Brian Freeman - The Bone House

'What do you mean?'

'Jen spent the night with the Fischers. Delia knew how bad it was for the girl at home. All the fights. It wasn't just Harris and Nettie, it was the boys, too. They picked up the poison from their mom. Delia took pity on her, and it's a good thing. Pete still sends Delia flowers every year to thank her.'

Cab didn't say anything for a long time. Finally, when he sensed Reich's impatience, he said, 'This is ugly, Sheriff. You know how ugly this is.'

'I do.'

'I came here ninety-five per cent convinced that Mark Bradley killed Glory Fischer.'

'Trust your instincts,' Reich told him.

'That's the problem. My instincts don't like this one little bit. If Glory saw Harris—'

'She didn't.'

'Sometimes you bump into your past at the worst possible time,' Cab pointed out.

'You said you have a witness. Bradley and Glory were kissing on the beach.'

'I still don't like the coincidence.'

The sheriff leaned forward with his elbows on his desk. 'Detective Bolton, I'm not going to tell you how to do your job. This is your case, not mine. My only interest is making sure that Delia Fischer doesn't have to grieve for her daughter without seeing her killer punished. I'd hate to see the ghost of Harris Bone getting in the way of that.'

'So would I.'

Reich turned his head sideways. With his index finger, he pointed to a two-inch jagged line on his skull where the hair didn't grow. 'You see that scar?'

Cab nodded. 'Looks bad. Did you get it in Vietnam?'

'No, I got it in a field about forty miles south of here. That's where Harris Bone cracked my head open with a rock when I let him out of the car for a piss as I was getting ready to dump him in Supermax for the rest of his stinking life. When I woke up, he was long gone. So you know what, Detective? Part of me hopes I'm wrong, and you're right. I hope Glory really did see that son of a bitch in Florida, and I hope you find the rock he's hiding under, and I hope you bring him here and leave me alone with him for five minutes. That's all I want, five minutes. Harris Bone and I have unfinished business.'

Amy Leigh sat on a bench near the trails of the Cofrin Arboretum, unwinding after her run. Beside her, Katie wore sweats and a T-shirt adorned with the school's Phoenix logo. Despite the frigid morning, sweat trickled from her bobbed black hair down the line of her jaw, and her shirt was stained with a triangle of sweat too. Her glasses kept slipping down her nose. Katie lit a cigarette. She always smoked after the two of them jogged, which Amy hated.

Cars came and went on the circular drive around the perimeter of the campus. The school was perched on a bluff a few miles outside downtown Green Bay. The city was gray and industrial, haunted by hard-scrabble, beer-drinking cheeseheads who worshiped at the shrine of Lambeau Field, but the university itself was an enclave of green athletic fields and brick academic buildings ringed by the lushly wooded nature preserve.

The two girls stretched out their legs and relaxed. A bright red cardinal flicked among the bare branches of the trees and sang to them.

'You still going to Gary Jensen's house tonight?' Katie asked.

'Yeah.'

'You want me to go with you?' 'No, I'll be OK.'

'I'm still not sure what you think you're going to accomplish.'

'I just want to see how he reacts,' Amy said.

'What, you're going to blurt out, "Hey, Gary, did you strangle that girl on the beach in Florida?'"

'No, don't be stupid. I want to drop some hints and see what he says. I'll know if he's lying.'

Katie shook her head. 'Some liars are pretty good at it, Ames.'

'We'll see.'

Her roommate shivered as the cold air began to overtake the warmth of the run. 'I did a little poking around on my own.'

'About Gary?'

Katie nodded. 'I had coffee with a secretary in the PhyEd department. I said it was for a follow-up story on the dance competition in Florida, but we did a little gossiping, too. Mainly about Gary's wife.'

'What did she tell you?'

'Well, the rumor is he was having an affair. Hot and heavy.'

'You mean before his wife died?'

'Yep.'

'Who was the other woman?'

Katie shrugged. 'Don't know. It may not even be true.'

'I can't believe no one told the police.'

'People aren't going to call the cops about hunches and suspicions. That's all you've got, you know. I haven't found anything to link Gary to Glory Fischer. You saw him with a girl who may have been Glory, but maybe not.'

'I heard him coming back to his room late, too.'

'Are you sure? My room was a couple doors down, and I didn't hear anything.'

'It was him,' Amy insisted. 'I heard his door open and close.'

'It doesn't prove anything.'

'I know.'

'Did you talk to your old coach about any of this? Hilary Bradley?'

'Not yet. I don't know if I have anything to tell her.'

Katie stood up and tugged her damp shirt away from her chest. She stubbed out her cigarette on the ground. 'Well, don't make an ass of yourself.'

'Yeah.'

'You coming back to the room?'

Amy shook her head. 'I'll do a couple more miles.'

'Jeez, you're extreme. I'll see you later tonight.' 'OK.'

Amy watched Katie head across East Circle Drive toward the dorms. She got up and stretched her legs, which had begun to tighten in the cold morning air, and then she followed the path back into the arboretum. The asphalt was slick, and she walked rather than risk twisting an ankle. Fifty yards later, she came to a T-junction where the path ended at a soft trail made of bark, moss, and dead leaves. The trees grew over her head, and the trail was dim and narrow, as if she were disappearing into a train tunnel. Where the trail curved, she couldn't see round the next bend.

She took a few tentative steps, but she stopped with a strange sense of discomfort. The down on the back of her neck stood up, as if the little hairs were iron filings drawn by a magnet. She felt eyes following her from somewhere in the forest.

'Hello?' she called.

Amy turned round slowly. She was alone, but the trees were big and wide enough here to hide someone. Those were crazy-making thoughts; she was letting herself get paranoid. She inhaled, smelling nothing but mold and the dewish sweat of her body. She didn't hear anything. '

She waited. Everything was still. There's nobody , she told herself.

Amy shook off her fears and jogged. She got into a rhythm as she ran, enough to crowd out other thoughts. Running was pure escape for her, in which she was conscious of nothing but the noise of her breathing and the vibrations as her feet hit the ground. She made two loops round the east section of the arboretum, following the border of the escarpment. It added almost two miles to her route, and when she finished the circle for the second time, she slowed to a walk as she cooled down. Her face was flushed. Her blond curls were frizzed.

She wasn't far from the trail that led back to the perimeter road when she felt it again. Eyes. Like a voyeur watching her.

She was sure she wasn't alone.

'Who's there?'

Behind her, a male voice growled the way a bear would, and Amy spun with a choked scream. Twenty yards away, a student she knew from one of her psychology classes giggled as she fended off animal kisses from a bearded, long-haired boy. They broke apart as they saw Amy and heard her squeal. They were innocent. They were nobody. Amy wanted to laugh in relief, but she was breathing too hard.

'You OK, Amy?' the girl called.

'Oh, yeah, fine. You startled me.'

'Sorry.'

Amy smiled at them, the couple out for a kissy stroll. She wished she had a boyfriend of her own for that kind of hike. It made her think she should find someone to ask out on a date, but there never seemed to be time with classes, work, and dance. She knew that was a crock, though. She just didn't want all the hassles of a relationship.