Bryan Gruley - The Skeleton Box

“There’s someone here,” Mrs. B whispered. She had to have been hiding. But why hadn’t she called 911? Maybe because her daughter was, after all, a cop.

The call went silent but for the sound of Mrs. B’s breathing. Hearing those shallow breaths must have been torture for Darlene, for they told her that her mother was frightened in the final moments of her life. I heard the creaking hinge of a door. I knew that sound. One of the two doors to Mom’s bathroom. There was a footstep. I pictured Mrs. B ducking her head out, stepping into the hallway, peeking around the corner into the living room.

If she saw someone, she didn’t say.

The door creaked shut.

There was silence again, then the sound of the other door opening. Mrs. B started to cry out but something muffled her voice. There was a brief scuffling, then a thud, then silence.

“My God,” I said.

“Wait.”

A few seconds passed. Then came a single word, in a barely audible whisper, a word I had never heard before. It sounded like “nye-less.” Like the name Silas, but with an “n.” Then, sounding barely able to speak, Mrs. B uttered it again: “Nye-less.”

Darlene ended the call.

I wanted to reach out and hug her, for what had happened to her mother, and for what she must have felt for not having picked up her mother’s call. Would she have made it to the house in time? Would she have been able to get an ambulance there faster?

“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” I said.

“I heard it ring, figured it was Mom, but… I was chasing a raccoon out of Mrs. Morcone’s house. She left the door open again. I thought I’d call Mom when I was done.”

“What was it she said? Nye-less? What is that?”

“I have no idea. I’ve listened to it a thousand times.”

“Can your tech guys make it clearer?”

“They can barely do a reboot.”

“Maybe it’s a name.”

“I thought of that.”

“What about the state cops? They have a lab.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Darlene,” I said. “You haven’t told anyone yet, have you.”

She had come close to losing her job the year before for failing to pursue a lead in the case of a close friend’s apparent suicide. She had let it become personal. Dingus gave her a break, knowing himself how hard it was for a cop to keep the proper distance in a place that could feel as crowded as New York City, minus the convenience of anonymity.

The case had also been the proximate cause of our second breakup, because my own investigation had exposed Darlene’s apparently willful negligence. So we’d gone our separate ways, or at least she had gone hers.

“No, I haven’t,” she said.

“It’s evidence. They’re going to run a check on the phone. They’ll see she called you.”

She yanked her cap back on her head. “I’ll tell them. It’s just-it was my mother.”

“So you’re on the case?”

“Damn right I am.”

“How’s Dingus? I’m thinking he’s afraid of losing, eh?”

“Heck, I’m afraid he’ll lose. I couldn’t work for that jerk D’Alessio. I wouldn’t.”

“So…”

“I’d need a job somewhere. With Mom gone…”

I felt a little shiver of panic. “There’s plenty of time for all that,” I said.

“We have to solve this, Gus.”

“Why don’t you let the police-”

“Dammit,” she said, “I am a police officer. I’m not about to go home and fucking cry into my pillow. My mother didn’t bring me up like that.”

No, she didn’t, I thought. “Do you think it’s the same guy who did the other houses?”

“That assumes just one person did all the other houses.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Whoever it was, in all these break-ins, has been very careful. No prints, no nothing, nothing stolen.”

“DNA?”

“Working on it.”

“Did the neighbors see anything?”

“The Grays are in Florida, the Cerrutis were in Detroit at a hockey tournament.”

“You’ve taped off the yard.”

“Routine. But it’ll discourage somebody if they decide to come back.”

“They’re not coming back.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can I put any of this in the paper?”

“I told you we were off the record.”

Actually she hadn’t, but I wasn’t about to push it. I was glad she’d come to me. “OK.”

“Please be careful what you report. This is my mother.”

“I know. I will.”

“Come here.”

She put a hand on my chest, feeling for my heart. It was pounding.

“You matter to me,” she said.

“Do you want me to stay with you?” I said.

“I’m going back to work. Nobody wants you there, believe me.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

“No.”

I leaned out the doorway and watched her hike down the path to her car, thinking about her mother and about my mom and about that word: nye-less.

The little bells on the door at Audrey’s Diner jangled as I stepped inside.

“Ask him,” somebody yelled in my direction, and a bunch of other people sitting at the tables and along the counter yelled, too.

“Ask me what?” I said.

I had come from Mom’s house, where I’d sat by her bed watching her sleep for an hour, then made sure the sheriff’s deputy watching her knew how she took her tea. I thought I’d stayed long enough to miss the morning rush at Audrey’s. But I’d never seen the diner like this, not even on Saturdays when Audrey made her egg-pie special. Every stool at the counter and every seat at every table was taken. The tables were arranged in a haphazard semicircle so everyone could face the man standing a few feet away from me in a brown-and-mustard Pine County Sheriff’s Department uniform.

“Take a seat, Gus,” Sheriff Aho said.

“Ask him if that’s a good idea, Sheriff.” It was Elvis Bontrager, Mrs. B’s brother-in-law, Darlene’s uncle, and a Pine County commissioner.

“What idea?” I said.

Audrey DeYonghe emerged from behind the counter wiping her hands on the white apron she wore over a sky-blue smock. “Oh, dear,” she said, taking my face in her damp hands, then pulling me into her arms for a hug. “This is so sad. It’s so, so terrible.”

“Yes.”

“I almost decided not to open today, but I thought, well, this would be a good place for people to blow off steam. How is Darlene?”

I glanced at Dingus. He was listening. “OK, I hope.”

“And your mother?”

“Not so good. She was sleeping when I saw her this morning.”

“I don’t suppose there are any funeral arrangements yet.”

“That’s going to take a while. The cops have to do their work first.”

Audrey squeezed me again before letting me go. She reached behind the counter and pulled out a wooden stool. “Here, honey, set this over there. I’ll get you some coffee.”

“Thank you.”

I set the stool by the window near the end of the counter and sat. Dingus was still looking at me, waiting. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a notebook.

“No,” Dingus said. “We’re off the record here.”

“What’s going on?” I said.

“The sheriff’s trying like hell to save his job is what’s going on,” Bart Fleder shouted from the back of the room. Then everyone started to yell again. I couldn’t make out everything they said, but I heard “bingo” and “murder” and “Phyllis” and “incompetent.” I could barely believe I was in Audrey’s. The faces around me were pinched with fury and fear. Two women looked as if they had been crying.

“Please,” Dingus said, holding his palms up for quiet.

“Tell us what you got, and we’ll stop,” Fleder said.

Elvis turned to me, his belly straining against the suspenders clipped to his jeans. “The sheriff wants to cancel all bingo. Just shut it off. Like that’s going to catch this guy. Brilliant, huh?”