The Bone House

by Brian Freeman

  'Do it,' Reich ordered him. 'You pussy, get something right for once in your life. We'll ditch your boat, and you can go hide in my basement, and we can figure out what to do with you. We're going to have to get you seriously lost.'

  'Sheriff, what are you doing?' Mark asked.

  'Shut up, Bradley. I'm waiting, Troy. Pull the trigger. Do it now.'

  'I don't - I don't think I can,' Troy murmured, his voice broken.

  Reich stepped in front of Troy impatiently and stripped the gun out of the boy's hands. 'Like I thought, no balls. Jesus, what a waste.'

  'I'm sorry.'

  'Get the hell out of here,' Reich told him.

  'Where do I go?' Troy asked plaintively.

  'My truck is on the highway. It's parked off the shoulder a hundred yards east of here. Climb inside and stay out of sight. Stay right there until I get back, got it? Do not move.'

  Troy did as he was told. He ran, tripping over the ground like a clown, through the cemetery, land. He never looked back. Reich followed Troy's progress until he couldn't see the boy anymore, and then he re-aimed Troy's gun at Bradley's chest. Unlike Troy's wobbly hand, Reich's grip was solid and assured, and his arm was rigid.

  'Now it's just you and me, Bradley,' Reich said.

  'Sheriff, are you out of your mind?'

  'Where's Tresa?' Reich asked.

  'I don't know. She ran. Sheriff, if this is a joke, it's not funny.'

  'It's no joke.'

  Mark could see that it wasn't. Reich's intentions were deadly.

  'Why are you doing this?' Mark asked.

  'Because as long as you're alive, people are going to keep digging up ghosts. Once you're gone, you can take the blame for everything. If you'd died in that car accident like you were supposed to, the case would already be closed.'

  'I can't believe you'd kill an innocent man,' Mark told him.

  'I've killed plenty of men. They were innocent. You're not. Don't bother pleading for your life. I'm fresh out of mercy.'

  'I didn't kill Glory.'

  'Now you're just making me mad,' Reich growled.

  'I don't care. I didn't do it.'

  'Pete knew you were a liar.'

  'I didn't kill Peter Hoffman either.'

  Reich nodded grimly. 'That's the first true thing you said, Bradley, but it doesn't matter. I killed Pete. You gave me no choice.'

  Mark felt the breath leave his chest. He knew with a terrible clarity that there was really no hope now. No chance of this ending well, of him walking away alive and free. Reich was no immature kid like

  Troy who was in over his head. When the sheriff ran out of bile, the gun in his hand would spit a bullet into Mark's heart.

  'He was your best friend,' Mark said.

  'That's right, I killed my best friend because of you.'

  'Because of me?'

  'Because you're a liar,' Reich told him. 'Because you had to hide behind a ghost in order to cover up your own crime. Pete was willing to give up everything to make sure you paid the price. I couldn't let him do that, but I'll make sure you pay. That's what Pete would want. That's why I can live with what I've done.'

  Mark shook his head and slowly held up his hands. 'Sheriff, I swear I don't know what the hell you're talking about.'

  'He's talking about Harris Bone,' Cab Bolton said.

  Reich whipped his light toward the voice that rose from the cemetery graves, but he didn't take his eyes off Mark or lower the gun even an inch. In the beam, Mark saw Cab Bolton ten feet away, next to the gray tower of a bell-shaped tombstone. Tresa huddled next to him, her face red with anger and tears.

  'Bolton,' Reich hissed.

  'What now, Sheriff?' Cab demanded. 'Are you going to kill me, too? First Hoffman, then Bradley, then me?'

  Reich's eyes darted furiously between Mark and Cab. He was a man looking for a way out and not finding one.

  'The girl, too?' Cab went on. 'Could you shoot the girl? How many more people are you willing to kill to keep the secret?'

  'Get the hell out of here,' Reich ordered him. 'Take Tresa with you. You have no idea what this is about.'

  'Harris Bone,' Cab repeated. 'That's what this is about. Peter Hoffman couldn't handle the guilt anymore, could he? When he thought Bradley was hiding behind Harris to get away with murder; he decided to tell the truth. Hoffman wasn't about to let Delia Fischer get robbed of justice. He wasn't going to let some defense attorney use Harris to get an acquittal. He knew Glory didn't come face to face with Harris Bone in Florida. That was a lie. That's what he wanted to tell me.'

  'Goddamn you, Bolton,' Reich said. 'You couldn't let it go, could you? What the hell did you do?'

  'I found him, Sheriff,' Cab replied, i found him in that hole where the two of you left him to rot. Harris Bone never escaped. He never ran. You and Peter Hoffman killed him.'

  In the miles since they left the county courthouse in Sturgeon Bay, Harris Bone hadn't said a word. He sat silently in the back of the squad car, his balding head hung forward, his hands and ankles cuffed. His jail clothes were baggy on his frame. Harris had never been a large man, but he'd shrunk inside his skin in the months since the fire, until he was almost a skeleton.

  Reich watched his headlights tunneling through the night. He was south of Kewaunee in the midst of flat, dormant farmlands. It was January, during one of the frigid winter stretches, with temperatures falling into the teens below zero when the sun went down. The season had been mostly snowless, leaving the ground barren and hard, swept clean by the bitter wind.

  He glanced in the mirror with hard eyes.

  'You should look outside, Harris. You won't be seeing open country again for the rest of your life. Just eighty square feet of concrete for twenty-three hours a day.'

  Harris didn't acknowledge him.

  'I'd watch my back in there if I were you. Big-ass gang killers don't like a man who burns up his wife and family.'

  Harris finally looked up with sunken eyes. 'Shut the hell up, Felix.'

  'Oh, don't start mouthing off. That's a bad lesson. You shoot off your mouth in there, and bad things are likely to happen.'

  'Thanks for the advice.'

  Reich heard the sarcasm, and he didn't care. 'A lot of people think you're getting off easy, sitting on the taxpayer's dime for the next forty years. That doesn't feel like justice.'

  'Is that right? What do you think, Felix?'

  'If it were up to me, we'd gather volunteers and stone you.'

  'Too bad it's not up to you.'

  Reich nodded and studied the empty highway. 'Yeah. Too bad.'

  Behind him, Harris closed his eyes, and his head fell back against the seat.

  'I always felt sorry for you, Harris,' Reich called to him. 'Nettie was a bitch. Not that I'd ever say so to Pete. But there are some lines a man doesn't cross, no matter how much he hates his life. There are some things that when you do them, you stop being human.'

  Harris leaned forward until his weary face was pressed against the steel mesh. 'What does that make you, Felix? How many babies did you kill during the war?'

  Reich gripped the wheel fiercely. His lip curled into a snarl. 'Are you suggesting I'm the same as you? Is that really what you want to say to me?'

  'I'm saying you can spare me the morality shit. I don't need it.'

  Harris sank back and pretended to sleep. Reich studied the man's face and saw tears slipping down his cheeks. It didn't matter. He felt nothing for him. It was just as he'd said: there were lines a man doesn't cross. There were also things a man had to do when justice demanded it.

  He was close to the rendezvous. Through the headlights, he spied the intersection at the county road, and he checked the odometer to count off one point seven miles. There was nothing but frozen land on either side of the vehicle. He and Pete had scouted the terrain weeks earlier as they made their plans.

  Where to meet. Where to stage the escape.

  Reich spotted the driveway leading to the farmhouse, miles from anything el
se around it. He slowed sharply and turned. In the back seat, Harris felt the change in direction and opened his eyes.

  'What's going on?'

  Reich said nothing. He drove into the rutted cornfield bordering the house and steered around the rear of the detached garage, where he parked the squad car with its right-hand door butted against the wall. From the highway, the car was invisible. It would be days before anyone found it.

  'What the hell are you doing, Felix?'

  Reich heard it in Harris's voice. The first tremors of fear. The first horrified realization of what was about to happen to him.

  Justice.

  Reich got out of the car. The wind was ferocious, and the cold bit through his coat like a maneater. He opened the rear door and dragged Harris Bone into the night by the cuff of his shirt. Harris, who wore nothing except his prison scrubs, howled as the frozen air knifed his skin. The bound man hunched his limbs together. Reich yanked a billy club from his belt and swung it across the man's skull. Harris collapsed to his knees. Reich laid a boot on the man's back and crushed him forward on to the rock-hard dirt, where he twitched from the pain and cold. Harris tried to crawl, but Reich held him down.

  'Hello, Felix,' Peter Hoffman said. He was waiting for them beside the garage.

  'No mercy tonight,' Reich replied.

  'None.'

  The house and land belonged to a retired couple who were away in the sunshine of Mesa and wouldn't be back in Wisconsin until after Easter. Reich had checked the house and garage three weeks earlier and found the couple's Accord parked inside for the season. Keys on a peg board by the door. He loved Midwesterners.

  'Let's get it over with,' Pete said.

  Reich marched to the side door of the garage. He didn't notice the cold, other than the prickly bite of ice crystals in his nose when he breathed. He cocked his leg and smashed the door inward with a swing of his boot. Just like Harris Bone would do. Inside, he pushed through spiderwebs and heard the scurry of rats in the rafters. He returned to find Harris on the ground, curled into a ball, and he lifted him bodily with both hands and threw him toward the garage door. Harris tripped in the shackles and fell with a whimper. Pete stepped over him into the garage, started the engine of the Accord, and popped the trunk. Reich grabbed Harris, pulled him on his heels, and dumped him into the rear of the car.

  He slammed the trunk shut, locking Harris inside.

  'Come on,' Reich said. He dug in his pocket for the keys to his squad car and threw them on the ground. He held out the keys to the cuffs and shackles to Pete, who stood by the driver's door with his hands in his pockets. 'You having second thoughts?' he asked.

  'You know me better than that, Felix.' He took the keys.

  Reich stared into his friend's face for a long time in the shadows. 'OK then.'

  Pete drove. They headed north on the deserted roads, back toward Door County. Ten miles from the farmhouse, they passed a bar with a handful of pickups parked outside the door. Pete continued past the bar for a quarter-mile until no one who ventured into the winter air would see them, and then he pulled on to the shoulder. Both men got out.

  The wind poured over their bodies with an unforgiving fury. Pete dug his chin into his neck and pulled down his wool hat. Reich simply walked down the gully from the road into the dirt of the field. He wasn't even wearing a hat to cover the steel wool of his hair. His skin was already numb and white, but he didn't care.

  Pete followed. 'You sure about this, Felix?'

  'Just do it.' Reich squatted and found a fist-sized clump of earth that had frozen into jagged edges. 'Here.'

  'I wish there was some other way,' Pete said.

  'Hit me. Hard. You only get one try.'

  Pete reared back with the rock and swung his gloved hand into his friend's forehead. The frozen spikes cut through Reich's skin, erupting in blood. Reich stumbled back at the force of the blow and nearly fell. He staggered. Pete dropped the rock and reached for his friend, but Reich shrugged him away.

  'Get the hell out of here.'

  'Can you make it to the bar?'

  Reich touched his hand to his cheek, where the warm blood was already freezing. He felt his words slurring as he tried to talk. He tasted copper on his lips. 'Just go. I'll join you as soon as I can, and we'll finish this. It's for Nettie and the boys, remember?'

  Reich stayed where he was, bleeding in the field, until Pete climbed the shoulder and drove away. The car disappeared, its tail lights winking out, leaving Reich alone. He was losing blood fast. He took two clumsy steps toward the bar, which looked impossibly far. Briefly, he wondered if it would be better to lie down among the broken cornstalks and give himself up to the winter. He had a vision of his future, and it wasn't pretty. He had been the one to cross the line tonight, and there was no going back.

  Even so, he quashed his doubts and marched for rescue like a wounded soldier.

  'I saw what was left of him, Sheriff,' Cab said. 'The two of you didn't just kill him. You tortured him.'

  'Torture is burning to death,' Reich replied. 'I've seen it happen to people I considered my enemies, and I didn't even wish it on them.'

  'I saw the broken bones. The bullet holes.'

  Reich shrugged. 'I don't regret what I did. Sometimes you have to take justice into your own hands.'

  'Peter Hoffman regretted it, though, didn't he?'

  'Pete got soft,' Reich said. 'He got old. The booze took over.'

  'Or maybe he finally realized the two of you had become the monsters you were trying to destroy.'

  'We did what we had to do,' Reich said.

  'If you're so sure about that, why kill Hoffman to cover it up? Why not tell the world?'

  'People like you don't understand,' he snapped. 'They don't appreciate the tough decisions that others make for them.'

  Tresa pulled away from Cab and marched toward Reich through the wet ground. She swept the red hair from her face. 'You son of a bitch,' she hissed.

  'Tresa, stay out of this,' Reich told her.

  'All this time I thought Harris was alive. That made it OK. And now I find out you killed him. You bastard!'

  'This doesn't concern you.'

  'Who else knew?' she demanded. 'Did my mother know?'

  'No one knew. Look, Tresa, you were a kid. Your father was dead, and Harris was there for you. That doesn't change what he did.'

  Tresa pushed in close enough to spit in Reich's face. 'You're always right, aren't you? You're right about everything. You didn't believe me about Mark either. You wouldn't listen when I told you that nothing happened between us. Instead, you had to go about ruining his life.'

  Reich wiped his face with his free hand. 'I'm sorry you had to find out about Harris, but if there's one good thing to come out of this, at least now you know what kind of a man Mark Bradley really is.' He jabbed a finger at Mark across the dark space between the graves. 'He wanted you to think Harris Bone killed your sister, didn't he? Now you know that's a lie. He was the one out on the beach with her. He was the one who killed Glory.'

  Tresa shook her head. 'You stupid macho jerk. All of you. You. Troy. Peter Hoffman. Everybody.'

  She walked toward Mark. Reich shouted to stop her, and Mark put his hands up to warn her away, but Tresa put herself squarely between

  Mark and the sheriff, in the path of his gun, and spread her arms wide, if you want to kill him, now you'll need to kill me, too.'

  Reich's face pulsed with fury and frustration. 'He's as evil as Harris was, Tresa. Don't be fooled.'

  'You're the evil one,' Tresa said. 'You're the one who murdered an innocent man.'

  'What the hell are you talking about?' Reich growled.

  'Don't you get it?' Tresa screamed at him. 'Harris Bone didn't kill his family. It wasn't him. He didn't start the fire.'

  * * *

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Gary Jensen heard Katie in the hallway.

  His shoulders swiveled, and his eyes flicked away. That was Hilary's chance. She charged
from her knees and leaped across the space between them, driving Jensen backward into the wall. Her knee spiked into Jensen's groin, and he doubled over. She dove for his gun hand, but he swung the butt of the gun and caught her on the bottom of her chin. The impact of metal on bone ricocheted in her brain. She staggered backward, tripping on the bed and falling as her left leg gave way beneath her.

  Jensen, still bent over, aimed the barrel at her chest. Hilary was dizzy, but she saw his finger slide over the trigger. Just as he fired, she heard a shout and saw a blur of motion. Amy threw herself into Jensen's body, and as they collided, the gun went off with a deafening blast. The bullet tore into the wall over the bed, blasting through Sheetrock and kicking up a cloud of white dust. Amy and Jensen toppled on to the floor. They rolled over each other into the doorway, and Amy clutched Jensen's gun arm with both hands, holding it down. Jensen pummeled the girl's kidneys with his other fist, and Amy, who was still weak, lost her grip. Hilary climbed to her feet as Jensen broke free. She dodged sideways just as a second bullet narrowly roared past her ear, so close she felt a searing heat on her hair.

  Jensen tried to get up, but Amy threw her dancer's leg backward, landing her heel on his wrist. His fingers went numb. The gun spilled from his hand and twirled as it skidded down the hallway. It landed in front of Katie, who picked it up. The coach threw an arm around Amy's neck and yanked the girl into his chest, squeezing off her air.

  'Stop!' Katie screamed.

  She stood over them, the gun in her hand. Jensen loosened his grip. Coughing, Amy crawled away and pushed herself to her feet. Jensen stood up too, and fell heavily against the bedroom wall. He looked bruised and beaten.

  Amy limped for Katie and threw her arms around her neck. She hugged her roommate with a smile of relief and then turned back toward Hilary.

  'The two of you saved—' Amy began, but she never finished.

  Katie lifted the gun and brought the butt down solidly on to the back of Amy's skull. Amy took two shaken steps in confused disbelief, crumpled to her knees, and pitched forward on to her face, unconscious.