Bare Bones (34 page)

“The note you and Doc found in Aiker’s shorts?”

I didn’t bother to point out the note’s correct provenance.

“Doc said to tel you that you were right about Columbia,” Slidel said.

Irrational y, I turned my back to the hal way entrance, as though dead Mr. Maples might pose an eavesdropping threat.

“The writer of the note was going to Columbia?”

“Looks that way. QD guys used some sort of voodoo light, managed to bring out a few of the missing letters.”

“Anything else?”

A door slammed in the vicinity of the chapel or garage. I cracked the entrance door and peeked out. No one was in sight.

“The only other word they could make out was ‘cousins.’”

My brain sparked like an electrical short.

No question. Cousins dirty. Heading to Columbia.

It was like being slapped awake.

A short, muscular man with thick black hair. A FWS agent who knew nothing about bear poaching.

Palmer Cousins.

Slidel was talking, but I didn’t hear him. I was flashing back to a conversation with Ryan. The privy remains were found on Tuesday. The Grim Reaper began his photo stalking on Wednesday.

Palmer Cousins was at the Foote farm that Saturday. He knew what Boyd had found.

Had Cousins placed the squirrel on my car? Was it another Grim Reaper threat? Was he fol owing me? Did he have Katy? Would he hurt her to get at me?

My heart was pounding, my palm sweaty against the phone.

“I’l cal you later,” I said.

Slidel sputtered.

I cut him off.

Hands trembling, I jammed the phone into my purse and pushed through the front door.

And slammed into a chest like concrete.

The man was about my height, dressed in ebony pinstripes and a dazzling white shirt.

I mumbled an apology, stepped sideways to pass.

An arm shot out. Steely fingers closed around my biceps.

I felt my body spin, saw thick black hair, my face reflected off metal ic lenses, mouth wide with surprise.

Fingers splayed across my left ear. My head shot forward and cracked against the door.

Pain screamed through my skul .

I struggled to free myself. The hands held me like a vise.

Fingers clawed my hair. My head whipped back. I felt blood and tears on my cheeks.

Again, my head shot forward and slammed into wood.

My neck snapped back yet again.

Forward.

I felt an impact, heard a dul thud.

Then nothing.

ISMELLED MILDEW, MOSS, A FAINT SWEETNESS, LIKE LIVER FRYINGin a pan.

I heard geese overhead, or cal ing to one another on some distant lake.

Where was I? Lying prone on something hard, but where?

My brain offered only disconnected fragments. The Cobb trailer. A gas station. A funeral home. Someone named Maples.

My fingers groped the ground around me.

Smooth. Cool. Flat.

I caressed the surface, breathed in the odor.

Cement.

I moved a hand over my face, felt crusted blood, a swol en eye, a lump on my cheek the size of an apple.

Another mind flash.

Pin-striped black. Antiseptic white.

The attack!

Then what?

I felt panic start to rise in my chest. My tortured gray cel s shot orders, not answers.

Wake up!

Now!

Drawing both palms beneath me, I tried to push up to my knees.

My arms were rubber. Pain sluiced through my skul . A spasm gripped my stomach.

I eased back down, the cold cement good against my cheek.

My heartbeat hammered in my ears.

Where? Where? Where?

Another barked command.

Move!

Rol ing onto my back, I sat up slowly. White light fired through my brain. Tremors twitched the underbel y of my tongue.

I drew my ankles to my bum, lowered my chin, and breathed deeply.

Little by little, the nausea and dizziness subsided.

Slowly, I raised my head, opened my one good eye, and peered intently into my surroundings.

The darkness was like a solid thing.

I waited for my pupil to dilate. It didn’t.

Gingerly, I rol ed to my knees and stood, groping the darkness, crouching, hands extended. Blindman’s buff and I was it.

Two steps and my palms hit vertical cement. I crab-walked sideways. Three steps to a corner. Turning ninety degrees, I fol owed the perpendicular wal , right hand in front of me, left hand Brail ing the concrete.

Oh, dear God. How smal was my prison? How smal ? I felt perspiration form on my face, my neck.

Four steps and my left toe jammed a solid object. I pitched forward. Both my hands shot out and downward into darkness, then slammed something rough and hard as my shin cracked against an edge of something on the floor.

I cried out from the pain and trembled from fear.

Again the tremors in my mouth, the bitter taste.

I had tripped over what felt like a stone slab. I was stretched across it, my hands and arms on the floor beyond, my feet back where they had made contact with the near edge.

I melted to the cement. A tear broke from my good eye and coursed down my cheek. Another oozed from the corner of my swol en eye, burning raw flesh as it slid across.

Cooling sweat. Burning tears. Racing heart.

More images, faster now.

A bul dog man with thick black hair.

Metal ic lenses. A fun house reflection of my startled face.

A ricochet flashback. Forty-eight hours. An exchange between Slidel and a feisty deb.

“Whatdidyou see?”

“Myself!”

Dolores was referring to mirrored lenses!

Sweet Jesus! My attacker was the man who had visited Cagle!

Cagle, who’d spent the last week in a coma.

Think!

My cheek was on fire. My shin throbbed. Blood pounded in my swol en eye.

Think!

Kaleidoscope images.

A jogger in headphones. Mrs. Cobb. The cuckoo. The photos.

I caught my breath.

The matches!

I jammed my fingers into a back jeans pocket.

Empty.

I tried the other, broke a nail in my frenzy.

Both front pockets.

One tissue, a nickel, a penny.

But I put the matches there. I know I did. Mrs. Cobb asked me to. Maybe I wasn’t remembering correctly. Think through the sequence more slowly.

I had a sensation of wal s compressing around me. How tiny was the space in which I was trapped? Oh God! The claustrophobia goosed the fear and pain.

My hands trembled as I kept thrusting them from pocket to pocket.

The matches had to be there.

Please!

I tried the smal square at the top of the right front pocket. My fingers closed around an oblong object, thick at one end, rough at the other.

A matchbook!

But how many?

I flipped the lid and felt with my finger and thumb.

Six.

Make them count!

Six. Only six!

Calm down! Take it by quadrants. Locate a light. Locate an exit.

Orienting toward what I hoped was the room’s center, I spread my feet, detached a match, and dragged it across the striker.

The head tore off without igniting.

Damn! Down to five!

I detached and struck another, pressing the head against the friction strip with the bal of my thumb.

The match sputtered, flamed, il uminated my shirt but little else. Holding it high, I crept forward and took a mental snapshot. From what I could see the room seemed fairly large.

Crates and cardboard cartons along the wal I’d been fol owing. Headstone that had taken a piece of my shin lay flat on the floor. Metal shelving, perforated strips holding the shelves in place. Gap between shelving and wal .

Fire burned my fingers. I dropped the match.

Darkness.

More Brail e-walking. At the end of the shelving I struck my third match.

Wooden door in the middle of the far wal .

Angling the match downward so the flame rose, I searched for a light switch.

Nothing.

The flame went out. I dropped the match, strode toward the door, groped for the knob, and twisted.

Locked!

I flung my weight against the wood, banged my fists, kicked, cal ed out.

No reply.

I felt like screaming in anger and frustration.

Stepping back, I turned toward three o’clock, took several steps, and lit my fourth match.

A table emerged from the inky black. Objects lined up on the tabletop. Bulky items stacked beside it.

The match died.

My visual recal centers pasted the three glimpses to form a composite sketch.

The room was about twenty by twelve feet.

OK. Manageable. My claustrophobia ratcheted down a notch. My fear did not.

Boxes and shelving along one wal , table or workbench opposite, storage beside that, door at the far end.

Recentered in the room, I turned my back to the door and inched forward, planning on a closer inspection of the back wal .

Trembling, I placed the next-to-last match head on the striker strip. Before I struck it, I sensed that this part of the room was more pewter than black.

I turned back. A smal rectangle was visible high above the table.

I peered more intently.

The rectangle was a window covered with gril work, grime, and dust.

Shoving the matchbook into my pocket, I climbed onto the table, stretched up on my toes, and looked out.

The window was half underground, surrounded by a vine-clogged wel . Through the top portion I could see trees, a shed, moonlight oozing through a crack between eggplant clouds.

I heard more geese, realized their squawking was muffled by earth and concrete, not altitude or distance.

My pulse began to race again. My breath came even quicker.

I was trapped in an underground room, a basement or cel ar of some sort. The only way out was probably a stairway beyond the locked door.

I closed my eyes, breathed deeply.

Move! Take action!

As I hopped from the table, a dozen filaments swayed in the moonlight, each glistening like spider silk. The sweet liver smel was stronger.

I stepped closer.

Each filament held a fleshy mass about the size of my fist. Each mass was suspended over a smal shielded burner.

Bear gal s! They must have been dried already because the burners weren’t on.

Outrage and anger sent the last of my claustrophobia packing.

Act now! Do it fast! The break in the clouds won’t last.

I struck match number five and moved to the far end of the table.

File cabinets. Parking signs. Flower stands with long spiky points. A baby casket. A miniature steel vault. Rol s of fake grass. A tent.

Unrol ing a layer of canvas, I grabbed a tent stake, stuck it in my pocket, and crossed the room.

Find candles! Get light next to the door. Use the tent stake to try to break the lock or pry the handle.

Barely breathing, I struck the last match and scanned the cartons.

Embalming fluids. Hardening compound.

I got to the shelves, squatted, peered into an open box.

Eye caps, trocar buttons, scalpels, drain tubes, hypodermic needles, syringes. Nothing that would break a door.

The room began to dim.

Could I move one of the burners? Could I light it?

I stood.

The upper shelves housed a theme park of urns in bronze and marble. An eagle with outstretched wings. Tutankhamen’s death mask. A gnarled oak. A Greek god. A double crypt.

Sweet Jesus! Did the urns contain cremains? Were the uncol ected dead staring down on my plight? Could a bronze eagle break a wooden door? Could I lift it?

The clouds closed. Darkness claimed the basement once again.

I felt my way back to the table, climbed up, and peered out. Could I attract anyone’s attention? Did I want to? Would the dark-haired stranger return and finish me off?

My leg and face pulsated with pain. Tears burned the back of my lids. Clamping my teeth, I held them in check.

The landscape was a study in black.

Minutes passed. Hours. Mil ennia.

I fought feelings of helplessness. Surely someone would come. But who? What time was it?

I looked at my watch. The darkness was so thick I couldn’t see my hand.

Who knew I was here? Despair clawed my brain. No one!

Suddenly, a light appeared, flickered as it moved through the trees.

I watched the light bob toward the smal patch of denseness I knew to be the shed. It disappeared, reappeared, bobbed in my direction. As it neared, I started to yel out, then stopped myself. I began to make out the form of a man. He drew close, veered out of my field of vision.

A door banged overhead.

I dropped from the table, scuttled across the room, and shrank behind the far end of the shelving. The case wobbled as I pressed against it. Reaching into my pocket, I withdrew the tent stake, wrapped my fingers around it, and dropped it to my side, point down.

Moments later I heard movement outside the basement door. A key turned. The door opened.

Barely breathing, I peered between the urns.

The man paused in the doorway, lantern held above his right shoulder. He was short and muscular, with thick black hair and Asian eyes. His sleeves were rol ed, revealing a tattoo above his right wrist.SEMPER FI.

Hershey Zamzow had spoken of Asian middlemen in bear gal trafficking.

Sonny Pounder had spoken of a Korean dealer, someone with an inside line.

Ricky Don Dorton had worked his mortuary scheme with a Marine Corps buddy.

Terry Woolsey was suspicious about her lover’s death, and about his replacement as coroner.

In a heartbeat my mind forged another composite.

My attacker was the man who had hastily embalmed Murray Snow’s body. The man who had visited Wal y Cagle. The man who smuggled drugs and bear gal s with Ricky Don Dorton.

My attacker was the Lancaster County coroner, James Park! James Park was Korean.

Park stepped through the doorway and swept his lantern about. I heard a sharp intake of breath, saw his body stiffen.