Emily Littlejohn - Inherit the Bones

The waitress, whose nametag read “Michelle,” came back and placed three glasses of water on the table. The water was iceless, the glasses filled only halfway. Her right hip jostled the table as she shifted her weight. She waited silently, her pen poised above a small notepad in hands that were red and chapped and dotted with age marks.

“Three coffees, please,” I said.

She gave me a skeptical look.

“Two regulars and a decaf, then?”

I shook my head. “Three regulars, please. With some cream and sugar on the side.”

“Honey, you sure? I don’t think you’re supposed to have coffee if you’re expecting a little one,” she said.

She’d taken a step back and placed her reddened hands on her hips. In her black-and-white-striped polo shirt, she looked like a referee, and I expected to hear a whistle pierce the quiet restaurant.

“Hey, Michelle. How ’bout those coffees,” Darren said without taking his eyes off the mountain bikers.

The woman’s hands dropped from her hips and with a shake of her head she turned back into the kitchen.

The basketball coach took off the Red Sox cap and his hair, dark and thick, fell at an angle down his forehead. He finally turned from the window and looked at me in a way that I hadn’t been looked at in a long time.

“So, I think you mentioned a former student, right?” Darren asked. “Is it someone who graduated?”

I swallowed. “Sort of. Nicholas Bellington. Remember him?”

Darren jolted in his seat, and his mouth fell open. “Nicky?”

Sam jumped in. “So you knew him?”

In response, my partner got a withering glare from Darren.

He answered. “Of course I knew him. Not only did I coach him, he was one of the most beloved students at the school. And then, of course, when he died… well, let’s just say it would be pretty squirrely if I didn’t know who Nicky was.”

“Would you call him a good player? It sounds like he was at the gym a lot that spring.”

Darren’s eyes met mine again. He put his hands flat on the table and leaned forward, holding my gaze two seconds longer than what most would consider polite.

“Look, what’s this all about?” he asked.

Sam Birdshead started to reply and I kicked his leg under the table.

“Please answer the question, Mr. Chase,” I said.

“It’s Darren. My dad is Mr. Chase,” he replied. “This was three years ago, you know.”

I nodded. “I get the feeling you’re not the kind of man who forgets things, Darren.”

“You’d be right about that. Well, someone’s been telling you tall tales. Nicky quit the team right before Christmas. He wasn’t that great of a player. I would have tried to get him to stay, but…” He trailed off.

“But what?”

“He started missing a lot of practices. We talked and decided it would be best for everyone if he dropped out. I don’t think his parents even noticed, they were so busy with that campaign,” Darren finished.

“So, where was he if not at practice?” I asked. “What was he up to?”

Darren gave me a smile. “Would you believe he was at the library? He was working on a special project.”

“Which was?” I pressed.

He sighed. “Look, I told him I wouldn’t tell anyone, okay? I can’t break a promise, not one I made to a dead kid.”

“The dead don’t give a damn about loyalty, Darren. Would it surprise you to know that Nicky’s been alive and well these past three years?” I asked.

The coach’s reaction was nearly identical to the one he’d had a few minutes earlier. Another jolt, another drop of the jaw.

“It’s true. Alive and well, that is, until he had his throat torn open Monday afternoon,” Sam added.

Darren’s face turned ashen. “I don’t believe it.”

“Oh, believe it,” I said. “The mayor will be holding a press conference today.”

Michelle returned with three white mugs of steaming coffee, and a small pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar. I pushed one of the cups toward Darren. He took a quick sip and then swore as the hot liquid burned his mouth.

Tears welled in his eyes and I wondered if it was the coffee or the news of Nicky that brought them forth.

“We obviously can’t give you any more details, but you can see, right, how it might be important to get a picture of Nicky’s last few weeks and months? Before he went over that waterfall?” Sam asked.

Darren dipped a napkin in his water and brought the cool cloth to his lip. He shook his head and blinked away the tears so fast I decided they must have been from the burn after all.

“Look, Darren,” I said. “I don’t want to subpoena you.”

“Are you sure? It might be fun,” he replied with a smirk. “Look, all I can say is that Nicky was interested, and I mean, very interested, in some local history. He asked me about it once, and I told him to get with Tilly over at the public library.”

Sam glared at Darren. “Could you be more vague? What exactly was this local history?”

I glanced at the bikers as I waited for Darren’s reply. They seemed to have finished their rides for the day, as they were huddled en masse at the bottom of the slope. A few peeled off their jerseys, revealing lean sweaty torsos and a solitary sports bra.

The restaurant was quiet and when I turned back to the table, I saw Darren staring at me.

“What?”

He laughed. “I was just thinking how ironic it is, you asking what Nicky was researching.”

“Ironic?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, it means-”

I lifted a hand. “He knows what it means. Why ironic?”

Darren Chase stood and jammed the baseball cap down on his head. He threw a ten-dollar bill on the table and stretched and as his T-shirt lifted, I caught a glimpse of another lean, tan torso, this one fringed with tiny dark hairs that trailed down into the waistband of his jeans. I swallowed and blamed my raging hormones, and the fact that Brody had been gone for so long, on the thoughts that flitted across my mind.

“Because you were the one who found the bodies, Gemma. Nicky was fascinated with the Woodsman murders. He couldn’t get enough of them. From the time you found that skull in what, November? December? Until his death, that kid was obsessed.”

I pushed back from the table, shocked. “You’re kidding. Why?”

“He wouldn’t tell me,” Darren said. He shook his head. “Like I said, he came to me one day and asked how someone would go about researching cold cases, old crimes. It wasn’t hard to guess which crime he was talking about, so I pointed him in Tilly’s direction.”

Darren left. Sam and I silently watched him walk away. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t get the McKenzie boys out of my head.

By the time I dropped Sam back at the station, I was so tired I didn’t think I was going to make it up the canyon. As I watched him walk into the building, his short blond hair turning amber in the setting sun, I was struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu, and for a moment, I waited to see if he would come back, and tell me that Ravi Hussen was on the phone, and the whole damn thing would start over like that Bill Murray classic Groundhog Day .

But he didn’t come out and I headed home. The last swatches of sunlight were chased across the sky by the deepening twilight. A couple of bats flitted high above me, on their way out for an evening meal. I pulled into our gravel driveway and stared at the house. It was, as it should have been, dark and silent. Immense woods flanked the narrow two-story house on three sides like an open mouth, gaping and black and ready to swallow up the place at any moment.

As I got out of the car, the chilly mountain air hit my bare forearms and I shivered; the intense heat of the day was already a distant memory. I hurried inside and got the lights on and some potatoes and salmon in the oven. I let Seamus out into the yard and left the back door open for him.