Brian Freeman - The Bone House

Vivian Frost. Beautiful, funny, intense, wicked, graceful, faithless, and treacherous. Vivian Frost, who'd wound up dead with a bullet in her brain on a deserted beach north of the city.

Unlike Glory Fischer, though, there was no mystery for Cab about who had killed her.

He'd done it himself.

'Someone she knew?' Lala Mosqueda asked as she sat down next to Cab's desk. 'Troy said that Glory recognized someone?'

Cab sat with his hands cupped over his nose and mouth. He didn't hear her. Instead, he heard a roaring noise that sounded like the Spanish surf, and he saw Vivian's face again, eyes open, entry wound in her forehead.

'Hey, Cab?'

He blinked as Lala said his name and heard concern in her voice. He rocked back in his chair and reached for the bag of plantain chips, but it was empty. He forced a smile on to his face. 'Moh-skee-toh,' he said, drawing out her nickname, talking loudly enough to cause others in the department to turn and watch them.

Lala shook her head in disgust, then leaned closer and hissed under her breath, 'Why do you do that?'

'What?'

'Push people away.'

'Is that what I'm doing?' he asked.

'You know damn well it is.'

She was right. He'd become an expert at keeping women on the far side of his safety zone. Those he liked, like Lala, were the ones he worked hardest to alienate.

'Fine,' she said, when he didn't reply. 'Be an ass. I don't care.'

Cab wanted to apologize, but he swallowed it down. 'Yes, Glory saw someone she knew,' he said. 'That's the story. Troy thinks she was talking about Mark Bradley, but he's just guessing. Glory didn't say who it was.'

Lala waited before she said anything else. When she spoke again, the softness in her tone was gone, replaced by cool detachment. She'd opened the door; he'd slammed it shut. That was his pattern.

'Do you think Troy is telling the truth?' she asked calmly. 'Did Glory really say anything like that, or is he simply trying to point us toward Bradley?'

Cab shrugged. 'I don't believe Troy is enough of a deep thinker to come up with a plan like that. He says he's certain that Bradley killed her. If he was going to lie, I think he'd just say that Glory said she saw Bradley on Friday night.'

'What about Tresa? Did Glory say anything to her about recognizing someone?'

'Apparently not.'

'Well, Troy backs up what Ronnie Trask told us,' Lala pointed out. 'Glory saw someone she knew, and for some reason she freaked and ran.'

'Too bad, I was hoping Trask made the whole thing up,' Cab said. 'The question is who Glory saw.'

'Could it be Mark Bradley?'

'Sure it could. Troy's guessing, but he may be right. What did you find out about Bradley and the Fischers?'

'I called the sheriff's department in Sturgeon Bay, which is the county seat for Door County,' Lala told him. 'I talked to the sheriff himself, tough old goat named Felix Reich. He said that pretty much everyone in the department believed Bradley was having sex with the girl. That would have been a misdemeanor assault in Wisconsin given their ages, but Tresa was adamant in denying the affair. No witness, no charges. Even so, Bradley wound up losing his teaching job. Tresa's mother, Delia, kept calling for his head. The district called it budgetary, but no one expected the school to keep him on. He hasn't found another job.'

'So he's got reason to be pissed off.'

'Yes, but I'm not seeing any motive for him to kill Glory,' Lala pointed out. 'No one accused them of having an affair.'

'That doesn't mean they weren't.'

'You're pretty cynical, Cab. For what it's worth, the sheriff had some things to tell me about Glory, too.'

Cab raised an eyebrow. 'Such as?'

'She was a troubled kid. Multiple arrests going back several years.' 'Several years? She's only sixteen.'

'Yeah, her first drug possession bust was at age twelve, and it wasn't her last. The local cops think she may have done some selling, too, although she was never actually charged. She was involved in vandalism, shoplifting, breaking and entering. It's not a happy picture.'

'Have there been any problems reported at the hotel this week?'

'The usual minor stuff. Glory's name didn't come up.'

'If we can pin this on someone, the defense is going to say Glory got involved with the local drug scene or hooked up with the wrong crowd.'

'That may be what happened,' Lala told him.

'Yeah, I know. Maybe. Let's keep talking to everyone we can, but put an emphasis on girls who were at the event center on Friday. I want to see if we can find someone who saw Glory before she went running toward Ronnie Trask. I want to know who she recognized.'

'The Bradleys are the only other people in the hotel from Door County,' Lala said.

'I know, but it sounds like Door County is a tourist area in Wisconsin. If Glory saw someone who visited the area but doesn't live there, that opens up a lot more possibilities. Particularly with a bunch of college kids staying at the hotel.'

'We're looking for a needle, and the haystack just got a lot bigger,' Lala said.

'There were a lot of people at that competition. Someone other than Ronnie Trask is bound to remember a girl running through the hall crying.'

Lala shrugged. 'Teenage girls do that all the time.'

'Yeah? I don't picture you doing that, Mosquito.'

'I was tougher than most,' she replied. After a moment, she added, 'You have a nickname, too, you know.'

'Catch-a-Cab Bolton,' he said, nodding.

'You know about it?'

'Sure. I know about the betting pool, too. When will Cab quit and move on? It's been two years. The welcome mat is wearing thin.'

'It's nothing to be proud of, Cab.'

'Did I say I was?' he asked.

'You never say anything.'

Cab opened his mouth to fire off a sarcastic reply, but for once he let it go. Then he asked, 'So what week do you have in the pool?'

'Next week, actually,' she said, without smiling.

'That soon?'

'I know you better than the others.'

It was as if she'd given him a terminal diagnosis. 'Well, if anyone's going to make money on me, I'd like it to be you.'

Lala didn't answer. Behind Cab's shoulder, someone gestured to her, and she climbed out of the chair and chatted with a uniformed officer in the doorway of the investigation division. When she returned, she was all business again. There wasn't time for anything personal between them, and he wondered if she was relieved by the interruption.

'You've got a visitor in the interview room,' Lala told him.

'Delia Fischer?' Cab asked, checking his watch. 'She's right on time.'

Lala shook her head. 'It's not her. It's Mark Bradley. And his attorney. They want to talk.'

Hilary Bradley emerged out of the Naples Police headquarters building into the bright sunshine. She slipped sunglasses on to her face. She stopped on the circular brick walkway and hesitated, unsure where to go. Mark was upstairs, and she assumed the police would interview him for an hour or more. At least he wasn't alone in facing their questions. She liked the attorney they'd hired; he was a bulldog, according to her father. It was the smart thing to do to get help, but she knew Mark was right about perceptions. The police would see him with a lawyer, and one word would jump into their heads.

Guilty.

She'd heard it in her father's voice, too. Her parents had stood behind Mark last year, because Hilary had convinced them he was innocent. Now she'd gone back to the well, and this time, there was an unspoken doubt in their reactions. They didn't know what to believe anymore. They probably wondered what she believed and whether she was being honest about her suspicions. But they had stayed silent.

Hilary stood in front of the pink stone building and saw a police cruiser glide up to the curb twenty feet away. The front passenger door opened, and she stiffened with dismay as she recognized the woman climbing out.