Disembodied Bones (44 page)

“I could prove it to you right now,” Gideon
offered.

Scott hesitated as he straightened up. “How’s
that?”

“I could find your blind woman, the woman
with the cherries on her hat,” he said.

This time Scott froze. He made his face go
neutral as he absorbed what Gideon had said. “Either Leonie told
you about that, or you’ve tapped a phone. I understand that you’re
some kind of computer expert, so I bet listening in on the
telephone wouldn’t be hard to do.”

“You’re forgetting a third alternative,
sheriff,” Gideon said.

“What?”

“That I’m telling the truth,” Gideon replied
bluntly. “Last week was the first time I’ve spoken to Leonie
Simoneaud since she rescued my little bunny butt all those years
ago. I called her and she didn’t even know it was me.”

“I’ve only got your word for that,” Scott
said, but the words sounded weak even to him. Dacey had told Scott
the same thing. She’d also mentioned the number of times that
Gideon Lily had come into the Gingerbread House and how Leonie
hadn’t known him. Why put on an elaborate act for months like that?
“Okay, let’s say you could prove it. How?”

“I’ve been thinking about the best way to
find someone like that,” Gideon said positively. “Social security
records would show disabilities payments to an older black woman
within two hundred miles of the Dallas/Fort Worth area.”

“Why two hundred miles?” Scott interrupted
sarcastically. “Why not five hundred? Or six?”

“How far would a murderer drive with a corpse
in the vehicle?” Gideon said grimly.

“Why don’t you tell me?” Scott said, just as
grimly.

Gideon disregarded that. “I think most people
wouldn’t want to take the chance of the police stopping them with
the body, so two hundred miles around the metroplex is just a best
guess.” He paused and went back to his argument. “It would be
simple to disregard some of the women that come up on such a list
as unlikely. And there can’t be more than a hundred such women in
the area. Legally blind, elderly black women don’t fall off trees.
A phone call to local law enforcement could verify…”

“Hell, no!” Scott interrupted. “I’m not
giving you access to a computer. And now you want to create some
kind of wild goose chase, so you can cause more trouble. Better
line up a lawyer, Mr. Lily.” He straightened up and went to the
door. He looked over one broad shoulder at Gideon. “You’re gonna
need a really good one. I’ll get Malone to take you back to the
jail.”

Gideon grinned at the closed door because the
sheriff hadn’t locked it on the way out. He reached out with both
hands to grasp the Bic that Vic Miller had left on the table. Along
with the aluminum can he figured he could make a set of improvised
lock picks in a matter of minutes. Then he could have the cuffs off
him in another two minutes. Using the chair he was sitting in as a
makeshift anvil and hammer, he didn’t waste any time.

•

Scott found Jay Malone trying to hit on the
night clerk. She wasn’t receptive. Poking an inch long,
copper-colored nail into his chest, she watched while he winced,
and said, “I don’t like you. I never liked you. I wouldn’t go out
with you, even if you weren’t married. If you keep this up, I’ll
complain to the supervisor about you. Then I’ll take your little
canister of pepper spray and use it on you. Then I’ll use it on
your little two inch weenie.”

When the clerk wheeled away and stomped down
the hallway in her four inch heels, both men were watched her butt
sashaying back and forth as if their eyes were glued to it. “Guess
she really doesn’t like you, Jay,” Scott said.

“Guess not,” Jay answered with an abject
expression on his face. “I ain’t married. Where she get that from?
And who in hell told her my dick’s two inches long?”

Scott considered. “Somebody else trying to
date her?”

Jay brightened. “That rotten asshole Ken Ash.
He’s always trying to get into some gal’s panties. Not happy with
that news girl he’s boinking, I guess.”

“Yep,” Scott said and smiled. That would make
up for what Ken had been doing to Scott lately. “Your boy, Lily, is
waiting for you in the interrogation room.”

“I reckon he’ll wait a bit, huh?”

“I reckon,” Scott agreed and left to visit
Dacey. When he realized that there probably wasn’t a florist open,
he absently wondered if he could get away with stealing some from a
cemetery.

When Jay finally came to the interrogation
room all that was left was a pile of shackles, a shredded can of
diet coke, and a disabled Bic pen.

•

Gideon found an empty office. Most of the
offices on the business side of the Pegram County Sheriff’s
Department were empty. In his prison coveralls he knew he would
stand out so he went quickly through the halls, avoiding two
deputies on their way out to patrol, and one clerk who was
obviously overworked and underappreciated on this Sunday. She was
stomping through the hallways like an elephant on steroids and he
heard her coming a mile away. But she passed him on her way
elsewhere and he was pretty much free to do as he wished.

He knew he didn’t have a lot of time. Malone
was going to discover that he had escaped any minute and they were
going to look in every nook and cranny. Every single, solitary nook
and cranny under the interpretation that Gideon hadn’t been gone
long and therefore couldn’t be very far. That included the
building. They wouldn’t spare any janitor’s closet or the air
ducts.

Gideon produced his improvised lock picks
once more and grinned to himself
. But there’s always some place
that someone overlooks.

-

I cut through evil

Like a double-edged sword,

And chaos flees at my approach.

Balance I single-handed upraise,

Through battles fought with heart and mind,

Instead of with my gaze.

What am I?

I am justice.

Sunday, July 28th

What is it you have to speak?

But to answer you have to ask?

And to ask you have to speak?

And to speak you have to know the answer.

“If you keep drugging me,” Leonie mumbled,
struggling to make the words go through uncooperative lips, “you
might cause some brain damage and then you won’t have a toy to play
with anymore.” She didn’t open her eyes because her mind was
swimming helplessly in a river of thick black sludge. Furthermore,
in the suspended quagmire she wasn’t quite sure if she wanted to
know where she was now. Back in the room with Keefe, tied like a
heifer about to be branded, or in some new play room, perhaps with
a thousand glittering, snarling carousel animals ready to taunt her
endlessly as they watched her being tortured by a man who might be
worse than Monroe Whitechapel.

Consciousness resumed gradually as she
refrained from movement, simply listening to the movements of
another person nearby. His clothing slithered on his body as he
clattered around not caring if she heard him or not. Unhappily she
had come to the conclusion that it was him and that he was very
much aware that she was coming around long before she had
spoken.

“I don’t think there will be any side
effects…from the drugs,” he said. There was an undercurrent of
vicious amusement lacing his words.

Leonie was lying on her side on a hard cold
floor. It was a different room than she had been in before. The
floor didn’t feel like the smooth wooden floor of the other room.
It was cold and rough, although not bare earth. Moving her fingers
she felt some crumbling bits of something that felt chalky, and
confusion briefly perplexed her.

“Come now, Leonie. You might as well open
your eyes now. See where you’re at.” There was a pleased chuckle.
“You won’t recognize it, but I can tell you-” his voice lowered to
a cold whisper that told her he was chillingly eager to proceed
with his game-“I recognize it. It was my hell for more time than I
care to remember.”

Leonie wanted to burst his bubble of
anticipatory excitement. She wanted to prick it with a large needle
and twist it around when she had it in there, just to make sure she
caused the maximum amount of pain. With sudden recognition of what
was happening to her, she suppressed a horrified gasp.
Oh, dear
God, I’m becoming almost as bad as he is.

“Elan,” she turned her face into the floor
and took refuge in the roughness rubbing against her bare cheek.
Its solidity reassured her in a manner that spoke volumes about
what was real and what was not. “You don’t have to do this.”

Elan didn’t answer. Finally, he asked in an
even tone, “How did you know it was me?”

Leonie opened her eyes and saw the cool gray
floor. Plain cement was her bed. The rough texture was the
hand-troweled floor. When she gingerly moved her arm, she found
there was a handcuff on her wrist, so tightly fastened that it
pinched her flesh. The handcuff was attached to a chain, and her
eyes followed the chain to where it was connected to a hasp in the
wall. Her bleak eyes looked around the room. It was six feet wide,
ten feet long, and barely tall enough for a child to stand inside,
much less a full grown woman. Behind her there was a toilet joined
to the back wall and next to it, a little sink with silver faucets.
There was a mattress on the floor in the corner farthest away from
the toilet. On it lay Keefe, still unconscious and covered with a
simple green blanket.

When her head went up, she saw the light from
above was a light bulb hanging from something she couldn’t see.
Behind the light bulb was nothing but unidentifiable darkness. It
might have been outside or inside for all she knew. Perched
precariously on a corner of the pit was a large cement block that
would be lowered into place and held from crushing the occupants of
the room by a concrete two-inch lip. It would also prevent the
pit’s prisoner from readily escaping this makeshift dungeon.

Almost too silhouetted to see clearly, Elan
Carter was sitting on the edge, looking down at her. As her eyes
adjusted she saw that his feet were dangling carelessly over the
edge of the pit and he was still clothed in dress pants and a white
shirt. The shirt’s collar was unbuttoned and the tie had been
discarded. His hair was uncombed and beads of sweat dotted his
flesh. He seemed more than a little mussed from the normally
well-kept man that Leonie knew.

He began to speak and his voice was like
listening to the sounds the most soulless demon would make. She
couldn’t prevent the flow of goose bumps that rippled down her
arms, raising the hair there like the hackles of a terrified dog.
“There was a simple single bed with an iron headboard and footboard
in the corner where the mattress is now. It was covered with
cartoon character blankets and pillows. The entire area was big
enough for a child to take six steps back and forth inside, but my
left hand was handcuffed to a chain that was attached to a plate in
the wall that was welded to the rebar inside the cement. I can’t
count how many times I tried to pry myself free with my
fingernails, leaving them bloody and useless for days. Right below
where I’m sitting was a television on a stand which had also been
welded to a plate that was also welded to the rebar inside the
wall.”

All Leonie could do was stare at him
horrifiedly.

Elan’s head nodded casually at her. “Yes, a
television. Whitechapel was cruel in some ways, kind in others.” He
waved at the toilet and sink behind her. “Sometimes he left me in
there for weeks. I got to watch cable though. It received twelve
channels and I left it on all the time. It was my friend, my only
companion. One day I was waiting for him. He said he had a surprise
for me. He should have turned the TV off, because I’d seen the news
the night before about the boy being taken out of the arcade at a
Shreveport mall. There was a photograph.”

Forcing herself to sit up, Leonie used the
chain to pull into an upright position. The headache was still
present; it forced itself upon her head full every inch of the
force of an avalanche of snow thundering down the side of a
mountain. That combined with the sluggishness of the drugs, she
knew she was in a world of hurt. With careful movements, she
brushed off her black T-shirt, deliberately not wincing as the
handcuff on her left hand pinched her. Then she brushed off the top
of her pants and coolly observed that her shoes were still gone.
Finally, she reached up with both hands and straightened her hair.
Half of it was pulled out of the braid, so she freed it and ran her
fingers through it, painstakingly untangling the knots there.

Elan tilted his head curiously. He hesitated
as he watched her. Then he went on. “It was the first time he’d
taken a child from so close. Stupid really, but he’d go to the
malls and the water park to watch children. He saw Douglas Trent,
and he couldn’t resist him.”

Leonie’s eyes locked with his again. She saw
the passing resemblance now as she had noticed before. Gideon and
Elan could be brothers. One a little older. One a little younger.
But the insides were vastly different, as day was to night, but
she’d never had the occasion to really see it. The Elan she had
seen was the one with the clever mask on, the one who was luring
her into an ever expanding ambush, like a cunning trapdoor
spider.

“I was getting too old for him. Maybe he
suspected that I was getting too clever as well. I think he knew
that if he had turned his back on me, I would have ripped his
throat out with my teeth.” Elan smiled down at Leonie and it wasn’t
a kind smile. “But you beat me to it. In a rather gruesomely
spectacular way. Impaled with a unicorn’s horn.”

Finishing her hair, Leonie put her hands into
her lap. The chains attached to her rattled and then settled into
place. While he talked she tried to take stock of herself. The
sedative was wearing off, but the headache was still present. Her
fingers throbbed where she had been cut with the razor blades, but
it was a negligible injury. There was a crusty bit of blood at her
nose, and her body felt bruised and battered. But she was alive and
there was a chance.