The Bone House (51 page)

    'Where
do I go?' Troy asked plaintively.

    'My truck
is on the highway. It's parked off the shoulder a hundred yards east of here.
Climb inside and stay out of sight. Stay right there until I get back, got it?
Do not move.'

    Troy
did as he was told. He ran, tripping over the ground like a clown, through the
cemetery, land. He never looked back. Reich followed Troy's progress until he
couldn't see the boy anymore, and then he re-aimed Troy's gun at Bradley's
chest. Unlike Troy's wobbly hand, Reich's grip was solid and assured, and his
arm was rigid.

    'Now
it's just you and me, Bradley,' Reich said.

    'Sheriff,
are you out of your mind?'

    'Where's
Tresa?' Reich asked.

    'I
don't know. She ran. Sheriff, if this is a joke, it's not funny.'

    'It's
no joke.'

    Mark
could see that it wasn't. Reich's intentions were deadly.

    'Why
are you doing this?' Mark asked.

    'Because
as long as you're alive, people are going to keep digging up ghosts. Once
you're gone, you can take the blame for everything. If you'd died in that car
accident like you were supposed to, the case would already be closed.'

    'I
can't believe you'd kill an innocent man,' Mark told him.

    'I've
killed plenty of men. They were innocent. You're not. Don't bother pleading for
your life. I'm fresh out of mercy.'

    'I
didn't kill Glory.'

    'Now
you're just making me mad,' Reich growled.

    'I
don't care. I didn't do it.'

    'Pete
knew you were a liar.'

    'I
didn't kill Peter Hoffman either.'

    Reich
nodded grimly. 'That's the first true thing you said, Bradley, but it doesn't
matter. I killed Pete. You gave me no choice.'

    Mark
felt the breath leave his chest. He knew with a terrible clarity that there was
really no hope now. No chance of this ending well, of him walking away alive
and free. Reich was no immature kid like

    Troy
who was in over his head. When the sheriff ran out of bile, the gun in his hand
would spit a bullet into Mark's heart.

    'He
was your best friend,' Mark said.

    'That's
right, I killed my best friend because of you.'

    'Because
of me?'

    'Because
you're a liar,' Reich told him. 'Because you had to hide behind a ghost in
order to cover up your own crime. Pete was willing to give up everything to
make sure you paid the price. I couldn't let him do that, but I'll make sure
you pay. That's what Pete would want. That's why I can live with what I've
done.'

    Mark
shook his head and slowly held up his hands. 'Sheriff, I swear I don't know
what the hell you're talking about.'

    'He's
talking about Harris Bone,' Cab Bolton said.

    Reich
whipped his light toward the voice that rose from the cemetery graves, but he
didn't take his eyes off Mark or lower the gun even an inch. In the beam, Mark
saw Cab Bolton ten feet away, next to the gray tower of a bell-shaped
tombstone. Tresa huddled next to him, her face red with anger and tears.

    'Bolton,'
Reich hissed.

    'What
now, Sheriff?' Cab demanded. 'Are you going to kill me, too? First Hoffman,
then Bradley, then me?'

    Reich's
eyes darted furiously between Mark and Cab. He was a man looking for a way out
and not finding one.

    'The
girl, too?' Cab went on. 'Could you shoot the girl? How many more people are
you willing to kill to keep the secret?'

    'Get
the hell out of here,' Reich ordered him. 'Take Tresa with you. You have no idea
what this is about.'

    
'Harris
Bone
,' Cab repeated. 'That's what this is about. Peter Hoffman couldn't
handle the guilt anymore, could he? When he thought Bradley was hiding behind
Harris to get away with murder; he decided to tell the truth. Hoffman wasn't
about to let Delia Fischer get robbed of justice. He wasn't going to let some
defense attorney use Harris to get an acquittal. He knew Glory didn't come face
to face with Harris Bone in Florida. That was a lie. That's what he wanted to
tell me.'

    'Goddamn
you, Bolton,' Reich said. 'You couldn't let it go, could you? What the hell did
you do?'

    'I
found him, Sheriff,' Cab replied, i found him in that hole where the two of you
left him to rot. Harris Bone never escaped. He never ran. You and Peter Hoffman
killed him.'

    
In
the miles since they left the county courthouse in Sturgeon Bay, Harris Bone
hadn't said a word. He sat silently in the back of the squad car, his balding
head hung forward, his hands and ankles cuffed. His jail clothes were baggy on
his frame. Harris had never been a large man, but he'd shrunk inside his skin
in the months since the fire, until he was almost a skeleton.

    
Reich
watched his headlights tunneling through the night. He was south of Kewaunee in
the midst of flat, dormant farmlands. It was January, during one of the frigid
winter stretches, with temperatures falling into the teens below zero when the
sun went down. The season had been mostly snowless, leaving the ground barren
and hard, swept clean by the bitter wind.

    
He
glanced in the mirror with hard eyes.

    
'You
should look outside, Harris. You won't be seeing open country again for the
rest of your life. Just eighty square feet of concrete for twenty-three hours a
day.'

    
Harris
didn't acknowledge him.

    
'I'd
watch my back in there if I were you. Big-ass gang killers don't like a man who
burns up his wife and family.'

    
Harris
finally looked up with sunken eyes. 'Shut the hell up, Felix.'

    
'Oh,
don't start mouthing off. That's a bad lesson. You shoot off your mouth in
there, and bad things are likely to happen.'

    
'Thanks
for the advice.'

    
Reich
heard the sarcasm, and he didn't care. 'A lot of people think you're getting
off easy, sitting on the taxpayer's dime for the next forty years. That doesn't
feel like justice.'

    
'Is
that right? What do you think, Felix?'

    
'If
it were up to me, we'd gather volunteers and stone you.'

    
'Too
bad it's not up to you.'

    
Reich
nodded and studied the empty highway. 'Yeah. Too bad.'

    
Behind
him, Harris closed his eyes, and his head fell back against the seat.

    
'I
always felt sorry for you, Harris,' Reich called to him. 'Nettie was a bitch.
Not that I'd ever say so to Pete. But there are some lines a man doesn't cross,
no matter how much he hates his life. There are some things that when you do
them, you stop being human.'

    
Harris
leaned forward until his weary face was pressed against the steel mesh. 'What
does that make you, Felix? How many babies did you kill during the war?'

    
Reich
gripped the wheel fiercely. His lip curled into a snarl. 'Are you suggesting
I'm the same as you? Is that really what you want to say to me?'

    
'I'm
saying you can spare me the morality shit. I don't need it.'

    
Harris
sank back and pretended to sleep. Reich studied the man's face and saw tears
slipping down his cheeks. It didn't matter. He felt nothing for him. It was
just as he'd said: there were lines a man doesn't cross. There were also things
a man had to do when justice demanded it.

    
He
was close to the rendezvous. Through the headlights, he spied the intersection
at the county road, and he checked the odometer to count off one point seven miles.
There was nothing but frozen land on either side of the vehicle. He and Pete
had scouted the terrain weeks earlier as they made their plans.

    
Where
to meet. Where to stage the escape.

    
Reich
spotted the driveway leading to the farmhouse, miles from anything else around
it. He slowed sharply and turned. In the back seat, Harris felt the change in
direction and opened his eyes.

    
'What's
going on?'

    
Reich
said nothing. He drove into the rutted cornfield bordering the house and
steered around the rear of the detached garage, where he parked the squad car
with its right-hand door butted against the wall. From the highway, the car was
invisible. It would be days before anyone found it.

    
'What
the hell are you doing, Felix?'

    
Reich
heard it in Harris's voice. The first tremors of fear. The first horrified
realization of what was about to happen to him.

    
Justice.

    
Reich
got out of the car. The wind was ferocious, and the cold bit through his coat
like a maneater. He opened the rear door and dragged Harris Bone into the night
by the cuff of his shirt. Harris, who wore nothing except his prison scrubs,
howled as the frozen air knifed his skin. The bound man hunched his limbs
together. Reich yanked a billy club from his belt and swung it across the man's
skull. Harris collapsed to his knees. Reich laid a boot on the man's back and
crushed him forward on to the rock-hard dirt, where he twitched from the pain
and cold. Harris tried to crawl, but Reich held him down.

    
'Hello,
Felix,' Peter Hoffman said. He was waiting for them beside the garage.

    
'No
mercy tonight,' Reich replied.

    
'None.'

    
The
house and land belonged to a retired couple who were away in the sunshine of
Mesa and wouldn't be back in Wisconsin until after Easter. Reich had checked
the house and garage three weeks earlier and found the couple's Accord parked
inside for the season. Keys on a peg board by the door. He loved Midwesterners.

    
'Let's
get it over with,' Pete said.

    
Reich
marched to the side door of the garage. He didn't notice the cold, other than
the prickly bite of ice crystals in his nose when he breathed. He cocked his
leg and smashed the door inward with a swing of his boot. Just like Harris Bone
would do. Inside, he pushed through spiderwebs and heard the scurry of rats in
the rafters. He returned to find Harris on the ground, curled into a ball, and
he lifted him bodily with both hands and threw him toward the garage door.
Harris tripped in the shackles and fell with a whimper. Pete stepped over him into
the garage, started the engine of the Accord, and popped the trunk. Reich
grabbed Harris, pulled him on his heels, and dumped him into the rear of the
car.

    
He
slammed the trunk shut, locking Harris inside.

    
'Come
on,' Reich said. He dug in his pocket for the keys to his squad car and threw
them on the ground. He held out the keys to the cuffs and shackles to Pete, who
stood by the driver's door with his hands in his pockets. 'You having second
thoughts?' he asked.

    
'You
know me better than that, Felix.' He took the keys.

    
Reich
stared into his friend's face for a long time in the shadows. 'OK then.'

    
Pete
drove. They headed north on the deserted roads, back toward Door County. Ten
miles from the farmhouse, they passed a bar with a handful of pickups parked
outside the door. Pete continued past the bar for a quarter-mile until no one
who ventured into the winter air would see them, and then he pulled on to the
shoulder. Both men got out.

    
The
wind poured over their bodies with an unforgiving fury. Pete dug his chin into
his neck and pulled down his wool hat. Reich simply walked down the gully from
the road into the dirt of the field. He wasn't even wearing a hat to cover the
steel wool of his hair. His skin was already numb and white, but he didn't
care.

    
Pete
followed. 'You sure about this, Felix?'