Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

Addison Winston dropped his smile. "Leave your mother's care to me."

You're not helping her."

"I'm not the one who did this to her." Well, that shut her up. And now, verbal spanking done, he left Isabelle alone with her handiwork, her weeping, frightened mother.

Only three people remained on the Coventry street outside the library. The rest of the reporters and their news crews had departed after failing to construct a jailbreak from Deputy Faulks's offhand comment.

"This is a waste of time," said the young segment producer, and she was not referring to the useless phone as she folded it into the back pocket of her jeans. There was no cell-phone tower within twenty miles of this backward town. She stared at the foothills, perhaps looking there for dinosaurs- something, anything, to film. She turned back to face the middle-aged reporter and attempted to reason with him one last time. "The sheriff told you Oren Hobbs was never under arrest."

"And that's what we lead with," said Reggie Mason. "A hot denial." He closed the door of what might be the last telephone booth in America. It even had a rotary dial-a charming artifact from his youth.

The producer banged on the booth's glass wall.

What the hell was the girl's name?

All of his segment producers were interchangeable, and none of them looked a day over thirteen years of age. This one-deluded child-truly believed that she was in charge of production.

"We're leaving!" she yelled. "Right now!" Turning her back on the phone booth, she climbed into the van and closed the sliding door behind her.

The cameraman would have followed the girl, but Reggie grabbed his arm. "Hold on. The operator's back." He had been placed on hold by a 9-1-1 operator, and now the woman resumed their telephone conversation. "Yes, ma'am… That's right… Yes, it smells."

Reggie cupped the phone's receiver with one hand when the cameraman leaned into the booth and asked, "Is she laughing?"

From the window of the van, the sullen child producer yelled, "Hey, it's time to pack it in!"

The cameraman stared at the small brick building. "Did you read the hours posted on the door? There's nobody in there."

"But the smell." Inspired now, Reggie reopened his dialogue with the

laughing 9-1-1 operator. "I think there's a dead body in the library… Well, it smells like death… So you'll send the sheriff?" After a few seconds, he placed the receiver back on its cradle. "She hung up on me."

The cameraman unstrapped his equipment and laid it down, final notice that his workday was done. "Do you know what a dead body smells like? I don't. You can't make something out of nothing."

Oh, contraire.

Reggie pointed at the library. "Did you see that?"

"What?"

"Something moved in that window."

"Reggie, are you making this up?"

"Where's that lame producer when I need her?" He banged his fist on the side of the van. "Hey, sweetheart. The wind's blowing our way again. I want you to smell something."

"I know Ad Winston was your lawyer," said Oren. "All that settlement money. You must've been a grateful client. Is that why you never interviewed him or his wife?"

After calmly wiping his hands on a napkin, Swahn finished his beer. "He was your lawyer, too, Mr. Hobbs."

What?

"You didn't know?" Swahn wore a satisfied smile. "Judge Hobbs retained him for you right after Josh disappeared. Wise move. You wouldn't give a reason for leaving your little brother alone in the woods. And you wouldn't tell anyone where you were all day and half that night. Your father was probably holding his breath, waiting for the sheriff to turn up at the door every second of every day. He wanted to be ready if it came to a trial. So he hired the best lawyer in the state. That's why I didn't interview either of the Winstons. They couldn't talk to me."

One old mystery was solved for Oren. This explained why he had been left alone after one brief and fruitless interrogation by the sheriff-after time had been allowed for the scratches on his face to heal.

Swahn picked up a sheet of paper attached to a photograph of Evelyn Straub. "You probably noticed-this interviews very short. I'm sure you wondered why. When did this woman ever censor a thought in her head? Absolutely fearless. It took me an hour to find her soft spots and break her."

Evelyn? Oren suppressed a smile. He wanted to laugh at this man, this amateur. Interrogation was not a criminologist's game, and he would pit Evelyn Straub against the best of the best in his own trade. The lady was made of unbreakable stuff. He waved off the proffered piece of paper. "I read it. Seems light."

"Most of her conversation was never typed up for my files." Swahn pulled out a small notebook. "However, I do have a more complete version. It concerns your lack of an alibi for the day your brother disappeared." He fanned the pages to show the handwritten lines-so many.

Oren was backing up in his mind, bracing.

Swahn glanced at the first page of his notes. "I had the feeling that Mrs. Straub knew all your secrets." He looked up and paused for a beat. "And she probably knew about the other women you were sleeping with."

Oren sipped his beer, appearing only mildly curious and keeping to a boyhood habit of never confirming or denying those rumors.

Leaning back against the side of a chair, Swahn dragged out this lull. "Mrs. Straub was very attractive in those days. These past twenty years, she hasn't aged well. And that's odd. You know she has the money to stay young forever."

Absently turning a page in his notebook, the man never took his eyes off Oren. "Your housekeeper asked me to find you an alibi witness. That was my job. She had no inside information about your affairs, but she had eyes. Miss Rice knew the effect you had on females. When she first came to me, her focus was on your refusal to say anything in your own defense. It was her theory that you might keep silent to protect a married woman. So I didn't just single out Mrs. Straub. I talked to all the women posed with you in Josh's photographs. Unfortunately, my efforts backfired. Two women came forward. The two alibis should've cancelled each other out. But the sheriff believed one of those stories. Hers." Swahn tapped the photograph of Evelyn Straub.

"You had good taste, Mr. Hobbs. She was a pretty woman in those days. I liked her. Very jaded-very hip. I figured she was only in it for the sex. A teenage boy never runs out of juice. No real emotion in play. That's why I thought the sheriff believed her when she told him you spent the whole day in her bed. But I was wrong. Later, I discovered she had a prenuptial agreement. If she was caught cheating on her husband, she'd get nothing in a divorce settlement. Mr. Straub was an old man-good as dead. His wife only had to bide her time for another year. But she put everything on the line for you."

Swahn flipped another page, though he never looked down at the lines written there. "I never told Mrs. Straub how I found out about her affair with you. I suppose she assumed that you betrayed her. For all I know, she still believes that. But after I talked to her, she went to the sheriff anyway. You were only seventeen-probably younger the first time she took you to bed-the underage son of a judge. That woman risked a lot more than money." He leaned forward, the better to study the younger man's face when he asked, "Did she tell the truth? Or did she risk everything to lie for you?… Did she love you, Mr. Hobbs?"

Oren looked at his watch. "Time to go." He brushed pizza crumbs from his jeans as he stood up. Extending a hand down to his host, he helped the man to rise from the floor.

Swahn seemed deeply disappointed. He had dug his hole, his trap of words, and covered it over with twigs and branches, but Oren had not fallen in.