House of Bones: A Novel

by Dale Bailey

  Now, surveying the generic comforts of the suite that would be her home for the next two weeks—a suite that might have been lifted entire from the nearest Sheraton—Lara uttered a rueful laugh at just how unprepared she really had been. The stress had been all but shattering, the workload crushing, the fatigue unbearable. As for the difficulty of making rational decisions in that fog of weariness—well, that had been something else altogether.

  And just that easily, the memory of Katie Wright—her thin fevered face and the damp blond curls matted against her forehead—loomed up in Lara’s mind.

  There was no escaping Katie Wright, was there?

  She waited at every turn of thought.

  And considering Katie’s present accommodations—a wooden box roughly six feet long and half as wide, and dark, unendurably dark—there was something obscene about the pleasure Lara found herself taking in these unexpectedly luxurious digs.

  That was the thing of it. You wanted the world to stop in its tracks, to acknowledge your tragedy—

  —except it isn’t your tragedy, Lars, a voice whispered inside her head—

  —but the world kept steaming full speed ahead. The earth still turned on its axis, the stars swung by in their unvarying arcs, and come dawn, when you woke from the brief oblivion of sleep, the morning light fell through your window with the precise clarity and weight it had always possessed, firing each floating scintilla of dust with a beauty that would not yield even for an instant to the primacy of some merely human sorrow.

  And even that wasn’t the worst of it.

  No. The worst of it was that there came a time when even your own body betrayed you. It didn’t take long either. An hour, two hours, maybe three if you were lucky, and you felt the world summon you back. You felt the pressure of a full bladder or your mouth went dry or somebody told you to get some rest, and suddenly you were back in the world again. The old imperatives of flesh possessed you, sleep and food and sex in their eternal round, and there was nothing you could do to mortify them out of you. You could run for hours along the lake—you could run until the world dissolved like celluloid on the fevered lamp of your exhaustion, and when you surfaced from unconsciousness at last, the world would still be there. And you would still find pleasure in it.

  Katie Wright was gone. She would always be gone.

  But you—you could still take pleasure in the overripe aroma of magnolia pushing out from the open door of a flower shop, or the new-minted coins of sunlight dazzling the rippled surface of the lake during your morning run. Or even, God help you, in the bland luxury of a hotel-quality suite. That was the horror of it.

  In the end, you grieved because you could no longer grieve.

  In the end, you strangled yourself with guilt.

  And maybe—maybe—you ran away.

  Is that why you’re here, Lars? a voice inquired inside her head, and Lara laughed, for she knew that voice, didn’t she? She knew it all too well.

  Shouldering her bag, she walked into the bedroom. The boxes containing her personal effects waited at the end of the bed. It didn’t take long to find the photo—Lana and Lara, Lara and Lana, leaning together to blow out the candles on an enormous birthday cake, their seven-year-old faces joyfully oblivious to everything that lay before them.

  One golden moment.

  You grieved because you could no longer grieve.

  Life went on, that’s all, and the dead fell behind.

  Lara sat on the bed. Brushing the hair from her eyes, she stared down at the photo, and what came to her mind was Lomax’s grim little speech about Theresa Matheson, raped and tortured to death over a span of six hours in the lobby below. What came to mind was the sound she had imagined as the elevator doors rumbled closed before her. The faintly mocking laughter of a child.

  Is that why you’re here, Lars? Lana said again, and this time she didn’t wait for an answer. This time she just plowed on ahead. You think you can just run away? Cause I gotta say that doesn’t seem all that wise, you being the only game in town as far as female companionship goes—not unless you want to wind up like that chick in the lobby.

  “Shut up, Lana.”

  Leaning over, Lara propped the photo on the nightstand. Then she stood, smoothing her slacks, and shut off the light. She walked to the window and leaned there, looking out. The night hung in velvet folds beyond the glass, stippled with city lights.

  She was here because she wanted it back. The thirty-six-hour shifts, the endless paperwork, the adrenaline rush that jolted through you whenever a trauma came rolling through the doors. That most of all, she supposed. She wanted her life—a life that mattered—back.

  That’s what Ramsey Lomax had offered her. All he wanted in return was two weeks of her time. It didn’t seem like too much to ask.

  “Right, Lana?” she said. “Right?”

  She waited in darkness for a long time afterward. But Lana didn’t answer.

  6

  “So what happened during the renovations?” Lara said over dinner.

  They sat over plates of fettuccini and grilled chicken—Ben had cooked it—in the gleaming, overbright industrial kitchen, Lara and Ben on one side of the long trestle, Abel and Keel on the other, with Ramsey Lomax peering down from the head of the table like some bizarre family patriarch.

  Lomax dabbed his lips with a napkin. “There was an accident,” he said. “There were a number of accidents actually, minor ones, but one in particular that persuaded me we should have medical facilities—and someone capable of using them—on site.”

  “Accidents happen,” Keel said.

  “Indeed, yes, Mr. Keel, all the time I’m afraid, especially in construction. But this one …” He shook his head. “There was an enormous amount of work to do, just in renovating this one floor. The place was built on the cheap in the early sixties.” He shook his head. “The Great Society. What a ridiculous notion that turned out to be. Such naïveté.”

  “Naïveté wasn’t the problem,” Ben said.

  “No? What was it then?”

  “Corruption. I’ve seen the plans of this place—the original plans, I mean. What it was supposed to be, what it could have been. The money was there, too. But it had a way of disappearing in the Housing Authority, didn’t it, so they built the place on the cheap instead.”

  “Well, what would you expect, Mr. Prather? Corruption’s everywhere. Failure to anticipate it—that’s just naïveté.” Lomax shrugged. “The point is, there wasn’t enough money from the start, and as time went on the situation worsened. Reagan made cuts in the eighties. The Democrats gave us welfare reform—such as it was—in the nineties. There had been no routine maintenance here for years, maybe even a decade—no painting, no repairs, nothing. The elevators didn’t work. Neither did the plumbing, the heat—the list went on and on. So there was a lot to do just to make the place livable, not to mention”—Lomax swept his hands around in a gesture that encompassed the elaborate kitchen, the neighboring lounge, the entire floor beyond—“the renovations.”

  “A lot of people found it livable for years,” Ben said.

  “Perhaps so. But I’m not inclined to make the sacrifices they were forced to make. Nor, Mr. Prather, to subject my companions to such conditions. Seeing as all of you—even you, Mr. Prather—have lived substantially more … comfortable lifestyles.”

  There was a faintly mocking edge to this last. In the stiff silence that followed, Ben leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “You said there was an accident,” Lara said.

  “Oh, yes,” Lomax said, smiling. “Yes indeed. If you want to call it that. When we first started the work, we established a buddy system to keep people from being alone in the place—things have a way of happening here when you’re alone, something I’d suggest you keep in mind.”

  “We live alone,” Keel said darkly.

  “True. But I think the … power, if you want to call it that … I think the power of the place—in this renovated corridor anyway
—has been considerably weakened.”

  “Why is that?”

  “We’ve inhabited it, haven’t we? We’ve possessed it, if you will. Nothing of the original structure remains here, not even the walls.” He leaned forward. “Let me tell you: the first time I came here I could feel something in the air, something”—he waved a hand—”watchful, I guess. Elsewhere in the building, I can feel it still—I felt it in the lobby today. But here … nothing.” Lomax shrugged, eyeing them over his fork. “Besides, much as I’m sure I’ll come to like you all, I have no desire for a roommate. Do you?”

  No one had an answer for that.

  “So, the buddy system,” Lara said into the silence. “What happened with that?”

  “It didn’t quite work out as planned.”

  “Why not?” Keel said.

  “People didn’t want to work here for one thing, despite an unusually generous wage. They’d be enthusiastic enough at the start. They’d put in a day or two, and then”—he shrugged—”they would just quit. Sometimes they’d have an excuse, other times they’d just stop showing up. I suppose we should have expected it. Pretty much the same thing happened with the residents in the early nineties—a mass exodus. People just wouldn’t live here anymore. By the time Theresa Matheson was raped and murdered, Tower Three was essentially abandoned.”

  “What was she doing here, then?” Lara said.

  “She was headed for one of the other towers—there were eight of them, remember, most of them at least still half full. Tower Three—for whatever reason—seems to be the nexus of … whatever was happening here.”

  “That still doesn’t explain how she wound up here.”

  “No. Nor does it explain how her assailants—most of them residents of the surrounding towers—ended up here that day either. They can’t explain it themselves.”

  “They won’t explain it, you mean,” Keel said.

  “What do you mean?” Lara said.

  “It’s not rocket science, Doc. You got an abandoned building in the middle of an area known for intensive gang activity. You bet those guys are going to use it.”

  “Maybe so,” Lomax said. “Though our interviews with the city’s gang units suggest otherwise. According to them, Tower Three had been universally abandoned by the mid-nineties. Gangs included.”

  “So how did they come to be there, then?” Ben said.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps—” Lomax hesitated. “Perhaps Tower Three summoned them.”

  “What?”

  “Summoned them, Doctor.” Lomax looked around at them. “Summoned her assailants anyway, and then used them to lure Miss Matheson into the lobby, into the shadows there, where passersby—if there were any—wouldn’t notice.”

  Keel shifted in his seat. He snorted and shook his head.

  “Laugh if you wish, Mr. Keel,” Lomax said. “You needn’t worry about offending me. But I believe this place can summon people, in some cases. I believe it calls out to them. I believe that’s what happened to our glazier.”

  “Your glazier?” Ben said.

  “Our accident victim. If you want to call it an accident. Ironically, he had a work partner—but people get sloppy, don’t they? People always get sloppy.”

  “So what happened?” Lara said.

  “Like I said, the further we got with the renovations, the more comfortable everybody became. The partner stepped out to use the rest room, and rather than buddy up with somebody else, the glazier stuck around to finish something else—an interval of perhaps ten minutes, that’s all, yet he managed to cut himself quite badly and nearly bled to death before his partner got back. An accident, that’s what I chose to call it and I paid accordingly—out of pocket, I should add. The workman’s comp adjuster denied the claim.”

  “Why is that?” Keel said.

  “If it was an accident,” Lomax said, “the man managed to slash both wrists with the same piece of glass. Nor did the injuries appear to happen simultaneously, as they might have had he lunged to catch a pane of glass that had slipped out of its frame or whatever. They ran longways”—Lomax drew a finger along his forearm—”and they were quite deep, a consistent depth the length of each incision. And if the fingerprints on the glass—some of them bloody—are any indication, he managed to use both hands in the process. You’re a seasoned investigator, Mr. Keel. What does the evidence suggest to you?”

  Flushing, Keel pushed his plate away. “He did it himself, that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what the insurance adjuster said. The glazier was fortunate that his friend was quick-thinking. He managed to get tourniquets on both arms, which enabled the ambulance to make the full round-trip from Mercy General and back. Thirty-four minutes.”

  “And?” Ben said.

  “And what? He’ll never work again, not with his hands anyway. The nerve damage was fairly extensive.”

  “No. What did he say about it?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Prather. Much like Theresa Matheson’s assailants, actually. He says he remembers asking his partner to bring him some bottled water from the cooler in the corridor. And then he just blanks out, like a spot missing in a cassette tape. The next thing he remembers is screaming—that was his partner—and he realizes that he’s on his knees, that he’s wet. You should hear him tell it, he’s quite eloquent on the issue. ‘I thought I must have pissed myself at first.’ That’s what he told me.” Lomax shook his head. “He realized it was blood soon enough, though—it must have taken a second or two, that’s all. I suppose he must have gone into shock almost immediately. Right, Doctor?”

  “It happens pretty quickly.”

  “The next thing he remembers is the emergency room.”

  “They must have done a psych consult,” Lara said.

  “Oh, yes. They admitted him for observation, did a full battery of tests, the works.”

  “And?” Ben said.

  “He was fine. No suicidal ideation. No personal problems of any real significance. His marriage was solid, his health was good, his finances were sound.” Lomax shrugged. “He was fine.”

  “Except for the slashed wrists,” Keel said.

  And Lomax smiled. “Indeed, yes, Mr. Keel. Except for that.”

  7

  “So what do you think of him?” Fletcher Keel said.

  He chalked his cue, leaned over the table, and sank the five in the corner pocket. They listened to it rattle down through the bowels of the table, and clatter into the return tray at the other end.

  “Who?” Ben said.

  Keel took his time answering. He moved around the table, poker-faced as he considered his next shot. Then, without looking up—though he projected a kind of taut peripheral awareness—he said, “Three in the side pocket.” He took the shot with unstudied grace: a single confident stroke with the cue, the sharp crack of the cushioned tip against the ivory. Ben watched as the ball zipped silently over the felt, a red blur on a green field. It rattled around the rim of the hole and dropped, snicking against the balls already waiting in the tray.

  Keel looked up, smiling, a lean blue-eyed man with long muscles and a deeply scored face. There was something paradoxical about him, a youthful grace that belied the gray in his neatly trimmed goatee. Even in repose—pausing to study his next shot—he radiated an aura of contained energy, a coiled potential: like a spring, or a snake. He seemed deeply at home inside his flesh, in a way that seemed, to Ben, who’d always been clumsy, both mysterious and faintly miraculous.

  “Mine host,” Keel said. “That’s who.”

  “Lomax?” Ben said.

  “Yep.”

  “Gosh, I don’t know.”

  Keel gave Ben a raspberry and turned back to the table, pointing his next shot with the tip of his cue. It went a quarter inch wide, caroming off the rail and shaking up the balls in the middle of the table. “Hurried that one,” he said under his breath, and then, looking up, “Come on, you’ve got to have an opinion.”

  Ben studied the table while he pon
dered how to answer the question—or whether to answer it at all. Keel wasn’t bad, there was no question about that. Ben’s only unimpeded shot ran the length of the felt. He chalked his stick. “Nine ball in the corner.” He leaned over the table, sighted down the cue, drew it back, and took the shot. He could see right away that he’d misjudged the angle. The nine rebounded off the corner of the pocket and coasted to the center of the table.

  Keel sank the seven and four in quick succession.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well, what?”

  “What do you think of the man?”

  “I’m a journalist. I’m not supposed to have opinions.”

  “Everybody has opinions. You just try to disguise them—which is far more insidious. Six in the side.” He leaned over the table and banked the ball off the far rail. It dropped neatly into the pocket. “Besides,” he added. “It’s not like you’re writing an article.”

  “No. But I might. I really am trying to withhold judgment.”

  “Not me,” Keel said. “The guy’s a loon.”

  “You think?”

  “Ghosts, Mr. Prather?”

  “Ben.”

  “Well, Ben, do you have any opinions on ghosts, or would that compromise your objectivity too much?”

  “I’m inclined to disbelieve in them, I guess.”

  “Well, that’s something, then—”

  “On the other hand, I don’t think that makes Lomax crazy.”

  “No?” Keel lifted his cue. “Two in the corner.”

  But this time, he’d misjudged. The ball came off the rail hard, leaving Ben a gimme on the ten.

  “So what do you mean, then?” Keel asked.

  “Just … that …” Biting his lower lip, Ben leaned over the table. The ten went down with a satisfying clunk. Which left him, what, six balls behind? He looked up. “… people believe in lots of things they can’t see.”

  “Such as?”

  “God for one thing.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s different.”

  “Is it?” Ben looked at the table. The upside to being so far behind was that there was nothing left in his way: the table was, literally, wide open. He pointed out the fourteen, leaned over, and sank it. His next shot—on the eleven—rolled wide.