Ashes and Bones (26 page)

I accepted gratefully, barely able to speak I was so nervous. The thought that I might be able to put this behind me…that this might be over today…was making me dizzy. The landlady pretended to sweep and dust the lobby—a hallway, really—but kept casting suspicious glances in my direction. I realized I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, that the floor seemed to have vanished from beneath my feet.

I looked at my watch: two-fifteen. The cops might be here in five minutes. Three more, to take my story. An instant to climb the stairs and open the door…wouldn’t even have to break it down, the landlady has a key…it could be done, all but the shouting, by two-thirty. Even before my lunch break is over…

The rap on the door came ten minutes later; it took an effort to recall the first time I’d looked at my watch. The instances between then and now were numerous and futile: nothing stuck in my head. Ten minutes is fine, I’ll be a little late getting back from lunch, I’ve got no appointments, no meetings the rest of the day…

The officer looked like he was in his fifties, and not well preserved at that. He was crew cut and grizzled and weather-beaten, paunchy and irritable. He took my information and then my story, and to my credit, I told it beautifully. I could tell—it felt as though I was watching myself do it—and I’m my own harshest critic. My voice was level, my words clear and to the point, my story succinct, all a thousand miles away from where I felt I stood. The cop’s disbelief wavered; he looked to Helen, who, bless her, did not refute any of my points, even nodded in a few places, and I loved her from the bottom of her worn-out tennis shoes to the dandruff on the shoulders of her red sweatshirt.

Officer Paunchy—I could not for the life of me fix the name on his tag in my mind—called back to the Campus Safety Office, asked questions, about the museum, Dora, the painting, the death of the security guard. His eyebrows raised, until he caught my hopeful look, and he scowled again, turning away.

It was two-thirty-five by the time he turned and said, “Well, I’ll go up and check it out.” He jerked his head at Helen, who pulled out her keys and mounted the stairs. I moved to follow.

“You stay down here. Out of the way. Don’t leave, either.”

“But—”

“Stay down here. Don’t leave. Got it?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll stay here. I won’t leave.”

He frowned, decided that I would do as he said, and then preceded Helen up the stairs.

I did move, I went to the back of the hallway, past the first-floor apartment entrance, and in the back there was another door—probably to the basement—and a small window. From there I could see the fire escape, the backyard, and the cemetery. I was struck by how nice a day it was, and I could see the oak trees better from this angle. I stood there, waiting, keeping an eye on the fire escape.

I could follow the footsteps of the two people up the stairs, a short way down the hallway. A brisk rap on the door, sharply spoken if indistinct words as the officer demanded entry. Silence, then a shuffling of steps: Helen was unlocking the door.

Barely aware of the warm sunlight on my face, I tensed, waiting for what had to come next. A shout, a scuffle, a shot…

There was a scream.

I pelted down the hallway, skidding on the well-worn tiles. I stumbled up the stairs, straining to identify what was going on.

The door was still open, and what I saw stopped me cold just inside the room.

A body swung gently back and forth, suspended from an old-fashioned lighting fixture in the center of the room, breaking the beams of light that filtered in between the slats of the Venetian blinds. It was wearing a Caldwell College Physical Plant uniform. A note was pinned to the front of the shirt.

It was Tony. I knew it.

A thrill ran through me, mingled shock, relief, and something that felt exactly the same as the moment I held my first book in my hands, the day I realized I wanted a second date with the guy who’d rescued me at the library, reading the letter that assured me of a full scholarship to…

Something was wrong. The cop was scowling, and the landlady wasn’t screaming. He was angry, she agape with disbelief. I looked again, more closely this time.

It was a dummy. Carefully, even lovingly, constructed so that the weight looked right, there were no unnatural bulges, even a wig had been pinned onto the head, which now looked like a pillow case to me. Latex gloves had been fashioned into hands, and the boots had been fastened to the inside of the trousers.

Before she could be stopped, Helen touched the dummy, sending it spinning slowly. I could see a second piece of paper pinned to the back. As my eyes adjusted, I could read the note on the front, just two words, I saw now.

Too late.

I stepped around to the back, and stopped it with the merest brush of my fingertips against the shirt. There was a note there, too.

Tell me, where is fancy bred?

I felt my mouth go dry.

“What the hell does that mean?” Helen demanded. “And look, the stupid idiot misspelled ‘bread.’”

“It’s not…not that kind of ‘bread,’” I said. “It’s a note for me.”

“Why should it have anything to do with you?” the cop demanded. “Where do you see your name on this?”

“For one thing, it’s a quote from
The Merchant of Venice.
People know I’m big into Shakespeare. For another thing”—I pointed to the paper on which both notes were written—“these are shooting-range targets, one on the heart, one on the head. The next line goes, ‘or in the heart or in the head.’ A friend of mine was shot recently.” I swallowed. “Most people agree that the rhyme in the poem directly references lead. As in, lead in the heart, lead in the head.”

“Kinda out there,” the cop muttered.

“There’s something else.” I pointed to the feet, slowly swaying, a pendulum running out of momentum. While the rest of the clothing was worn but clean, the only thing that
was unusual in any was the dirt on the bottoms of the boots. I recognized it immediately, as it was the same color as I often had on my own. I could even tell you the specific classification I had assigned it with the Munsell book, the color-coded chart that archaeologists, geologists, and the like use to describe soil colors: 10YR3/4, dark yellowish brown.

It was just a guess of course, the color was ubiquitous in New England, but I was willing to bet any money that the soil on the shoes would be identified to match that at the Funny Farm.

The thing was, nothing about the room or its contents was illegal. The rent had been paid through the end of the month, on a month-by-month basis, always with a bank check. The room was spotless—literally. It had been wiped down of every kind of print.

The only other piece of paper in the room was the third shooting target on the window on the far side of the room. A hole was cut through the bull’s-eye, and looking through it, I saw a great view of the cemetery, and the tree under which I usually sat.

I went back to my office. It took me a long time to realize I was just sitting there, with the door locked, and that I could do that just as easily at home. I sorted out the papers on my desk, making neat piles that meant nothing, and left my backpack on the couch. I took my pocketbook and carefully locked the door behind me.

I was too late because Tony had been on campus, watching me, waiting for the moment I might figure out where he was. He would never go back there again, and I was willing to bet that there were any number of similar lairs elsewhere. He had used several fake IDs, but had used Ernie’s near Caldwell, confusing the trail with just enough true information. The cops showed Helen a copy of the picture of Ernie, and she believed it was the man she’d rented the apartment to, but wasn’t completely sure. When she saw a picture of
Tony—I’d taken to carrying one around with me—she was positive.

Tony wasn’t afraid to show his face around campus. He’d colored his hair, and he looked a little more rugged, less well-fed than he had when he’d been there last, but that was four years ago. No one was looking for him there. I wondered if the fact that he was unafraid to be seen meant that he was getting eager and sloppy, or whether it was just that he was no longer worried about people knowing that he might be back.

Neither thought made me very happy.

I was some ways down the off-ramp for the wrong exit before I realized that I wasn’t heading home. I was heading to the Point. Not so far from the College, but I wondered what I was going to do when I got there. I guessed I’d find out.

An hour later, I pulled onto the historic site’s parking lot, killed the engine, and got out immediately. I vaguely registered the insistent dinging of the sensor that indicated I’d left the keys in the ignition and the door open. Oh well.

The grass needed to be cut again, and it was still damp from the last good thunderstorm; grass seeds stuck to my jeans and my shoes slipped on the slick weeds. My ankles were damp and tickled by the taller, tougher stalks that had survived the last mowing. As I moved, bees varied their course from mine, mosquitoes swarmed, sensing fresh meat, and crickets leapt out soundlessly ahead of me, as if they were torch-boys running ahead of a coach. The air was humid and soon my shirt was stuck to me; I was aware of sweat beading on my upper lip and running down the back of my scalp. There was no wind. If there were noises beyond the pounding in my ears or the insects, I didn’t hear them.

I ignored the excavation units that had been so interesting to me—what was it, a week ago? A month ago? I could barely tell what day it was anymore, anyway—and headed straight for the fence. I stepped up on the bottom rail, swung my leg over, and sat on the top rail. I looked down at the water, a few meters below me, and couldn’t hear the waves for the roaring in my ears.

All it would take is a simple straightening of my legs…

Don’t be an ass. It’s far too short a fall, not nearly bad enough to do any serious damage.

Maybe not here. But think about it: It would be over. There would be no more fear, no more pain, no more worry. No more twitching every time you hear a creak in the house, no more jumping when the phone rings.

I’m not even—

People—your friends, your family—would be safe. They’d be left alone.

I don’t think it works like that. It’s just not as easy as that.

I stared at the horizon, a washed-out whitish gray over slate seas, the sun a cool white disc that occasionally gleamed through the shreds of clouds. The air was warm and damp…I started with that…

It took me a few moments of hard work, but at last I was able to feel my hands gripping the rail I sat on, could feel the rough-hewn wood under my palms. Another two minutes of concentration, and I could feel my feet, heels hooked over the bottom rail. A breeze, faint as a whisper, moved, and my cheek itched. My shirt was soaking, and I could feel the fabric pull and slide against my shoulders when I shrugged.

The feeling of cold numbness, the tingling adrenaline crawl that wouldn’t leave my arms and chest, was still there, but I could feel my body again. I willed it to remain solidly in my possession. Ignore the shivers, ignore the numbness, I thought, don’t let it take over completely…

A throat cleared behind me.

I lurched forward in surprise, but felt a hand grab the back of my shirt.

“Whoa, there! You okay?” It was Sheriff Stannard.

“Holy mother of…damn it, Dave!” Dave Stannard tried to shove me over? Get a grip, Emma, he was pulling you back. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I am sorry, Emma. I tried calling to you, back up in the field, but you were a million miles away—”

I swallowed, tried not to look as guilty as I felt.

“—and I swear, I made as much noise as wet grass will allow, but you didn’t hear me. Better now?”

I nodded, and he slowly released my shirt.

“Want a hand getting down from there?”

I didn’t really need a hand, but I took the one he offered anyway. The ground beneath my feet felt…real. Felt good.

“Don’t need to go for a swim today, all you have to do is hang outside for a minute. Might as well grow gills, this time of year.”

“Yeah,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Ugh.”

“I keep telling the park rangers that this is completely the wrong kind of fence to have here, for exactly this reason. People climb up on it, sit down to get the view.” He shrugged. “If they’re dumb enough to climb up there and fall off, bust a leg, well, that’s their business.”

“I’m sorry. Sometimes I feel like I have the run of this place…I mean…”

“I know what you mean. Lots of your history here. Not just work, not just family.” Pauline wasn’t family, not in the strict sense, but Dave knew that.

I nodded. “I was just thinking.”

“Lots to think about?” When I didn’t answer right away, he said, “Your husband Brian’s been keeping me posted. I was hoping it was just a fluke, the bones you and Meg found out here.”

“No, it’s Tony Markham all right.”

“So Brian said. I’m still…”

He waited. I shrugged again. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone what had happened earlier this afternoon. Not yet.

“Well, just take care,” Dave said finally. “No sense in wasting all that history, is there? Who’d sort it all out for us?”

“It’s getting chilly out here,” I said.

“Fall’s coming. But you’re shivering.”

“I’ve got a fleece in the car.”

“I’ll walk you up there, then.”

There was no arguing with him, and I was done thinking.

Besides, Dave had asked the question I needed to complete my thoughts. If I wasn’t here, who’d sort it all out? I couldn’t leave that up to just anyone.

When I got home, Brian ran out to the driveway, waving his arms around like a crazy man.

“They found him! They found his body!”

I got out of the car. “What? Who?”

“They’ve found Tony’s body. You don’t need to worry that he’s come back.”

S
AY THAT AGAIN.
”
I LEANED AGAINST THE CAR,
not sure which Tony he might be talking about, not daring to believe him.

“Look, I know there’s a long way to go before the case is completely closed”—Brian’s eyes were wide open, a smile on his face—“but it really looks like Tony Markham is dead. They found his body.”

“How long ago?”

“I just got a call now—”

“No, I mean how long ago did he die?”

Brian frowned. “I don’t get what you mean.”

“Knowing that tells me whether he died five years ago and someone else is responsible for all the crap that’s been going on around here. Or it tells me he died last week, and we might really be through it.”

Brian nodded. “I don’t know exactly, but they kind of gave the impression that it was more recently than not. We’ll have to wait for a full report.”

I nodded impatiently; of the two of us, I wanted to be the judge. “Tell me what they told you.”

“A man’s body, fished it out of the water near Stone Harbor.” Brian swallowed. “It had been in the water a while. It…well, it was kind of a mess…the skin…actually—”

My renewed anxiety pushed aside an image of what water and marine life will do to a human body; the books I’d been reading for fun—mostly about forensic techniques and crime scene processing—were all too clear on the subject. But the fact that there was skin left at all suggested that it hadn’t been in the water very long, probably less than a couple of weeks, I guessed. “But then how can they tell it’s Tony?”

“A male, the right age, the right build, the right kind of clothes—what’s left of them anyway. You know, good quality, not too showy—”

“Yeah, I could find six guys like that down the coffee shop at lunchtime,” I snapped. “Doesn’t make them Tony. What about teeth? What about fingerprints?”

“No teeth. No fingerprints, either.”

“None of those things? Not even teeth? They should have survived, even if the soft tissues didn’t.”

“Apparently, this guy’s hands were…removed. Probably cut off before he was dumped in the water.” Brian swallowed, looked queasy.

“Cut off? As opposed to what? Shark attack?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Okay, what about teeth?”

“No teeth. His head was cut off as well. Somebody really didn’t like this guy.”

“Are you joking? Brian, this sounds like they’ve found a body and want to call it Tony; it’s all so terribly convenient.” I didn’t want to give up, not yet. “What about blood type, DNA, that sort of thing?”

“Right, they’re doing it,” Brian assured me. “I guess they have to find Tony’s old medical reports, or a relative or something, and that’s going to take time, on top of a full-blown autopsy.”

“And maybe they’ll look for fingerprints then?”

“Em, I said there were no hands.”

“Not his fingerprints. The killer’s. They might be able to find something from that, something left on the…” I slumped down in my seat, shook my head. “Brian, what in the name of God makes them at all sure that it’s Tony?”

Apparently some measure of peace of mind was keeping Brian calmer than I. “I know we need to wait, I just think this is a real hopeful turn. But there’s a couple of things that I’m hanging on to. For one thing, the fact he was shot is significant. We know that he—whoever has been hassling us—was consorting with some pretty shady characters. Getting a head chopped off…well, it’s not inconsistent.”

Not inconsistent? Not good enough. I bit my tongue, just nodded for Brian to go on.

“Then there’s the rope that was tying his guy up. The fibers matched a brand that’s made in the United States, and is used for marine equipment. Sold locally.”

We lived on the coast; I couldn’t get excited about that. “What else?”

Brian broke out into a smile. “The most important thing was a coin.”

“A coin?”

“A coin, found stuffed in one of the shoes.” Brian paused, closed his eyes to help remember. “A gold coin, a guinea, he called it. Is that right? From the 1750s. The sort of thing that you’d find on a ship…that had gone down before the Revolution.”

“Like the one that Tony was looting back at Penitence Point,” I said slowly.

“Right. I never thought I’d be so glad to find out someone was dead.” He grabbed my hands and tried to dance around, but I wouldn’t move. “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head. “It’s too perfect.”

Brian had a dangerous look in his eye; he really didn’t want to be gainsaid in this. “Too perfect, how? It’s pretty good to me.”

How could I explain that after trying to convince Brian and the rest of the world that Tony was back, that I didn’t think this was him? Bad vibes aren’t quantifiable and aren’t very convincing.

“I think someone wants us to believe it’s Tony. I think there was a lot of care taken to ruin all the identifying body parts—head and hands removed, all the quickest identifiable elements dumped in water. It’s classic. Then really damning evidence, something that is too perfect, is planted. And it’s the kind of evidence that doesn’t deteriorate in water.”

Brian was working really hard to keep his patience. “Right, okay, I said they need to do the autopsy. Try to get some DNA. Absolutely. But until then…would it be so bad if we could imagine Tony is dead?”

“It’s just like every soap opera and monster movie you’ve ever seen, Bri. You don’t believe he’s dead until you see the guy in the casket, with fingerprints, teeth and dental work, all intact. Or DNA or something more than evidence that could be planted on a conveniently mangled corpse.”

Brian nodded, but I could tell he was stubbornly hanging on to the hope that this was Tony. “Your dummy in the apartment and this…these are the first tangible evidence that Tony’s involved. And now we’ve got a corpse, right physical look, right location, lots of clues lead to Tony. It’s a real good start.”

I put my hand on my hip. “I think the body’s being served up to us on a silver platter.”

Brian was quiet for a very long time. “Well, when the autopsy is done, you’ll have all the proof you want. Blood types, broken bones, that sort of thing. In the meantime, I bet the attacks will come to an end. I’m betting this is over.” He paused. “I would really love for this to be over.”

I sighed. “Me too. But it may take a long time for the autopsy to get done. Crime labs are wicked backed up these days.”

“Well, until then, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

I called Sergeant Franco myself and they confirmed everything Brian had reported to me. They were “cautiously optimistic” that they had Tony. They said the location where the body was found suggested it wasn’t too far from the place that Ernie said that he met Tony for his instructions. In fact, they’d used the news of Tony’s body being discovered to try and get more from Ernie. While he seemed uneasy with the news—somehow Tony was able to convince his pawns that he cared about them—he didn’t give out any new information. In fact, he became even more reticent than before. Maybe he knew more of Tony’s plans than he was letting on, or maybe he just didn’t know all that much to begin with. It would take about a week to get the report from the autopsy, if we were lucky. Longer, probably, for Tony’s medical history, and what we really needed for conclusive evidence was a DNA sample from a close relative, and I’d never heard Tony mention family; they’d have to work through university records…

Not one untoward thing happened the next day, or the day after that. No spooky presents, no strange cars following me, I didn’t even get cut off in the parking lot at school. No one died near me.

I even won ten bucks on a lottery ticket I bought on impulse.

Maybe my luck is turning, I thought. Maybe I can take this as a sign.

A week passed. Nothing happened still. Cautiously, I tried on the thought that Tony was gone, that the siege was at an end. That I was free.

It still came back to me that if I were Tony, I’d orchestrate just this kind of thing to get someone to let her guard down. But I didn’t want to think like Tony. Didn’t want to think that he was anything but fish food.

Trying not to think of it was almost as good as actually believing it. Brian helped, he told me how he had been wrong when he’d said it had been Duncan or Michael or even Ryan, that it had been Tony, and now Tony was gone. A
couple of times he got a little too insistent, but I let it go. It wasn’t quite I-told-you-so, on either of our parts. We began to smile at each other again, pat each other in passing, for no good reason, just like we used to.

Nolan was going to live. He was still in bad shape, but there was reason for hope.

My short-term memory came back. One day the phone rang, and I was merely surprised and annoyed, not startled to death. It was a telemarketer, and I told him in the nicest way possible to take my name off the list, to have a good day. I was proud of myself.

I tried drinking a beer because I felt like a beer. I did it without wondering if I was trying to blot something out, as I had the weeks before. I drank it only because drinking a cold beer with a burger on a hot day is a good thing. I stopped scrutinizing myself for every potential indication that I was losing my mind.

It was Tony, and now he’s gone. He won’t be back. I practiced saying it to myself every once and a while. It was like having an onerous task that had been hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles suddenly removed.

If I’m still wired, it’s because it’s close to the anniversary of the night out at the Point, all those years ago…

Late one afternoon, about a week after the body was found, I realized that I hadn’t recently checked the computer files for pictures, the way that Joel had told me.

I did it now, if only to remove the useless ones from the hard drive and reclaim some of my memory. All of them were pretty boring, shots of the front of the house and the side, probably triggered by birds and squirrels where there weren’t clear pictures of me and Brian going in or out. The last one, however, was dark and blurry. The only thing clear about it was that there was a human form there. Something the size of a Sasquatch with fair hair lurking outside my door. About three days ago, three in the morning.

I thought quickly. It was faint, and there were no details, but it was definitely human, definitely male, and looked way too much like Temple for me to be completely comfortable.

Whoever it was, was big, at least as big as the guy who attacked Chuck. There were a lot of big guys in the world. None of them had any business wandering outside of my house late at night.

Wait a minute—if the people at the hospital weren’t letting non-family know about Nolan, how did Temple know to come to Massachusetts, to take over his class?

God, it couldn’t be…could it?

I thought for a moment, my skin crawling as my mind raced:

How did he know to come? How did he find out Nolan was shot?

Chuck had been attacked weeks ago…I had just assumed that Temple arrived after Nolan was shot…

He knows all my weaknesses, all my bad habits…

Had Nolan ever actually mentioned Temple by name? He’d said he’d had a friend in California, that I should visit the school, but mightn’t that have been Mr. Anderson? All I could remember was that Nolan had given me an address and telephone number.

Why did he come?

He could kill me with his bare hands…

The first time I spoke to him on the phone, he was talking to someone who wanted money from him. My God, he was arguing with his wife about money when we saw them in the restaurant that night.

He warned me never to feel too comfortable…

Tony loved indirection, separating himself from the dirty work. Temple had gotten here alarmingly fast—was he working for Tony?

He didn’t seem to be the brain dead sort that Tony favored…

I stared at the image awhile, wondering what to do. I had just decided to call California, try to wring some information
out of someone at the dojo when I noticed that the IM screen showed that Brian had logged off from work some time ago. He’d be home soon. Not soon enough to quell my suddenly jangling nerves.

The icon suddenly went on; Brian was downstairs. I was never so grateful for his lead-footed driving.

You home?
I typed.

Yep,
came back the reply.

Long day?

NTB.
Not too bad.

K, brd,
I typed. Okay, be right down.

TTYL.

I frowned. Why would he write
talk to you later
and not
ccos,
“caution, cats on stairs,” as he usually did?

I typed,
k.
Then I thought about it and typed:
Dinner-E1’sP?
Evil one’s pizza for dinner?

A long wait, then,
whatever.

Now that was just plain wrong. Brian would never defer to me about pizza, especially not when it came to the evil, addictive sauce that Mario’s Pizza was famous for. I sat for a moment, wondering whether Brian was really okay, whether he wasn’t more burnt out than I thought.

Something was up.

The lights went out.

Damn Artie. I’d asked him to take care of the problem where the printer surged when the fridge did…Wasn’t that problem with the electricity supposed to be taken care of before today?

“Brian?” I called out from my desk.

There was no answer. I felt the all too familiar rush of adrenaline and prayed that it was just one more innocent situation that would be explained away in a moment…

A soft, rhythmic noise from downstairs…more a vibration than a noise…

“Brian?” I said, much more softly, and heard my voice crack.

Nothing.

I looked outside. His pickup wasn’t in the driveway. Through the open window, too high to be an exit, I could hear the muffled pounding. I picked up my phone. No dial tone, no nothing.

The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. A softer noise, barely a noise, much closer…I recognized it was Minnie, almost invisible, a shadow in the mottled dark of the house. She was inching toward the door and stairs slowly, tail not even twitching, hesitating the way she does when she’s stalking or unsure of something.