Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

"You think he's gonna-" The girl paused for a second or two. There was sarcasm in her voice, a touch of payback when she said, "So no one's been injured. You just think somebody might kill his wife."

William yelled, "Tell him!"

"You kept that photograph all these years," said Addison Winston.

Sarah turned away from her husband and gripped the rail, off balanced by dancing and liquor, dizzy and sick. "I told you about the graduation ceremony. I always told you about every hour of my day- where I went, who I spoke to."

Behind his wife's back, ever mindful of their audience, Addison mimed the act of stabbing Sarah with a knife. For his next performance piece, he left her standing at the rail, holding on tight. He flattened up against the glass wall, and then, with both hands raised, as if to push her off the deck, he rushed forward, stopping short of touching her back. He lowered his hands and laughed out loud, imagining that he could hear Swahn screaming in the distance-in the dark.

Yet his voice was tender as he stood behind Sarah, holding her by the shoulders and nuzzling the soft skin of her neck. "I know you kept one of his letters, too."

She turned around to face him, uncomprehending. "What letters? There was only-"

"Only one left. I know. I suppose you burned the others, but this one was special. Every now and then, I dig it out of your keepsake box and read it again. All these years later, I still find it very powerful. I can understand why you kept that one."

He stepped back a pace to regard his wife. So this was what a stunned cow looked like after it had been hit between the eyes with a baseball bat-the prelude to slaughter.

Taking Sarah in his arms, Addison danced her past the open door. Her bedside telephone rang, and the answering machine played a message from a man in deep distress, an anguished paramour pleading for Sarah to come indoors. "Hold on!" Swahn yelled from the little box. "I'm coming! I'm on the way!" On this note of hysteria, the call ended.

Perfect.

William Swahn stepped out of the elevator cage and crossed the room to another telephone for one more call. Once he reached the lodge, he would be helpless. Its grand staircase was insurmountable for a man with a ruined leg that could not support him in a climb to anywhere.

His mere presence in the house might be enough to end the madness, but he could not count on that. William made a call for help from another quarter, spending precious seconds to listen to a tape recording telling him that there was no one there to hear him, no one home. He left a message and then limped toward his front door. Haste caused him pain.

His pills were upstairs on the desk in his study. No time to get them.

He left the house hobbling, aching.

Addison held her very close. "I followed you the night you dug up the boy's skull. Why did you have to do that? Guilt, Sarah? After all these years? Everything was going so well. But now you and Swahn are becoming more unstable every day. He's putting it all together. If he doesn't know already, he'll figure out that you were the cause of his mutilation. Well, you can see what you've done."

Sarah was looking down at the headlights rushing along Paulson Lane.

"He's coming," said Addison. "Almost here." He wrapped both her hands around the deck rail. "Don't go anywhere without me." He gently turned her face to his and softly kissed her lips. "I'd love to stay and dance all night, but I have to go downstairs and greet our guest."

Father and son walked up the driveway, and the yellow stray trotted ahead of them. Henry Hobbs was in good spirits and slightly tipsy when he tossed another stick, and the dog fetched it back. "Remember doing this with old Horatio?"

"Yeah," said Oren. "Those sticks kept whizzing past him. He never figured out what they were for."

The judge's happiness was complete. Fine wine and a warm summer night-these things were truly gifts, and best of all was a walk down a country road with his son. He held his watch up to the light of the porch and squinted at the dial. "Hannah should've been home by now. I'd better go inside and check the answering machine."

"Give her a little more time." Oren leaned down to scratch the stray dog behind the ears. "She must've been the designated driver for half the town tonight."

"Well, Hannah does love to drive."

"Odd that she never got a driver's license… but she'd have to produce a birth certificate to get one." Oren stood with his back to the porch, taking advantage of deep shadow to conceal his face. The judge was exposed, lit by a yellow bug light glowing brightly.

Oren sat down on the bottom step. "You still pay her wages in cash, right? I always wondered where Hannah kept her money. I know she can't put it in the bank. She'd need a Social Security number to open an account."

This posed an unsettling problem. There were rules to be observed, and Oren was breaking them with impunity. Henry Hobbs had invented this game to teach his boys the art of conversation, instructing them not to trivialize it by injection of the obvious. Oren was taking the contest to a new level, using lost points for bait.

The judge threw up his hands, feigning confusion and misunderstanding. "Don't you worry about Hannah. She's well provided for in my will."

He clapped his son on the back as he moved past him to climb the porch stairs.

Turnabout.

Now it was Oren's face that was bathed in light, and there was grave suspicion there. "Without any kind of identification, I wonder how she's going to prove that she's Hannah Rice-so she can collect from your estate."

Henry Hobbs forced a smile. "You're my executor, boy. You won't have any problem identifying her."

"Won't I? I don't even know if Hannah's her right name-and neither do you."

In his haste-as much haste as a cripple could manage-the late-night visitor dispensed with the custom of knocking. The great oak door to the lodge swung open, and the man entered the foyer walking ungainly, almost comic with his awkward limp.

Addison paused half the way down the staircase to lean against the banister. "Good evening… again."

Swahn advanced on him, hobbling, listing to one side, and every step threatened to tip him over. He came to a halt at the bottom of the staircase. "Where is Sarah?"

"William, my wife is too tired for any more entertaining tonight. I'll give her your regards."

Swahn shouted, "Sarah, I'm here!"

"Stop!" Addison held up one hand in the manner of a traffic cop. "Keep your voice down. My wife is quite drunk. I don't think she could handle these stairs any better than you. We don't want her to fall and break her neck, do we?"

Swahn placed one foot on the bottom step. The weight on his bad leg caused a wince of pain. He was slow to gain the next step, and the next.

"Well, I can see this might take a while." Addison danced past him down the stairs. There was time enough to enter the front room and fill two glasses at the caterer's bar. When he returned to the foyer, Swahn had fallen. Reduced to crawling, he had abandoned his cane to drag himself up four more steps.

"Good job," said the lawyer. "Only forty to go." He bent down and offered Swahn one of the glasses, but he was rebuffed. "No? None for you? Ah, well." He settled one champagne flute on the carpet beside the crawling man. "Just in case you get thirsty."

Six steps above his guest, Addison sat down to watch the man's slow, painful progress. "I can see that you're still totally preoccupied with my wife. Have you figured out Sarah's part in the death of Joshua Hobbs?"

Swahn's brow was beaded with the sweat of exertion. He gave up his struggle and laid his head on one arm. "That's insane."