Kathy Reichs: Flash and Bones

Completion of the Nationwide race had been postponed Friday night due to rain and the possibility of tornadoes. The following day Joey Frank crossed the line at number twenty-seven.

And the sun finally came out.

Katy had visited my bedside daily. Larabee dropped in. Charlie Hunt. Pete, sans Summer.

Hmm.

The sting on my finger wasn’t from a biting insect. Bogan had hit me with an abrin-coated dart. My mobile rang at the precise moment he aimed his little blow tube at my neck. Either the movement of my hand, the phone, or my jacket sleeve deflected the hit.

Karma? Fate? Blind-ass luck? Whatever. That kind of help is welcome any time.

Here’s a bit of irony. The caller was Summer. Another bout of wedding hysteria had saved my life.

The trace amount of abrin that had penetrated my skin caused vomiting, fever, headache, and disorientation. But I lived.

Galimore had also been poisoned. The prognosis was that, although further hospitalization was required, his recovery would proceed without complications.

Doctors figured either the abrin was degraded, incorrectly processed, or Bogan had put too little on the dart. Or maybe rain had diluted the toxin before or during delivery. Bottom line: the dosages were too low to be lethal to either of us.

Padgett was right. Bogan had been supplying flowers and greenery to the Speedway for years. After darting us, he’d locked our “bodies” in one of his gardening sheds, waiting for the right moment to dump them.

The sinkhole had been a stroke of luck. Bogan’s offer to deal with the inconvenience had been gratefully accepted by frantic Speedway personnel. He intended to load us onto the backhoe, deposit us thirty-five feet below ground level, then shovel tons of fill over our corpses. Finding me alive had forced him to modify his plan. He’d drop Galimore after he got some dirt over me.

My epiphany in the shed was dead-on. Bogan had killed Cindi and Cale, then threatened Grady Winge with the loss of his job if he didn’t help a fellow posseman dispose of a couple of bodies.

The Gambles and Ethel Bradford would be vindicated. The task force finding was indeed flawed. The couple hadn’t run off to get married or to join an extremist group out West.

Lynn Nolan and Wayne Gamble were also wrong. Cale hadn’t killed Cindi, then gone into hiding for fear of being caught.

Slidell and I had not been any more accurate. Cale wasn’t an FBI informant and hadn’t been murdered by members of the Patriot Posse. Nor had he and Cindi been piped into witness protection.

Eugene Fries’s theory was also off base. Cale hadn’t fled to avoid arrest for a terrorist act.

It was Tuesday, one week after Wayne Gamble’s death. Slidell, Williams, Randall, and I were drinking coffee in my study.

Slidell was being Slidell.

“You clean up pretty good, Doc. Last time I saw you, you looked like something climbed out of an unflushed toilet.”

“Thank you, Detective. And thanks for the flowers. They were very thoughtful.”

“I tried hiring baton twirlers, but everyone was booked.”

“That’s OK. It would have been rather crowded in here.”

It was tight anyway. Skinny was at the desk. The specials were in chairs dragged from the dining room. I was on the sofa, with Birdie curled on my quilt-covered lap.

“Bogan’s going to make it?” I asked.

“Not because I wasn’t aiming. The peckerwood hunkered down in the backhoe just as I fired.”

The pops I’d heard weren’t backfires.

“How did you know I’d gone to the Speedway?”

“A tip from a man of the cloth.”

“Reverend Grace?” Of course. I’d mentioned my whereabouts in our phone conversation.

“Hallelujah, sister.” Slidell waggled splayed fingers.

“Why did you go to the dirt track?”

“I learned that Bogan was supposed to fill the sinkhole. I hauled ass out there, saw the headlights, heard you cursing like a sailor on shore leave.”

“Thank God you finally called Winge’s pastor.”

“Big Guy had nothing to do with it. And I didn’t call Grace. He called me around ten, all in a twist because we’d collared one of his flock. I was still sweating Winge.”

“Grace persuaded him to talk?”

“Yeah. Told him that salvation would be his only if he bore witness to the truth. Or some bullshit like that. According to Winge, Bogan killed the girl and his own kid, then told Winge they’d been agents of an anti-patriot conspiracy and ordered him to bury the bodies, or both his membership in the posse and his job were toast.”

“Two years later, Bogan used the same arguments to force Winge to help dump Eli Hand.”

Williams’s comment was news to me.

“It was like a damn pyramid scheme,” Slidell said. “Danner was squeezing Bogan. Bogan was squeezing Winge.”

“J. D. Danner? The leader of the Patriot Posse?” Clearly I’d missed a lot while incapacitated.

“The head wrangler,” Slidell said.

“After events at the Speedway, the bureau decided it was time to bring in some individuals we’d had under surveillance,” Williams explained.

“Round ’em up.” Slidell circled a finger in the air.

“Danner’s lawyer allowed him to cooperate in exchange for immunity from prosecution. The DA agreed to a deal covering criminal acts prior to 2002.”

“The year the Patriot Posse disbanded.”

“Yes. As you know, Grady Winge is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And he was still drinking back in ’ninety-eight. Winge let slip to others in the posse that Bogan had killed Cale and Cindi. According to Danner, certain group members used that knowledge to blackmail Bogan.”

“They made him their whore,” Slidell said.

“When Eli Hand died, higher-ups in the posse pressed Bogan into service to dispose of his body,” Williams said. “As with Cindi and Cale, Bogan forced Winge to do the dirty work.”

“Conveniently, at the time they were filling potholes at the Speedway,” Slidell said.

It seemed incredible that a person, even one with Winge’s limited IQ, could be pressured to do such a thing.

“How do you get someone to cram a corpse into a barrel, cover it with asphalt, and haul it to a landfill?” I asked.

“Bogan told Winge if he refused to dump Hand, he’d make sure Winge took the fall for Cindi and Cale. And he threatened to burn Mama Winge’s place to the ground.”

“It was Bogan who killed Eugene Fries’s dog and torched his house,” I guessed.

Williams nodded. “And it was Bogan who was stalking Wayne Gamble.”

I considered that. “When Gamble first came to see me at the MCME, he offered to locate Cale Lovette’s father and give him a call. He must have done that.”

“Freaked Bogan out.” Slidell was playing with a water globe I keep on my desk, a gift from my nephew Kit.

“Bogan used his usual MO to try to dissuade Gamble from pursuing the reopening of his sister’s case,” Williams said. “But this time intimidation didn’t work.”

I remembered Gamble’s calls to me, the anger and fear in his voice as he talked of his stalker. Again felt the heavy weight of guilt.

“It was Bogan who threatened Galimore,” Williams added. “And you.”

I thought back to the day at CB Botanicals. The greenhouse. Daytona.

“His cat startled me, and I dropped my iPhone. Bogan probably got my number while pretending to clean it. But he was with me when the call came in.”

“When Bogan went to the kitchen for sodas, he phoned an employee, offered fifty dollars, and provided your number and the message to be delivered or left on voice mail.”

The kid on the ladder cleaning the gutters: Bogan’s call must have beeped in while he was listening to music on his cell phone. Fifty bucks? Sure. The kid hit a few keys. Done.