Disembodied Bones (28 page)

He swiped away the beads of sweat that had
appeared on his brow and looked around the bedroom. A simple
king-sized four-poster sat in the middle of the room. A dresser for
his clothes was on one side and he could see the master bedroom’s
open bathroom door from where he lay. The bedroom door was closed.
No demons here. No one could trespass into his immediate property
without the alarms being sounded inside the house. His breath
slowed as he thought about what had woken him up.

Gideon had been dreaming. Dreaming about
Keefe, of all people. His seven year old nephew was sprouting like
a weed. He lived in Shreveport with his parents, Gideon’s sister,
Blair and his father, Alex.

Blair liked staying near their parents, not
to mention that Alex was a plant manager in Shreveport. Personally,
Gideon had never understood how his parents could have stayed in
Shreveport. He hated the city and had escaped to go to college as
soon as he could. But he discovered that in the computer security
business one didn’t really need a degree to be successful and
dropped out within a few years. One needed to be a hacker and to
understand hackers to defeat them. So he got hands on training and
that was all it took to organize his own business and contacts. He
usually had more business than he could deal with and ended up
turning some of it away or referring to competitors.

But…Keefe
. Gideon froze into place.
His blood congealed in his veins.
Something about Keefe.
Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong..

When the phone beside his bed rang, he knew
exactly who was calling.

-

It stands alone, with no bone or solid form.

Adamant, it prospers never wrong,

Though hurt it may.

Twistable, malleable, might it be,

But always straight as an arrow.

What is it?

It is the truth.

Friday, July 26th

In daytime I lie pooled about,

At night I cloak like a mist.

I creep inside shut boxes and

Inside your tightened fist.

You see me best when you cannot see,

For I do not exist.

What am I?

One of the things that Scott Haskell hated
most of all in all the world was to look like a jackass. He could
accept that there were going to be times that he actually was a
jackass, the piercing braying could be heard in his head, a strange
orchestra to drive him slowly insane. Being viewed as such was
something that was guaranteed to have the results of his teeth
slowly being pulverized into white calcium dust as he ground them
together in mute irritation. It certainly seemed as though fate and
a particular person were conspiring to make him into that very
long-eared, big-mouthed animal.

Yesterday a deputy named Ken Ash had produced
The Dallas Morning News
with a sly expression on his face,
sure that he was about to ruin Scott’s day. Ken was happy to do so
because that meant that he might run for Scott’s position in the
immediate future, seeing as how that position might in fact be
empty soonest.
I hate that little prick, Ken. I hope he falls in
the toilet the next time he takes a dump.

But the headlines on the metropolitan section
of Thursday’s paper Scott didn’t make him grind his teeth. It made
him wince and groan. Then Deacon had called with his genial
reprimand. Not only was Leonie wrong, but someone else had called
to emphasize that she was really wrong.

Scott’s eyes narrowed as he stared without
seeing the wall opposite his desk.

But that wasn’t quite right, was it? Scott
thought about what Deacon had said. “Our mysterious caller said
everything she said about the old lady was true, ditto the church,
triple ditto the old lady being in danger from the killer. But what
your gal didn’t get was that the body had been moved twice.”
Someone had called Deacon, remaining anonymous, and stated that
Leonie had been right about some of what she’d said, but only wrong
about the location.

Scott frowned harder, his eyebrows created a
furrow. What could be deduced from what Deacon had told him didn’t
make Scott happy at all. One, it was unlikely that anyone could
have heard what Leonie had told him and Larry Palacios in the
County Medical Examiner’s Office. That meant that either Leonie or
Larry had told someone else. That someone had either shared the
information or called up Deacon himself. Deacon said the caller had
been a man, sounded like an educated white man by his guess. He
knew Larry and was positive it hadn’t been Larry’s voice. Besides,
both of them knew that Larry wouldn’t benefit from playing some
kind of stupid game like that. Larry was interested in results. If
results could be produced from some method that he would normally
utilize, then so be it. That left Leonie herself.

“No press, no publicity,” she’d said,
adamantly, with a note of bitterness in it.

If Scott turned his head he could have seen
the section from yesterday’s paper detailing the story on Leonie
Simoneaud. It didn’t put her in a good light. It wasn’t the kind of
story that a glory hound would want in the paper. Supposed psychic
finds her partner’s child the Saturday before, but years before she
failed to find another missing child. And as much as Scott wanted
to discover authoritative proof of her lack of abilities, he knew
that Leonie from the beginning hadn’t sworn to Alexa Harkenrider
that Jay could be definitively found. Neither had she demanded
money from the widow of the missing boy. No, he remembered that
Leonie had been quietly unwavering about Jay being on the Trinity
River bluff, sincerely insistent that he was there, and the law
enforcement officers weren’t looking hard enough. However, most of
the button-down cops wanted nothing to do with the woman and
thought she deserved it when Alexa had spat on her face. At the
time, it had been what Scott had thought.

There were a contradictory set of thoughts in
Scott’s mind that was bothering him, pestering him like determined
gnats dive-bombing his head. One side said that Dacey Rojas, a
woman he respected and held in great esteem, wouldn’t be fooled by
a petty charlatan. Dacey was neither stupid, nor foolish. The two
women had been partners for a long time now and even after Scott
had warned Leonie all that time ago, she hadn’t gotten into any
trouble. No crimes committed, no troubles reported by neighbors,
not even a hint of her past reputation had surfaced until the
previous Saturday. Not even a speeding ticket. Hell, not even a
parking ticket.

The other set of thoughts said that there was
no such thing as psychic powers. No telepathy. No ‘blue sense’ that
helped out law enforcement with ongoing cases. There were only
manipulative operators who saw opportunities and took advantage for
all kinds of reasons.

But the deputy chief of police in Shreveport
had told him in the most sincere tone of voice that he believed
that Leonie was the only “real thing” he’d ever seen. The only one
he’d seen. Because she had found and rescued Douglas Trent all by
herself. She’d gone to the police and been rebuffed. Roosevelt
Hemstreet had admitted it freely. He hadn’t believed her. He had
thought the same thing as Scott. Fake. Phony. Scam artist. But
something else had happened. She’d somehow convinced a twenty year
veteran. A deputy chief of a large city, even.

“Christ,” Scott muttered. “I’m getting a
headache.” Only someone she knew could have called Deacon Brady and
told him what he had.

Something else popped into Scott’s head.
Leonie had run out of the morgue before he’d asked Larry who had
the Jane Doe case. She had never heard who was in charge of it.
Then he bit back a frustrated snarl. That didn’t mean anything. She
could have found out from the paper who was in charge of it. She
could have called up Dallas P.D. and asked.

Still,
he thought.
There were so
many buts…

Another deputy tapped on his door and stuck
her head inside. Her name was Sue Hewitt and she was an old hat in
the county. “Fax for you, Sheriff,” she said, holding it out in her
hand. “The results on that fingerprint. Dallas sent it right over
after it clicked.”

Scott looked up from the mental hell he was
putting himself through, debating pros and cons of actually psychic
phenomena. Then what Sue said registered with him. “The fingerprint
on the duct tape around Olga Rojas? There was a match?”

“Sure. They checked the criminal registers
first. AFIS, FIRS. Didn’t get shit.” Sue passed the sheet of fax
paper over his desk. She was referring to the FBI’s Automated
Fingerprint Identification System and Fingerprint Identification
Records System. “But then they checked other records. Military,
government, people with security clearances.” Sue adjusted her belt
on her lanky frame. “Just goes to show what I know.”

Scott was trying to make sense of the fax. It
was somewhat smeared because of the poor quality of the fax and
probably of the one that had been sent initially. There were little
blue ink scribbles on the bottom that he couldn’t quite read.
“Wait, Sue, did they call you first?”

“Yeah, well, he wanted to talk to you but you
were on the phone with the governor’s office. That political thing
coming up. The governor’s wife coming to Buffalo Creek to look for
antiques.” Sue tittered. “Who wants to shoot the governor’s wife? I
mean, she’s fifty years old and looks like she dresses herself out
of her grandmother’s attic.” She paused to consider. “Maybe Mr.
Blackwell would. You know, the fashion fairy with the worst dressed
list.”

A red haze began to settle over Scott’s
vision. “What,” he gritted out between clenched teeth, “did the guy
from Dallas County say about the fingerprint?”

Sue realized she was standing on shaky ground
and her eyes widened. “Uh.” She pointed to a name on the fax sheet.
“Right there. That’s him. Had to get a background check on account
of who he works for.”

Scott’s gaze settled on the name. “Huh?
That’s…uh…that’s…well, motherfucker.” Normally, he didn’t use
language like that unless he was aggravated and he was rapidly
becoming just that. However the name got his explicit
attention.

Sue shrugged. “Not exactly what I would have
said, but I included his local address for you. Wrote it there on
the bottom. You want we should go out and fetch him for you?”

•

The riddle was next to the Tonka Dump Truck.
Neatly folded, it appeared exactly like the one found on Olga. When
Leonie pulled it out she gave a little shiver and dropped it onto
the porch. Distantly she thought if Vinegar Tom had been there he
would have pounced on it like the crumpled note from Mr. Martinez.
Luckily for her, he’d vamoosed. If she looked over to the side of
her yard she could see some of the decorative shrubbery moving as
he worked his way through them, probably looking for a place to dig
to China and deposit his own little load.

She unfolded the note with trembling fingers
and read it over. Another riddle, it was typed with the same font
as before. Nothing stood out about it, except that there were a few
more drops of blood on the bottom of the note.
Deliberately
so,
she thought
. He wants me to know that the child has been
hurt.

Leonie looked out and saw that the sky was
free of clouds. The morning sky was the shade of periwinkles after
the morning dew had evaporated away. It was going to be a lovely
day and the sounds of Mrs. Smith’s lawnmower were still carried
over to Leonie as she held a note from a madman in her quivering
fist.

I need help. I need help. From someone who
will believe me. I need to know who’s doing this to me. I need to
know who Keefe Grant is. I need to know who G. Lily is. I need to
know why he followed me to Dallas and whether he means me harm. Oh,
God, I need it badly.

She folded the note back up and put it back
in the pack, touching as little of the bag as possible. The words
of the riddle rattled around in her mind like a vicious animal
caught in a circular trap and it was frantic to escape:

-

Never ahead, ever behind,

Yet flying swiftly past:

For a child I last forever,

For an adult I’m gone too fast.

What am I?

What am I? What am I
? Those words
taunted every child Monroe Whitechapel had kidnapped and tortured.
“If you can answer it, I’ll let you go.” But he never let them go.
Never. He held them to his chest with his dying words. “But you
haven’t solved the last riddle.”

Leonie backed into the house, leaving her
coffee steaming on the armchair of the Adirondack chair and closed
the door behind her. Was that what Whitechapel had meant? That
there was some other horrid secret that would come back to haunt
her when the time was right, when her life was beginning to settle
into a recognizable pattern?

“God,” she muttered. When the phone rang,
Leonie turned with a startled murmur. What if that was him? She
growled, “I’m not afraid of you. I’m not. I wasn’t afraid of
Whitechapel and I’ll be damned before I let you ruin this life any
more than you already have.”

But it was only her mother, who was quietly
furious with her.

“I don’t really have time to talk with you,
Maman,
” Leonie said.

Babette swore under her breath. “Did you see
what was in the Dallas paper yesterday?”

“
Oui
,” Leonie replied evenly. “A bunch
of garbage. It should make you happy. After all, it calls me a
fraud in every respect except the actual word. Certainly nothing
there to make curious people come tramping out to the lake.”

“If you knew how much I hate using the
telephone,
chère,
” her mother grated. “None of the family
should…” she trailed off when she realized what she was saying and
to whom she was saying it.