Emily Littlejohn - Inherit the Bones

Tessa stared at him another moment and then jammed her hands under her thighs and shook her head. Her face grew flushed.

Finn stood. “Tell her, Gemma.”

“Actually, she doesn’t have to write a thing. She hasn’t been read her rights and this is not a formal interview. But Tessa, if this is what you really believe, you’d be helping Reed out a great deal by giving us a statement.”

She stood up so fast her chair shot backward.

“I’m not a rat. I guess I was right the first time. I can’t trust you fucking cops. You pigs have no sense of loyalty.”

She pushed past Sam and went out the door. Finn made as though to stop her but I grabbed his arm and gripped it tight.

“Let her go. She won’t get far.”

Finn turned to me and I let go of his arm when I saw the anger on his face.

“You are a real piece, Gemma, you know that? If we go to court, none of what she told you is admissible. She may have just laid Nicky’s killer in our lap and we can’t do a damn thing about it,” he said.

Sam started backing out of the room, and I raised a hand to stop him.

“C’mon, Finn, the finer details of the law have never stopped you before,” I said. He turned pale.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he said.

“You know damn well what that means. Anyways, we certainly wouldn’t be very good cops if we had to rely on the offhand comments of a twenty-two-year-old girl to catch a killer. Sam, you got my Sprite?”

Sam grinned and tossed it to me and then yelled, “Don’t open it” as I popped the top and soda sprayed all over Finn’s three-hundred-dollar suit.

I caught a small break. The one place I needed to visit next was the one place I could theoretically hope to find some peace and quiet: Cedar Valley Public Library. Before I left the station, I grabbed a few of the files on Nicky’s accident three years ago. That’s what we had called it then: an accident.

I had eyeballed the case notes on the investigation yesterday; Finn had been lead, Louis Moriarty, second, and their distinct signatures filled the bottom of each page-standard operating procedure on any documentation. I looked at the table of contents, the first page in the first folder, but saw no mention of the library.

But then, the investigation had been conducted from the start under the assumption that Nicky had gone over the waterfall and died, his body washed down the Arkansas River straight on into the Gulf of Mexico.

There was never a reason to suspect anything else.

I made my way across town to the redbrick building that housed the library. Although it was still early in the day, thunderclouds, dark as charcoal, filled the horizon like ghostly specters, coming in low and fast over the Rockies. Judging from the speed they were moving, and the strange green-blue tint of the sky behind them, there would be rain by noon.

With the windows down, the moisture in the air hit my lungs like a welcome tonic. The humidity was a nice change from the heat we had experienced all week but as I breathed in the cool air, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread. Summer storms have a way of bringing more than rain and wind to town.

Before I’d left the station, I’d heard whispers that the Bellingtons planned to hold a memorial service on Saturday for Nicky at Wellshire Presbyterian. At least this time around they’d have a body to bury.

I parked and hurried across the lot, battling wind that blew against my cheeks, teasing up my hair and then releasing the dark strands just as quickly. Inside the library, a kid in baggy Adidas gear answered my questions with a nod. He pointed a finger down a short hallway and at the end of it, at a reference desk cluttered with paperback novels, tape dispensers, assorted stamps and ink pads, I found Tilly Jane Krinkle.

Surprised, I recognized her at once. I had just never known her name. Like most people in town, I simply called her the Bird Lady.

Orange hair stood in tufts on her scalp, as though a child had commandeered her head as an art table and left a mess of paint and cotton balls. She wore a pair of rhinestone cat-eye glasses, and a blue denim jumper over a cotton blouse, upon which was printed dozens of tiny red and green hearts. The jumper stopped at her calves, exposing thin pale legs that ended in red high top sneakers. On her shoulder a stuffed bird sat, a silent sentinel whose eye, at least the one that I could see, was cloudy as a cataract. The parrot’s feet were glued to a thin branch, which in turn was fastened to Tilly’s jumper with an intricate silver clasp and chain set.

The woman wore no socks and smelled of lilacs and talcum powder and glue. She looked up at me, took in my badge, and asked how she could help.

“Ms. Krinkle, my name is Gemma Monroe. I’m with the police department.”

“Well, of course you are,” she answered. Her voice was husky, a smoker’s voice. “Petey told me you were coming. Call me Tilly.”

“Petey?”

“My parrot,” she said, and pointed at the stuffed bird that stood on her right shoulder. “She is very wise.”

“I see. Um, hello, Petey,” I said, and half waved at the bird.

The woman gave me a black look. “Don’t expect a hello back, missy. Petey can be very shy. You’re here about Nicky Bellington, aren’t you?”

I hadn’t told anyone I was coming, not even Finn or Sam.

“How did you know that?”

Tilly said, “I watch the news, girly. I saw the press conference. It was only a matter of time.”

She stood, tsked-tsked, and motioned for me to follow her across the main reading room. The red sneakers squeaked against the linoleum and she walked on her tiptoes as though that would quiet the sound, but it just made her look as though she were about to sneak up on someone. I giggled and an elderly man in a suit at a study table frowned at me over the top of his half-moon glasses.

I shrugged back and mouthed an apology.

“I knew sooner or later someone would come about Nicky. I thought it would be sooner, but here you are,” Tilly whispered. “I’ve been waiting three god dang years.”

“Did the police talk to you after the accident?” I whispered back. “After Nicky fell at Bride’s Veil?”

She shook her head. “Nope, not a one of them. I waited but no one ever came.”

Damn Finn.

But then, would I have done any different? No matter what you think from watching CSI or Law & Order , we don’t tend to go looking for mysteries when there are simpler answers there for the taking. And the simple answer back then was, Nicky died in a tragic accident.

Tilly led me to a locked door at the back of the library. She inserted a stubby silver key into the handle and jiggled it back and forth, cursing up a storm when it wouldn’t catch. She took a deep breath, whispered something to Petey the bird, and then tried the key again. This time, the tumbler flipped back with a gentle click. The door popped open, and I followed the older woman down a wide flight of stairs that ended in a shadowy, cavernous room.

“The town archives,” she whispered to me.

Tilly instructed me to wait at the base of the stairs and then she walked into the dimness, keeping one hand on the wall, disappearing from my sight. She muttered more choice words and then one by one, rows of ceiling-mounted fluorescent lights buzzed on high above me.

The rest of the space remained dark and it was impossible to get a good sense of the room’s layout.

A tall bookshelf at my left held row after row of thick volumes. I pulled one out at random, sneezing as a layer of dust drifted off the scarlet leather cover. The title on the front read “Congressional Reports, Denver County, 1899-1901.”