Disembodied Bones (53 page)

Deacon Brady said, “Hey, yo, buddy. Don’t
they got you doing enough bubba stuff that you got to go and fool
with one of my cases some more?”

“Deke,” Scott said grimly. “It wasn’t-”

“I don’t know how you did it,” Deacon went on
blithely. “This goober from up north calls bright and shining. He’s
calling about Jane Doe. Jane is really Gwendolyn Parker. She’s
supposedly been back east someplace and her granny is…get this…an
old black woman who’s blind and, and, and, here’s the funny
Twilight Zone
part, her favorite hat of all time is one with
cherries on top. Like a sundae. And you put it all together in the
middle of the night because you couldn’t sleep on account of your
other little problem.”

“My other little problem,” Scott looked
grimly at Lily again. He stood at the doorway, one of his arms held
by Ken Ash, the other by Sue. Impatience was written all over
Lily’s face, but there was a little hope contained there too,
especially once he realized with whom Scott was speaking. “Well,
he’s not a problem anymore.”

“Oh, you caught the rabbit,” Deacon said.
“Good for you.”

“Yeah,” Scott said. “Deke, this is for real?
You’re not yanking my suspenders?”

“Brother, I don’t know how I’m gonna explain
this one. I found out that the paper up at Paris didn’t run Jane
Doe’s picture because they had something else going on, a festival
of some kind, and didn’t bother to tell me about it. Some of them
get
the Dallas Morning News
up there, but I guess they
didn’t make the connection. But the goober, what’s his name? Burke,
that’s it. Well Officer Burke was pretty stoked. He put granny
under supervision. There was that other bit about her being in
danger, well, he took it one step further, and asked her who was
reading her granddaughter’s letters to her. Turns out it was her
pastor. Burke had a word with the man right after that, and he
broke down right away. Spilled everything. The guilt had been
eating him up. Also he had tried to break into granny’s house and
nearly got caught red-handed. This guy had been bumping uglies with
little Miss Gwendolyn and done got her pregnant. Well, she didn’t
want to have an abortion and he didn’t want to tell his wife. So
they got into an argument and he strangled her. First he dumped the
body locally. Within ten miles of a brand-spanking new church, if
that sounds familiar to you. Then he went back and moved her. Took
her all the way to Dallas, and left her at that old factory. Turns
out, he worked there when he was in his teens.”

Deacon finally took a breath and sighed
melodramatically. “I don’t know how your girl got it right, or the
other one. But I don’t think they could possibly be connected to
this pastor in Paris, Texas. That would be a stretch for sure. You
said, she was in a morgue drawer for six months, unidentified. She
couldn’t have planned on that happening.”

“No, I guess not,” Scott said, his eyes
connecting with Lily’s again. The younger man was standing straight
up, his back like a steel girder. His entire attention was focused
on what Scott was saying to Deacon Brady. “You need to go, Deke?
You sound like you’re in a hurry.”

“Yeah, buddy. I do. Gonna run up to Paris and
talk to the pastor. Make sure there’s nothing more to it than that.
But your girl got it mostly right. Better than any other psychic I
ever heard of. Maybe you should put her on the payroll.” Deacon
paused. “I know about that negative stuff you’ve been getting in
the papers lately. I’ll make sure you get a fair shake.”

“She said no publicity,” Scott said quickly.
“She made me agree. No publicity.”

“Well, then, maybe she is a gem, then,”
Deacon said slowly. “Whatever you want, man.”

After Scott hung up the phone, he exhaled
slowly and then said to Ken, “Who’s been feeding stories to the
newspapers about Leonie Simoneaud?”

“I-uh-I don’t know that,” Ken stuttered. Sue
watched with interest as she single-handedly unwrapped a stick of
Wrigley’s and put it into her mouth. She kept the other hand on
Lily’s arm. Lily didn’t move a muscle.

“Well, your girlfriend works at the local
rag, don’t they talk about that?”

“She’s not, uh, oh, crap.” Ken ran nervous
fingers through his hair and looked around as if his wife was
standing behind him. “Okay, I’m doing the girl from the newspaper.
She got anonymous tips for one story and it ran nationally. The
other one went to the Dallas paper’s people. They don’t talk about
their sources, either.”

“But she’s dying to know, right?” Scott
persisted. “Thinking it’s the same person?”

“Yeah, she thinks her source double-crossed
her.”

“Cuff Mr. Lily in front and put him in a
chair in front of my desk,” Scott directed.

Sue shot Scott a look and shrugged. Ken was
still looking around for his wife. As Sue did as Scott directed,
Ken said, “You ain’t gonna hold it against me, Scott, are you?”

“Depends on you, Ken,” Scott said cheerfully.
“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Ken said wrathfully. “I know what you
mean, dammit.”

Sue shoved Lily into a chair and stepped
back.

“Go away, Ken,” Scott said. “Go apply to
another county, right now, and I’ll give you a good reference. The
best I ever gave. That’s a better offer than you should get.”

Ken skulked away sullenly. Sue didn’t say
anything but chewed on gum with vigorous determination. Scott
turned his attention to Gideon Lily. “Tell me about Gorshin
Corporation.”

Gideon blinked doubtfully, as if he couldn’t
believe the abrupt turn of events. “Did Deacon Brady corroborate
the story?”

Scott sighed again. “Yeah, he did. They even
got the guy who killed Jane Doe-Gwendolyn Parker, that is. He
confessed about two seconds after your officer buddy confronted
him. Caved like a spelunker at Carlsbad Caverns.”

“Good,” Gideon said harshly. “The bastard
strangled a pregnant woman who was barely out of childhood. He’ll
be lucky if they don’t execute him
before
the trial.”

Sue stopped chewing to say, “So all the
rumors running around are true, Scott?”

Scott looked briefly at Sue. “Yeah, I guess
so, and I’m beginning to think that Mr. Lily here might be telling
the truth. But he needs to convince me more.”

Gideon held up his hands. The cuffs rattled.
Scott started as he saw the swelling along the young man’s left
hand, near the thumb. It was about the size of a golf ball and the
color of ripening blackberries. “How the hell did that happen,
Sue?”

Sue shrugged.

“She didn’t do it,” Gideon said. “Neither did
the other one. It’s Leonie. Someone’s hurt her. I told you we’re
connected somehow. Something’s wrong with her hand, both hands
actually. The left feels like the thumbs been dislocated or
something like that. And not long ago, it felt like someone stabbed
her in the thigh.”

Sue stopped chewing and looked down
incredulously at Gideon. “What the fuck?” she said. “Are you crazy?
This guy is a more than a few French fries short of a happy
meal.”

Scott rested his chin on his hands and his
elbows on the top of his desk. “Yeah, well, you know what they say,
life is stranger than fiction.”

•

By the time Leonie reached the third turn,
she almost lost hope
. Am I sure I’m remembering the right turns?
Could I stumble into a pit of snakes if…oh, God, shut up.
She
closed her eyes and concentrated on what she was doing, ignoring
the aching of various parts of her body. Her left hand felt like a
balloon swollen with water. Her thigh felt like it was on fire. The
pain of those two made the cuts on her palm and fingers feel like
nothing in comparison and any remaining aching of her head like
mere child’s play in the reflection of a master. She needed to
reach Keefe before Elan. Elan obviously had a quicker way through
the maze.

Or
, she paused as she saw a little red
light suddenly appear in the darkness,
is this just another game
to him
? “Elan?” she said. “Are you listening?”

There wasn’t an answer. Leonie waved her hand
in the darkness. Could Elan have infrared cameras, with which to
watch her? She decided that he could. And what did she know about
infrared cameras? In the darkness heat looked white, and cold
looked black. The remainder appeared greenish, a technology
designed to see movement of warm bodies in darkness.
If Elan is
watching me, then he isn’t going after Keefe
. She said silently
to herself,
You should have covered the little red lights, Elan.
You really should have
.

•

“Let me see if I’ve got this correct,” Scott
said slowly. “Some person with a grudge against you and Leonie
Simoneaud is the one who set you up and took her.”

Sue rolled her eyes, as she leaned against
the office wall behind Gideon.

“And,” Scott continued, “they bought a house
they believed you would be interested in and refurbished it. The
place out on 287, so you could be lured into the area to be near
Leonie.”

Scott saw Sue perk up and her eyes
narrowed.

“Someone must have spent a couple hundred
thou on that renovation, Mr. Lily,” Scott said. “That’s a whole
helluva lot of money to get someone in a house.”

“I didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth,”
Gideon said bitterly. He sat forward in the chair and looked down
at his handcuffed wrists. “I should have. The realtor implied that
the corporation had gotten in over its head and needed to unload
quickly, that if I gave them a halfway decent offer, they’d jump.
They did, but not for the reasons I imagined.”

“So it’s not just some pissed off person,
it’s a pissed off person with megabucks.”

“I’m not pretending that I understand why
it’s happening, Scott,” Gideon said and looked back up. His gaze
was frank. “Just that it is. And if you don’t believe anything
else, then believe that Leonie and Keefe are in the most deadly
danger they’ve ever been in. He’ll kill them. Keefe first, because
he wants to torture Leonie, then eventually he’ll kill Leonie, when
he’s satisfied his sick sense of retribution.”

Sue shifted awkwardly behind Gideon. She
blinked and then blinked again at Scott. “What?” he barked at her.
“What? Just spit it out.’

“Scott,” she said. “You know I’m on the
Historical Preservation Committee.”

Scott stared at Sue unflinchingly.
“Yeah?”

“The old place on 287. It falls under our
aegis because it’s in the original charter area of Buffalo Creek.
It was originally built by a Pennsylvanian couple in 1906. They
came to Texas because her grandfather settled in the area and left
them 250 acres there.”

“God,” Scott swore. “Skip the hysterical
committee bullshit, and get to the point.”

“The corporation that renovated the house had
to submit plans and work permits to the Historical Committee, and
it’s not hysterical, Scott. We’re very serious.” Sue straightened
up and looked him in the eye. All Scott could see was a mental
image of Sue thumping Gideon’s ear with her thumb and index finger
after he’d said something about her weight.

“Oh, jumping jehoshaphat!” Scott threw
himself upward and leaned over the desk. “I haven’t had any sleep
last night. I don’t give a rat’s ass about your committee, and if
you don’t get to the fucking point I’m probably going to throw you
out of my office, and Sue,” he paused dramatically, “I know about
your black belt.”

Sue’s lips tightened into a flat line. “The
corporation submitted some funny ideas for the re-build. They
wanted an office space that was ready for dedicated hard lines for
computer work. We assumed it was because they were thinking of
someone working from home. But we’ve never seen someone go to the
trouble in one of these older houses before. Not to that extreme.
They did everything but put in a computer screen that comes down
from the ceiling. And they spent a lot of money doing it. But they
said the point of renovation wasn’t to use it for themselves or for
one of their corporate officers, but to sell it as an investment.
So why…”

“Why bother with all the fancy computer stuff
and the extra cost?” Scott finished.

Gideon shrugged. “More bait for me. I thought
what they thought. That they set it up for their CEO or something
of the ilk. Someone who wanted privacy but needed the specialized
set up in a renovated house of that age. It’s not restored, it’s
renovated, you know. It has all the modern amenities but the
outside appears like it did the day it was finished.”

“Was it the office setup that clinched the
deal for you?” Scott said curiously.

“It was part of it,” Gideon admitted. “I can
honestly say that even before I knew Leonie was here, I felt a
singular affinity with the place. I can only surmise that it was
because of her proximity to me.” He stopped and lifted his hands in
an inquisitive gesture. “As soon as I stepped out of my car, I knew
I wanted to be here.”

Scott digested that and saw Sue scrape her
heels on the floor in a deliberately disinterested manner. “So what
would you want me to do?”

“I can find out about this corporation,”
Gideon said. “I can crack their system and find out about their
properties. I’m betting she’s still within the area. Maybe not very
close, but she isn’t moving away. She’s wherever he wants her to
be, where he can play with her.”

“Crack their system?” Scott repeated tiredly.
“You mean you want to hack something.”

Gideon shrugged painfully. “I’ll do what I
have to do. She’s hurt, badly. He’s playing with her like a toy
he’s fascinated with. He wants to keep her around until his honor
is satisfied. I don’t how long that’s going to be and Keefe has
even less time. He’s just a little kid. He didn’t do anything
except to be born as my nephew. If you want, we can pretend you
came back to your office an hour later than you actually did.” He
lifted his eyebrows hopefully.