The Bone House

by Brian Freeman

  'On the beach?'

  'Yes.'

  'That must have been great. It was a beautiful night.'

  'It was,' he said.

  'How long were you gone?'

  'I don't know. An hour maybe.'

  Hilary pushed her chair back and stood up. 'I'm going to get some more orange juice. You want anything?'

  Mark shook his head. He'd picked at his food but left most of it on his plate. It made her feel guilty eating everything she'd taken. If she'd been alone, she probably would have treated herself to another scoop of scrambled eggs, but instead she wandered over to the buffet and poured a second glass of juice over ice.

  She noticed the cluster of police on the beach again. The handful of patrons in the cafe watched them curiously. Several guests had stood up and were shielding their eyes to get a better view of the activity near the water. A white-uniformed waiter passed Hilary with a fresh tray of cut fruit, and she smiled at him.

  'Do you know what's going on?' she asked.

  The waiter shrugged as he positioned the fruit on the buffet. 'Somebody told me they found a body out there.'

  'A body? What happened?'

  'Don't know. That's all I heard. Somebody died.'

  'Do you know who it was?'

  'A hotel guest, I think.'

  'Here? At this hotel?'

  'I guess so.'

  He slid the empty tray under his arm and left without answering more questions. Hilary looked around the patio for someone she knew, but she didn't recognize anyone among the morning guests. She was concerned, because she and Mark had traveled to Florida this week specifically to watch the dance competition, which included several of her former students from Chicago. She had good friends among the girls and the coaches, and she hoped they were safe.

  Hilary brought her juice back to the table. Mark saw the anxiety in her face.

  'What's wrong?' he asked.

  'Those are police out on the beach. The waiter says they found a hotel guest dead out there.'

  Mark reacted immediately. 'Dead? Who was it?'

  'I don't know.' She saw his eyes dart to the water, and she asked, 'Did you see anything last night?'

  'What, like a body? Of course not.'

  'Well, I wonder if you should talk to someone,' she said.

  'And tell them what? I didn't see anything.'

  Hilary shrugged. She saw the glass doors open on the other side of the patio, and she knew the woman who emerged from the hotel lobby. It was Jane Chapman, the mother of one of the dancers from Chicago. She waved at Jane, who made a beeline for their table. Her face was distraught.

  'Hilary, it's terrible, did you hear?' Jane asked breathlessly. 'I can't believe it.'

  'I heard that somebody from the hotel died. Do you know who it was?'

  Jane nodded. 'A teenage girl. She was murdered.'

  'One of the dancers?'

  'I don't think so. I heard she's from your area, though. Door County.'

  'Who?' Hilary asked. Instinctively, she felt a wave of nausea and fear.

  'A coach told me the dead girl's name was Glory Fischer.'

  Hilary's breath left her chest. She felt dizzy. She heard Jane asking if she was OK, but the woman's voice was at the end of a long tunnel, muffled and distant. Hilary tried to speak and couldn't. She knew. Somehow she knew, without looking at Mark, without saying a word, that this event was a tornado that would suck in her and her husband. Her head swiveled slowly so that she could stare at him. She didn't want to see the truth, but their eyes met, and his expression confirmed all her fears. She saw emotions in his face she'd never seen in him before. Panic. Terror. Guilt.

  Mark, what did you do? What happened last night?

  She hated it that her first thought had nothing to do with trusting him. She hated it that her first thought had nothing to do with protecting him. It didn't matter that she would never believe for a moment that Mark Bradley could ever harm another human being. It didn't matter that she had faith in his willingness to stare at temptation and walk away from it. Her first thought had nothing to do with his innocence.

  Instead, she stared at the man she loved, and all she could think was: Not again.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  Detective Cab Bolton didn't notice the Gulf wave riding up the beach until he felt salt water lapping at his two-hundred-dollar Hugo Boss loafers. The surf rose above his ankles like a margarita in a blender and soaked inside his shoes before he had time to leap out of the way. As the wave retreated, he squatted in the sand, removed the loafers, and peeled off his wet socks. He shook his head in exaggerated dismay.

  'Every time I buy a new pair of shoes, we get a beach body the next day,' he complained.

  Cab rolled up the trouser legs of his navy blue silk suit. With his hare ankles and size 13 feet on display at the bottom of his six-foot- six frame, he resembled a great blue heron. His long neck, spiky blond hair, and the ski-jump slope of his sunburnt nose contributed to the impression of a bird on stilts.

  Lala Mosqueda, who was the lead crime scene analyst, didn't look sympathetic. 'It's Florida, Cab. You ever hear of flip-flops?'

  'I'd sooner wear Crocs,' he said.

  The damage to the leather was done, but he took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the sand from his shoes and blotted the excess water. He hooked the shoes on the fingers of his right hand and let them dangle. With his other hand, he stripped off his amber sunglasses and squinted at the tower of the hotel.

  'So what do we have in this place, five hundred rooms?' Cab mused. 'Maybe more? You'd figure somebody had to be up there staring at the beach at three in the morning. Somebody saw something.'

  Lala shook her head. 'No way. Too far, too dark.'

  Cab pointed a long, crooked finger at the floor-to-ceiling windows, where at least a dozen gawkers followed the activity near the water. 'Look at the binoculars spying on us right now. Beachfront voyeurs are always looking for people humping by the water in the middle of the night.'

  'Well, we've got uniforms interviewing guests in the lobby,' Lala told him. 'It's Sunday, and half the hotel is checking out. We're trying to catch people as they leave.'

  'Good.' Cab eyed the narrow strip of Gulf Coast sand, which stretched along the water like a ribbon for several miles in both directions. Even in the early morning, there were already bathers sunning themselves up and down the beach. 'If you strangled someone in the surf, what would you do next?' he asked Lala.

  'I'd walk along the water and head up the beach where there are a ton of footprints in the sand,' she said.

  'Exactly. I hate beach bodies.' He replaced his sunglasses on his face, covering up his sky-blue eyes. 'OK, Mosquito, what do we know so far?'

  Cab saw her dark eyes flash with annoyance. He knew she hated it when he used her nickname, but he couldn't resist pushing her buttons. He'd never been a master of social graces; his mouth was always getting him into trouble. That was one of the reasons he'd gone from the FBI to the police to private investigative work and back to the police in half a dozen cities over the past twelve years. His colleagues also resented his born-in-LA style. Unlike most cops working for a pension, he had a bulging trust fund thanks to his Hollywood mother, and he did what he did because he enjoyed it, not because he needed a paycheck. That didn't fly with most cops, and particularly not in Naples, which was a sun-soaked resort town of rich snowbirds and spoiled spring break college students. If you had money, you were supposed to be on the other side of the social divide.

  He wasn't fooling Lala with his jokes, though. He was deliberately keeping her at a distance, and she knew it. They'd had a brief affair not long ago that was the equivalent of a supernova: super-charged, blindingly bright, collapsing with a big bang. Their attraction hadn't gone away, but what was left between them was a black hole, with both of them fighting against the pull of gravity.

  'OK, Ms Mosqueda, what do we know so far?' he asked her.

  She had a very pretty C
uban face, but there was definitely no light escaping from it now. Black hole.

  'A jogger found the body before sunrise,' she told him. 'She was face down in the water, topless, with her bikini top wrapped around her neck. He pulled her out of the water and tried mouth-to-mouth, but she'd been dead for a while. Preliminary estimate on time of death is between two and four o'clock. From the ligature marks on the neck and bruising on the backs of the shoulders, it looks like someone held her down and strangled her in the water. The ME isn't sure yet whether asphyxiation resulted from the rope of the bikini top or the water itself.'

  'But she didn't just get drunk and do a bellyflop in the surf?' Cab asked.

  'No, she definitely had help. The girl had been drinking, though. We found an empty bottle of Yellow Tail near the body, and her teeth and tongue show discoloration from red wine. We won't know how much she had until we get the blood analysis back. Maybe she was drunk, maybe she wasn't.'

  'Did she have sex?' Cab asked.

  'She was still wearing her bikini bottom,' Lala replied in a monotone, 'and the fabric wasn't ripped or otherwise disturbed. There was no bruising, blood, or external injury consistent with vaginal or anal rape, at least based on a visual inspection.'

  Cab wasn't convinced. 'You're talking about a teenage girl who's drinking and topless on the beach. That sure smells like sex was involved.'

  'I'm not saying she didn't have sex, but there isn't any evidence yet of sexual assault.'

  'Fair enough. I get it. Did you find anything else near the body?'

  Lala gestured up and down the beach with frustration. 'We're combing the sand, but you've got a few thousand people along here every day. We'll bag and test what we find, but don't get your hopes up.'

  'How about the body itself?' Cab asked.

  'We're checking for DNA under her fingernails, but her hands were lying in the water. Even if she fought back, I'm not sure what we're going to find.'

  'See, this is why I hate beach bodies,' Cab repeated.

  Lala opened her mouth as if she had more to tell him, but he held up a hand to stop her as he let the details soak into his mind. His way of approaching an investigation was to add layers of fact to his brain like coats of paint. He liked to let one coat dry before slapping on the next one. Lala was different. She preferred to blurt out her whole report at once and sort through the puzzle pieces.

  Lala was dressed all in black. Black T-shirt, black jeans, black sandals, all of it matching her shoulder-length black hair. She was in her mid- thirties, like Cab, and had spent her entire career with the Naples Police. She was intense about everything that Cab wasn't. Her Cuban family. Her Cuban politics. Her Catholic heritage. Her job. Her temper. She was fire; he was water, always flowing downhill, always running away. Still, she was about the only cop in Florida he considered a friend.

  Not that he would ever say so to her face.

  'Cab?' Lala asked impatiently.

  'Yeah, OK, keep going. Do we know who this girl is?'

  'We got lucky about that. Her name's Glory Fischer. Sixteen years old.'

  Cab exhaled in dismay. 'She's just a kid.'

  'Sixteen's older than you think these days.'

  'Yeah, yeah, thirteen is the new eighteen, sixteen's the new twenty- one. How'd we make the ID?'

  'Her sister and Glory's boyfriend were looking for her in the hotel grounds when we showed up. The sister said Glory wasn't in their room, and when they heard about the body, they both freaked. The sister confirmed Glory's ID from a photograph. We've got them with a policewoman now. A counselor's on the way.'

  'What about a parent?'

  Lala shook her head. 'The girls are from rural Wisconsin, an area called Door County. Mom's back home, Dad's deceased. The sister already called the mother and gave her the news. She's flying down here today.'

  'Wisconsin,' Cab said. 'Remind me, that's north of Michigan, right?'

  'No, the place north of Michigan is called Canada, Cab.'

  'Same difference. What were these girls doing here anyway?'

  'The hotel is crawling with college dancers,' Lala told him. 'There was some kind of competition this week with student teams from all over the country. The sister - her name is Tresa, T-r-e-s-a - she goes to school at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls. She came down here on a bus with her teammates. Her mother couldn't come, so it sounds like Glory and her boyfriend - his name's Troy Geier - drove down here separately to cheer for Tresa during the program. They were all supposed to be heading back home today.'

  'The victim, Glory, she wasn't part of the competition?'

  Lala shook her head. 'Nope.'

  'Did you get any more info about Glory out of the sister or the boyfriend? Do they have any idea what she was doing on the beach last night?'

  'They say no.'

  'Do you believe them?' Cab asked.

  'If one of them was involved, they put on a good act. Most of the time, you can see through kids if they're lying.'

  'I pretty much assume everybody's lying,' Cab said.

  That was part of his legacy growing up with a mother who worked as an actress. If someone was moving their lips in LA, they were probably lying. Being a cop had done nothing to change his conviction that people were dishonest at heart. He'd learned that lesson the hard way.

  'How old is the sister Tresa?' he added.

  'Nineteen. She's a freshman at River Falls.'

  'How about the boyfriend? Did you pick up anything about his relationship with Glory?'

  'Nothing about Glory,' Lala said. He saw a self-satisfied smirk on her golden face. She knew something. She'd been aching to tell him from the beginning.

  'Spill it, Mosquito,' Cab said. 'What did the boyfriend tell you?'

  Lala didn't blink at the nickname this time. 'Troy followed me so we could talk in private. He didn't want Tresa to hear what he had to say, because she wouldn't let him talk about it.'

  'About what?'

  'Apparently there's another couple from the same part of Wisconsin staying at the resort this week. Their names are Mark and Hilary Bradley. I checked, and he's right. They have a room that opens right on to the beach. It's not even two hundred yards from where the murder took place.'

  'OK,' Cab said, waiting for more.

  'Troy told me that we needed to talk to the husband before he skipped town. He claimed that if there's anyone in the hotel who might have done this to Glory, it's Mark Bradley.'

  Cab raised an eyebrow. 'Yeah? Based on what? Does this guy have some kind of connection to Glory?'

  'Not to Glory,' Lala told him, 'but to her sister. According to Troy, everyone in Door County knows Mark Bradley. He was a teacher at the high school until he was let go under a cloud last year. The police couldn't bring statutory rape charges, because Tresa wouldn't say a word against him on the record. But the story is, he was having sex with her.'

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  Hilary Bradley sat motionless on the sofa in their hotel room as Mark paced in and out of the dusty stream of light through the patio door. They hadn't spoken. She studied the stricken expression on her husband's face. His breathing was fast and loud through his nose; he was scared. It was like a rerun of the previous year, when they'd sat together in their Washington Island home and confronted the rumors about Mark and Tresa.

  Not again.

  They didn't need to talk to each other to know what was going to happen. Hilary could see it all too clearly. Accusations were about to rain down on Mark like a storm. There would be a knock on the door. Questions. Suspicion. This one would be even worse than the previous year because Mark's name was already linked to teenage girls and sex - and because there was no doubt this time about whether anything bad had really happened. There would be no he-said, she- said this year.

  A girl was dead on the beach. Someone killed her.

  Mark stopped in the middle of the carpet. He'd closed the glass door to the beach, and the air in the room was cold and sterile. Their
eyes met. She saw anger and anxiety fighting in his face. He took two steps in his long stride and knelt in front of her. He took both of her hands and squeezed them hard. 'I need to say something.'

  Hilary was calm. 'Go ahead.'

  'I didn't do this,' Mark said. 'I never thought I'd have to ask this again, but I need you to have faith in me. You have to believe me.'

  'I do.'

  He stood up again, relieved, and she hoped he didn't doubt her sincerity or wonder if she was hiding something behind her face. She wasn't lying.

  A year ago, her friends had called her naive when she told them that she didn't think that Mark had slept with Tresa Fischer. He denied it; she believed him. They'd both been foolish in letting Tresa get closer to them than their other students, which was a mistake Hilary had always sworn to herself she'd avoid as a teacher. But she and Mark were new to Door County and anxious to fit into small-town life. Tresa was sincere, smart, quiet; she was pretty, but she wasn't wild or sexual like her younger sister Glory. They'd paid attention to her, and Tresa, who didn't get much attention at home, thrived on it.

  Hilary had realized quickly that Tresa was developing a schoolgirl crush on her husband. It wasn't the first time. Women young and old were drawn to Mark, but he'd never shown any inclination to cheat. She hadn't seen Tresa's emotions as a threat, because she knew the girl too well and didn't believe Tresa would ever try to act on her feelings. Her affection for Tresa made her forget her first rule of teenagers, which was that they weren't girls growing up to be women; they were women in girl's clothes. She also never expected that Tresa's fantasies alone could get her husband into trouble.

  Then Tresa's mother Delia found her daughter's diary.

  When Tresa wasn't dancing, she was writing. Mark was her English and art teacher. He'd encouraged her to write short fiction, and he and Hilary had both read several of her stories, in which she'd created a teenage detective who was a lot like herself. What neither of them realized was that Tresa had been writing other stories too. On her computer, she'd invented an imaginary diary in which she related the details of her passionate sexual affair with her teacher. It was erotic and explicit. She described their trysts, how he touched her, how her body responded, the things he told her, the things she told him.