Fire in Bone: A Jake Pettman Thriller

by Wes Markin

  “How did Earl Jewell die?”

  “Heart attack three days after retirement.”

  “Unlucky.”

  “Do you know any of Gabriel’s thoughts on this investigation?”

  “No. No one does. He’s a closed book on that.”

  Jake nodded. “Wonder if he picked up where his father left off with that grudge against Mason Rogers?”

  “If he did, he never mentioned it. Sorry, Jake, I have to go. Louise may be wondering where I’ve gone.”

  “Please call me as soon as you know anything.”

  “You know I will. What are you doing anyway?”

  “Going back to sleep. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to do something I’ve been putting off.”

  “Oh, what’s that?”

  “I’m going to see a man about a gun.”

  4

  DOWN ON HIS knees, sheltered by the woodland and the night, the old man used his binoculars to watch them bag the body. “There are so many of them. It was never like this thirty years ago when they were out looking for her.”

  “She’s like a vintage wine,” his older brother said. “Grown more valuable with age.”

  The old man glared at him.

  “You never did appreciate my jokes.”

  “They’ve never been funny.”

  The irritating bastard smiled, exposing his toothless, swollen gums.

  The old man turned back and watched the white-suited lawmen work.

  “Of all the bodies that came to the surface, it had to be that one,” his older brother said. “There was a time when the Abenaki brought their wrong-uns to the bank of the Skweda to wash away their sins, to allow the fire in the water to show them the true way. A fair few throats of the unrepentant were cut. It’s a fucking graveyard out there. Yet, out of all those bodies, up she floats. We should have tied the rope tighter—”

  “Be quiet. I’m trying to think!”

  “I know. I can hear your thoughts. They’re like crickets in the grass—loud and chaotic.”

  “Jesus! Please shut up!”

  “I warned you, little brother. I said it wasn’t over. That the truth floats. It rises to the surface, and there it floats.”

  He glared at him again. “You’re incessant! At least give me an idea. You must have an idea.”

  His older brother smiled again. “How many teeth do I have?”

  “Not a single one.”

  “That’s how many of my ideas you’ll like, little brother. Not one. Not a single one.”

  At one point, everyone had been looking for Collette Jewell.

  In his basement, through a slot in the door, Gabriel watched the girl who no one had ever looked for—daughter of the now deceased Jotham MacLeoid, sister of the now deceased Ayden MacLeoid—Kayla. The world believed the MacLeoid children had fled into the sunset together to begin again. The story worked and so needn’t be changed. But even though Gabriel owned her, his frustration grew daily.

  Kayla had not spoken to him in a long time—ever since he’d slit her brother’s throat in front of her, to be precise. For months, Gabriel had tried to sell her the beauty of her rebirth. Away from the poisonous MacLeoid legacy, with him, she could thrive. If only she could accept that. If only she could accept him.

  Despite his demons, which filled him regularly and forcefully with lust for girls the same age as his dead sister, he’d never laid a finger on her—or any young girl, for that matter.

  But she was stubborn, and even last week, on her fourteenth birthday, she’d refused to acknowledge his existence.

  “I need you now, Kayla, more than ever.”

  She continued to read from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one of the many books he’d given her.

  “I can take your books from you, Kayla.” But he wouldn’t. It was an empty threat. He loved her too much for that.

  She turned the page. Smug bitch was testing him. She knew how he felt. Sensed his longing and sensed the battle that raged within him.

  He hit the door hard with the palm of his hand.

  She flinched but didn’t look up. She continued to read, or at least pretended to.

  “They found her. My sister. They found her.”

  Kayla turned back a page to reread something. She nodded, then flicked back to continue.

  “Someone broke Collette’s neck and dumped her in the Skweda. She was fourteen, the same age as you.”

  She continued to scan the page.

  “Kayla, listen to me. I just saw my sister’s body. Someone broke her neck.”

  When she didn’t respond, Gabriel slammed his palm into the door again. He laid his head against it. Useless. It always was—

  “How’d she look?”

  Wide-eyed, Gabriel lifted his head and looked through the slot. She appeared to be reading still, which made him wonder if he’d just imagined her speaking. “They were just her remains—a skeleton wearing her clothes.”

  “Not like a butchered animal, then?” She looked up with narrowed eyes. “Not like my brother.”

  Gabriel shook his head. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  “That’s something, then.”

  He took a deep breath. “You cannot compare, Kayla. Collette was innocent. Ayden wasn’t. He was a part of what happened to that young girl, Maddie Thompson, and if you’d have gone with him when he came for you, your life would have been hell.”

  Kayla threw her book on the floor, stood, and outstretched her arms. “And what is this you offer me? Heaven?”

  “This is temporary.”

  “No. You’re a liar. You’ll never let me out of here.”

  “That’s not true.”

  She undid the buttons on her blouse. “Is this what you want?”

  “No … I mean, yes … I crave it, of course … but I won’t let it happen. You mean too much to me.”

  She threw the blouse on the floor and stood there in her bra. “I hear you outside the room every night. I see you looking in as you do those things.”

  He looked away, ashamed.

  “Every night.”

  “I’ve kept control. I will always keep control. I won’t touch you. That is the right thing to do.”

  “And is keeping me here the right thing to do?”

  “No, but you came to me. It was you who needed me.”

  Kayla shook her head. “I needed your help after I saw what my father and brother did.” She raised her hands to gesture at her cell. “I didn’t need this.”

  “At the time, Kayla, I thought it was the right thing, to protect you. And, even now, it still feels like the right thing.”

  “Once you lose control, once you do what it is you want to do to me, you’ll kill me, won’t you?”

  “No, I could never—”

  “You’re lying. You’re a fucking liar!” She started to cry and sat on the bed.

  “I’m not. I’d never hurt you. For a start, you remind me too much of Collette. Your hair, your eyes, your temperament. And your innocence. I adored her, and I adore you. I will treat you no differently to how I treated her.”

  “Did you lock her up too?”

  Gabriel sighed. “Please, Kayla. I saw her tonight. I saw her body.”

  “Did you lock her up too?” she screamed.

  Gabriel turned from the door and bit into his fist.

  Upstairs, Gabriel perused the old file he’d taken from his department. The paperwork had yellowed but was holding up quite well considering it was almost half a century old. No one would have touched it since the investigation had been closed. It was a cold case that no one in Maine had seen fit to reopen, because just like its place of origin, Blue Falls, it was better left in limbo, out in the middle of nowhere.

  He ran his fingers over his father’s handwriting as he reviewed the documentation. It was the closest he’d felt to him since he’d passed, and a few times, he stopped to wipe away tears, because it was almost like he was in the room, talking to him.


  Gabriel read long into the night. Long before the loss of Collette and the alcoholism had begun, Earl, his father, had been a passionate policeman. It showed in the detail and the neatness of the scribe. Working through the file, Gabriel couldn’t remember ever working this hard on an investigation, and he felt somewhat ashamed. It seemed no stone had gone unturned in hunting down the brutal murderer of two fifteen-year-old boys.

  The two boys had suffered blunt force trauma to the front of their heads from a hammer. They’d been wrapped in plastic, boxed up, and taken to a delivery company called Carrs. In the report, Earl had meticulously detailed this company. Safety checks on packaging had been virtually non-existent, and little or no documentation had ever existed between them and the customer, making the company unhelpful in this investigation, as well as criminally incompetent.

  Carrs Deliveries hadn’t been able to provide any decent information regarding the identity of their client, other than he was male and that he’d left the boxes outside their premises overnight and conducted all the business by telephone. It’d also come to light that the client had offered a significant amount of money to send the parcels that day without a single security check. After Arran Carr, the owner, had agreed, a significant bundle of cash had found its way through his letterbox. Ironically, the company had been so bad that they’d even messed up the lucrative contract and conveyed each boy to the wrong parents.

  Gabriel knew about Arran Carr’s history. After the local scandal had destroyed his courier business and he’d served some jail time for his malpractice, he’d become a drunk and a thief until his death ten years ago, falling from the second-floor window of a house he’d been robbing.

  In the early hours of the morning, Gabriel reached the end of the file, and he felt disappointment. It felt like an engaging book or movie with an ending suggesting it’d all been a dream. Because, despite the depth of his father’s investigation, this brutal murder of two fifteen-year-old boys had been written off the same way that all unsolved crimes of this nature were written off—as being committed by ‘someone passing through’.

  And, in nineteen seventy-five this was a particularly easy sell. Tourism in Blue Falls had been at an all-time high, and these deaths had occurred in the heart of the summer season.

  Unless the killer struck again elsewhere, with the same MO, it was a lost cause. Or at least that’s what everyone had believed.

  He scanned the autopsy reports of Bobby White and Henry Clark. All their teeth had been pulled out post-mortem. He recalled the asthmatic ME hunched over his sister’s body, describing how all her teeth had been removed.

  SITTING ON THE rug, bathing in the glow of a muted television screen and listening to his older brother’s heavy breathing, the old man turned the small plastic Ziplock bag over and over, letting the loose teeth fall from one side to the other. He eyed his older brother on the sofa.

  His lips were pulled back, and he looked as if he was in pain; his tongue darted between his empty gums.

  The old man stopped turning the bag, and his older brother’s lips settled, his breathing too.

  The toothless bastard leaned forward and ran his fingers over the pliers that had assisted him in filling that Ziplock bag. “Everyone wants what they cannot have. Everyone. Yet, this is something they could never comprehend. But they will know that it was after, brother. After, and not before.”

  “But what difference would that make? They would still be disgusted by you. They would still call you sick.”

  “And you, brother. And you.”

  “We’re different. I’ve never taken any pleasure from pain. And why would I? Having experienced so much myself, why would I wish it on others?”

  “Whatever you say, brother.”

  The old man sighed. “We are wasting time. Now is the time for us to clean up, so do you want to touch them one last time?” He offered the Ziplock bag.

  His older brother reached out. The tips of his fingers trembled as they neared. “No.” His hand recoiled. “I’ve said my farewells. You’re right. We shouldn’t prolong this any longer.”

  The old man grabbed the mortar from the coffee table and placed it on the rug in front of him. He opened the Ziplock bag, emptied the contents into the ceramic bowl, and reached for the pestle. He pressed the heavy ceramic instrument into the teeth and rotated the grinder. It was heavy-going, and he sweated, but eventually, he achieved the powdery texture that would allow easy disposal.

  He offered it to his older brother to throw it away, but he sadly shook his head. “I can’t do it.”

  The old man nodded, stood, and headed to the bathroom to dispose of it down the toilet.

  When he returned, his older brother was looking at that photograph again.

  “Don’t obsess, brother. Please.”

  His older brother looked up. “But it all started when he arrived. Everything. Do you not see that?”

  He nodded. “But, brother, it doesn’t matter how many times we say it; it changes nothing.”

  His older brother grabbed a pen and put the nib against the teeth of the smiling man on the photograph. “Maybe then, we should think about making those changes.” He scribbled out Jake Pettman’s teeth.

  5

  JAKE EYED THE assortment of handguns in the glass cabinet.

  The proprietor, Mason Rogers, entered from his adjacent convenience store through a connecting door. Mason was a slim man with a weathered face and gelled-back white hair. He wore jeans and a denim jacket over a Grateful Dead T-shirt. “Can I help you, Mr. Pettman?”

  Jake was taken aback. “Have we met?”

  “I don’t think you’re a mystery to many people around here.”

  Jake raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think I’d made that much of an impression. At least, I tried not to.”

  “No impression goes unnoticed in a sensitive place like Blue Falls, no matter how subtle. Do you know who I am, Mr. Pettman?”

  “Yes, I do, and I’m sorry for your loss. Please call me Jake.”

  Mason nodded. “For somebody who likes to keep their head down, you certainly know a great deal.”

  “I’m dating a resident here. She mentioned it, and again, I’m sorry for what happened.”

  “Anthony was a good boy.”

  Jake recalled Anthony training a rifle on him. He also recalled the young man’s head snapping sideways under a cloud of blood and his eyes rolling back. “I’m sure he was.”

  “Yes, was. He made his decision a long time ago to go work for that bully, MacLeoid. It’s not surprising they ended up in the same pit together. The truth is, I lost Anthony long before that. Still, if we continue this conversation much longer, you’ll see an elderly man cry, and that has never been a good look. How can I help you, Jake?”

  Jake pointed down into the display case. “I’m in the market for a gun.”

  “Never sold to a British tourist before.”

  “I’m not a British tourist. I have an American passport.”

  “Really? After the murderous Bickford mob fled to England, Uncle Sam kept their descendants furnished with the keys to the kingdom? Ridiculous, but typical, I guess.”

  “If the accounts of what my ancestors did are true, I’m nothing like them.”

  Mason opened the palms of his hands over the case. “Well, shall I just take your word for it then and open this case of goodies?”

  “You needn’t worry. I’m not buying today anyway. Just doing my research. I still have to get my Maine State ID, and I need gainful employment for that. Don’t suppose you’re looking for a hand in your store?”

  Mason didn’t smile.

  Jake made a note to not attempt any more humour.

  “What you after?”

  “Just a no-frills handgun. I’m not going hunting. It’s just for protection.”

  Mason did smile over this. “You figuring the place out quite quick then?”

  Jake shrugged. “Feels like I’m the only person around here unarmed.”

&nbs
p; “One of the most popular handguns in the states for concealed carry is this Springfield.” He pointed into the glass case. “You want a feel?”

  Jake nodded.

  Mason unlocked the glass case, grabbed a slim single-stack firearm, and offered him the butt.

  “It’s not loaded, is it?” Jake asked.

  “Never made a habit of handing over loaded guns in this store, Jake.”

  Jake took the weapon. It certainly felt compact and looked sleek. He traced the words Springfield Armoury U.S.A with his fingers and practiced aiming it at the door that connected Mason’s stores together.

  “That is an XD-S Mod.2 OSP.” He reached over and touched the top of the weapon in Jake’s hand. “This milled slide makes it optic ready if you really want to focus on your target and is now available with the Crimson Trace micro red dot for just over a hundred dollars more.”

  “I like it. How much?”

  “Five hundred and fifty. You want to look at some other options?”

  “No, my heart is already set. Besides, I trust your opinion.”

  “There’s a reason that it’s one of the most popular in the US. So, now you need to hurry up and find that job, Jake. Stop leaving yourself vulnerable. You never know who may have it in for you.”

  He handed the gun back to Mason. “You’re right. Should be fine at the moment though; there’s a lot of police presence in town.” Jake observed him for a reaction. He didn’t get one; the elderly salesman was too preoccupied with carefully replacing his wares into the display case.

  “Seen it before. They never stay long. They quickly lose interest in small-town crimes. I think they’re happy to leave the pond life to feed on itself.”

  “They seem quite serious this time. Piper has a friend in the police department.”

  Mason locked the case. “Is there something you’d like to ask me, Jake?”

  “No. What makes you say that?”

  Mason looked up and took a deep breath. He seemed like he was going to respond, but then didn’t.

  A moment of silence ensued, but Jake was patient and waited for Mason to comment.