Authors: Nadja Bernitt
She swallowed, but her throat was dry, her mouth like cotton wool. “That falcon on your arm. That why she called you Birdie?”
He touched it with his free hand. “Three ungodly hours of pain for this. Original body art, not some ordinary Sailor Jerry tattoo. I did it for her, because she loved birds. But when I showed it to her, she recoiled. Only slightly, but I saw it. Oh, she tried to placate me after that. Said, you’re my Jay bird, my sweet Birdie.” He snarled. “I wanted to cut off my arm and throw it in the garbage.”
“She’d never have hurt you on purpose.”
He shrugged. “I used to hang on her every word, but she never listened to me. She only had ears for Wheatley. Robin. Robin. Robin.”
He was growing more and more agitated, and she’d no idea where he was going with this. “I’ve got to know. Were the first set of bones on Table Rock Mother’s?”
He moved slowly to the gurney, the barrel of Mendiola’s revolver close enough to blow her into the cupboards behind her. But she sensed he wouldn’t do that unless he had to. He wanted her alive for a photograph and that gave her a bargaining chit.
“I will not move from this spot unless you tell me.”
“They were your mother’s. I knew if I’d used the other woman’s you’d sense the difference. Bones have a way of talking to you. Don’t they?”
She nodded, recalling the feel of her mother’s bones in the crime lab. He’d probably killed her mother in this room. Ripped her scalp from her head.
“You learn taxidermy from Graber’s father?”
Jason drew in a deep breath and puffed out his broad chest as though she’d asked to see his medals. “A fine incision around the hairline, then I coaxed the skin from the skull. Salted the flesh immediately. It’s sad, how the skin turns rock hard, until the acid pickle and the neutralizing with bi-sulfide. Ever see the Hopi tan hides? No. I’m sure you haven’t but it’s a process, Meri Ann, scraping off the meat and softening the skin. It takes an artist to mold it to the head form.”
It was more than she wanted to know, horrible, sick and unforgivable. She held her hands over her ears.
He paused, waiting until she’d removed her hands from her ears. “But I can’t bring the dead to life. I need your face. A set of photographs to cherish.” His features grew stern. “It’s time Meri Ann. Everything’s ready upstairs.”
This freak had his camera ready and waiting for glamour shots in a room scattered with broken glass and, by now, dead piranhas. She got to her feet, staggered. “It’s my ankle.”
His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How unoriginal, Meri Ann. The sparrow’s feigned broken wing. I am not convinced.”
She grasped onto the opposite end of the gurney, took another step and fell to her knees. “Damn it.”
He scowled, rubbed the flesh on his neck with his left hand. He stepped closer. “Lift your pant leg. Show me.”
“Get away from me,” she spat. “I’ll make it on my own. The pain’s nothing. Lets me know I’m alive. And you’re right, Jason. I want to live. I want every moment.”
“Spoken like Joanna’s daughter.” He clutched the weapon with both hands and cautiously stepped aside. He motioned her around him. He seemed pleased at her injury, or satisfied with himself or something or both. She didn’t care. Every cell in her body ached to get at him.
She hobbled toward him, bent low. The knife was now in her hand. She moved inch by inch, until she was close enough to smell his sweat. Then she lunged at him, thrusting the knife up under his ribs. He stumbled backward. But she clung to him, twisting the blade. His knees buckled and he fell. The revolver fired.
She winced, clutched her side. Her fingers came back sticky with blood. But it didn’t stop her, wrenching the weapon from his hand. She grasped her side and rushed from the room, upstairs, to Graber.
He was still alive.
Her fingers trembled as she unbound his hands, handed him a towel from a stack on the workstation counter. “Let’s put pressure on the wound.”
She placed the revolver in his lap, took his shotgun. She broke out the salon’s picture window. With each blow, she gasped from the pain in her side.
“Jason’s downstairs. He’s wounded, but I don’t know how bad.” She gave him the revolver and took his double gun. “Shoot him if he comes upstairs. I’ll flag down a car.”
Graber motioned her away. “Go. Go on.”
But was he strong enough to apply the necessary pressure to the wound, or pull the trigger? And how much time did he have till he lost consciousness? She pressed her fingers against her temple, thinking what to do.
She heard Jason’s office door open, heard his heavy breathing and the shuffle of his footsteps in the hall. He came lumbering toward them, his bloody hand on the wall for support.
She picked up the Parker, broke it open and saw it was loaded. All she had to do was kink her finger and blow him away. She yearned for the moment of payback. It would be so easy.
Suddenly, lights exploded on the walls and ceiling. Flashing blue and red rollers pulsed, like her heart.
“Cops here,” Graber said.
Jason staggered a few feet closer. His evil eyes dared her. “Kill me,” he said. “You want to, don’t you?”
His tone cajoled, seduced. And her finger quivered on the trigger. She stood rock-still with the double barrels pointed at his chest. Tears streamed down her eyes, blurred her vision. She blinked them away and took aim.
A stampede of booted feet pounded up the front stairs. A husky male voice announced, “Sheriff’s Department. Open up.”
She lowered the shotgun, her arms weak, her legs weaker. She held the arm of Graber’s chair for support. “Break it down,” she called. “Or come through the window. We need an ambulance here.”
M
eri Ann’s steadied herself
as a uniformed deputy stepped through the broken window, a useless battering ram in hand. Mendiola was right behind. He pushed past the deputy and into the salon, his weapon drawn, his strong legs in a wide-apart stance.
He seemed taller to her. And she wanted to hug him. Not that she felt saved, just grateful to be alive, grateful that he’d figured it out.
He read the room, taking in the dead fish, shards of glass and pool of bloody water. “Sweet Jesus,” he said. Then he started for Harold Graber.
“It wasn’t him,” she said. He’s been shot and needs help. Jason’s the one you want.”
She pointed down the hall where the putrid piece of garbage lay on his back, hands to his bloody chest. A deputy kneeled beside him, checking vital signs. She wondered if he would make it to the hospital in time, or if he would die, here, now. She glanced away, her mind hop-scotching from one thought to another, trying to figure out how to explain what had happened.
“Jason’s tried to implicate Graber with his sick stories,” she said. “He’s confessed to killing three women and a man in Garden City.”
Mendiola’s gaze steadied on the shotgun in her hand. “You shoot him?” he asked without judgment.
“No.” She had wanted to shoot him, to watch him die. Yet she hadn’t pulled the trigger. Her lack of action surprised her more than anything. “He cornered me in the cellar,” she said, “and I stabbed him.”
The emergency medical team arrived, a foursome. They split up between the two wounded men. Graber hung on, a testament to his uncanny strength. Anyone else would have gone into shock.
Then Mendiola spotted the blood on her side. “You’re hurt.”
“Just a flesh wound.” It had started to burn. “Feels like he shot me with a hand-propelled rocket.”
Mendiola jerked her sweater up, lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah. You’ve lost some flesh. Now shut up. There’ll be time for explaining, later.”
The salon bustled with frenetic energy, as more technicians and deputies arrived. She and Mendiola stayed with Graber until the medics loaded him onto a gurney. “He’s a good man,” she said. “Not a stalker. He knew about Jason and that’s why he came here. He hasn’t been stalking me but watching over me.”
Mendiola thumbed in the direction of the medics. “We’re not waiting for them. I’ll get you to the hospital.”
She didn’t care to admit it but she felt weak. She threaded her arm through his as they went outside. He gave her a hand up into his Blazer. “How’d you know I was here?” she asked.
“Becky called me two hours ago. She’d thought you were at Pauline’s. Then she found Wheatley’s letter and a cassette. She thought it had to be from someone at the party. We started with Wheatley.”
“Of course,” she said. “I wondered about that too when I heard Rocking Robin. Jason sent it as a clue. It was the Jay Bird line we didn’t get.”
He went around to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel.
“If only I’d known about this lunatic, then? I went to Wheatley’s and found him watching television with a neighbor. So I took off for Graber’s. I was half way there when dispatch caught me. Seems a call came in from a pizza guy who got stiffed on a delivery. He reported the tag on Graber’s truck. Guess it was the only vehicle here. Dispatch matched the numbers and I was on my way with backup.”
She smiled. “I can’t believe Becky called you.”
“Isn’t that what friends do?”
Meri Ann’s right hand pressed hard against the pain in her side. “I hope we’re still friends.”
Dillon pulled alongside and Mendiola lowered his window. “I’m taking Meri Ann to St. Luke’s.”
“She hurt bad?”
“I’ll survive.” Meri Ann thanked God, leaned back and closed her eyes.
“You can debrief her at the hospital,” Mendiola said to Dillon. “It’s a helluva mess inside.” He threw his SUV in gear, teased it away from the curb. In between berating her for foolhardy behavior, he apologized for every bump in the road.
# # #
Morris Hill Cemetery stands on a bluff overlooking Ann Morrison Park. Meri Ann, like the old-timer Boiseans, called the bluff a bench. She had always thought this spot a pastoral vista. The random assortment of worn granite monuments and headstones resembled an Elizabethan etching of a country graveyard. Her mother and father had bought burial plots here, to rest beneath towering pines and elms.
Reverend Hugh Gwartney guided Meri Ann by the arm toward a mound of earth covered with a bright green cloth. He looked much the same to her as when she’d gone to him for grief counseling as a teen, though the lines in his kindly face cut deeper, his brows heavier. He was tall, bent at the shoulders, and leaning in her direction.
“Your mother’s soul is with God, now. The burial is for you, dear, to know this is her final grave, her bed, her place to rest.”
His words hung on the cool air.
Meri Ann breathed deeply, aware of the small entourage that trailed behind them, down the narrow gravel path.
It had been a week since the ordeal with Jason. The surgeons had pulled him through after 10 hours on the operating table. He was listed in critical condition. No one knew if he’d make it or not. She had never wished for anyone’s death, but God forgive her, she wished for his.
Meri Ann touched her bandaged torso. Her stitches from the gunshot wound pulled as she walked. She wasn’t the only one injured in the group. Leroy, Graber’s friend from Idaho City pushed him in a wheelchair. The poor man looked as though he should still be in the hospital. His presence surprised her. Their conversations in the hospital had led her to believe he didn’t attend funerals. Yet he came despite his weakness and pain. Wheatley hobbled along on his injured ankle as well. All of them like veterans on a memorial pilgrimage.
Reverend Gwartney explained about the headstones, probably to lighten things up. “If you’re wondering why the headstones don’t face the same direction,” he said loudly enough for the followers to hear. “it’s a matter of faith and sect. The Christians are buried facing east. Muslims face Mecca. And the priests are buried facing their congregations. Every last one is waiting for the blessed resurrection and the sight of God.”
He tightened his grip on her arm. “There is promise in life, Meri Ann, you must feel it.” He slowed as they neared the open grave. A light breeze ruffled his prayer shawl, as he turned and faced the breeze. He motioned the group to form a circle.
Becky stood to Meri Ann’s left, Pauline to her right amid the odd assortment of family, friends and acquaintances gathered all around. The show of support and the kindness moved her beyond words.
Wheatley stood opposite Meri Ann, eyes cast down, shoulders bowed. He looked broken, and somehow she missed the arrogance that had annoyed her. Oddly he seemed a part of her, like distant family. If her mother had lived, Meri Ann might have been his stepdaughter. The notion still didn’t sit well, but she believed he had tried to find her mother’s killer, that he grieved in earnest. That weighed in his favor.
Mrs. Johnson, her mom’s best friend, hurried down the path with her daughter, Marsha, to join the assembly. Leaves crunched beneath their feet, the sound crisp. Mendiola, Lt. Dillon, and Neles followed.
Once they’d all gathered, there weren’t quite a dozen. The Spartan service began with the Lord’s Prayer and ended with the Twenty-third Psalm.
Meri Ann lifted her head and caught Pauline crying. She reached for her hand and Pauline unexpectedly threw her arms around her. “You and John are all I have left. And if I’m hard on you, well… well, it’s my way. I’ve worked hard for what I have. Tough times make tough people. Our people were pioneers.” She lifted her chin and pursed her lips.
Meri Ann found comfort in her Aunt’s Calvinistic quirks—at least today she did. “Of course, I understand. We’re family.” They made lunch plans for the following day and parted with another hug.
After Pauline left, the Johnsons approached Meri Ann. Their words were few, the usual condolences, but their kindness overflowed. One after the other they kissed her cheek.
Lt. Dillon’s blonde hair ruffled in the brisk wind as she paid her respects. She smoothed the flyaway strands as she spoke. “You’ve buried more than you think, girl.”
“It’s almost over, if that’s what you mean.”
Dillon nodded. “Almost. You may be back for a trial if—”
“If he survives.” Meri Ann finished her sentence. But in her heart she prayed for his release from life and her release from him. Not for herself alone, but for all the other victims and their families as well. She glanced at the polished pine box. It held more than her mother’s remains. It held her anger and heartbreak.