ said Hannah, nonchalantly chalking up her pool cue in preparation for clearing the table. ‘That shaky stick? That trick’s got a real fancy name. It’s called the ideomotor effect.’
Click. A striped ball dropped into a corner
pocket.
‘I wasn’t talking to you when I made your stick shake,’ she said. ‘I bypassed your brain.’
Click, click. Two balls in the corner pocket.
‘I was talking to your arm.’
‘Sure you were.’ When Oren looked up from the last shot, Hannah was unfolding the sheets of paper given to her by the librarian.
‘Here.’ She slapped the pages down on the rim of the table. ‘I’ve got science on my side. Read it.’
Click, click, click.
Oren read the article’s long title, The Influence of Suggestion in Direction of Muscular Action Independent of Volition. This was followed by lengthy text in small type. ‘Maybe you could just—’
Click.
‘You want me to give you the gist of it?’ She lined up her next shot. ‘Your brain’s got what’s called an executive module. That’s what you use to do this.’ Click. She sank a ball. ‘But you’ve got other modules, independent ones, and they bypass the thinking process. I made a suggestion and they moved your muscles to blow that easy shot. That’s how I talked to your arm. And now you know how Alice Friday’s witchboard works. A question might suggest an answer, and then all those hands move that little wooden heart to spell out a word on the board. Or maybe, when the players call out a letter, that one suggests the next one. But there ’s no connection between their fingertips and their brains. I told you – nobody cheats.’
‘That psychic runs the board,’ said Oren. ‘She’s a con artist.’
‘No, she ’s an idiot.’
Click, click, click, click.
When Hannah had sunk the last ball on the table, she straightened up to her full height of four feet, nine inches and faced him down. ‘Only idiots believe in two-way conversations with the dead, and that woman is a true believer.’
‘The judge has conversations with my dead mother.’
Bone by Bone Page 24
