Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

Oren smelled piss and shit and vomit. The dog smelled fear.

The man in the hole rallied, rising to a stand and reaching high to grab the tree root. His bare toes dug into the muddy wall, scrambling, frantic for purchase. Dirt caved in all around the root, and the deputy fell, legs folded under him and covered over by the small avalanche. Dave Hardy raised his head and rubbed his eyes. He looked down at the place where his limbs should be. Oren watched the deputy twist and strain, but Dave Hardy could only free his arms; he could not move his buried. legs. Panicked, manic, as fast as he could scoop the dirt away, Oren piled on more.

Ploff, ploff, ploff.

He lowered the shovel and stood back as Hannah leaned over the hole.

"My memory is long," she said to the deputy. "The proof was in your hands. Your knuckles were red and raw… from doing murder in woods."

"That happened in a fight with Oren." Dave's voice was weaker, and his words came out like a whine. "You saw it, Hannah. You were in the gym that night."

"Oh, I'll never forget it. Every punch belonged to Oren. All those people in the bleachers-they all remember Oren's bloody fists… your bloody face… not one bruise on your knuckles. But Cable Babitt got the story secondhand. He didn't see that fight. If he had, he would've arrested you twenty years ago."

Ploff

The dirt from the caved-in wall had thickened into mud all around the deputy's body, and he ceased to struggle. He only shivered, and his words were halfhearted. "Make him stop? Please, Hannah?"

"I'll try." She stole a glance at Oren, and then turned her face down to the deputy. "But he's got this idea in his head that you raped his brother before you murdered him."

Oren lost his rhythm with the shovel. He turned to stare at her.

"No, no, no!" Dave's voice was breaking, his head shaking. "I wasn't queer for Josh. I never-"

"You broke that child's bones. His jaw, his arms-half his ribs." There was no recrimination in her voice, only sadness. "And then… his fingers… You broke them one by one… Oren says only sex perverts do sick things like that."

"I'm no pervert!"

"You hurt that child all day long." Hannah's voice faltered and cracked. "And then when Josh was broken and helpless, you took off his-"

"I'm not a pervert!" Dave's voice was growing stronger, louder. His hands were raised fists when he yelled, "I killed the woman for money! The wrong woman, all right? But what I did to Josh-that was payback!" His fists slowly lowered. He was deflating, losing air and will. In a smaller voice, he said, "Payback for that beating I took from Oren… that night in the gym… the whole town watching."

The shovel dropped from Oren's hands. His head moved slowly from side to side, lips shaping the word payback, and his eyes rolled up to the sky. Payback.

The door of the garden shed creaked open. Oren turned around to watch the CBI agent retrieve a microphone from the ferns near the hole. He had not agreed to that.

Sally Polk nodded to him and mimed the words, Good job.

Their deal was done, the bargain kept-on his end. He had broken a suspect without using his fists. That had always been his way, and once it had been a source of pride, but not this time-not for a long time.

The voice from the pit was faint. "Make it stop," Dave begged, as if dirt still rained down on him.

Agent Polk led Oren out of earshot and then opened her purse to pull out a small recording device. "My tape starts with the splash-him falling into the hole." Smiling, she shook her head. "That clumsy boy. So all I've got is his voice and Hannah's. Nothing to prove you were ever here."

"You can't use that tape." He had agreed to break Dave Hardy, to take him naked to a place where posturing was ludicrous-half the battle, only that and nothing more.

"I need this." Her hand closed on the recorder. "You laid out a good case, but it's all circumstantial evidence and hearsay. Though I did like that part about the money missing from the hotel safe. Now, just in case his lawyer gets picky-when I get the deputy cleaned up, will I find any defensive wounds-anything to back up a fight?"

"You can't use a coerced confession in court."

One hand on her hip, she nodded toward the pit. "You call that coercion?"

No. He would call it torture. He always called it by its name. Over the past few years, he had, once or twice, thought to look down at that line he would never cross-as if he could still see it. He could, at least, remember it, but now the only salvage of any value was this one rule of evidence-a law that he could keep.

"Erase the tape," said Oren. "It'll come back on you if you don't. That's a promise."

The set of her jaw and the pugilist stance told him she was taking this as a threat. Good.

Oren turned around to face the pit. "After you pull Dave out of there, when he's wearing dry clothes and drinking tea-when he's chewing one of your damn brownies-that's when you tell him you'll drop the charge of assault on a child. And word it just that way. Then offer him a deal- one count of murder for hire. He'll grab it-even if you get him a dozen lawyers. But I don't think he'll lawyer up-not today. Dave's ready to talk, and he'll write it all down if you like. Today, a ten-year-old girl could get his confession."

Any female would do.

Dubious, the CBI agent walked with him to the edge of the pit and called down to the man below. "Dave Hardy? It's me, Sally Polk." Now she remembered to speak her only line, one final lie. "Hannah called me to come get you out of there."

Down in the hole, a mumbling of nonsense words turned to convulsive sobbing. Dirt was piled up to the deputy's chest. Mud caked his face and covered his eyes. Despite his old hatred of all her kind, blindly, Dave reached up to her-like any crying child seeking comfort from a woman- like every man who believed, at core, that a woman could save him.

The CBI agent hefted the recording device in her hand.

Weighing its value?

"You'll get a legal confession." Oren said this as an order, wanting no misunderstanding. He was not her cop.

This past hour had cost him dearly. Hannah, too. The tiny woman sat on the ground, rocking her body, her head bowed low. She had played her part so well, and now she was spent and crying and sick at heart.

Sally Polk held up her tape recorder and pressed the erase button. "I'll look after Hannah. You should be gone before the troopers get here."

Oren obliged her and walked away.

On the far side of the meadow, he was swallowed up by dense woods. For the love of Josh, he was a staggering man, feeling every wound to a child's broken body. He traveled farther into the forest, only stopping when he was certain that no one would find him this time.

Birds flew up from the trees in a whirlwind of spread wings and songs of panic, as though they had heard the bang of a bullet. On the ground, other creatures gave a wide berth to the man with a lost look about him, who sat with a gun in his lap all that day.

Night fell.

A new Mercedes was parked in the driveway, but Henry Hobbs was on foot today. Striding across the meadow, he was heading for a promising trout stream with his rod and reel and a yellow dog.

The old man never walked in his sleep anymore. Oren was on his knees, cutting flowers from the judge's enduring garden. He was nearly done with his term as interim county sheriff. Would he run for election-or lay down his gun like his father before him? Did it matter?