Jonathan Kellerman: Bones

Oh, man, he should’ve stayed in bed.

He said “Idiot” out loud and examined the half bike.

Cheap, flimsy junk. Made in China sticker pasted to what remained of a crossbar that Bob could bend with his hands.

Disgusted, he mixed a Mary in the kitchenette, sat down on the floor, and drank. Thinking about eighty wasted bucks made him more tired than ever, but leaving the bags around reminded him he was an idiot.

Time to haul the whole damn load out back to the Dumpsters.

Finishing his Mary, he labored to his feet, tossed the papers back in the second bag, lifted.

Something rattled. Bottom of the bag.

Probably his imagination. He shook the bag hard.

Rattle rattle rattle-like one of those maracas they sold on Olvera Street, Kathy had bought him a pair of those when they were dating. Figuring, what? He was half Mexican, so he’d half like it?

He pawed through the papers, reached bottom, found the source of the noise.

Wooden box, dark, shiny. Long as a shoe box but wider, with curly brass inlay, nice lacquer finish, little brass latch holding it shut.

EBay here we come! The box alone… he’d call it exotic, imported, whatever, maybe make up a story about it coming from… Malaysia? No, something more mysterious, where was Mount Everest-Tibet… Nepal.

Exotic box-exotic jewel case-from the Nepal alps, made of solid choice mountain… looked like mahogany, he could play that up-solid choice rare Asian mahogany. Maybe stick on a Buy It Now for a hundred, hundred thirty. Now, let’s see what’s inside. And if it was dry beans, who cared? The box alone meant he was No Longer An Idiot.

He freed the brass latch, raised the lid. Inside was a gold velvet tray.

Empty; the noise was coming from below.

He lifted the tray, exposed a bottom compartment. Inside were… little white knobby things.

He picked one up. Smooth and white, with a pointy tip, and all of a sudden Bob knew what it was without being told.

Even though biology had never been his strong point, he’d flunked it once in high school, repeated, managed a D.

A bone.

Like from a hand or a foot. Or a paw.

Lots of little bones, so many they nearly filled the compartment, didn’t make that much noise.

Had to be what… three, four dozen.

Bob counted.

Forty-two.

He examined his own hand. Three bones on each of the four fingers, two for the thumb, making… fourteen per hand.

Three hands’ worth. Or three paws’ worth. No reason to think these weren’t from an animal. Then he thought of something-maybe these came from one of those skeletons they used in medical schools, people willing their bodies to science.

Getting cut up and examined and reconstructed into skeletons using wires to hold it all together.

Nope, none of these bones had holes for wires.

Weird.

Bob picked up another of the smallest ones, held it alongside the top joint of his own index finger.

Not as big as his.

Maybe a small dog.

Or a woman.

Or a kid…

No, that was too… had to be a dog. Or a cat. How many bones in a paw or a claw?

Too small for a cat.

A medium-sized dog, like Alf. Yeah, this might fit Alf.

He missed Alf, living in Dallas with Kathy.

Was thinking about all that when he shut the latch.

The box rattled.

Bones.

He’d do a little research on the Internet. Maybe sell the collection as antiques-like from an Indian archaeology dig. Out in… Utah. Or Colorado, Colorado sounded more… exotic.

Antique collection of exotic bones.

Stuff like that eBayed great.

Milo had a fancy job title, courtesy the new police chief: Special Case Investigator, Lieutenant Grade.

Or as he put it: “Hoo-hah Poobah Big-Ass Sitting Mallard.”

What it came down to was he avoided most of the paper-pushing that came with his rank, kept his closet-sized office at West L.A. Division, continued to work his own homicides until Downtown called and pointed him elsewhere.

Two calls had come in over the last fourteen months, both Rampart Division gang-revenge shootings. Not even close to whodunits but the chief, still feeling his way in L.A., had heard rumors of fresh Rampart corruption and wanted liability insurance.

The rumors proved false and Milo had concentrated on not being a nuisance. When the cases closed, the chief insisted his assignee’s name be on the reports.

“Even though I was as useful as a stone-blind trapshooter. Made me real popular.”

Easy metaphor; the morning he came up with it, the two of us were blasting away at clay pigeons on a Simi Valley firing range.

Late June, dry heat, blue skies, khaki hills. Milo lumbered through all five positions of the voice-activated trap setup, hitting 80 percent without much effort. Last year he’d been the target of a shotgun-wielding psychopath, still carried pellets in his left shoulder.

I’d emptied an entire box of shells before accidentally nailing one of the bright green disks. As I racked the Browning and drank a warm soda, he said, “When you shoot, you close your left eye.”

“So?”

“So maybe you’re right-handed but left-eyed, and it’s throwing you off balance.”

He had me form a triangle with both hands, positioned my fingers so the space between them was filled by a dead tree off to the east.

“Shut the left one. Now the right. Which one makes it jump more?”

I knew the eye dominance test, had run it years ago as a psych intern, researching brain laterality in learning disabled children.

Never tried it on myself. The results were a surprise.

Milo laughed. “Sinister-eyed. Now you know what to do. Also, stop rejecting the damn thing.”

I said, “What do you mean?” but I knew exactly what he was talking about.

“You’re holding it like you can’t wait to ditch it.” Hefting the gun and handing it over. “Embrace it-lean forward-yeah, yeah, like that.”

I’ve fired pistols and rifles in ugly situations. Don’t enjoy firearms any more than going through dental work, but I appreciate the value of both.

Shotguns, with their elegant lethal simplicity, were another story. Up till today, I’d avoided them.

Twelve-gauge Remingtons had been my father’s playthings of choice. An 870 pump-action Wingmaster purchased at a police auction stood in a corner of Dad’s closet, almost always loaded.

Like Dad.

Summers-late June-he’d make me tag along on squirrel and small-bird hunts. Stalking flimsy little animals with absurd firepower because all he wanted to do was obliterate. Using me to search the bloody dust, bring back a bone fragment or a claw or a beak, because I was more obedient than a dog.

Scared of his mood swings in a way no dog could ever be.

My other assignments were keeping my mouth shut and toting his camouflage-pattern gear bag. Inside, along with his cleaning kit and boxes of ammo and the odd dog-eared Playboy, were the silver-plated whiskey flask, the plaid thermos of coffee, the sweating cans of Blue Ribbon.

The reek of alcohol on his breath growing stronger as the day wore on.

“Ready, Dead-eye?” said Milo. “Shut the right, open the left, and lean-more-even more, make yourself part of the gun. There you go. Hold that. And don’t aim, just point.” Eyeing the bunker. “Pull!”

Half an hour later: “You hit more than I did, pal. I’ve created a monster.”

At ten thirty we were loading the trunk of my Seville when Milo’s cell phone beeped the first six notes of “My Way.”

He listened while following the ascent of a red-tailed hawk. His big, pale face tightened. “When… okay… an hour.” Click. “Time to head back to anti-civilization. Drive, por favor.”