Bones ik-7 Page 25

  Long moments passed, in which the Moth thought of the toolbox and the drain plugs, and felt sick, absolutely sick.

  The doorbell rang.

  The Moth curled up into a little ball.

  There was a long silence, then the Moth found the courage to stand up and leave the closet.

  The Moth made a quick search of the two bedrooms and of the bathroom, as silly a place as it would be to hide what the Moth wanted.

  The neighbor’s dog began barking again. Losing any remaining courage, the Moth left the house, picked up the toolbox in the garage, and hurried away from the dead man’s house.

  Driving away, the Moth didn’t take time to look at the old woman’s house, to see if she was spying at her window. The Moth’s thoughts were consumed by a single idea, a notion that was becoming something of a Moth mantra:

  Don’t tell Nicky!

  Don’t tell Nicky!

  Don’t tell Nicky!

  36

  WEDNESDAY MORNING, MAY 31

  Las Piernas

  Ellen Raice called me at work to tell me that someone had broken into Ben’s office by prying off a basement window latch.

  “Was anything taken?”

  “Not that I can see. If I hadn’t tried to lock the window, I might not have even noticed that someone had been in here. But when I saw that, I looked around, and I could see that things had been moved, you know, looked through. Especially on some of the shelves, and in the desk drawers.”

  “Campus police know about this?”

  “Yes. But I don’t believe the officer understands the implication.”

  “That this is connected with Nicholas Parrish.”

  “I knew you’d understand! Will you talk to your husband about it?”

  I called Frank. A detective and a crime lab technician were sent out to the college, and a patrol car to David’s house — there had been a break-in there, too. At the house, it was apparent that someone had jimmied the back door of the garage. I let Ben know what was going on, and told him I would go to the house to see if I noticed anything missing.

  Frank met me there. It was the sort of case that might have otherwise merited a patrol car — if that — but because Nick Parrish might be connected to the break-in, the mobile crime lab was already at work when I arrived.

  “Any fingerprints?” I asked Frank.

  “No, but they’re hoping they’ve picked up some tool marks on the door here and the latch of the window at the campus.”

  “Not likely that Ben would suffer a break-in at both the office and at home on the same day, is it?”

  “No, especially unlikely that he’d have two break-ins and nothing stolen from either place. There were valuables here and in the office that weren’t touched.”

  “What could Ben have that Parrish wants?”

  “We don’t know that this was Parrish.”

  I stared at him.

  “Yes, I’m with you — but we have to stay open to other possibilities,” he said. “You mentioned this ex-girlfriend of his.”

  “Camille. And don’t even pretend you’ve forgotten her name.”

  He laughed. “Okay, Camille. There was some rancor between them, right?”

  “Some,” I admitted. “But I have a hard time picturing this woman in her silk power suit breaking in through a basement window.”

  “Just the same, I think I’ll call Ben and ask for the name of the place where she works. I’d like to have a talk with her.”

  “I’ll bet you would.”

  The detective handling the case approached us just then. “Neighbor across the street says she saw a repairman of some sort over here earlier. Either of you know if Dr. Sheridan had arranged for any repairs?”

  “No,” I said. “He hasn’t.”

  “The neighbor said the repairman came directly into the backyard. She knows Dr. Sheridan is in the hospital, so she got suspicious and came over and knocked and rang the bell. There wasn’t any answer.”

  “What time was that?” Frank asked.

  “Early afternoon. She was watching a soap opera that comes on at one o’clock. She came over on a commercial break, so she didn’t stay around too long.”

  “Any description of this repairman?”

  “Not much of one, unless you call ‘a white guy wearing a cap’ a description. She has no idea regarding height or weight — changed her mind about three times on that one.” He paused, then said, “At first, before she figured out that he would have used the front door, she thought Sheridan might be home from the hospital. She said this repairman limped.”

  Frank raised his eyebrows.

  “Yeah,” the detective said. “Exactly what I was thinking. Flights from San Francisco on the hour.”

  “Who’s in San Francisco?” I asked.

  “Phil Newly — north of there, really, but not too far from the city. He’s visiting his sister.”

  “Lady across the street said she thought it looked like a fake limp, but then, she can’t remember which leg the guy was limping on.”

  “There’s someone else we may want to talk to,” Frank told him.

  “It’s not Camille,” Ben insisted. “Impossible. She’d never do anything like that. Besides, I have nothing she’d want.”

  “Just the same, I’d like to follow up on this,” Frank said.

  Ben grudgingly gave him Camille’s work and home addresses. “If, for some unimaginable reason, she did this, I’m not pressing charges.”

  “You parted amicably?” Frank asked.

  After a long silence, Ben said, “No.”

  “Thanks for being honest about it,” Frank said. “As you say, it probably wasn’t her.”

  Frank called me at the paper to tell me that Camille Graham hadn’t been into work that day. “In fact,” he said, “she’s quit working there. We caught up with her at home, where she claims she’s been holed up for the last few days with a summer cold. She did seem to be a little congested.”

  “You saw her?”

  “Yes,” he said, amused. “She’s a looker, but I prefer brunettes.”

  “Even though classes are over for the term, can you imagine a woman who looks like Camille crossing a campus undetected? Don’t young frat boys have radar for such women?”

  “Why, Irene! I think that might have been a sexist remark,” he said.

  “You know what I’m trying to say, Susan B. Anthony.”

  “Anything is possible — of anyone. That’s all I’m asking you to keep in mind.”

  We were getting nearer the day when Ben would be released from the hospital, and he was still claiming that he didn’t want to impose on us, but he wasn’t protesting quite so much. He was having problems with both phantom limb sensation and phantom limb pain, and was feeling discouraged.

  Dr. Riley had warned him that both were common phenomena, especially in the period of time just after surgery.

  The phantom limb sensation made Ben “feel” the missing lower portion of his left leg, including his left ankle, foot, and toes, as if they were still there. One morning, half asleep, absolutely convinced that his left foot was still there, he fell trying to get out of bed. Although he bruised his hip and shoulder, fortunately, he didn’t do further damage to his leg. On another occasion, his left toes itched maddeningly. I even tried scratching the prosthetic foot to relieve it — to no avail. He had to live with the itch for three torturous hours before the sensation went away on its own.

  This “presence” of the missing limb was a weird sensation, Ben said, but not necessarily bad. Phantom limb pain was another matter. Not long after surgery, Ben’s left foot and ankle cramped. Because they weren’t there, though, he couldn’t figure out what the hell to do to relieve it.

  Sometimes, one of the nurses came in and massaged his “residual limb,” as they referred to what remained of his lower left leg. It was very sensitive to touch, and still swollen from the surgery, but the massage seemed to help.

  He told me that he felt phantom pain
more often late at night, when he was alone, and in specific regions of the missing limb — sometimes it came as a sharp, stabbing pain in his calf, other times he felt as if he had been given an electric shock through his heel. Occasionally, only strong, painkilling drugs would bring relief — which, he told me, made him wonder if he was doomed to become a morphine addict.

  Those were his worst days at the hospital. On the whole, though, he seemed to have a determined outlook.

  “I want to be able to manage on my own,” he said, whenever the subject of staying with us arose.

  “We want the same thing,” I said. “You aren’t invited to move in forever. I don’t even know if you should still be there after six months.”

  He laughed.

  “We’ll stand by you either way. You know that?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “The difference is, this way you don’t have to clean up the house before we come over.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  It was the day we got the news about Oregon that he made up his mind to stay with us — not because of his own fear of Nicholas Parrish, he told me, but because of mine.

  37

  THURSDAY AFTERNOON, JUNE 1

  Eastern Oregon

  The receptionist, Parrish decided, would have to go.

  Whenever she thought he wasn’t looking, she stared at him.

  Idiot. He was always looking.

  She was afraid of him, he knew. He had lost his temper with her once, the first time he was here. She had been living strictly on his sufferance ever since.

  A nurse opened a door and smiled at him. “Mr. Kent?”

  Fat cow. What the hell was there to smile about? Maybe she’d go, too. Maybe there wouldn’t be a woman alive in the state of Oregon by the time he left it. Entirely possible, he thought. He was smiling by the time the woman was taking his blood pressure.

  She finally left him alone to wait for the sorry excuse of a doctor to get around to seeing him. Doddering old fart probably wouldn’t have made it in a big city, Parrish thought. He passed the time waiting for the fool to appear by fantasizing a story about the physician’s past, one in which he had performed back-alley abortions, lost his license, and run away to this little burg — where no one knew enough to question his phony diplomas and licenses. Parrish convinced himself so thoroughly, he was carefully studying the engraved parchment on the wall when the doctor walked in.

  “Ancient, but real, just like me,” the doctor said. “Let’s have a look at that shoulder, Mr. Kent.”

  Oh, let’s.

  “It seems to be healing nicely now,” the doctor said. “Scar tissue can’t be helped, but you were lucky not to face worse. Well, I won’t lecture you about ignoring puncture wounds — you’ve heard it all from me before.”

  Yes, indeed he had. He studied the doctor, considered adding him to his list — but suddenly the old man was regarding him with an unwavering stare. Parrish looked away and said, “In the future, I won’t delay getting treatment.”

  Screw the old bastard, he thought, glancing up at him surreptitiously. God was going to call the stupid quack’s number any day now, anyway. No use wasting the effort on him.

  He wondered, briefly, if any of them had recognized him. But although only two weeks had passed, he was no longer the hot topic of news. He would be on the front page again, of course, but for now he looked nothing like the photographs, which no one would have seen for over a week now. He had dyed his hair blond and was wearing tinted contact lenses. Probably not even necessary in this little backwater.

  That night, as he worked, he thought of Irene Kelly, who had made his shoulder stiff and sore. He did not like scars. He did not like pain. He chuckled a little at this thought. Not my own, he added silently, and pleased to find his sense of humor returning, went back to the matter at hand.

  The next morning, he drove slowly past the clinic, smiling as he saw close to a dozen people waiting outside its door, their expressions varying from anger to puzzlement. One of them, hands cupped and pressed to the glass, was trying to see in.

  “Some-bod-y’s laaa-te to worr-rrk!” Parrish sang, a little child’s taunting song. “The patients grow impatient!”

  He found this remark such a heartening indicator that his true, clever self was making a comeback that he laughed all the way to the highway, ignoring — whenever he braked or took a curve — the occasional thump in the trunk made by shifting dead weight.

  38

  MONDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 11

  Las Piernas

  I looked out the window of Jo Robinson’s second-story office, idly wondering what other troubled souls might have shared this view, watching the rain plaster red and gold leaves to the black asphalt of the parking lot below. Autumn. I had almost managed to hold out until autumn.

  “So Ben spent the summer with you and Frank,” she prompted. I had been trying to tell her what had happened since the last time I had seen her, outside Ben’s hospital room.

  “Yes,” I answered her, still watching the rain. If it hadn’t ever rained again, I thought, I might have been all right.

  What a lie.

  “Ben and Bingle have moved back to David’s house. He’s doing fine there. Bingle, too.”

  “And you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “ ‘To know, love, and serve God so that I may be happy in the next life,’ ” I replied.

  She waited.

  I glanced back at her. “Sorry — knee-jerk Baltimore Catechism response to that question. But you know why I’m here.”

  “You tell me.”

  “I’m here because I broke something at work.”

  “Really? I’d think a hardware store could be of more use to you, then.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  So I told her how, coming into work one day, I had been told to report to Winston Wrigley III’s “God office,” which is how the staff refers to the glass enclosure near the newsroom. Wrigley deigns to visit the God office when he wants to view his minions in action, or, more accurately, to spy on whatever young, new female employee he has added to the roster.

  There hadn’t been any new additions lately — sexual harassment laws were severely cramping WWIII’s style — so his current visit had the rumor-fueled newsroom aflame with gossip. These flames were fanned by the fact that he had two elegantly dressed couples with him, who joined him around the conference table at one end of the room. Before John Walters summoned me, I had heard that the paper was being sold to a big chain, that there were going to be layoffs, and that John was going to be fired for letting Morry mouth off to Wrigley before Morry left for Buffalo.

  I didn’t have a chance to hear any of the rumors that circulated after I got called in, but later Lydia told me that one of the best was that I was going to be asked to replace John after he was fired for letting Morry vent.

  As I approached the God office, I was already tired and tense; I hadn’t slept well lately, and the previous three nights, hardly at all.

  Until three days earlier, the Oregon killings had provided the last solid leads on Nick Parrish’s whereabouts. In June, the discovery of the bodies — one a legless torso — of two clinic workers had launched Parrish back into the headlines. The search for him intensified, but the rest of the summer had passed without any sign of him. I began to hope that he had been hit by a car.

  But three days before I was summoned into Wrigley’s glass domain, the LPPD had received a report that Nick Parrish had been sighted not far from Las Piernas.

  Despite the fact that these sightings of Parrish were usually unfounded, the police checked out all leads. But this call led to the discovery of a woman’s body in a trash container.

  I’ve since wondered how things might have gone if Frank had been the one to give me the news. But on the day she was found, Frank was in court, giving testimony
on another case. So I learned about Parrish’s newest victim at work, on a day when there wasn’t any way to contact my husband.

  By the time Mark Baker arrived in the newsroom to file the story, there was already a buzz among the other reporters about it. I had already heard that Parrish had left another body somewhere. That news alone made me feel as if someone were sandpapering the ends of my nerves.

  Mark had been in to talk to John, and John beckoned me in to join them. Looking grim, John said, “You should probably know about this before the others start asking you about it.”

  “Asking me about it?”

  So Mark gave me the details. “This Jane Doe’s fingers and toes were severed and missing. She was a blue-eyed brunette. Her name is not yet known, but your name was carved into her chest.”

  I felt my stomach lurch; I quickly excused myself, ran into the bathroom, and got sick.

  I washed up, then, looking into the mirror with a measure of detachment, studied my tense, too thin face and the dark circles under my eyes. Detachment was becoming one of my favorite emotional states. It was constantly being disturbed, though — this time, when the door opened, causing me to jump.

  It was Lydia. She asked if I was all right.

  “No,” I said.

  “Maybe it isn’t him,” Lydia said. “It could be a copycat.”

  “What a relief that would be,” I replied, and later wondered how much more of my sarcasm she could take.

  “This happened three days before you were asked to see Mr. Wrigley?” Jo Robinson asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Go on.”

  I turned back to the window.

  When I entered the God office, Wrigley was smiling and holding an unlit cigar. (California’s anti-smoking laws were second only to sexual harassment suits in making his life miserable.) I grew more wary; Wrigley’s halo is always perched on his horns. He introduced the two couples with him as friends of the family who were visiting the area, who had stopped by the office today especially to meet me.