Under the Bones

by Kory M. Shrum

  She pressed her thumb to Buddha’s round belly. “Lou must’ve brought them from my apartment.”

  “That was nice of her.” He said no more, but he thought plenty. Why didn’t she stay? Why didn’t she tell you she loved you? Offer to sit with you for a while? Why did she have to come like a thief in the night? He wondered if the visit was like the one she’d paid him a couple of days before. Another way to avoid whatever was going on in her apartment.

  “I like this one,” Lucy said. She turned the magazine so King could see. A plunging neckline in Art Deco style. A mermaid fit, or so description read. As if King knew dresses any better than he knew daytime soap operas.

  “Too bad I don’t have the cleavage to hold it up,” she said, turning the page.

  “What are you talking about!” He took the magazine and flipped back to the page, finding the dismissed dress. “It would be gorgeous on you.”

  He earmarked the page, creasing it between his thumb and forefinger.

  She smiled. “You’re sweet, Robert.”

  Her smile warmed him to his toes.

  “What about flowers?” he asked, fishing for another magazine. “You need a bouquet.”

  “Do I?” she said with a laugh.

  “Knowing you, you’ll probably want something seasonal.” If not, she might refuse flowers outright. He remembered the five-minute lecture she’d given him about commercially grown flowers the first time he’d gifted her with some red roses wrapped in cellophane.

  She lay against the pillow, breathing hard as if flipping through magazines was proving too strenuous. “Sunflowers are in season. Lilies. Mums. Dah-dahlias.”

  “What color?” he asked, scribbling in the margins beside the mermaid dress.

  “Fall colors. Red or burnt sienna. Robert—” she rasped.

  The wheeze made him look up, alarm bells sounding in his head.

  “You don’t have to do all this. There’s no point,” she whispered.

  “No point?”

  She placed a clammy hand on his. “I know you love me. That’s more than enough.”

  He scoffed, hoping it hid the fear welling up inside him. “I’m doing this for the rich inheritance.”

  She smiled, but didn’t laugh. Her breath remained too high in her throat. Should he call someone?

  “What flower will you pin to your suit?” she asked. “A sunflower is too large.”

  “I’ll get a daisy or something like it. There’s that yellow daisy with the black center. I’ve forgotten the name.”

  “A black-eyed Susan.”

  Awful name, he thought. “Or maybe I’ll wear only a sunflower. Strategically placed. We can have one of those naked yoga weddings.”

  She laughed, but it devolved into coughing. He held the water out for her, helping her to sit up straighter.

  The sight made his chest ache. The hateful voice he’d been carrying all morning rose up, volume to the max. This is stupid. This is pointless. She’s barely more than a bag of bones. She’d break the second you tried to push a ring onto her finger. This isn’t what she wants.

  The voice had started as he’d walked through the French quarter that morning. From the moment he’d stopped into the corner market across from his apartment and scoured the magazine racks for Bridal Boutique, Bridal Monthly. Brides-R-Us, The White Dress, and every wedding magazine he could find, this relentless voice ragged him.

  But it had been worth it when she took the first magazine from the pile, her shaking hand flipping open the first cover. The way she’d smiled. The strength in her voice as she patiently answered each of his questions. The laughter.

  Stupid or not, she was enjoying herself. And even if the walls caved in on her tomorrow, squeezing the last breath from her chest, he wanted her to die excited about something.

  Anything. No matter how stupid, commercial, or pointless. Anything to make these last moments the best they could be.

  “This one’s all about dresses,” he says, seizing The White Dress from the slick pile. “Are you sure you want a mermaid dress?”

  Red-faced but breathing, she motioned toward the slick pile. “I want to look at the cakes.”

  “Now we’re talking.”

  King had purchased two magazines that focused on cake and food. It was true that he was thinner now than when he’d first seen her months ago, but he still loved food, as he always had. He’d lost nearly twenty pounds over the summer they spent together, walking the Tuileries Gardens, West bank and Eifel Tower together. Seeing the inside of an Egyptian pyramid by flashlight. The Parthenon and Coliseum.

  She had a bucket list as well as anyone.

  So they jumped naked into the Mediterranean. Kneeled in the temples of Kyoto. Dove the Great Barrier Reef on a clear day where the sea turtles and clown fish could be seen easily.

  They’d worked on checking them off one by one, together. Saving tremendously on airfare and lodging. Sandwiching in as many excursions as she had the stamina for between her chemo treatments. Some days her spirit and body held up fine. Other nights, they agreed that movie and popcorn was better. But it was mostly King who had eaten the popcorn and watched the movie, while Lucy slept in the crook of his arm.

  He worried that while all the walking and activity was great for him, maybe it had worn her out quicker. Would she have had more time if she’d rested? If she hadn’t tried to push herself to squeeze the most out of the days she had left?

  He wondered what his life might be like when she was gone…

  He’d drank quite a bit before she’d came back into his life. Now, he drank no more than three drinks in one go. He wondered if it would come back—the weight and the drinking—once she was gone. We hold so much of ourselves back for the ones we love.

  Without her…Once she’s gone…

  Don’t think of that.

  King wished he wasn’t so big, so that he could lay beside her in the hospital bed, look at the magazines side by side. He would have to satisfy himself with turning the page, as she pointed out cake stands and decorations that worked well with a fall theme. A croquembouche.

  “Do you think this was produced sustainably,” she said, and pointed at a wooden pedestal on which a cake sat. Globs of chocolate icing decorated with orange and red leaves across three layers.

  Her face pinched suddenly, and her hand tightened on the corners of the magazine.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. His heart hammered in his chest, his stomach filling up with acrid bile.

  She closed the magazine, eyes clamped shut. “I’m tired.”

  He pulled the magazine from her limp hands and gathered them up, placing in a neat pile next the wooden Buddha on the little table.

  “We can pick this up another time.” He shook the styrofoam cup, rattling the ice. “Do you want more ice?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Lucy?”

  She finally opened her eyes. They were bright with pain and fear. He pressed the call button before she even asked. Nurses entered a moment later. King stepped out of the way, clutching the cup of ice in his right hand, so they could fuss over her. Check the IV and the drugs.

  Before they had to ask, he excused himself. He was too large to stand there gawking while others frantically worked. And it was just as well. The reality was his old claustrophobia had risen up to meet him. When Lucy had opened her blue eyes and revealed all her fear and pain, the walls of the hospital room had slid in closer. Four, maybe five inches. Even the ceiling seemed to press down from above. The air which had felt too cool one moment before, was suddenly hot. Way too hot. And instead of holding him up, the chair in which he sat seemed to pull him down.

  He could never predict when his claustrophobia might arise. Often at night, he lay in his king-sized bed, staring at the ceiling. In those moments, he begged for sleep but the walls crept close. He would shove his pillows away. Open the French doors leading out to the covered balcony so a cool breeze could flow through his apartment. But often even the air and
the moonlight weren’t enough to relieve the mounting suffocation clawing at his chest and neck.

  Only when he’d turned on the light did the walls of his bedroom seem to move back an inch.

  Lying in the ruins of a collapsed building would do that to a man. Eleven DEA agents had gone into a building for drugs and a mob boss, and only King had come out alive. He’d been standing beneath a set of stairs when the bomb went off, bringing down the Westside brownstone they were searching. Brick after brick crashed down around him, until he was pinned under the rubble. Four days he laid in the dark, trying to breathe, trying to stay alive.

  Somehow he managed to keep breathing. He might have been pulled from the wreckage with all ten fingers and toes, but he hadn’t escaped the rubble completely unscathed. His only company, the compressing darkness, was always with him now. And sometimes it liked to remind King that it was so.

  King sank down into the plastic chair outside the hospital room. It was white and reminded him of an egg, whose shell had been emptied and cleaned before being placed on four metal legs.

  He listened to the machines rattling in the room. To the rapid fire instructions spat between them.

  He wondered if he should call Lou. Then decided against it. Two more nurses and a doctor rushed past him into Lucy’s room.

  The phone in his pocket buzzed. “Christ.”

  He fished the phone from his pocket, swearing as he worked his fingers into his coat pocket, getting seemingly stuck on corners that didn’t exist.

  He didn’t recognize the number right away, but answered it. If he had been home, in the quiet calm of his apartment above Mel’s shop, he would have let it go to voicemail. But any distraction, even a telemarketer, was welcome against the frantic commotion in the room behind him.

  “King,” he said.

  “Robbie!” a deep vibrato greeted him. The kind of voice that rumbled up from the chest rather than from the nose or throat.

  King knew it instantly. “Sampson? How the hell are you?”

  “I’ve been better, honestly. How are you?”

  King tried not to listen to the hushed whispers echoing through the open door.

  “I’ve been better too. What’s going on?”

  King heard the click of keys and knew that Sampson was typing something. “I heard you’d opened your own private practice. Is that true?”

  “I did. But something came up and it’s on hold at the moment.”

  You’ll have plenty of free time soon, a hateful voice hissed. King shoved the snake beneath the water of his mind. Enough to turn right back into the fat, alcoholic you were.

  “Just as well,” Sampson went on. “In four months, I’ll be leaving the force myself.”

  “Got retirement plans? A houseboat in the Bahamas?”

  The man laughed heartily. “I do love me some lime in the coconut. But no, no plans. Why, you looking for a partner? I wouldn’t mind some investigative work. It’s gotta be more interesting than Sudoku.”

  A nurse came out of Lucy’s room, jogging right past him without a word. She cut into an adjacent room and reemerged with a box of some kind.

  “You there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” King mumbled. But he was aware, if distantly, the way his mouth hung open, his eyes fixated on the nurse.

  “If this is a bad time, I can call you back.” Sampson’s voice was so distant yet King saw him in his mind’s eye. An ex-boxer like himself but they both had bellies now. Sampson as dark as he was fair. But a kinder, gentler man King had never known.

  “There’s nothing I can do unfortunately,” King said. “So you might as well tell me why you called. Distract me.”

  King was certain that whatever Sampson might need, it wasn’t post-retirement work.

  “I called for a couple of reasons. First, you should watch your back.”

  “Who wants to kill me now?” King chuckled, but the sound was hollow. He was pantomiming a conversation. He was relieved to find he could still do it when necessary.

  “We don’t know. But 24 of our agents have disappeared this week.”

  “Field agents?”

  “Yeah. And some undercover. It’s not unheard of for undercovers to go dark, but the ones we’ve confirmed missed their check-ins. We wouldn’t think anything of it except—”

  “—except 24 is a lot.”

  “In 48 hours.”

  King whistled. “That is mighty damn suspicious.”

  Sampson agreed. “We don’t know if this has anything to do with Brasso’s disappearance. We haven’t made a connection yet.”

  Brasso. King knew exactly where he was. After a brief stint of forced isolation in a Siberian shipping container, he’d received free one-way passage to La Loon, courtesy of Louie Thorne.

  Just thinking of Brasso made King’s jaw jump.

  He may have saved King from the wreckage of a collapsed building, but apparently that hadn’t been enough to inoculate him against betrayal. Brasso almost put a bullet in King himself—if Lou had given him the chance.

  King heard a chair squeak through the line and wondered if he’d missed something Sampson had said. He tried to imagine the other man in the hustle and bustle of the St. Louis Headquarters.

  The last time he’d visited that building was three months ago, with Lou in tow. They’d slipped right through the shadow of an oak tree up into Brasso’s office, trying to get a sense of how deep the man’s betrayal ran.

  Where was Sampson in the building? In one of the cloistered offices? Or was he on the main floor, in the thick of it. An office with a closed door, he suspected, given the silence on the other end. That wouldn’t have been possible if he’d been in the center of the fury that consumed the floor.

  And the office itself? Sampson had been a military man and as neat as they come. No doubt all the trash was in the waste bin. The surface of the desk clear of everything but a computer and maybe a coffee cup. Behind him on a windowsill, a few pictures of his two grown kids and wife.

  Doreen would’ve added something nice to the place. A rug. Maybe a plant.

  “I want you to keep your eyes open,” Sampson said, offering King solid ground again.

  “I’m not a field agent anymore, Sammy,” King pointed out, hoping to recover the thread of the conversation he may have dropped. “No one is going to come looking for me.”

  That was a damned lie. He’d done away with that illusion when his very own partner offered him a case—only with the intention of dumping his chained body in the river for the fishes to nibble on. And he hadn’t cut Lou from his life, and with that one, who knew what the hell would come knocking.

  “Keep your eyes and ears open,” Sampson said.

  “You said you called about a couple of things. What else?”

  Silence stretched on the phone.

  “Did I lose you?” King asked, his heart tapping out a strange rhythm. Danger, it said. Danger.

  “Nothing serious,” Sampson said, and King knew it for the bold-faced lie that it was. “But I’d like to tell you in-person. You free on Friday?”

  14

  Lou managed to get her body into an upright position before her boots hit the fish cart. Her momentum was more than the dead weight of the fish. Like a seesaw, her end went down and the fish went up. But the motion was enough to cushion the worst of her fall, absorbing her momentum. If she’d crashed through the landing a foot or so to the right or left, it would’ve been a different story.

  She stumbled back a step with the shifting cart beneath her boots, knees shaking. Her balance was compromised. The back of her ankles hit the lip of the cart. This was enough to buck her off the other side.

  She hit hard.

  The unforgiving concrete floor bit her elbow. It sang, sharp pain ricocheting up the funny bone into her neck. She rolled under the conveyor belt, seeking shelter in its shadow. Before she slipped two fat tuna slapped against the floor an inch from her face. Their watery eyes wide-open, mouth parted in a pantomime of surpris
e. The tail slapping concrete splashed water into her face.

  She recovered in the darkness of a closet. She didn’t know what closet, and she didn’t care as she ran her hands over her wet face. She reeked of fish. Her face. Her hands. Her clothes were wet too, no doubt from when she’d tried to break her own fall. She wiped at her cargo pants and snatched a shirt off a hanger above her to dab at her face.

  She pat herself down, checking to make sure all the working parts were present and accounted for.

  Only the elbow throbbed. It was a hell of a time to realize that this Kevlar jacket didn’t have reinforced elbows like her leather jacket did. But the pain was tolerable. She could work with that.

  Splinters in her hair and the reeking scent of fish clinging to her, she would have to push that aside. She still had her guns and her bullets. And if she was lucky, her target.

  The closet door creaked open, slowly spilling light into the space. Her entrance must’ve been louder than she’d thought.

  Lou pressed deeper into the darkness, and right out the other side. No doubt the closet would be searched and some tenant confused and frightened. She probably cost someone a decent night’s sleep.

  She was back in the fish house a moment later.

  A man screamed. Too close. So close her ears rang with it. She turned just as Jason, wide-eyed reached for the gun tucked into the back of his jeans. She’d appeared right beside him without meaning to. What had he been doing? Squatting in a dark corner while everyone else tried to solve the mystery of the falling woman?

  Before he could get his gun up, Lou grabbed his elbow, pushing down to lock his hands at his side, making it impossible to pull the weapon at that angle. She freed her own Beretta and yanked him through the dark.

  A heartbeat later, her boots hit the dirt beside her Nova Scotian paradise. It was dark.

  “What—” Jason began, his wide fearful eyes sliding from her face to the lake.

  She didn’t have time to play with him, especially since he wasn’t the man she wanted. She wanted Cam.