The Bone House

by Brian Freeman

  Their escape from reality didn't last.

  They left their luggage in the trunk and went to the front door, and Hilary stopped on the porch when she saw the door hanging open. Mark peered into the darkness inside. Mud and leaves had drifted into the foyer. A fetid aroma wafted like a toxic cloud into the sweet, cold air.

  'Wait here,' he said under his breath.

  She watched him go inside. He was tense, his body coiled like a spring. Seconds later, she heard something come from his throat, an exhalation of rage unlike anything she'd heard from her husband before. It was as if his life had been sucked away by whatever he'd found.

  'Mark?' she called.

  He didn't answer her.

  'Is everything OK?' she asked, more urgently.

  When he was still silent, she went inside herself. Beyond the hardwood floor of the foyer, she turned into the living room, with its musty carpet and fireplace and furniture gathered from their separate lives before they were married. Mark stood in the center of the room, his face grim with violence. In the gloom of near darkness, she could see the damage. She understood now what was next. She recognized the message that their neighbors were sending.

  The house had been violated. That was the only word she could use. Holes had been punched in the Sheetrock with what must have been a baseball bat. Figurines she had collected since childhood lay shattered into shards on the floor. Lamps were overturned and broken. Animal feces had been thrown at the wall and left to sink into vile brown streaks. The cushions of the furniture had been slashed with knives, foam stripped out, littering the floor like cottonwood.

  A single word had been spray-painted everywhere. On the walls. On the glass of the windows. On the ceiling. On the floor. It must have been fifty times.

  A single word over and over in blood-red paint.

  KILLER.

  * * *

  Chapter Fifteen

  'I've lived here for twenty years,' Terri Duecker told Hilary, as she took the cigarette out of her mouth and watched the smoke dissipate in the cold air. 'It never ends. You weren't born here, so you'll never be a local. If you have kids, they'll be accepted from day one, but not you.'

  The two women sat in the bleachers outside the Fish Creek School. Both of them wore heavy coats, and Hilary had her hands shoved in the fleece pockets. The grass of the football field was white with frost. The sky overhead was a mottled blanket of charcoal. A row of spruce trees lined the far side of the field like spectators, blocking the view of the Green Bay water past the bluff. Behind them, the school parking lot was wet, thanks to the intermittent sleet that had fallen overnight.

  'I don't care about that,' Hilary replied. 'We knew that coming in, but it's different now. They're trying to drive us out. Scare us away.'

  Terri shrugged. 'Small towns,' she said. 'If they could, they'd build a wall to keep strangers out. It's worse that you're from Chicago, too. People around here need someone to blame because the whole county is changing, and they figure it's because of rich people moving in from Chicago.'

  'We're not rich.'

  Terri shook her head. 'It doesn't matter. As long as you live here, people will look at you and see a Land of Lincoln license plate on your car. Once a fib, always a fib. I was lucky. Chris and I moved here from Fargo. We're still outsiders, but at least we're not Bears fans. Even so, you won't find any of the natives spilling their secrets to me.'

  Hilary glanced at the school behind them. She saw two other high school teachers chatting on the sidewalk outside the glass doors. She could follow their eyes and the way they turned their heads toward them, and she knew that she and Mark were the topic of conversation.

  The school itself, two hundred yards away, was a one-story building, long and low, made of vanilla brick. She heard the American flag snapping in the wind and the flagpole rope banging against the metal. It was a place that could have been any other high school in the country. She could easily have been back in Highland Park, except that there weren't expensive suburban Audis and BMWs in the parking lot. She'd always felt comfortable walking through school doors, smelling the cafeteria food, listening to the thunder of shouts and basketballs in the gymnasium. Now, however, going inside meant being watched by a hundred spies. It was ground zero for the gulf between her and Mark and the teachers, administrators, and parents who wanted them gone.

  'So why do you stay here if you feel that way?' Hilary asked Terri.

  'We're just like you two. We always wanted to live in a place like this. You go north of Sturgeon Bay, and it's like going back in time. No chain stores. No fast food restaurants. The views are amazing, and we've got room to breathe. If it weren't for the tourists in the summer, it would be paradise all year. We all know the tourists pay the bills, but don't expect anyone around here to be happy about that.'

  'Can I ask you something?' Hilary asked.

  'Sure.'

  'Do people around here give you a hard time because we're friends?'

  Terri shrugged. 'Yes.'

  'Well, thanks for sticking by me.'

  'You and Mark remind me of Chris and me when we moved here,' Terri said. 'We outsiders need to have a community too.'

  Terri was a handful of years older than Hilary, but they were good friends. She was a slim brunette whose principal vice was her morning cigarette break on the edge of the school grounds. Hilary often joined her. Terri had taught science at the high school for two decades. She and her husband owned a series of guest cottages and condominiums around the Fish Creek area that they rented during the summer, which was their main source of income. Her husband, Chris, managed the properties. During the winter, when most of their units were vacant, they'd allowed Hilary and Mark to rent a cottage from them for little more than the cost of utilities. It was a perfect arrangement. Hilary and Mark could stay near the school and ferry back to their Washington Island home on the weekends.

  'What are they saying about us now?' Hilary asked.

  'You know exactly what they're saying,' Terri replied. Her eyes were sad but hard. 'It was the first thing out of everyone's mouths at school yesterday morning. Mark killed Glory. It's not a rumor. It's not suspicion. As far as most people are concerned, it's fact.'

  'I'm glad I wasn't here.'

  'They won't say it to your face, but they'll talk behind your back. You're only innocent until proven guilty in a courtroom, Hilary. Not in real life.'

  'They're going to boot me out, aren't they?' she asked. 'I'll never get tenure now.'

  Terri shook her head. 'No, you will. You're a star, and everyone knows it. Plus, you're a woman, not a man, that always helps. I think some people actually feel sorry for you too. You'll get tenure, but they'll do everything they can to make you so miserable that you don't want to stay.'

  'Great.'

  'I'd understand if you and Mark chose to leave,' Terri added, 'but I hope you won't.'

  'I get stubborn about other people telling me what to do,' Hilary said.

  Terri smiled. 'Me, too.'

  'I appreciate your not asking me, by the way.'

  'Ask you what?' Terri asked.

  'Whether I'm sure. Whether I think Mark did it.'

  Terri stubbed out her cigarette on the metal frame of the bleachers. She squinted at the gray horizon. 'You sound like you want me to ask. You sound like you need to say it.'

  'Maybe,' Hilary admitted.

  'Are you sure?'

  'Yes.'

  'He didn't do it?'

  'No.'

  'That's good enough for me,' Terri replied. 'Look, I saw Mark in the classroom. I saw him with the kids. No way he would lift a hand against a teenage girl. He wouldn't sleep with one either, because that man loves you. I'm not saying he wouldn't kill someone who tried to mess with either of you, but an innocent girl? Not Mark. Chris and I talked about it. He feels the same way.'

  'Thank you.'

  'I wish I spoke for the majority, Hilary, but I don't.'

  'I know.'

  Terri checked her watch a
nd shivered. The two women climbed down from the bleachers, taking care not to slip on the damp metal steps. The frost-crusted grass crunched under their feet. They walked back toward the school beside Highway 42, the north-south road that stretched along the west coast of the peninsula. The two-lane road was quiet.

  'This isn't just about Mark,' Terri confided, speaking louder as the wind roared and covered her voice. 'You understand that, right?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I mean, it's about Glory, too. It would be bad with any local girl, but it's worse because it's Glory. We all felt sorry because of what happened to her.'

  'What happened?' Hilary said.

  Terri stopped. 'You don't know about the fire?'

  'No, what are you talking about?'

  'Oh, hell.' Terri checked her watch again.

  'Tell me,' Hilary said. 'Please.'

  'I'll give you the short version. It was six years ago. Glory was ten. You know that Delia has an old place over near Kangaroo Lake, right? Well, she and the kids lived right across the road from a house owned by a man named Harris Bone. Does that name ring a bell?'

  Hilary thought about it and shook her head. 'I don't think so.'

  'I'm surprised. I figured it would have made the papers, even in Chicago, because it was so horrible.'

  'What happened?'

  Terri sighed. 'Harris Bone was married to a local girl named Nettie. She was a native from a prominent family, the Hoffmans. They go back decades here in Door County. It was kind of an odd match. Harris was an only child from Sturgeon Bay, lived with his mom above a little liquor store there. Not exactly a catch, but he was a good-looking guy, and I think Nettie wanted a mama's boy she could push around. She was a piece of work. Always treated Harris like crap, but it got ten times worse after she wound up paralyzed in a car accident. She got angry at the world and took it out on Harris. I'd hear their kids talk about what it was like in the house. The arguments. The screaming. Not pretty.'

  'What does this have to do with Glory?' Hilary asked.

  'Glory stumbled into the middle of it on the wrong night,' Terri replied. 'She found a kitten in the Bone garage and began sneaking out at night to feed it. One of those nights, Harris Bone came home while Glory was hiding in the garage. The son of a bitch doused the entire house in gasoline, inside and out, lit up the place like a torch. Nettie and the boys died. Harris sat there and watched them burn. No shame, no regret, no guilt. I remember Sheriff Reich saying it was like he was in a trance.'

  'What about Glory?'

  'Glory was in the garage, and the fire almost got her, too. She crawled out through a hole in the wall, but she'd inhaled a lot of smoke. She spent weeks in the hospital. She made it, but that's the kind of thing that does as much damage to the head as it does to the body. People always said the fire made Glory the kind of girl she was. Wild. Reckless. Promiscuous. Like she was running from the past.'

  Hilary found it hard to breathe. Terri was right. It would have been bad with any girl, but she understood now what it meant to this community to lose Glory. She remembered what Delia had said in Florida. I almost lost her once, and I thought I got a second chance.

  This was the girl that everyone thought Mark had murdered.

  'I'm sorry,' Hilary murmured. 'Tresa never mentioned it to us.'

  'Well, I'm not surprised. We all treated it like it had never happened. I think the idea was, if you didn't talk about it, it didn't exist. Everyone was trying to spare Glory. Who wants to remember listening to a family burn to death?'

  'Did she go through therapy?'

  'I hope so, but people aren't big on that around here. It's like a character flaw if you have to see a shrink.'

  'It must have been hard on Tresa, too,' Hilary said.

  'Sure it was. She became the forgotten sister.'

  Hilary shook her head as she considered the wreckage of the Fischers and Bones. People were fragile things. You scratched the surface and found pain everywhere. When something bad happened to someone, it had a ripple effect, washing away other lives as the circles got larger.

  The two women continued walking slowly toward the school building. They were already late for the next class.

  'So Mark's paying the price for Harris Bone,' Terri told her. 'That's part of what's happening here. People around here are sensitive to the idea of a man getting away with murder. They don't want to see it happening again.'

  Hilary stopped and put a hand on Terri's shoulder. 'Getting away with murder? What are you talking about? You said they found Harris Bone at the ruins.'

  'They did. Harris was tried, and he got life in prison. A lot of people wished we had the death penalty in Wisconsin. Most of us thought life in prison was too good for him.'

  'That's not the same as getting away with it.'

  'I know, but Harris escaped,' Terri said. 'He got away as they were taking him to the Supermax facility in Boscobel. He's been on the run ever since. He's out there somewhere, hiding.'

  * * *

  Chapter Sixteen

  Amy Leigh's room in Downham Hall at the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay looked out on the remnants of a cornfield from the previous harvest season. Beyond the rows of broken stalks, she could see the line of barren winter trees marking the Cofrin Arboretum that ringed the entire campus, isolating it like an island protected by an enchanted forest. It was late afternoon on Tuesday, but the ashen sky made the day look later than it was. Classes had begun again, and she had psychology books piled on her bed that she needed to read, but she was finding it hard to concentrate. Rather than working, she kept looking outside at the desolate field and thinking about Glory Fischer and Gary Jensen.

  She'd thought about nothing else but the two of them since the bus arrived back in Green Bay: the girl who'd been found dead on the beach in Florida and the coach who always seemed to be stripping her naked in his head when he looked at her.

  'Gary and his wife went rock-climbing in Utah in December,' Amy murmured, studying the article she'd pulled up on the Internet. She wasn't even aware that she'd spoken aloud until her roommate rolled over on her back on the opposite bed and groaned.

  'Are you on about this again?' Katie asked.

  Amy took the pen from her mouth. 'His wife died. She lost her grip during the climb and fell more than two hundred feet. There was no one in that area of the park but the two of them. If you wanted to murder someone and get away with it, can you think of a better way to do it? Who knows what really happened out there?'

  Katie laid the textbook on her bare stomach. She wore a sports bra and loose-fitting sweatpants. 'I remember you telling me that Gary looked devastated when you saw him on campus in January.'

  'People can fake that. What if she found out the kind of man he was?'

  'What kind of man is he?'

  'He's a pig. He comes on to all the girls.'

  'So do half the older men in the world.'

  'It was in the papers after she died,' Amy said. 'The police in Utah investigated her death.'

  'The police are going to investigate any time somebody falls off a cliff. They didn't charge him with anything, did they?'

  'No.'

  Katie sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. 'Look, Ames, just because your coach is a jerk doesn't mean he's some kind of serial killer. First he kills his wife and now some girl in Florida he doesn't even know? Does that make any sense?'

  'I just wonder if I should tell someone. I mean, I think I saw Gary with Glory Fischer.'

  'You think?'

  'OK, I'm not sure.' She added, 'This is personal for me now. Because of Hilary.'

  'She was your coach. You haven't seen her in years.'

  'Yes, but you saw the news,' Amy said. 'They're looking at her husband. He's the prime suspect.'

  'Well, he knew the girl, and he had a room right near where she was killed, and he had a grudge against the family. Sounds like he deserves to be a suspect.'

  Amy took a strand of her curly blond hair an
d twisted it between her fingers. She shook her head. 'I remember him. He was a nice guy. Hilary wouldn't marry anyone who could do something like that. She's way too smart.'

  'Wow, don't tell me you're that naive,' Katie said. 'If you're going to be a psychologist, you better learn real fast that you can't trust people just by looking at them, you know?'

  'Yeah, I know.'

  Her roommate got off the bed and grabbed a Green Bay sweatshirt from the top of her laundry basket and shrugged it over her skinny torso. She peeled off her sweatpants and squeezed her bare legs into a tight pair of jeans. Sitting on the bed again, she laced up her sneakers. As she bent over, her glasses skidded down her nose.

  'I'm going to dinner,' she told Amy. 'You want to come with me?'

  'I'm not hungry.'

  'You sure?'

  'Yeah. You go.'

  'OK, whatever. See you later.'

  Katie left Amy alone in the room. Amy got up and paced back and forth between the walls, then tried to clear her mind with a series of yoga positions. It didn't help. She sat down at the desk again and reread the story in the Green Bay paper about the death of Gary Jensen's wife four months earlier. It was the kind of accidental tragedy that happened every day. There was nothing suspicious about it. She was making Gary into a monster in her head for no good reason.

  Amy called up the home page of Facebook on her computer. She had almost four hundred friends on the network, including everyone from her high school class and dozens of dancers she'd met from schools across the country. She did a search and found the profile for Hilary Bradley, who was one of her friends, and clicked over to her former coach's home page.

  Hilary's profile photo showed her on a bicycle somewhere on a tree- lined road. She had a big smile, her long hair blew behind her, and her blue eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. She looked happy. Amy figured the photo had been taken where she lived now, in the rural lands of Door County. Hilary didn't look as if she had changed much in the three years since Amy had known her in high school in Chicago. She was pretty and blonde, like Amy, and she was tall and full-bodied, which was also like Amy. That was one of the things she'd liked most about Hilary. She wasn't a stick. She didn't make any apologies for her figure. She'd always told Amy that you could be a big girl and still be graceful and sexy.