A Haunting of the Bones (5 page)

“What are you talking about?”

“They found another set of bones last night. Least a mile and a half away from the first one—over in the area they've been working ever since they had to switch locations. Looks like this victim was hit by a car. Bones're all broken—pelvis, back, legs, arms, neck. Lab's already made a positive ID.”

“Who was it?”

“They got lucky. He'd been in the military, so there were dental records available. Name was David Blanton Hickok.”

* * *

Four hours later, Bell realized that she had to get something to eat or risk keeling over. Her morning had been a busy one. She was perversely glad about that; it distracted her from her disappointment at the news about Dave Hickok.

After leaving the
Gazette
office she'd handled a preliminary hearing on an aggravated assault case and taken a deposition regarding a massive check-fraud ring that stretched across four counties. Her duties as prosecutor didn't stop, no matter how many bones were wrenched from their secret resting places. But it was nearly noon now, and she was feeling a little faint from hunger.

She pushed open the front door of JP's. The lunch rush—“rush” was a relative term in Acker's Gap, especially these days, but a fair number of customers had already settled into their burgers or fried egg sandwiches or tuna melts—meaning that Bell, as a party of one, had to be satisfied with a seat at the counter. She could've pulled rank and demanded a booth; she was a public official and a friend of Jackie's, to boot. And she was not above playing that card. She'd insisted on a booth plenty of times, on days when she needed the privacy.

Today, however, she slid onto a stool without protest. Truth was, she was too tired to argue, even on behalf of a special privilege.

“Coffee, hon?”

Wanda Harshbarger was working the counter. She wiped off the space in front of Bell and waited for an answer.

“You bet.”

“Thought so. You look all in, Bell.” Wanda paid extra attention to a spot on the stainless steel that wouldn't rub out. She didn't want to meet Bell's gaze just now. “Heard about what them kids found the other day. I'm sorry. I truly am.”

There'd been no way to keep a lid on the discovery of the bones. Nor on the preliminary ID. In less than twenty-four hours, the news had spread through Acker's Gap the way a creek meanders through open countryside—not with one wild gush, but at a methodical, relentless pace, picking up the sticks and small rocks of additional tidbits of information as it went. Bell had been accepting people's condolences all morning long and was weary of it. After all, it was not as if she'd recently lost her mother.
She died a long, long time ago
, she wanted to snap at them.
And I didn't even really know her.
But she didn't say any of that, of course. Because they meant well.

The news about a second set of bones had yet to make its way through town. It would happen soon enough. This was a blessed interlude of calm before the next round of questions started: Were they murdered at the same time? What else might be buried out there in the desolate part of the county, waiting to rise up and haunt their sleep?

“Thank you, Wanda.”

“Need a menu?”

“No. Just a chef salad, please.”

“Saltines?”

Bell nodded. She didn't care whether or not Wanda added the little plastic packet containing two crackers, but if Bell had said, “No, thanks,” then Wanda would've said, “You sure, hon?” and Bell would've been forced to reply, “Yes, I'm sure,” and then Wanda would've been obliged to say, “Well, if you change your mind by the time I bring you your salad, you just let me know and I'll fetch 'em for you then, no trouble at all”—and so, to forestall all that interaction, all that excruciating chitchat, Bell agreed to the saltines.

The revelation about Dave Hickok's death had jarred and discouraged her. Once she'd found the clue that might have led her to him, Bell had let herself imagine the conversation with Hickok: The gathering of details about what her mother was like. And perhaps, at long last, the truth about Teresa Dolan's death. It might have been arrogance on her part, but Bell—in the brief interval between her finding the ad and the devastating phone call from Sheriff Fogelsong—had persuaded herself that she'd be able to handle Dave Hickok. If he'd been involved in her mother's death, no matter to what extent, she'd force him to confess. She'd get it out of him. As a county prosecutor she'd dealt with people like Dave Hickok before, and she knew how to turn the screws so that he'd come clean—no matter how long ago he'd committed the crime.

And then she would know. Finally, she would know for sure. Donnie Dolan had been a child molester and a liar and a lazy bastard and an altogether miserable excuse for a human being—but was he a murderer, too? Or had he—for once in his repugnant, selfish, greedy, disgusting life—told the truth? Did Teresa Dolan run off with Dave Hickok? And was it her lover, and not her husband, who had killed her?

Or it could've been somebody else altogether, Bell knew. She was well aware that Hickok might not have all the answers she was seeking. But it was a fresh trail. It was a new day.

At least it
had
been all of that, until Nick Fogelsong's call had snatched away even that one fragile thread of a chance. A chance to know.

“Got a call from Larry.”

Bell was so startled that she almost knocked over her coffee mug. Lost in thought, she hadn't noticed Jackie LeFevre coming toward her, leaning over from the other side of the counter. Jackie had a spatula in one hand. A hairnet had captured her long thick hair, shaping it into a plump black raindrop. She was flushed from the heat of the grill.

“What?” Bell said.

“Larry. Last night.” She shook her head. To Bell, Jackie seemed more irritated than frightened. “Mad as hell. Just like always. Said he was calling from a pay phone at a gas station halfway between Richmond and Acker's Gap. Said he's coming here, no matter what. He used a pay phone so I'd answer—because if I'd seen it was his number on the caller ID, I never would've picked up. He was right about that.”

Bell had two thoughts simultaneously:
I didn't know there were any pay phones left anywhere on earth
was one. The other:
I'm a lousy friend
. With everything else going on, she'd not given Jackie or her problems a second's worth of thought. From the moment she'd gotten the sheriff's call about the bones, those bones had preoccupied her. It was a wonder she'd been able to focus on her work at the courthouse that morning.

“Did you talk to Sheriff Fogelsong?” Bell asked.

Jackie nodded. “He's alerted his deputies. But like you said, until Larry does something, we just have to sit tight. So far, all the bastard's done is shoot off his mouth. Keeps telling me how much I'm gonna regret treating him this way. Telling me to watch out. Telling me I better see the light—or else.”

Before Bell could comment, Jackie had returned to the grill. She finished up two hamburgers, sliding them onto the bottom halves of a pair of buns on a big white plate and handing the plate to Mindy Lewis, the other waitress. “Fries'll be up in a sec,” Jackie told her. “Go ahead and take him the burgers while they're hot.”

Jackie, Bell recalled, had envisioned another sort of place when she'd first opened JP's. It would be a place where nobody ordered fries or onion rings as side dishes because the grilled asparagus and oven-roasted Brussels sprouts were so enticing. Gradually, though, she'd been forced to abandon that dream. The people of Acker's Gap had started avoiding JP's, driving the extra distance out to the interstate to the fast-food chains to get what they wanted. Frustrated but realistic, Jackie plugged in the deep-fat fryer and now kept it going all day long.

“Guess nothing much changes around here,” she'd muttered over her shoulder to Bell one day last year as she'd turned the dripping wire basket to one side, dumping a pile of shiny fries onto a plate. “You try and help people out, show 'em another way, and they go right back to what they know best.”

Bell had given Jackie a sympathetic smile, but felt like a damned hypocrite when she did so. Because she was the one who'd ordered the fries.

* * *

The next day, Bell was sitting at her desk in her courthouse office when Rhonda Lovejoycharged in. Rhonda was a large woman with a piled-up parfait of brown hair with blond highlights, a yen for brightly colored skirts and flamboyant tops, and a unique skill set: She had a bloodhound's relentlessness when it came to tracking people down and a light, highly effective touch when it came to interrogating them.

“Found her,” Rhonda said.

“Great.” Bell flipped down the lid of her laptop, glad for the excuse to abandon the memo she was writing to the county commissioners. She and Nick Fogelsong had been trying for a year now to get them to requisition the funds for a third deputy. Bell crafted a new argument for each commission meeting. Trouble was, she saw it from the commissioners' side as well: With limited public resources, would the advantages of an additional deputy outweigh the benefits of repairs to torn-up roads and dangerously overstressed bridges?

“Yeah.” Rhonda didn't wait for an invitation to sit down on the couch across from Bell's desk. She smoothed out the hem of her skirt. “Started on the job right after you texted me yesterday. For one thing, her name's not Haney anymore. It's Gilmore. Sheila Gilmore. And she lives on the other side of the state. In Petit County.” Rhonda took a deep breath, preparatory to explaining how she'd done it. “There was a bankruptcy filing in federal court for Haney Roofing in 1977. Company didn't last very long, apparently. Hard to make a go of it in that business. In any kind of construction business, really. You can ask my brother Willie about that—he's started up and then had to shut down two construction companies. Fellow once said to him, ‘You know, there's a lot of money in construction,' and Willie said, ‘Yeah.
Mine
.' Anyway, the contact information in the filing was years and years out of date, but the attorney this Sheila person used—Leon Fink—is still practicing. Reached him last night.”

“And he knew Shelia's new name?”

“Nope.”

Bell looked a bit confused, which delighted Rhonda; she loved to up the dramatic ante while describing her work.

“Turns out,” Rhonda continued, “that Leon Fink was clueless. Sounded like he's about a hundred and fifty years old. But his secretary, bless her heart, stayed in touch with Sheila for a little while after the bankruptcy was final. Long enough to know that Sheila married a man named Royce Gilmore and moved to Petit County. Now she sells real estate. So it wasn't too hard to locate the company she works for and get contact numbers for her. Work, home, and cell—you know how those real estate agents are. They want you to be able to reach 'em anytime, anywhere. I e-mailed all three numbers to you just before I came up here.”

The assistant prosecutors' office was in the courthouse basement, a stone-floored, low-ceilinged, dungeon-like space that only a tolerant soul like Rhonda Lovejoy would endure without complaint. The other assistant prosecutor, Hickey Leonard, was not so forgiving; he had insisted for years that the office constituted cruel and unusual punishment and swore, furthermore, that if he weren't so busy scraping off mold and stomping on spiders, he'd take his grievance to a Supreme Court justice. Or maybe just a Raythune County commissioner. Depended on who returned his call first.

Bell opened her laptop. Tapped the keys. “Here it is.” She looked at the numbers. She felt an odd sensation, similar to the one she'd felt when she had come across the ad for the roofing company that proved Dave Hickok had existed. Inch by inch, she was getting closer to the people who had known her mother. Finding out that Hickok was dead had been a blow—but Hickok's business partner, Sheila, apparently was still alive. And thanks to Rhonda's diligence and creativity, the means of reaching her was right here. On the glowing screen with the pulsing cursor. The cursor looked as if it were daring her to keep going, to push on.

“I'll try her tonight,” Bell said. “Got some things I need to finish first.”

The truth was, Bell didn't want a witness when she called. She needed to be alone. If Dave Hickok's business partner had information for her about her mother, she'd rather be by herself when she heard it; she didn't know how she might react. Certain emotions, Bell had taken pains to bury very deep. When—if—they finally broke the surface, she didn't know what would happen to the rigid control she had carefully maintained for so long, the thick exterior that sealed the heat within, like a cast-iron lid on a scalding hot skillet.

* * *

The big black Chevy Blazer with the county seal on the sides huffed to a stop in front of Bell's house. She was sitting on the porch, even though the air had grown chilly now that the sun was down. She'd sensed Sheriff Fogelsong might stop by tonight. They'd spoken on the phone several times since the discovery of her mother's remains, but they had yet to speak face-to-face. That was unusual; typically, they'd see each other several times a day, either in the courthouse corridor or taking a break at JP's. But the burden of their respective caseloads had intensified in the past few weeks, even before the bones had come to light.

“Hey,” he said. He took a seat. She was sitting cross-legged on the porch swing, in sweatpants and sneakers.

She lifted the green bottle of Rolling Rock. “There's another one of these in the fridge,” she said. “Interested?”

“No, I've only got a minute. And technically I'm still on duty.”

“Technically, so am I, but it's not stopping me.” She grinned and lifted the bottle for another sip. “Any more word from the forensics lab?”