Bone Dust White (2 page)

Her startled eyes look up at Grace in surprise. “You’re all grown up.” She touches Grace’s cheek.

Grace presses the kimono harder against the wounds. Her efforts have exhausted her. There are too many ways her mother can bleed.

“Shush, Momma.” Grace turns toward the house and strains her ears for the sounds of sirens, but there’s nothing. “You rest now. Help is on its way.”

Her mother tilts her chin upward toward the darkening sky. “You know why I left. You know why I couldn’t come back.”

“I never understood.”

Something that sounds like laughter escapes her mother’s throat. “I just wanted to see you one last time.”

Grace leans in close and raises her voice. “Tell me who my father is.”

Her mother’s eyes close. “You’ll have to be careful. They’re still looking for the money.”

Grace grabs her mother by the shoulders and speaks as loud as she dares. “I don’t understand.”

Her mother’s voice fades and Grace catches only whispers.

Her mother’s voice sputters and Grace loses hope.

Her mother’s voice goes out and Grace is alone.

The cold settles into Grace’s chest like a stone. She kneels, clasping her mother’s hands together with her own like they’re in common prayer. The woods are closing in, and above her the sky sits heavily, draping the morning in a blue-hued cloak. From their woodland nest Grace watches the first snowflakes drift down, lazy and slow. They melt against her bare skin but all around her the moldering leaves turn white. Grace cradles her mother in her arms, feeling the sharp bones where there were once fulsome curves. The mother she remembers had a red-painted mouth and kohl-rimmed eyes set into a face framed by dark waves of hair. A haze of cigarette smoke. The clink of whiskey on ice. Laughter that continued long after a room fell silent.

Grace’s lips are as cold as her fingertips and her bare limbs taper out like wires from her thin red nightgown but she doesn’t shiver. Aside from her frantic eyes, she lies perfectly still, curling up for warmth where there’s none to be found.

At the base of the hill, the back of her house rests in winter’s palm. Fat snowflakes fall like bits of white plastic in a globe, but beyond her damp lashes she can see right into the kitchen and dining room. All the lights are on. It’s a stage. Her eyes shift upward, and she looks straight across into her bedroom window. From where she lies, Grace can’t escape its outward gaze. The ceiling light blinks at her erratically before going out. She stares hard into the dim interior, struggling to pick out familiar shapes from beneath her sleepy lids. Beside her, her mother gives way to the cold, cold ground. Everything around Grace slows to the same pace of her mother’s failing heart.

An ambulance screams up the last bit of her road and slows to an off-key halt. Its unseen doors slam shut, and behind Grace a startled bird takes flight. The shadow of the crow passes over, solid and black, its wings fluttering faster than her heart. From the highest branches it calls out to others of its kind, the falling snow muffling the sound.

Grace imagines she’s so small she disappears. She’s drifting into this new reality when she finally hears help coming up the hill to claim her. Through her half-closed lids she can see them move through the trees. In her head she’d assembled an army but there’s only two men struggling up the slope. They wade through knee-deep leaves and newly fallen snow. They look small and vulnerable with their heavy cases. She wants to call out to them but her voice sits frozen in her throat. Only their belted radios crackle with life. The sound sends more crows flying up to the barren trees that tower above them like scaffolding.

A dispatcher’s disembodied voice asks if they’ve found anything yet and the two men stop moving. Their eyes sweep a wide arc across the snowy woodland. They see nothing. Grace wants to move but she’s frozen by more than just cold. Fear now sticks to her skin like snow. Her pale throat feels severed. She wants to reach up and touch the invisible wound, but her hand stays where it is. Her silence is killing her. More birds call out. The moody blue light of winter shows off their black silhouettes. Caw, caw, caw echoes between the tall trees. The radio crackles once more and when at last they find Grace and her mother, the men come to a halt. The older paramedic is standing the closest, a few more steps and he would have trod on their bodies.

“Damn,” he says in a low rolling voice that hints at thunder. He moves forward as he speaks. “That ain’t right.”

Behind him, his partner scratches around his belt trying to grab his radio, but he keeps missing because he can’t tear his eyes away from what he’s seeing. When he does find it, his hands shake so much he can hardly push the buttons.

“Where in the hell are the cops?” he yells into his microphone. His eyes dart around the wintry scene. “We’ve got two bodies out here … They’re covered in snow, for God’s sake … No, me and Jared … Where you said, but you’ve got to go through the side yard.”

Jared pulls off his gloves and plucks Grace’s wrist from the tangle of bodies. “Carson, take a second to calm down. I’m going to see if anyone’s still breathing.”

Grace feels her eyelids flutter; her curiosity wants to gaze straight into that voice. She feels the familiar prodding of her wrist. It is limp in his bare hands. His knees creak, and there is a smell of coffee, cigarettes, and booze on his breath.

He slaps her lightly on the cheek and the shock opens her eyes. His face hovers too close to hers. She panics. His lips form words she can’t hear because her mouth is wide from screaming. Her body arches upward and thrashes from side to side, following the will of her new heart, which pumps like a foreign beast in her chest. All that untried blood racing through her veins is more than she can handle. She wants to run again, see her feet move like wings, but he straddles her, grasping both her wiry wrists in one of his hands and holding her head down with the other. She can hear him now.

“I’ve got you,” Jared repeats over and over again, and then finally, “You’re safe.”

Everything that holds Grace together unwinds like a spool and her body goes limp under Jared’s weight.

His partner, Carson, kneels next to her mother. His first-aid case is open, lying askew in the snow with its contents spilling out. He slaps on surgical gloves and rips away the plastic wrapping on a syringe with his teeth.

All Grace can remember is blood. Pressing against the flow was like trying to stop the coming of winter. She speaks in a whisper, her teeth chattering together so hard she can’t keep her face still. “Is she going to be okay?”

Jared sits in the snow beside her, catching his breath, as if fighting ninety-eight pounds of flesh and newly fused bone could ever trouble a man of his size. “We’re doing what we can.” His expression is anxious when he turns to her again.

Grace’s nightgown has slipped away, but when her fingers pull at the lace straps, Jared’s hands are once again on hers, stopping her and her dignity from going any further. His curiosity almost reaches out and runs its fingers across the broken skin, but he pulls his hand back just in time.

Embarrassed, Jared shrugs off his heavy winter coat and wraps it around her. He can no longer look her in the eye. “You need to stay calm now.”

Grace knows what Jared saw, what he almost reached out and touched. The long angry scar cuts a jagged line down her sternum. Like fresh meat, it’s still raw. “I’m so cold,” she says, noticing her bloody hands for the first time. They’re sticky. She holds her splayed fingers out in front of her and stares at them.

His voice is all business again. “We best get you warm then.”

Grace is so tiny his coat goes down to her knees. Opening a case, Jared unrolls a silver blanket. He lifts her up and sits her down a little ways off before wrapping her legs up in foil. As an afterthought, he pulls off his knitted cap and pushes it down around her ears.

He looks her in the eyes. “You’ll be okay. Just try to stay calm. I need to look after your friend.”

Grace sobs, taking big gulps of air but never getting enough. “She’s not my friend. She’s my mother.”

His expression is different when he glances back over his shoulder. He looks confused. He digs his fingers into his dark hair. “Your mother?”

Grace burrows deeper into the coat, averting her eyes. She laughs because she’s nervous. “She’s been gone so long I didn’t know her. I didn’t know my own mother.”

Her wet cheeks are pink with shame. He reaches out, placing his hand on her forehead, perhaps thinking she’s feverish. She leans into it, curving her neck like she’s a kitten.

“We’re going to do all we can,” he promises. “You just stay quiet now.”

From where Grace sits shivering among the frosted bracken, she watches them work. Their voices are frantic, their actions desperate. She sees her kimono, thrown clear and half buried in fresh snow. She concentrates on it. It’s ruined now, reduced to a wad of damp blood and silk. Pressing it to the knife wounds did nothing to stop the bleeding. Farther up the hill, the ridgeline has disappeared beyond a thick veil of snow. She concentrates on the dark trunks of trees and tries to pick out shapes.

More voices. Shouting. There are stretchers and the whir of helicopter blades. It sounds as if the army she’d imagined is finally moving through the trees. She looks at her mother again and knows they’re too late. She curls up, falling asleep too easily and vanishing into dreams once more.

2

Detective Macy Greeley steps away from the counter at the ice rink and spreads her arms wide. “Seriously? Do I look like I want to rent a pair of ice skates?” The heavy winter coat she’s wearing is unbuttoned, revealing a stomach well into the third trimester of pregnancy. She places her hands on the little shelf that’s formed below her rib cage and frowns. There’s something about the young man in front of her that she finds especially irritating. She decides it’s his youth, which he’s clearly wasting.

Perhaps thinking she’s skated in from the parking lot the young man parts his long drape of hair and leans forward to inspect her feet. “Well, if you want to skate it’s kind of mandatory?”

“That goes without saying.”

“So, do you want to skate?”

“Nooooooo,” she says, removing her purple knitted cap. Bright red hair frames an angular face and other than a matching shade of lipstick she wears no makeup. She lifts a finely plucked eyebrow and flashes her state police badge. “Like I said before, I’m meeting a colleague. I don’t want to skate.”

“Oh yeah, you did say that.” He casts around for the buzzer to open the barrier.

But Macy doesn’t move. She keeps her badge raised up in his face, and her eyes dart about as they try to make contact with his. She leans forward when she has him in her sights. “Are you stoned or are you always this stupid?”

He stands slack-mouthed and still, only breaking into a smile when he sees her wink. “Stupid, I guess.” He laughs, finally noticing her condition. “You’re pregnant. You shouldn’t skate.”

“Congratulations,” she says, dropping the badge and walking through the open barrier. “Go to the head of the class.”

Her boss, Ray Davidson, spends his lunch hours playing ice hockey. The time is sacred, and no one, not even his wife, dares disturb him. Cap in hand, Macy walks along the high Plexiglas wall separating the rink from the spectators, making her way to the café where he’d said they could have a quiet word. Back at the office they’d already been having a quiet word next to the coffee machine when he’d told her to meet him here. Why he couldn’t just string together a few more quiet words then and there is a mystery. Macy puts her cap back on. Inside the skating rink it’s as cold as it is outside. The city of Helena rests under a fresh coat of white snow. There’s a crisp quality to the air that never fails to lift her mood.

A group of hockey players crash into the wall next to her, and there’s Ray’s face pressed against the partition. His nose is squashed with his nostrils flared outward like a pig’s snout. He grins like an idiot, revealing his red gum shield.

Macy continues walking, and Ray follows along, skating in a slow lumbering glide. Well over six and a half feet in skates and padded out in hockey gear he dwarfs Macy. At the gate, he removes his gloves and helmet. His dark hair is damp and plastered to his forehead. He brushes it away with his fingers and casts around for his sports bag. “Thanks again for coming to meet me here,” he says, bending low to put on his blade covers.

Macy gestures to the empty tables at the quiet end of the café. “Order something for us to eat. I’ve got to find a bathroom.”

Macy joins Ray at the table and there’s a green salad sitting at her place. She glances over at Ray’s burger and fries and narrows her eyes. Ray knows better than to mess with her when she’s hungry. “What’s this?” she says, plucking a fry from his plate and ladling it into the ketchup.

“It’s a salad. It’s healthy.”

“I can see that.” She shifts their plates. “Now it’s your healthy salad.”

Ray laughs it off and orders another burger from the girl behind the counter, picking at Macy’s fries until it arrives. They both ignore the salad.

“So what’s this all about, Ray?” Macy looks out at the rink where his team continues to practice.

Ray wipes his full mouth with the corner of his napkin and reaches around behind him to rifle through his gym bag. Without saying a word he places a file between them and slides his index finger along the name.

Macy shrugs. “Arnold Lamm is dead.”

“And as of this morning so is his sister-in-law Leanne Adams.” He picks up the file and thumbs through it, handing Macy a preliminary report from Collier’s sheriff’s department.

Her eyes skim through the information. “Leanne Adams finally resurfaced.”

“And she was murdered on the same day.”

Macy holds a fist to her mouth to stifle a yawn. “It says here that her daughter might have seen the killer.”

“It also mentions a baby-doll nightie, a bouquet of roses found in a garbage can, and hints at a compromised crime scene. The paramedics arrived too late to save Leanne, but they still got there before the cops. I want you to interview the medics and Grace Adams before Collier’s sheriff’s department steps in and fucks it all up.”