Her Perfect Bones: A totally addictive mystery and suspense novel

by Ellery A Kane

  Parole denied for five years.

  Waiting was the only thing left to do.

  Olivia forced a smile as she picked herself up and followed Attorney Sanchez into the hallway. She wished she could call Deck, text him at least. But cell phones weren’t allowed inside the prison.

  “Well?” Emily’s wide eyes met hers, as expectant as a child’s. The same way she’d looked every time Dad had made his I’ll be home soon promises in the prison visiting room. Conceived during a family visit, Emily had only known their father behind iron bars.

  Olivia shook her head.

  “How long?”

  “Five years.”

  “Five years? In five years, I’ll be thirty.”

  “I told you not to get your hopes up. Nobody gets out on their first try.”

  Attorney Sanchez patted Emily on the shoulder. “Your sister’s right. Assuming your father keeps up the good work, we’ll petition for an advancement in two years.”

  Emily disappeared inside the nearest bathroom. When the lock clicked into place, Olivia silenced her inner big sister, the pestering nag who wanted to chase after her, pound on the door, and tell her she shouldn’t waste any more tears on Dad.

  Em had been through enough. Her move from Fog Harbor to San Francisco in January to attend art school, the least of it. But Olivia had gotten better at letting go, so she pressed her ear to the door instead. She wasn’t ready to relinquish the big sister mantle just yet.

  “Is she okay?” A brief frown wrinkled Attorney Sanchez’s forehead, but she didn’t wait for Olivia’s answer. She glanced over her shoulder down the empty hallway and back again before handing Olivia an envelope.

  “Don’t open it here.”

  “What—”

  The prison alarm blared, jolting Olivia bone-deep. Like a foghorn waking her from a nightmare. She heard yelling from the direction of the boardroom, from the other side of the door where they’d escorted her father fifteen minutes ago. She shoved the envelope in her purse.

  “Stay with my sister.” Then Olivia ran toward the sound, her blood crashing loud as the ocean in her ears.

  Olivia emerged in a long corridor of holding cells, amid a frantic crowd of correctional officers who swarmed the middle cell, its door wide open.

  No one stopped her.

  No one told her to turn back.

  No one even noticed her.

  “Cut him down!” someone yelled. “Hurry!”

  When she reached the cell, it took a moment to make sense of what she saw. A moment that stretched like an eternity but vanished in a heartbeat. Inside, she saw a man’s boots swinging a foot off the ground.

  Though she went no further, saw no more, she knew. Those boots belonged to her father. He’d hanged himself.

  Four

  Olivia felt the weight of Emily’s hand on hers. The cold metal of the bench beneath her legs. Her body was seated outside Warden Sandra Ochoa’s office in Valley View State Prison, but her mind, untethered, traveled elsewhere.

  Twenty-seven years ago at the Double Rock, her father had scooped her up with his blood-red hands and carried her to Miss Pearl’s apartment. He’d taken her into the bathroom, locked the door, crouched down to her level and held both her hands so she’d stop wiping at the bloodstains on her dress.

  Listen to me. You can’t tell anyone who you saw in there. It was just me, okay? Just me. I did this.

  She’d opened her little mouth but her voice stayed hidden deep inside her.

  Let’s practice. Tell me who you saw.

  C’mon, Liv, he’d urged her.

  Finally, the word came out, betraying them both.

  “Olivia.” Em nudged her shoulder. “The medical examiner wants to speak with us.”

  Warden Ochoa led them down the hallway to the infirmary, where they were greeted by David Plunkett, Chief Medical Examiner. He shook Olivia’s hand, his own limp and sweaty, and she pulled hers back sooner than was polite. He gave her a pitying look.

  “I’m sorry about your father. I know you must be in a state of shock. But I’ll need you both to make a decision about the autopsy. My preliminary examination of the body showed no evidence that this was anything other than a suicide.”

  A sob escaped Emily’s throat.

  “We can have your father transported down to the morgue and do a full autopsy, or we can release the body to you for burial. It’s your call.”

  Emily wiped her face with a crumpled tissue. “I don’t like the idea of them cutting on Dad.”

  Olivia glanced at the envelope she’d tucked in her purse, still sealed. “Before we make any decisions, I want to see his body.”

  “Liv, are you sure you want to remember him like that?”

  Dr. Plunkett’s frown deepened. “Your sister is right to be concerned. You’ve already been through a lot today.”

  He had no idea what she’d been through. How she’d stood there unnoticed while Officer Boon cut her father down from an exposed pipe, where he’d hung from a strip of bedsheet.

  Resolute, Olivia stood up and steeled herself. “I need to do this, Em. You can wait outside.” Little sisters had that luxury.

  Dr. Plunkett pulled back the sheet, then retreated to the corner while Olivia studied the contours of her father’s face, half expecting him to sit bolt upright from the examination table. Gotcha, he’d say, laughing.

  His skin hadn’t yet begun to gray, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch him. Then, there would be no denying it. It seemed impossible that only a few hours ago he’d been spilling his guts and contemplating his freedom. That she’d been sitting a few feet away as he’d walked past. That she hadn’t reached for him.

  “What are those scratches?” Olivia looked closer at the frantic red marks on her father’s neck.

  “It seems at some point he must’ve changed his mind.” Dr. Plunkett made an awful tsk-ing noise. “Most do, you know.”

  “And this swelling on his head?”

  He joined her at the table, slipping on a pair of gloves. The aggressive snap of the latex against his wrists seemed directed at her. Lifting her father’s shaggy gray hair, he studied the raised bump on his temple.

  “Hard to say. Could’ve been there already.”

  “I didn’t notice it during the hearing.” Olivia focused on the bluish lump, suspicions spinning through her mind, making her dizzy. She leaned against the counter to steady herself. “I don’t understand why the officers put him in that holding cell anyway. The only one with exposed pipe. There were plenty of others available.”

  Dr. Plunkett released a long breath.

  “And how did my father reach the pipe? Did you check the distance? Was it even possible for him to reach on his own?”

  He wrestled off his gloves and chucked them in the trash can.

  “I don’t work for the prison.”

  “That’s right. You don’t. I hope you remember that when you autopsy my father.”

  Olivia stood on the small balcony outside her sister’s studio apartment, the lights of downtown San Francisco shimmering in the distance. The beauty and bustle of the city twisted a knife inside her, and she turned her face from it, peering through the sliding glass doors that separated her and Emily.

  She’d promised herself she’d stop protecting Em. She’d stop keeping secrets. But it had been hard enough letting Em traipse off to San Francisco for art school. Letting down all the walls around her heart had proven impossible.

  Olivia took the envelope from inside her jacket, slipped her finger beneath the seal and removed the single folded page. Suddenly terrified, she contemplated dropping it and letting the wind carry it to parts unknown. She didn’t fear what her father had written, but rather what he hadn’t. That these few words were all she had left of him:

  Box 19 has your answers.

  Miss Pearl has the key.

  Talk before you leave tomorrow? Visiting hours start at 7:45 a.m.

  P.S. Always keep the rubber side down and the shiny side
up.

  Overcome, she collapsed into the plastic chair behind her. Her father had been making plans, thinking about tomorrow, dishing out his special brand of motorcycle slang in his postscript. She read the note again, turned it over. Looked inside the empty envelope. As if she’d find him in there.

  A single tear tracked its way down her face before she remembered she was angry and wiped it away.

  When Olivia’s phone buzzed, she stared at the name on the screen. She wanted to talk, needed to. But she couldn’t imagine saying the words. My dad is dead. Especially not to him. He’d probably blame himself, and that she couldn’t bear.

  Still, her finger hovered over the answer icon, swiped.

  “Deck?”

  He’d already hung up.

  Five

  Will slipped his phone back into his pocket, disappointed. He told himself he’d only been hoping to pick Olivia’s brain about the girl in the barrel. A pathetic excuse.

  He poured two cups of watered-down coffee from the office machine, loading his with cream and sugar to make it palatable, and returned to his cubicle, where he found JB scrolling through the cabin’s property records and talking to a celery stick.

  “You are a chocolate bar. Delicious and creamy and filled with peanut butter.” He closed his eyes and nibbled on the end.

  “How’s that working for you?” Will laughed as he rolled his chair over to JB’s desk.

  “About as well as it looks.” JB chewed, grimaced, and swallowed, chasing the bite of celery with a swig of coffee, then pointed to the computer screen. “Jackson Weatherby, aka Grandpa Jack, owned that cabin since ’98. Before that, it was a guy named Frank Schmidt. I found a contact number for him, if you want to give it a go?”

  Will eyed the digits JB had scrawled on a pad of paper. “Why can’t you do it?”

  “Remember the story Sam told us? He’s probably the one who had the wolfdogs. I’m not gettin’ on that guy’s radar. No, siree.”

  With a roll of his eyes, Will punched in the number on the desk phone and waited.

  “Hello?” Frank Schmidt sounded a few beers short of a twelve pack, punctuating his greeting with a belch.

  “Detective Will Decker. Fog Harbor Homicide. I apologize for the late call, but I was hoping you could help me with some information on a case I’m working.”

  “Depends. I ain’t done nothin’ wrong, have I?”

  “Not that I know of.” Will pictured that bracket on the wall, the scratches beneath it. “I’m wondering if you could tell me about the cabin you owned a while back on Wolver Hollow Road.”

  The silence stretched, and Will wondered if Frank had hung up the phone. “What about it? I didn’t own the place for that long. Sold it years ago. Moved up the coast to Mendocino. ”

  “Did you ever come across a barrel in the basement?”

  Will hit the speakerphone, and Frank’s baritone voice filled the empty station. “A barrel, huh? Come to think of it, that thing was there when I moved in. Along with a bunch of other useless crap I tossed out. Couldn’t budge that barrel an inch, though. I figured it was left over from the prior owner. The movie guy.”

  “The movie guy?”

  JB gestured to the screen. To the entry below Schmidt, Frank.

  “Does the movie guy have a name?”

  “Can’t say I recall it. Real eccentric fella. But his studio went belly-up. That’s how I got the place for a steal in the early nineties.”

  “Anything else you remember that might help us track down the owner of that barrel?”

  “Are you talking about the rumors? You know, everybody’s got their nose in your business in Fog Harbor.”

  “Rumors?” Will hoped he didn’t sound too eager.

  His laugh was loud and pickled in alcohol. “I heard that Movie Guy kept somebody chained up down there.”

  “Did you believe it?”

  “Sure as shit. I found the chains.”

  As Will pounded out combinations on the heavy bag in his garage, Cy watched him with a judgmental eye. Like he wondered when Will would finally give it a rest and admit defeat. No matter how many jab-cross-hooks he landed, he couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling in his stomach. He had to keep punching hard and fast. His opponent, the monsters in his head.

  It turned out Frank Schmidt had discarded part of a rusted chain he’d found coiled in the corner of the basement when he’d taken possession of the cabin. With the injuries to the victim’s wrists, Will suspected she’d been held prisoner down there.

  First thing in the morning, he and JB planned to locate Maxwell Grimaldi, former owner of the now-defunct Obscura Studios. Property records showed Grimaldi purchased the cabin back in 1983, selling it ten years later, after the studio closed its doors. Will and JB had a much-needed laugh perusing the studios’ catalog of B horror movies. Classics like Cheerleader Massacre and The Zombie in my Bedroom.

  Will planned to finish his boxing round with a flurry of uppercuts to the body—something to tire him out—but the buzz of his cell phone stopped him short, its sound as jarring as the ring of a boxing bell.

  He didn’t recognize the number but the voice on the other end was as familiar as his own. Even if it had been over two years since he’d last seen his brother, Ben, when they’d carted him away in handcuffs to Valley View State Prison to serve six years for voluntary manslaughter in an officer-involved shooting.

  “Hey, little bro.”

  “Ben?” Will didn’t know if he should be relieved or panicked. “Are you alright? How are you calling me right now?”

  Ben’s groan meant he didn’t want a lecture, so Will left it alone. He could guess the answer anyway. An illegal, ill-gotten cell phone.

  “I can’t talk long. Petey told me it’s you who’s been sending the money. I didn’t believe him at first, but then I remembered that between his gambling and the overhead on the nightclub, Petey’s flat broke.”

  “I know you think I hate you, but—”

  “Now’s not the time for a heart-to-heart, man. You’ve gotta get me out of here. I’m a dead man walking.”

  Will stumbled back, steadying himself against the tailgate. He flashed to that night in the Tenderloin, when he’d watched Ben—Officer Decker, then—shoot an unarmed woman. To the courtroom, where he’d said the words that put his brother away. To the agonizing moment the jury foreman had read the verdict. Guilty.

  “They got to him. I don’t know how. But he’s dead. If I don’t transfer out of here, I’m next.”

  “Slow down. Got to who? Who’s dead?”

  “The Oaktown guy who’s had my back for the last couple months.”

  Will couldn’t speak. He felt tied to the tracks with a train rushing toward him at breakneck speed. As Ben barreled on, he braced for impact.

  “Martin Reilly. They called him Mad Dog.”

  Script: Good Morning, San Francisco

  Cue Heather

  Good morning, San Francisco. I’m Heather Hoffman. It’s 5 a.m. on Friday, March sixth. Time to rise and shine.

  Roll intro music

  Today’s show promises to be one of our most exciting yet, starting with our groundbreaking new crime segment, Murder in the Bay, where we take our viewers behind the scenes of local homicide investigations.

  Roll segment intro

  Our first case takes us to Fog Harbor, California, a town close to my heart. Last winter, Drake Devere disappeared from Crescent Bay State Prison located in the small town, following a bungled police rescue, an incident which was caught by my cameraman and debuted exclusively on this show.

  Roll video excerpt of Devere escape

  Here at Good Morning, San Francisco, we pride ourselves on being the first to the story, and we are indeed the first to report that tragedy has returned to this quaint seaside community. Yesterday afternoon, a man made a gruesome discovery in his grandfather’s basement. The body of an unidentified woman was found mummified in a barrel that had sat untouched for over thirty years. Though the st
ory is still developing, our sources in law enforcement have confirmed that the young victim was pregnant at the time of her death.

  Stay with Good Morning, San Francisco for the latest in this haunting mystery. Next up, Fitness Trainer Chrissy Quan shows us how to turn fat to fit and whip our assets into shape.

  Cut to commercial

  Six

  The sky still dark, Olivia slipped from beneath the blanket and padded across her sister’s living room. She dressed in the pitch-blackness, tugged her hair into a ponytail, and snagged a banana from the kitchen counter, dropping it in her purse with the caution of a cat burglar.

  Before she made her way to the door, Olivia jotted a note on the board that hung above the table, scribbling her message next to Em’s impressive chalk drawing of the Golden Gate Bridge. She wiped the white dust on her jeans, carefully unlocked the door, and turned the knob.

  The soft click of the light switch behind her froze her in her tracks.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I just need some air, Em. I can’t sleep.”

  “Me either. I’ll come with you.”

  Emily grabbed her jacket from the closet and stuffed her feet into her fuzzy pink slippers. In the soft glow of the bathroom light, her little sister looked every bit the part; curls askew, a pillow crease on her cheek, she could’ve been sixteen, not twenty-five. Not living on her own in the big city.

  “You can’t.”

  Emily walked over and erased her note from the chalkboard in one adamant swipe. The look in her eye reminded Olivia of their mother, Louise. How willful she’d been, refusing to go to the doctor even when her skin turned a sickly yellow and her abdomen swelled like a blister.