The Quiet Bones

by V. J. Chambers

  Hawk was there, putting quarters in the table. “Loser pays?”

  “Sure,” said Reilly, fishing out some quarters of his own and setting them down on the table.

  The balls came down with a rumble. Hawk went to get a cue stick.

  Reilly started lining up pool balls, alternating solids and stripes, in the rack. “You can break,” he told Hawk. “It’s your money.”

  “Fine,” said Hawk.

  Reilly finished racking the balls and then got a cue stick. He rubbed blue chalk on the end.

  Hawk, at the other end of the table, bent over with his stick, squinting at the balls. He hit the cue ball, propelling it into the other balls, sending them flying. Nothing went in. Hawk made a face at the table, as if it had failed him.

  “You and Wren,” said Reilly.

  Hawk glanced at him. “So, you bring up Wren? Well, surprise, surprise.”

  “She and I work together,” said Reilly. “I need her sharp to do her job, and I can’t be sure you’re conducive to her doing her best work.”

  “Ah,” said Hawk. “So, it’s all about job performance, then?”

  Reilly didn’t respond. He stalked down to the end of the table and lined up the white ball with a striped ball. He tapped it into the pocket and then straightened.

  “What?” said Hawk. “You looking for congratulations? Nice shot, Detective.” But there was an ironic tinge to his tone.

  Reilly lined up another shot. He knocked another ball in.

  Hawk sighed, leaning on his cue stick.

  Reilly lined up another shot. “You and Wren. What happened?” He took the shot, but the ball bounced off the pocket and rolled across the table. He straightened.

  “What happened?” Hawk repeated. “I’m not sure I understand. You want a blow by blow, because I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable—”

  “Back then,” said Reilly, and even as he said it, he couldn’t believe he was saying it out loud. As if any of this was his business, as if it wasn’t encroaching on Wren’s personal life, as if it wasn’t unprofessional as hell. What the fuck, though? He was having a shit day.

  “Back when?” Hawk leaned over the table and knocked in a solid ball. He strode around the table, surveying the balls. His tone sounded distracted, as if he was more interested in the pool table.

  “You know what I’m talking about.” Reilly furiously rubbed blue chalk on his cue stick. “You’re the one who told me about it. About David Song and the initiates.”

  Hawk lined up another shot and took it. “I might have filled in the broad strokes for you, Detective. I didn’t realize your imagination was running wild with it all. Were you thinking about little Wren Delacroix when she was ten years old? Is that what you’ve been picturing to yourself? When do you think about her?” The ball went into a pocket.

  “You know that’s not—”

  “Yeah, sorry,” said Hawk. “I shouldn’t accuse you of something like that, should I? It’s not like I have any reason to think that about you.”

  Reilly’s nostrils flared.

  “Sure,” said Hawk, walking around to line up another shot. “I find Wren attractive now. It obviously follows that I found her attractive when she was a kid. And you find her attractive, too, right?” He looked up at Reilly with a hard smile, and then took the shot, still holding Reilly’s gaze.

  The ball went in the pocket.

  Reilly grimaced.

  “So, it follows you would have found her attractive back then, too, I guess.”

  “We’re not talking about attraction, we’re talking about actions,” said Reilly. “We’re talking about abuse. We’re talking about a crime.”

  Hawk chuckled softly. “You don’t know shit about any of it.” He approached Reilly, stopped five inches away from him, looked him in the eye, and spoke in a low voice. “I was sixteen at that initiation ceremony and then my name was called, and they told me she was supposed to come home with me, and I was supposed to look out for her. I was sixteen, and they’d already driven me out to watch people get their heads blown off while they slept in their beds. I still remember the way it smelled in the Johnson house. That coppery scent, and the way that the blood was splattered all over the wall, and the way that Lexi Hill was laughing like a hyena the whole time, and that was just a regular day on the compound. And it’s not as though I had anywhere else to go, because I didn’t. My mother left me there with the FCL when I was five years old, and no one’s heard from her since. After she left, Vivian Delacroix took me aside and she said that they would let me stay, and they would feed me and clothe me, but that I had to devote myself to the Crimson Ram and do his bidding whenever asked. And she was the mouthpiece of the Crimson Ram. She was the woman that first dosed me with drugs, and she was the woman who said that spilling blood was the way to salvation, because weren’t we all washed in the blood? Spill the blood, she’d say. Spill it for his glory, she’d say.” Hawk pulled back, and he was smiling. “Is it my shot?”

  Reilly swallowed.

  Hawk turned back to the table. He lined up another shot. “I guess what I’m saying, is that back then, I was a kid and I had a lot of pressure on me.”

  “If you hurt her back then, it’s sick to be with her now. It’s sick for the two of you to be going to her father’s wedding together and pretending like you’re some kind of normal couple. She can never properly consent to anything.”

  Hawk hit the cue ball, but it didn’t connect with anything else. He gestured to the table. “Your shot, Detective.” His voice was subdued now.

  Reilly was still talking. Why, he didn’t know. “I’m not saying that it was a cakewalk for you growing up there. I’m not saying that at all. But if you care about Wren, you shouldn’t make things harder on her.”

  Hawk’s jaw twitched. “You know, when you and I had this conversation before, and I explained to you about the pairings, I distinctly remember saying to you that I never touched Wren. I wouldn’t have. She was a scared little bird, and I knew it was my job to keep her safe.” His voice wasn’t strong now. He squared his shoulders.

  “You swear to me that’s the truth?” said Reilly.

  Hawk tossed his cue stick on the table. “I think I’ve lost interest in this pool game.”

  “Look, I know that I’ve got no call to talk to you about this shit,” said Reilly. “It’s only that I can’t bring it up with Wren. I can’t ask her about it. But I need to know.” For some perverse reason.

  “Have a good night, Detective.” Hawk walked away.

  Reilly watched him go, watched Hawk walk out the door and into the night. Reilly took another drink of his beer. He collected the quarters he’d put on the table and stuck them in his pocket.

  Hell.

  * * *

  “Hawk?” Wren was at the door to her house. “Are you on something?”

  “No,” said Hawk, who was standing at the foot of the steps to her porch, looking up at her. “Well, I had a few beers. Does that count?”

  “I’m working on this profile thing,” she said. “For the case.” The truth was, she was so annoyed with her inability to put together a profile that she’d been drawing pictures of butterflies in an app on her phone for the better part of an hour. But he didn’t need to know that. She was supposed to be working on the profile. That was the important thing. Maybe if Hawk left, she’d actually get some brilliant bit of insight.

  On the other hand, she knew that something was wrong. Usually, when she looked at a scene, it just happened. She could understand the killer by looking at his handiwork, and she used the information she’d gotten at the FBI Academy, and she put it all together, just like that. She had the profile, right then. It was something that came naturally to her. This wasn’t coming naturally, and she probably wasn’t going to be able to force it.

  She wondered if she was broken in some way now. Maybe Hawk would be a good distraction. “You want to come in?” she asked him.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want to intrude. Ma
ybe, if you have a few minutes to take a break, you could walk with me?”

  “It’s kind of cold out there,” she said.

  He nodded. “All right. Well, see you later, then.” He turned, hunching down into his jacket, and started away from the house.

  She was confused. This wasn’t like Hawk. “Hey,” she said. “You okay?”

  He stopped and turned. “I thought… I thought it was like a sign or something when you showed back up. I didn’t think of anything except how much I missed you, and how good it was for you to be back. All the time you were gone, something was missing, and I didn’t realize it was you until you were here again.”

  She looked at him. “Why don’t you come in?”

  “Nah, I don’t want to,” he said. “I don’t need to bother you.”

  She reached over and got her leather jacket off a hook where it was hanging near the door. She slipped into her boots. She crossed the porch and went down the steps and stood next to him. “What’s up, Hawk?”

  “I just… hell, I need to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “For…” His gray eyes shone in the light from her porch. “Hell, you said it when you picked me up from the hospital. You said that you were saying it over and over again, and that I wouldn’t let you reject me. I pushed is what I did.”

  “Um… okay.” She blinked. This was out of left field. He was always so sure of himself. Maybe he pushed, but she was used to that pushing from him. She’d come to rely on it. It was the current that she drifted on. He pushed, and she went along with it, and it was comfortable.

  “I’m not gonna come by again,” he said. “I’ll leave you be.”

  “Really?” She folded her arms over her chest. “I thought you didn’t care about what people thought or about doing the right thing. I thought you didn’t care about being bad for me.”

  He hung his head. “I said that shit ‘cause I wanted you to argue with me, tell me I wasn’t bad for you, tell me… I don’t know… Doesn’t matter.”

  “Did something happen?” She furrowed her brow. “What’s going on?”

  “Uh…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I found out from Detective Reilly that your father’s getting married.”

  She stilled. “You talk to Reilly?”

  “You never told me about the wedding,” said Hawk. “Reilly said something like we’d be going to it together.” He let out a short laugh. “I didn’t know a damned thing about it. I felt…” He looked up at her. “Well, that’s when I realized that this thing I’m doing with you, it’s not fair to you. If you wanted me in your life, you would have told me about your dad’s wedding.”

  “Hawk…” She twisted her hands together.

  “No, it’s okay,” he said. “I get it. I think you’ve been trying to tell me all along, but I’ve been too busy bulldozing my way into your bed, and it’s not cool. It’s just fucked up. I’m fucked up. To think you would want me, that I could be anything you needed… I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, come on.” She rested her hand on his shoulder. She didn’t like seeing him like this.

  He looked into her eyes. “I got so caught up in what you were doing for me. When you’re around, I’m better. But I didn’t think about what I was doing to you. I’m supposed to take care of you, little bird, not hurt you.”

  “I’m not hurt,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  He looked her up and down, as if he could confirm or deny this with a visual examination.

  “Why would you think I wasn’t fine?”

  “You keep telling me you don’t want me,” he said.

  “I keep saying I don’t want a commitment. I’m confused, but I’m not damaged.” She considered. “Well, we’re neither of us in particularly healthy places in our lives, but you’re not making things worse for me.”

  He ran a hand through his chin-length hair.

  “I want us to keep having sex sometimes,” she said, just throwing it out there, as bald as it was. “I mean, I know that’s the kind of thing that women aren’t supposed to say and aren’t supposed to want. I know that out in the regular world, I’m supposed to be repressed and happy about it, but I was brought up here, and I’m not like that, and I like having sex with you. So, there.”

  The side of his mouth quirked up.

  She laughed a little. “I don’t know about anything more than that, though. If that’s not okay with you—”

  “It’s okay with me.”

  “Then, fine, why do things have to change? Why do you have to say you’re going to stay away, and that you’re not going to come by anymore?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “It’s because you want me to commit to you. You want something more than sex, and you’re not satisfied—”

  “No,” he said.

  She waited.

  He looked away. “That detective of yours thinks that I took advantage of you when you were little girl.”

  “What?” She was horrified. “How does he even know that about us?” Of course, Reilly did know about the pairings, and she had said that she was an initiate, and maybe it wasn’t hard to figure out that it had been Hawk, but—

  “I told him,” said Hawk. “When he questioned me, I talked about the pairings.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t know it was a secret,” he said.

  She fidgeted with the zipper on her jacket, unsure of why she was so uncomfortable with Reilly knowing.

  “He point-blank asked me what happened back then,” said Hawk.

  “Shit,” she said. “I can talk to him.” But even as she said it, she thought the subject was too horrible to broach with Reilly. And she didn’t like that he was talking about it with Hawk either. Reilly didn’t need to be concerned with her past, not in that way.

  “No,” said Hawk. “No, he’ll think I put you up to it. I don’t fucking care what he thinks anyway.”

  “You obviously do if it’s making you say these things to me.”

  “I care what you think,” said Hawk. “I mean, even if nothing happened when we were kids, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t fuck you up somehow, and I’m part of that.”

  “If it fucked me up, it fucked you up too.”

  “Had to be worse for you.”

  “I don’t know, it wasn’t so bad. You were, you know, older and… and hot, and I got to see you wearing pajamas and talk to you in whispers after the lights were off.”

  He hung his head.

  “Hawk…” She sighed. “You should come to the wedding. With me. As my plus one.”

  He raised his gaze to hers. “What?”

  “Just say you’ll come.”

  “It’s not about that,” he said.

  “But you will come. Right?”

  “Okay, if you want me to.”

  “I do,” she said. “I want you come along.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  Her hand darted out and she snagged one of his. She squeezed his fingers. “We don’t ever have to talk about the pairings ever again. We were sleeping in the same bed for what? A month? Not even, I don’t think. Three weeks maybe and the arrests happened.”

  He squeezed her fingers back. “Yeah.”

  “And I’m fine,” she said. “So, let’s just forget about it, okay? Let’s never, ever bring it up ever again.”

  His lips parted.

  “Okay?” she whispered.

  He hesitated. “Okay,” he said.

  “Good,” she said. “Now come inside my cabin with me, and let’s talk about something else. Or better yet, let’s not talk at all.” She tugged on his arm.

  He resisted for a moment, but then he came along, letting her lead him back towards the cabin, back to the light and warmth of her home.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Reilly looked up from his desk to see that Wren was standing there. She was holding her cup of coffee. “This was on my desk.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I got it for you because Angela said that you hadn’t com
e in to the Daily Bean yet.”

  “And you just left it for me? Didn’t give it to me face to face?”

  “Are you mad?” He leaned back in his office chair. “You seem mad.”

  She took a drink of her coffee. “Were you embarrassed to face me after you spent all of last night trying to discover some childhood trauma you imagined for me?”

  He winced. “You talked to Hawk.”

  She yanked a chair over in front of his desk and sat down. “I didn’t think you liked Hawk.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But you were so chummy with him. You had a whole conversation where you told him all about my father’s wedding and accused him of being child rapist.”

  He looked down at his desk. “I… I had kind of a shitty day yesterday. Hawk showed up, and I… you’re right, I shouldn’t have said anything to him.”

  “Seriously, Reilly, I don’t see why you would think there was any call to talk about me like that.”

  He raised his gaze to meet hers. “There wasn’t. I had no right. I’m sorry.”

  She took another drink of coffee. “You should be.”

  “I am.”

  She squared her shoulders. “Okay, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  He nodded. But then he couldn’t seem to keep it in. “I talked to him about it because I was worried about you.” He held up both hands. “Which doesn’t excuse what I did or anything. I get that it’s crossing lines.”

  “Am I giving you a reason to be worried? Is it because of the profile thing?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t look convinced, but she said, “Fine. Next time, if you’re worried, talk to me.”

  “That’s the thing, I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring it up to you. It wasn’t fair to you to trap you in that conversation, you know? If something did happen to you when you were a little girl, then my asking about it would be like forcing you to relive it.”

  She thought about this for a minute. “Maybe I get that. Maybe.”

  “And if there was some way I could get to the bottom of it and decide if I needed to act—”

  “You didn’t. I don’t need you to take care of me.”