Closet Full Of Bones

by A. J. Aalto

  Bruce glanced back at her, and motioned for her to stand directly behind him like he was a massive human shield. They approached the front door cautiously; it was closed and locked. As the key turned, Gillian set the lamp box down beside the door, wanting her one good arm free in case she needed to defend herself. She was tempted to pick up the metal shovel beside the door, but she knew with her right shoulder in so much pain, she’d never be able to swing it.

  Bruce stood listening to the interior of the house before crossing the threshold. He slipped her house key back to her hands, fiddling with it until she was holding the key between her knuckles. She nodded at him.

  Bruce whispered, “What did you say the name of Paul’s watch guard dude is?”

  “Beaner.”

  He nodded and cleared his throat to call, “Beaner? You in here?”

  Silence answered them, a dead calm. Gillian whispered, “I left the light on over the sink in the kitchen. We should be able to see that from here. And there’s a night light in the bathroom. If the door was open like I left it, we’d see that, too.”

  In the hallway, pure darkness, the kind you only find far from town where there are no streetlights to break the night’s cover. Bruce nodded grimly, and said, “Might be time for a police sweep, lady. I don’t like this.”

  “Me either,” she agreed, and reached for her purse. It was not over her left shoulder. She’d left it in Bruce’s truck. “Need your phone.”

  “In the truck,” he said with a soft curse. “Time to get the fuck out?”

  Nodding, Gillian spun around to retreat.

  And slammed face first into Travis Freeman.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Sunday, November 2. 8:05 P.M.

  Craning up at Travis in horror, tongue glued to the roof of her mouth, Gillian could only shake her head. A little whimper escaped from deep in her throat.

  Travis’ mouth slid into a knowing smirk. “Hey, Featherweight.”

  Bruce reacted quickly, stepping forward with both fists raised in front of his face, but Travis held up a rusty orange diary flagged with colored tabs and rocked back on his heels.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He wagged the diary meaningfully at them. “Settle down, there, Wide Load. I’m only here to talk.”

  Gillian recovered enough to look him up and down. “Talk about what?” she demanded. “How I’m a whore? How I’m a nut?”

  “Actually, no,” Travis said, his eyebrows rocketing upward. “May I come in? It’s cold as balls out here.”

  Gillian, confused and uncertain, glanced up at Bruce. Bruce did not look impressed, and said, “If I can pat you down for weapons, and the lady says it’s okay.”

  “Lady,” Travis repeated. “That’s rich. But whatever. Pat away.” He dropped an open backpack off his shoulder and spread his arms wide, tolerating Bruce’s big hands searching his body from bottom to top. Gillian watched this carefully. Travis snort-laughed. “You want to cop a feel too, honey? Be my guest.”

  “I’d really rather not,” she said tightly.

  Bruce found a pocket knife on Travis and put it in his own pocket. “Gills?”

  The cold air blasting through the open door made her eyes water. Shaking from the shock of actually speaking to this man after the hell he’d put her through, speaking semi-civilly at that, she demanded, “Did you let the dog out?”

  Travis frowned and glanced over his shoulder. “Who, dumb-dumb-Doogie? No.” He whistled sharply; the dog’s head came up and he loped over, his tail wagging his whole body, his tongue lolling out. He cozied up to Travis’ leg for a stroke and a head scratch before running into the house, yapping.

  “It’s nice to know I was missed,” Travis said, smiling again.

  Gillian didn’t take that bait, and backed up a few feet so Travis could come in. When he did, Bruce shut the door behind him and stood there, flanking the newcomer. Travis shot a look over his shoulder and said to her, “This one’s a lot bigger than the last man you fucked. And I don’t mean your husband.”

  Gillian fumed but did her best to keep it off her face, asking coolly, “What does that mean?”

  Travis slapped the diary open to a little blue sticky note and read aloud, “May third. Dear diary. My sister, that slut!” He said the word with delight, drawing it out. Sluuuuuuut! “I can’t believe she fucked her husband’s partner. She said it was ‘an accident.’ Did Ken’s dick just fall into her? So disappointed but not at all surprised. She’s always doing shit like this.”

  Bruce made an unhappy noise but Gillian held up a hand. She didn’t believe for a second that Frankie had actually written those words. The diary looked like Frankie’s, but those words… no, those were not Frankie’s words. Gillian had never touched Ken. There was no affair. Why would Frankie make that up in a diary that only she would ever read? Why would she write lies to herself?

  “Is that what you came here for after all this time?” she asked coolly. “To talk about my sex life?”

  “I came to return some things I borrowed,” he said, pointing at the backpack.

  She felt her eyes narrow at him, crouched to peek inside, saw her sex toys and her underwear, and left them in the bag. “Keep them. I’ll buy something else.”

  “I didn’t do anything to them,” Travis promised, wearing a lewd grin. “Promise.”

  Gillian just glared at him. “And my pictures?”

  “They’re in there. Nice tits, by the way.” Travis side-eyed Bruce, and then insisted, “No, I mean it. They’re cute.”

  “That’s enough,” Bruce said.

  “Where are the other diaries?” Gillian asked. “You had more than one.”

  “Oh, the green one? Yeah, that had some interesting stuff. Oddly, it overlapped with this one. I sent the cops the other. Sorry ‘bout that. I was in a bad mood,” Travis said. “The orange diary was the most interesting by far, though.”

  “Oh?” Gillian said tightly, but was now too afraid by the thought of policemen reading the green diary and whatever Frankie might have written in it to form any intelligent inquiry.

  “Did you fuck around? It’s no big deal,” Travis said, “but I’ve been calling you a whore, and if it isn’t true, I’d like to apologize.”

  Bruce moved fast, grabbing Travis by the shirt front and heaving him backward and around, his feet coming clear of the floor. The front door shuddered loudly with the impact. Travis laughed, spreading his arms in a gesture of surrender, holding the diary high. Bruce pulled him off the door once to give him another solid, punishing slam.

  “Well, somebody doesn’t think so,” Travis noted. “Wanna call off your pet bear, here, Featherweight?”

  “Stop calling me that,” Gillian insisted. Then, softer, “Bruce.”

  Bruce stepped back but not very far, using the size of his body to intimidate.

  Travis rolled his eyes. “So that’s a ‘no?’ Look, there’s a lot of other bullshit in here about you. I’m trying to pick out the facts.”

  “No,” she said, voice thick with emotion, “not that it’s any of your business. I never slept with anyone but my husband during my marriage.”

  “Not even the big guy, here?” Travis jerked a thumb at Bruce.

  Bruce growled, “You want another fucking thump, asshole?”

  “I loved Greg and was never disloyal,” Gillian said. “But I don’t need your apology. Your opinion means nothing to me.”

  “Now, now. Listen. I was sitting in the pub just now, reading the last bit of this diary, and I started thinking, what is the likelihood that all of this is true?” Travis shook his head, turning to another page. “Which made me wonder, of course, if any of it was true. Did you tell Frankie to ditch me?”

  “She asked me what I would do in her position,” Gillian said. “She was unhappy. I told her to make herself happy. That is all I said about you. Make of that what you will.”

  Travis nodded, deep in thought, and then read aloud, “September second. Dear diary. Bobby is the only one who underst
ands what it’s like to live with that psycho-bitch. Bobby and I should run away together, but I’m afraid of what Gillian would do to us, especially after what she did to Mike.”

  Gillian glared. “You’re full of shit. It does not say that.”

  Travis showed her the page. She stared in shock, reading each word one at a time, over and over, feeling it sink in. “She had a bad night, I guess. Wrote something in anger. Half of what’s in a diary is nonsensical ranting and garbage.”

  Travis read, “October seventeenth. Gillian told me if I don’t break up with Trav, she’ll make sure he ends up chopped up and buried under rose bushes just like Mike Deacon. I wonder where she put the skull? She never would tell us.”

  Silence fell in the room and Gillian felt Bruce’s eyes cut her way. She shook her head mutely. Mike Deacon was buried under roses, but neither Frankie nor Bobby knew where. She had kept complete control of that little detail. There was no way she could risk anyone else knowing.

  She watched Travis’ finger slide down the page and he continued, “Gillian shot him. I don’t know where she got the gun. Maybe it was Greg’s.” Finger slide. “When I got downstairs, it was too late. He was already dead. She put the body in the freezer, warned me not to tell. I was afraid if I told anyone, she’d kill me next.”

  “What? How? I… That’s completely false,” Gillian barely breathed, head swimming. She saw little stars. “That’s not how it was. I don’t understand.”

  “Gills?” Bruce said. “You need to sit.”

  “I need a drink,” she said, swallowing hard.

  “Frankie’s chair is in here, right?” Bruce said. “Come into the dining room and sit, and I’ll get you a drink.”

  Travis followed them down the hall, boots clumping. Gillian had almost made it to Frankie’s Papasan chair when she noticed the dog wasn’t in his favorite place by the hearth. She wondered where the hell he was now.

  “Bruce, can you make sure the back door is closed and locked?” she asked.

  He nodded, casting one last suspicious look at Travis before leaving for the kitchen down the dark hallway.

  Travis handed her the diary. “So, I ordered another beer, and I really thought about it. She wrote that you fought with Mike Deacon at the top of the stairs and you both fell.”

  She nodded and heard Bruce thumping around in the kitchen, slamming the fridge door and the cabinets. Two thumps that sounded like he removed his boots and dropped them. Then silence. She listened, worried. Another thump that sounded like the back door.

  “The fall is true,” she admitted, feeling the urge to fetch her purse and phone, though it no longer felt like an emergency. “Bruce?”

  “Then, according to Frankie’s muddled diaries,” Travis continued, “which were thoughtfully dropped in my mailbox, by the way, you shot this guy and hauled him up into the old chest freezer and threatened her if she told. Which would have to mean you carried a gun. But your husband was a cop. He wouldn’t have let you traipse around with a gun, not in Canada. Lots of stuff that doesn’t make sense, here.”

  Dropped in his mailbox. “You didn’t break in and steal the diaries?”

  He shook his head. “I did deliver one to the police, that was on me. But I received two as a gift. Say, how did you lift Mike Deacon’s dead body if you were so badly injured that you needed an ambulance?” Travis grimaced doubtfully. “And why wasn’t there blood all over from the gunshot? Gunshot residue? Some evidence of a crime when the EMS guys got there to take you to the hospital for your fall? If you shot him…”

  “I didn’t,” she insisted hoarsely, looking at the pages, page after page of ugly lies about her mixed with just enough truth to be believable on first read. “It was a fall. I didn’t put him in the freezer. I didn’t even know.” She realized she was confessing, but looked up at this man who knew her secrets. “Someone else did that while I was unconscious, to protect me. I didn’t know he was even dead until I got out of the hospital. I was scared stiff to say anything until I knew for sure what had happened. And by then, it looked way too suspicious to tell anyone about. I was going to jail. There was no way out of it.”

  “But then, I noticed this. You’ve got to see this,” Travis said, and leaned over to take a small section of the last diary pages and fold them over.

  The lovely, loopy script handwriting in the early pages of the diary was wildly different from the pages of accusations; the writing was sharp, all-caps, riotously slanted in the later pages. He opened the front of the diary to show her Frankie’s worried words about her increasingly abusive relationship with Mike Deacon and her fears about leaving him, and then pulled back the pages to reveal the nasty things that were scrawled about Gillian in the end of the book, and she knew those were not Frankie’s words.

  Gillian heard a small, rapid series of floor squeaks and had a mere half-second to wonder why Bruce was running into the room at them when Travis grunted and fell at her hard, throwing the chair backwards and both of them to the floor. The cushion flew sideways as Gillian hit the floor on the back of her head, and Travis’ weight slammed her in the chest, knocking out her breath.

  The baseball bat swung high again. Bobby’s eyes were wide and empty of emotion. This time, the bat whipped straight down at the pile of them. She whacked Travis in the back of the skull hard enough to drive the front of his head into Gillian’s ribcage. Gillian’s breath whooshed out. She tried to cry out for Bobby to stop but it came out a croak. Trying to buck Travis’ heavy, unconscious weight off of her, she wriggled, using both arms for leverage. Her right shoulder screamed, freshly aching, but she ignored it, desperately scrambling backward. Bobby raised the bat again. It came down with a sickening crack on Travis’ skull. Gillian screamed Bruce’s name. Slipping free of the bulk of Travis’ weight, she flipped to hands and knees and crawled a foot until she could launch to her feet. Gill bolted past the fireplace and ducked down the back hall toward the rear stairs. She didn’t make it that far.

  Bobby leaped over the body, right on her heels, closing in fast, ordering her to stop. Gillian took a chance and dropped into a crouch. Bobby slammed into her bent back at knee height and went flying. The impact screamed through Gillian’s bad shoulder. Sailing over Gillian, Bobby sprawled, losing her grip on the blood-splattered baseball bat; it spun out of her hand, clattered and rolled, coming to a stop against the wall.

  Gillian sprang up; she doubled back down the hall, and slipped into one of the empty rooms, shedding her noisy shoes and sidling into one dark corner behind the slightly open door to plan her next move. Cupping her bad arm, she pinched her lips inward and refused to cry, refused to think of the bashed-in skull in her dining room or the blood on her shirt, anything but the crazy bitch in her hall. She’s lost her mind. Bobby’s finally lost it. She knew she had to get out of the house. She couldn’t hide in these empty rooms.

  She had to check on Bruce; he must be down, otherwise he’d have come running at the commotion. What had Bobby done to him? Did she only have the baseball bat? She worked to quiet her panting, breathe slowly, and listen hard for sounds in the hall.

  A shuffle. Heavy breathing. Gillian’s eyes darted to the crack in the door. A shadow slid across the wall.

  “Am I going to have a problem with you, Gillian?” Bobby called out warningly. “You sent her away from me. You tried to break me. You tried to break me but I’m still here. I’m stronger than you. Smarter. I can do the things you can’t do, won’t do.” Her breath was ragged. “Poor guilt-ridden Gillian. You actually think you killed Mike Deacon? Fuckin’ joke. A joke. Bobby cleans up the messes. Bobby does, not you!”

  What the fuck does that mean? Gillian bit her tongue and sidled in her sock feet to the far side of the room where the shared bathroom led into the front living room. From there, if she was quick and stealthy enough, she could reach the kitchen and the back door. Where the hell was the damn dog? And where was Paul’s guard, Beaner? Was Travis dead? Had she hit him that hard?

  Bobby’s voi
ce floated through the room, closer now. “No more games. You need to know the truth. Frankie doesn’t tell you shit. I cleaned up the last one. Surprise-surprise, tough girl, you didn’t fix anything. You didn’t save Frankie. I did. I finished him off.”

  Gillian forced herself to inhale slowly, quietly, though her lungs were constricting and her heart thundering hard.

  Bobby’s footstep was soft. “Pillow case and a hammer,” she said, as if to herself, “like a fucking rat. Twitched a bit and then pop, one more. Sank his battleship, you betcha.”

  The door swung further open on noisy hinges just as Gillian was slipping into the en suite bathroom, and she paused and strained to hear the direction of Bobby’s footsteps; was she coming into the room, or passing it by to go to the kitchen? Gillian, with no weapon and no phone, couldn't afford to be wrong. She heard nothing. No breathing, no movement. Was Bobby standing still, also listening? Gill’s eyes darted around the dark room, adjusting quickly, looking for anything. A toilet brush. Some tissue. Her toothbrush and a plastic cup for rinsing. She hadn’t moved anything useful in yet.

  “You need to tell me where the body went, Gillian,” Bobby called out. “It’s mine. I need it.”

  What the hell for? That thought was followed quickly by, If you tell her where it is, she’ll have no reason to keep you alive. It might be your bargaining chip.

  Bobby’s voice wavered on the edge of brittle. “Nobody said you could steal it away. It was supposed to stay in the freezer where I put it. It wasn’t yours to move. Now… if you tell me where you buried him, and tell me where you put Frankie, I’ll let you live.”