Kathy Reichs: Flash and Bones

My mind offered only disconnected recollections.

Synapse: A narrow gap between haulers. Footsteps in the dark .

I raised my head.

My stomach lurched. I tasted bitterness and felt a tremor beneath my tongue.

I eased back down.

I smelled loamy earth. Vegetation. Felt cold hardness beneath my cheek.

Synapse: A body pressed tight against my back.

A real-time sensation intruded. Heat on my right ring finger.

I moved my hand. Tested the surface on which I lay.

Solid. Sandpaper-rough.

Concrete.

Synapse: A chokehold squeezing my throat. My fingers clawing, my lungs desperate for air.

I breathed deeply.

Opened my eyes.

Saw nothing but variations on darkness.

Using both palms, I raised one shoulder and shifted my hips.

Before I could sit, nausea overwhelmed me. I hung my head and threw up until my stomach muscles ached.

When I’d finished, I backhanded my mouth, rolled, and rose to all fours.

And vomited again until I could only spit bile.

I sat back on my haunches, listening.

Over the drumming rain, I heard what sounded like grinding gears, the thrum of an engine. Muffled by walls.

And another sound. Soft. Barely audible.

A moan? A growl?

Close.

Dear God!

Some other being shared my prison!

I felt a flutter in my chest, as if my heart had broken free and was beating at my rib cage.

I strained my ears. Heard no movement. No further sign of another presence.

Was I mistaken?

I rose to my knees and waited for my eyes to adjust. The only break in the inky blackness was a hairline strip of gray at floor level off to my left. Too little light to dilate my pupils.

I got to my feet. Paused again.

My gut cramped once more, but there was nothing left to purge.

Arms extended, I inched blindly toward what I hoped was a door.

My fingertips soon brushed something hard and smooth. Metal. Vertically ribbed.

I stepped to my right. The steel ribs now ran horizontally.

I felt around, found a discontinuity. Traced it up, over, down to the floor. A rectangle.

Aiming my shoulder at what I assumed was the rectangle’s center, I lunged.

Metal rattled, but the door held.

I tried again and again until my shoulder ached. Then I dropped to my back and kicked with my feet.

My efforts were useless. I hadn’t the strength of a toddler, and the door was metal.

I lay on the floor, limbs trembling, breath rasping in and out of my lungs.

My mouth was a desert. My head pounded. My gut was on fire.

Get out! Find the bastard who put you here!

The orders came from deep in my brain.

I rose again on rubber legs.

Dizziness sent the world spinning and triggered new nausea.

When I finished dry-heaving, I lurched forward once more.

And followed the wall. In ten feet, it met another. At the intersection, on the floor, slumped large plastic sacks.

I pressed my thumb to the nearest. The contents felt heavy but grainy, like oatmeal. I drew my nose close. Sniffed. Smelled a mixture of soil, clay, and dung.

Turning ninety degrees, I edged through the dark.

Two feet from the corner, a shovel hung from a hook roughly a yard above my head. Beside the shovel was a pitchfork. Then a hoe, another spade, a hand tiller, a hedge clipper, and a pruner. Below the tools were three coiled hoses.

My mind processed. An outdoor storage shed. Galvanized steel. One door. Bolted from the outside.

Tears threatened.

No!

The shed’s interior was relatively cool. I knew that wouldn’t last. When the rain stopped and the sun rose, the heat inside the windowless metal box would become unbearable.

Move!

Eight feet down, the second wall met a third.

I made the turn.

I’d taken two steps when the toe of my sneaker nudged an object on the floor. I prodded with my foot.

The thing felt firm. Yet yielding.

Familiar.

Another image fired up from my gray cells.

A corpse.

I shrank back.

Then, heart pounding, I squatted to examine the body.

IWORKED MY WAY UP THE TORSO TOWARD THE THROAT.

It was a man. His chest was broad, and his cheeks were rough with stubble.

I pressed my fingers to the flesh beneath his jaw.

No sign of a pulse.

Again and again I shifted my hand, searching for the throb of a carotid. Or jugular.

Nothing.

The man’s flesh felt cool, not cold. If he was dead, it hadn’t been for long.

Sweet Jesus! Who was he?

With trembling hands, I braille-read the facial features.

Shock sent adrenaline firing through me.

Galimore!

Breath frozen, I pressed my ear to his chest. A faint murmur? The rain was so loud, I couldn’t be sure.

Please God! Let him be alive!

I shivered. Then felt scalded.

My thoughts splintered into even tinier shards. Nothing made sense.

Galimore had not locked me in the shed. If he was a murderer or had partnered with a murderer, what was he doing here himself? Was he dead?

Galimore and I had a common enemy.

Who?

A wave of dizziness forced me down to my bum. I slumped back against the wall. Muddled words and images tumbled through my mind.

Two skeletons embracing in a makeshift grave. Two skulls with bullet holes centered at the back.

Grady Winge praying in the woods. Sitting at a table in the Speedway Media Center.

A ’sixty-five Petty-blue Mustang with a lime-green decal on the passenger side. Winge said it in ’ninety-eight. Repeated the exact phrase over a decade later.

Maddy Padgett standing by a pile of tires.

Padgett had been Cale Lovette’s lover. She was black. Lovette planned to quit the Patriot Posse.

A neon-lit bar. Slidell, yanking a man by his beard.

A cheesy Kmart apartment. Lynn Nolan wearing a tacky negligee.

The old guy said that thing about poisoning the system. Then Cale said something about it being too late. It was going to happen. Then the old guy said something about knowing your place.

Maddy Padgett, face tight with emotion.

Craig Bogan was a racist, a sexist. Cindi Gamble had flash. Again the bones.

Flash and bones.

A photo of a girl with a blond pixie bob and silver loops in her ears.

Craig Bogan in an armchair, stroking a cat.

Bogan said ’sixty-five Petty-blue Mustang.

Not “a Mustang.” Or “a blue Mustang.” A ’sixty-five Petty-blue Mustang.

Ted Raines cringing on a couch.

Every fricking red seed has to be accounted for.

Red beads peeking from the neckline of a jumpsuit.

Galimore talking to a woman in sweaty black spandex. Reta Yountz. A handshake. Yountz’s bracelet jumping like a string of ladybugs doing a conga.

The world slid sideways.

I sucked in my breath.

Was that the message my id had been whispering?

Summoning what little strength I had left, I crawled to the door. Still on hands and knees, I pulled a paper from the back pocket of my jeans and unfolded it on the concrete. In the thin strip of light, I could see the picture and most of the text.

The article was titled “Rosary Pea: Abrus precatorius. ” The image showed small red seeds with jet-black spots at one end. The text described them as resembling ladybugs.

In my delirium, atoms collided. Meshed.

Reta Yountz was wearing a bracelet made of rosary pea seeds.

Abrin comes from the rosary pea.

Wayne Gamble was poisoned with abrin.

Maddy Padgett made reference to a contract between Bogan and the Speedway. CB Botanicals. I was in a garden shed.