Brian Freeman - The Bone House

Troy smelled of frying grease and stale beer. He wore a Woody the Woodpecker T-shirt and blue jeans, and his hands were dirty. His bulging cheeks looked like a squirrel eating nuts.

'What do you do at the bar?' Cab asked.

'Whatever my dad tells me to do.'

Cab nodded. Troy's wavy hair was flat where he'd been wearing a hat, but Cab figured it could have been the giant thumbprint of Troy's dad squashing his boy. Whether it was his father, or Glory, Troy did as he was told.

'I heard you got a witness who can help you nail Mark Bradley,' Troy told him.

'Who told you that?'

'Mrs Fischer talked to the sheriff.'

'Well, we've still got a lot of work to do,' Cab said. 'In the meantime, I need to clear up a few things with you, Troy.'

'Like what?'

'Like the argument you had with Glory on Saturday night.'

Troy moved his jaw as if he was chewing gum. 'I already told you, it was stupid. I wanted Glory to come back to the room with me, and she wouldn't go. So I left.'

'I heard it was more than that,' Cab said.

'What do you mean?'

'I heard Glory was coming on to other boys in the pool.'

'It wasn't like that.'

'No?'

'No, Glory was playing games. She wasn't serious.'

'If my girlfriend was grabbing cocks under the water, I think I'd be pretty mad,' Cab said.

Troy's face reddened. 'She didn't do that!'

'We talked to a girl who said you were so mad you were ready to go off like a bomb.'

'I was just — that's not what happened. I told you, Glory had been acting weird all day. I was frustrated. It was our last day, and she was ruining it.'

'So you left her at the pool with the boys.'

'She wasn't doing anything crazy. She was just being Glory. I was mad at first, but I calmed down.'

'Did you go straight back to the hotel room?'

Troy nodded. 'I watched a movie. I already told you that.'

'Then what happened?'

'I fell asleep. That's it. I got up when Tresa woke me in the morning and said Glory wasn't in the room.'

'What did you think?' Cab asked. 'Did you think she was with another boy? Did you think she'd spent the night with someone?'

'No!'

'Are you sure you didn't wake up overnight and realize Glory was gone?'

Troy shook his head fiercely. 'I didn't.'

'Would you have gone to look for her?'

'I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. That's not what happened.'

'What if you saw her on the beach with Mark Bradley? That would have made you mad, wouldn't it? Particularly if you saw them kissing.'

Troy crumpled the collar of his T-shirt in his fist. 'Glory wouldn't let him touch her.'

'But what if she did? What if you saw her?'

'I didn't! You're trying to make it out like I killed her, and I would never hurt her, never.'

'I hear you, Troy. I do. You can help us prove it.'

'How?'

'Someone from the sheriff's office is going to pay you a little visit and stick a cotton swab in your mouth.'

'What? Why?'

'To get a DNA sample to match against Glory's fingernails. We think she scratched the person who killed her.'

Troy's eyes widened. 'Yeah, but she was my girlfriend. I don't know, what if she scratched me accidentally that day?'

'Did she?'

'I don't think so, but I don't know. I don't remember.'

'Give us a sample. We'll check it and see.'

He hesitated. 'Yeah, I guess. But it doesn't mean—'

'Troy!'

Cab heard a shrill voice from the side door of the bar, which hung open. Delia Fischer stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. Her face was worn, with suspicion etched in her bloodshot eyes. She shouted again. 'Troy, your dad wants to know where the hell you are.'

'I have to go,' Troy said.

'Sure.'

Troy looked relieved to have an escape. He jogged for the bar and squeezed past Delia, who stepped outside and closed the door behind her. She waited for Cab. Her bottle-blond hair hung limply at her shoulders. She wore a roomy polo shirt with the bar's logo on her breast and an apron tied round black jeans. She looked like a woman who had shrunk over the years and was growing smaller.

'How are you, Mrs Fischer?' Cab asked.

'How do you think I am?'

'I'm sorry, I know how hard this must be.'

'What do you want, Detective? What are you doing here?'

'I'm doing everything I can to find out what happened to Glory,' he told her.

Delia's hands were damp, and she dried them on the apron. 'Why were you talking to Troy?'

'I just had some more questions for him.'

'What kind of questions?'

Cab shrugged. 'It's routine.'

'The person you should be talking to is Mark Bradley,' she snapped.

'Mr Bradley isn't talking.' He added, 'It looks like people around here are trying to take matters into their own hands. Someone tried to kill him and his wife.'

'Am I supposed to feel bad about that?'

'If something happens to Mr Bradley, we'll probably never know the truth about Glory's death.'

'People will do what they do. I don't care. That's the sheriff's problem, not mine.'

Delia wore her bitterness like a shroud around her tense shoulders. He knew there was nothing he could do to change how she felt. Her mind was made up. She'd settled on one explanation for her grief, and that explanation was Mark Bradley. He'd become the symbol of every wrong turn in her life.

'Do you work here?' he asked, nodding his head at the bar.

'Yes.'

'You wait tables?'

'That's right. I wait tables, and at home I sell metal jewelry. I scrape by.' She eyed Cab's expensive suit with disdain. 'I guess you don't know what that's like.'

'You're right, I haven't lived that kind of life, but I respect it.'

'I don't need your respect or your pity. Some Door County natives, they do pretty damn well. They bought up land decades ago when it was cheap. My parents weren't able to do that. I was just lucky that they paid off the mortgage on their house, so I have somewhere to live. Then I lost my husband, and he didn't have any life insurance, so it was just me and the girls. Now it's just me and Tresa.'

'How's Tresa holding up?' he asked her.

'Why? Do you want to interrogate her, too? Do you think she killed her own sister?'

'I just wanted to make sure she's OK.'

'That's my business, Detective, not yours. I wish you'd do your job. Instead, you seem to be looking at everyone except the man we both know is guilty. You're badgering Troy, who wouldn't lift a finger against Glory. You're even chasing ghosts.'

'You mean Harris Bone?'

'Yes.'

'I have no reason to think Harris Bone has anything to do with this case, but I can't ignore the possibility.'

Delia shook her head. 'Listen to yourself. You're doing exactly what Mark Bradley and his wife want you to do. You're playing their game. If Harris was in Florida, someone would have recognized him.'

'Maybe someone did,' Cab said gently.

'You mean Glory? If she saw him, she would have called the police. Or she would have called me.'

Cab cocked his head with curiosity. 'She didn't call you, did she?'

'No.'

'But you knew Harris Bone pretty well, right?'

'Of course.'

'I'm a little surprised that you stayed friends with him after the car accident that killed your husband.'

Delia's mouth tightened, and her lips turned white. 'Harris wasn't to blame for what happened any more than the rest of us. We were stupid. It was a tragedy.'

'Were you surprised by what he did to his family?'

'I was sickened. Wherever Harris is, I hope he sees the faces of his family every time he tries to sleep. I hope he sees Glory's face, too. But that doesn't mean I believe he was in Florida.'

'I understand how you feel,' Cab told her. 'Mark Bradley is the prime suspect, but he's not the only suspect, and if I disregarded other theories of the crime, I'd make it easier for him to get an acquittal at trial. I don't want that to happen.'