Blood and Bone

by V. M. Giambanco

  There had been about two hundred people on the Kaleetan and Madison was eager to meet only one of them—unfortunately, though, he did not seem to feel the same way.

  The flow of people began to ebb. After a few minutes there was only a trickle of teenagers, laughing as they crossed the gangway and went past the line of police officers and detectives. Madison focused on the artist’s sketch of the fake engineer who had visited the Duncan home. She held it in her mind against each face. Regular features, dark hair, blue eyes, tall, confident, comfortable around people. Might be talking to other travelers he has just met. No one even came close.

  The radio crackle from the police radios filled the hall and it became clear, after no one had come through the passage for a minute or so, that there were no other travelers waiting to disembark.

  Madison edged toward the windows. The orange lights glowed through the thin rain over the shiny concrete below and the parallel lines of the lanes ran straight up, leading all the way into the wide, gaping mouth of the ship. They were deserted except for the police cars. Inside the half-gloom of the car deck the flashlight beams of the Harbor Patrol officers and the Seattle PD patrols searched, explored, and probed the empty darkness. They could only hold the ship for a few more minutes.

  Madison left Kate Duncan with Brown and rushed across the gangway and onto the ferry. If the man had been on board, he would need to get off. There was no way around it.

  Madison found herself on the passenger deck: the Kaleetan was vast and the rows after rows of tables and benches stood eerily deserted. The engine noise was merely a low grumble as the ferry idled at the dock. She started down the first row, knowing that the patrols had already been there, but she couldn’t help herself. Her steps clacked as she hurried through, looking left and right, her eyes running over the nooks and crannies and seeking out corners where someone might be quietly waiting for the next group of passengers to board so that he could conceal himself among them.

  The outer decks were deep and long—the passengers who crossed during the day would be looking at the views of the distant Olympic Peninsula mountains on one side and Mount Rainier on the other. No one was admiring the view now as Madison burst through the doors and raced from one end to the other, then crossed and checked the deck on the opposite side.

  Inside she ran into a crew member. Her eyes clocked the ID badge on a chain around the man’s neck and the picture matched his face. He went past with a look that said hurry up, we’ve got a job to do. Madison knocked and walked into each of the deserted restroom facilities and then found her way out through the double-level car deck. The cold wind was harsh and cutting on the dock.

  Kate Duncan sat on the chair, her arms tightly crossed over her chest. The passenger boarding hall was empty, except for the police officers, and the concessions were closed for the day.

  Madison sat close yet far enough away to give her some space. The woman looked not only scared but bewildered.

  “So, you spent the day with your husband’s relatives, you said good-bye in time to catch the 9:05 from Bremerton, and you drove to the harbor. What happened next?”

  The woman frowned slightly, eyes narrowed, reaching out for the memory of anything that might have been out of the ordinary. “Nothing happened until we were all on board, until the cars were parked and the ferry was moving.” Kate Duncan’s gaze was fixed on a spot of worn fabric on the armrest of her chair. “People started to go up to the passenger decks and I stayed behind a little because I was looking for a book that Matthew’s cousin had given me and I thought . . . I thought she was so kind . . . and if I’d left the book at her place it would have been rude, you know?”

  Madison nodded. Brown watched them from a few feet away.

  “I found the book, got out of the car, and locked it. Then, as some people between us moved to go up the stairs, I saw him. He didn’t see me, but I saw him. He was way back on the deck.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “He was just standing there, waiting.”

  “Waiting?”

  “Waiting for me to leave the car, for the others to leave. I don’t know. He was just standing there.”

  “Tell me again what he looked like.”

  “Tall, dark clothes, a hooded top. He looked exactly the same as he did when he followed me in the gardens the other day.”

  “But he was farther away from you this time.”

  Kate Duncan blinked, coming back momentarily from her reverie. “Yes, he was.”

  “How far?”

  “About one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet away.”

  “That’s quite a way away from you. Much farther away than before.”

  “I guess so.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I rushed behind the pickup and I hid and he started to walk toward me, well, toward my car. He must know my car, because how could he have followed me otherwise?”

  Madison nodded.

  “And then he just looked inside the car—as if, as if he was making sure I wasn’t still inside it—and he went all around it and that’s when I called you.”

  “Right,” Madison said.

  “And the man, he saw that I wasn’t there and began to walk up and down the rows, looking into each car, looking up to see if there was anyone else around. All the time getting closer.” Kate Duncan closed her eyes.

  “Did you see his face this time?” Madison asked her.

  The woman shook her head. “The hood was up. I didn’t see his face.”

  Madison knew she had to ask. “And yet you’re sure it was the same man?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Same height, same body shape, same everything. And he was looking for me.”

  Madison held her eyes. Kate Duncan had seen a man wearing dark clothes walking through a car deck. That was all she could testify to.

  “Wasn’t he?” the woman repeated.

  “That’s what we need to find out,” Madison said.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you,” Madison said, and she wasn’t lying. She believed that Kate Duncan was utterly convinced that a man was stalking her.

  “Could have been a thief,” Brown said. “Checking out the cars for any valuables left in sight, ready for a little bit of late-evening retailing if any car was left unlocked.”

  Brown and Madison stood under the shelter of the ferry terminal. Kate Duncan had been put in a patrol car, which would drive her to the Collins home, where she was still staying. An officer was following in her SUV.

  Madison looked at the place where the ferry had stood. The Kaleetan was on its way back to Bremerton. Lieutenant Fynn had joined them after the search of the ferry had revealed nothing more than occasional littering and a forgotten child’s glove. She had given him the gist of the woman’s testimony.

  “Basically, she just saw a guy walking with his hood up on a cold night,” he’d said.

  “Yes.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Fynn left.

  Madison felt a twinge of guilt—as if the whole operation had been a colossal waste of time and it had been her own fault. It was her case, her witness, her squandered resources.

  She turned to Brown. “Do you think she’s losing it?”

  “She saw what she thought she would see.”

  “We’ll have CCTV tomorrow morning.”

  “What do you think it’ll show you?”

  Madison thought about it for a moment. “A guy walking with his hood up on a cold night,” she said.

  “You had to call it in like you did.”

  Madison didn’t reply. She was about to shrug, but it felt juvenile and she stopped and turned away instead.

  “You had to call it in because, if you didn’t, Kate Duncan might have been killed and thrown overboard. And all that would have been left of her was her car blocking the deck.”

  They parted and both dashed off under the drizzle.

  When she got back home Madison peeled of
f her damp clothes and padded back into the kitchen in her pajamas. The eggs were still on the counter and the butter was a congealed pool in the pan. She turned on the gas and soon the butter began to sizzle.

  Kate Duncan lay on her bed in Annie’s home. Her cell phone was on her bedside table; its screen glowed for a moment then it switched off. The blankets felt heavy on her frame and one lock of hair was still wet from the hot shower. She knew what she had seen; she knew what had happened. Her mind was clear and her brain was working as well as ever. A man had been following her—whatever the detectives said.

  Her eyes were wide open and her fists balled up tightly at her sides. It came before she knew it: a wave of anger that blotted out everything else. She twisted the T-shirt she was wearing; she grabbed at the collar and pulled it as if she couldn’t breathe. A couple of seams stretched and tore and the sound felt good. She pulled it off and tore at it, ripping the fabric into strips. When her breathing slowed down Kate Duncan placed what remained of the shirt carefully at the bottom of her bag and found a fresh one.

  Sleep did not come for a long time that night—and when it did, it brought the scent of copper.

  The man stepped into the hot shower. The chill on the car deck had reached deep into his bones, and the heat brought his skin back to life with the sting of a whip.

  What a night it had been. And yet, however much he wanted to mull over every moment of it, there was a decision to make and it couldn’t wait. In what he considered a long and fruitful career he had always been careful not to rush and he had been especially watchful against being arrogant or presumptuous—the sins of a poor craftsman. He would not have been as successful as he had if he had not been careful about moving too fast, too early, or too much in the open. Be wary, be ready, be safe. Be safe. The man sighed: Kate Duncan seemed to draw out the best and the worst in him: he hadn’t been thinking about safety at all when he had looked through her things in the dresser, had he? A puff of her perfume when he opened her drawer had almost made him swoon.

  This latest project had been, well, it had been the most fun he’d had in a very long time and he didn’t want to spoil everything by rushing to the next one. Then again, the new one was good to go—and there was the issue of timing. If he didn’t do it now, he’d have to wait another twelve months and the whole notion of cause and effect would somehow deflate.

  The hot water worked its wonders and even his thinking seemed to warm, stretch, and expand. He had never before started the next project when the old one was still in play, but these were extraordinary circumstances. If he didn’t do it now, he might as well scrap it completely and look for a new one. Finding a project would not be a problem when people seemed to be almost begging him to take them on. How could he resist them, how could he say no? And while he was prepared to ditch an operation, if necessary—even if it meant wasting months of work—there was something so juicy about this next one that he found it hard to let go.

  Maybe this was his own test: Could he let go? Could he move on and let it be?

  Not for the first time he went back to what he trusted most to help him make up his mind: it was a kind of celestial navigation, after all. He closed his eyes and imagined all his past and future projects like the heavenly bodies of a solar system with their trajectories, their orbits, and their own moons. It was a complex, shockingly beautiful system that comprised death and rebirth, the arbitrary and the inevitable. He was there too—invisible—the force that changed their paths because his gravity was so much stronger than theirs and would affect their course, whether they liked it or not, whether they saw him or not. And there was his answer: he was invisible and had to remain that way.

  There was a pang of regret he didn’t expect—cutting and almost sweet. He had so looked forward to the next one; his hunger had already tasted the moment and played with it over and over. The man exhaled and reached for the disposable razor. He ran it over his chest and his forearms as he had done every day since just before he moved into the house, five years earlier. His scalp and his brows would have to wait for the mirror. Although shaving had started as a useful precaution as his work progressed, in time he had begun to see it for what it truly was: the shedding of a life that was beneath him.

  He tried to distract himself from the bitter disappointment and wished he could find solace in his old friend, in the constellations around it, but tonight Jupiter was behind the clouds and the man felt completely alone. Rain without and within.

  Chapter 33

  Jerry Lindquist woke up and, as every morning, his first shock was realizing that he was in a cell of the King County Justice Complex. The second, as it had been since the previous Friday, was remembering that the brother of the man he had inadvertently killed in self-defense was in a cell on the same wing, waiting for the appropriate moment to strike.

  Jerry craved sleep and yet every awakening brought a jab of pain: he dreamt like a free man dreams—walking, swimming, breathing free air under the warm sun—but he woke up as a lifer. And it seemed to matter not at all that he was innocent of his wife’s murder and that he shouldn’t be there, in prison, about to eat his powdered eggs, trying to look dangerous.

  The only time he had been this afraid was when he first arrived at KCJC. Those early weeks had been so terrifying that he hadn’t expected to survive at all. Somehow, he had—and he had found in his days a faltering rhythm of abject fear and boredom—and here he was, two years later.

  Saul Garner, his appeal attorney, had been supportive when he’d told him that the cons on his wing were taking bets on his imminent death. But there was only so much that he could do. It wasn’t a hotel: you couldn’t move to a different floor because your neighbor partied late or you didn’t like the view.

  Jerry Lindquist ran his hands over his face: on top of all the daily humiliations, the lacerating grief for his wife and the loss of everything that had been important to him, it was the fact that he didn’t matter at all that stayed with him every second of every day. What he thought, what he felt, who he was simply did not matter. If his life were swept away with the garbage, this week or the next, no one would notice.

  He swung his feet off his cot and wondered idly whether the bookkeeping class on Thursday would be canceled for Thanksgiving—and whether he’d still be alive for it anyway.

  At breakfast William (robbery/homicide) came to sit next to him. Jerry worked hard to finish his food and look normal.

  The corrections officers paced the gangway above the canteen and, as he did every day, Jerry hoped that they’d stay close. And that their aim was sharp.

  Saul Garner looked like he hadn’t slept in the previous twenty-four hours because, in fact, he had not. After he found the first one—and it had been with a sickening jolt in his gut—he hadn’t been able to stop. He had gone home for a quick shower and breakfast with the children and then he had returned to the office.

  The files were lined up on his desk and with each came the memory of the defendant who had appealed his conviction. He knew each one personally—in some cases, he knew their families as well.

  Saul made himself some of the Earl Grey tea his mother had given him and took the mug back to his desk. The detectives would arrive soon and he had nothing for them. Nothing but the worst news.

  Chapter 34

  Madison arrived at the office early and found Brown already there. The coffee that he’d brought for her was cooling on her desk. He had been reading the previous day’s interviews, and when she arrived he barely looked up.

  They checked the CCTV tapes from the ferry and their eyes tracked fuzzy gray silhouettes on the screen. However, nothing confirmed or denied Kate Duncan’s statement. The CCTV on the car deck had not picked up the stalker. Whoever the woman had seen had known to keep well away from the range of the camera. At some point a figure dashed across and disappeared up the passenger stairs. After that there was no further movement until a crew member came to check the deck after the Coast Guard call and then the travelers
returned to get ready to disembark.

  Madison froze the blurred image. Someone had been there, even if he hadn’t been Kate Duncan’s stalker. If it was just an opportunistic thief, he had certainly bothered to figure out the range of the camera. Twenty-three male drivers had traveled alone, including four cyclists. Madison ran through the pictures of their driver’s licenses, but none of them resembled the sketch of the fake engineer who had visited the Duncans’ home.

  Madison checked the round clock on the wall and saw that it was time to go. One way or another the meeting with Saul Garner was going to reshape her future and Brown’s past.

  They sat in his office with the door closed. Madison had steeled herself for whatever number the lawyer might come up with. There were still checks to be done, evidence to be accounted for and testimonies to look over; there was still a chance that he might have gotten it wrong somehow.

  “Eleven,” Saul Garner said. “I went back seven years and I ran the cases through the parameters we talked about, and I found eleven that present similar profiles.”

  “Eleven?” Brown repeated.

  Madison, who thought that she had been ready for it, realized that in fact she was not.

  “Eleven,” Garner said. “And one of the reasons why I believe the cases are related is an escalation in violence that follows the chronology.”

  “He got worse as he got a taste for it,” Madison said.

  “You could say that,” Garner smiled without mirth. “He got worse as he got better at it.”

  “Better?” Brown was not in the mood for droll.