Bone Dust White (12 page)

“That’s sweet,” says Macy, making a note to tell Jared to watch himself.

They both look up to see Lexxie standing in the doorway. Macy keeps her voice low. “Doesn’t anyone knock around here?”

Lexxie gestures toward Grace. “Excuse me, I’ve got a few things to do in here.”

Macy flashes her badge. “We’re in the middle of something. Can you come back in half an hour?”

Lexxie gives Grace a little wave and heads out the door, promising she’ll be back soon.

“She’s one of the nice ones,” says Grace.

“Aren’t they all supposed to be nice?”

“Not to me they’re not.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“My mother mostly.”

“Your mother has been gone for eleven years. You would have thought they’d have moved on by now.”

“Collier never moves on.”

Macy keeps her eyes on Grace. “Well, at any rate, it’s good to know Jared is with someone
nice
.”

“What do you mean?”

Macy tilts her head toward the door. “Lexxie is Jared’s girlfriend.”

Grace hands tighten around the cap. “I didn’t know.”

“Well, now you do.” Macy seesaws her pen with her fingers. “Did you know the fire trail behind your house ends at Dray Creek Lane?”

“Until the day before yesterday I’d never been on the trail.”

“No matter. Anyway, there’s evidence that a car was parked near the trailhead. There’s a nice big rectangle where the snow isn’t quite as deep as everywhere else. Went out and found it myself. So I’m thinking the killer parked there and then hiked the rest of the way to your house. It’s only a little over a mile.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I’m asking myself the same question. No one uses the road much except during hunting season. He would have been confident he could come and go unseen. We’re clearing away the snow and looking for tire tracks. Who knows what we might find?”

Macy picks up her phone again, scrolling through the numbers to find the one she needs. “Hello, Colin. This is Detective Macy Greeley. We spoke earlier.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I need you to track down the sketch artist. His name is Robert and I think he’s hanging out down in the cafeteria. I’m just finishing so bring him up here in ten minutes.”

“Is he the guy who looks like a liberal?”

“Yeah, but try to be nice to him anyway.”

Macy hangs up and gives Grace a friendly smile. “I know you said you didn’t see him very well, but Robert is good at what he does. He can probably help you remember details you’ve forgotten.”

Grace shrugs.

Macy looks at her notes. “I’ve got it written here that your uncle ran a trucking company? Cross Border Trucking?”

“Yes, ma’am. We didn’t find out until after he died that things weren’t going too well.”

“Your doctor told me that your uncle was against you having the operation.”

“I guess he had his reasons.”

“Didn’t you find it a little odd?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so.”

“You’re lucky your aunt didn’t feel the same way.”

Grace runs her palms downward across her face, eventually making two tight little fists, which she rests against her chin. “I’m not feeling so lucky these days.”

“Were you close to your uncle?”

“We used to go on camping trips together. He was always very protective of me.”

“And yet he didn’t want you to have a lifesaving operation? Strange.” Macy pulls out a business card and places it on Grace’s lap. “You’re to call me if you remember anything new.”

“Do you think you’ll find him?”

“I hope so. I seem to have a knack for finding people. That’s why they’ve brought me up from Helena.” Macy rises from her chair.

“I think my mother rang the front doorbell.”

Macy bites her lip. “What makes you say that?”

“When I was up in my room it rang several times, but I was on my own in the house so I ignored it.”

“That’s understandable.”

“But not so lucky.”

“No,” Macy admits. “Not so lucky.”

Macy leaves Grace with the sketch artist and slips into the hospital chapel for privacy. Warren answers on the third try.

“Sorry, it’s a bit hectic over here.”

“Please tell me you found the house keys.”

“I wish that were the case. As far as we can tell the killer used them to get into the house last night.”

Macy starts pacing between the pews. “What’s been taken?”

“We’re not sure, but Arnold Lamm’s office has been thoroughly searched. It looks like an entire file cabinet has been cleaned out. Then upstairs in Grace’s room there’s been some vandalism.”

“What do you mean by vandalism?”

“There’s a fairly strange message written on the wall. A forensics team arrives any minute. I’ll have them get started immediately.”

Macy slumps down in a pew and stares up at the cross above the altar. “This is a major screwup.”

“Not our finest hour. I was out there searching the hillside along with everyone else. I don’t know how we could have missed it.”

“Stranger still is that the killer thought to come back for it.”

“He might have stuck around for longer than we realized.”

“At this point there’s no way of knowing. He may have just got lucky.” She looks at her watch. “I’m going to speak to Grace’s doctors. It makes sense for her and her aunt to come have a look. They can tell us if anything is missing.”

“Elizabeth isn’t going to take the news well.”

“I imagine not. I’ll call you when I have a better idea when I can head up there. In the meantime, let me know if you find anything.”

“Will do,” he says before ending the call.

8

Jared stares at the low basement ceiling and watches the tail end of the fluorescent lights blink on and off. His eyes follow a line of exposed piping and he counts three disused fire sprinklers. Cobwebs hang off thickly wrapped cables like tinsel that’s lost its shine. The narrow bed where he’s been sleeping in fits and starts is hidden in the back corner of the men’s locker room, a concrete wall to one side and the backside of a bank of lockers along the other. Unwelcome images have run through his dreams in loops, doubling back to overtake him just as he thinks he’s broken free. A discarded shoe and a red stain in the snow—that’s how he found Grace and her mother. That’s what he saw. His dreams of Hayley are more frantic. No matter what he does, the gauze he uses to wrap her wrists keeps falling apart like wet tissue. He can’t stop the bleeding.

The two pills Lexxie gave him had looked harmless, but in the intervening hours, he’s passed in and out of unwanted dreams and memories. In his lucid moments he knows there is something worrying about how he feels, but his concerns fade each time he drifts off into pleasant numbness.

Jared listens to the sharp tapping of a woman’s heels on the hard-tiled floor. He smells her before he sees her. It’s a fragrance that reminds him of a flower but he doesn’t feel confident enough to give it a name. But he’d know those heels anywhere. Somehow, Hayley’s mother has managed to find him.

Pamela Larson is dressed in a powder blue jacket and skirt. Her blouse is white and crisply ironed and there is not a stray blond hair on her head. It’s been thirty-two years since she gave birth to Hayley and her twin sister Angie, but the only place her age shows is in her hands; they’re a contour map of raised blue veins. She gives Jared a worried smile and sits down on the edge of his narrow bed.

“You okay?” she asks, reaching out to touch him lightly on the forearm with a chilled hand.

Jared doesn’t know if he’s okay or not. He only wants to fall asleep again. He sits up, inching his way toward the wall, but her hand doesn’t slide away like he wants it to. He notices her nails are painted pale pink.
Talons,
he thinks.

“How’s Hayley?” he asks, rubbing his damp face.

“She’s confused. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

Jared pictures his bathroom floor. He already knows too much about the blood she’s lost. “Is she awake?”

“She’s awake and talking.”

“What’s she saying?”

“She’s saying what I tell her to say.” She digs her nails into Jared’s arm.

He winces. “And what’s that?”

“That she was upset and called you so you came and took her to the hospital.” She eases her grip and pats his arm. “You saved her life so she’s grateful.”

“Not so sure about that.” Jared leans back and closes his eyes.

Pamela doesn’t skip a beat. “Which part? Saving her life or her being grateful?”

“Both, I guess.”

Pamela rolls her eyes.

Jared’s sluggish mind has difficulty putting together a coherent sentence. “I mean she did it because of me, and the way she fought when I tried to help makes me think she really wanted to die.”

“That’s nonsense. If you really want to kill yourself, you don’t do it in a paramedic’s house.” She lays her hands flat on her powder blue skirt. The diamond on her wedding ring is the size of a pecan. “Brian is the reason she did it. Not you.”

“If Brian finds out that Hayley spent the night at my place, I’m as good as dead.” Jared thinks for a slow second. “Ditto for Hayley.”

Pamela puts her hand back on Jared’s forearm, gently this time. “Then he can’t ever find out. The police and the doctors have no reason to question our version of events. So relax. You’re a hero.”

Jared won’t look her in the eye.

Pamela tells him that she’s heard about what happened behind the Adamses’ house.

“It’s been a difficult couple of days for a lot of people.”

“Still, that’s all anyone in this town is going to be talking about.”

“I can’t get what I saw out there out of my head,” he says, his eyes welling up. “And a day later I find Hayley on my bathroom floor.”

“That girl Grace. She’s an interesting one. Those clothes she wears.”

Jared can only imagine her red nightie and the scar running down her chest like a zipper. “What do you mean?”

“She dresses like my grandmother. I imagine she smells like an old folks’ home.”

“I don’t know how she’s managing. I’d be a wreck if I saw my own mother murdered.” Jared backtracks when he remembers he’s supposed to keep some things to himself. “I shouldn’t have said…”

“That woman had a lot of nerve showing her face in this town after what she did to my family.” She digs her fingers into Jared’s arm again. “Do you know anything about Leanne?”

Jared pulls away. “I’ve heard rumors.”

“They’re not rumors. That woman was a nightmare. Leaving Grace behind was the kindest thing she’s ever done for that child.”

“She was lucky her aunt and uncle took her in.”

“There was nothing lucky about it. Elizabeth couldn’t have children. She probably had her sights on Grace from the day she was born. I have to hand it to her though, she got what she wanted in the end.”

“What about Hayley’s kids? Are they okay?”

“I went and picked them up this morning. Isobel had her younger sisters up and dressed for school. She’d even made breakfast. That’s quite a lot for a nine-year-old to accomplish before nine in morning.”

“I didn’t know,” he mumbles into his shirtsleeve, noting that the fabric feels pleasant on his cheek. “Whenever I asked after them, she’d always say her sister was staying over.”

Pamela purses her lips. Her disappointment in her twin daughters is familiar territory for anyone who lives in Collier. “Angie’s in Chicago. She claims to have been shortlisted for a spot on the Chicago Bears cheerleading squad.”

Jared laughs, but Pamela’s face remains immobile.

“I’m sorry,” he says, forcing his features to mirror hers. He ends up looking lopsided.

“Sometimes I wonder if that girl ever looks in a full-length mirror. She’s twice the size of Hayley and can barely get her fat ass off the couch to answer the phone.”

Jared wants to sleep again. He yawns, hoping Pamela will get the hint. “I would have never let Hayley stay over if I knew the kids were on their own.”

“A girl like Hayley, you should have checked.”

“They might take her kids away,” he says, thinking the courts already have enough reasons to declare her an unfit mother. “Or Brian might leave her and claim full custody.”

“We’ll lie and say they were with me.” She presses harder into her thighs. The blue-veined rivers swell on the backs of her hands. “The police will want to talk to you.”

Jared keeps his mouth shut.

“You okay with lying?”

He yawns again. He thinks of asking the time but forgets. “I have to be, don’t I?” He remembers Hayley’s car and his eyes widen. “Her car is still at my place.”

She fidgets with her phone, frustrated there’s no coverage. “I’ll deal with that. I’ll also tell everyone that her father and I cleaned up her place.”

Jared relaxes.

“I think Brian gets off on threatening her with losing the kids if she causes too much fuss.”

Jared doesn’t know how many times Hayley has left her kids on their own, but he imagines it’s been every time she’s stayed over. She’s not a good liar. He should have seen through it. “She’s not exactly mother of the year.”

Pamela’s head snaps up. “You think I don’t know that. She’s desperate, that’s all.”

They get real quiet and Jared almost falls asleep. Pamela’s voice revives him, pulling him back into the room like a collared dog. “She should have never taken the fall for him on those drug possession charges. No judge in their right mind would give her custody of the girls.”

“He must have bullied her into doing it. Everyone knows he’s been bringing stuff over the border for years.”

“He would have gone to jail. Hayley could have made a clean break. I can’t believe she was so stupid.”

“What about the physical abuse?”

“She’s never reported it. Not once.”

“Has anyone managed to contact Brian?”

“When the authorities tracked him down he said he’d been ice fishing up near Calgary.”

“You didn’t call him?”

“We don’t talk, or rather he no longer takes my calls.”

Jared keeps his thoughts to himself.

She looks around the little bunker he’s sleeping in, noticing how awful it is for the first time. “Why are you still here? You should go home.”