Bone on Bone:

by Julia Keller

  He made a great deal of money but his travel schedule was brutal, unyielding; he was rarely home for more than a few days at a time. Bell had found herself wondering if all that travel was strictly necessary—or if Rex had simply been unable to bear watching his family unravel.

  Because that was what had happened, even if he hadn’t been around to witness it. This was where it had all been heading: to a bleak October morning, minutes before his world was destroyed.

  “Talk to us about what?” Rex said. He sounded weary, not cross. “As you can see, we’re moving. Heading to Pennsylvania. This has been such a traumatic time. We can’t stay here in this neighborhood. With all that’s gone on. Please—please, just let us go.”

  Bell glanced at Sandy. The woman stood a few feet away from her husband. Her face wore the stunned, vacant expression of the recently bereaved. She’d put down her suitcase and now she simply stood there, arms at her sides, her eyes watering from the cold.

  “Let us go,” Rex repeated. “Please.”

  “Sandy,” Bell said, shifting her focus. “I know why you confessed to killing Brett Topping. I know who you were trying to protect. And I understand about wanting to take care of the people you love. Somebody did that for me, too. A long time ago. Somebody tried to get between me and the terrible thing I’d done.”

  “No.” Sandy spoke in a soft whisper. “No.”

  “You have to tell the truth, Sandy.” Bell moved a step closer to her. “You know what has to happen here.”

  Sandy bristled and shrank back, as if Bell were an assailant, bent on serious harm.

  In a sense, that’s exactly what I am, Bell thought.

  “Sandy,” Bell went on, “we know. We know about Sara and what she did. And we know how you tried to take the blame on yourself. You were willing to go to prison for her. You were going to do that, weren’t you? For your daughter. Because you love her.”

  “Yes,” Sandy whispered.

  “When did you find out?” Bell asked. “When did you first know that Sara had killed Brett Topping? How did you—”

  Sara’s harsh voice crashed through the drifting web of soft voices.

  “This is bullshit! Total bullshit!’” she declared. “Dad, let’s go. Come on. Mom—shut the hell up! We don’t have to talk to these people. They’re nothing. Mom, just keep going. Get in the car.”

  Sandy’s face made an infinitely slow turn toward her daughter.

  “Sara,” she said.

  Sara must have seen something in her mother’s eyes—a hopelessness, a quiet surrender to the inevitable—because she became even more combative. “Mom, do you hear me? This is complete and utter bullshit. You know me. What these people are saying is just—”

  “Yes, my darling,” Sandy said, interrupting her but in a gentle way, her serenity in vivid contrast to her daughter’s agitation. “I do know you. It breaks my heart, but I do. I know what you’re capable of. Somehow I knew right away, even before I found the gun in your room. The moment I heard about Brett, I knew. God help me, but I knew. It just took me a few days to figure out what I had to do.”

  Rex blundered toward his wife, reaching out a hand for her.

  “Sandy,” he said. He was a baffled, stricken man. “What are you talking about? This is our daughter. She couldn’t have—”

  “Oh, Rex,” Sandy said. Her voice was pitched low, with sorrow spreading to every corner of it. “You know, too. You’ve always known, sweetheart. In your heart, you know. It’s both of them, Rex. Both of our children. Our beautiful babies. Both of them are gone now.”

  Sara was almost shrieking. “I swear—if you two don’t shut up, I’m going to—”

  “Going to do what, Sara?” Tyler said. “What are you going to do? Shoot them? Kill them like you killed my dad?”

  “Come on, Tyler,” Sara said. “You can’t believe any of this bullshit, either.” She waved dismissively at Bell. “Who is this bitch, anyway? You and me—we’re friends. We’ve been friends forever, right?”

  “If it’s not true,” Tyler said calmly, “then show us what’s in your backpack.”

  Bell would always wonder if, in that moment, Sara had considered making a run for it. The Range Rover was right there. The keys were in the ignition. Bell and Tyler would’ve lunged to stop her, of course, but the lawn was slippery with frost; it would take them a second or so to gain traction. Perhaps her parents would have tried to stop her, too, but Sara was young and fast.

  Chances are, she would have made it to the vehicle. Backed frantically down the driveway. In three turns she’d be on the interstate, heading … anywhere. Anywhere but here.

  But she didn’t do that. Maybe, Bell thought, Sara was just tired. Tired of her life. If she wanted to see where her life was heading, all she had to do was think about her brother, Alex. Or Tyler—Tyler as she thought she knew him. Just another addict in a grubby gray sea of addicts.

  Or maybe what stopped her was the sight of her mother’s face, the skin stretched tightly over the bones, the grief easy to spot in her eyes. Sara was looking at that face now. It was the face of the woman who had confessed to a murder she didn’t commit, just to protect her. The face of the woman who’d been willing to go to prison for her.

  Bell slipped out her cell and pressed 911.

  “It’s not your fault, Mom,” Sara said. “None of it. It’s—it’s this place. This damned town. There’s nothing to do here, okay? Except get high. Except get so completely fucked up that you don’t care anymore. About anything. And before you know it, that’s all you’re doing. Getting fucked up, every chance you get. But you’ve got to pay for it somehow, right? Come up with the cash? Because they don’t give it away for free.” Her voice was harsher now. Her eyes went to Tyler. “You thought you were pretty smart, didn’t you? Working for Deke Foley. Well, guess what? Deke Foley thinks you’re a joke. He laughs at you. You’re a fucking amateur, okay? You and Alex, both. I’m the one he counts on.” She folded her hands into fists. “And then—and then your dad had to start his stupid file. He didn’t know who he was messing with. Fucking dumbshit.” The wave of anger passed. She looked back at her mother again. “Before you know it, you don’t have a choice anymore. You just don’t.”

  Sara shrugged off her backpack, letting it drop to the ground. She went down on one knee. Unzipped it.

  “No, sweetheart,” Sandy whispered. Her instinct was still to protect her child, even now that it was too late. “Wait. Don’t. Don’t show them anything. You don’t have to. They can’t make you.” A sob. “I’ve lost Alex. I can’t lose you, too.”

  “It’s too late, Mom,” Sara said. Her voice was matter-of-fact. “It was too late a long time ago.”

  She pulled out the contents, one by one:

  A black ski mask, black gloves, a black turtleneck, black slacks, black boots.

  And a gun.

  They would perform the requisite ballistics tests, but Bell knew what they would find: It was the gun that had killed Brett Topping.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Ellie was back in the doll room. It was time. Time to write a note to her son that would lay it all out, detail by detail. It would be messy—her thoughts were like leaves blown around in the wind, with no pattern—but there were things she needed to explain, to clarify. And yes: to justify.

  So that he would understand her. So that he wouldn’t despise her.

  She had been very surprised when Tyler called a few minutes ago and told her about Sara Banville. He was on his way back to the police station. The deputies had arrested Sara. So that’s what the commotion had been, all the fuss and confusion at the end of this long street with its pretty homes and its pristine yards.

  There had been no sirens, but Ellie had heard the heavy rumble of the SUVs. When she parted the curtains at her bedroom window, she saw that the vehicles were black, with the county seal on their sides.

  So that was it. Tyler had explained things to her: Sara had been working for Deke Foley. They all had worke
d for him, from time to time; everybody ended up working for Deke Foley, because it was the only way to keep getting drugs. Alex, Tyler, Sara. And so many others.

  But Sara—Sara had fallen under his spell. It wasn’t just to pay for her drugs.

  Sara had shot Brett. Because he had dared to threaten Deke Foley with that file of his. And Sara was also the one who, hours later, held a gun on the janitor at the bank so that she could search Brett’s office. She knew she was in the file: all the dates and times she had picked up drugs from Foley to sell.

  Which meant that Brett had known about Sara. And all the others, too. The entire operation, all spelled out. What a burden he had carried. All that knowledge. The pain of it, the disappointment.

  They still hadn’t found the file.

  Oh, Brett, Ellie thought. Where did you hide it? Why didn’t you tell me where you—

  And then she realized that, no, of course he wouldn’t have done that. Knowing the location of the file would have put her at risk.

  Dear Tyler, she wrote.

  She heard someone coming up the stairs.

  “Brett?” she whispered.

  No. It couldn’t be him.

  It couldn’t be him because he was dead. And even though she wasn’t the one who had killed him, she had intended to kill him—which was the same thing as if she had killed him. Wasn’t it?

  She had contemplated killing Brett because she had to save him from more disappointment.

  If she couldn’t kill her son—and she’d tried, but she couldn’t—then she would kill her husband.

  But someone had beaten her to it.

  * * *

  False alarm, Ellie realized. No one was coming up the stairs. There was only silence, a soothing quietness that felt like a blanket that some well-intentioned stranger had arranged over a nervous world, tucking in the sides.

  She finished her letter to Tyler:

  Once a week, I drive up to Charleston and I put a basket of fresh flowers on Henry’s grave. I don’t think I ever told you about that. Brett knew. And he understood. He knew how much I loved Henry. Sometimes your father offered to come with me to the cemetery but I always said no. I want to be there alone so I can remember Henry.

  When I went that day, I took the gun.

  I wanted to make sure—this time—that I had the gun with me. Other times, when I have needed it, I didn’t have it. I had to be sure. So that if Brett and I arrived home at the same time, I would have it.

  My plan was to kill him. And then I would kill myself. And we would be together, and we would be free. And happy.

  But I changed my mind. As I stood in front of Henry’s grave that day and I thought about what a good, gentle man my brother was, I realized how disappointed he would be. If he knew what I was thinking. What I was planning. I stood there for many, many hours, remembering Henry’s face and the sound of his laugh.

  I could not do it. I didn’t want the gun anymore, either. All these thoughts of killing—no. They were wrong. All wrong.

  So I pushed the gun into the basket of flowers. Put it real deep. Down under all that dirt. No one would find it there. Who would ever look in a flower basket for a gun?

  I drove home. It was very late.

  I turned into our street and saw him. My beloved Brett. Shot to death.

  I was surprised when Sandy Banville confessed. And now it seems like she didn’t do it, after all. Now you tell me that it was Sara Banville, not her mother, who killed Brett.

  Is there no end to the pain of this world?

  I had every intention of killing your father. I wanted to save him. And wanting to kill is the same thing as killing. Wanting to is the same as doing.

  I have to go now.

  I hope you find your way, Tyler, through this wilderness you find yourself in. Like the boy Sam in My Side of the Mountain. He came home again. And so can you.

  Love forever,

  Mom

  Ellie folded over the piece of paper. To her surprise, she’d filled up both sides.

  She placed it on the small writing table. She had brought up a glass of water from the kitchen and now she drank it, very slowly, and methodically she took all the pills that the doctor had given her in the wake of her husband’s death. A month’s supply.

  She was getting sleepy now. She leaned her head back. Morning sunlight was filling up the doll room, and everything was so bright. She closed her eyes. She felt something warm touching her face. She knew it was the sun but she pretended, for the last few seconds of her life, that it was Brett.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Rhonda Lovejoy sat down at her desk. She faced her visitors.

  The prosecutor’s office was awash in the powerful scent of freshly brewed French roast, an uppercut of an aroma that could spin your head around and maybe even knock you off your feet.

  But there was a catch: Rhonda had run out of mugs.

  She always tried to keep the supply of assorted cups washed and sparkling. But it had been an exceptionally busy few days. And so the dirty mugs had accumulated next to the coffeemaker, congregating in a grubby little club alongside the crusty spoons and empty Splenda packets.

  “Word of warning,” Rhonda said. “We’re all out of clean cups.”

  “Clean cups?” Bell said. “Half the flavor comes from the buildup of old coffee over the years. You’re ruining everything with this misguided clean-cup fetish.”

  Rhonda laughed. “Okay, then. Help yourselves. Just don’t say you weren’t warned. And not a word to the county health department.”

  They had all taken their seats as if they’d been preassigned: Bell and Sheriff Harrison in the two chairs facing Rhonda’s desk, Jake on the right side of the desk, Nick on the sofa.

  “So as you all know, Sara Banville was taken into custody this morning,” Rhonda said. “Her mother will be facing obstruction of justice charges for failing to report what she knew about her daughter’s crimes.”

  “But you still haven’t found that file,” Nick said.

  “No.” Rhonda picked up a pencil. She tapped the eraser end lightly against the desktop. “Frankly, I’m not sure we ever will.”

  “Damned shame,” the sheriff muttered. “That information could’ve put Deke Foley permanently out of business. Done a better job of it than his car accident—which, I’m sad to report, he seems to be rapidly recovering from. Doctors over at Bulger County Hospital say he might be released in another few weeks. Then he’ll surely be back to his old drug-dealing ways. Can you beat that?”

  “Maybe we can slip a few bucks to his physical therapists,” Jake said. “Have them go extra-hard on him. They sure as hell never let up on me. I used to call the PT room the medieval torture chamber. You know what they said when they heard that? They said, ‘Don’t tempt us, buddy. We can make it a lot worse.’”

  Bell stood up. She was too restless to sit.

  “Appreciate the update, Rhonda,” she said, “but if there’s nothing else—”

  “There is.” Rhonda let the pencil drop. She leaned forward at her desk, clasping her hands. “Sit back down, Bell. Won’t take long.”

  Bell complied.

  “Sheriff Harrison had an idea that struck me as downright inspired,” Rhonda went on. “I wanted to run it past the people in this room.”

  Eyes swiveled toward Harrison. She wasn’t typically the source of inspired ideas. This was a surprise. Was there an actual personality hidden beneath all that brown polyester and the permafrost frown?

  “It’s become painfully obvious,” Rhonda said, “that we’re badly understaffed these days. Sheriff’s department, EMTs, and, of course, the prosecutor’s office, too. The county budget is just stretched too thin. And so when I heard that Nick here was planning on moving back to Acker’s Gap, it seemed like a good time to consider Pam’s proposal.”

  Another surprise.

  Bell looked over at Nick. He sat stiffly on the sofa, both feet on the floor, hands on his thighs. The expression on his face was unrea
dable. The prospect of his return to Raythune County made her happy, but it also made her anxious. What about Mary Sue?

  “So let’s hear about your proposal,” Jake said. He moved his chair backward and forward.

  “Okay. Here goes.” Rhonda’s tone was businesslike. “Assuming you and Bell are interested, we’d be willing to make the consultant positions with the sheriff’s department permanent. And we’ll add you, Nick, if it strikes your fancy. You three would be on call for us. Major cases, special investigations—whatever comes up. The county commission agreed. With all that’s going on around here, we can bend the rules a little bit if it helps keep the peace. And clear some cases faster. Which, given the track records of the people involved, it surely will. We could even rustle up a little pay. Plus take care of your expenses. What do you say?”

  Bell looked at Jake. He shrugged. She looked at Nick. He had tilted his head to one side and appeared to be considering it.

  “One thing,” Bell said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Being on call is fine, but I’d want to be able to pursue my own investigations, too. For instance—Utley Pharmaceuticals.”

  Rhonda nodded. “I’ve got no problem with that. Sheriff?”

  “Me, neither.”

  The prosecutor was eager to hear answers from the other two. “Nick? Jake? What do you all think of the proposal?”

  Jake grinned. “I’m in.”

  Now it was time to check with the former sheriff. Time was, Bell reflected, when she’d have known what Nick was thinking without him having to speak out loud. That was how close they’d been. Their working relationship had been a thing of mutual trust and respect and—okay, she’d acknowledge it, but only to herself and never out loud—love.

  She loved Nick Fogelsong. He was the father she’d never had. She didn’t know him nearly as well as she once had, but the love remained. She was glad to find that out, even though it was a stealth epiphany.

  “Sounds good,” Nick said.

  “Okay, then.” Rhonda stood up behind her desk. “We’ll iron out the particulars in a day or so. I’ve got to run.”