Bone White

by Ronald Malfi

  Danny came into the cabin carrying a large pot of water. “Did you have enough to eat?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’s the foot?”

  “Hurts.”

  “You shouldn’t walk on it for a while. Once your toes start looking better, I’ll wrap it up for you.”

  With his boot, Danny kicked aside some items on a shelf at the back of the cabin. He set the pot of water on it, then shrugged off his coat and unbuttoned his shirt. He had lost a lot of weight. His ribs and muscles were clearly defined. There was also a handful of pinkish scars running along his back. The largest one must have been six inches long, and it curled down Danny’s left flank, a puckered Frankenstein contrail that still looked tender.

  “You get in a fight with a bobcat?” Paul asked.

  “Something like that.” Danny soaked a rag in the pot, then proceeded to wash his chest, his armpits, his arms. Paul watched as he scrubbed the grime off his face.

  “Where are they? The people you’ve killed.” The words were out of his mouth before he realized he had said them.

  Danny wrung the rag out over the pot. When he turned to look at Paul, there was no animosity in his eyes. In fact, the look there was so foreign that at first Paul didn’t recognize it for what it was: pity. The man who’d spent a year of his life out here steeped in madness was looking at him with pity in his eyes. As if Paul was the madman.

  “That part doesn’t matter,” Danny said. “Anyway, there are more important things we can talk about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why you’re here,” Danny said. “The reason you were summoned here.”

  “I already told you that. I wasn’t summoned. I came out here looking for you.”

  That look of pity simmered in Danny’s eyes. “Last week,” he said, “I was out checking the traps when I fell down the side of the ravine out there. I hit my head and was knocked out for a couple of minutes. But for a split second, just before everything went dark, I was lying not on the ground out there, but on the floor of a classroom with a bunch of kids staring at me. Suddenly I had a book in my hand and I think my nose was bleeding. The vision was so clear to me that when I got back to the cabin, I wrote down the title of the book.”

  He dried his hands on his shirt then went over to the small tower of paperback novels that stood on the floor beside his bedroll. He opened one of the novels to the title page—it was some garish bodice-ripper with a distressed female on the cover—and he held it out so that Paul could see what had been hand-printed just above the author’s name in Danny’s inimitable handwriting:

  The Jolly Corner

  Paul felt a finger of ice trace down his spine at the sight of it. He handed the book back to Danny.

  “I wasn’t sure what that vision meant until you showed up out here. And then I thought maybe it was some sort of premonition. That maybe the vision of the classroom was a vision of my twin brother, the big college professor. My other half.” Danny smiled at him, then glanced down at his own handwriting on the book’s title page. “Do you know what The Jolly Corner is? Is that a real book?”

  “It’s a story. I teach it in class. You must have heard me talk about it before.”

  Yet Paul’s actual thought was that he had been talking in his sleep, or that he’d had some conversation with Danny while still in the throes of a feverish delirium. If that was the case, why would Danny want to trick him now? What did it all mean?

  Nothing. It means nothing.

  “I’m not sure exactly what it is yet,” Danny went on, “but I know things are coming together. We’re meant to do something out here—something even greater than what I’ve been doing all along, maybe. I think . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “What do you think?” Paul prompted.

  “I think we’re here to end this thing. Somehow. For good.”

  Paul didn’t like the finality he heard in his brother’s voice. He’s killed people out here. He’s lost his mind and committed murders. What makes you think you’re any safer than any of them?

  “So, what’s the plan, then?” he asked Danny.

  “I don’t know yet. I’m not sure.”

  “Maybe the plan is for me to take you home. Maybe that’s how I help you, how I fit into all of this. Maybe the whole point of us finding each other out here is to help us get back to where we’re supposed to be.”

  The pity in Danny’s eyes turned to stone. “I’m not so sure it’s about us at all, Paul. I’m not so sure it’s about you and me helping each other. I think we’re here on some greater mission. We’re just the conduits.”

  We are both going to die out here. The thought rang through Paul’s head like a Klaxon. All of a sudden, it was too easy to imagine Danny shooting him in the head, then killing himself. And just thinking this made him think of the police report that Jill Ryerson had given him.

  “I read that police report. The one where they sent you to Sheppard Pratt for evaluation.”

  “How’d you find that?” Danny asked. He didn’t seem the least bit bothered by it. He swept aside the fur curtain over the cutout in the wall and rummaged around until he found another shirt.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Paul said. “How come you didn’t talk to me about it?”

  “That’s not something you talk about.”

  “I’m your brother.”

  “That’s all behind me now. I’m not that man anymore.”

  “Yeah,” Paul said, and his eyes skirted away from his brother’s oddly satisfied face.

  “I just hit a low point. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “You could have come to me if you were in that much pain. To do something that drastic . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Danny said, buttoning his shirt.

  “It does to me,” Paul said.

  “I love you, Paul,” Danny said. “You were always a good brother to me. I’m sorry I was always such a shit.”

  “Not always. You had a good week in the fall of 2002.”

  Danny laughed, and just like that, Paul was transported to those summers spent swimming in the river behind their house, just him and Danny, mirror images of each other, splashing and diving off piers and seeing who could hold their breath the longest underwater.

  He’s going to win this time around, Paul thought, and the thought sobered him up. He’s going to outlast me out here unless I think of something.

  Danny’s laughter subsided. “I was in the hospital when Mom and Dad died. I didn’t even know about the funeral. You think they forgive me for not going?”

  “I think they’d understand.”

  “Thanks for handling all that stuff back then. I always looked up to you for it.”

  “I’m your big brother,” Paul said.

  “By seven minutes,” said Danny.

  “Well, you’re handling things now.” The words simmered between them. Paul lifted his foot out of the pail of water. The water had grown cold.

  Danny replaced the water with a pot that had been simmering over the fire outside. It wasn’t hot—it was just barely warm—yet it hurt like hell to sink his ruined toes back into it. He wondered how long it took for frostbite to turn gangrenous.

  “It’s good that you’re here,” Danny said, smiling at him through the gloom.

  Just until I can figure out a way to get us both out of here, Paul thought.

  He hoped that epiphany would come sooner than later.

  30

  Gwendolyn Rhobean now lived with her brother, Gordon Boutillier, in a small fishing community called Winsock. According to the background info Ryerson was able to pull up on the woman, she had never remarried and had never made a public appearance or even released any public statements following the murder-suicide of her husband and teenage son.

  Ryerson had called Boutillier that morning and had explained her interest in wanting to speak with his sister. There was a long pause on the other end of the line before Boutillier asked her to hold on for a second. S
he expected him to refuse her request, but when he returned on the line, he said his sister was willing to meet with her. She thought that even he sounded surprised. Gordon Boutillier invited her out to the house.

  She left Fairbanks around two thirty, her head still aching from her battle with the flu. The sky to the north looked like hammered tin. Swollen gray storm clouds were creeping down from the mountains, and halfway through the drive, a frozen drizzle speckled her car’s windshield.

  You’re chasing ghosts, she thought, unable to silence that head-voice throughout the duration of the hour-long drive out to Winsock. What connection could there possibly be between Rhobean and Mallory? The only thing you’re going to accomplish is to upset a poor woman who has already had more than her share of grief.

  She silenced the head-voice by sliding a Marilyn Manson disc into the CD player. She still wasn’t feeling a hundred percent— far from it, in fact—but sitting in the house for days on end had made her restless and nervy. At night, doped up on NyQuil, she slept hard and deep, plummeting into her nightmares headlong like someone shoved into the dark sea strapped to an anchor. There was no logic to her nightmares, but the random clutter of images—the ones she could remember upon waking, anyway—carried with them a grave and unsettling aura. Last night, after having read the Rhobean file again, cover to cover, she’d awoken from a weighty sleep to the sound of someone screaming. It wasn’t until she came fully awake and bolted upright in bed that she realized she was the one screaming.

  By the time she arrived in Winsock, her body was racked with chills and her muscles were sore. There were only about a dozen homes here along the river—dilapidated double-wides with massive red oil tanks in their yards. The land was flat, and as Ryerson entered the community, driving past a wooden sign that showed two wooden carp jumping toward each other, she could see for many miles across a brownish-yellow tundra, straight out to the hills. The shores of the river were made of black sand and white stones, and the water itself glittered and shone like crystal.

  She had anticipated some difficulty locating Gordon Boutillier’s residence upon arriving in Winsock—her GPS worked for shit out here—but the guy’s name was stenciled on a mailbox at the end of a stone driveway. Ryerson turned into the driveway and parked her car behind an old Ford Super Duty and two mud-splattered ATVs. The vehicles looked more expensive than the house.

  Ryerson got out of the car and was immediately struck by the fishy scent of the air. It sent her mind reeling back to her childhood in Ketchikan, and of the dead salmon that would stink up the air at the close of spawning season.

  As she approached the trailer’s door, a large Alaskan malamute appeared from around the corner of the trailer. Malamutes were normally beautiful dogs, but this one, despite its healthy size, looked mangy and malnourished. It locked Jill Ryerson in an ice-blue stare.

  A woman came around the side of the trailer after the dog. She was calling to it and didn’t notice Ryerson until Ryerson called out to her.

  “Hello,” Ryerson said. “I’m looking for Gordon Boutillier.”

  The woman was short and thick around the middle, with dark features and a severe widow’s peak. Ryerson had gotten Gwendolyn Rhobean’s photo from the DMV, and this woman looked nothing like her.

  “Are you that cop?” the woman said.

  “I am. I spoke to Mr. Boutillier earlier this morning. He’s expecting me.”

  “Yeah, he said you’d be coming around.” The woman bent down and looped her fingers around the malamute’s collar. Yet the girl looked more feral than the dog. “I’m Claire, his daughter. My dad’s around back.” She nodded toward the rear of the trailer. “Go on. Gunnar won’t hurt you.”

  At the mention of his name, Gunnar growled deep in his throat.

  Ryerson had shot and killed a dog once, when responding to a domestic at some squalid little trailer park not much different from this place. She knew that the average citizen was appalled whenever they heard stories like that, but it was easy to criticize when you didn’t have some hundred-pound monster with snapping jaws and teeth like spear hooks eager to rip out your jugular.

  “Seriously, lady, he’s cool,” said Claire.

  “I must look like a Milk-Bone.” But she approached anyway, that stupid, phony smile still stuck to her face.

  This close, she could see that Claire was close to her own age, though the weatherworn look of her face was deceiving. She wore a diamond stud at the side of her nose, and when she spoke, Ryerson could see that some of her teeth were silver.

  “You state police?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ever kill anybody?”

  “Huh?”

  Claire made a gun shape with her thumb and forefinger. “You know,” she said. “Ever shoot anyone?”

  Just a dog, sweetheart, so keep your hand on old Gunnar’s collar.

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “Right on,” said Claire.

  She gave the malamute a wide berth as she turned the corner of the trailer. Wind chimes jangled from the eaves. The rear lawn was a field that stretched out toward the river maybe fifty yards out. Fronds and tall grass rippled in the cool breeze. Ryerson felt that chill straight down to the marrow. She wondered whether her fever was creeping back up on her.

  A large man stood on a concrete slab, either assembling or taking apart a large wire cage that reminded Ryerson of the crab pots back home. The guy had his back toward her, his expansive girth covered in a camouflaged hunting jacket. He wore rubber waders that looked wide enough to fit around an oil drum.

  “Gordon Boutillier?”

  The man turned around, startled. He was maybe in his sixties, with a sparse beard the color of beach sand. His eyes were shaded by the bill of a ConocoPhillips ball cap.

  “Ryerson, right?” Boutillier said. His wasn’t the gruff longshoreman’s voice Ryerson had been expecting, based on their brief conversation earlier that morning on the phone. The tone was smooth, almost musical. The guy could have been an opera singer.

  “Hello.” She extended a hand and he stripped off one rubber glove and shook it. “I truly appreciate this.”

  “It ain’t me who’s doing you any favors,” Boutillier said. “It’s been almost ten years, Ms. Ryerson. But I don’t think time heals a thing like that. Do you?”

  He seemed to be genuinely asking the question, so she said, “No. I don’t think so, either.” Photographs of the crime scene slid through her brain. “Is she still willing to talk?”

  “Well, she baked cookies.” He hitched his shoulders in an expression that said he was done trying to understand the mind-set of his grief-stricken sister. “We don’t get a lot of visitors, and Gwen, she don’t go out much.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you mind me asking, Ms. Ryerson, what’s the sudden interest in this thing now, after all these years?”

  There was no sense in being evasive. She said, “I’ve come across some similarities between your brother-in-law’s case and one that I’ve been working. It’s probably a long shot, Mr. Boutillier, but there might be a chance your sister might know something that could help me connect some dots. Something so minor that it may mean nothing to her, but might help me.”

  “It’s that Mallory fella, ain’t it?” Boutillier said. He tugged off his other glove, then dug a pack of Marlboros out of his breast pocket.

  “I’m not really at liberty to talk about it.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ve seen the news.” He stuck a cigarette in his mouth, then waved her toward the set of sliding doors at the back of the trailer. “Come on. She’s inside.”

  She followed him into a cramped little room that seemed to serve as both the living room and kitchen nook. The furniture looked like it had been salvaged from a fire sale, and the carpet was so worn in places, Ryerson could see the nylon stitching. There was an enormous flat-screen TV balanced on a rolling cart in one corner of the room, The Price Is Right on the screen. At the kitchen table, a woman sat in press
ed slacks and a handsome cable-knit sweater before a laptop, her fingers clattering away at the keys. She turned her head in their direction as they came into the room.

  “Gwen, this is Ms. Ryerson, the investigator from the state police,” Boutillier announced in his operatic voice.

  “Call me Jill,” she said.

  “Oh, you’re a peach,” said Gwendolyn Rhobean.

  Ryerson smiled and said, “I’m sorry?”

  “Look at her, Gordon. She’s so young.”

  The woman pulled herself out of her chair and extended both hands toward Ryerson. Not knowing what to do, Ryerson gripped both hands in her own and found herself a participant in some awkward double handshake.

  “So young,” repeated Gwendolyn Rhobean. “But you have a smart face. A smart face.” She turned toward her brother. “We’re okay in here.”

  Boutillier nodded, though most of his focus was on lighting the tip of his cigarette with a plastic lighter. Once he got it lit, he strolled back out into the yard, sliding the door closed behind him.

  “Have a seat inside on the sofa,” Mrs. Rhobean said, closing her laptop.

  Ryerson sat on the sofa. There were tufts of stuffing spooling out of the armrest and the cushions were so worn and thin, she could feel the springs pressing against her ass. They could probably sell that TV and move into a nice condo, she thought. If she had a nickel for every shithole apartment she’d been in where the TV took up the entirety of one wall, she’d be a very rich woman.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” Mrs. Rhobean called from the nook.

  “Water’s fine. Thank you.”

  “Are you sure? I’m having a cocktail.”

  “Just water,” Ryerson said.

  On the television, a King Kong version of Drew Carey laughed good-naturedly at one of the contestants. Ryerson thought she could see the camera crew reflected in the lenses of Carey’s oversized glasses.

  Gwendolyn Rhobean returned with a glass of water, a vodka tonic, and a plate of chocolate chip cookies. She set the drinks and cookies on the wobbly table in front of the sofa, then turned a rattan rocking chair around so she could face Ryerson. The woman was sixty, and Ryerson had been expecting someone who looked much older, prematurely aged by the darkness that had taken away her son and husband. But Gwendolyn Rhobean looked spry and almost jubilant, her face done up in blush and eye shadow, her nails freshly polished.