Bones (37 page)

"Why are you here?" she asked.

" 'To know, love, and serve God so that I may be happy in the next life,' " I replied.

She waited.

I glanced back at her. "Sorry--knee-jerk Baltimore Catechism response to that question. But you know why I'm here."

"You tell me."

"I'm here because I broke something at work."

"Really? I'd think a hardware store could be of more use to you, then."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?"

"Tell me what happened."

So I told her how, coming into work one day, I had been told to report to Winston Wrigley III's "God office," which is how the staff refers to the glass enclosure near the newsroom. Wrigley deigns to visit the God office when he wants to view his minions in action, or, more accurately, to spy on whatever young, new female employee he has added to the roster.

There hadn't been any new additions lately--sexual harassment laws were severely cramping WWIII's style--so his current visit had the rumor-fueled newsroom aflame with gossip. These flames were fanned by the fact that he had two elegantly dressed couples with him, who joined him around the conference table at one end of the room. Before John Walters summoned me, I had heard that the paper was being sold to a big chain, that there were going to be layoffs, and that John was going to be fired for letting Morry mouth off to Wrigley before Morry left for Buffalo.

I didn't have a chance to hear any of the rumors that circulated after I got called in, but later Lydia told me that one of the best was that I was going to be asked to replace John after he was fired for letting Morry vent.

As I approached the God office, I was already tired and tense; I hadn't slept well lately, and the previous three nights, hardly at all.

Until three days earlier, the Oregon killings had provided the last solid leads on Nick Parrish's whereabouts. In June, the discovery of the bodies--one a legless torso--of two clinic workers had launched Parrish back into the headlines. The search for him intensified, but the rest of the summer had passed without any sign of him. I began to hope that he had been hit by a car.

But three days before I was summoned into Wrigley's glass domain, the LPPD had received a report that Nick Parrish had been sighted not far from Las Piernas.

Despite the fact that these sightings of Parrish were usually unfounded, the police checked out all leads. But this call led to the discovery of a woman's body in a trash container.

I've since wondered how things might have gone if Frank had been the one to give me the news. But on the day she was found, Frank was in court, giving testimony on another case. So I learned about Parrish's newest victim at work, on a day when there wasn't any way to contact my husband.

By the time Mark Baker arrived in the newsroom to file the story, there was already a buzz among the other reporters about it. I had already heard that Parrish had left another body somewhere. That news alone made me feel as if someone were sandpapering the ends of my nerves.

Mark had been in to talk to John, and John beckoned me in to join them. Looking grim, John said, "You should probably know about this before the others start asking you about it."

"Asking me about it?"

So Mark gave me the details. "This Jane Doe's fingers and toes were severed and missing. She was a blue-eyed brunette. Her name is not yet known, but your name was carved into her chest."

I felt my stomach lurch; I quickly excused myself, ran into the bathroom, and got sick.

I washed up, then, looking into the mirror with a measure of detachment, studied my tense, too thin face and the dark circles under my eyes. Detachment was becoming one of my favorite emotional states. It was constantly being disturbed, though--this time, when the door opened, causing me to jump.

It was Lydia. She asked if I was all right.

"No," I said.

"Maybe it isn't him," Lydia said. "It could be a copycat."

"What a relief that would be," I replied, and later wondered how much more of my sarcasm she could take.

"This happened three days before you were asked to see Mr. Wrigley?" Jo Robinson asked.

"Yes."

"Go on."

I turned back to the window.

When I entered the God office, Wrigley was smiling and holding an unlit cigar. (California's anti-smoking laws were second only to sexual harassment suits in making his life miserable.) I grew more wary; Wrigley's halo is always perched on his horns. He introduced the two couples with him as friends of the family who were visiting the area, who had stopped by the office today especially to meet me.

"To meet me?" I asked. "I don't understand."

"You're the one who escaped from Nick Parrish, right?" one of the men asked.

I looked at Wrigley. He's known me for many years, which is why he stopped smiling. His guests didn't seem to notice.

"Oh! It must have been so horrible!" one woman said, but she made the word "horrible" sound a lot like the word "thrilling."

"What is he really like?" she went on. "They say he's probably killed more women than Ted Bundy did. They say he's just as handsome as Bundy."

"He's not handsome," I managed to say. "Excuse me, I have to get back to work."

"Not especially handsome," the other woman corrected, "but charming. They say that's how he lures women."

"Don't run off," one of the men said, seeing me edge toward the door. "After all, you're here with the boss, right, Win?"

Win? I had never heard anyone call him that before.

"Right," Wrigley said. "Irene wasn't taken in by his charms," he added, trying to recover. "She's a professional, through and through. Why, she nearly killed him!"

This elicited gasps from the female members of his audience.

"And she was the only one up there who had the sense not to get herself killed or wounded!" he said, warming to his subject. "She saved the life of this one idiot who ran into the field after the shooting started--can you imagine anyone doing anything so stupid?"

"Mr. Wrigley--" I began angrily, but he must not have heard me over the combination of exclamations of disbelief and laughter.

"He's crippled now, but really, it's his own damned fault. Irene has been taking care of him. In fact--"

"Yo, Win!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.

All laughter and conversation ceased.

"Yo, Win," I said quietly. "Go fuck yourself."

I walked out. But as I did, I heard them start to laugh again--nervously, at first, and then one of the men made some crack I couldn't hear, and they all laughed loudly.

"What happened then?" Jo Robinson prompted.

But I was frozen, watching a man walk across the parking lot.

It's him.

Panic replaced the blood in my veins, pumped through me, tensed every muscle in my body.

He's found out that I'm here alone. When I leave here, he'll . . .

In the next moment, I saw it wasn't him.

Just like every other time, it wasn't him.

"Irene?" Jo Robinson's voice, breaking through to me. Had she noticed?

"I was near Stuart Angert's desk," I said, forcing my mind back to the events of that day. "I seemed to go into this--this altered state. I heard this rushing in my ears, and then, after that, nothing. It was almost like being underwater, without the water--no sound, not even the sound of my own thoughts. I didn't see anyone, feel anything.

"But I saw Stuart's computer monitor, and I pulled the connections out of the back of it. Lydia tells me Stuart asked me what I was doing, but I didn't hear, didn't notice him. I pulled it off his desk with both hands--it's a big monitor, but I didn't notice its weight, either. I hurled it through one of the glass windows of the God office. I heard the glass breaking--that was the first thing I heard."

"And after that?"

"They stopped laughing."

She waited, and when I turned back to the window, she said, "Do you remember what happened after they stopped laughing?"

"I was forced to take a leave of absence and told I couldn't come back until I had sought counseling."

"I meant, immediately after you broke the glass panel."

I frowned, then said, "Not really. There was a lot of shouting and--I'm embarrassed to admit this, because I should have been making a speech or something at that point, you know, a grand exit--but instead, I sort of fainted."

"Sort of fainted?"

I came back to one of the chairs near her, and sat down in it. I looked down at my hands, clasped in front of me. "I didn't really pass out, but all of a sudden I couldn't stand up, and the next thing I knew, Stuart and--I don't really remember, but a lot of people were around me, shielding me from Wrigley and his friends, or so it seemed to me, and Wrigley and one of the women were yelling and John was yelling back and Lydia and Mark and Stuart--Stuart, of all people! He never yells at anyone. Stuart was yelling. And the woman was saying, 'I want her fired!' as if she were anybody at the paper. It was close to a damned riot."

She poured me a glass of water.

"Thanks," I said, accepting it. "I still can't . . ."

"Can't what?"

"I often feel thirsty," I muttered, and drank before she could ask anything more.

"Pretty crazy, huh?" I said. She refilled the water for me.

"Being thirsty?"

"No, you know, smashing things at work. Launching expensive electronic equipment through glass walls in rooms where people are seated."

"Do you think you're crazy?"

"No--yes--I don't know."

"A, B, C, or all of the above?" she asked.

"I feel," I said, my voice shaking, "out of control. It scares me."

She waited a moment before asking, "Aside from this incident at work, what's making you conclude that you're out of control?"

"I don't know. I guess it's that . . . I can't concentrate. I don't sleep much. Maybe that's what causes the lack of concentration."

"Did you have trouble concentrating before you went to the mountains?"

"Not really."

"Trouble sleeping?"

I hesitated. "Sometimes. Not often."

She waited.

"When I'm under a lot of stress, I sometimes have nightmares." In a few words, I told her about my time of being held captive in a small, dark room in a cabin, of the fear and injuries I suffered there, of the occasional bouts with nightmares and claustrophobia I have suffered since. Only a few people know the details of that time. I don't usually talk about it very freely, but I found myself thinking that maybe if I could interest her in that, she would not ask about more recent events.

She asked a few questions about my life in general. Again, I considered this safer ground, and was fairly relaxed, even when describing situations that had been traumatic at the time they occurred.

"You've been through a lot lately," she said.

I shrugged. "Other people have been through worse."

"But you survived. All of that, and what happened in May in the--"

"I don't want to talk about the mountains," I said quickly. "I'm tired of talking about what happened there."

"Okay," she said. "I won't ask you to talk about those events just now."

I felt a vast sense of relief.

"In the time since you've been back in Las Piernas, and except for Ben, have you spoken to any of the other people who were in the group?"

"I thought you weren't going to ask--"

"Since you've been back," she said calmly.

"They died," I said, unable to keep the edginess out of my voice. "All except Ben and Bingle."

"Everyone?"

"Yes. Unless you mean--the original group that hiked in?"

"That's who I mean."

"J.C. came by to see Ben several times. And so did Andy."