Emily Littlejohn - Inherit the Bones

I introduced myself and asked if I could see him regarding a student he had coached a few years back.

He said, “Well, sure, of course,” then added, “Which student?”

Damn. I forgot the Bellingtons still had not held their press conference.

“Mr. Chase, I’d rather not get into too many details over the phone. Can I buy you a coffee at Rick’s?” I said. “I can be there in twenty minutes.”

“Make it thirty, and a beer, my treat,” he said with a laugh. “Or is it doughnuts that you cops prefer?”

“Very funny, Mr. Chase. I’ll see you at four thirty then.”

I asked Sam to join me. Chief Chavez hadn’t officially made us partners on the case but what the hell, the kid was eager to learn and it never hurt to have a second set of eyes and ears. I didn’t want to put the mileage on my car, so I checked at reception and gave Sam a high five when the receptionist tossed me the keys to Olga.

Olga was a piece-of-shit Oldsmobile, a relic from the ’80s, but she was the hottest ticket around, on account of her working air conditioner and AM/FM stereo. We clamored into it and cranked the AC and headed over to Rick’s Café, a small restaurant that sat in the shadows of the ski lifts, at the base of a black-diamond run called Maverick’s Goose.

“I was thinking about what you said the other day, you know, dreaming about those kids, the McKenzie boys,” said Sam. He fiddled with the AC vents, opening and closing them like a kid himself. “Do you think we’ll ever know who killed them?”

I shrugged. “I hope so, but who knows? You have to understand, back in ’85, and then in 2011, when I found the skull, thousands of dollars were poured into the case. Hell, tens of thousands, and not just money, but time, effort, and energy. Finding those bodies opened old, deep wounds in Cedar Valley. There were people in town that would have preferred the bodies never be found. I guess they thought it was just easier to keep thinking maybe the kids had run away.”

“But if the Woodsman is still alive… well, that would be something, right? If there was some way to find him…”

I had to appreciate his enthusiasm.

“Of course. But we went over it, again and again. I haven’t given up, but I can’t let the past prevent me from giving all to the present. Take Nicky Bellington-we have an opportunity to find his killer and solve this case, here and now.”

“And what’s this Darren Chase got to do with it?” Sam asked.

“He’s the basketball coach at the high school. Ellen Bellington said that in the months before Nicky disappeared over Bride’s Veil, he was spending all his free time at practice with his coach. She hinted that perhaps there was something inappropriate going on.”

“Hinted?”

I nodded. “She didn’t come right out and say it, but she has her suspicions.”

“And do we? Have our suspicions, I mean? Is this guy on a list?”

I shook my head. “Nope. I checked before we left the station, he’s clean. Mr. Chase moved here from the Gulf about five years ago. He’s clean as a whistle.”

“Hmmm. Something to be aware of, at least. Just because there’s no record doesn’t mean something hasn’t happened,” Sam said. He stopped fiddling with the vents and began channel surfing the stereo. “Do you have any names picked out?”

I smiled. The name. Lately, the only thing Brody and I fought about.

“Well, it’s a girl. I like Elizabeth, after my mother. But Brody dated a girl named Eliza who was a real bitch, so he hates it. He likes Tara but spelled T-E-R-R-A, like the earth kind of terra, nerdy scientist that he is.”

“Different. I like it. But the name Brody’s different, too. His parents must have been hippies.”

I shook my head. “Nope. They were missionaries in China in the sixties and seventies. His mother came down with a terrible fever while carrying him and she almost died. They were in a remote outpost hundreds of miles from any kind of hospital, but the Buddhist villagers saved her life. They’d already settled on the name Matthew but his dad was so grateful to them that he switched it to Bodhi, after the Bodhisattva. But back in the States, when she delivered, the nurse misheard her and wrote Brody on his birth certificate.”

“Wow. That’s a crazy story,” Sam said, shaking his head. He settled on a country-western station and George Strait filled the Olds, singing about an oceanfront property in Arizona.

“After they returned to the States, they had four more children, all girls: Rachel, Mary, Naomi, and Sarah.”

Sam laughed. “Biblical names.”

“Except for Brody. Can you imagine? I think you guys would like each other; you’ll have to come over for dinner once he gets back from Alaska,” I said.

Just a few more days and he’d be home; unless, that is, he was planning to shack up with Celeste Fucking Takashima. Maybe she would take him back to Tokyo and they’d eat sushi naked, holding intense conversations deep into the night about geological anomalies and surface-level fissures.

Sam was looking at me funny.

“Sorry, I missed that?”

“Your house is up canyon, isn’t it? Sort of isolated up there.”

“Brody bought it ten years ago. Once we started dating, and fell in love, I sort of fell in love with it, too. It’s just beautiful and peaceful. And the wildlife is amazing; we’ve seen deer, of course, but also black bear and even a mountain lion once.”

“Is it on the grid?”

“Yes and no. We’re on a propane system and our own septic, but we’ve got Internet and cable and electricity,” I said with a laugh. “It’s not as out there as you might think.”

I pulled into the parking lot at Rick’s Café. It was empty save for a beat-up Subaru wagon. A tall man leaned against the driver’s door, a Red Sox ball cap pulled low over his ears. By his hip, the Subaru’s side mirror hung at an angle, held in place with duct tape. I noticed a rear fender was dented, as well.

We met him halfway between our cars and the restaurant. Late-afternoon heat rose from the asphalt. At the edge of the lot, two crows pecked at a dead squirrel. Their loud cackles filled the air and I turned away from the sight of them diving into the squirrel’s abdomen, their sharp beaks bobbing back up with bits of flesh.

“Mr. Chase? Thanks for meeting us. This is my partner, Sam Birdshead. I’m Detective Gemma Monroe,” I said. I had to crane my neck to look up at him. He was my age, give or take a year or two. His eyes were dark and framed with long lashes, the kind any woman would kill for. When he spoke, I again heard the Gulf in his voice, a low drawl that trod softly over the harder consonants and vowels.

“Darren. And it’s no problem,” he said. “Look, am I in some kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know, are you?” I asked. My intent had not been flirtation, but it sounded that way.

Darren just smiled and shook his head.

Inside Rick’s, we took a seat at a table by a window that looked out at the ski slopes, brown and drab and dusty in the summer heat. The ski lift chairs swung gently in the breeze, giant swing sets suspended high up in the air. A handful of mountain bikers crisscrossed their way down the slopes, small clouds of dirt and dust bellowing up from their back tires. We watched as two of the bikers almost collided. At the last second, one angled uphill and the other downhill. Darren and Sam watched them and made small talk while I leaned back and watched Darren. I was curious what he’d have to say about Nicky.

A waitress with hips like a Chevy dropped three menus in front of us. The laminated pages were sticky, as though they hadn’t been wiped down after the lunch crowd, and Sam put his down in disgust. He wiped the tips of his fingers on the edge of the tablecloth.