He raised his voice. ‘Why was Oren running that crime scene when he was always the prime suspect – the only suspect?’
The woman clearly did not care. Her back was turned to him as she stood before the window with a view of the parking lot. ‘So that’s the famous yellow Rolls-Royce. Was it really owned by Al Capone?’
It was all too apparent that he would have to lead this fool woman by the hand. ‘Oren was the last one to see Joshua alive. I know that for a fact. I’ve interviewed a lot of people in Coventry. Of course that was twenty years ago.’
‘When you were writing a book? Isn’t that what you said?’ She left the window to stand by his chair. ‘A book about murder in a small town, I suppose.’ Not waiting for a response, she pressed on. ‘Well, how prescient. Until recently, Joshua Hobbs was only a missing person. But all those years ago, you decided that he’d been murdered.’ She placed one soft hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s odd. I mean the boy might just as well have died in a fall out in the woods.’
Now he had her attention.
‘I never said my book was about murder. I said it was about a tragedy in a small town. The effect it had on the—’
‘But that’s not your style, is it, dear? You write the gossip behind the headline news, and I think you’re damned good at it. I make a point of reading your column. Call me a fan.’
‘Thank you, but I wasn’t always a gossip columnist. I began my writing career as a serious novelist. Now here ’s another point to consider. Oren’s father was an active judge in those days. And he came from an old California family – lots of money. He could’ve used his influence to get Oren out of town and beyond the reach of the sheriff.’
This information about Henry Hobbs seemed to make no impression on her. She gave him a kindly smile as she sat down behind her desk. ‘A novelist? You don’t say. Well, I thought all your books were nonfiction – true crime. What sort of novels did you write? Murder mysteries?’
Oh, God. He imagined that crime genre must be her idea of literature.
‘I only published one novel,’ he said, teeth on edge. Stupid woman. ‘And it didn’t have a single murder.’ And now he intended to lead her back to the matter at hand, the stuff of his current book. ‘I think it’s obvious that Cable Babitt cooperated – no, he conspired to send Oren away.’
Sally Polk pushed the plate of cookies across the desk. ‘Joshua Hobbs was only fifteen years old.’ Her eyes gleamed with genuine interest. ‘Were there lots of young boys in that old novel of yours?’
Apparently, the sheriff had called ahead to warn his people off. No one took notice of Oren when he entered the private office alone and locked the door behind him. He pulled Cable Babitt’s keys from his pocket and opened the credenza to plunder the man’s files.
The pile of old case folders made less than an hour’s read – a waste of time, mostly rumor and hearsay. William Swahn had done a more thorough job of interviewing the people of Coventry. Oren had already formed an opinion of the sheriff ’s incompetence, but there must be more evidence than this. Turning back to the credenza, he opened the lower drawer to thumb through unrelated files, looking for something out of place, and he found an unmarked red folder.
Revelation.
The sheriff had lied to him about never committing the old alibi statements to paper.
There had been no formal interview with young Isabelle Winston, perhaps because Cable Babitt was, at core, a kind man. The teenager had submitted her four-page story in longhand, a schoolgirl script of curlicues and rampant sex in the deep woods with Oren Hobbs. Its content was the stuff of romance novels and bad movies. The wording described nothing more than a young girl’s lack of experience, and it inadvertently exposed her as a virgin. Twenty years ago, the sheriff had probably slipped this statement into a drawer and smiled as he let her go unpunished for lying.
Oren moved on to alibi number two, a more official document. Evelyn Straub’s statement had been transcribed from a taped interview, only one page of words neatly typed. He recognized her signature below the final line.
EVELYN STRAUB: Usually, I screwed the boy at the hotel. There’s always an empty room to use. There was only one time at the cabin. I never took anyone there for sex. It was special. But that day, I made an exception.
SHERIFF BABITT: Why? I need something I can believe in, Evelyn.
EVELYN STRAUB: Too many birthdays, Cable. I’d just broken every mirror in that cabin. And then I looked through a back window and saw Oren out there on the trail. I needed him. I just needed him.
SHERIFF BABITT: And what about Josh?
EVELYN STRAUB: He went on ahead. He took that old hiking trail that runs past the cabin.
SHERIFF BABITT: So Josh goes up the trail by himself – believing God knows what – and Oren was fine with that?
EVELYN STRAUB: I think Oren stayed with me that day because I was crying. And my feet were bleeding.
She went on to describe the details of her crime: the carnal knowledge of a boy.
To make her lie more credible, Evelyn had told the truth. Except for the mention of Josh, she had perfectly described a memorable day. He recalled those broken mirrors – her fear – the bloody cost of vanity. He had carried her up the stairs to the bedroom so that the broken shards could not cut her soles anymore. After laying her down on the bed, he had washed her bleeding feet and bound the wounds with strips of old sheets. At the end of a day in that bed, their names were still Hey Boy and Mrs Straub. They had seen the moon sail past the bedroom window, and the light of the sun had awakened them in the morning. But he had been sixteen years old on that day, not seventeen. And she had described their first time together – not the last.
A full year would pass before Josh was lost and Oren was banished. On long nights in far-off New Mexico, he had sometimes lain awake and wondered if the mirrors had gone after her again and left her bleeding.
The next page was another interview. Though the sheriff had led him to believe otherwise, apparently William Swahn – another man without an alibi – had made a formal statement.
All of the previous coroners had been funeral directors. Dr Martingale, DDS, was the first dentist ever elected to that county office. At the burial site in the woods, the new coroner posed for a photo opportunity with the press, and he smiled broadly, knowing that fame was only as far away as the dinner hour and the evening news.
The sheriff ’s evidence officer had no need of a dentist’s skills in the excavation of bones, but the reporters had used Dr Martingale as a human shield when they broke through the line of yellow crime-scene tape.
And now, at the request of a cameraman, the coroner obligingly jumped into the grave. ‘More bones,’ he said, holding one high for the camera.
An angry deputy yelled, ‘Get the fuck out of there!’
The press corps salivated. Though the obscenity would be bleeped for the television audience, four-letter words were the finest kind. Cameras whirred and still photographs were snapped as the humiliated Dr Martingale climbed out of the hole.
State troopers arrived en masse to herd reporters back behind the enemy line of the fallen crime-scene tape. The next people to cross the line carried screens and trowels, soft brushes and other tools for unearthing the dead. Reporters identified them as university students and their archaeology professor. The group’s official escort was a gray-haired middle-aged woman in a shapeless flowered dress. ‘Call me Sally,’ said the agent from the California Bureau of Investigation.
A reporter yelled, ‘I thought this case belonged to the County Sheriff ’s Office! Is this a turf war?’
‘Oh my, no,’ said Special Agent Polk in a folksy tone of Perish the thought. ‘We ’re just here to lend a hand.’
The county sheriff was not available for comment. According to his deputies, he had left the scene on a matter of urgent business elsewhere.
Cable Babitt was hard at work in his own backyard. He squatted before the open door of his toolshed, swinging a hammer
and bringing it down on the edge of his shovel – clang – obliterating a distinctive nick, the mark of a grave robber.
When he was done with this chore, he entered the shed and unlocked a tin cabinet. He stood there for a while, eyes adjusting to the poor light, and then he opened the small metal door to expose a most precious object. It had been protected by dusty plastic and darkness these past twenty years. He unwrapped the knapsack. Marred by only a few spots of old dried blood, it was still as green and bright as the day Josh Hobbs had dropped it in the woods.
Where would he hide it now?
FIFTEEN
This time, there was no need to knock. The door was opened before Oren reached the top step of the portico. And now the two men stood face-to-face.
‘Good afternoon,’ said William Swahn, a day late in remembering his manners.
In lieu of a greeting, Oren handed him a twenty-year-old statement made to the sheriff. ‘I don’t want to hear any crap about being railroaded by cops, OK? Your interview was typed from a recording.’ He held up a dusty cassette from that era.
The householder sat down on the marble steps and leaned his cane against a pillar. He held up the sheet of yellowed paper and read the lines:WILLIAM SWAHN: I can’t prove I was home alone that day, can I? I can only tell you that I never had any interaction with Josh.
SHERIFF BABITT: There’s three photographs of you hanging in the Coventry Post Office. The boy took those pictures a year ago.
WILLIAM SWAHN: They’re candid shots. I didn’t pose for them. I wasn’t even aware of those pictures until the postmaster hung them up in the lobby.
SHERIFF BABITT: Then maybe you met Josh at one of Sarah Winston’s birthday balls. I know you attended all of them.
WILLIAM SWAHN: And I usually left early.
SHERIFF BABITT: Josh went to all of them, too. Sarah made him her official ball photographer when he was just ten years old. That kid made a nice piece of change selling pictures to the guests. If you bought one of his prints, I’m sure you’d remember a good-looking kid like that.
WILLIAM SWAHN: You mean pedophile candy, don’t you? At least a hundred children show up at the lodge every year. As far as I know, Josh never took a picture of me at any of the balls.
SHERIFF BABITT: And that’s odd, isn’t it? I searched the boy’s darkroom. I looked at five years of photographs, all the ones he took at the Winston lodge. There’s not one single picture of you at the ball – everyone else in town – but not you. Now I call that strange. You’d think he would’ve caught you in one of those group shots just by accident. So, naturally, I assumed that you bought those pictures from the boy – maybe the negatives, too. You see why I can’t let go of the idea that you met him, talked to him, maybe did a little business with him?
Oren leaned down to point at the margin note in Cable Babitt ’s handwriting: I thought the man was going to wet his pants.
Swahn smiled as he read this line. ‘I believe that was wishful thinking on the sheriff ’s part. As I recall, I declined to answer any more questions without my attorney present.’
The elevator descended to the parlor floor with its passenger and a storage carton.
‘I couldn’t defend myself to the sheriff – not without giving up Miss Rice as my client.’ Swahn opened the cage door and nudged the box out with one foot. ‘That ’s all of them. Your housekeeper gave me the contact sheets so I wouldn’t have to develop all the negatives. That ’s why the sheriff never saw them. Babitt only saw the pictures that were made into full-size prints.’ He rummaged through a drawer and pulled out a magnifying glass. ‘You’ll need this.’
Oren opened the cardboard carton and pulled out stacks of glossy paper, each one filled with miniature photographs the size of postage stamps. He had watched his brother make these sheets by laying strips of negatives on the paper, side by side, and then exposing the lot with a burst of light. Circles of a red wax pencil highlighted images chosen for the labor-intensive process of making eight-by-ten prints. ‘Josh never wanted anyone to see these. Ninety percent of his shots were rejects. I thought he destroyed all the contact sheets.’
Swahn sat on the floor beside the box and picked up a sheet of twenty small images. ‘This one has shots from a birthday ball.’ He turned it over to show Oren a list of names in Josh’s handwriting. ‘And these are the guests who ordered prints from your brother. You’ll find me in some of these group shots, but none of my pictures are circled in red. Josh never made them into full-size prints, and why would he? I never ordered one. For the last time, Mr Hobbs – until the day he disappeared, I didn’t even know your brother was alive.’
Oren knew that some of the uncircled shots had been printed. But Swahn had not been the customer, though the man figured prominently in a picture marked by the indent of Sarah Winston’s fingernail. This was how the lady had chosen the photographs she wanted to buy, and then she and Josh would always argue over her selections.
Once, Oren had accompanied his brother to the frame shop where Mrs Winston was waiting. Josh had wanted moral support for a fight he could never win. That day could have gone worse. Fortunately, the shop’s owner had been in the back room when Josh dived between Horatio and Mrs Winston, waving his arms, dancing and dodging to block the dog’s every avenue of assault on her by drool or tongue licking.
‘Hey! Settle down!’
In a happy accident of timing, the dog had chosen that moment to lie down on the floor.
Mrs Winston was Josh’s patron. He would have killed Horatio to save her from a slobbering. On that long-ago morning, Josh had handed her the chosen print, saying, ‘You know it ’s not the best one.’
‘Yes, dear, I know that. But it ’s the one I want.’
That time, Josh had a plan to defeat her. He pulled another envelope from his knapsack and gave it to her.
This second photograph delighted her. ‘Oh, this is beautiful. Really first-rate.’
‘It’s the best work I’ve ever done.’
‘Well, I want this one, too. I’ll buy it from you right now.’
‘No, it’s free,’ he said. ‘Just give me back the other one.’
In the end, Mrs Winston had beaten him in her very charming way. She had so gracefully worn the boy down and won both photographs – and crushed him. Josh had been forced to bear many compliments on the second picture, the good one, and he was made to accept a check for an outrageous amount, the most he had ever earned for one print. But Josh cared so little for money. He had only wanted to get back the bad photograph – so that he could destroy it.
When the two brothers and the dog left the shop that day, even Horatio had been subdued, sensing Josh’s loss.
Oren wished that he had paid more attention to that transaction in the frame shop. But now he had a second chance. He went through all of the contact sheets for the birthday balls and looked for the indents of Mrs Winston’s fingernails beneath the small images.
He found five, one for each ball, and all of them pictured William Swahn’s face in the crowd. One other guest was featured in each of these shots, and now he understood what had eluded his brother for years: These two faces in one photograph were key to the lady’s selections.
‘Swahn? How well do you know Mavis Hardy?’
It was a rare day when the sheriff visited the County Coroner’s Office, a small building between an electronics store and a coffee shop. In a quiet county with a low crime rate, there were few occasions that might call him here. This late afternoon, he had arrived before the appointed hour.
After a long talk with a title company, he knew jurisdiction was dicey. The gravesite was on private land, but Evelyn Straub had suckered the state into a lease of mineral rights that had not panned out. And now he was in a contest for the bones.
His adversary, the CBI agent, drove her black Taurus into the parking space next to his jeep. It was said that a man could be judged by the caliber of his opponents. If this was true, then Cable Babitt was insulted. Special Agent Sally Polk step
ped out of her car, and the wind whipped up the hem of a flowery dress. It was the sort of thing she might wear to a meeting of the garden club. Also, he had to wonder what kind of woman was too lazy to dye the gray out of her hair.
And the answer?
He decided that, unlike himself, she was not at all anxious about holding on to her job in the California culture of youth. And that stupid dress was another sign that she must be good. This woman didn’t care one whit about her public image. Sally Polk slipped a purse strap over one shoulder and headed for the entrance, indistinguishable from any matronly civilian who had business with the coroner.
The race was on.
Cable was first to the door, but he did not pause to hold it open for her. Hell no. Chivalry was dead, dead, dead. He let the door swing shut behind him to slow her down a pace. He smiled, as if scoring a point that might help him hold on to his double homicide. And he had another game point in his pocket. The county coroner was nothing so grand as a pathologist, and whatever Dr Martingale imparted to the CBI agent would be useless.
Down the hall they went, the sheriff in his footrace with the state’s investigator. The woman, unhurried, lagged farther behind. Cable slowed his steps, aiming to effect a mosey when he entered the refrigerated back room.
A stainless steel table was laid out with two incomplete skeletons, but all the major bones had been accounted for between the mountain grave and Joshua Hobbs’s coffin. An overhanging lamp bathed the remains in light so bright that the stains from the earth were washed away. These people might have been flayed of flesh only this morning.
The CBI agent had caught up to him. Sally Polk stood by his side, offering him a hello nod and a smile. And now the unthinkable happened. Dr Martingale stood back from the table and introduced him to a celebrity anthropologist from San Francisco, a white-haired man, tall and thin – who needed no introduction to the CBI agent. They seemed to know each other quite well.
Bone by Bone Page 15