Bad Bones (Claire Morgan)

by Linda Ladd

  Blood Brothers

  Making a plan to kill their betraying brother didn’t take very long at all. Punk and Bones had always liked keeping things simple, which was just easier, and all. So they decided to hide out in the hotel’s parking lot on the night of his fight and wait for Punk’s true love’s new love to come outside. He had the last fight, the showcase one, and most everybody was gone before he had showered and finished up in the locker room. When he finally did show up, he was all alone and the parking lot was nearly empty. So as soon as he put his gym bag down so he could unlock his car door, they attacked him from behind with baseball bats and knocked him down with double blows. Then Bones hit him again and cracked his right kneecap before Punk could get the duct tape over his mouth. He screamed in agony, and they dragged him behind some trashcans, but nobody heard, or came outside, or anything, which was very lucky for them.

  Then they tied him up and threw him in the back and took off in the orderly’s Jeep and headed for a nice deserted place in which to take their time breaking him up. It was snowing hard again but they were used to that and the new Jeep was well equipped for bad weather. The roads were nearly deserted so late, and they turned onto a cleared road that led up into a big state park. Punk stopped the Jeep, and Bones got out and unhooked the chain across the entrance. Then they drove inside, found a good spot, and then got out and left the car lights on. They dragged their moaning, groaning brother to a high cliff that overlooked the lake. It was pitch dark, still snowing, but the white snow reflected the headlights and made things nice and bright, as they flipped a rope over a tree limb and strung him up to a tree by his wrists. They stood under him, both holding the old aluminum baseball bats that the three of them had played with as children.

  Bones said, “You wanna go first? Since he’s screwin’ your girl?”

  Growling with rage at the mental picture that brought up inside his mind, Punk swung the bat against their victim’s spine. He didn’t hear any vertebra snap so he hit him again, harder this time. Bones laughed at the way Punk was yelling and cussing at their trussed-up brother. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about! You miss that while you was locked up, Punk? You glad you’re back here with me, the way it oughta be?”

  “Just hurry it up and hit him. We gotta get rid of him and make my girl a free woman again, now that I’m back and ready to get married. Nobody’s gonna stop me now from havin’ her. Nobody.”

  “Sounds good to me. You’re finally showin’ me some guts. Don’t know why you want that lily-white tail, anyways. She sure don’t do it for me.”

  “Nothin’ does it for you except breakin’ people’s bones. Go ahead, it’s your turn. Hurry up. Somebody might see the car lights.”

  Punk stood back and watched Bones raise the bat over his head and bring it down hard on the man’s collarbone. It snapped, but their brother probably didn’t feel anything anymore, not now that his spine was splintered all apart. But the furious revenge was still burning hot inside Punk, a hard red rage that he’d locked up so long, just at the thought of other men sleeping and having sex with his girl. Now he was wreaking his vengeance, and he was gonna enjoy it.

  So he took his turns with passionate eagerness, beating one brother alongside his other brother, glad for Bones’s help. Maybe he didn’t swing his Louisville Slugger with the same kind of maniacal glee that Bones did, but he bet he was getting a lot more satisfaction. It felt good to be free from those stupid doctors. It felt good to kill somebody, somebody who had touched his woman’s pure white skin while he’d been gone.

  After almost an hour, the blizzard intensified so much that they could barely see where to aim their blows. They couldn’t hear the bones pop anymore, either, and they were cold down to their marrow. So they cut the broken corpse down off the tree limb and heaved him as far as they could off the cliff and into the water below. Nobody was gonna find what was left of him until the snow melted and the park opened in the spring, if even then, after the animals had gotten to him and dragged his broken bones to hell and back, which was just good enough for him.

  Both of them were highly satisfied with their night’s work, and they took off back home to the warmth of Bones’s little cozy digs in the mine shaft, wanting to get toasty again and rest awhile before they went in search of his true love and brought her back with them. When they did find her, Punk was just going to have to give her the bad news about her dead lover boy and maybe even punish her a little bit, just for being so dadburned disloyal, and then he’d take her far away and marry her, once and for all, and they’d be happy again, like it had always meant to be. Yeah, finally, finally, his life was looking up. Things were gonna be good from now on. All he had to do was wait a teensy bit longer, and she would be his alone.

  Unfortunately, it took them several days to figure out exactly where she lived but they finally found the house. The place was pretty isolated, high up in a fancy subdivision with big houses bought by lots of rich folks. He wondered how they had even afforded it, but then again, her dead lover had been a damn good fighter. Not as good as he and Bones were, but he probably made plenty good money.

  They drove up to her place in the middle of the night. All was quiet, and that evening the snow had finally stopped falling. The entrance road was cleared, but Punk stopped the car a good distance from the house. “We better walk in from here, Bones. She might call the cops if she sees us comin’.”

  “Let’s just do it. You gonna break her arm for messin’ around with those other guys while you was sick and in the hospital?”

  “I wasn’t sick, and you know it. And no. I love her. Can’t you get that through your thick head. I love her. She’s mine. Live with it.”

  Bones looked surprised and then his face crinkled all up, and he started crying real tears, and everything. “You act like you like her more’n you do me.”

  “Don’t be stupid. I just like her different, is all. Now after we get inside, you wait downstairs ’cause I bet she’s upstairs where that light’s burnin’. I want to handle this alone. Understand that, Bones. You wait here, if you can’t do what I say. This here is an important night in my life and I don’t want you messin’ it up.”

  “I can do what you say, and you know it. But if you do break her arm, I wanna see it.”

  “I’m not gonna break nothin’ on her, you idiot.”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not no idiot.”

  After that, they didn’t say anything else to each other, both still a little bit mad. They snuck around and found the backdoor up on a high deck. It was locked up tight, but they just kicked it in, simple as pie. So she knew they were coming when they ran through the rooms to the front of the big house, and Punk started up the steps to get her. The chandelier in the front hall flared on all of a sudden, and he finally saw his true love again. She was standing at the top of the stairs, wearing a white satin nightgown, and she was holding it together at the throat with both hands. She was barefoot. His heart trembled and almost went still with his need and his love and his pleasure.

  “You,” she said, obviously shocked to see him.

  “Yes, it’s me, all right. I’ve come to take you home with me.”

  Then she got a frightened look on her beautiful face. “You killed him, didn’t you? You killed my husband.”

  “Oh, yeah, we sure did. What did you expect me to do? You shouldn’t’ve ever been sleepin’ with him. You’re mine. You know that. You said you were. I’m gonna have to punish you for screwin’ him and that other guy, too, I guess. I was all locked up and waitin’ for you, and look what you were doin’ behind my back.”

  After he said that, she whirled around and ran for the bedroom. He was on her in seconds, and he could hear Bones laughing at the bottom of the steps. She was still as light and delicate as he remembered, and he clamped his arms around her from the back and held her arms down at her sides as she struggled frantically against his tight hold.

  “Let me go! I hate you, I hate you, you killed him! I lov
ed him! I hate you!”

  Pure fury, unlike anything he had ever felt in his entire life, gushed up into his blood, the rush of adrenaline and pain and hurt at her cruel words. He let go of her, spun her back around to face him, and hit her in the face with his fist as hard as he could. Blood spurted from her nose, and she fell down and didn’t move at all. He jerked her back up again and hit her in the head again and then he threw her bodily onto the bed. He was panting, breathless with anger and exertion and disappointment, but then he realized that she was already dead. He had killed her. He had hit her too hard. Her beautiful pale eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. Sobbing at what he’d done, he fell on top of her and cradled her bleeding head in his arms.

  “Oh, no, oh, no, you can’t die, I love you, I love you,” he kept whispering as he pressed her head into his chest, but she never moved again. He began to lick her cool white skin, his tongue moving over every inch of her body. God, why had he killed her so fast? Why? Now he couldn’t ever marry her or take her away or have sex with her, ever again, or nothing.

  “Well, that didn’t last long,” Bones’s voice said from the doorway. “I thought you wanted to keep her around forever.”

  “I did, I did. But she said she hated me, and I got awful mad. And now, look what I did to her. I killed her. Why did I do that?”

  Punk fell face-first down onto the soft and silky comforter and wept heartbrokenly into the pillows, holding her limp body tightly up against him. Bones stood watching him, leaning his shoulder up against the doorjamb and not saying anything. Finally, Punk pushed her dead body aside and got off the bed. “C’mon, Bones,” he said, walking across the room. “Let’s get outta here.”

  Bones halted him with a hand on his arm. “Can I slit her throat or break some of her bones before we go? She’s dead. She’s not gonna feel nothin’. I haven’t had any fun like that in ages. Come on, Punk. Please. She deserves it, and you know it.”

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Punk felt slightly ill, still shocked at what he’d done. He hadn’t even given her a chance to change her mind and love him again. What was the matter with him? “I guess so. Like you say, she’s not gonna feel nothin’ now, that’s for damn sure. I’ll wait in the car. And clean up after yourself this time, will ya? I gotta think about all this. I feel sick. I shouldn’t’ve done this. I’ve gone and done something real stupid.”

  Before Punk reached the top of the stairs, he heard the muffled sound of a bone cracking. He stopped there, mourned his true love for a moment longer, as the muted sounds of her bones crunching continued, and then he walked down the steps and ran down the driveway to the car. All he wanted to do now was go back home with Bones and mourn the greatest loss in his life. He sat there for a long time, waiting for Bones to get done with his fun and watching the big white snowflakes spiraling softly down to the ground. He just felt so lonely without his true love. He was gonna miss her so much. Damn her, anyway, for making him kill her so fast.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  During the drive home from Fulton, Claire sat quietly and listened to Black telling her how careful she needed to be. Then she went to the office and ran the case for Sheriff Charlie Ramsay, who also ended up telling her how careful she should be. After that, Claire joined Bud to decide if another visit to Fitchville and its bizarre and murderous and sexist inhabitants was in the cards. Luckily, Bud didn’t mention any extra safety precautions she should take, not one time. Surveillance was what they talked about, deciding it was indeed necessary and from several different vantage points, so they took two cars and headed out. Bud elected to conceal himself and his Bronco in a hidden grove where he could watch the comings and goings at the main Fitchville gate, with the heater on full blast, no doubt.

  Claire drove on to Laurie Dale’s house, where she and her new and sharpshooting FBI special agent friend climbed atop Laurie’s two rather sweet and brand-new snowmobiles and headed up the Dale property line that edged Fitchville environs. Claire stopped her vehicle at the same spot from where she and Bud had watched the Parker brothers attack the compound in their pickup truck the day they had met their first Fitchvillers.

  “How about you staying on watch here, Laurie, while I go on up farther along the property line and see if I can catch sight of tracks or campfire smoke, something like that. If it is Bones or Punk Fitch, or Preston Parker, or whatever his name is, who is camping out around here somewhere, I want to get him before he kills one of us and/or somebody else.”

  “Okay. I’ve got on my extra-duty thermal underwear.” Laurie looked up at the clouds darkening the sky on the horizon above the trees and gauged the weather with a practiced eye. “It’s gonna start snowing soon. Mark my words.”

  “Yeah, I saw the forecast. I’ll be back after I scope out the cliff up there. It shouldn’t take me all that long.”

  “Okay. Take your time. I’ll check the game cameras while you’re gone. Good luck.”

  Claire proceeded up the fence row, enjoying a day out in the crisp cold weather for a change. It felt good to ride on a fast snowmobile and enjoy the fresh air, but the sun was not out and it was gradually growing colder. Black was busy with staff meetings and conference calls all day long at Cedar Bend Lodge, and she did not envy him those boring hours going over a bunch of boring reports with a bunch of boring people. She hated meetings. They were just a useless waste of time. Good thing that Charlie didn’t like them, either, and usually cut departmental powwows short because he got impatient with everybody after about ten minutes.

  Laurie Dale’s farm was quite large with vast tracts of woods and pastures and even a small lake fed by a river that ran behind her property, one that also touched on Joe McKay’s land, as well as that of the two quarreling clans. Claire drove the snowmobile to the extreme far end of the Dale property where the fence row took a sharp right turn and headed away from the Fitches’ property and back across Laurie’s land until it reached some of the Parkers’ acreage on the opposite side. If she remembered correctly, Joe McKay had told her that the Fitch orchards also touched a portion of Parker lands that lay well behind Laurie’s place. Yep, one big unhappy, un-neighborly family, to be sure. She stopped there in a dense glade of snow-laden cedar trees and thoughtfully contemplated the woods across the small, swift river, a short trek through which would apparently bring one out into the open fields surrounding Joe McKay’s farmhouse.

  Then she peered out over the adjoining Fitch and Parker properties. It looked rather vast, too, lots of hills and rocky ridges, which were probably pockmarked with caves, not to mention the enormous sinkholes prevalent in the area. The whole of Canton County was riddled with immense networks of caves and grottoes and old and abandoned lead mines. She had once worked another case where she’d crawled through some dark and creepy caves and tunnels, a horrible case she would not soon forget. But it was completely conceivable that Bones Fitch had holed up inside a similar kind of hideout. So all she had to do was figure out where it was, find it, and then arrest him before he beat and licked her to death. No problem, piece of cake.

  Climbing to the top of the highest outcropping of rocks that she could find, she positioned the tripod of her high-powered rifle securely in the snow, a gun that was affixed with the most excellent nightscope when needed, and surveyed the vast panoramic valley spread out below her. There were many rolling hills of woods and pastures along the highways of middle Missouri, some stretching into the distance as far as the eye could see. Yes, it was indeed a perfect place for a man on the run to hole up, especially if he was a survivalist. Their work was cut out for them, all right.

  Next she checked the skyline for any gray wisps of smoke rising up off any evil psycho’s campfire. But no dice there. Besides, there were plenty of places where she would never see it, anyway. As it gradually grew dark around her, Claire kept searching, determined to find Bones Fitch, slowly moving the scope over every inch of the surrounding landscape, back and forth, bringing the distance up close and in focus. It seemed a bit dising
enuous to her that the Fitches could not find this guy, especially if he was really a former adopted son and was wandering around on their own property. On the other hand, the acres farthest away from the paved county road did consist mainly of heavy woods and dense undergrowth and rocky ridges that would be hard to search for any moving target, and one who possessed those crack survivalist skills. They might have to resort to a search warrant and about a hundred police academy recruits if they didn’t find the guy soon. Maybe McGowen and his ATF friends could help out with that a bit. If McGowen was still alive, which was iffy, providing if all the scary stories she’d heard thus far were true.

  Claire wondered then if the Fitch brood was really looking for their prodigal insane sonny boy or if they were helping him kill recalcitrant people or rebellious women on their little sicko reservation. When her phone rang, it was Black again, no doubt worrying himself silly some more, so she picked up in a hurry.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m lying on my stomach in frozen snow and ice in falling winter darkness and trying to pick out in the far distance a homicidal maniac who we think is sneaking around and killing his family members. As you well know.”