I will wait until I’ve heard from you before I do anything with them, but honestly, there’s no need to rush over and hold my hand. I am far beyond the stage where a few dry bones keep me from sleep.
Rae Newborn
It was, she decided, looking over the fifth and final attempt at the letter, nothing more than the truth. If anything, in the three days she had lived with the knowledge of her cave’s remains, she had come to think of them as a larger version of Desmond’s crude wooden figurine in the foundation. Were she any less automatically and unfailingly law-abiding, were she not certain that sooner or later she would break down and admit to Nikki or Petra or someone else that she was concealing human remains, Rae would have been tempted merely to cover them over and leave them there.
Still, secrets had a way of coming out at the most awkward moment possible. Besides which, other than the temporary upheaval of her daily rounds, she did not see what harm would come of bringing Jerry Carmichael in.
Having written the letter, however, there was something Rae needed to do before she placed it in Ed’s hand the next morning. On Monday night, the first floor framed in and her hand nearly healed, she ate an early dinner and then, when she was certain that no one was going to drop in on her unannounced, she walked in twilight up to the house and through the stud wall, entering for the third time Desmond Newborn’s final resting place.
She had not been back to the cave since Nikki’s precipitate arrival on Friday morning, although looking back, she thought that her mind had been on little else. Images and questions and decisions had all whirled their way around and around, and one of the decisions she had reached was that, of the myriad questions about Desmond’s presence, there were few that she would care to share with outsiders.
The questions all boiled down to one: Why was he here? How Desmond had died, when he had done so, and the reason why his family had believed him to be in Arizona—all these puzzles fell into line behind the one big question: How had Desmond Newborn come to crawl into the earth, there to die?
Rae had no doubt the coroner would have some idea what had killed Desmond, even if it was just old age. But tonight would be her last chance to have him on her own, to allow his remains to tell her what they would. She felt strongly, for reasons she could not have explained even to herself, that she owed him that chance: She owed the builder of Folly the opportunity to speak privately to the one person who might hear. She had never had a last moment alone with either Alan or Bella. Both of them had been whisked away from hospital to morgue to crematorium before Rae knew what she wanted. With Desmond, she would take her time to say good-bye.
Plus, she had to know what was in the metal box that she had flung back into the darkness.
The spare lamp and the flashlight were both where she had left them, just inside the narrow entrance. She lit a match and set it to the mantle, which thankfully lit without the small puff that invariably proved fatal to the delicate membrane. Instead, it began instantly to glow, filling the passage with light. She replaced the glass hood, and shuffled forward on her knees down the stone floor.
Hello, Desmond, she said silently. Not long now.
From here on, whatever she did would be obvious to the police. There would be no way to conceal her passage into Desmond’s cubbyhole, no way to replace the disturbed dust on his clothing. Well, she would face that problem when she came to it. It wasn’t exactly a crime scene she was disturbing, after all.
Unless …
Only one way to find out. She didn’t know if she should reassure the spirit that she was about to lay the body to its long-delayed rest or apologize for disturbing its peace, but she pushed forward until the knees of her jeans brushed the delicate foot bones, scattered on the ground like some ancient runic consultation of the oracles. Then she sat back on her heels and raised the lamp, sending weird shadows fleeing across the rock.
After the house burned, enough debris had covered the cave opening to allow only the smallest of scavengers access. Nothing larger than a rat could have reached the body, which meant that Desmond was more or less intact, if somewhat… relaxed. However, she doubted very much that even a large rat would have taken away articles of clothing, yet Desmond had nothing on his feet, not even stockings. His leg bones disappeared up into a pair of dust-draped trousers of some heavy black fabric. Good, thick woolen cloth, she judged, rather than workman’s pants. He wore neither jacket nor waistcoat, only a long-sleeved shirt that was white beneath the stains, with the sort of neck band designed to button into a high, stiff collar. The collar itself was missing, as was his necktie, but behind the shirt she could see the neck band and a few inches of undershirt, draped across the breastbone. The lower section of the undergarment was ragged, either rotted or chewed away. He also wore a pair of suspenders, but not over his shoulders: Both sides were down around his waist, one actually looped underneath his thighs. Most telling of all, the buttons down the front of his shirt were all undone, obvious even considering the amount of nibbling something had done to the garment.
With absolutely no experience in the habits of a body in dissolution, Rae could not be certain what the relative position of the various limbs meant, but if she imagined it as a melted ice sculpture, it appeared as if the figure before her had expired in a somewhat slumped position, its— his—head resting against a slope to his right, his right leg slightly drawn up, his left leg outstretched. The bones of the left arm had slid out of the sleeve onto the ground, but the right sleeve remained folded against the body, its cuff tucked inside the remnants of the shirtfront.
Along with the bones of the right hand, she saw when she shone the flashlight down into the jumble of ribs and vertebrae.
The bones inside the shirt (and Rae couldn’t help wondering if this little exploration was going to give her nightmares) were cleaner, more protected from dust. Taking the edge of the shirt between her fingernails, she drew the fabric back, casting the powerful beam in among the bones to study what lay beneath: curving ribs, the knobs of the spinal column, flat pelvic bones, a lot of leathery scraps she didn’t care to think about, and sprinkled among them the small bumpy bones of the disintegrated right hand. And among these, an unnaturally smooth shape little larger than a pencil eraser. She wouldn’t have seen it if she hadn’t been looking for it. Rae screwed up her face, which was inches from Desmond’s leather-draped skull (he’d had good teeth, she noted), and gingerly snaked two fingers in behind the waist of his trousers to retrieve the object.
A bullet. And not a smashed leaden blob as the others had been, but a clean, only slightly misshapen bullet. She put it in her chest pocket and buttoned the flap over it. She started to withdraw, but when her light came up, it illuminated an unexpected bulge on the back of the left shoulder blade. A second bullet, but this one had once been nearly the size of her little finger, though it was now flattened and half buried in the bone. At the thought of prying it out, her nerve finally failed, and she sat back to catch her breath; after perhaps five seconds she leaned forward again, to look more closely at the shapeless wad of metal. The bone around the bullet showed clear fracture lines, but no movement. The shoulder blade had cracked, but not fallen apart.
No, she corrected herself: The bone had fallen apart, and had then regrown, trapping the bullet in place.
She was looking at the work of a German sniper, whose shot had gone through Desmond’s shoulder and smashed the bone a decade before the smaller bullet that had killed him.
Enough—she couldn’t face any more. She had what she came for, the bullet and the metal box, and she moved to pick up the lamp and go. At the mouth of the side cave, however, one last oddity niggled its way into her mind: the weight of the dusty shirtfront as she had pulled it back. She took up the flashlight again, straightened out the fold of the shirt-front, and saw in the breast pocket the edge of a small leather-bound book the size of her grandmother’s New Testament, barely larger than her palm. She eased it out, letting the neck of the shirt fall back across t
he pocket, and glanced at the pages. It took a split second to realize it was not a Bible: The pages were covered with handwriting.
A diary.
Without hesitation, Rae flipped through to the final entry, twenty pages or so in from the end. There, on the twelfth of September, 1927, Desmond had written a brief entry.
My brother comes tomorrow, to talk me out of my folly. Let him try. Although I freely admit, to myself if none other, that the thought of seeing his face fills me with a terrible dread.
Thirty
Letter from Rae
to Her Lawyer
May 25
Dear Pam,
You’re going to think I’ve well and truly lost my mind this time. All I can say is, I wish it were that simple.
I want you to find a private investigator who has access to a forensic lab, and give him the enclosed packet. Do not open the packet. Do not report any of this to the police, do not let the lab report this— I swear to you it would only get them excited for no purpose. Ill explain it all once I know what it means. Please, trust me.
I need the lab to give me a complete analysis on the five objects I am sending, comparing them for similarities and differences. I want to know absolutely everything about each one, and I don’t care what it costs.
I may be returning to civilization for a few days; if so, I’ll phone and let you know where I am.
Sorry for the mystery. I’ll explain when we talk. Promise.
Rae
Thirty-one
Rae was up that night until well after three o’clock, straining her eyes to finish Desmond Newborn’s diary; the hoot of Ed De la Torre’s horn before eight the next morning caught her still in her sleeping bag. She threw on some clothes, doused her face with cold water, and made coffee, drinking it with her mind far removed from Ed’s informative philosophic monologue. Eventually, he tired of her unresponsiveness, and stood to go. Rae hastily got to her own feet.
“Can you wait for just a minute, Ed? I need you to mail something urgent for me.” Without waiting for his response, she ducked inside the tent, took the note she had written to Pamela Church, and packaged it up with the five separately wrapped and numbered lumps of lead. She filled out the mailing label and sealed it, then took it and the letter to Jerry Carmichael and handed them to Ed. He seemed less than thrilled about having anything to do with the sheriff’s office, but made up for it in his hearty reassurances that the overnight package to the lawyer would make it into the box for the afternoon pickup.
When he left, Rae was tempted to climb back into her bed, but she had things to do before the machinery of the law began to turn and deposited Jerry Carmichael on her shore. She heated water and showered, tidied her tent and the space around it (which looked more than ever like a gypsy camp, with 2×4s propping up the sagging blue tarpaulin and various branches of the fallen cedar turned into pan hooks and drying racks), then slid the things she did not want anyone to see into the bottom of her knapsack and piled clothes, shoes, and a toilet kit on top. Her locked trunk was all well and good, but some things she needed to keep with her.
When the sheriff arrived, she was ready. More than ready: She was, for what felt like the first time in her life, impatient, eager to move. Her campsite was spotless, every fire-blackened pan was gleaming, tent and tarpaulin were snug, the ground looked as if she had swept it. She heard the boat before she could see it, and was waiting on the dock with her knapsack at her feet. At nearly noon, the low tide had long since turned, and there was no hesitation as he came into the cove.
The sheriff was alone.
“Nikki’s bringing the others” were his first words to her. “We’ve got a woman from the university flying in later, to look at the bones, as she said, ‘in situ.’ This is all going to be very disruptive for you.” He looked at her with a mingled apology and question in his face.
“Actually,” she told him, “I was thinking I might just use this as an excuse to go over to Friday Harbor for a day or so. If I can trust your guys to keep an eye on the place, so the passing tourists don’t walk away with all my things.”
He looked surprised, and it occurred to her that he had been preparing an argument to persuade her to leave the island, for a few hours at any rate. But she knew full well how disruptive this was going to be, and wanted no part of it—besides which, she did actually have business on San Juan Island. If nothing else, between her hard labor and Ed’s commercial laundry (both of which appeared to involve pounding clothes on rocks) she was running short of things to wear.
She led him up to the house, where she had left both flashlight and kerosene lamp, and then back along the gap between rock wall and stone fireplace to the cave entrance. “He’s in there,” she said, pointing at the hole. “Do you want me to show you?”
“Is there anything tricky about finding him?”
“Not at all. He’s just sitting there.”
“Then if you could just wait here for a minute, I’ll check it and be right back.”
Carmichael looked too large to get through the entrance, but he did not get stuck, merely wriggled his shoulders a few times before his feet were disappearing. She followed the sound of his passage, heard him pause as he spotted the bones, then he turned and came back out.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve seen a lot of things in this job, but never anything like that. It looks like a movie set. Spooky.”
Rae thought it an interesting reaction: She didn’t think the bones spooky, just sad.
“I’ve got a generator and spotlights,” he said, and Rae made a face at the thought of the racket. Yes, far better to retreat, not to witness the invasion.
“Is there someone who could run me over to Friday Harbor?” she asked. “Or if you could radio to Ed and have him come pick me up.”
“Do you mind waiting for Nikki?”
Rae did, but didn’t tell him that. However, she also did not help him unload all the equipment he would use to illuminate and record the bones before their removal. She went into her tent and took up a book, turning her back on the entire proceedings. When the other boat arrived, she presented herself promptly to the ranger.
“Can I just go see the cave?” Nikki pleaded. Rae did not trust herself to speak, just nodded and retreated into the tent.
Nikki was back inside of ten minutes. Rae was wearing the good khaki pants that she had preserved, a cleanish T-shirt, and city shoes. She picked up her green knapsack.
“Shall we go?”
“Jerry says he’ll need you to make a statement, when things settle down a little. I saw where you found that wine, by the way.” She arched an eyebrow at Rae, to chide Rae for her lie, but Rae refused to be penitent.
“And if any bottles are missing, or if anything in the tent is disturbed without a warrant, my lawyer will raise holy hell.” Rae held the younger woman’s eyes to make it clear that half a dozen friendly visits did not mean a friendship without limits, ignored the hurt look that came over the ranger’s face, and turned to zip the door all the way around, then tie down the flap. Head down, ears shut against the cacophony of the generator, she followed Nikki to the boat and sat down, leaving the ranger to cast off. She heard Nikki talking on a radio, no doubt conveying Rae’s threat of legal wrath descending on the county, and then they were in open water.
Rae was far enough from Nikki to make speech difficult; neither of them said anything. After a while Nikki pointed out a splash and a fin a mile or so away and shouted at Rae that it was a minke whale. Rae nodded, and that was all.
You can’t hide, you can’t ignore.
Maybe not. But as far as Rae was concerned, beyond a certain point the continual picking open of wounds was torture for its own sake, pointless and even hindering to healing. There were times when a person had to hide; there were things it was best to ignore. She had stopped arguing with the professionals about it, since it just worried them and, in a hospital situation, a worried psychiatrist made for a hefty barrier between patient and outer world. Still,
she had long ago come to the conclusion that sometimes, things actually did go away—or rather, a person could cover enough ground to leave the problem behind, and when it did catch up again it was apt to be weakened by the journey. Sometimes, pretending things—bravery, wholeness, humor—made them so.
Right now, she was content to close off the image of what was happening on Folly. She would not think about the violation of her privacy, not picture what they would do with Desmond Newborn, not even think about the old, stained leather diary with the brittle pages that lay in her knapsack. She would instead reduce herself to a small and intense point of focus, pretend this was an outing she had chosen; she would take care of the tasks she had set herself, then she would go back to Folly in the serenity of her chosen ignorance, to take up her hammer anew.
Her resolve was shaken when Friday Harbor appeared through the boat’s windshield. A forest of masts grew from the water, behind it a far more bustling town than she remembered. A ferry horn blared massively, and Rae twitched. Nikki glanced over at her, then returned to her task of threading the boat through traffic.
“It’s really a pretty quiet little town,” she said reassuringly. “And I called my aunt, who has a small inn a couple of miles outside town, and she says she has a room free for tonight. If you like it, that is.”
No town was quiet, compared with Folly, Rae thought, but she told Nikki that would be fine.
“I’ll just put in to the dock and run you up to—”
“No need for that,” Rae interrupted. “You have work, and I have things to do in town.” She met Nikki’s green eyes evenly. It was like being mean to a kitten, seeing the faint hurt in the wrinkles on Nikki’s pale brow, but at the same time, Rae knew that if she didn’t cut this tie of responsibility here and now, she was in danger of becoming Nikki Walls’s property for life. After a minute Nikki shrugged her narrow shoulders and reached into her pocket for a pencil.
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