Кэти Райх - A Conspiracy of Bones

“Record your name, the date and time, and a brief message.”

I looked a question at Slidell. He gave a thumbs-up.

“I’m sorry I missed your call. Please try me again. You have my number.” Disconnect. To Slidell. “Reach out to the local guy?”

“Sure.” Flipping me the second of Peppers’s prints.

I read the recovered number, dialed. Got the same recording as Slidell. Did as instructed.

“I need to speak with you concerning a mutual friend. You know where to reach me.” Disconnect.

My gaze slid back to Slidell. He was studying Peppers’s photo, fingers drumming riffs on the desktop.

“Any hallelujahs on this third line?” he asked.

JCOLE1013.

I manipulated in my head, moving letters and numbers like pieces on a board. Separated the alphabetic from the numeric. Set the first pair of digits apart from the second. Split off one letter at a time. One numeral. Recombined them in various ways.

At one point, I heard Slidell lean back and resume his precarious oscillation.

JCOLE? A name? Wasn’t there a hip-hop artist named J. Cole?

10-13. A date? October 2013?

Across from me, Slidell was playing the same game.

The squad room quieted as detectives drifted off to dinner, to interrogations, to promising or tenuous leads. Overhead, the fluorescent bars buzzed softly. Across from me, Slidell’s chair groaned in undulating protest.

Abruptly, the grating stopped, and the chair’s front legs smacked the tile. “Who was that kid went missing?”

I looked up. Slidell’s eyes were on the print, brows angled into a bushy V.

“What kid?” I asked.

“Maybe four, five years ago.” Maybe 2013.

Like many in my line of work, I carry a roster of heartache in my brain. A wrenchingly painful catalog of dead and lost children. There was no need to thumb through the names. Slidell’s reference roared home instantly.

“Jahaan Cole.”

One or two brain cells sizzled cruel. A face popped. The same face displayed on endless posters and news broadcasts. A child with caramel skin, laughing eyes, boisterous dreadlocks bound with bright pink beads.

“Wasn’t Cole nine when she went missing?” Slidell asked.

We both did the math. Born 2004. Vanished October 10, 2013.

JCOLE1013.

My mouth suddenly tasted like ash.

Jahaan Cole was last seen leaving home to return a book to a neighborhood library stand at the end of her block, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie . When Jahaan failed to return home, Brightie Cole phoned 911 to report her daughter missing. The book was found the following day on a rural highway eight miles from the Cole home. Jahaan’s hair bow turned up five weeks later.

The media staged their usual circus. With nothing new to report, they eventually folded their tents and scurried off.

Nine months after Jahaan’s disappearance, fragmentary remains came to the MCME. The news machine kicked back into gear. Until I determined that the bones were those of Vulpes vulpes . A red fox.

Six months after the fox fiasco, I traveled with a recovery team to a farmer’s field in Gaston County. When I close my eyes, I can still feel the weight of the afternoon heat on my skin. Smell the mowed hay and see the moths swirling in the dusty sunlight.

Again, breathless anticipation. The bones were human but those of an elderly male. There was a brief flurry of coverage, then the cameras and mics moved on to other tales of grief. While disappointed at the lack of closure, I was gratified that there was still hope for life.

The case was now colder than a glacial lake. Features aired on the anniversary of Jahaan’s disappearance. The media contacted me requesting interviews. The old photo was trotted out. A few calls would come in, lead nowhere. Jahaan Cole remained an MP. Missing person.

“Why the fuck would John Ito jot your number and notes about a missing kid?” Slidell said quietly.

I ran my tongue over my teeth. Swallowed. Had the faceless man known something about the child that he’d wanted to tell me?

I had no answer.

Something startled me awake.

I’d been dreaming, another complex scenario involving tangled shadows and murky figures. It took me a moment to disengage and figure out where I was.

Birdie? Running an arm over the covers without finding a cat.

Heart banging, I listened for noises on the first floor. Down the hall. Heard nothing but the familiar settling of the annex.

Digits glowed teal on the bedside table. 2:47. Sleep had been elusive. And brief. I doubted it would come again.

Still, I tried.

Turning my back to the clock, I closed my eyes.

And saw the photos I’d snapped in the autopsy room. Those texted to me from an unknown source.

John Ito? Felix Vodyanov? Someone else?

The pummeling questions started anew.

How had the faceless man died? Had he hidden the Hyundai at Art’s salvage yard, hiked into the woods, and taken his own life? Had he met someone on the banks of Buffalo Creek? Had that person killed him?

If the faceless man had been murdered, who did it? How? Why? Had the killer driven the Hyundai? If so, why leave it at Art’s? Did the faceless man and his killer arrive together? If so, how had his killer departed? Did his death have anything to do with the Estonia disaster?

Round and round, in endless loops. Question after question. No answers.

I pictured the duffel locked in the Hyundai’s trunk. The spiral with its notes about biochemical weapons and a ferry disaster. The peculiar assemblage of tools. The delabeled clothing. The thumb drive with its Cyrillic identifier.

Would the thumb drive provide the breakthrough I was hoping for? Names? Addresses? Passwords for email accounts? Selfies snapped with a cell phone?

Files on top-secret SVR espionage operations? On Russian moles in the CIA?

Sweet Jesus in a romper. I was spending way too much time with Skinny.

Slidell had taken the lot. I’d agreed with his reasoning. The Cleveland County sheriff, if interested, would send the duffel and its contents to the CMPD forensic lab for analysis. A quick dust for prints, then he’d probably transfer the car to Charlotte as well. Slidell was simply speeding the investigatory process.

Slidell’s apparent about-face had surprised me. Why the sudden willingness to help with the faceless man? Animosity toward Sheriff Poston? Or did the change in attitude have to do with me?

The notebook had yielded an impression containing two numbers: one with a West Virginia area code and one for my mobile. The West Virginia number had dialed my phone within the past ten days. Was that it? Was Slidell motivated by some paternalistic notion that I needed protecting? The thought didn’t please me.

Had someone told Slidell about the aneurysm? The migraines? If so, who? That thought didn’t please me, either.

I got up and walked through the turquoise-lit darkness to the bathroom. A cold drink of water, then I stood, arms crossed, not moving, not listening, as facts and questions collided in my head.

The West Virginia number had called my iPhone on June 22. The date of my migraine nightmare and midnight walk. The night I’d been anxious about the trench-coated man.

But had Trench Coat actually been there? Or was he merely a headache aftereffect?

No. The man was real.

Had my instincts been correct? Had Trench Coat been watching me? Following me? Was he John Ito? Felix Vodyanov? Were the owner of the Hyundai and Trench Coat the same man?

Was the man prowling the grounds of Sharon Hall the faceless man found dead at Buffalo Creek? If so, he’d called me a week before his death. Why? Had he followed me home? Why? Clearly, the man wanted to make contact. To talk about what? The Estonia ? Biochemical weapons? That made no sense. I knew nothing about either.