The Bone Box

by Gregg Olsen

  “What was different?” Birdy asked.

  Pat-Stan shrugged. “Don’t remember. Check the tape.”

  “Video?”

  “No, audio. We taped all the interviews. Policy.”

  This interested Birdy. The transcripts—no matter who did them—didn’t sound completely like Tommy. “Where are the tapes?” she asked.

  “I’ve got some. When I left, I was so mad that I took a bunch of old case files. Don’t lecture me. You’ve never lost a leg and then had your boss tell you that it would be best if you sat at a desk for the rest of your life. I get off at five. House is a mess, but I do the best that I can. Come over.”

  She wrote down an address on Hawthorne Avenue and went down the narrow aisle. No one would have known that she’d lost a leg. Pat-Stan had practiced her gait. She might have lost a limb, but she had never lost her sense of pride. As Birdy Waterman saw it, despite its place in the “sin” category of the Bible, pride could be a very good thing. Pat-Stan was angry about the contents of the report.

  Anger, Birdy knew, could be a good ally.

  CHAPTER NINE

  With a little more than an hour to kill, Birdy found a coffee shop that made ginormous cinnamon rolls. Even though the time of day was so wrong for that kind of indulgence, the forensic pathologist with a sweet tooth ordered one.

  “Heated with butter?” a pleasant young man behind the counter asked.

  “If I’m going to die from sugar overload, might as well go all the way,” Birdy said.

  As she drank her coffee and ate the gooey roll at the table in the back of the café, she reread her own statement and compared it against what Tommy told the detectives.

  I was smoking pot and drinking beer that afternoon in the woods alone. I had talked to Anna Jo Bonners about meeting me at the cabin so we could mess around. Anna Jo didn’t show up so I hung out by myself. I heard a scream coming from the cabin later and I went inside. I found Anna Jo Bonners in a pool of blood. I was scared that whoever had hurt her was still there so I grabbed the knife. I ran out of the cabin and hurried down the trail where my cousin Birdy found me. I don’t know why I picked up the knife, but I threw it away before my cousin came up to me. I did not kill her. I really liked Anna Jo. I think I might have loved her even.

  All of the evidence supported the contention that Tommy was the killer. He’d had Anna Jo’s blood on his shirt and hands, his fingerprints had been recovered from the knife, and Birdy’s eyewitness testimony had put him fleeing the scene of the grisly homicide in Ponder’s cabin.

  Yet he said he didn’t do it.

  Surprised that she’d devoured half of the roll, Birdy pushed the plate away just as a call came in with a 509 area code, eastern Washington.

  “Waterman,” she said.

  “Dr. Waterman, I hope you don’t mind the intrusion,” a man’s voice said. “This is Ken Holloway. I’m the guard you talked to at the prison. You know, about your cousin?”

  “Of course. Is everything all right? I didn’t leave my ID behind, did I?”

  “No. Not that. It’s about Tommy. He’s been admitted to the infirmary. They might take him out of here to Spokane. He’s not doing so hot. After you left, he changed his family contact info to your name. Not changed. Actually gave a family contact. The spot on his file had been empty since he got here.”

  Birdy felt sick and it wasn’t the cinnamon roll, which was now expanding in her upset stomach. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “He wanted me to give you a message. He wanted me to tell you that ...” The man’s voice grew soft. For a second, Birdy thought he might be crying.

  “Are you all right, Sergeant?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice clipped in an obvious attempt to snap out of his grief. “He just wanted me to tell you that even if you don’t believe in him all the way yet, he’s grateful knowing that someone out there thinks he matters.”

  Birdy asked, “Will you let him know I got the message? Tell him that I’m doing my best. I don’t want to give him false hope.”

  “Hope is never false,” he said. “Hope is what keeps the innocent from killing themselves. Hope is what makes me think that justice will be done.”

  She hung up and looked at the time on her phone. Pat-Stan was waiting for her.

  Patricia Stanford produced an old audiocassette from the box of things she’d taken when she’d hobbled out of the Clallam County Sheriff’s department. It had been kept in an envelope with the date and Tommy’s first name scrawled on it in pencil. On the top right-hand side, a red ink stamp read: EVIDENCE.

  Pat-Stan offered her some coffee, but Birdy declined. She was sick to her stomach.

  “If you have any Rolaids,” she asked. “I’ll take a couple.”

  “Alka-Seltzer all right?”

  Birdy nodded. Pat-Stan went into her kitchen and returned shortly with a fizzing glass of water.

  “Lemon lime,” she said.

  As Birdy drank it, she couldn’t help but think of Pat-Stan’s need to collect some things from her office, her own kind of a Bone Box, maybe. She wondered if there were hundreds, if not thousands, of law enforcement people who carried away the flotsam and jetsam of cases that niggled at them too.

  “Why Tommy’s tape?” she finally asked.

  Pat-Stan inserted it into the player. “I guess I took things that bugged me. Things that I wasn’t really sure about.”

  Birdy didn’t tell her about her own stash. Pat-Stan, in some ways, was a kindred spirit. Maybe law enforcement was full of people like them; those who were on the right side of the law, but weren’t as convinced as the men and women who lined up in the jury box. More times than she could care to admit, Birdy and her colleagues turned over the best information they could find, in hope that the jury would sort out the puzzle pieces that didn’t really fit. Their job had been to gather the evidence, the prosecutor’s job was to put it all into a story, and the jury was called upon to make the final call.

  “Were you there?” Birdy asked. “In the room when this was recorded?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not at all. Didn’t have the right badge back then. Derby treated me like an office girl and flunky. My scores on the detective’s test were twenty points higher than his. He’s now sheriff and I’m a human tripod selling Partridge Family lunchboxes.”

  Even though the woman had clearly been wronged by her boss, in a very real, and very uncomfortable way, Birdy was grateful for it. Pat-Stan’s anger was proving to be more helpful than she’d hoped. Bitterness, sadly, was something that she could put to use.

  Pat-Stan pushed the PLAY button. The tape crackled and popped, but Tommy’s voice was unmistakable. It was young Tommy. Broken Tommy. Not the man old before his time rotting away in prison. Tommy Freeland spoke in a deliberate, halting manner.

  “I was smoking pot and drinking beer that afternoon in the woods alone. I had talked to Anna Jo Bonners about meeting me at the cabin so we could mess around. Anna Jo didn’t show up so I hung out by myself. I heard a scream coming from the cabin later and I went inside.”

  His words were so precise that Birdy wondered if he’d been reading his statement. But he couldn’t have been because the statement was a transcription of the tape, not the other way around.

  “I found Anna Jo Bonners in a pool of blood. I was scared that whoever had hurt her was still there so I grabbed the knife. He told me to put it down. So I—”

  “Stop the tape, please,” Birdy said, looking up from the transcript of her cousin’s statement, her heart beat a little faster. The Alka-Seltzer roiled in her stomach.

  Pat-Stan complied. She kept her facial expression flat, but her eyes were alert and sharply focused. There was awareness behind them, and, Birdy thought, a kind of appreciation for what she was hearing.

  Maybe even a little relief.

  “Did you hear what I heard?”

  “Yes. I guess that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  “He says that s
omeone told him to put the knife down,” she said.

  “That’s right. That’s what he says.”

  “But at trial he said he was alone.”

  “He didn’t. Maybe you don’t remember, but Tommy Freeland never actually testified. His lawyer told him not to. The transcripts were used.”

  “But the transcriptions are wrong.”

  The former detective nodded. “I know. I was there. The only comfort I’ve had is that all the other evidence so clearly indicated that Tommy was the killer. It was only after his conviction that I played back the tapes.”

  “Not only that, but doesn’t he sound peculiar?” Birdy said.

  Pat-Stan watched her visitor closely. “How so?” she asked.

  “Stilted, calm. Not like someone who’d just killed his girlfriend and was looking for a way out of it,” Birdy said.

  “Funny that you should say that,” Pat-Stan said, her finger hovering over the recorder to advance the audiotape one more time. “I saw him the afternoon they brought him in. He was a complete wreck. He was barely able to breathe because he was crying so hard. Also, this isn’t an interview tape at all. It seems like a compilation, bits and pieces strung together. Did you hear how the hissing in the background stopped at the end of the sentence?”

  Birdy was still stunned by the disclosure that someone else had been at the crime scene. “Not really,” she said. “I’ll listen more carefully.”

  Pat-Stan nodded. “I want you to follow along with your transcription, okay? You are missing something.”

  “Missing something?”

  “Listen carefully. There’s a hiss on the tape just as he says it.”

  “All right.”

  The tape resumed.

  “I ran out of the cabin and hurried down the trail where my cousin Birdy found me. I don’t know why I picked up the knife, but I threw it away before Birdy came up to me.”

  “Stop, please.”

  The former detective pushed the button, her finger hovering to advance the tape once more.

  “He said that he threw it away, before he saw me.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “But when I read the report, it indicated that the knife had been recovered from the cabin.”

  “I don’t recall that, but all right. What does it matter where it was found?”

  “It matters to me. Not so much where, but by who?”

  “That’s easy. Detective Derby found it.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jim Derby’s house commanded the edge of a hill overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca, an always choppy passage that divides Washington from British Columbia. It was a big house with shingled siding and a river rock chimney. Atop its second story was a widow’s walk framed by ornate ironwork. It was the kind of place that drive-bys admire and covet.

  Pitched in the front yard was a campaign sign as big as a car: THE DERBY WINNER YOU WANT.

  Birdy parked and walked up the long cobblestone path. She wondered how a sheriff could afford such a place. A congressman, yes. They had a zillion ways to earn a fortune through sweetheart deals made when their constituents were home dealing with the real-life problems of their respective districts.

  She knocked and Jim Derby opened the door.

  “What do you want?” he asked, clearly not happy to see her. “It’s late.”

  “I think you know why I’m here, Sheriff.” Her tone was flat, without emotion. Her eyes stared hard at him. He had to know why she was there. It wasn’t a social call.

  “It sounds like you’re threatening me,” he said.

  Witch hazel scented the air.

  “Are you going to invite me in or are we going to have this conversation out here where the neighbors might hear?” she asked, refusing to yield to fear.

  Jim Derby looked warily over the hedge next door. A light beamed from the porch.

  “Come in,” he said.

  “Who’s there?” a woman’s voice called as Birdy followed the sheriff into a living room that had been turned into campaign central. Mailers, bumper stickers, and yard signs blanketed the coffee table, the sofa, and a credenza that ran the length of a bay window that overlooked the Strait.

  “No one, Lydia,” he said calling into the hallway. “Just a staffer.”

  “All right then,” she said.

  He turned back to Birdy. “My wife doesn’t need to hear this. I made a few phone calls after you left. I know what you’re up to. I just don’t know why. I’m guessing that someone from the other side is trying to smear me. I get it. That happens. Don’t be used. Despite Tommy being a family member, you and I are on the same team.”

  “Are we? My team doesn’t frame people for murders they didn’t commit.”

  “You better back off, Ms. Waterman,” he said.

  “Doctor,” she shot back.

  He looked flustered, maybe for the first time ever. “Fine, Doctor, back off. No one framed anyone. Are you working for the Democrats or not? Is this about hurting my chances for reelection?”

  “No,” she said. “But it does give me a little bit of comfort knowing that what you did to my cousin and Anna Jo will stop you from winning the derby, as you like to call it.”

  “Just wait a second. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I found out that Anna Jo was seeing someone. Someone she didn’t want her parents to know about. It was you, wasn’t it?”

  Derby took a step backward, but said nothing.

  Birdy pressed on. “It wasn’t that Anna Jo was embarrassed about who she was seeing. It was the other person—you—who was embarrassed about seeing her, a Makah girl. She meant nothing to you. She was trash to you, wasn’t she?”

  “I want you to leave,” he said. “I will call my deputies and have them pick you up for threatening an officer.”

  Birdy gripped her keys. She’d planned on jabbing them in his eyes if he got violent with her. Instead, he was cowering behind the shields of the men and women who worked for him. Probably like he’d always done. Like he did to Patricia Stanton. “Fine,” she said. “People like you ruin the law for everyone who actually gives a damn. You killed her and you set up Tommy.”

  “Get out!” he said, his voice rising to flat-out anger.

  Again, Birdy felt her keys.

  “Wait,” came the woman’s voice from the other room.

  Birdy spun around and faced Lydia H. Derby, the woman who graced every campaign poster; the woman her husband wore like an accessory. She was a slender woman with dark-dyed hair and a flawless, powdery white complexion. She wore brown velvet sweatpants that she somehow managed to make stylish. She was the ultimate dream wife for a man with higher aspirations.

  “Lydia, this is handled. Dr. Waterman is leaving now.”

  Lydia’s face stayed calm. Botox? A controlled wariness that had been practiced over the years? Resignation that what she was going to do was something that had to be done? Birdy didn’t know.

  “This is going to come out,” Lydia said. “I suppose it should. Owning up to something will set you free. Isn’t that the truth, Jim?”

  His eyes pleaded with her. “Lydia, don’t.”

  Birdy held up her hand without the keys to stop him from saying anything more. “Mrs. Derby, you overheard what we were saying, didn’t you?”

  “Every word,” she said.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  She shook her head. “No, you’re half right.”

  It didn’t track. “Half?” Birdy asked.

  “Jim did frame Tommy Freeland, but he didn’t kill Anna Jo.”

  “Then who did?”

  Lydia looked at her husband. By then Jim Derby had dissolved into a chair by the credenza.

  “I did,” she said.

  Birdy thought she didn’t hear quite right. “What? You?”

  Lydia Derby glanced at her husband, his face buried in his hands. “A couple of days earlier I followed Anna Jo to that love nest Jim kept with her.” Lydia said, stop
ping a beat as her husband jabbed a finger at her.

  “Shut up, Lydia!” he said, snapping back into the moment.

  “You’d like to shut me up,” Lydia said before returning her attention to Birdy. “I don’t know how special Anna Jo Bonners was. All I know is that she was ruining my marriage. I had a little boy to think about. You were about to ruin my life, Kenny’s life. I only wanted to threaten her with the knife. But something just took over. She was sitting there, waiting for Tommy or something. I just grabbed a knife from the kitchen and started ...”

  Anna Jo Bonners was dressing. She was young, beautiful. She was unencumbered by children, with a slender body that had never carried a baby.

  “I know who you are,” Anna Jo said, barely glancing at Lydia.

  “Leave him alone,” she said.

  “You mean like you do? I’m giving him what he wants and needs. I know about your type. Needy. Always thinking of yourself. No wonder he laughs about you when we’re in bed.” Anna Jo started for the door. “You know what’s so funny? I don’t give a crap about Jim. I’m looking for a good time. You might try it sometime, Mrs. Derby. Jim says you have no passion.”

  “Please,” Lydia said. Her body was so tense, she thought if she breathed any harder her breastbone would shatter into a million little pieces.

  “I do what I want to do,” Anna Jo said. She was not really a malicious girl, but somehow the fact that Lydia was so upset made her feel good. Jim Derby’s wife’s tears only served to egg her on. Lydia’s anguish gave her power.

  “We made love in his car the other day,” she said. “You ever try that?”

  Lydia was shaking. “Stop it or I’ll stop you.”

  Anna Jo just didn’t seem to care. “That’s a laugh. You couldn’t satisfy your man—how do think you’ll find the courage to stop me? Go home, Mrs. Derby.”

  That was when Lydia saw the knife. It was like an antenna transmitting its presence from the open kitchen doorway. Without another second to think it through, she grabbed it from the cutting board, spun around and plunged it into Anna Jo’s midsection. The first cut brought a muffled scream, a kind of guttural spasm of noise that undulated over the cabin’s cedar floorboards. The second brought eye contact, a look of horror and disbelief.