Brian Freeman - The Bone House

Delia pressed the heels of her palms against her forehead, as if she was fighting a migraine that throbbed inside her skull. 'I know how it works, Detective. He'll walk away. The people from the city, the ones with money, they hire lawyers, and they get off.'

'Not if I can help it,' Cab said.

'I've heard it before, Detective,' Delia told him wearily, 'so don't waste your breath trying to convince me it will be different this time. I'm not waiting around for justice. The police don't do anything. The prosecutors don't do anything. The guilty walk free.'

She turned and went back inside the bar and slammed the door.

Peter Hoffman parked at the end of Juice Mill Lane, where a rusting metal gate stretched across the old road that led into the forest. He was on the border of Newport State Park, which sprawled across the eastern edge of the NorDoor and jutted into Lake Michigan like the profile of a monster's chin. He still owned several acres of undeveloped land here that had been passed down from his grandparents to his parents over the course of half a century. He rarely visited now. Coming here carried too many memories of time and people passing away.

He was drunk. He knew he shouldn't have been driving, but no one was around to stop him, and the vacant land was only a few miles south on Timberline Road from his own home on the northern coast. He got out of his car. Around him, he saw nothing but winter fields and the tangle of forest behind the gated road. The sun was almost down. The world was getting darker minute by minute.

Hoffman took his half-empty bottle with him. He squeezed past the gate with its No Trespassing sign and limped down the old logger's road. A ridge of dormant grass made a racing stripe between the tire ruts, but no vehicle had traveled this road in years. There were Private Property signs posted on tree trunks every twenty yards or so. He'd nailed them there himself. He didn't want hikers in the park drifting on to his land and getting curious.

When he reached the trail that led to his grandfather's hunting cabin, he tried to remember when he'd last been here. Three years, at least. The shack was hidden behind an army of hardwood trunks that were green with moss. He'd spent countless nights and early mornings inside, before the walls had rotted and the roof had caved in during a snowy winter. He'd tasted his first beer there. He'd listened to his grandfather rail against Kennedy. He'd smelled the blood of animals they'd killed. He'd toasted dead friends with Felix in the years since the war.

He'd taken Harris and the boys here once for a man's night in the woods. That had been more than a decade ago. He remembered how content he had been with his life then, surrounded by family, with a wife he loved at home, in a beautiful part of the world, where he had history and friends.

It was all gone now.

He stared at the ruins of the cabin in front of him, and it felt like the ruins of his life. The wilderness was reclaiming it year by year. The windows had long ago been punched out by vandals. Its wooden beams were warped and popped, and the frame, which his grandfather had built by hand, would collapse altogether in another season or two. He didn't plan to be around to see its final demise. It was already a haunted place, and he was ready to become one of the ghosts.

Hoffman uncapped the bottle and drank, not noticing the burn in his throat. He had trouble standing. The cold and wind swirled around his body and picked at his skin. Darkness grew deeper, making the forest a nest of shadows and hiding places. He smelled the wood decaying. As he stood in the clearing, memories stormed his brain. There were good ones and terrible ones.

It would have been easy to kill himself right here. Death had no fear or mystery for him. He'd considered bringing a-shotgun and carrying it down inside the musty storm cellar and using his toe to reach the trigger. Eventually, someone would have stumbled upon the ladder in the ground and found him. Eventually, they would all know what had happened.

That was the coward's way. Hoffman had never been a coward. He owed a debt to Delia Fischer and to Glory, and he couldn't run away from it. It was time to face the truth.

The bottle slipped from his numb fingers and landed in the soft ground without breaking, but he didn't pick it up. The amber liquid ran out like a river on to the dirt-covered lid of the storm cellar. He turned, leaving the cabin and all its memories behind. His boots left dents in the earth. He felt at peace for the first time in a long time.

He thought that he would be able to sleep tonight, which was something that usually eluded him.

He hiked back along the rutted road until he could see the metal gate at the dead end fifty yards away. The last flicker of daylight made the hole in the woods bright against the gloomy interior of the forest. Sunlight gleamed against something. A mirror. A window. A pair of binoculars.

Hoffman heard the engine of a vehicle. He didn't see it, but he heard it. It was loud but got quieter as it disappeared down Juice Mill Lane with a roar of thunder on the gravel. When he reached the gate, where his own car was parked, he saw nothing but a trail of dust billowing out of the dirt road. The car had come and gone in the time he'd been inside the woods.

Someone had been watching him. Following him.

It didn't matter. He didn't care about the consequences for himself or anyone else. He knew what he had to do.

It had happened when Delia was sixteen. The same age as Glory.

The boy's name was Palmer Ford. That was the kind of name your parents gave you when money was your birthright, when every school you would attend in your life was private and privileged. He was from Kenilworth, one of those rich Chicago enclaves with the gilded estates and the lakeside lots. He was the same age as Delia. That summer, his parents rented a house on Mansion Row in Fish Creek for the last two weeks of July. Palmer had his own car; he was on his own while his parents shopped for art and antiques.

He did what rich boys do in places like Door County. He went to the local kids to buy drugs. Delia met him at a Friday night party on Clark Lake, where stoned teenagers lashed fishing boats together and lay on their backs and watched the stars. Delia and Palmer wound up next to each other, mixing beer and pot and dangling their feet in the cool water. They talked. They laughed. They kissed.

He was tall and handsome, with tight black curly hair, a hooked nose, and a muscular physique. An athlete. He played high school football, and college scouts were already jotting down his name in their rosters. He dressed well, in Izod shirts, khakis, and boat shoes without socks. He threw money around. It was impossible not to like someone who always picked up the check for everyone else. That was what fibs did; they floated in and out of town, skimming the cream, making friends with kids who wouldn't fit in back home.

After that first night, Palmer and Delia spent every evening together. They played miniature golf. They got ice cream. They kissed more, and she let him inside her blouse, where he rubbed her nipples with chapped hands. Delia wasn't a virgin. She'd done it before with a couple boys, one a year since she was fourteen. Later, the lawyers made it out like she was a slut who threw it around, but that was a lie. Most of her friends went from boy to boy all summer. Not Delia.

Palmer was a gentleman. That was what she thought. He didn't push her; he stopped when she told him to stop, even though she could feel his erection through his pants like steel against her thigh. On the last night, the night before he would leave her forever and go back to Chicago — which was always how those relationships went — she figured she would give in. Spread her legs, give him his prize for all the money he'd spent on her. She didn't have any illusions that he loved her or that he'd invite her back to Mansion Row to meet his parents. She was summer candy. You unwrapped it, you ate it, and it was gone. That was OK. She didn't expect more.