BoneMan's Daughters

by Ted Dekker

  It took him four hours to reach San Antonio because he decided to take a side trip through the Hill Country on Highway 281 and come into the city from the west. Late October had brought cooler temperatures, and in the wake of heavy late-summer rains the rolling hills were brilliant green beneath a blue sky.

  He knew then, thinking about the landscape around him, that he really was finding himself again. On several occasions he wished he had a cell phone so that he could call up Father Hortense and inform him that he had turned the corner, more so than they had realized even yesterday, but he didn’t have another cell phone yet.

  San Antonio was pretty much the way he remembered it. He headed to the east side and took his time driving through neighborhoods near Fort Sam Houston. Knowing that he wouldn’t be staying long if he did come, he looked for monthly rentals—common in this area. He didn’t really care how nice the neighborhood was; he would be going it alone this time.

  It was seven o’clock that evening before Ryan Evans pulled the Toyota Camry into the parking lot of the Howard Johnson off I-35, checked in for one night, and retired to his room to watch a pay-per-view movie, something he hadn’t done in over two years.

  He fell asleep in the first ten minutes.

  RYAN WOKE TO a housekeeping call at his door the next morning. He pulled his sheets off and informed the maid that he wasn’t ready.

  Ten o’clock? He’d slept as though dead.

  Standing and stretching, he felt an unusual calm. Sunlight flooded the room when he ripped open the green curtains. A new day awaited and there was no way it could disappoint him; he’d already lived through the worst life could bring his way.

  Not even death, he thought. He’d faced death and no longer feared it.

  He spent the next two hours taking a long, luxuriously hot shower and relishing each bite of his bacon-and-eggs breakfast at the Denny’s next to the hotel. He finished his fourth cup of coffee, paid the cashier sixteen dollars and an extra five for tip, then headed back out to his Toyota Camry.

  Two nearby apartment complexes were to his liking and he took applications from both and told the managers he’d be in touch. No hurry, but both had several vacancies that they were eager to fill immediately.

  The drive back to Waco was uneventful, except for the driving rhythm, which provided for an excellent environment to think clearly now that he was once again capable. Celine was in the hands and arms of another man.

  Bethany was growing into a young woman with a bright future who would thrive in this self-indulgent landscape called North America.

  He, on the other hand, was an outsider, with neither lover nor bright future in a place he was neither needed nor wanted.

  The thought did pain him some, but he was now healthy enough to understand that some emotion was good, so long as it didn’t interfere with sound reasoning.

  His apartment off University was no worse off for sitting vacant for two days. He flipped the lights on, tossed his keys on the counter, and took another shower. Few realized the benefits of raising one’s skin temperature roughly an hour before sleep through a hot shower. The body compensated by slowing itself down to cool, and this often resulted in drowsiness and sound sleep.

  He pulled on a pair of gray sweats and a black Nike T-shirt, then sat down to scan the cable feeds. Nothing jumped out at him. Unless the terrorists had knocked over another tower, he wasn’t interested in the news. The evening soaps, as he called them, no better. He settled on the Science Channel, which was running a program on how technology was changing forensics and crime scene investigation. CSI.

  This he found utterly fascinating. But when the show ended fifty minutes later, it was followed by a less interesting program about the building of the Titanic.

  Feeling drowsy from his hot shower, Ryan clicked the TV off, poured himself a glass of water, and headed off to bed.

  He’d pulled back the covers and was about to climb under the cool sheets when it occurred to him that he hadn’t checked the answering machine for messages. He’d gone days and even a week without checking the messages, something that Hortense had chided him for.

  Not that it would matter at ten in the evening. He would check the machine when he woke.

  Ryan slid into bed and sighed deeply. He’d slept a lot over the past two months but those times of lapsed consciousness had been a mental retreat from reality. The sleep his body demanded now came from a healthy, even overactive mind.

  The next morning came too soon for his tastes, thanks to the shrill ring of his phone. He rolled from the bed and lurched for the kitchen, noting that it was already a quarter past eight. But the phone stopped ringing while he was still in the living room.

  Time to get up anyway.

  Whoever it was didn’t bother to leave a message. He walked into the kitchen, started the coffeemaker, and filled the pot with filtered water. The little red light on the answering machine was blinking.

  So he did have a message?

  He looked closer. 4 messages.

  Four? He’d received maybe a total of five messages since taking the apartment. Setting the pot he was filling back in the sink, he wiped his hands and pushed the playback button.

  The first message was from a gravely concerned Father Hortense. “Please, Ryan, if you’re there, pick up the phone. It’s urgent I talk to you.” A small stretch of silence. “Check the news. Call me as soon as you can.”

  The news? He’d never heard Hortense speak with such urgency.

  Ryan let the machine run, a second message from Father Hortense, demanding he call him immediately. He hurried into the living room and tuned to CNN.

  Football scores.

  FOX was no better, some story about a bear that had taken a swipe at a photographer who—

  Headline News. Sports again. But the headlines ran across the bottom in a ticker tape.

  REBELS STRIKE MILITARY BASE IN SOMALIA, KILLING 34 U.S. TROOPS…

  STOCK MARKET GAINS 312 POINTS ON NEWS OF HOUSING REBOUND…

  KILLER KNOWN AS BONEMAN TAKES ANOTHER VICTIM AFTER TWO-YEAR HIATUS…

  CHINA…

  But Ryan’s mind was locked on the story that had just rolled off the screen. The BoneMan had struck again. Either because the man they’d released from prison had indeed been BoneMan or because the killer no longer wanted to hide behind the wrong man.

  Father Hortense was calling him to talk it through with him so that he wouldn’t overreact.

  He let out some air. Hortense didn’t realize just how far Ryan had progressed these last few days. He not only cared very little about this whole BoneMan connection to his torture in the desert but he had released the guilt that had kept him bound to the experience.

  He’d let Bethany go.

  Headline News was talking about Michael Jackson. Ryan watched for a minute, waiting for the ticker tape to roll back around to news of the BoneMan, just in case he’d missed something.

  The third message was from Hortense, yet again, left yesterday afternoon. Same thing. He would have to call the man back and set his mind to rest.

  There it was again, rolling across the bottom: Killer known…

  The fourth answering machine message began to play, a soft, low voice from the kitchen. “Hello, Father. I have the girl you think is your daughter.”

  Ryan spun his head in the direction of the kitchen.

  The voice continued after a brief pause. “Her name is Bethany and she is mine now. It took you seven days to make her, now I’m giving you as much time to save her. If you think you can catch her, follow me where the crows fly, alone, Father.”

  Click.

  18

  FOR WHAT FELT like several minutes but could only have been a few seconds, Ryan found that he could not move. He just stood in his living room, arms spread slightly by his sides, eyes peeled at the kitchen, mouth gaping. Frozen like a stone pillar in the dead of winter.

  The photographs that Kahlid had pinned to the wall filled his mind. The sound of Ahmed’s br
eaking bones.

  BoneMan had Bethany. The knowledge felt distant, only vaguely relevant because it couldn’t be true, not in its entirety. He was missing something. A mistake had been made. It defied all reason.

  Ryan had allowed other children to suffer to protect his own daughter. This wasn’t Kahlid because he’d killed the man. And yet by escaping Kahlid he’d still condemned his own daughter? BoneMan had stumbled upon the story, maybe talked to Burton Welsh after Ryan had rubbed the BoneMan in his face for effect.

  Was it possible that he’d actually attracted the BoneMan’s attention?

  His heart pounded like a steam piston. His mouth felt like it had been stuffed with powder; waves of heat rolled over him, but he was fully aware and fully in control, because he knew that his mind was in a delicate place and could be thrown back into disorder, driven by irrational emotion. He had to stay calm!

  Ryan’s eyes jerked to the television screen. The woman anchoring Headline News was now talking next to bold letters that read BONEMAN STRIKES AGAIN. A photograph stared at him from beneath the letters.

  A beautiful, smiling young woman with flowing brown hair and bright blue eyes who looked nineteen, not sixteen. Bethany.

  Ryan knew that he was losing control before the shakes came, but he was powerless to stop them. He felt as if a giant hand had reached down his throat and ripped out his heart and, now hollowed, his chest was reacting violently with the rest of his body before dropping into a pile, dead.

  But he didn’t drop dead and was no longer only shaking. He was sprinting. Racing into the kitchen, stabbing at the play button, fighting a full-tilt panic.

  Father Hortense’s voice came on, asking him to—He erased the message, and the next, and the next, and then BoneMan’s voice crackled over the machine’s tiny speakers.

  “Hello, Father. I have the girl you think is your daughter. Her name is Bethany and she is mine now. It took you seven days to make her, now I’m giving you as much time to save her. If you think you can catch her, follow me where the crows fly, alone, Father.”

  He slammed his fist down on the machine and screamed.

  “Mail box empty,” the device announced.

  He had to think… .

  Think, think!

  Stay calm, Ryan. Just stay calm.

  How had the BoneMan known to call him? Father, as if Ryan was the BoneMan’s father? As if BoneMan were some kind of sick Satan who had taken a daughter and wanted her father to play God?

  Come and get me, Father.

  Ryan grabbed the phone and punched in Celine’s cell number, pacing as it rang.

  “Come on, Celine. Please pick up.”

  “Leave a message,” her cheery voice announced.

  He quickly entered the home phone, missed a digit, retried, and hit the connect button.

  This time it was Bethany, and Ryan’s world blurred at the sound of his daughter’s voice. “Hello, you know the drill. If you want me, call me. If you want Celine, call Celine. Don’t bother with this machine, no one checks it.”

  Click.

  “Celine?” His voice sounded frantic. “Celine, for God’s sake, pick up the phone!”

  Silence.

  “Celine?”

  But she wasn’t answering. He stood breathing hard for a moment, then tried all the numbers that might connect him with someone, anyone, who could tell him what was going on. He had to know why? When? How long had she been gone? Had they found her?

  He frantically spun through the handful of contacts that might connect him to Celine. Her cell again, the home phone again, the DA’s office, which connected him to another voice mail.

  Why hadn’t Celine contacted him?

  He tried the priest’s line, but again, no live connection.

  The apartment walls felt like they were closing in on him, toppling over, pushed from the outside to crush him.

  Did the FBI know about the seven days BoneMan had given them? Or was it just him? Had this been a private challenge only for his ears?

  Angel, my angel, dear God please, please don’t let her be hurt.

  But he knew that it was too late. No matter what the outcome now, Bethany, his sweet little girl who was the very essence of his life, would be scarred for life.

  He had to know what was happening!

  Ryan snatched up his car keys, ripped the answering machine from the wall, and ran from the apartment.

  It took him an hour, most of it doing ninety miles an hour in a cool, steady sweat, to reach Capitol of Texas Highway. Another twenty minutes to reach Celine’s neighborhood, all of it regretting that he didn’t have a cell phone yet.

  The moment Ryan pulled up to Celine’s house, he knew that BoneMan had taken Bethany from this house. A squad car sat in the driveway, along with two unmarked sedans—likely FBI. Yellow tape cordoned off the sidewalk that ran around the house to the backyard.

  Rather than march in through the front door and demand answers as he’d intended all along, he parked his Camry on the street and angled around the house toward the backyard.

  Only then did the restraining order occur to him, but the thought did little more than slow him down. Clearly, a restraining order meant nothing in the face of what had happened.

  He stumbled forward, legs wobbling beneath him like Twizzlers. An extension ladder rose from the ground to the upper balcony, where it rested against white railing in need of a fresh coat of paint.

  Ryan pulled up hard, locked down by the sight. A slight breeze was blowing lazily through the trees. Behind him, car tires rolled past on Barton Creek Boulevard. High overhead a jet roared as it clawed higher.

  But none of the sounds swirling around Ryan were as pronounced as the stillness of the ladder BoneMan had used to access his daughter’s bedroom.

  It was the stillness of utter emptiness and it hit Ryan’s chest with enough force to rob him of breath for several long beats of his heart. The crime scene had already been processed a full day after the crime. The yellow tape served as a reminder that forensics investigators had been and gone and enough time had passed for any trail to have gone cold.

  He felt himself guided by an innate need to know. To the foot of the ladder. Up the metal rungs, one step at a time.

  His gut and his heart and his mind were all staging a fullscale revolt, demanding he get off the ladder, away from the vicinity of the taking, to protect himself from the agonizing images that flooded his mind.

  His daughter screaming into duct tape as her wide eyes searched for meaning.

  Daddy!

  Daddy, Daddy, please!

  How he managed to hoist himself over the railing he wasn’t sure, because by the time he reached the top of the ladder, he was a limp mess. He stood on the balcony facing drawn blinds, now regretting his decision to climb the ladder. He couldn’t possibly go inside!

  But he had to. He had to know what his daughter had felt and seen when BoneMan had come.

  Pushing back a dreadful ache, he tried the door, found it open, and slid it wide. The room inside was a storage room, not the bedroom. Bethany’s bed was in the next one over.

  Her white sheets were tucked in at the bottom, otherwise strewn about as if ripped from her and left to lie half off the bed. He could still see the indentation of her head in the pillow.

  This was his first time in her room since his return, and he hated himself for it. If he could have even one day back, he would deny every court authority known to man to make his love evident to his daughter.

  He’d buy her a car. A room full of roses. He’d fly her to Dubai and put her up in a suite that cost four grand a night and demand the staff bring her anything she wanted without the slightest thought of cost.

  He would fall to his knees and beg her forgiveness and tell her how much he loved her.

  Seven days, as of yesterday, when the message had been left. That left just over six days.

  Ryan turned from the room, wiped his eyes, set his jaw, and walked downstairs.

  They were
in the living room; he could hear them before he saw them.

  “Every hour you delay is one more he’s got.”

  “We need more.”

  “Then get more. You have Celine’s testimony, that’s enough to bring him in. For God’s sake, we don’t have time to sit around on this.”

  Ryan stopped in the doorway and looked at them. Burton Welsh, the man whom he’d attacked, tall, cleanly shaven. The smell of aftershave had to be his.

  Ricki Valentine, the FBI agent who’d interrogated him in the hotel two months earlier. The small woman with a big heart.

  Celine, dressed in a green flowered dress, pacing, nursing a bandaged forefinger at the end of her slung arm.

  He tried to say something but his voice suddenly felt inadequate. He didn’t belong here; he belonged out where BoneMan wanted him, bartering for his daughter’s life.

  “Ryan?”

  Ricki Valentine had seen him. They all turned to look at him, and he wanted to run because he knew that even now the effects of that empty bed upstairs were haunting his sanity.

  But there was nothing to do. He couldn’t turn and run because that would only make him the object of their search rather than BoneMan. He couldn’t say anything to them because there was nothing to say that made sense to him.

  He could only stand there and return their stares.

  “Well, speak of the devil,” the DA said. “What are you doing here?”

  The FBI agent shot him an angry glare and closed half the distance between them. “I’m sorry, Captain, I’m sure this is very upsetting.”

  “Why didn’t anyone call me?” he asked.

  “Get him out of here.” Celine glared at him like a wolf standing off a bear. “Get him out!”

  “Celine?” Something was wrong. He’d come with news, but…

  And then he understood. The DA had been talking about him when he’d walked up. Welsh wanted to bring him in for questioning.

  Rage flared up his back. “What’s going on?” he demanded.