Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

“Could I have a couple minutes with my wife, please? We never did have a chance to say good-bye.”

Layla had already taken her smears and gone over the body for trace and transfer evidence, so Coffee had no problem with that. He and Parmenter went across the hall to the coroner’s office to go over a few details about the autopsy scheduled for later that evening, leaving Lewis alone with Hokey.

He looked around to be sure there were no hidden cameras, then pulled the sheet down to her waist. It was sort of the ultimate peep, but he got no pleasure out of it.

At least she still had her full-body, no-line tan, Lewis told himself, and would for eternity now. Hokey would have been glad of that: she’d been terribly vain about her tan, all but suicidally so in this age of melanoma.

Poor Hokey-so much had happened in the last twenty-four hours that it was just beginning to sink in for Lewis that what had been only a vague plan the previous morning was now a fait accompli.

“I miss you,” he whispered. “And all over a few fucking trees. You stupid, stupid-” He was about to call her the C-word. He caught himself-he hadn’t come here for that. “Sorry,” he said, bending to kiss her.

He couldn’t do it, though-he could feel the cold coming off her in waves when his lips were only an inch away. He touched her blue lips with his forefinger instead, then pulled the sheet back up over her head and smoothed out the wrinkles with his palm.

“Pearl and I had just split up,” said Holly. “She had a chance to be an executive chef at a fancy ski resort in Banff, and I wasn’t about to move to Canada-I hate cold, I hate snow. That’s why I moved from New York to California in the first place. So I had this whole big house to myself. The plan, of course, was that I was going to wrap up Laurel’s affairs and bring the kids back to Big Sur with me.” Holly threw up her hands and laughed. “So much for plans.”

She and Pender were sitting on a split log at the very top of the clearing, the only vantage point in the Core from which to view the short but spectacular tropical sunset in its entirety. Holly was in the process of telling Pender her life story-a development that had come as a complete surprise to her. All she’d intended to do was keep an eye on him, make sure he didn’t steal any of Andy’s stuff.

But the big bulvon was surprisingly graceful on his Hush Puppies as he explored the A-frame, meticulous about replacing every tchatchke and objet he picked up, including Andy’s bong, remarkably perceptive in his running monologue, and nowhere near as dumb as he looked-but then, he couldn’t have been, could he? Not and breathe.

He was looking for anything to indicate what Andy was up to before he left, Pender told her. What was the last thing he did, did he appear to have packed, did he leave any perishables around? And most importantly in a search like this one, Pender had added, he was looking for the hardest thing to find: what wasn’t there that should have been.

C. B. Dawson, Arena’s ex-girlfriend, would probably be able to answer that last question when she returned from her latest rain forest trek, Holly informed Pender. But she was able to tell him that if the unopened carton of Half amp; Half in the knee-high refrigerator, the new loaf of store-bought bread, and the ripe bananas were any indication, Andy didn’t appear to have been planning an extended absence.

How Holly segued from there to telling Pender her life story was something she wasn’t quite clear on. (The beauty part of an affective interview, Pender used to tell his students, was that if it was done right, the interviewee never even had to know it was taking place.)

“But you did know about Marley’s…condition before you moved down,” he prompted her. He didn’t want to use the term handicap or disability, lest she go off on him again.

“Yes-and I’d seen pictures. But it was still a shock, seeing him in person for the first time. That’s why I’m so sorry for tearing into you yesterday-I know what a…disconcerting experience it can be.”

“No, I’m sorry,” said Pender. “I expect better of myself.”

“Oh.” No arguing with that. “Anyway, I knew Dawnie would be okay in Big Sur-she’d be okay anywhere. But to take Marley away from St. Luke, where everybody’s known him since birth, where his handicap is hardly even noticed anymore, where he knows all the kids and they all know him-not to mention the fact that he almost never has to wear shoes here-for him wearing shoes is like us wearing boxing gloves. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“Did you ever look into prosthetics?”

“Just long enough to find out how much they cost.”

“How much?”

“For what he’d need, between thirty and fifty thousand dollars apiece.”

Pender whistled low. “That’s a lot of massages.”

“Tell me about it,” said Holly, as the setting sun lit up the rain tree in the meadow on the other side of the lane like a great pink Japanese lantern.

After the formal identification of Hokey’s body, Lewis accompanied Chief Coffee back to headquarters, where he allowed the lovely Layla to take a DNA sample. If she hadn’t been the chief’s daughter, Lewis would have suggested a few more interesting ways for her to extract her sample. As it was, he settled for having the inside of his cheek swabbed for epithelial cells.

There was of course no danger of Lewis’s DNA betraying him. The test could only bear out his story: that the widower had made love to his wife on the last night of her life. Poor chappie.

Chief Coffee himself drove Lewis home afterward, though it was out of his way. Lewis expected to find the Great House torn apart, but the police had been unusually considerate, and Johnny Rankin had taken it upon himself to call in an extra housekeeper, so by the time Lewis returned, things were more or less back to normal.

Lewis didn’t think he was hungry, but when Johnny brought him a plate of sandwiches in the study, he surprised himself by absentmindedly gobbling them down, crusts and all, while he pored over the latest statements from his brokerage. What remained of his portfolio had taken a few more hits in the last several days. But now that the airport project would be going ahead, the losses weren’t nearly as painful.

It was a little like exploring a bad tooth with your tongue on the way to the dentist, Lewis thought as he washed down the last of the sandwiches with the last of the Red Stripe beer Johnny had poured out for him: knowing it would soon be over made the pain sort of enjoyable. And kept his mind off Hokey.

When Johnny returned to clear the tray, he asked Lewis if he wanted him to spen’ night. “It bein’ ya firs’ one alone, an’ all.”

“No, you go on home,” Lewis told him. “I think I’d rather be alone.”

“Good night, den, Mistah Lewis. An’ m’say again, sah, fa boat of us, how terrible, terrible sorry we boat are for ya loss. Dissa terrible, terrible t’ing, what hoppen. Sally, she say-”

Lewis cut him off. “Thank you, Johnny. See you tomorrow.”

“T’ank ya, sah. Dis a terrible-”

“A terrible, terrible t’ing-yes, I know. Good night, Johnny.”

Lewis felt Hokey’s absence more acutely when the Great House was empty. Struggle to suppress them as he might, the good memories started to flood his mind once he was alone. The honeymoon, the early years when the sex was still good, winning the mixed doubles tennis tournament at Blue Valley and dancing in the moonlight at the Champion’s Ball afterward.

And while Lewis was not superstitious, he did find himself looking around nervously as he wandered through the big empty mansion clutching a bottle of St. Luke Reserve by the neck and taking a slug every now and then. It wasn’t that he believed in ghosts-just a nagging what-if, a reluctance to enter a dark room, and a little voice in his ear whispering don’t turn around.