Bone to Pick

by TA Moore

  “He is a devoted brother,” Diggs corrected smoothly. He reached up and touched Lara’s hand briefly. “And we know Billy was taken from the cabin. So I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Agent.”

  Javi watched Billy chew on the inside of his lip. “Did Drew threaten to tell your parents you’d left him alone?” he asked. “You were already in trouble, weren’t you, Billy?”

  “How did you know—”

  “He’s a teenager,” Diggs said. “He’s always in trouble.”

  “And he was at a party,” Lara broke in again and leaned forward. “You know that. There were people there, other kids who saw him. His friends. His girlfriend.”

  “Allison, right?” Javi asked. “Unfortunately she didn’t see Billy that night, did she, Billy? You didn’t answer her texts either.”

  Billy shrugged uncomfortably, still twisting his hands together on the table. “I… I lost my phone,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “I know,” Javi said. He put his fingers on the evidence bag sitting on the table and tipped it up. The phone slid out. “We found it. Or rather Deputy Witte did.”

  Cloister’s reluctance was obvious as he shifted his weight in the chair, but he did his part. “It was down by the road,” he said. “Where we lost Drew’s trail.”

  The phone lay on the table, scratched and battered. Lara relaxed her hand, slid it off Billy’s shoulder, and visibly shifted her body away from him. Billy reached for the phone, but Javi blocked him.

  “Is there anything you want to tell us?”

  “I lost it,” Billy said. He looked to Javi first and then swung his eyes to Lara, and his voice cracked. “Mom, I lost it. I swear.”

  This time it was Diggs’s hand on Billy’s shoulder. It looked manicured and elegant against the scruffy, gray, too-well-loved band shirt. “I think that’s enough questions,” he said. “Unless you want to make this official, Agent Merlo, we’ll be leaving.”

  “Is that your phone?” Lara asked. Her voice cracked, and tension pulled the cords in her neck into taut lines under her skin. “Billy. Is that your phone?”

  “I… I don’t know,” Billy stammered. The need to answer her outweighed the pressure of Diggs’s hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know where it went, Mom. I lost it.”

  Lara cupped her trembling hands over her mouth and pressed her knuckles so hard against her lips that they left white divots in the skin. “What did you do?” she breathed.

  “Nothing!”

  Billy reached for her, and she cringed back from him and slapped his hand away. “If you did something, you tell them now,” she said. Her voice shuddered up in pitch. “You tell them where my baby is.”

  Diggs talked over both of them. “You say nothing, William,” he said. He swung his attention to Javi and narrowed his blue eyes as he stated firmly, “This interview is suspended, Agent Merlo. My client isn’t saying anything more.”

  “Yes he is,” Lara said. “He’s going to tell them why his phone was there. He’s going to tell them what happened. I want to know.”

  “I don’t work for you, Doctor Hartley,” he said. “I work for Billy, and until I have a chance to discuss this with him, it isn’t in his best interests to talk to you. So, are we free to leave or not?”

  Javi inclined his head. “For now.”

  Diggs shushed Billy before he could spill anything else and hurried him out of the room. “Mom?” Billy protested over his shoulder. His voice got more panicked and rose over Diggs’s quiet instructions. “Mom, I didn’t do anything.”

  Across the table Lara turned her whole body away from him. Her shoulders looked sharp enough to scrape as she hunched in on herself.

  “Lara,” Javi said gently, and she didn’t correct him. “Do you think Billy could have done something to his brother?”

  She sniffed. The corners of her mouth turned down, and she wiped her finger over her upper lip. “I don’t know,” she said. “He never used to be…. He’s just gotten so angry.”

  Cloister leaned over the table but hunched down to look smaller. “Apparently Drew was saying that it might be the last year you went to the Retreat, and it was because of Billy?”

  “No. Not just Billy,” she said. “I want to move to San Diego this summer, get Billy into a new environment, but Ken wanted to wait until Christmas. He didn’t want to upset his father.”

  The bitterness in her words had taken a long time to get there—more than the few months between summer and now. Before they could ask any other questions, Ken burst into the room.

  “Our lawyer says we shouldn’t be talking to you,” he said. He grabbed Lara’s arm and pulled, but she didn’t move. “Lara. It’s time to go.”

  “It’s his phone,” she said. “He wasn’t at the party, and it’s his phone, Ken. My baby is out there somewhere, and Billy—”

  “No,” Ken said flatly. “You will not finish that sentence. Our son did not do this.”

  “Doctor Hartley,” Javi said as he stood up. “You need to calm down.”

  “No I don’t,” Ken said. “My lawyer says we should leave. That’s what we’re going to do.”

  He bullied Lara to her feet and out of the room, muttering in her ear with every step. Javi grimaced. Five more minutes and he might have gotten some answers.

  “I did not expect him to find his balls,” he muttered.

  Cloister rocked onto the back legs of the chair and braced his long legs against the floor. His face was closed off again with a layer of sullenness that masked whatever else he was feeling.

  “What?” Javi asked.

  “Nothin’,” Cloister said. He hesitated and then added slowly, “Just something feels off.”

  “A boy might have murdered his little brother,” Javi said. Frustration bled into his voice and turned into sarcasm somewhere along the way. “We have to prove it for his parents. Is there anything there, Deputy Witte, that isn’t off?”

  Cloister scratched his jaw, and his nails scraped in the fuzz of almost-invisible gold stubble. He changed the subject. “Ken has a new script, but Lara’s still the one with the spine. If she hadn’t budged.”

  “I know,” Javi said, and annoyance pleated his lips. “Five more minutes and we could have gotten something useful from her. It doesn’t matter. We’ll get another chance. The seed’s planted now. Every time she looks at Billy, she’ll wonder if maybe we’re right.”

  “Yeah.” Cloister pushed himself up from the chair. He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and stared out the door for a second. “And if we aren’t right?”

  “Then we’ve wasted time on the wrong avenue of investigation,” Javi said, “and helped keep a family therapist in business. Our job is finding out who took Drew Hartley, not worrying about his family.”

  The muscles in Cloister’s jaw flexed. “Your job,” he said. “My job’s finding Drew. I should get back to that, if there’s nothing else?”

  There wasn’t. Nothing appropriate for the workplace, anyhow. Javi let him go, and if he lingered at the door to watch his long, rangy body cross the floor, it was only partly for the view. It was mostly because he wondered if Cloister had seen something he hadn’t or because he didn’t want another kid to grow up thinking his mother hated him.

  Maybe it was both.

  Chapter Eight

  IT WAS a nightmare. Cloister knew that. The fear of it was familiar as an old pair of sweats, but it didn’t help. He was still afraid.

  It was dry and hot. Cloister was thirsty—that wringing thirst that almost choked you—and the sand scratched his legs as he ran. He didn’t know what he was running from or where he was going. Just that he didn’t want to be there. There was something bad ahead and worse behind.

  So he ran, mouth dry and eyes stinging as the wind flicked dust under his lashes.

  It was only as he stumbled and hit a rock that he wondered why he was so small. He didn’t have time to make sense of it. First he heard the whistling, and then he heard the dogs. That was always t
he order. Whistle, then dogs.

  A wet nose in the heart of Cloister’s hand jolted him awake. For a second he wasn’t sure he actually was awake. His mouth was still dry, and sweat itched in the folds of his body. But when he swung his legs out of the cot, they were longer than his entire body had been in the dream. The scar on his knee—where a fall and a bottle had left him looking at his kneecap in more detail than he ever wanted—was there too, and he never dreamed about that.

  Maybe because the memory of dirty bone and the wrinkled flap of degloved knee skin was too gross for his subconscious to touch.

  Bourneville shoved her way between his legs and demanded attention. Cloister wasn’t sure if it was the fear stink of his nightmare that annoyed her or the fruitless afternoon they’d spent quartering the ground between oak trees in search of something belonging to Drew Hartley.

  Something else they’d missed.

  He let the thought sit for a second and tried it out for size, but it still didn’t feel right. Everyone made mistakes, but he couldn’t see how this one had happened. There was enough of Drew’s scent on the phone that Bon picked it up two hot days after the boy disappeared, but not when it was fresh? And it might have been dark that night, but Cloister had crawled under that fence on his belly. The phone would have been right under his elbow.

  Except what then? If someone planted it, how had they gotten hold of it if Billy wasn’t out there that night? And what was Billy doing that night that he was lying about?

  Bourneville butted his chin with her head and clicked his teeth together with enough force to make his eyes water. Apparently he’d gotten distracted enough to stop paying attention to her. He scratched her ears, shoved her away, and checked his watch.

  Two hours’ sleep. He scrubbed the heel of his hand over his eyes and felt the grit of sand. It was probably more like an hour and a half. He was still tired—his brain felt the way your mouth did after the dentist stuffed it with cotton—but if he went back to sleep, he’d just tip back into the nightmare. He always did, and it was never better the second time around. So he got up instead, swung his leg over Bourneville, and grabbed some clothes.

  “Want to go for a run?” he asked. She thumped the ground with her tail in answer and cocked her head to the side. He grinned at her. “C’mon, then.”

  He shoved the door open and let Bourneville jump down first. Then he sat down on the steps as he pulled on a battered, sandy pair of sneakers. The wind was still up, bowling discarded soda cans and torn paper bags across the trailer park. It was dark but not quiet. A child was squalling somewhere—that dull whine that was in for the long haul—and the dull thump of bass from the stoners’ trailer was like a heartbeat.

  Some of the other deputies gave him shit for living there, and he’d seen the sneer on Javi’s mouth earlier, but it suited him. When you were a lifelong insomniac, the last thing you wanted at night was peace and quiet. Silence just felt like the world taunting you with how well it was sleeping.

  Besides, the only roots he ever had turned out to be poisoned. So he paid rent on a battered old Airstream, and his old kitbag did double duty as a wardrobe.

  He stood up and whistled for Bourneville. She came wriggling out from under the trailer, spiderwebs decorating her ears and a scabby old tennis ball in her mouth.

  “I buy you shit, Bon,” he told her. “Good shit, but you’d rather run around with some thrift-store reject ball? People talk.”

  She grinned at him, her tongue hanging out behind the ball until he laughed. A wave of his hand sent her loping down to the shore. He rolled his shoulders back hard to loosen the muscles and raced her there.

  The dog won.

  CLOISTER HAD spent his life running—into trouble, after dogs, away from whatever was in his nightmares. The mistake people like Bozo the Meth-head made was to think you could outrun your problems. That never worked. The problems always beat you to the finish line. All you could do was run until the biggest problem was whether you were going to puke or come.

  It was puke this time.

  Cloister limped into the tide, his muscles aching from running on the shifting footing of the coarse sand. He scooped up a handful of seawater and swilled it around his mouth. Salt and grit cut the taste of grease and acid, and he spat.

  Behind him Bon rolled enthusiastically, adding elflocks of sand to the salt that matted her fluffy coat. She was going to need a bath.

  Cloister ran for that one minute of exhausted clarity when his brain was empty. Bon ran because she was a dog. But why had Drew Hartley run? Ten-year-old boys didn’t run away from their big brothers, not unless something had already established itself as very wrong in that household.

  The tremble of Lara’s voice replayed in his ear. “He’s been so angry.” But was that how she’d have phrased it before Drew went missing? Once you started to think your child could have done something horrible, everything else they did was warped by association. No one said that Drew was scared of Billy. Annoyed with him, pestering him, but not scared.

  Ten-year-olds drank what their brothers gave them, even if it tasted weird. Ten-year-olds ran after they knew someone wanted to hurt them—not because they thought someone might. The fear of looking stupid had kicked in by then.

  The dread that usually confined itself to his nightmares stretched in the back of Cloister’s brain, making the skin at the nape of his neck prickle clammily. He could guess why, but he didn’t see how a fractured memory made years ago and miles away could help.

  Cloister stood for a second more and stared over the stretch of choppy black water as the tide washed waves in around his knees. He still didn’t think Billy was guilty, but he couldn’t pin that feeling down to a reason.

  The case against Billy had evidence, witness testimony, and a mother’s doubt. He had nightmares and a blurry scene in his head that could be a theory or could be wishful thinking. If it wasn’t his gut, even he’d admit the merits of the case damned Billy.

  “What do you think?” he asked Bourneville as he waded out of the sea. His sneakers were wet. The rough seams rubbed his ankles while the sodden laces trailed in the dirt. “Am I just being soft on the kid, or what?”

  Bourneville scrambled to her feet and shook violently, shedding half a beach of sand and shell. The other half stayed tangled in her fluffy black coat. Her tongue dangled out of her mouth behind what was left of the ball.

  “You’re right.” He walked up the beach to her. There was seaweed in her muttonchops. He picked it out and gave her a scratch under the chin. “We should stick to what we’re good at—finding people and staying up late. Leave the detective work to the guys who have to wear suits.”

  She wagged her tail in agreement and stirred up the sand.

  “C’mon, then,” he said as he hooked his hand in her collar. “Let’s get home and get you rinsed off. Maybe I can grab another hour’s shut eye before I gotta get up.”

  Instead of going back along the beach, following the long jut of headland, Cloister took the narrow path up to the scenic overlook at the road. The narrow dirt path crawled up the steep hill, and dry dirt and shells slid under foot. By the time he reached the potholed oval of tarmac, his sodden sneakers were dry and salt-stiff against his toes as they bent.

  They walked back along the road, and Bourneville stuck obediently to Cloister’s side on the shoulder. Two cars passed them, music blaring and men wearing sunglasses driving. Back at the trailer park, Khaled Hirmiz—a construction worker and neighbor—was swearing quietly at his truck.

  “Problems?” Cloister paused on his way across the plot.

  Khaled looked up, his mouth open to rant, but caught himself as he registered who was talking to him. He shut his mouth and pursed his lips under a week-old moustache. He’d always been uneasy around Cloister since he learned he was a cop, not that Cloister had ever seen him or his small, well-behaved family even litter.

  “No,” Khaled said. He shuffled away from Bourneville as she sniffed around the tires. “Ju
st the kids. They untied all the ropes again. I can do it.”

  Usually that would have been the end of their interaction. Cloister only played mascot when the lieutenant sent him and Bourneville out to schools to be the approachable, fuzzy face of the department. Tonight he lingered and stared at the new plastic sign zip-tied to the pickup.

  Andres and Son Construction

  His brain felt like a car stuck in neutral, revving until it smoked but stuck in one place. The “off” that he needed to pinpoint, to pin down, was right there. He just couldn’t bring it into focus. It hadn’t been Andres, it had been….

  “Deputy?”

  Cloister glanced at Khaled. “Is there a builder in town called Atkins?”

  Khaled frowned and shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He shrugged and hazarded uncertainly, “There’s Utkin, the property developer?”

  That was it. Birdie Utkin.

  Cloister clapped his hand on Khaled’s shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. “That’s been bothering me all day.”

  Cloister left a confused Khaled to finish tying down the equipment in the back of the pickup and loped back to his trailer. Any thought of sleep was gone. Now that he’d worked out what had been bothering him about the case, he needed to work out what it meant.

  That’s if it meant anything. It had been ten years since Birdie Utkin disappeared.

  Chapter Nine

  THERE WAS a half-empty bottle of whiskey sitting on the desk, doing double duty as a paperweight for a stack of photocopied driver’s licenses. The one on top belonged to the Retreat’s owner, Tranquil Reed. Either the removal of his granny-framed glasses or the smudgy ink had taken the genteel sheen off him. He looked ratty and pinched in the photo.

  “What do you want?” Javi asked impatiently as he shoved the office doors shut behind Cloister. “I don’t have the time to coddle you through this investigation. If the evidence is so hard for you to stomach, get taken off the case. You can’t be the only dog cop in town.”