Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

EVELYN STRAUB: I think Oren stayed with me that day because I was crying. And my feet were bleeding.

She went on to describe the details of her crime: the carnal knowledge of a boy.

To make her lie more credible, Evelyn had told the truth. Except for the mention of Josh, she had perfectly described a memorable day. He recalled those broken mirrors-her fear-the bloody cost of vanity. He had carried her up the stairs to the bedroom so that the broken shards could not cut her soles anymore. After laying her down on the bed, he had washed her bleeding feet and bound the wounds with strips of old sheets. At the end of a day in that bed, their names were still Hey Boy and Mrs. Straub. They had seen the moon sail past the bedroom window, and the light of the sun had awakened them in the morning. But he had been sixteen years old on that day, not seventeen. And she had described their first time together-not the last.

A full year would pass before Josh was lost and Oren was banished. On long nights in far-off New Mexico, he had sometimes lain awake and wondered if the mirrors had gone after her again and left her bleeding.

The next page was another interview. Though the sheriff had led him to believe otherwise, apparently William Swahn-another man without an alibi-had made a formal statement.

All of the previous coroners had been funeral directors. Dr. Martingale, DDS, was the first dentist ever elected to that county office. At the burial site in the woods, the new coroner posed for a photo opportunity with the press, and he smiled broadly, knowing that fame was only as far away as the dinner hour and the evening news.

The sheriff's evidence officer had no need of a dentist's skills in the excavation of bones, but the reporters had used Dr. Martingale as a human shield when they broke through the line of yellow crime-scene tape.

And now, at the request of a cameraman, the coroner obligingly jumped into the grave. "More bones," he said, holding one high for the camera.

An angry deputy yelled, "Get the fuck out of there!"

The press corps salivated. Though the obscenity would be bleeped for the television audience, four-letter words were the finest kind. Cameras whirred and still photographs were snapped as the humiliated Dr. Martingale climbed out of the hole.

State troopers arrived en masse to herd reporters back behind the enemy line of the fallen crime-scene tape. The next people to cross the line carried screens and trowels, soft brushes and other tools for unearthing the dead. Reporters identified them as university students and their archaeology professor. The group's official escort was a gray-haired middle-aged woman in a shapeless flowered dress. "Call me Sally," said the agent from the California Bureau of Investigation.

A reporter yelled, "I thought this case belonged to the County Sheriff 's Office! Is this a turf war?"

"Oh my, no," said Special Agent Polk in a folksy tone of Perish the thought, "We're just here to lend a hand."

The county sheriff was not available for comment. According to his deputies, he had left the scene on a matter of urgent business elsewhere.

Cable Babitt was hard at work in his own backyard. He squatted before the open door of his toolshed, swinging a hammer and bringing it down on the edge of his shovel- clang -obliterating a distinctive nick, the mark of a grave robber.

When he was done with this chore, he entered the shed and unlocked a tin cabinet. He stood there for a while, eyes adjusting to the poor light, and then he opened the small metal door to expose a most precious object. It had been protected by dusty plastic and darkness these past twenty years. He unwrapped the knapsack. Marred by only a few spots of old dried blood, it was still as green and bright as the day Josh Hobbs had dropped it in the woods.

Where would he hide it now?

This time, there was no need to knock. The door was opened before Oren reached the top step of the portico. And now the two men stood face-to-face.

"Good afternoon," said William Swahn, a day late in remembering his manners.

In lieu of a greeting, Oren handed him a twenty-year-old statement made to the sheriff. "I don't want to hear any crap about being railroaded by cops, okay? Your interview was typed from a recording." He held up a dusty cassette from that era.

The householder sat down on the marble steps and leaned his cane against a pillar. He held up the sheet of yellowed paper and read the lines:

William Swahn: I can't prove I was home alone that day, can I? I can only tell you that I never had any interaction with Josh.

Sheriff Babitt: There's three photographs of you hanging in the Coventry Post Office. The boy took those pictures a year ago.

William Swahn: They're candid shots. I didn't pose for them. I wasn't even aware of those pictures until the postmaster hung them up in the lobby.

Sheriff Babitt: Then maybe you met Josh at one of Sarah Winston's birthday balls. I know you attended all of them.

William Swahn: And I usually left early.

Sheriff Babitt: Josh went to all of them, too. Sarah made him her official ball photographer when he was just ten years old. That kid made a nice piece of change selling pictures to the guests. If you bought one of his prints, I'm sure you'd remember a good-looking kid like that.

William Swahn: You mean pedophile candy, don't you? At least a hundred children show up at the lodge every year. As far as I know, Josh never took a picture of me at any of the balls.

Sheriff Babitt: And that's odd, isn't it? I searched the boy's darkroom. I looked at five years of photographs, all the ones he took at the Winston lodge. There's not one single picture of you at the ball- everyone else in town-but not you. Now I call that strange. You'd think he would've caught you in one of those group shots just by accident. So, naturally, I assumed that you bought those pictures from the boy-maybe the negatives, too. You see why I can't let go of the idea that you met him, talked to him, maybe did a little business with him?

Oren leaned down to point at the margin note in Cable Babitt's handwriting: I thought the man was going to wet his pants.

Swahn smiled as he read this line. "I believe that was wishful thinking on the sheriff's part. As I recall, I declined to answer any more questions without my attorney present."

The elevator descended to the parlor floor with its passenger and a storage carton.

"I couldn't defend myself to the sheriff-not without giving up Miss Rice as my client." Swahn opened the cage door and nudged the box out with one foot. "That's all of them. Your housekeeper gave me the contact sheets so I wouldn't have to develop all the negatives. That's why the sheriff never saw them. Babitt only saw the pictures that were made into full-size prints." He rummaged through a drawer and pulled out a magnifying glass. "You'll need this."

Oren opened the cardboard carton and pulled out stacks of glossy paper, each one filled with miniature photographs the size of postage stamps. He had watched his brother make these sheets by laying strips of negatives on the paper, side by side, and then exposing the lot with a burst of light. Circles of a red wax pencil highlighted images chosen for the labor-intensive process of making eight-by-ten prints. "Josh never wanted anyone to see these. Ninety percent of his shots were rejects. I thought he destroyed all the contact sheets."

Swahn sat on the floor beside the box and picked up a sheet of twenty small images. "This one has shots from a birthday ball." He turned it over to show Oren a list of names in Josh's handwriting. "And these are the guests who ordered prints from your brother. You'll find me in some of these group shots, but none of my pictures are circled in red. Josh never made them into full-size prints, and why would he? I never ordered one. For the last time, Mr. Hobbs-until the day he disappeared, I didn't even know your brother was alive."