Bone by Bone

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Bone by Bone Page 31

by Carol O'Connell


  Addison never heard the barefoot steps behind him; he heard the clink of ice cubes in Sarah’s glass as she entered the circular room.

  The lawyer’s smile was in place.

  Showtime.

  He turned around to face his wife, who seemed startled to find him in her sanctuary at this time of night. ‘So Belle is gone?’

  ‘Yes.’ She closed her robe and belted it in an act of modesty, as if they had never been married, never shared a bed. Sarah tilted her head to one side, regarding him as a stranger here in Birdland, this other country at the top of the house. She took a long draught of her whiskey glass, draining it as she sank down in a chair.

  ‘I’m not surprised that Belle left in such a rush.’ Addison uncapped a bottle he had discovered tucked behind the journals on the bookshelf. He leaned down to pour more whiskey into her glass. ‘You’ll need this. Someone we know has been digging behind the stable.’ He picked up his wife’s hand and kissed it. ‘Belle found Josh’s camera.’ He stared down at his wife ’s shattered eyes, and he caressed her face with one hand. ‘Don’t worry. She put it back in the hole and covered it up again. What a good girl. She ’d never have done that to protect me.’

  Sarah shook her head, unable to make sense of this. And then she closed her eyes. She understood.

  ‘That ’s right,’ said Addison. ‘Belle knows you’re the one who buried that camera. I can only imagine what ’s going through her mind right now. Maybe she’s thinking that I’m not the only monster in Birdland.’

  William Swahn held the binoculars to his eyes and watched Addison feed more booze to his wife. This could be construed as the slow poisoning of an alcoholic, nothing as graphic as battering, but just as deadly. Sarah was clearly pained by something her husband was saying.

  William did not underestimate the killing power of words.

  The telephone rang, and he knew who the caller would be before he picked up the receiver. ‘Hello, Belle . . . Are you crying? . . . Yes, I’m watching her now.’

  By their poor connection, he realized that Isabelle was calling from a cell phone, and that would place her well outside the town. ‘Where are you? . . . You’re leaving? . . . What about the maid? Is she still in the house?’

  The call ended in the middle of a word, and he guessed that Belle’s cell phone had failed her in this corner of the world where wireless lines of communication were hit and miss.

  He resumed his watch on the tower room. Though he disliked the idea of spying, a promise was a promise. He had never been able to say no to Isabelle.

  Sarah was more pliant when she was drunk, and Addison almost preferred her this way. When he took her hand, she obediently rose from the chair. How he loved her – he loved her to death. He led her to the sliding door that opened onto the deck.

  The night was warm and all the winged rats had gone to sleep – so quiet now, only the soft applause of leaves slapping one another as the wind rushed through them. Man and wife were about to pass through the open door when Addison turned to the opposite wall of glass and smiled for his audience, the watcher in the dark. He waved.

  William Swahn was startled – a voyeur caught in the act. He watched Addison kiss his wife. It appeared that the man was sucking air and life from Sarah’s body. She went limp and staggered onto the deck, supported by her husband’s arm about her waist. The two of them disappeared behind a solid portion of the circular wall.

  This stroll in the sky would certainly make their watcher anxious, and so Addison was slow to lead his wife around to that part of the deck that could be seen from Swahn’s window. The lawyer, a showman and consummate actor, delighted in dragging out the other man’s tension. As they walked, he said to Sarah, ‘I saw you bury the camera . . . and the Hobbs boy.’

  She stopped, but failed to make a stand.

  He led her onward, for they could not keep Swahn in suspense all night. Around the deck they went, and now they were in full view of the house on Paulson Lane. It was time to jack up the fear in Sarah’s eyes. ‘When I borrowed one of your journals – I needed the sketches for the ice sculptors to copy – I couldn’t help but notice that some of them were missing from the shelf. They covered the year when Josh died. Did Belle take them with her by any chance?’

  ‘No.’ Sarah turned her head toward the ocean view, perhaps looking there for inspiration. And she found it. Her eyes were too bright when she turned back to him, saying, ‘I threw those books into the sea.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Did he believe her? Of course not. But he had read every one of her birder logs and pronounced them all insanely delusional. ‘So you just tossed them off a cliff. Now why couldn’t you have done that with Josh’s camera? Why drag it home and bury it behind the stable? What were you thinking?’

  Was that the day your mind snapped?

  Easier to recall that night when he had lain awake, waiting for his wife to come to bed. He remembered the sliver of light under their bedroom door. He had seen the shadows of her footsteps pausing there, then moving on to make her bed elsewhere.

  Dating back to early days at eastern boarding schools, Isabelle Winston had spent most of her life grieving over a death that had not happened yet. And tonight she was still longing for a ghost mother who had not yet – not entirely – died.

  The limousine driver pulled into the local airport. The commuter plane could be seen near the small building that passed for a terminal. Soon the aircraft would be loading passengers bound for San Francisco and connecting red-eye flights to points all over the world.

  The ticket to ride was in her hand.

  Every time she left her mother, all but pushed out the door, Isabelle felt the same sense of fear; it always escalated to panic when she saw these airport lights. And each time she had reached a distant shore, all she had ever wanted was to go home again.

  A lifetime of longing.

  Enough.

  She leaned toward the driver and said, ‘Take me back!’

  Addison took Sarah’s hand and twirled her in the turn of a waltz step until she was dizzy and in danger of falling. ‘I know you still have that photograph of you and Swahn.’

  She could only stare at him.

  He prompted her recall. ‘It’s been a while – more than a quarter of a century. The picture was taken back in LA – at a graduation ceremony for police cadets.’

  Sarah nodded. ‘I ordered that print from the photographer. When it came in the mail, I showed it to you. And you knew I was going—’

  ‘To see an old friend. So you said. The boy in that photograph was barely twenty-one – hardly an old friend, Sarah.’

  He held her at arm’s length, and together they whirled around the deck, faster and faster, in and out of the sights of Swahn’s binoculars. They stopped once again to stand on that portion of the deck overlooking Paulson Lane. Still in the dancing mode, Addison dipped his partner over the rail, her long hair dangling, her face contorted in fear. He turned his head to smile for the man who sat in the dark.

  ‘Yes!’ William Swahn yelled at the civilian aide who had answered the phone at the sheriff ’s office. ‘Yes, it’s a damned emergency!’

  ‘I don’t think I like your tone.’ The girl’s voice was painfully young and slightly bruised. ‘Why didn’t you call nine-one-one?’

  ‘The operator would ’ve sent a deputy from Saulburg. The sheriff ’s house is right here in Coventry.’ But Cable Babitt’s home telephone was unlisted. ‘You have to call him and—’

  ‘What is the nature of the emergency?’

  Oh, bloody Christ. He imagined her reading lines from a script. He gripped the telephone receiver tighter, and he was calmer when he said, ‘Call the sheriff ’s house. Tell him I think Ad Winston is going to murder his wife.’

  ‘You think he’s gonna—’ The girl paused for a second or two. There was sarcasm in her voice, a touch of payback when she said, ‘So no one’s been injured. You just think somebody might kill his wife.’

  William yelled, ‘Tell him!


  ‘You kept that photograph all these years,’ said Addison Winston.

  Sarah turned away from her husband and gripped the rail, off balanced by dancing and liquor, dizzy and sick. ‘I told you about the graduation ceremony. I always told you about every hour of my day – where I went, who I spoke to.’

  Behind his wife’s back, ever mindful of their audience, Addison mimed the act of stabbing Sarah with a knife. For his next performance piece, he left her standing at the rail, holding on tight. He flattened up against the glass wall, and then, with both hands raised, as if to push her off the deck, he rushed forward, stopping short of touching her back. He lowered his hands and laughed out loud, imagining that he could hear Swahn screaming in the distance – in the dark.

  Yet his voice was tender as he stood behind Sarah, holding her by the shoulders and nuzzling the soft skin of her neck. ‘I know you kept one of his letters, too.’

  She turned around to face him, uncomprehending. ‘What letters? There was only—’

  ‘Only one left. I know. I suppose you burned the others, but this one was special. Every now and then, I dig it out of your keepsake box and read it again. All these years later, I still find it very powerful. I can understand why you kept that one.’

  He stepped back a pace to regard his wife. So this was what a stunned cow looked like after it had been hit between the eyes with a baseball bat – the prelude to slaughter.

  Taking Sarah in his arms, Addison danced her past the open door. Her bedside telephone rang, and the answering machine played a message from a man in deep distress, an anguished paramour pleading for Sarah to come indoors. ‘Hold on!’ Swahn yelled from the little box. ‘I’m coming! I’m on the way!’ On this note of hysteria, the call ended.

  Perfect.

  William Swahn stepped out of the elevator cage and crossed the room to another telephone for one more call. Once he reached the lodge, he would be helpless. Its grand staircase was insurmountable for a man with a ruined leg that could not support him in a climb to anywhere.

  His mere presence in the house might be enough to end the madness, but he could not count on that. William made a call for help from another quarter, spending precious seconds to listen to a tape recording telling him that there was no one there to hear him, no one home. He left a message and then limped toward his front door. Haste caused him pain.

  His pills were upstairs on the desk in his study. No time to get them.

  He left the house hobbling, aching.

  Addison held her very close. ‘I followed you the night you dug up the boy’s skull. Why did you have to do that? Guilt, Sarah? After all these years? Everything was going so well. But now you and Swahn are becoming more unstable every day. He’s putting it all together. If he doesn’t know already, he’ll figure out that you were the cause of his mutilation. Well, you can see what you’ve done.’

  Sarah was looking down at the headlights rushing along Paulson Lane.

  ‘He’s coming,’ said Addison. ‘Almost here.’ He wrapped both her hands around the deck rail. ‘Don’t go anywhere without me.’ He gently turned her face to his and softly kissed her lips. ‘I’d love to stay and dance all night, but I have to go downstairs and greet our guest.’

  Father and son walked up the driveway, and the yellow stray trotted ahead of them. Henry Hobbs was in good spirits and slightly tipsy when he tossed another stick, and the dog fetched it back. ‘Remember doing this with old Horatio?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Oren. ‘Those sticks kept whizzing past him. He never figured out what they were for.’

  The judge ’s happiness was complete. Fine wine and a warm summer night – these things were truly gifts, and best of all was a walk down a country road with his son. He held his watch up to the light of the porch and squinted at the dial. ‘Hannah should’ve been home by now. I’d better go inside and check the answering machine.’

  ‘Give her a little more time.’ Oren leaned down to scratch the stray dog behind the ears. ‘She must’ve been the designated driver for half the town tonight.’

  ‘Well, Hannah does love to drive.’

  ‘Odd that she never got a driver’s license . . . but she’d have to produce a birth certificate to get one.’ Oren stood with his back to the porch, taking advantage of deep shadow to conceal his face. The judge was exposed, lit by a yellow bug light glowing brightly.

  Oren sat down on the bottom step. ‘You still pay her wages in cash, right? I always wondered where Hannah kept her money. I know she can’t put it in the bank. She ’d need a Social Security number to open an account.’

  This posed an unsettling problem. There were rules to be observed, and Oren was breaking them with impunity. Henry Hobbs had invented this game to teach his boys the art of conversation, instructing them not to trivialize it by injection of the obvious. Oren was taking the contest to a new level, using lost points for bait.

  The judge threw up his hands, feigning confusion and misunderstanding. ‘Don’t you worry about Hannah. She ’s well provided for in my will.’ He clapped his son on the back as he moved past him to climb the porch stairs.

  Turnabout.

  Now it was Oren’s face that was bathed in light, and there was grave suspicion there. ‘Without any kind of identification, I wonder how she’s going to prove that she’s Hannah Rice – so she can collect from your estate.’

  Henry Hobbs forced a smile. ‘You’re my executor, boy. You won’t have any problem identifying her.’

  ‘Won’t I? I don’t even know if Hannah’s her right name – and neither do you.’

  In his haste – as much haste as a cripple could manage – the late-night visitor dispensed with the custom of knocking. The great oak door to the lodge swung open, and the man entered the foyer walking ungainly, almost comic with his awkward limp.

  Addison paused half the way down the staircase to lean against the banister. ‘Good evening . . . again.’

  Swahn advanced on him, hobbling, listing to one side, and every step threatened to tip him over. He came to a halt at the bottom of the staircase. ‘Where is Sarah?’

  ‘William, my wife is too tired for any more entertaining tonight. I’ll give her your regards.’

  Swahn shouted, ‘Sarah, I’m here!’

  ‘Stop!’ Addison held up one hand in the manner of a traffic cop. ‘Keep your voice down. My wife is quite drunk. I don’t think she could handle these stairs any better than you. We don’t want her to fall and break her neck, do we?’

  Swahn placed one foot on the bottom step. The weight on his bad leg caused a wince of pain. He was slow to gain the next step, and the next.

  ‘Well, I can see this might take a while.’ Addison danced past him down the stairs. There was time enough to enter the front room and fill two glasses at the caterer’s bar. When he returned to the foyer, Swahn had fallen. Reduced to crawling, he had abandoned his cane to drag himself up four more steps.

  ‘Good job,’ said the lawyer. ‘Only forty to go.’ He bent down and offered Swahn one of the glasses, but he was rebuffed. ‘No? None for you? Ah, well.’ He settled one champagne flute on the carpet beside the crawling man. ‘Just in case you get thirsty.’

  Six steps above his guest, Addison sat down to watch the man’s slow, painful progress. ‘I can see that you’re still totally preoccupied with my wife. Have you figured out Sarah’s part in the death of Joshua Hobbs?’

  Swahn’s brow was beaded with the sweat of exertion. He gave up his struggle and laid his head on one arm. ‘That’s insane.’

  Addison tipped back his glass, then wiped his lips. ‘I know you met with Sarah in the woods every Saturday at precisely twelve noon.’

  ‘That never happened.’

  ‘Don’t interrupt.’ Addison lightly stepped down the staircase to retrieve the cane that had been left behind as dead weight. He raised it over his head and brought it down on the man’s back. Swahn moaned.

  The lawyer resumed his smile, always a gracious host. ‘I even know wh
ere the two of you met. With a telescope, I could always find Sarah’s car on that bald section of the mountain. Of course, she knew I’d be watching, but you were cagey, William. You must’ve parked your own car under the trees – that turnout close to the clearing – easier to hobble into the woods from there.’

  ‘You’re deluded.’

  This time, Addison had only to raise the cane, and his well-trained guest fell silent.

  ‘One day, I decided to catch Sarah in the act. Hours before my wife left the house, I set out on foot. I took the old hikers’ trail. Not far past Evelyn’s cabin – that’s where the bodies were. I had no use for the woman’s corpse, but that dead boy was a gift. Sad, really. Poor Sarah had so few friends – just you and her little protégé, the fledgling photographer.’

  ‘You killed Josh?’

  ‘That has nothing to do with my story.’ Addison brought the cane down on Swahn’s hand. The blow was hard enough to break the skin and, hopefully, a few bones as well, but the man did not cry out.

  A small disappointment.

  ‘Pay attention, William. I dragged the boy’s corpse up the trail to the clearing, and then I went to work on his face with a pocketknife. Sarah and I had a lack of communication in those days. So this was how I talked to my wife, through mutilation.’

  ‘Like mine?’ Swahn raised himself up to lean upon one arm, and his fingers lightly grazed his old scar. ‘The woman they found in Josh’s grave – was that the missing dispatcher from LA? Is that why you—’

 

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