Disembodied Bones (38 page)

“It is possible that he has some ulterior
knowledge of events precipitated before he was incarcerated,
sheriff,” suggested Walter.

“Just make sure there’s nothing going on in
that neighborhood. Send a county car to patrol the block. Shine
lights down all the alleyways and make sure no one’s lurking behind
the dumpsters.” Scott yawned widely and then went on, “Nothing’s
going to happen to Leonie. The bad guy’s in jail already.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Walter?”

“Sir? Sheriff?”

“Don’t call me again unless a terrorist is
about to fly a plane into the courthouse or unless Dacey Rojas
needs saving. Got it?”

Walter swallowed audibly on the other end.
“That’s a ten-four, sheriff.”

Scott hung up before the kid could say
anything else stupid. He lay back in bed and wondered how it was
that he was forced to endure all the Walters in the world and
determined that it was probably his lot in life. He’d had a hard
night and he was ready for some more sleep. Closing his eyes, he
hoped he wouldn’t dream about Leonie’s cold-blooded tailless cat
any more.

•

In the morning Scott discovered Dacey Rojas
pounding on his front door. He was dressed barely in gym shorts and
a towel he was using after he’d gone for a three mile run. Dacey
didn’t look much better than she had the previous day in the
hospital. Black circles were still under her eyes and from the
looks of it, it seemed as though she had forcibly pulled the IV out
of her own hand. She was dressed in blue jeans that appeared too
big for her and a green scrub that she had obviously appropriated
from the hospital.

“Out of the hospital so soon?” Scott said
because nothing else came to mind.

Dacey swayed. His hand shot out and steadied
her. Her normally warm brown eyes launched pure fire at him. “Aie.
You are one big, dumb guy.”

Scott frowned. “Not typically, I’m not.
What’s my particular transgression today? And shouldn’t you be
sitting down? Lying down?”

Dacey hooked a thumb over her shoulder. There
was a sedan with an older Hispanic woman inside patiently waiting.
“I’m going back to the hospital in about two minutes, Mr. Macho
sheriff. My employee, Erica, just called up to say Leonie closed
the store yesterday. She was going to open this morning, but guess
what, nothing.
Nada
. And Erica was worried so she went to
Leonie’s house. No one’s home. Her car’s gone and she’s not at
work. Do you want to know how many days at work that Leonie missed
in the last five years without calling me well in advance? Or-” she
paused to emphasis her point by jabbing him in the chest with her
sharp index finger- “how many times she’s actually been late to
work?”

Scott looked at the offending finger. “I’m
guessing not many.”

“You’re darn tooting.” Dacey rattled off a
string of indecipherable Spanish. Scott couldn’t follow it because
she was going so fast, but he suspected that none of it was nice.
“I can tell you she was late without calling all of once. Because
she had a flat tire and her cell phone battery was dead. So
something’s wrong. And Erica’s brother is a jail guard.”

Scott would have looked away but he was
entrapped by Dacey’s intent brown eyes.

“And you know what he told her?” Dacey was
unreservedly sarcastic. “I don’t need to tell you, right? Because
he heard from the night shift about what Gideon Lily’s been
screaming all night. The jail falls under your jurisdiction, so
you’d know, right?”

Nodding slowly, Scott silently wished he
didn’t have to admit anything. He said, “I had a car patrol her
neighborhood, check her house back and front.”

A little of Dacey’s wind deflated. Her
shoulders suddenly slumped.

“For God’s sake, Dacey, you should be back on
your way to the hospital before I have to call an ambulance to come
get you.” Scott was plainly incredulous. “You could have called me
from the hospital. I would have-”

“You would have rushed right out to protect
Leonie?” Dacey’s eyes narrowed. “Doubt it. She saved Olga from that
guy. She’s done a lot for a lot of people. I’ve been reading up on
her. She found some missing children alive and well. She’s not a
fake.”

Scott dropped the towel onto the floor and
gently took Dacey’s shoulders. “I’ll go check her house right now.
Do you have a key?”

Dacey held out a set of keys attached to a
little Mickey Mouse fob. “I came prepared.” She paused. “But I
guess you should find out why Gideon thinks she’s in danger. He’s
got to know something, if she’s really in trouble.”

Turning Dacey smoothly back toward the
street, Scott guided her back out to the waiting sedan. The older
woman was her mother and with one look at her daughter she mouthed
something inaudible and got out to help Scott put Dacey in the
passenger seat of the car.

Scott watched as they drove away.

•

Two hours later Scott was standing in front
of Gideon Lily’s cell. He was isolated from the other prisoners
because he had completely aggravated all of them, so much so that
he had put himself in a position of danger. Now Gideon was sitting
on the single bunk in the handicapped cell, which was located off
the regular wing, and had special fixtures to accommodate any
disabled prisoners they might have. He sat with his back against
the wall, one knee bent and the foot resting on the edge of the
bunk. One of his arms rested across the upright knee and he was
staring at the wall.

“Mr. Lily,” said Scott. “Heard you put up
some kind of ruckus this morning.”

Gideon didn’t say anything. He had waited all
night long, alternating pleading with yelling at the guards to get
some attention. He knew he sounded like a loon and any minute they
might decide to send him to the special ward of a Dallas area
hospital where he’d be held indefinitely for psychiatric
evaluation. He didn’t want that, but neither could he simply let
Leonie be forgotten like some piece of discarded rubbish. He had to
get out of this place. He had to go and find her.
Before it’s
too late
.

But he couldn’t hear her.
Can’t feel her.
She might already be dead.

“You mind telling me what that was all
about?” Scott persisted.

“Leonie’s in danger. Someone has her.”

Scott’s eyes went wide. “How could you
possibly know that?”

Gideon looked away from the wall and met the
sheriff’s curious gaze. “She’s in trouble. God, I can’t tell you
how much trouble. Same guy who took my nephew has her. The problem
is I can’t tell if she’s alive or dead now.”

A frown worked at Scott’s features as he
worked out the words in his mind. “You can’t tell…if she’s alive or
dead?”

“She went to my house late last night, early
this morning. You’ll probably find her car out behind the ridge
still. He was there too.”

“Are you trying to tell me you’re psychic
like she is?”

“No,” Gideon sighed the word. “No, not like
her. Connected to her.”

Scott thought of all the photographs and
newspaper articles about Leonie Simoneaud pinned up on Gideon’s
office wall and wondered if this was part of some kind of perverse
psychological illness. He’d forgotten most of his college
psychology, but he remembered enough about stalkers that he knew
some of them suffered from a certain set of delusions. If this was
like that, then Gideon had a brand spanking new set of equations
for the shrinks to study.

“I know you don’t believe me,” Gideon said
slowly. “It’s as clear as glass. But you should go take a look at
my house again. Look for her car. It’s not too much to ask.”

“Do you have an accomplice, then, Mr. Lily?
Someone who’s keeping the boy? Someone who came back and perhaps
kidnapped Leonie as well? Or is it that she’s involved, as I first
suspected?” Scott was like a bulldog with an old chewed shoe.

Gideon shut his eyes. “I’ve got nothing else
to say to you, sheriff. Go on, go take a look at the house.”

And he wouldn’t say another word.

-

I’m the beginning of eternity

And the end of time and space;

I’m the beginning of every end

And the end of every place.

What am I?

I am the letter “e”’

Saturday, July 27th

Twice four and twenty blackbirds

Sitting in the rain.

I shot and killed a quarter of them.

How many do remain?

The act of lifting her head was like trying
to hoist an unimaginably substantial weight with limbs made of
Jell-O. Leonie paused for the moment to regain her breath. Woozy
and sick to her stomach, she couldn’t quite remember what was
happening to her. Concentrating on anything at all made her head
swim with pain that rocked her to the soles of her feet. Instead
she focused on regular breathing, an exercise in relaxation that
she had learned from Michel Quenelle years before. Deliberate
uniform breaths in through her nose. Slow regular breaths out
through her mouth. She needed to fill her lungs to capacity. She
needed to feel the muscles in her chest expand with the incoming
air, stretching to their limits, and then the calculated rush of
life-giving oxygen through her lips.

When Leonie had counted twenty of these
breaths her head didn’t feel like it would automatically explode
like a grenade in a World War II movie. Her thoughts were still
muddled and for the moment she didn’t attempt to make sense of
anything.

I didn’t go drinking last night, did
I?
she thought. Not entirely sure of that, she couldn’t
immediately explain why she felt as though some horrendous hangover
was torturing her body as a result of overindulgence in Dacey’s
scrumptious margaritas.

Leonie?

Someone was calling her name and Leonie
didn’t have the strength to even open her eyes. It seemed so far
away as though a shadow was speaking through a distant screen; a
muffled call that resonated on her consciousness. She didn’t know
who it was, but there was the sense that he was so familiar to her.
So familiar to her that she could have tasted his name on the tip
of her tongue. It was so close, she wanted to lift a hand and touch
it.

But the distant compelling request that was
contained in her name was floating away, ever distant, ever
unattainable. And then it was gone, as surely as a heavy iron gate
had slammed down and had been locked in place.

Leonie shivered. Something had drained out of
herself as well. She steeled herself and tried to talk herself into
opening her eyes. Her hands felt cautiously around her. She was
lying on a hard surface, the floor solid against her back. No rough
surface this, but smooth flooring with equidistant parallel lines
that demonstrated it to be wood planks.

I’m on the floor? How many did I have?

Then she touched a smooth surface that felt
as silky as the most diaphanous cloth. It was soft and accommodated
itself to her probing fingers. It felt like a comforter or a
pillow
. Did Dacey cover me up with something because I couldn’t
get into bed?

The headache that centered between her eyes
throbbed anew and felt as though a jagged object were being thrust
into the back of her optical nerves. Thinking about anything
specific was going to cause her pain, she recognized and that
thought didn’t bring her any relief.

Oh,
Dieu.
This isn’t any
hangover
. The thought was coldly infuriating and frightening
all at the same time.
Open your eyes, Leonie. Open them, now,
dammit.

And she did.

Déjà vu.
The thought occurred to her.
Déjà vu. This is what that feels like. A disagreeable
familiarity. Something that haunts your mind and digs at the roots
of your soul.
Tilting her head, she knew that she was inside
the windowless room of her thoughts. A single bulb burned in a
ceiling socket, revealing what she already knew. There were dozens
of red, satin pillows on the floor and in the exact center of the
room was a metal hook that had been attached to the floor with
rivets that prying fingernails couldn’t hope to force up. But
secured to the hook was the other main figure that Leonie had been
so connected with.

But it wasn’t Douglas Trent, and it wasn’t
Gideon Lily. It was a little boy. Skinny with blonde hair, he
didn’t seem to be much older than Olga Rojas. His eyes were shut
and she could tell merely by looking at him that he was asleep.
Other than the facts that he wore clothes that looked as if they
had been purchased from a thrift shop and a bandage on one of his
slender arms, he appeared unharmed. A lock of pale blonde hair
covered one eyebrow and tickled at his eyelid and seemed
surprisingly normal.

For one bloodcurdling moment she dared to
look upward, expecting to see the closed off attic door, with the
little nubbin of rope cut away, something to taunt her with. Except
this time there would be no way to reach it. No matter how tall
Leonie stretched, no matter how far the child would reach, they
would never be able to touch the rope, or pull the door down. But
the simple truth was that the ceiling was intact. There were no
doors there, attic or otherwise, and it was then that Leonie knew
that someone had gone to much trouble to set this place up for her.
Explicitly for her and she would be one of the few living ones who
would know what this place would have looked like. The police had
taken photographs that had never been publicly released, and the
Whitechapel house had been burned to the ground months later, most
likely a deed accomplished by outraged parents’ of his victims.

This was the same room that she had been in
for a short period of time, upon regaining consciousness once upon
a long time before. So eerily recognizable, so oddly familiar, it
was the place of nightmares. It was the place that every nightmare
that Leonie ever had begun and the place where every nightmare
never ended, because there was more, so much more. Just outside the
single closed door off to one side, a door that she knew that she
didn’t even have to check to know that it was securely locked from
the outside.