The Quiet Bones

by V. J. Chambers

  “We all need taken care of sometimes,” said Reilly. “I get that I overstepped into your personal business, but if you were being abused or taken advantage of, I couldn’t stand by and watch that. I became a cop to stop that shit.”

  She sighed. “Look, I’m not being abused. And I wasn’t. Well… not by Hawk.”

  His eyes widened.

  “Not like that, not ever,” she said. “No one molested me as a child, but growing up in that place, with Vivian… well, I’m not going to say it was a healthy childhood.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I understand that. I promise I will leave it alone from now on.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She turned and started out of his office. Then she turned back around. “Why did you have a shitty day yesterday?”

  He looked down at his desk. He didn’t want to share this. Not with her, not with anyone. He didn’t even want to think about it.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “You delve into my personal life, but you won’t share?”

  “My ex-wife is getting married because she is pregnant,” said Reilly.

  Wren didn’t say anything.

  “I know,” he said. “It shouldn’t bother me. I don’t even know why it does. I don’t want to talk about it, or think about it, so let’s move on. I got stuff for us to do today, anyway.”

  “Stuff?”

  “We’re going to go find Seth Harrison,” said Reilly.

  “That teacher Tobias Harrison’s brother? The one he has to take care of?”

  “Yeah,” said Reilly. “I had Maliah do some digging and she found out that he’s autistic, and he’s pretty much confined to his home. He has someone who stays with him while Tobias works. At one point in time, back when their parents were still alive, Seth had a job doing something with computers at a dance studio for girls.”

  “Huh,” said Wren. “Like this was a dance studio.”

  “Yeah, I don’t even know how they fit in here,” said Reilly.

  “So, what happened with his job?”

  “He was asked to leave because of inappropriate behavior. Apparently, from what Maliah can gather, he was flashing people, like dropping his pants at them. I don’t know. Probably harmless, but sometimes that kind of behavior escalates.”

  “Right,” said Wren. “Sometimes serial killers start out doing those kinds of anti-social actions. It would really depend on whether he was doing it in order to antagonize people—if he was getting a charge out of other people’s discomfort, or if he was just confused about social norms.”

  “Right,” said Reilly.

  “Also,” said Wren, “if he really is autistic, it’s very unlikely he’s a serial killer. On the other hand, sometimes the lack of empathy in psychopathy gets misdiagnosed as autism when a kid is young. If a psychopath is smart enough, he apes autistic behavior in the same way he might ape empathetic behaviors.”

  “So, what you’re saying is that we don’t know,” said Reilly.

  “We need to talk to him,” she said.

  * * *

  “Um, I’m not sure,” said the woman at the door. “I don’t know if I should let you in to talk to Seth. Maybe I should call his brother.”

  “We’re not here to do anything except ask a few questions,” said Reilly. “We promise, nothing more than that.”

  “And we’ve already spoken to Tobias,” put in Wren, although she didn’t mention that he hadn’t given explicit permission for them to talk to Seth.

  “Oh,” said the woman. “Well, all right, I guess. I’m the homemaker, Mindy. I come in mostly to be here in case Seth gets in any trouble, but he’s fairly independent.” She opened the door wider for them to come in.

  Reilly went in first and Wren followed him.

  Mindy continued, “He’s actually probably on the computer right now. He spends a lot of time on the computer. I might have trouble getting him to leave and come out to talk in the living room.”

  “That’s fine. We can go to him,” said Reilly. “Or do you think that would upset him? The new people?”

  “I really couldn’t say,” said Mindy. “Let’s try it. I’ll take you up to his room.”

  They crossed a nondescript living room to a set of carpeted steps and ascended to the upper level of the house. At the first door they came to, Mindy stopped outside a door which was open a few feet.

  She gently rapped on the door. “Seth? There’s some people here to talk to you.”

  “We’ll be right back after these messages,” called a cheery voice from within.

  Mindy smiled. “Hey, Seth, can we come in?”

  “Do what you have to. I can’t stop you,” came the response.

  Mindy grinned at them. “Sometimes, he does that. When he talks, he just quotes things. Sometimes they relate, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes he gets on a kick, and he’ll wander around the house doing the entire script of a movie. He knows all the words to The Princess Bride.”

  Wren noticed Reilly stiffen at this. Maybe he didn’t like The Princess Bride. Blasphemy.

  Mindy pushed open the door and they entered an office that had been decorated with big bright posters on the wall of kittens and puppies. Seth was sitting at a table that had quite a setup. There were three wide monitors spread across the desk and lots of electronic towers that beeped and blinked. He twirled around on his swivel chair and clapped his hands.

  “Hi, Seth,” said Mindy.

  “Hi,” said Seth. He grinned too, but his word came out flat, monotone.

  “These people want to talk to you. Would that be all right?”

  Seth ticked his head to the side a few times. “Okay,” he said in his flat voice.

  “Okay,” said Mindy. She raised her eyebrows at Wren and Reilly.

  Wren waited for Reilly to take the lead. She wasn’t good at interrogations under the best of circumstances, let alone when dealing with a guy with special needs.

  Reilly ran a hand over his face. “Hi, Seth, my name is Detective Reilly.”

  “Detective?” said Seth. “Really?”

  “Really,” said Reilly, getting out his badge and showing it to Seth.

  Seth’s eyes got very wide. “Oh!” he said. “Oh, oh, that’s a badge. Alert the media! Alert the media!”

  “You want to see it?” said Reilly, smiling.

  “Can I?” Seth grinned a huge, huge grin.

  Reilly handed it over.

  “Oh,” said Seth. “Oh, wow.” He inspected the badge for several moments. “Do I have to give it back now?”

  “Yeah, give it back,” Reilly said gently.

  Seth handed it back.

  “I wonder if I can ask you about someone,” said Reilly. He got his phone out and tapped and scrolled on his screen for a minute. When he turned the phone to Seth, he had a picture up of Bristol Cannon. “Have you ever seen this girl before?”

  Seth looked at the picture. “I think so.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I think so.” Seth began to tick his head to the side again. This time he didn’t stop.

  “Where did you see her?”

  “On TV maybe,” said Seth.

  “Okay,” said Reilly. “What was she doing on TV?”

  “It was just a picture. She wasn’t doing anything,” said Seth.

  Maybe the news, Wren thought. They would have had pictures of Bristol on the news. “Did you ever see her in real life?” she spoke up.

  Seth looked at Wren. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, think about it,” said Wren. “Maybe at your brother’s school?”

  “Maybe,” said Seth agreeably, nodding.

  Reilly shook his head at her.

  Wren nodded. She realized right away that it would be easy to lead this man to say anything she wanted.

  “Did you see her at the high school?” said Reilly.

  “Maybe,” said Seth.

  “Yes or no,” said Reilly.

  Seth looked worried. “Yes?”

  Reilly put his phon
e back in his jacket. “You know what, Seth, I think that’s all we need from you. Why don’t you go back to your computer, huh?”

  “Okay.” Seth shrugged and swiveled his chair around.

  * * *

  Wren was sitting in the car while Reilly was on the phone with his captain Lopez. She listened to Reilly’s side of the conversation, trying to follow, but Reilly was mostly making hmm-ing noises and saying yes or no.

  Finally, Reilly hung up. He put the key into the ignition of his car and started it. “Lopez doesn’t know of anyone who’d be qualified to question him, but he’ll ask around.”

  “Well, we could try, I guess,” said Wren, “but I can’t help but feel that he’d agree to anything if you pushed him.”

  “Yeah, questioning him could be extremely difficult,” said Reilly. “And if he’s lying, we might never know. If it’s a situation as you said, where he’s aping autistic behavior, then he could be playing all of us for a fool.”

  “Wow,” said Wren. “That would be truly devious. He really didn’t strike me that way. I got no sense of malice from him at all. He just seemed like a little boy, you know?”

  “Yeah,” said Reilly, pulling the car out of the driveway and onto the road.

  After a moment, she asked, “Are you all right?” And then wondered if she should. When she’d pushed at him earlier, he’d been pretty adamant that he didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  “Did I ever tell you about my son?” said Reilly.

  “What?” she said. “No.”

  “He’s, um… well, he’s very probably autistic, but Janessa has resisted the diagnosis his whole life. Which… hell, it’s a thing sometimes I wonder about. Like, they say early intervention is really key, and we did get him all kinds of help when he was small, and we still do, but she was real sensitive about it being called autism. I think she thought if we didn’t say it, it wouldn’t be true?”

  “Oh, geez,” said Wren. “I had no idea. I’m, um…” She had been about to apologize, but then caught herself. You didn’t apologize for something like this. Man, she felt awful.

  Reilly kept talking, as if he hadn’t noticed. “Anyway, he’s verbal, but he’s echolalic. He doesn’t say anything except other things he’s heard.”

  “Seth did that,” said Wren. “He was quoting stuff.” She remembered Reilly’s reaction. It made sense now. He had been thinking about his son.

  “Yeah,” said Reilly. “When I think about how excited I would be if Timmy could be as functional as Seth is, it kind of kills me. Because I think, deep down, some part of me still hopes that he’ll snap out of it and become a normal kid and have a normal life.”

  “Oh, Reilly,” said Wren. “Wow.”

  “You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “That’s not what I’m doing. I just… I can’t even imagine having a child, and the fact that you’ve been dealing with this all this time and I didn’t know…” It changed her entire picture of Reilly, she realized.

  “I don’t deal with it much,” he said. “I just run from it. That’s why my marriage broke up.”

  “I’m sure you deal with it,” she said. “You’ve talked about having your kid for the weekend.” Of course, now that she thought about it, he was always vague about the details.

  “I’m not saying I do nothing, but Janessa has him all the time. She’s the primary caregiver, and I’m just… I mean, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Someday, he won’t be a little kid anymore, and it’ll be like Tobias and Seth. Someone’s going to have to take care of Timmy. Always take care of him. He can’t even ask for a drink if he’s thirsty, you know? He’s trapped in another world, and I can’t even reach him.”

  On impulse, Wren reached across the car and put her hand on his arm.

  He looked at her when she did it.

  She patted him once, and then removed her hand.

  “Anyway,” said Reilly, “I don’t know, but I’m with you. I don’t think Seth did it. Maybe it’s because I see my son in him, or what I someday hope my son could be. I don’t know if that’s naive or what.”

  “What about Tobias?” she said.

  “He’s still on the board,” said Reilly. “But, you know, in our last case, I feel like we had too many viable suspects. There were all these people that ticked boxes, and I felt like it could have been any of them. This time, I feel as though we haven’t found one suspect that I truly feel is right for this.”

  Wren sighed.

  “You don’t agree?” he said.

  “No, I guess I can’t. I feel like, without a profile, I can’t determine whether anyone fits the crime or not.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I get that.”

  “You know, I haven’t been doing profiles for that long, but I feel like it’s gotten twined up in my own identity. And now that I can’t do it anymore, I don’t even know who I am.”

  “You’re Wren fucking Delacroix,” said Reilly.

  She shook her head, snorting. “Right, of course.”

  “No, I’m serious. Profiling is not the sum total of you,” he said. “You, uh, you want to hit up the Daily Bean on our way back to headquarters?”

  “Heck, yeah,” she said.

  “What are you going to get to drink? You gonna try that sea salt thing again?”

  “I don’t like to do repeats,” she said. “I might try a new flavor combination in my latte. Maybe mint and cinnamon.”

  “Yuck,” he said. “That doesn’t go together at all.”

  “Well, you say that,” she said. “But you don’t know, because you’ve never tried it. It might be amazing. I’m going to find out, okay?”

  “Knock yourself out,” he said. “But that sounds disgusting.”

  * * *

  “So?” said Reilly, eyeing her. “Disgusting, right?”

  “No,” she said. “Not disgusting.”

  Reilly noticed she wasn’t drinking as much of it as she might usually be, however. They were back in headquarters, and they had just stopped into the bullpen to check on the progress of the uniforms.

  Marjorie Jaid hopped right up when they came into the room.

  “Jaid,” said Reilly. “You got updates on anything for me?”

  “The stolen handgun?” she said.

  “Yeah?” said Reilly.

  “Checks out. I’ve got the police report. It was taken before the murders started.”

  “Hmm, so that makes it harder for Noah Adams to be our guy,” said Reilly. “What about, uh, those alibis you’re checking into?”

  “Um, right,” said Jaid. She turned to one of the other uniforms. “Officer Tooms here, he’s been calling to try to verify this list that Noah Adams gave us, but mostly striking out. People don’t even know who Noah is. They also don’t know Megan, either.”

  “So, what do you think that means?” spoke up Wren. “Is he lying?”

  “I don’t know, could be,” said Jaid. “But it could also be that we’re just hitting these places at the wrong times, because the people we’ve been talking to have told us they don’t work the shifts that hit around 8:00. If I thought our department would kick in some overtime, I’d be happy to stay and call around that time.”

  “Oh, don’t count on that,” said Reilly.

  “I didn’t figure so,” said Jaid. “Look, I might be able to stay later one night later next week.”

  “Next week?” said Reilly. Then he cocked his head to one side. “How long have you been here with us?”

  “Oh, I’ve been trading with people to stay,” said Jaid. “I don’t know, I like it here. Anyway, I should be here next week, and I might be able to stay later. I just have to work things out with my babysitter.”

  “Look, you don’t have to do that,” said Reilly. “But I really appreciate it. If I could find a way to keep you on here full time, I would.”

  “Really?” said Jaid, beaming. “Because I would—”

  “You’re back,” interrupted a voice.


  Reilly and Wren turned to see Maliah in the doorway to the bullpen.

  “There’s another video,” said Maliah.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The screen was very dark, illuminating only the barest outlines of trees and the night sky. Mostly what came through was the distorted voice of the killer. His hooded sweatshirt was swallowed almost entirely by blackness. He was trudging through the woods, addressing the camera.

  “I have reached a point of satisfaction,” he growled. “I have slaked my bloodlust and found what I sought. Now, I must go into a period of hibernation, quiet and still, like a caterpillar goes into a cocoon. When I return, I will have transformed. I will be a better and more efficient killer. I will stalk new victims. For now, I bow to the memory of the killers in the tri-state area who have come before me, and I vow to do their memory homage.”

  The screen went to that big K letter.

  The video ended.

  “Is there a body?” said Reilly.

  Maliah shook her head. “Nothing reported, not that I can see, at least from what I have access to. But that doesn’t mean anything. For me to find things electronically, reports have to be filed, and maybe this hasn’t been filed yet.”

  “The video’s never come out before we found a body before,” said Reilly. “He’s changing his pattern.”

  “What pattern?” said Wren. “As far as I’m concerned, we have two vaguely connected homicides.”

  “Wait, you don’t think it’s the same guy?”

  “It’s the same guy making the videos,” said Wren. “I guess it has to be the same guy doing the killing, because he wouldn’t have known about the bodies otherwise. And in the last video, he was there with the body.”

  “He could have been with the body this time,” said Reilly. “He was out in the woods. We need to have people combing the woods.” He left the office to go and call the police.

  Wren stayed behind.

  Maliah surveyed her. “You got something to say?”

  “No,” said Wren. “None of this makes any sense at all. Did you hear what he said? That his bloodlust had been slaked and that he was going into hibernation? That’s bullshit. Killers don’t do that. The more they kill, the more they want to kill. It’s like a drug, and they build up a tolerance. They need to kill more frequently to get the same high. They don’t go on hiatus.”