The Quiet Bones

by V. J. Chambers

  She reached out for his lighter. “What’d you come to talk about?”

  He handed her the lighter. “I didn’t come to talk.”

  “No?” She popped the top off her beer and then gave him back the lighter. “Then, what? It’s a booty call?” She wrinkled up her nose. “Booty visit? For it to be a call, you’d have to, you know, call.”

  “I thought you might hang up on me if I called.”

  “You’re not denying it. Is that why you’re here?”

  He took a long swig of beer. “Well, you make it sound crass.”

  She snorted. “Because it is.”

  “So, you’re kicking me out?”

  She sighed.

  “Look, little bird, you’re a hard one to read. If I thought I could wine and dine you—”

  “On burgers from bait and tackle places?”

  “They’re really good burgers.”

  “No, you’re right. They are really good burgers.” She drank more beer. “I thought we decided not to, you know, do this.”

  “You said you didn’t want things to be formal,” he said. “I’m not here in a formal capacity.”

  “But you want something?”

  He thought about it. “Need something. Isn’t that what you said? If either of us needed it, we’d just… be.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “What do you need?”

  “Company,” he said. “Yours. Drink beer with me, hang out.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “And that’s it.” He grinned. “If there were… how did you put it? Booty? If there were that, I wouldn’t complain.”

  She eyed him, drinking more beer. “Oh, I guess you wouldn’t.”

  “But whatever you want, little bird. If you really want me to leave…” He stood up, reaching for his six pack.

  She stopped him, putting her hand on his before he could pick up the beer. “You don’t have to go.”

  He leaned against the porch railing.

  She put a finger in his face. “But whatever happens, it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Yeah, you won’t let me forget how meaningless it all is between us.” He shook his head, chuckling softly. “I get it. I promise.”

  * * *

  Wren woke up to Hawk’s mouth on her shoulder.

  She giggled a little, rolling over and stretching and somehow ending up in his arms.

  He covered her in kisses. Her neck, her jaw, her earlobe.

  She groaned.

  He rolled over onto her, pinning her beneath him, and he kissed her mouth.

  She shut her eyes, enjoying it. It was nice not to wake up alone. It was nice to wake up to his firm body next to her, and he was a good kisser, and she was happy.

  Then her alarm started blaring.

  Her eyes snapped open.

  Hawk sat up, looking around. “What the flying fuck is that?”

  “It’s my alarm.” She felt around on the side table until she found her phone and turned it off.

  “Thank God,” said Hawk. “That was making my head pound. Why would you do that to yourself?”

  She sat up, leaning back against the headboard of the bed. “We have a new case, and I need to be in early to get cracking on it.”

  “What? More murders? Another serial killer? Already?”

  “Well, he’s claiming he’s a serial killer. On YouTube. He made a video and said he was going to keep killing. But so far, there’s only one body.”

  Hawk made a face like something smelled bad. “Already.” He shook his head.

  She stretched again, arching her back.

  Hawk pounced on her, cupping one of her breasts while he kissed her again.

  “Mmmnph,” she said into his mouth, pushing him off. “I have to go to work.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “How about breakfast?” said Hawk.

  “No. No time.” She climbed out of bed. “Besides, breakfast together is a thing that couples do, and we are not a couple.”

  “What are we?” said Hawk.

  “I don’t know. Nothing.”

  He pointed back and forth between them. “This is not nothing.”

  “This is sex,” she said. “It’s just sex. It’s good sex, but that’s all.”

  Hawk flopped backwards on the bed. “You’re killing me here, Wren.”

  “You’re the one who came over for a booty call.” She searched around in her hamper and pulled out a pair of jeans. She had three different pairs of jeans that she wore basically nonstop. She washed them occasionally, but she didn’t like to, because after they were washed, they were stiff and uncomfortable, and it took days of wearing them to get them worked back in.

  He sat up. “Coffee, then. Let’s get coffee.”

  She shook her head. “No. That’s a couple thing, too.”

  “I know for a fact you’re going down to that coffee shop. You go there every morning. So, I’ll come with you.”

  “Hawk.”

  “You can’t stop me from going to the coffee shop,” he said.

  “Why are you being like this?” she said. “What do you think is going to happen? We’re going to have a big June wedding and invite our families? Oh, wait. My mother’s in jail, yours left you here to go find herself when you were a kid, and neither of us know our fathers.”

  “You have a dad, Wren,” he said, getting out of bed. He seemed subdued now. Maybe it was the mention of his mother. She remembered it had been a sore subject when he was younger. Apparently, it still was.

  “Right, okay,” she said. “We’ll invite him, then, and his boyfriend.” Hayes Delacroix was the man who had raised her, but he wasn’t her biological father. She was close to him, though. “But Dad probably doesn’t approve of you, just so you know.”

  Hawk’s laugh was a little caustic. He was getting dressed too. “Did I get down on one knee or something? I didn’t. All I asked for was coffee.”

  She glared at him.

  “Maybe you have issues with intimacy, little bird.”

  “Fine,” she said, seizing a t-shirt from the hamper as well. “Fine. We’ll get coffee.”

  * * *

  Reilly’d had his son Timmy overnight the night before. He usually only had him every other weekend, but Timmy’s mother, Janessa, had asked him if Timmy could stay over, and Reilly had agreed. He wasn’t sure what Janessa had been up to, and he hadn’t asked. Maybe she had gone with her friends or something. Maybe it had been a date. She was his ex-wife, and it wasn’t his business. He didn’t even have any emotional reaction to the prospect of her with another man.

  Not that he would have any right to a reaction, considering their marriage had broken up because he’d been unfaithful to her.

  Well, that was oversimplifying things. The marriage had broken up for a lot of reasons, not least the strain that raising a severely developmentally delayed child had on them both. The cheating had been a symptom, not a cause, in Reilly’s mind. But it had been the last straw for Janessa.

  Honestly, being apart was good for both of them, Reilly thought. Now, he only had to feel guilty about one thing—Timmy. Janessa was no longer his responsibility, and he was relieved. Timmy, on the other hand, that was always tough.

  When he dropped his son off at school that morning, he tried to give the little guy a hug, but Timmy wasn’t having it. He shoved him off and said, “The island of Sodor is surrounded by water an all sides.”

  That was obviously something that Timmy had heard on a Thomas the Tank Engine cartoon. Thomas and his friends lived on the island of Sodor.

  Reilly watched the kid go, thinking too much about what he’d said. Islands were surrounded by water, and Timmy hadn’t wanted a hug, and maybe he was trying to tell him…

  But no, that was wishful thinking on Reilly’s part. Timmy couldn’t communicate. Though he could talk, he never said anything original. He just repeated things that he had heard. It was called echolalia, and Reilly hated it. Sometimes he wonder
ed if there was anything going on in there, or if his son was little more than a human robot.

  He longed for some kind of relationship with the boy, but relationships were hard without communication, and Timmy couldn’t do much more than the bare minimum. Still, Reilly felt guilty. He couldn’t not. He knew that he had run from Timmy and Janessa. He’d buried himself in his work. Maybe if he’d paid more attention to his son in his formative years, he could have made a difference. Maybe if they’d refused to let him watch those damned Thomas cartoons, he would have learned to talk.

  Reilly didn’t know. He wasn’t sure what failing it was within him that had caused his child to be the way that he was, but he was sure it was something.

  What was hell, though, real hell, was seeing kids of awful parents be totally normal and bright. In those moments, he knew it wasn’t really his fault. But when he let go of blaming himself, he let go of any hope, because then he knew that he had no effect on Timmy, and that Timmy would never get better.

  Which, hell, he was having a hard time accepting.

  He got to the coffee shop, the Daily Bean, later than he usually did. He would still ask Angela if Wren had been in yet, because Wren was hell for sleeping in, and he might have beaten her there. Whoever got there first usually bought the other a drink. That was him probably seventy percent of the time.

  When he walked into the coffee shop, Wren was there, however, and she was with Hawk Marner, who was shaking his head and saying, “… buy his own coffee.”

  “It’s just a thing we do,” said Wren, who was clutching two cardboard coffee cups. She looked up. “Reilly!”

  “Morning,” said Reilly.

  Hawk looked Reilly over.

  Wren crossed the store and handed Reilly one of her coffee cups. “I got your ginger latte. Triple shot. Just how you like it.”

  “Thanks,” said Reilly, taking the cup. He was eyeing Hawk too.

  Wren glanced at Hawk and then glanced at Reilly. “Okay,” she said. “Well, I’m going to work now. Bye, you two.”

  Reilly broke his gaze with Hawk and went after her. “You have any brainwaves on your profile yet?”

  “Nope,” she said, heading for her car.

  Hawk went around to the passenger side of the car.

  She glared at him. “What are you doing?”

  “Give me a ride back to my place,” said Hawk.

  “It’s out of my way,” she said.

  “By two minutes,” said Hawk. “Come on.”

  Reilly cleared his throat. “I’ll, uh, I’ll see you at work, Wren.”

  “Yep,” she said, getting into her car, looking furious.

  Reilly took his coffee and got in his own car. He watched Wren and Hawk argue a little longer before Wren caved and let him get in the car. Then she peeled out of the parking lot.

  Reilly wasn’t sure what to make of that. He contemplated it as he drove to the task force headquarters.

  Hawk had once told him that when Wren was only ten years old, she’d been paired with Hawk by the leader of the Fellowship, the cult the two had grown up in. David Song was a prick who’d exercised his power by sexualizing young girls. But Hawk had claimed that he’d kept Wren safe. It was this connection to the cult that had made Wren think Hawk was most likely their serial killer.

  Now, they were getting coffee together?

  Reilly just… didn’t like it for some reason.

  When Wren arrived at work a few minutes later, he spoke before he could think.

  “So,” he said, “you and Hawk Marner?”

  “No,” she said, putting a finger in Reilly’s face. “No, it’s nothing. It means nothing. It’s just…” She chugged coffee. “It’s none of your business. And you have no right to talk. I mean, what with you and Maliah.”

  Reilly looked down at his shoes, feeling acutely embarrassed. Maliah was the woman he’d had an affair with. That affair had ended his marriage.

  “Everyone knows about that,” Wren muttered to herself. “Does that mean everyone’s going to be all up in my business too?”

  “Wait,” said Reilly. “What do you mean, ‘everyone’?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Whatever uniforms get rotated in here to help us, they gossip about you. Hell, they probably gossip about me too. We can’t be sure what they’re saying.”

  He grimaced. “Well, that’s gonna stop.”

  “Sure.” She nodded. “Like, how would you stop it?”

  He sighed. “Back to Hawk.”

  “No.” She started through the hallway.

  He followed her. “You’re right, it’s none of my business, but he was a suspect in a serial murder case two minutes ago.”

  She turned into her office. “But he didn’t do it.”

  “But he practically aided and abetted.”

  “True.” She sat down at her desk.

  “Plus, with the, uh, the history between you two—”

  “What do you know about that?” Now, she was standing up.

  He licked his lips. “You know what? I don’t know why I’m talking to you about this. None of my business.”

  “None,” she agreed.

  “But speaking of Maliah, you think you could get her up to speed on the YouTube video?” He smiled at her.

  * * *

  “Where’s Reilly?” said Maliah Wright. She was in her own office, looking Wren over.

  “Too chicken to talk to you,” said Wren, stepping inside. “He sent me instead. Are you guys fighting?”

  “No,” said Maliah. “And that’s not your business.”

  Wren shrugged.

  “We can’t fight, anyway,” said Maliah. “Because there’s nothing going on. I mean, maybe there was something going on, but once his wife found out, it all cooled off.”

  Wren nodded. “Right. Which is why I saw you at his house that morning before I came to work here.”

  “Well, that was just….” Maliah glared at Wren. “I’m married.”

  “Right, so I hear,” said Wren, looking the other woman over.

  “Oh, get that judgy tone out of your voice,” said Maliah. “He was married too, and you don’t get that judgy tone with him. Why not? Because he’s a man? Is that why?”

  “Because he’s divorced now,” said Wren.

  Maliah sighed. “Well…”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” said Wren. “Reilly got in my face about my sex life this morning, and I guess I’m feeling punchy.”

  “What does Reilly care about your sex life?” said Maliah, a hard edge to her voice.

  “Exactly,” said Wren. She cleared her throat. “Um, this new killer that we’re trying to find, he uploaded a YouTube video.”

  “Oh, right,” said Maliah. “I got the link. I’ve been digging into it a bit already. It’s a new account created to upload the video. It’s not associated with anyone’s identity, unfortunately. It’s not going to be easy, but if you give me a little while longer, I might be able to find out the IP address where the video was uploaded.”

  “Really? So, then you’ll know who uploaded the video?”

  “I’ll know what computer it was uploaded from,” she said.

  “And whoever that computer belongs to will probably be the killer.”

  Maliah smiled. “Quite likely.”

  “Well, perfect. Then I won’t even have to make a profile. Excellent.” Wren grinned at Maliah. “Do your thing.”

  Maliah laughed. “Get the hell out of my office and let me work, then.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Wren saluted and left. She didn’t go back to her office, she went to Reilly’s. “Why are you avoiding Maliah?”

  Reilly looked up from his computer. “I’m not.”

  “She said that you two hadn’t been seeing each other, not since that time I found her walk-of-shaming it down your stairs. So, if that’s true, then what’s the big deal?”

  Reilly blinked. “Didn’t we just have a conversation about things not being each other’s business?”

  W
ren shrugged. “I think you should go talk to her. You guys should make up. I think it really hurt her that you didn’t come talk to her about the YouTube video.”

  Reilly snorted. “Maliah is not the kind of woman to get ‘really hurt.’ She just gets, you know, even.”

  “Mmm.” Wren nodded. “And what with her wicked hacking skills, that could be really bad. I wouldn’t piss her off if I were you.”

  Reilly gave her a withering look. “Go work on your profile, Delacroix.”

  Wren stuck out her tongue at him, but she left his office.

  * * *

  Reilly debated going to Maliah’s office but decided against it. The truth was, it was technically true that he and Maliah hadn’t hooked up since that night before Wren had come to work for the task force, but the other night, Maliah had been at Billy’s, the local bar, and she’d been pretty drunk.

  If Reilly had been drunker, he might have gone with it, but he’d been just sober enough to keep his shit together, and he’d told her that he wasn’t taking her home if she was still with her husband. She’d been the kind of drunk where she wasn’t taking no for an answer, and it had gotten a little bit ugly.

  He hadn’t spoken to her since, because he was embarrassed.

  This was why they didn’t want you having sex with people you worked with. It was a bad idea. And it was against the policy of the police department. There was some form he was supposed to have filled out. There were probably all kinds of legal issues they could get into for this.

  Midmorning, Wren came into his office. “Thinking about a coffee run,” she said.

  “We have coffee in the break room that we can brew ourselves,” said Reilly.

  “Right, we do,” said Wren. “So, you don’t want anything from the Daily Bean?”

  “There’s no reason to leave work and go back out there,” said Reilly. “I can brew a nice cup of coffee. You ever had coffee I’ve brewed?”

  “I’ve had coffee that was in the break room,” said Wren. “And yeah… I’m going to the Daily Bean.”

  He shook his head at her. “You’re challenging my coffee brewing prowess?”

  She shrugged. “Uh, I don’t know it’s a challenge so much as maybe a denouncement.”

  “Oh.” He clutched his chest. He got up out of his desk. “Look, now it’s on. I am going to make you some coffee right now, and you are going to eat your words.”