The Bone House

by Brian Freeman

  Hoffman separated the key from the others on the ring. He undid the latch and extracted the key and dropped the ring back on the table. He held the key and rubbed it until it was warm between his fingers. It was horrifying, the vivid memories you could find in a shiny piece of metal. When he couldn't stare at it anymore, he slid the key inside his pocket.

  It was next to Mark Bradley's phone.

  He pushed himself up from his chair. As he did, a shiver of pain coursed down his leg like ice. His bad leg, where he'd taken a bullet for Felix Reich in a fetid jungle, had stiffened since the fall at the store, and now it was almost immovable. His calf was swollen and purple and tender to the touch. He suspected he had broken a bone. They'd wanted to call an ambulance for him, but he'd refused, even though now he could barely walk. It didn't matter. He had other things to do.

  Cab Bolton would be here soon.

  Hoffman clung to the kitchen counter and grabbed his cane. He leaned into it, supporting his weight. With his other hand, he picked up the map from the table and slid it under his arm. Step by step, he limped from the kitchen into his bedroom, where he kept his desk and a printer that doubled as a copy machine. He fumbled with the map, unfolding it and laying it on the glass. He punched the copy button, but when he saw the page that printed, he realized that he had misaligned the map. He moved the paper, tried again, and decided that the image was too small. He set the machine to enlarge.

  It would have been easier to drive along with Cab Bolton to show him the way, but Hoffman knew he couldn't walk that far in the cold and rain. He didn't want to go back there anyway. He had faced evil things in the past, but some evil was too much to bear.

  He made several more copies before he was satisfied with the result. He crumpled the other pages and dropped them in the trash basket next to the desk. He left the map where it was on the glass. With the copy in his hand, he staggered back to the kitchen, biting his lip at the shooting pains running up his leg. He lowered himself into the chair with a groan. He searched on the desk for a pen and squinted at the copy of the map.

  He listened.

  Outside the house, above the tremors of wind, he heard a sharp snap, like the crack of a bullet. Someone's footfall had broken a branch. He had a visitor approaching his house through the woods, someone who was trying not to be heard.

  Hoffman wasn't surprised.

  He folded the copy of the map and slid the paper into his pocket along with the key and the phone. He pushed himself up with both hands flat on the glossy wood of the table. This time, he didn't bother with the cane, and the weight on his calf nearly made him collapse with his first step. He dragged his leg behind him, making stutter steps toward the closet near the front door. The short distance felt endless. At the closet, he reached inside to find his shotgun, which he always kept oiled and ready. He reached up for a box of shells from the closet shelf and spilled them like marbles as he loaded the gun.

  He closed the door and sagged against it, breathing heavily, almost weeping as pain knifed his leg. Leaning his shoulders against the wall, keeping his foot off the ground, he slid along the walnut paneling to the front door. He twisted the knob and nudged it open. Outside, on the porch, he smelled dead leaves. The forest was alive, twisting and knocking bare branches together. The dirt driveway was damp with mud. He looked for fresh footprints from the road and saw none.

  Where was he?

  Hoffman gripped the door frame and hung on as he cradled the shotgun under his other arm. He studied the forest, just as he'd done years earlier, through the misery of drowning rain and voracious insects. He didn't have to see anyone, or hear them, or smell them, to know he wasn't alone.

  'I know you're here,' he called into the woods.

  There was no answer. The wind roared. He tasted the damp mist on his lips.

  'It's time to end this,' he shouted, but no one replied. The trees cackled as if they were taunting him. We know what scares you, old man. He should have listened to their warning.

  Hoffman heard a noise inside the house. He'd forgotten the cardinal rule: always watch your back. The footsteps on the wooden floor were so close that he expected to feel breath on his neck. He tried to turn, to wheel the gun around, but he didn't have enough strength or time. Strong hands took hold of his shirt collar and yanked him backward into the foyer. He fell like a stone drops, his leg caving under him. As he collapsed, the shotgun was peeled from his hands. He hit his head on the floor. He squirmed like an insect on his back, unable to get up.

  In every battle, there was a winner and a loser, and he had lost.

  'Close your eyes,' the voice said above him.

  Hoffman didn't. Not now, not ever. The twin barrels of his own gun dug into his forehead, and he left his eyes wide open to see the end when it came.

  Hilary's car smelled of freshly ground coffee. She'd emptied their supply with the last pot of the morning, and so she decided to make a pilgrimage to the small shop by the harbor before Mark arrived home. As she drove back, she heard her phone ringing. She pulled off the road rather than navigate with her phone wedged at her shoulder.

  'Is this Hilary Bradley?' It was an unfamiliar girl's voice.

  'Yes, who is this?'

  'My name is Katie Monroe. I think you know my roommate, Amy Leigh.'

  Hilary heard Amy's name, and her stomach turned over with anxiety, is something wrong? Is Amy OK? I've been trying to reach her.'

  'You have?'

  'Yes, Amy called me last night. It was a strange call. I've called her several times since then, but she's not answering her phone. I'm worried.'

  Hilary heard the girl breathing into the line.

  'She didn't come back to our room last night.'

  'Is that unlike her?'

  'Some girls stay out all night, but not Ames.'

  Hilary yanked off her glasses and closed her eyes as she thought about Amy's call. 'Listen, Katie, Amy mentioned the name of her coach when she called. Gary Jensen. Does that mean anything to you?'

  The girl paused. 'Son of a bitch!' she exclaimed.

  'Did she tell you anything about him?'

  'Amy told me she was going to talk to Gary last night. She was meeting him at his house. I haven't been able to reach her since then.'

  'Did you call the police?'

  'I called campus security, but they blew me off. They all know Gary. They told me I was crazy. A college girl not coming home overnight isn't a big deal to them.'

  'You should go to the police,' Hilary repeated.

  'And tell them what? My roommate didn't sleep in the dorm last night? They'll pat me on the head and tell me to come back tomorrow. I can't do this alone.' Katie stopped and then spoke again in a rapid voice. 'Listen, you're just over in Door County, right? That's why I called. If you drove down here, we could talk to the police together.'

  Hilary checked her watch and frowned. 'I'm on Washington Island. There's only one ferry left for the day. I'm not sure I can make it.'

  'Please,' Katie insisted. 'If we do this together, they'll take us seriously. Otherwise, they won't start pushing papers around for a couple days, and I'm afraid that Amy is in trouble right now.'

  Hilary hesitated. She knew they had nothing of any weight to tell the police. Gary Jensen may have been creepy, but creepy wasn't a crime. Even so, she shared Katie's fears that something was wrong. If Amy was at Jensen's house when she made that odd call, then she might be in danger, particularly if Jensen was in some way connected to Glory Fischer.

  'OK,' Hilary said. 'If I make the ferry, it'll still take me a couple hours to get there. In the meantime, don't do anything, OK? Just wait for me.'

  'Call me when you're getting close,' Katie said.

  Hilary hung up. She glanced at the foreboding sky and realized she'd be driving into heavy rain as she neared Green Bay. A wicked storm was coming. She turned the car around and accelerated toward the ferry harbor. As she drove, she punched the speed dial for Mark's number. The phone was already ringing when she re
membered the message he'd left on their answering machine.

  He'd lost his phone.

  She was about to hang up when someone answered on Mark's line. It wasn't Mark.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Cab found the dead end at Peter Hoffman's house and followed the edge of the dirt driveway toward the house. He brushed past tree branches, and his black shoes sank into mossy ground. He noticed boot prints in the mud of the driveway; someone else had come and gone recently. The house was situated in a clearing that had been carved out of the woods, in the middle of a lawn littered with leaves, acorns, and branches. The log beams of the building glistened. Steam from the furnace spewed out like smoke from a pipe through a white exhaust vent. Behind the house, where the woods began again, Cab could see a glimmer of the blue water beyond the cliff.

  He noticed something else, too. From the woods at the rear, a second set of footprints made impressions in the long grass leading toward the back door.

  Two visitors. One in front, one in back.

  Cab approached the porch warily. He saw tools strewn across the floor and patches of sawdust. The front door was closed. He climbed the steps, but he couldn't see inside, because the drapes were closed across the windows.

  He rang the bell. When no one answered, he pounded loudly.

  'Mr Hoffman!' he called. 'It's Cab Bolton.'

  There was no response from inside.

  Cab nudged the door with his shoulder. When it didn't open, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully twisted the knob. The door was locked. He stood on the porch, hands in his pockets, and surveyed the yard. To his left, beyond the house, he saw a detached garage. The door was open; a car was parked inside. Rutted tracks led in and out, but they didn't look recent. Hoffman hadn't driven anywhere today.

  His gut sounded an alarm. He reached inside his coat and extracted his service Glock, which he cradled loosely in his hand. He descended the steps and followed the house to the rear, noting the footsteps in the grass, which were mostly indistinguishable, with no visible tread marks. The rear door of the house was ajar. Beyond the door, the frame of the roof angled upward, and huge windows looked out on the water. In the yard, he saw a lonely deckchair beneath the shade of a mammoth oak tree, near the sharp drop-off to the shore. In the stretch of gray-blue on the horizon, he spotted a dot of white where a ferry cruised through the passage toward Washington Island.

  Cab approached the open door and called again. 'Mr Hoffman!'

  The door led into the dinette area of the kitchen. At the doorway, he stepped out of his loafers and crossed the threshold in black socks. He was near a butcher block table placed in front of the windows. The kitchen was on his right. The house was warm, and in the shut- up space, he smelled the metallic smoke of gunpowder. Above it was something fetid, a dead smell of excrement and blood.

  Cab swore under his breath.

  He followed the hallway toward the front of the house, passing doors for two bedrooms on his right and stairs to a loft. At the end of the hallway, the house opened up into a large living room with a high ceiling. He saw the body lying halfway on the carpet behind the front door. Unspent shotgun shells gleamed in the floor. Blood made a spider on the tile of the foyer and soaked into a pool in the fibers of the carpet. Peter Hoffman was a limp mess of sprawled limbs. He had no face. The blast from the gun had obviously been dead on into his skull while the man lay on the ground.

  Cab reached for his phone. He was about to call Felix Reich when he stopped.

  He knew what would happen when the crew from the sheriff's department arrived. Reich would take a statement and get him out of the house, which was exactly what Cab would do if it was his own turf. Before he was banished, Cab wanted to know if Hoffman had left behind any clues about what he intended to tell him. Whatever information the man had, it had been enough to get him killed.

  He backtracked to the kitchen. Based on the cane and pushed-back chair, he concluded that Hoffman had been sitting at the dinette table before he made his way to the front door and was shot. There was nothing on the table except a pen and an open bottle of Jameson's. On the kitchen counter, he saw the man's bulky key ring and a pair of glasses. He checked the master bedroom, which was impeccably neat, and spotted a computer and printer on one wall. When he lifted the top of the printer, the glass was clear. The wastebasket beside the desk was empty. He pulled open the top drawer and found pens, paper clips, staples, and a neatly folded Door County map. That was all.

  He did a quick review of the filing cabinet near the man's desk, but the folders mostly revealed tax and property records, which would take hours to study in detail. He nudged the computer mouse with the knuckle of his finger, but the computer had been powered down.

  Cab frowned. Nothing.

  He checked his watch and knew the clock was ticking. He needed to call the sheriff. He made his way back to the living room and stared down at Peter Hoffman.

  'What did you want to tell me?' he said aloud to the corpse at his feet.

  At that moment, the body began to sing to him in Steven Tyler's voice. It was an Aerosmith song. 'Dude Looks Like a Lady.'

  Cab started in surprise before realizing that the music came from the dead man's pocket. It was a phone. Cab bent down and used two fingers to reach inside Hoffman's right pocket and slide the phone into his hand. He answered neutrally. 'Yeah?'

  'Hello? Mark? Who's this?'

  'You first,' Cab said.

  'This is Hilary Bradley. I don't know who you are, but I think you've got my husband's phone.'

  Cab shook his head in sad disbelief. This wasn't going to be a happy call, it's Cab Bolton, Mrs Bradley.'

  'Detective?' He could hear her freeze with shock and surprise. 'How on earth did you get Mark's phone?'

  He didn't answer her question. 'Do you know how he lost it?'

  'No, I don't.'

  'Where is your husband now?'

  'As far as I know, he's on the ferry back to the island. What's going on? Where did you find his phone?'

  'I can't tell you that right now.'

  'Excuse me?'

  'You won't be able to get it back.'

  'Why not?'

  'I'm sorry,' Cab said. 'That's all I can say.'

  'Is something wrong?'

  'I'm sorry,' he repeated. 'I have to hang up now. It would be better if you didn't call this number again.'

  He ended the call before she could say anything more. She'd know what it was all about soon enough. The sheriff was going to be out for blood, finding Mark Bradley's phone in the pocket of Peter Hoffman, lying dead in his own house. Peter Hoffman, who was Reich's lifelong friend. Peter Hoffman, who swore he had information that could help put Mark Bradley behind bars.

  He bent down next to Hoffman's body. As he slid the phone back into the dead man's pocket, his fingers grazed something else. Paper. He extracted a single folded sheet with his fingertips, and when he unfolded it, he found an enlargement of a map showing a small portion of the NorDoor section of the county stretching west to east from the town of Ellison Bay to Newport State Park. Nothing was written on the page itself.

  Curious, Cab reached into Hoffman's pocket again and dug to the bottom. This time he found something metal. He pulled it out and cupped it in his hand.

  It was a key.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Hilary saw Mark's face as he drove off the ferry and knew that something had gone terribly wrong. He drove by her, oblivious to everything around him. His face was pale. His eyes were blank and distracted. She hit the horn to get his attention, and he pulled off the road when he spotted the Taurus. He got out and walked toward her. He climbed into the passenger seat, but when she hugged him, he sat motionless, not responding.

  'What is it?' she asked. 'What's wrong?'

  'Peter Hoffman's dead,' Mark told her.

  'Oh, my God, what happened?'

  'I don't know, but I know who they're going to blame
for it.'

  Hilary stared at the ferry port. They were behind schedule, and she knew they'd be rushing to get the half-dozen cars on board. 'Back up, back up,' she told him. 'What the hell's going on?'

  Mark ran his hands through his hair. 'Hoffman confronted me at the market. He was spouting off about how I'd killed Glory. It got physical. He hit me. Cracked me right in the jaw.'

  Hilary closed her eyes. 'What did you do?'

  'I pushed him, and he fell. Everybody saw it happen.'

  'You mean he died? Right there?'

  'No, no, no, no, but everyone knows there was a fight.'

  'Mark, you're not making any sense. What happened to your phone?'

  'I dropped it at the store when Hoffman hit me. When I realized it was gone, I called my number, and Hoffman told me he had it. So when the ferry was delayed, I drove to his house. I wanted to apologize, get my phone back, and get the hell out of there. But he was dead. Someone blew his head off. It was so recent that I could still smell it. It must have happened in the fifteen minutes or so between when we talked and I drove over there.'

  'What did you do?'

  'I left. I ran.' He added, 'I didn't kill him, Hil. It wasn't me.'

  Hilary cupped her hands in front of her mouth. Her mind raced. 'They already found your phone,' she murmured.

  'What?'

  'I called you. I forgot about your message. Cab Bolton answered. He must have been at Hoffman's house, which means he found the body and your phone.'

  Mark shook his head. 'They're going to crucify me.'

  Hilary wanted to tell him he was wrong, but she wasn't going to fool either of them with false hope. He was the obvious suspect. The accusations, the fight, the phone calls, all of it played against him, and all of it could be proved by witnesses and records. She felt a sense of uneasiness herself, however much she tried to pretend she was immune. Hesitation. Doubt. Every time she quelled it, something happened that pushed her deeper into shadow.