Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

The dust and debris of the large front room was the giveaway of a long malaise, but Oren could chart the past few days of recovery by inroads made in the mess and by the garbage bags lined up at the door. These signs of a brighter mood would not square with the anxiety of a murderer whose crime had recently come to light with the bones. He sank down in an armchair, and Ferris Monty stood before him, eyes cast downward, like an aged schoolboy awaiting punishment.

"I took a long look at those three pictures of you in the bank."

"I guessed as much." Monty slowly raised his eyes. "But tell me, what did you think of the other triptych?" His smile was strained. "The photographs in the post office?"

Oren's voice was calm. His eyes were cold. "I noticed the way you were looking at my brother when he took those shots-the ones in the bank."

"But the postmaster's pictures are miles more interesting. They give up a secret relationship. Your brother was very good at capturing secrets."

Oren nodded. "There's a word for what you are."

"A phebophile," said Monty. "One who preys on adolescent boys. That's the word you want. It doesn't describe me. I'm hardly a virgin, but I can assure you that all of my lovers have been consenting adults. I never touched that boy. I'd never set myself up for that kind of rejection."

Monty removed his toupee to reveal sparse strands of gray on a wrinkled scalp. He seemed even less normal without the fake hair-more insectile. The sheriff had correctly likened him to bug larvae.

The little man looked down at the black hairpiece in his hands. "A beautiful boy like that would run from the likes of me." His eyes wandered to Oren's boots. "And your brother could run very fast. He needed speed… considering what he was doing, shadowing people, following them around for hours-days. I think that's why he always wore sneakers. He imitated everything else about you, Mr. Hobbs-your walk, the way you combed your hair, clothes-everything but your cowboy boots."

"You just admitted to stalking my brother."

"I always kept my distance." Monty backed away as Oren rose from the chair. "I can help you, Mr. Hobbs." He tripped on one of his garbage bags and fell backward to land on his tailbone. "Today I led you into the post office." There was a trace of whimper in his voice. "I all but led you there by the hand and pointed out the pictures on the wall. I know you've seen them a hundred times… but today you actually studied them, didn't you?"

Oren moved toward him.

By hands and feet, Monty scuttled backward, eyes wide and frightened as he dragged his rump across the rug, and backed up to the wall. "You saw the pictures of Swahn secretly passing a letter to the town lunatic." His eyes were begging now, hands rising to ward off anticipated violence.

Seconds ticked by-half a minute.

Oren was motionless, arms at his sides. He knew how to wait.

Monty slowly lowered his hands. "You're disgusted by the idea that I could love Joshua. But I think you'll take my help. I know something about Swahn's letter."

Sarah Winston hardly paid attention to her husband. Addison had become accustomed to her hundred-mile stare, and so it raised no interest in him when her gaze went over his head to the high bookshelf that ran around the wall of the tower room.

A group of birder logs was missing.

Which ones?

Could Addison have taken them? No, her husband had nothing but contempt for this side of her life. Isabelle must have borrowed those Bird-land chronicles.

If he should look up and see that empty space on the shelf, he might wonder where the books had gone; and then he might take an interest and open the others. What then? Would he commit her to another hospital?

He was talking in the lecture mode that followed her every binge. She nodded absently, lowering her gaze to meet his eyes. And now husband and wife were connected. She could still hold him this way. At core, Addison was a romantic man, blind to the changes of her aging and alcohol-

| ism. His smile was a constant thing, even in moments of anger, but she knew all of the subtle nuances.

She wished he would stop it, drop it-yell if he liked-but stop smiling.

Isabelle and Nickel Number Two had followed a well-worn trail past Evelyn Straub's old cabin. After a while, it should have led her to a landmark in one of her mother's journals, but she had been lulled by the slow rhythm of the horse and the warmth of the summer sun. Intoxicated by lush green forest and birdsong, trills that ran up and downhill-distracted by the novelty of happiness-she had overshot the clearing.

She found another trail leading out of the woods and onto the fire road. Following a memory, she counted sharp twists and wide curves, and then she saw the turnout up ahead, the place where her mother had always left the car. As the horse clopped toward that old parking space, Isabelle passed another turnout closer to a favorite place in the forest, and there stood an empty van. In the dirt, there were signs of other vehicles recently stopping here.

She dismounted and guided the horse through the trees where there was no clear path. High in the branches, warbling songsters were drowned out by a magpie's whining, quizzical song.

Maag? Aag-aag?

And then came a rapid fire of notes. Wah-wah-wah-wah?

Sections of yellow tape were visible between tree trunks. And now she heard human voices. Drawing closer, Isabelle could see that the tape cordoned off an opening in the ground. Two teenagers, wearing T-shirts with university logos, knelt beside the hole, sifting dirt through screens. A third student used a soft brush to dust away the dirt from an object in her hand.

A bone?

So this was the grave of Josh Hobbs and a nameless stranger- here in the place her mother loved best among the million acres of forestland.

Isabelle tightened her hold on the reins, and the horse shied in sympathetic anxiety.

Oren stared at the photographs on the wall of Ferris Monty's study. He stood close behind the gossip columnist, who was scrolling through a file on his computer.

"You see?" Monty ran one finger down a list on the screen and paused at mentions of individual students. "They were all at UCLA that same year. Here's William Swahn-something of a prodigy, barely fourteen when he got his first college degree. Here's the librarian. She was in her twenties then. And Sarah Winston was twenty-four." One finger tapped the screen on this line. "This is her maiden name."

"That's it? You've got nothing on Ad Winston." Oren's eyes traveled back to the damning pictures on the wall.

Ferris Monty rose from his chair and removed these prints of the bank photographs to stack them facedown on his desk. "Concentrate on the photos at the post office. Before William Swahn was mutilated, I believe he had a relationship with Sarah Winston."

"When they were at UCLA? He was a little boy." Oren folded his arms and watched Monty's frustration grow with this little piece of bait. "I don't see Mrs. Winston as a pedophile."

"Not then." Monty paused to purse his lips and perhaps to censor his next words. "Later. When the child grew up -that's when they had the affair."

"The alleged affair," said Oren. Apparently Swahn's nondisclosure agreement had teeth and staying power. Ferris Monty's research had never turned up a rumor that the man was gay.

"All right," said Monty. "It's speculation. But what if it's true? What if that relationship continued after Swahn moved to Coventry? What if Addison found out about Mavis passing Swahn's love letters to his wife? I know a woman's bones were found with Joshua. Suppose Addison meant to kill Sarah… and he murdered a stranger by mistake? And let's say your brother was following her that-"