Emily Littlejohn - Inherit the Bones

Dannon :Now, what do you mean, he got in the way?

Moriarty, Elsa:Well, he-

Moriarty, D:Ma, let me handle this. It was nothing. We just had a scuffle last spring. It wasn’t a big deal.

Cleegmont :Was this before or after you stole lunch money from Andrew McKenzie on the bus?

Moriarty, D:Someone has been lying to you guys. Andrew’s poor as dirt. I never stole anything from that kid.

Dannon :You think this is funny? He’s eleven. His birthday was two days before he disappeared. And I have more than one person who can testify you were giving him a hard time a few months back.

Moriarty, L:Okay, fellows, I think you made your point. Danny’s a good boy and he sure didn’t have anything to do with the missing boys. I think this interview is about done.

Dannon :Lou, you know better than anyone that we’ve got to talk to everyone. We got two kids missing, and according to our records, your son has, at various points within the last year, had “issues” with each of them. We also know your son’s got a file an inch thick at the school. Now, we can go about this the easy way or the hard way. What’s it going to be?

“Is that it?” Finn asked.

I nodded. “The page ends there. Seems like there should be more to the report, but…”

“Wow. I mean, wow. Moriarty. What do you want to do?”

What I wanted to do was to sink my teeth into a big steaming slice of cheese pizza with olives and mushrooms, and forget I’d ever opened the folder.

I shrugged. “Let’s keep this between us for now. Like you said, they would have interviewed everyone. There weren’t that many kids in town; they were all bound to know one another, at least peripherally. But, it does make me wonder. A father’s loyalty to his son is something to consider, especially if the kid had a reputation. The cops would have been all over that.”

Finn said, “What are you saying, Gemma? That Danny Moriarty was the Woodsman? And his dad covered up the crime? No way. No, I know the guy too well. Lou Moriarty didn’t cover up the murder of two boys and then spend the next thirty years in the same damn town, all the while knowing the bodies were rotting a few miles away.”

He stood and pulled at his hair, something I had never seen him do before. He paced the aisle to our right, stopping at the edge of the dark void and then coming back. “And then what? Sixteen-year-old Nicky discovers this and Moriarty kills him, too? That is complete and utter bullshit.”

I thought a moment, recalling Finn’s words. “You said it yourself. Moriarty was insistent on searching Nicky’s room. What if Nicky had approached him, and threatened to expose him, or his son? Maybe Moriarty was looking for something Nicky had, some piece of evidence or proof?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Something . When you searched the room, did you have a pack with you, something to collect evidence?”

Finn nodded. “Yes, but I carried it. Moriarty couldn’t have taken anything without me seeing. I remember that day, we met at the Bellingtons’-their old place-and we looked like the freaking Bobbsey twins, both of us in khakis and maroon polo shirts. Moriarty didn’t have anything else with him, no briefcase, no bag, no nothing.”

“But if it was something small… something he could have slipped in his pocket?”

Finn stopped pacing and stared at me and then started pacing again. “What the hell. Sure, I suppose.”

I thought about Louis Moriarty. In 1985, he would have been in his mid-forties, smack dab in the middle of a distinguished career with the Cedar Valley Police Department. From the police transcript, it sounded as though he was still married at that point, living with a teenage son with a history of getting into trouble with the other kids.

Lou was big and strong; I had to imagine his son Danny had been as well. How much easier for a kid, known from the neighborhood, to get close to the two young boys than it would have been for a stranger? Maybe there was something there.

I thought about something else, too. Lou was one of the men that used to play poker with my step-grandfather, Bull Weston, and Frank Bellington and a couple of other guys from town. Thirty years ago, they were all accomplished, middle-age men, running the town in various ways: lawyers, cops, businessmen, and politicians.

And then, about twenty years ago, there was a falling out. The group disbanded, the men went their separate ways. What could have been at the root of something like that?

The lights above us buzzed off for a second and came back on and then flickered again and then went completely out. I stood and waved my arms, hoping to trigger a sensor but nothing happened. The space was dark, so dark that when I lifted a hand in front of my eyes, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t even make out the green glow of the emergency exit sign.

Maybe the entire building had experienced a power outage.

“Gemma?”

“I’m here, by the desk. Just stay where you are, I’ll see if I can find a switch,” I said. I groped blindly with my arms outstretched in front of me low, to protect my belly. I felt the edge of the table and ran my hands up the sides of the study carrel and then up and on to the wall.

Left or right?

Tilly had mentioned a copy machine around the corner and I headed that way, keeping a hand on the wall like a tether.

“Gemma? I’m going to come back to the desk,” Finn called. He sounded far away, much farther than if he had indeed stayed where he was when the lights went out.

Maybe it was a trick of the dark, causing our voices to ricochet and bounce around in space. My hand ran along the smooth flat surface of the wall until it hit an edge. I reached around and decided it was a corner and rounded it, careful to keep my other hand stretched out to fend off any tables or chairs.

I hit the copy machine with my foot and stopped and felt along the wall, but there was no button or switch… just more of the same smoothness that seemed to stretch on into infinity. With no idea what lay before me, and getting farther and farther from my partner, I was hesitant to keep going.

“Finn?”

I listened and heard nothing but the ticking from my Timex, and a low shifting noise as though the building itself was settling in for the day.

“Finn? Are you there?”

The darkness had a weight all its own, and the silence around me grew. It pressed against me and I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, willing my nerves to settle.

A few feet away, a soft scuffling noise, like a sneaker catching on carpet, caused my heart to hiccup.

“Hello?” I called softly. “Tilly? Finn?”

Another scuffle and I backed up against the wall next to the copy machine. For the second time in one week, the feeling of being watched by someone unseen slipped over me and settled in my bowels like a shard of ice.

I held my breath and listened and almost screamed when I heard the low, steady inhalation and exhalation of someone else breathing. My heart felt like it was going to crawl up out of my throat and my hand went automatically to my belt, where I found… nothing.

I was in the summer dress I’d worn to the circus. My Glock was locked in the gun safe in the trunk of my car.

“Who’s there?” I called. “I can hear you breathing, damn it.”

A low laugh, followed by, “Yes, I’m here.”

The voice was too low to tell the age or sex of the speaker but there was a familiar quality to it, one that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The words were enough to make me slide down the wall and land on my rear end. I wrapped my arms around my knees and shrank into myself and closed my eyes and tried not to breathe.