Kathy Reichs: Bare Bones

“Anything else?”

A door slammed in the vicinity of the chapel or garage. I cracked the entrance door and peeked out. No one was in sight.

“The only other word they could make out was ‘cousins.’”

My brain sparked like an electrical short.

No question. Cousins dirty. Heading to Columbia.

It was like being slapped awake.

A short, muscular man with thick black hair. A FWS agent who knew nothing about bear poaching.

Palmer Cousins.

Slidell was talking, but I didn’t hear him. I was flashing back to a conversation with Ryan. The privy remains were found on Tuesday. The Grim Reaper began his photo stalking on Wednesday.

Palmer Cousins was at the Foote farm that Saturday. He knew what Boyd had found.

Had Cousins placed the squirrel on my car? Was it another Grim Reaper threat? Was he following me? Did he have Katy? Would he hurt her to get at me?

My heart was pounding, my palm sweaty against the phone.

“I’ll call you later,” I said.

Slidell sputtered.

I cut him off.

Hands trembling, I jammed the phone into my purse and pushed through the front door.

And slammed into a chest like concrete.

The man was about my height, dressed in ebony pinstripes and a dazzling white shirt.

I mumbled an apology, stepped sideways to pass.

An arm shot out. Steely fingers closed around my biceps.

I felt my body spin, saw thick black hair, my face reflected off metallic lenses, mouth wide with surprise.

Fingers splayed across my left ear. My head shot forward and cracked against the door.

Pain screamed through my skull.

I struggled to free myself. The hands held me like a vise.

Fingers clawed my hair. My head whipped back. I felt blood and tears on my cheeks.

Again, my head shot forward and slammed into wood.

My neck snapped back yet again.

Forward.

I felt an impact, heard a dull thud.

Then nothing.

35

I SMELLED MILDEW, MOSS, A FAINT SWEETNESS, LIKE LIVER FRYINGin a pan.

I heard geese overhead, or calling to one another on some distant lake.

Where was I? Lying prone on something hard, but where?

My brain offered only disconnected fragments. The Cobb trailer. A gas station. A funeral home. Someone named Maples.

My fingers groped the ground around me.

Smooth. Cool. Flat.

I caressed the surface, breathed in the odor.

Cement.

I moved a hand over my face, felt crusted blood, a swollen eye, a lump on my cheek the size of an apple.

Another mind flash.

Pin-striped black. Antiseptic white.

The attack!

Then what?

I felt panic start to rise in my chest. My tortured gray cells shot orders, not answers.

Wake up!

Now!

Drawing both palms beneath me, I tried to push up to my knees.

My arms were rubber. Pain sluiced through my skull. A spasm gripped my stomach.

I eased back down, the cold cement good against my cheek.

My heartbeat hammered in my ears.

Where? Where? Where?

Another barked command.

Move!

Rolling onto my back, I sat up slowly. White light fired through my brain. Tremors twitched the underbelly of my tongue.

I drew my ankles to my bum, lowered my chin, and breathed deeply.

Little by little, the nausea and dizziness subsided.

Slowly, I raised my head, opened my one good eye, and peered intently into my surroundings.

The darkness was like a solid thing.

I waited for my pupil to dilate. It didn’t.

Gingerly, I rolled to my knees and stood, groping the darkness, crouching, hands extended. Blindman’s buff and I was it.

Two steps and my palms hit vertical cement. I crab-walked sideways. Three steps to a corner. Turning ninety degrees, I followed the perpendicular wall, right hand in front of me, left hand Brailling the concrete.

Oh, dear God. How small was my prison? How small? I felt perspiration form on my face, my neck.

Four steps and my left toe jammed a solid object. I pitched forward. Both my hands shot out and downward into darkness, then slammed something rough and hard as my shin cracked against an edge of something on the floor.

I cried out from the pain and trembled from fear.

Again the tremors in my mouth, the bitter taste.

I had tripped over what felt like a stone slab. I was stretched across it, my hands and arms on the floor beyond, my feet back where they had made contact with the near edge.

I melted to the cement. A tear broke from my good eye and coursed down my cheek. Another oozed from the corner of my swollen eye, burning raw flesh as it slid across.

Cooling sweat. Burning tears. Racing heart.

More images, faster now.

A bulldog man with thick black hair.

Metallic lenses. A fun house reflection of my startled face.

A ricochet flashback. Forty-eight hours. An exchange between Slidell and a feisty deb.

“What did you see?”

“Myself!”

Dolores was referring to mirrored lenses!

Sweet Jesus! My attacker was the man who had visited Cagle!

Cagle, who’d spent the last week in a coma.

Think!

My cheek was on fire. My shin throbbed. Blood pounded in my swollen eye.

Think!

Kaleidoscope images.

A jogger in headphones. Mrs. Cobb. The cuckoo. The photos.

I caught my breath.

The matches!

I jammed my fingers into a back jeans pocket.

Empty.

I tried the other, broke a nail in my frenzy.

Both front pockets.

One tissue, a nickel, a penny.

But I put the matches there. I know I did. Mrs. Cobb asked me to. Maybe I wasn’t remembering correctly. Think through the sequence more slowly.

I had a sensation of walls compressing around me. How tiny was the space in which I was trapped? Oh God! The claustrophobia goosed the fear and pain.

My hands trembled as I kept thrusting them from pocket to pocket.

The matches had to be there.

Please!

I tried the small square at the top of the right front pocket. My fingers closed around an oblong object, thick at one end, rough at the other.

A matchbook!

But how many?

I flipped the lid and felt with my finger and thumb.

Six.

Make them count!

Six. Only six!

Calm down! Take it by quadrants. Locate a light. Locate an exit.

Orienting toward what I hoped was the room’s center, I spread my feet, detached a match, and dragged it across the striker.

The head tore off without igniting.

Damn! Down to five!

I detached and struck another, pressing the head against the friction strip with the ball of my thumb.

The match sputtered, flamed, illuminated my shirt but little else. Holding it high, I crept forward and took a mental snapshot. From what I could see the room seemed fairly large.

Crates and cardboard cartons along the wall I’d been following. Headstone that had taken a piece of my shin lay flat on the floor. Metal shelving, perforated strips holding the shelves in place. Gap between shelving and wall.

Fire burned my fingers. I dropped the match.

Darkness.

More Braille-walking. At the end of the shelving I struck my third match.

Wooden door in the middle of the far wall.

Angling the match downward so the flame rose, I searched for a light switch.

Nothing.

The flame went out. I dropped the match, strode toward the door, groped for the knob, and twisted.

Locked!

I flung my weight against the wood, banged my fists, kicked, called out.

No reply.

I felt like screaming in anger and frustration.

Stepping back, I turned toward three o’clock, took several steps, and lit my fourth match.