Bone Music

by Rice, Christopher

  His bloodshot, tear-filled eyes cut to the left.

  For the first time, she really surveys her surroundings, surveys this basement of horrors where at least two women lost their lives in a brutal, agonizing way. One wall is dominated by a utility sink and lockable metal supply closets that look like they could survive a bomb blast. To the left, the direction he just looked, are double doors to what looks like a giant walk-in freezer.

  She heads to it, observes the lock, grabs both handles, one in each hand, and pries the doors open with minimal effort. The lock mechanism tears in half and falls to the floor at her feet. A blast of refrigeration hits her. The space is large enough to park a car in. And they’re all in there. All three of them. Elle’s body is still strapped to an operating table just like the one Charley escaped from, but her face is missing.

  Toward the back, what remains of Sarah Pratt and Kelley Sumter sit side by side on a bench. Their missing faces reveal frozen eyeballs staring out from exposed muscles and tendons. But the rest of their flesh is intact. They sit upright, held that way by lengths of wire that secure them to the ceiling overhead. They are something between mannequins and puppets. Still being molded and formed into their final poses, destined perhaps for a rendering similar to the exhibit at the Bryant Center, only for the depraved delight of one man.

  Charlotte is amazed to discover that even in this heightened state she is still capable of tears. That even as she lays her hand gently on Elle Schaeffer’s collarbone, as she wishes the woman some peaceful rest, that Zypraxon in full bloom in her veins does not rid her of grief or pain, for these women, for those who met their end in the Bannings’ root cellar.

  For her mother, who loved “Angel of the Morning.” Who might have patched things up with her father again, if only for her sake.

  She hears him behind her. Coughing, wheezing, struggling to his feet. She knows even as she turns that he’s going to try some pathetic, last-minute defense.

  She also knows that she’s going to kill him.

  He’s yanked the acetone bag from the stanchion; he holds the long rod of steel in his unbroken arm as he runs for her like a gutter drunk trying to scare off the cops. She reaches out and seizes his throat with the gentlest of grips. It’s enough to choke off his air and drive him backward as she walks out of the refrigerator.

  She carries him by his throat to the operating table, slams him to the metal. Carefully straps his unbroken wrist, then realizes she tore through the other strap when she broke free. She secures his ankles instead. He barely manages to catch his breath by the time he realizes he’s restrained.

  “Tell me, Doctor,” she says. “What happens if it’s all got nowhere to go?”

  Goggle-eyed, he stares at her, shaking his head, wheezing, no idea what she’s talking about, until he sees her reach down and slide the large IV port from her arm with the press of one finger against the plastic. She studies the bloody needle briefly; then, with her other hand, she grips his left forearm just above his shattered wrist. There’s enough power in even this light grip to bring his vein pulsing to the surface of his skin.

  She sticks him with the IV, reaches for the cord dangling from the acetone bag. “What happens if the acetone goes in and all your blood and body fluids have nowhere to go? Does it just fill you up, Doctor? Does it fill you with meaning?”

  She’s never seen someone pass out from fear before, but that’s exactly what he does. Nods off like exhaustion’s overtaken him, when really it’s shock. She’s considering ways to wake him up when another man’s voice calls out to her from across the room.

  She looks up, instantly recognizes him from the magazine profile of him she read only days before.

  Cole Graydon.

  He stands at the foot of the staircase. Two bulky men in black windbreakers with military-grade buzz cuts have preceded him into the basement, guns raised. Are they aiming at her or Pemberton or both of them? It’s impossible to tell. Because both men have seen what Cole hasn’t. They’ve seen Kelley Sumter, Sarah Pratt, and Elle Schaeffer.

  “Don’t do that, Charley,” Cole says. “Whatever you’re about to do with that IV, just . . . take a step back from the table so we can talk.”

  “Come closer, Mr. Graydon.”

  “Let’s avoid threats if we can. And please. Call me Cole.”

  “Come closer so you can see what your men are seeing.”

  He complies, leaving the bottom step. When he sees what’s inside the walk-in refrigerator, he goes as still as if a snake were coiled at his feet. The confidence that sparked in his eyes when she first saw him fades. His nostrils flare. She doesn’t delight in his silent, muffled terror, but she thinks maybe it’s just. If he is one of the architects of all this, if, like Dylan, he’s tried to use her past to manipulate her, he should at least have to stand nose to nose with what that past is really made of.

  He turns to face her, trying his best to compose himself. It isn’t working.

  “Come with me, Charley. We have much to discuss.”

  “And this . . . thing?” she asks. “What should I do with him?”

  “We’ll take care of him.”

  “I don’t want him taken care of. I want him dead.”

  “No. No, that’s not true, Charley. You want him to have never killed at all. And that’s not an option. But you’ve done the next best thing. You stopped him.”

  “Now you’re trying to read my mind. Bend me to what you want. Just like Dylan Cody.”

  A flash of something in his eyes when she says Dylan’s name. He’s still so shaken by the scene inside the refrigerator; he can’t hide it from her. But this is different from horror, this feeling that flares bright in his piercing-blue eyes. Hurt, betrayal.

  “I am not just like Dylan Cody.” There’s a tremor in his voice. “And I didn’t want any of this.”

  She believes him.

  Maybe she shouldn’t, but she does.

  “Come with me. We’ll talk. Things will become clearer—I promise.”

  She looks down at Pemberton. So twisted and deformed by terror, agony, and pain as to be almost unrecognizable from the man who strapped her to this very table only moments ago.

  She backs away from the table, rounds its foot, and starts toward Cole and the staircase. Instantly one of Cole’s men aims his gun at Pemberton. The other takes aim at her, even as he sidesteps closer to his partner and the operating table, allowing her to join Cole.

  Cole gestures for her to go first.

  “I could tear you apart,” she says. “You know that, right?”

  “I do. And I trust you not to. Just as I hope you’ll trust me not to do anything to harm you or your men.”

  My men. So he’s reminding me he’s got Marty and Luke, she thinks. So much for avoiding threats.

  She steps forward. Takes the stairs carefully, one at a time. They’re rickety. Too much pressure might punch a hole through them.

  For a moment, she thinks she’s stepping into a quiet house. Pottery Barn furniture; bland hotel-room-ready art on the walls. It’s all a front for the work Pemberton did in the basement; most of the rooms seem as neglected as the vineyard fields beyond the fence. Then she sees the glass doors to the backyard have all burst inward. There’s a regiment of rifles pointed at her from all sides, through every opening, through every possible escape. Helmets, visors, goggles. Black tactical gear, sticking out amid the house’s beige walls and clay pottery like some infestation from an alien world. It all reminds her of the SWAT team that burst from the woods and tore her from Abigail’s arms.

  She isn’t frightened, but she feels numb. Dislocated. As if she’s crossed a barrier into a world trying as hard as it can to deny the existence of the one she just emerged from. There will be order here, the guns of the helmeted men in black seem to say. There will be order and structure and rules. Maybe not laws, exactly. But rules, at least.

  Fat chance, assholes, she thinks.

  Cole walks out from behind her and into the foyer. T
he house’s front door stands open to the driveway. Beyond, more rifles, more men in combat gear, and farther out, impossibly, the giant hulk of a helicopter that’s somehow landed just outside the house’s front fence.

  With each rifle she walks past, with each soldier down in a crouch, ready to fire, the momentousness of what she’s capable of is somehow more apparent to her than it was as she broke Pemberton’s bones. Down there in the basement, the twisted laws of his madness ruled.

  Up here she is a terrifying aberration amid firepower that could have overpowered her only an hour before.

  She follows Cole outside.

  When they reach a fallen section of fence, she sees Luke, Marty, Rucker, and Brasher standing in a huddle off to one side of the driveway, watched over by windbreaker-clad guys like the ones she assumes are taking Pemberton into custody down in the basement right now.

  She stops.

  Cole stops.

  “I’ll bring them to you once we’re done,” he says. “They’ll be safe. I promise you.”

  Luke makes eye contact with her, nods. His expression is stone cold, jaw tense, but the nod’s slight enough to say it’s intended just for her. She figures he’s telling her to do whatever these people have said. Telling her he doesn’t feel like the group’s in any immediate danger if she leaves. She doesn’t know whether or not to trust his judgment. For the first time, she sees the rest of Marty’s crew, the guys who should have been up at the surveillance point. They’re huddled with the group, too. How they got rounded up, she has no idea. But seeing them all together frightens her. Yes, she has strength. Impossible, almost otherworldly strength, but to fight off an army of this size would require coordination and skills well beyond that.

  “Charley?” Cole calls.

  “What do you want from me?” she asks. “Why can’t they come with us?”

  “Because there isn’t room.” He smiles and gestures to the helicopter, as if he’s inviting her to dine with him at an exclusive restaurant. He starts toward her. She feels every man in her vicinity stiffen and raise his weapon by an inch or two. “Charley, do you really think I’m going to try something stupid at two thousand feet with you in your current condition?”

  “You get thirty minutes. If you don’t put me down after thirty minutes, with them, we’ll all get to see how I fare in a crash landing.”

  “Deal.” His smile is bright, confident, as if he’s never seen the horrors in Pemberton’s basement, as if he’s the type of man who’ll be able to stash them away for the rest of his life. Maybe he is.

  There are two other men standing next to the chopper’s open door. The tall bald one radiates a quiet confidence that some of the other men lack, even as they point guns at her. The other is short, bespectacled, and his rigidity and vacant-eyed stare as she approaches could either be terror or a laserlike focus that borders on sociopathy. Or he’s terrified of whatever’s inside the thick briefcase he holds in both arms.

  Cole steps inside the passenger compartment, which she sees is much more spacious than she thought.

  The other two wait for her to go first. The bald one gives her a polite nod as she steps past him, as if she were any other guest. As if this were just another corporate flight on a busy CEO’s calendar.

  Careful not to touch anything, she takes a seat on the leather-upholstered bench seat across from Cole. The engine starts up. The blades spin, slicing the glare cast by the house’s security lights. The other two men pile into the helicopter after her, taking seats on opposite sides of Cole.

  The bald one slides the cargo door shut. Soft golden light fills the cabin from running lights along the roof and the floor. It’s insane, this juxtaposition. The distance she seems to have traveled between one world and another in no more than a few paces.

  Then, suddenly, they’re rising into the air. Her heart lurches as Luke, Marty, and the rest of them disappear under tree cover. As they ascend over the valley, she wonders if the unreality of this, rising into the air this suddenly, watching the house of horrors below shrink down to the size of a child’s dollhouse, will somehow separate her from the nightmares in that basement.

  No, she realizes, but the memory of Pemberton’s sobs will make the nightmares bearable.

  For the first time since liftoff, she looks into Cole’s eyes.

  He introduces the bald man sitting next to him as Ed Baker, his director of security. Ed wisely doesn’t attempt to shake her hand. When it’s clear he’s not going to introduce the shorter guy in spectacles to his left, Charley says, “And who are you?”

  The man just stares at her.

  “This is Mark Hetherington. He’s also with my security team, but he has a background as a registered nurse, and when it’s appropriate and you consent, he’ll take a sample of your blood.”

  Now Cole’s staring at her, too.

  “Will you allow me to do that, Charley? Will you allow me to take a sample of your blood?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  Cole smiles, taps the briefcase Mark now holds on his lap. Mark pops it open. She glimpses thick foam padding with indentations holding several different vials. They look empty, but she can’t be sure. Mark opens up a second compartment within, removes a thick file folder, and hands it to Cole. In turn, he hands it to her.

  “Let start with this,” he says cheerfully. “I think you’ll be very interested in what’s inside.”

  40

  “I’m not really good at flipping pages right now,” she says.

  Her voice sounds like someone else’s—something between a growl and a whisper. They seem to be heading east, toward the Arizona border, over mountainous terrain that will soon yield to the Anza-Borrego Desert.

  The cabin is surprisingly quiet given the size of the rotors overhead: a floating, padded cell.

  Cole reaches across the space between them, presses a button just over her shoulder. A pin-spot light clicks to life, shining a bright halo down on her lap, revealing the bloodstains on her jeans, the loose flaps where Pemberton sliced the legs. Cole’s nose comes within inches of hers as he withdraws. Kissing distance, almost. She’s not sure if he genuinely wants her to read the file, or if he wants to show her he’s not afraid, that he trusts her not to tear his arm off.

  With all the effort she can manage, she opens the file without ripping it in half. Finds herself staring down at a page printed with large side-by-side photographs, one of a toddler-aged boy who strikes her as immediately familiar. The other’s Dylan. The resemblance between the two is undeniable; they share not only Dylan’s sculpted chin but also his relaxed, attentive gaze.

  “I can summarize the contents if you like,” Cole says, “but the file’s yours to keep.”

  She tries to nod but can’t manage it. It’s sinking in suddenly, what the page before her means, and maybe if her veins weren’t enflamed with impossible strength, she’d feel like an idiot for not having seen it sooner.

  Of course Dylan didn’t pick the Saguaro Wellness Center at random. Didn’t even pick Scarlet, Arizona, at random, and now, it’s clear, most certainly didn’t pick her at random. Why didn’t she see it the other night when she was journaling about all the victims? The boy who was whisked off to a foreign country. Given a new life so different from hers. Or so she thought.

  “Lilah Turlington,” she says. “He’s her son.”

  “Yes. The Bannings killed his mother and her boyfriend just like they killed your mother. After their disappearance, he was taken out of the country, given a new identity.”

  “The uncle. The one who works in gas pipelines.”

  “Exactly. Dylan was protected from things you weren’t. But given my experience of him, I don’t imagine it was a very pleasant upbringing.”

  She gently slides the picture page to one side; sees what looks like the records of Dylan’s military service Kayla couldn’t find. References to kills and assassinations with the word CLASSIFIED stamped across the top, which seems pathetic. The word should be red, but
instead it’s black and white, which means these documents are photocopies made by someone who wasn’t supposed to have them. Too dense to read through now. But it’s something. Far more than she expected out of the guy sitting across from her.

  “And what’s your experience of him?” she asks.

  “Dylan was one of my father’s last hires before he passed away. When I became CEO, Dylan came to me with video evidence of animal testing he’d done on a new drug. He’d been trying to advance antianxiety medications beyond what he called the realm of alcohol in a pill. He was searching for a compound that suppressed certain panic responses in the brain that can lead to paralysis and other fear responses he deemed . . . ineffective.

  “Given what I’ve just shown you, it’s not a mystery where this obsession came from. I know you were very young, and I know you weren’t involved in any of their murders, so I’m not sure how much time you spent researching the details of their crimes, the statements Abigail has made in prison.” She nods weakly. “Then you’re probably aware Abigail Banning told authorities and several journalists that Lilah Turlington froze up when they attacked her boyfriend. That they almost bungled it, and there was a moment when she could have got away, maybe even saved Eddie Stevens. But she was paralyzed by the shock of it all. Two perfectly nice people she thought were fellow backpackers sharing a campfire suddenly turning on her boyfriend with a rock. She froze.”

  “Abigail lied about a lot of things.”

  “Even so, the story seems to have had a particular effect on the man we know as Dylan Cody, born Noah Turlington in Asheville, North Carolina.”

  “I knew him as Dylan Thorpe.”

  “Indeed. It’s been hard to keep track of everyone’s name of late.”

  “I only have one, and it’s Charlotte Rowe.”

  Cole smiles nervously, nods. “Of course.”

  “These animal tests. What did they show?”

  “In two hundred of them, Dylan matched prey and predator in a contained environment after dosing the prey subject with Zypraxon. In only five of them did the predator survive.”