Patricia Cornwell: The Bone Bed

“Are you awake?” a man asks loudly.

I’ve heard his voice before.

I don’t answer, and my head clears some. I’m in a car. In the cargo area in back, lights from oncoming traffic illuminating him intermittently. Surrounded by boxy shapes behind the front seats, I do the best I can to gather the darkness around me. To hide in it.

Make him think you’re dead.

“You should be awake,” says the man driving what I thought was a good idea for the CFC, a small crossover SUV.

I struggle to remember his name and envision his complete lack of empathy when he sat across from me. Soulless. Empty. Emoting nothing.

“Don’t fake it,” he says.

Play dead.

“Your fakery can’t save you anymore.”

I recognize the textures of the clothes I put on this morning, I think it was this morning. The corduroys, the cable-knit sweater, and a down jacket I wore because the temperature was freezing.

I rub my feet together, and they are bare and very cold, and I push them against the net and they find the resistance of something hard and square. It is completely dark, and I hear traffic. While I don’t remember what happened, I am beginning to be certain I know. Then I think I’m dreaming.

This is a bad dream. I need to wake up. It’s a terrible dream, and you’re fine.

I take a deep breath and choke back bile as my head throbs, and I take more deep breaths and realize I’m awake. I really am, and this really is happening. I mustn’t panic. I push the hard square shape with my netted bare feet, and whatever it is moves very slightly and feels like plastic.

A scene case.

He speaks loudly from the driver’s seat, asking if I’m awake, and again I don’t answer, and I know who he is.

“Now you won’t have to figure it out anymore,” Al Galbraith says, and I can tell by the sound of his voice, the fluctuations in the volume of it, that he continues to turn around, looking in my direction.

I don’t move in a way he can see, the entire back of the SUV outfitted as a cargo area, the backseat permanently folded flat, and I try to envision what is in here. It is difficult to think, difficult to breathe. My hands are free. He didn’t tie me but wrapped the net around me, and it is quite tight, and oddly I think of creatures entangled, of the huge leatherback and what I was told. They run into something like a vertical line and panic and spin themselves up in it and then they drown.

Don’t panic. Slow, deep breaths.

My phone is gone. He has my phone. He has my shoulder bag, unless it and my phone are on the pavement of the Fayth House parking lot and he left them there.

He wouldn’t leave them.

My hands are pinned against my chest, and I move them, poke my fingers through what I realize is the cargo net we use to secure our equipment, and I feel a knotted tie-down and try to loosen it but I can’t. My fingers are stiff and cold, and I’m shaking as if I’m shivering, my teeth about to chatter, and I will myself to calm down.

“You should be awake,” he says. “I didn’t give you that much. I’ve always wondered if they could smell it coming. The sweet smell of death coming.”

I don’t remember anything at all, but I know what he did, probably keeps a bottle of it in his car, in that silver Jeep Cherokee, for when the urge strikes. His murder kit.

You son of a bitch.

“Of course, everybody reacts a little differently,” he says. “That’s the danger and the art. Too much and the show ends early, which is what happened to the lady in Canada, had to keep knocking her out because I was driving.”

I can tell from the sound of the pavement under me and the change in pitch of the engine that we are going through a tunnel.

“Her head was in my lap, and I knew she was going to fight me if I didn’t keep the cloth handy. Then she wouldn’t wake up anymore. I didn’t get a chance to tell her what she needed to hear. Stupid as hell, such a waste. She never heard a word. Not one.”

I wiggle my fingers through the net and feel the rough plastic side of another case.

“She had no idea. Keys out, opening a door in a downpour, the last thing she ever knew or did, and that’s just a waste. A real waste after all the trouble I’d gone to, so I had to make something of it. I mean, I didn’t want it to be a complete waste. I made it interesting, at least. It’s all about timing and I know how to wait. But some things aren’t preventable. See what happens when people interfere?”

I can’t envision which scene case this is.

“How did you know it was dear Mother’s birthday? Maybe you didn’t. Did you go to see her? Probably not. Wouldn’t matter. She can’t talk.”

I’m trying to remember exactly how the cases were arranged back here.

“You have to admit I made it interesting, sending you what I did. Look what it caused.”

He says it bitterly.

“It’s probably best if your boss isn’t in jail unless you’re the one who put him there. But the end result wasn’t the plan. You need to know that, and some of it’s your fault. I never intended for him to win the way he has. He should rot. It was just a really perfect time to get everybody’s attention, and it’s a pity he won’t rot in a stinking cell that he can’t furnish comfortably with all his money.”

He would have moved things back here to fit me inside.

“I confess I was a little squeamish at first. I’m not talking about the disgusting old carcass you were all over the news about. An old carcass even when she was still alive, such a Goody Two-shoes teaching Mother to make a collage and other mindless hobbies and not appropriately polite when I’d show up. She was earlier than the bone lady, and I wasn’t as daring because I didn’t need to be. I had plenty of time for our little chat, for her to realize the error of her ways. I’m talking about the other one who was a waste. A damn waste.”

I’m not sure which plastic case is what. Some are orange, others are black, but it’s too dark back here to make out colors.

“It actually turned my stomach, the sound of the knife going through cartilage. And I’m thinking, if this doesn’t wake you up, lady, you really are dead.”

He laughs. It is a quiet chuckle that has no joy in it.

“Lend me your ear. Play it by ear. Think of all the lame clichés with the word ear in them. You never listened. If only you had listened. Why did God give ears to people who don’t listen?”

I don’t want to open the wrong case.

“Well, now you have to listen. That’s all you can do. Isn’t it something the way things turn out?”

Please don’t let me open the wrong one.

“Are you awake yet!” he yells. “The best part you won’t smell. Well, sort of an ozone smell. You ever heard the old saying about someone sucking all the air out of the room? You’re about to find out it’s true.”

I’m pretty sure what I want will be in a Pelican transport case, what Marino calls a sixteen-thirty.

“Are you listening to me? Wake up!”

I feel a fold-down handle, and that could be a good sign, but it’s hard for me to remember.

“How good I’ve been to you, and this is what I get. I bring you flowers and hold your disgusting hand.” He continues talking to me, and he’s talking to somebody else.

Very, very slowly I push up a plastic clasp, working my fingers along the side of the case until I feel another clasp and then another.

“Dutiful, perfect, really, and put you in the best place when what I really should have done is spit in your face. You know what it’s cost me all these years because you had me late and I was raised by a disgusting old hag? By the grace of no one but me. Fayth House, and you aren’t gracious or grateful. A damn hypocrite, and it’s time you admit it. Well, you will. In a little while, you’re going to apologize.”