Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

"Well, sir, you've got human bones dropping on the front porch like clockwork. That might account for the locks."

The sash was raised on the window in Josh's bedroom, and both men looked up to see the sheriff leaning over the sill and calling out in a neighborly fashion, "Oren? A word?"

Hannah came down the stairs as Oren climbed upward.

"I plan to throw a quick lunch together. You fancy a chicken sandwich?"

"Yes, ma'am.

She paused on the step beside him. "I told Cable everything." In passing, she whispered, "I don't think he'll need to question the judge today."

"Good job."

Reaching the second-floor landing, he saw a stranger standing idle in the hallway. Printing on the back of his jacket identified him as the county coroner's man-still waiting for the bones. That was odd. Hannah's small store of information would have filled ten minutes at the outside. What had Cable Babitt been doing with all this time?

Oren hovered on the threshold of his brother's bedroom. He stared at the open closet, the rod packed tight with smashed-together clothes, a shelf piled high with junk-and he wondered if the sheriff had noticed the single anomaly in that chaos.

Henry Hobbs was surprised-and wary.

No revved-up Porsche had announced the arrival of Addison Winston, who so loved a noisy entrance. The lawyer came strolling across the meadow-quietly, and that alone was cause for suspicion. Though technically neighbors, the Winstons owned a great deal of acreage, and it was a good hike from the lodge-for an attorney in wildly expensive dress shoes. All decked out in a superbly tailored suit of gray silk, Addison hardly looked the part of a man in early retirement. But then, he had never fit that role by so much as a single strand of gray hair.

"Hello, Henry. I saw the sheriff's jeep in the driveway. Thought you might need a good lawyer." Ad Winston had a smile that could charm a suicide bomber-but not the judge.

The attorney's lean jawline was suspiciously well preserved. His hair was cut to a youthful shoulder length, and the Vandyke beard, no doubt dyed the same shade of brown, was trimmed to a sharp point. The judge was convinced that if he could only see the man's ears, they would be pointy, too. And so, in a Dorian Gray kind of way, Addison never seemed to age.

"I don't need a celebrity lawyer," said the judge.

"Well, Henry, if you're down to your last million, I could take you on as a charity case." The attorney sat on the tree stump and raised his face to the sun, as if he were not tanned enough.

The judge also looked up, but to the north where the Winston lodge perched on a foothill. All that could be seen above the tree line was the conical roof of the tower atop Addison 's castle of logs. "You got a telescope up there?"

"Three of them," said Addison. "Tools of the trade for an ambulance chaser. Actually, I passed the coroner's van on the road. So, naturally, I assumed you were dead." His smile faded off as he turned toward the house. "Please tell me the coroner didn't come for Hannah."

"Hannah's just fine." Or was she? He was still speculating on the pharmacy bottle in his hand.

"Not dead. Glad to hear it. My daughter mentioned seeing Oren in town. So the boy's come home."

"Josh, too."

Ad Winston wore a look of stunned surprise. And the judge would have enjoyed that so much if he could only believe that it was genuine.

Oren stood at the center of Josh's bedroom and looked down at the coffin, where his brother's bones blended with those of a stranger.

"It's official now," said Sheriff Babitt. "Twenty years late, but we got ourselves a homicide investigation." He rolled up a cloth tape measure that looked like something borrowed from Hannah's sewing basket.

So this was where the time had gone. The sheriff had been measuring the bones of arms and legs.

As a CID agent, when Oren had no DNA samples or dental records, he had sometimes used these same markers to identify victims found in the mass graves of combat zones. And, on one occasion, all he had was the vertebrae of a baby mingled with bones of the mother. But Cable Babitt was probably more concerned with the body count in the coffin. This man would not care to wait on a pathologist's report to tell him how many people it had taken to make this one partial skeleton.

"A double homicide," said Oren. "Unless you think there might be three victims."

The sheriff smiled. "Nice catch, son. Hannah told me you figured on at least two people here. If I come up with a different number, you know I won't be sharing that with you."

"Yes, sir."

Cable Babitt glanced at his wristwatch. "Where the hell is Dave?" He called out to the coroner's man in the hallway. "Harry? No need to wait for my deputy. I guess we can just load the bones into a body bag."

"No," said Oren. "Don't bag them." He reverently lowered the heavy wooden lid. "Just load the casket into the van."

The sheriff nodded to the man in the hall. "Go get another pair of hands, Harry." When the other man's footsteps had died off down the hall, he said, "Good idea, son. It's best if your dad doesn't keep the coffin in the house. He might get to thinking that's a normal thing to do. Now, about these bones showing up on the porch. Hannah tells me this has been going on for a while… but you just got home last night."

Oren nodded, looking down through the open window as a jeep pulled up in front of the house. The door opened, and the driver dropped to the ground on the run. Only seconds later, the coroner's man entered the room, followed by Dave Hardy, who had changed into his uniform. They each grabbed a brass handle, then lifted the coffin and turned it toward the door with some haste on Dave's end.

"I made a call to the Army," said the sheriff. "Oren, you know how this works. I had to account for your time while the judge was collecting those bones."

The coroner's man and the deputy were in less of a hurry now. Though the coffin must be heavy, they lingered at the bedroom door.

If this annoyed the sheriff, it never showed on his face. "The boss of your old outfit vouched for all your duty hours. He told me you were the best CID agent he ever met. He thinks I'd be a fool not to make use of all that talent. But I guess you know why I can't do that."

"Yes, sir." Oren well understood the reason: One day, two brothers had walked into the woods, and only one had come back alive.

The road was narrow, and new shoots of foliage reached out to touch the sheriff's jeep, just a kiss of leaves in passing. As Cable Babitt traveled toward the coast highway, the dense forest was left behind, and he had a broad vista of town and sea and sky. He turned to the silent man beside him to make one more attempt at an actual conversation.

"I hear the Army gave you a real fine education-a damn master's degree in forensic science. They must think a lot of you, son. I'm surprised they let you go without a fight." This was doubly surprising in wartime, when the military was strained and stretched thin, when National Guardsmen much older than Oren were pressed into active duty. "Your commanding officer didn't say why you quit. I had the feeling he didn't know."

A station wagon sped past. The name of a news program was printed on a sign anchored to its roof. Oren Hobbs turned in the passenger seat to watch this vehicle heading back toward the judge's house.

"Reporters," said the sheriff. "Those guys are from a local radio station, and the signal's pretty weak." He pointed to the sky and a low-flying helicopter with station call letters boldly printed on the bottom. "Now that's the outfit that worries me. They broadcast statewide."