Bones Never Lie

by Kathy Reichs

  I killed the engine and flew from the car. Rain stung my face as I pounded up a driveway, through a backyard, and onto the grounds.

  At the point where I pushed through the hedge, the townhouses were freestanding brick structures in rows of three. The structures formed two sides of a square. Inside the square was a patch of concrete for parking.

  I stopped to catch my breath and do a quick scan. Five cars. Among them a 2001 Chevy Impala. Tan.

  She was here!

  But where?

  The main house was off to my left. Straight ahead, beyond its two wings and back courtyard, was the coach house. Beside it, the annex.

  Would she dare bring her malignancy right to my doorstep?

  My eyes probed the shadows among the trees and shrubs.

  Rain soaked my hair, my jeans. My jacket clung to my shirt like an outer layer of skin.

  Circle to the front? Take the brick walk along the back of the property?

  Wait for backup? How long?

  Fearing a male presence might trigger a full psychotic break in Tawny McGee, I hadn’t phoned 911. Had I erred in relying on Hull? Had she gotten my second text giving this address? Was she already here? Could she even take action in this county?

  My scalp felt tight and cold, my skin clammy inside my shirt. Not from rain. From adrenaline jolting every system into high.

  Screw it.

  I was off the block and sprinting. Around the back, down the walk, to a live oak directly opposite the annex.

  There was no one in the patio, the side yard, the area where I parked. No one at the coach house.

  Flashback.

  Movement below a giant magnolia.

  Heart banging, I raced to the front lawn.

  And saw her beside the tree, brick boundary beyond her.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the knife.

  Go! screamed every cell in my brain stem.

  Wait! urged a reasoning part of my cortex.

  Panting and sweating, I allowed my higher centers to process. To convert my animal instincts into rational thought.

  My breathing slowed. My heart eased its hammering against my ribs. My dilated pupils took in detail.

  Her back was to me, so I couldn’t see her face. But I could tell she was tall and broad-shouldered. Long neck. Slender legs. High boots.

  She held an object in one hand. A larger one lay at her feet.

  Above and around her, a tower of leaves gleamed slick as black ice. Here and there, a dull underside looked darkly opaque.

  One deep breath. I began zigzagging from tree to tree, placing my feet soundlessly on the wet lawn. Jealously guarding the element of surprise.

  When only one live oak stood between us, I tightened my fingers into a death-grip on the knife. Checked my hand.

  No trembling. Good.

  As my mind tore through options, she squatted and leaned over the thing on the ground. Head movements suggested speech, but no words made it to where I stood.

  The thing on the ground changed shape.

  She reached out.

  The thing twisted, rounded like a sprout in time-lapse video.

  Sat up.

  White-hot fury sent wasps whining in my brain.

  Blowing off caution, I strode forward.

  “Alice.” Loud. “Or should I say Kim?”

  Both heads swiveled at the sound of my voice. One fast, one slow, as though dazed. Or drugged. Two pale ovals pointed my way in the darkness.

  “Which is it, Tawny?” Coming in hot on adrenaline. “Did you kill her to steal the name?”

  Tawny McGee rose to her full height and regarded me mutely.

  “Or did you just like the ring of it? Alice Kimberly Hamilton.” The steadiness of my voice surprised me.

  “Go away.”

  “Not a chance.”

  I took another step. The oval topping the stalk neck took on detail. Eyes. Nose. Mouth. The same face I’d seen framed in motherof-pearl.

  I couldn’t read her expression. It might have been surprise. Or fear. Or anger. Or nothing.

  “Kim’s name was in a journal left at de Sébastopol. It survived the fire that Pomerleau set.”

  No response.

  “Was Kim a fellow captive in the basement? Did Pomerleau or her sidekick murder her?”

  Nothing but the patter of rain.

  “Or was it you? Did you hunt Kim down and kill her?”

  “I would never hurt Kim.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I loved her.” A statement about feeling, devoid of feeling.

  “Where is she?” Cold.

  She might have answered. But in that splinter of silence, Mary Louise whimpered, a sound like the mewing of a kitten.

  “Let the child come to me.”

  “No.”

  “Now.” Diamond-hard.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I love her, too.”

  “You don’t know her.”

  “She won’t endure what we did. What Kim did.”

  “Where is Kim?”

  “She died.” Flat.

  “In the cellar?”

  Again, no answer.

  “Did you kill Anique Pomerleau?”

  “I loved her.”

  “She tortured you.”

  Her eyes held, unblinking, wormholes into evil. Or madness. But her jaw slackened as she withdrew into her mind.

  Several beats passed.

  Sensing an altered vibe, Mary Louise raised her knees and planted her heels.

  McGee placed a restraining hand on her head. “Stop. You’ll get muddy.”

  “Let me go.” Half pleading, half defiant.

  “Soon.”

  “I don’t like you. I want to go home.”

  “Down.” With gentle pressure.

  As Mary Louise lay back, a small ragged sob floated on the night.

  At the sound, McGee tensed and looked down at the thing in her hand. For a moment my heart stopped beating. Was she holding a weapon? A gun?

  I imagined my blade piercing her flesh. Her bone. Crushing through honeycombed marrow. The black cavity filling with blood. I didn’t want to stab this woman. But I would. Dear God, I would.

  McGee had escalated beyond her previous pattern. Perhaps due to pressure from Slidell. Maybe Ajax. The trigger didn’t matter. The fact was, she was spinning out of control.

  If armed, would she shoot the person closest to her? The one spoiling her game? Could I act quickly enough? Overcome her before she hurt Mary Louise?

  The hollow stare. The disembodied voice. I feared the slightest thing would cause her to snap. Better to stall. To wait for Hull.

  Unless McGee made a move.

  Unless.

  “You’re a healer, Tawny. Not a killer.”

  “I’m a freak.”

  “No. You’re not.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I’ve spoken with Dr. Lindahl.”

  “She’s useless.”

  “I’ve talked to your mother.”

  “My mother.” Whip-crack sharp. “The bitch who never searched for me? The bitch who just moved away to start over?”

  “She did search.” Emptying my voice of all emotion.

  “Not hard enough to find me.”

  “She—”

  “Shut the fuck up about my mother!” The first note of hysteria.

  Fast change of tack.

  “You helped the girls.” I said the names slowly, a mantra meant to calm. “Nellie. Lizzie. Tia. Shelly. You made them pretty. Made sure they wouldn’t suffer.”

  “No one should hurt.” Barely a whisper. “No one should die in the dark.”

  She was like a raft on white water. Lurching and spinning, wildly unstable.

  As I groped for the right things to say, my eyes caught a glint in the shadows at two o’clock.

  A bat or a bird? Imagined? I couldn’t tell. It was there, then gone.

  “The child’s name is Mary
Louise.” Trying to personalize.

  No response.

  “Why have you brought Mary Louise to this place?”

  “For you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You took me out.”

  “Of the cellar.”

  “You said I wasn’t just a creature in a cage.” McGee dropped to her knees and pressed the object that she was clutching to her chest. With her free hand, she stroked Mary Louise’s hair. “She will never be a creature in a cage.”

  I could see two tiny white crescents in the dark recesses above Mary Louise’s nose. Knew her eyes were open and wide with fear.

  My fingers tightened on the knife. I would do it. I would.

  “Where will you put her?” Skimming one foot over the grass. Inching the other forward to meet it.

  “Here. In the sun.”

  “There are dogs.” Taking another silent step.

  No response as McGee thought about that. Or her next move.

  “You must find a safer place,” I said.

  “Where?” Still caressing the child she would kill.

  “No one looks under the porch.”

  Mary Louise blinked, all panic and heartbeat. I held up a finger. Wait.

  “No,” McGee said. “No darkness.”

  The next step brought me to within two yards. “Sun always shines through the slats.”

  McGee whipped around, startled at my proximity. “Get back!” Shooting upright.

  “Let her go.”

  “No.”

  Now or never.

  “No one looks under the porch!” I shrieked.

  Three things happened.

  I lunged for McGee.

  Mary Louise rolled, then scrambled away on all fours.

  A form burst from the shadow of the boundary wall.

  Hull and I hit McGee at the same time.

  It took thirty seconds to subdue her.

  Another ninety to gather Mary Louise.

  CHAPTER 43

  THE EARTH HAD twirled on its axis fourteen times. Charlotte was enjoying one of those midwinter flukes that make you thankful you live in the South. The sky was an endless blue-gold dome, the temperature somewhere in the low seventies.

  Mary Louise chose mango, topped it with strawberry and pineapple chunks, walnuts, raisins, and a thousand gummy things. It was a truly impressive amount of poundage.

  We took our frozen yogurt to a small iron table outside the Phillips Place Pinkberry and watched post-holiday shoppers there to score bargains or off-load unwanted gifts. We made a game of guessing what item each might be returning. The kid’s ideas were much more inventive than mine.

  In the previous two weeks, CSS had spent days tossing the apartment on Dotger. The contents of the freezer were as I suspected. Blood. Scalp. Swabbed saliva. DNA testing showed everything came from Anique Pomerleau.

  Chloral hydrate capsules were found in an unmarked vial in a bathroom cabinet. A syringe. A dish and pestle for mixing the powder with water.

  Drawstring plastic bags were recovered from a kitchen drawer. Content analysis demonstrated that those remaining in the box were from the same manufacturer and batch as the one McGee had taken to Sharon Hall to asphyxiate Mary Louise.

  A purple wool coat was collected from a hook in the bedroom closet. Fiber analysis linked it to the threads snagged on Ajax’s backyard hedge.

  In addition to Lizzie Nance’s other ballet slipper, the box on McGee’s desk contained news clippings covering the murders of Gower, Nance, and Estrada, and the disappearance of Donovan. And more pictures of me.

  Mary Louise seemed unscathed, more than willing to talk about her ordeal. On her way home from school, she’d stopped by the annex to give me a picture of Birdie she painted in art class. Getting no response to her ringing and knocking, she’d decided to read her book on the patio and wait a short while.

  She’d barely settled when a woman appeared, claiming to be my friend. The woman said I’d been taken ill and that I’d asked her to contact Mary Louise about minding Birdie, whom she had in her car. Trusting the woman, who was wearing scrubs and therefore a nurse, Mary Louise went to gather the cat.

  Mary Louise remembered sharing apple slices as she and the woman walked to her vehicle; after that, “only swimmy bits from the romp on the lawn.” Her words.

  Ironically, at the time Mary Louise was being abducted, I’d been two blocks away, at the Marcus home.

  Remains of an apple were found in Tawny McGee’s Impala. Tox analysis showed portions contained chloral hydrate. The injected slices had been notched at one end.

  An old MacBook Pro was dug out from under the car’s front seat. Pastori and his IT pals were dissecting it every which way but Sunday.

  McGee was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and a dozen other offenses with regard to Leal and Nance, kidnapping and assault with regard to Mary Louise. Vermont was waiting in the wings with Gower. Deciding what to do about Pomerleau. Quebec was in line with Violette and Bastien. The upside to homicide: no statute of limitations.

  McGee was interrogated daily, mostly by Barrow and Rodas. Slidell was on administrative leave, routine in any officer-involved shooting. He watched via remote hookup, smoldering, jotting notes so fiercely that his pencil lead often snapped and went flying.

  Tinker—who had been discharged from Mercy and was recovering nicely—and Slidell gave differing accounts of the incident. Both versions and witness statements agreed on core facts.

  Tinker had been at the home of Verlene Wryznyk, Slidell’s former girlfriend and Tinker’s flavor of the month. Tinker wanted to tango, Verlene didn’t. She asked him to leave, he wouldn’t. Frustrated, Verlene called someone she trusted.

  Slidell stormed in breathing fire. Hoping to neutralize Skinny long enough to allow him to cool down, Tinker drew his weapon. The two struggled and the gun discharged. Tinker caught a bullet in the shoulder.

  Slidell visited me at the MCME a week after McGee’s arrest. God knows why, but he felt compelled to share the true story. After demanding stick-a-needle-in-my-eye confidentiality, he told me that Tinker had shown up drunk and become aggressive, and Verlene had capped him.

  I told Slidell he was a sap for taking the hit. Got “Eeyuh” for an answer. Clearly, Skinny was not over Verlene.

  McGee waived her right to counsel, even when she was assured that efforts would be made to secure a female attorney. Barrow and Rodas nearly wet themselves with joy.

  Along with Slidell, I observed most of the questioning. Throughout, McGee was cool and distant. But her eyes were empty as glass, never connecting with anything or anyone in the room.

  McGee admitted to stealing Kim Hamilton’s identity. Talked freely of the girl with whom she’d been imprisoned. With whom she’d whispered, naked in the dark.

  In 1998, Alice Kimberly Hamilton and four older teens made a clandestine trip from their hometown of Detroit to Toronto for a night of Canadian fun. At that time no passport was required to transit the border, so she carried a birth certificate in one shoe.

  The secret trip turned deadly when Hamilton’s path crossed that of Pomerleau or Catts/Menard. McGee didn’t know why either would have traveled to Ontario. I suspected we never would.

  Hoping to keep the sole link to her life out of the hands of her captors, Hamilton hid the birth certificate behind a cell wall, in a gap between the wood and cement. McGee listened to Hamilton’s hushed secret, stored the information for possible future advantage.

  Hamilton lasted only nineteen months in captivity. McGee had no idea what happened to her body. She was sixteen years old at the time of her death.

  Once freed and in therapy, McGee pressed for a visit to the house on de Sébastopol. When Lindahl finally agreed, she went to the basement and dug out Hamilton’s carefully concealed ID.

  The document proved useful sooner than McGee could have anticipated. After storming from the Kezerian home in the summer of 2006, she spent a week on the streets and
eventually hooked up with a group of girls from the University of Vermont. Drunk or stoned, they offered her a ride south. Passports were still unnecessary for vehicular crossings, so McGee entered the States using Hamilton’s birth certificate.

  For several months she crashed at one student pad or another in Burlington. Using the money she’d stolen from Bernadette, and the name Alice Hamilton, she enrolled in a quick-trip online course and obtained certification as a CNA1.

  McGee had learned of the Corneau farm by overhearing conversations between Pomerleau and Catts/Menard. More info stored for future advantage. In early 2007, using what remained of Bernadette’s stash, and perhaps more obtained by the same means, she bought the aged Impala and set out for St. Johnsbury. One can only imagine that first meeting between former predator and prey.

  By McGee’s account, she and Pomerleau lived together for a while, making maple syrup and playing in the snow. All sins forgiven. One night Pomerleau died in her sleep. Saddened, McGee left Vermont for North Carolina to fulfill a long-standing desire to thank me properly. Thus the clipped photos.

  Not sure if she’d flourish in Dixie, and wanting backup options, McGee kept paying the bills on the Corneau property. Pomerleau had explained the scam, the accounts at the Citizens Bank in Burlington. Or, more likely, McGee had extorted the information and stored it for future advantage.

  I suspected a far different reality for the time in Vermont. McGee pursuing much darker desires. For payback. For torture. Eventually, for blood. One day we may learn how she overcame her former captor, how she harvested Pomerleau’s tissues, how she killed her. Or we may not. That will be up to McGee.

  When questioned about Gower, Nance, Leal, and the other girls, McGee switched to abstractions. Talked of angels, of sunlight, of eternal peace and safety. Only then did something remotely human soften her eyes.

  When asked why Pomerleau was in a barrel, McGee stared blankly.

  When asked about human tissue in her freezer, she stared blankly.

  When asked about chloral hydrate, she stared blankly.

  When asked about Hamet Ajax, she stared blankly.

  Incredibly shrewd or crazy as a loon. I couldn’t decide.

  “Ready?”

  Mary Louise’s voice snapped me back to the present. I was wrong about her intake capacity. The kid had cleaned her tub.