Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

She marched up the stairs and into the house. The screen door slammed behind her, a message to tell him that she was in no mood for criticism tonight.

The judge called after her, "We'll get a new car, all right? We'll get two new cars."

"I called the sheriff's office," said William Swahn.

"And they laughed at you, right? You told them you saw a man dance with his wife? Something like that?" Addison Winston tapped his temple with one finger to illustrate a mind at work. "I anticipated you." Theatrically, he cupped his ears with both hands. "Do I hear sirens in the distance?" He lowered his hands. "No, I'm afraid not."

"I made another call."

Isabelle's limousine was headed homeward, but only moving at the legal limit. She renewed her quarrel with the chauffer. "Yes, you can go faster. It's late, and all the state troopers are asleep by the side of the road. I promise you won't get a ticket." She reached through the opening in the glass partition and emptied her wallet on the front seat beside the driver.

The limousine sped up, but not fast enough, and she had no more money to buy another twenty miles per hour.

The screen door was pushed open so hard it banged against the porch wall, and Hannah came flying out. "Mr. Swahn left a message on the answering machine. There's trouble at the Winston lodge. No idea when he called, but he said to come quick."

Oren snatched the keys from her outstretched hand. When he slid behind the wheel of the Mercedes, the engine would not turn over.

"I misspoke." The judge turned to Hannah. "The car's not low on gas-it's out of gas."

Oren never heard this remark. He was running down the driveway.

"Ah, William. Intrepid fellow." Addison slowly climbed the stairs beside the crawling man, grinning with encouragement, pausing to beat him with the cane every now and then when he thought his guest's attention might be flagging.

"Great joke on me, isn't it?" The cane rose again and came down. "It just keeps getting funnier and funnier."

Swahn rolled onto his side, shot through and through with pain. "You can't get away with this."

"Of course I can. My wife has a history of slashed wrists and sleeping pills. And you're going to shoot yourself." Addison sat down on the steps, a brief respite from his labors-the heavy work of inflicting agony. "There's only one conclusion that our idiot sheriff will draw-that old cliché of unrequited love. If you can't have my wife, then no man can. So you pushed her off the deck and then-Oh, allow me one more cliché. You're going to eat your gun. That's the time-honored method for an ex-cop's suicide. I thought you'd like that part-a cop to the end- literally."

Addison wagged one finger at Swahn. "Don't tell me. I know what you're thinking. Those bruises on your body. They'll be blamed on the mob, all those flying bottles and rocks. And the cuts-the blood from your open wounds? Well, of course I tried valiantly to defend my wife, but then you pulled a gun." He reached behind his back and under his coattails to retrieve a revolver from his waistband. "Unregistered, untraceable. Finest kind. And they say nothing good can come of consorting with criminals." He took a handkerchief from his pocket and cleaned the surface. "Your prints will be the only ones found. And I have all the proof I need to back up my version of events." He waved the yellowed sheet of paper. "Your love letter to Sarah."

The lawyer laid the weapon on a step beyond Swahn's reach. "The revolver has to be in your hands when it goes off-just in case the sheriff remembers to test for residue from gunfire. This works best if you're unconscious when I put the barrel in your mouth. So you'll understand why I have to put you to sleep." He picked up the cane and raised it high for another strike. "Good night, William."

"That letter's going to destroy you. Any document expert can use it against you."

The cane stopped mid-swing. "I hardly think so. It's your handwriting. And the wording-so obsessive. Psychotic, I'd say. Love is insane, isn't it?"

"But I only wrote one letter to Sarah. It was the year she left school to marry you. She was twenty-four, a grown woman. I was barely fourteen years old." With his bloodied right hand, he pointed to the letter. "That's only the lovesick ramblings of a child."

Conviction was lacking in Addison 's voice when he said, "You'd say anything to-"

"I was only her friend." Swahn rested his head on the stairs and left blood there from his wounds. "It would never occur to her that I killed the boy You heard what she said-bad things happen to her friends. Sarah's own words." He touched the scar on his face. "When she saw this A carved into Josh… that's when she knew you were the one who did this to me."

The cane dropped from Addison 's hand. He felt a constriction within, a vise that gripped his heart. From without, an invisible force was bearing down on his chest, pressing, pressing.

"I think she knew you were crazy long before that," said Swahn. "She was sending Belle away to boarding school years before Josh died. She did her best to keep her child away from you. But Sarah could never leave you."

Addison sank down on the stairs and gasped for air.

"I was at your wedding." Swahn dragged himself up one more step. "You might remember me as the pimple-faced little boy in the first pew. I'll tell you what I remember-the vows, old ones, so traditional. She vowed to stand by you 'in sickness and in health, for better or for worse.' So she sent her child away because she was afraid for Belle. But Sarah stayed. Crazy as you are, she stayed to keep you company… and she even went insane with you." Swahn gripped the staircase carpet and dragged one useless leg behind him as he climbed the steps. "She buried Josh's body to protect you. She did it for love."

Addison leaned back against the banister.

So hard to breathe.

Pain radiated outward from his heart, traveling upward to his neck and his jaw. Soon the nausea would be upon him; he knew all the symptoms. Bile was rising in his throat. His face wet with cold sweat.

Swahn was impervious to all these signs as he dragged his ruined body upward. The man's face was turned toward the next flight of steps, the next round of agony that would lead him to the tower room.

Only Addison saw Sarah's body falling past the window. His wife did not cry out. It was Addison who screamed-or thought he did. His mouth opened wide, but he could only manage a hoarse whisper of her name. For one insane moment, he believed that he could call Sarah back before she fell to earth.

Would that she could fly.

Oren pushed open the front door and entered the foyer. Addison Winston sat alone on the staircase, tie undone and clutching the breast of his dress shirt. His face was ashen. The lawyer was orating to no one. His mouth only moved in dumb show.

Using the telephone in the foyer, Oren called for an ambulance. "It's a heart attack," he said, last words, as he hung up on the 9-1-1 operator. Joining Addison on the stairs, he picked up the gun on the step behind the man. And then he saw William Swahn's cane. There was blood on the silver handle, but none on the lawyer.

The lawyer's gun in one hand and the cane in the other, he traveled up the stairs to the second-floor landing, following a trail of small bloody dots and long smears. Swahn had collapsed on a second staircase, a narrow one. Oren laid down the cane, freeing one hand to roll the man over and check for a pulse. It was there, weak and thready.

Swahn's eyes opened.

"Ad Winston did this to you?"

"I have to get to Sarah." Swahn pointed to the top of the narrow staircase, and then his hand dropped. His eyes closed.