Her Perfect Bones Read online

  “I’d speculate it’s a woman. There’s a ring with a stone around the fourth metacarpal. And she’s been here a hell of a long time. With no air in the barrel, the body mummified. That’s a lucky break. We need to get this whole thing to the medical examiner’s office where I can inspect it properly.”

  Tearing himself away, Will followed JB past the barrel and further into the bowels of the basement, where the light from the single bulb didn’t reach. Before the darkness swallowed them whole, JB clicked on his own penlight, sweeping it across the brick walls and bare dirt floor. In the corners, the spiderwebs hung heavy with dust.

  “This place is like something out of a bad horror movie.” JB ran his hand along the bricks, inspecting the mortar.

  “Got something?”

  “Maybe.” He directed his light at the back wall. “Take a look.”

  Will stepped closer, scanning the rows until he’d found what drew JB’s attention. A large U-shaped bracket was affixed to the wall, its surface rusted with age. Near it, two perfect holes punched in the clay. “What do you make of it?”

  “Looks like there might have been another bracket hanging there. Could’ve been a shelf or…”

  “Grandpa Jack told me a story about that bracket.” Sam appeared on the top step. Backlit by the sun, he loomed over them in a way that made Will uneasy. Even if his voice still wavered when he spoke. “You’re right. There used to be another one.”

  With JB behind him, Will made his way back past the barrel and across the dimly lit floor so he could look Sam in the eyes. “A story?”

  JB snuffed his penlight, leaving the lone bulb to spotlight Sam. “Let’s hear it. I love a good yarn.”

  Will conjured his own childhood bedroom, huddled with his brothers Ben and Petey under a blanket fort, Ben spinning the classic tale of an escaped serial killer with a hook for a hand to distract them from their parents going nine rounds in the kitchen. The thought of Ben grabbing Petey from behind after he delivered the final line, of them collapsing into giggles, caused a familiar ache behind Will’s breastbone.

  “But I don’t know if there’s any truth to it.”

  “That’s the best kind of story.” JB gave Will a look that said he’d gone into full Good Cop mode now, complete with the gracious smile and the trite reassurances. Already Sam seemed more relaxed.

  “Well, Grandpa Jack said the man who owned the cabin before him had these two wolfdogs, Zeus and Hera. Scariest dogs you ever saw, with teeth sharp as razors. One day, the dogs got out of the yard and killed a bunch of chickens at the cabin next door. You know, a real bloodbath. The cops told him he had to keep Zeus and Hera chained up down here. But then, the strangest thing happened. The chickens kept disappearing. Other animals too. The neighbor—fella’s name was Crawley—decided to keep watch on the cabin. He hunkered down in the redwoods with his Winchester and waited.”

  JB rubbed his arms. “Anybody else gettin’ goosebumps?”

  “Under the light of a full moon, old Crawley caught the man red-handed, sneaking into his chicken coop. As you can imagine, Crawley didn’t take kindly to it. No one ever saw that man again.”

  “I feel like you’re settin’ me up,” JB said. “But, I’ve gotta ask. What happened to the man? Did Crawley shoot him?”

  “Nope. According to my granddad, Crawley shackled him up down here and raised Zeus and Hera as his own. Turns out those wolfdogs got along with the chickens just fine.” Sam half-smiled, reeling them in. “As long as he kept them well fed.”

  “Jeez.” JB’s eyes widened. “Your grandpa could spin one hell of a story.”

  “See for yourself.”

  When Sam gestured back toward the belly of the basement, where the shadows melded into a pool of darkness, Will felt like a boy again, imagining that hook hand scraping down his back. To be a cop, you had to welcome fear. To claim it as your friend.

  He snatched the penlight from JB and directed it at the courses of bricks below the brackets. Down, down, down. Until, sure enough, several long, thin scratches marred the clay.

  “Grandpa Jack always said he tried to claw his way out.”

  Two

  It took three men and a heavy-duty dolly to haul the barrel up the stairs and out of the cabin, into the last rays of sunlight. Now it stood empty in the corner of Chet’s examination room. Under a thick layer of dust near the base, Will uncovered a stamp, bearing the name RILEY CORP. A quick Google search turned up thousands of results but nothing of interest in Fog Harbor.

  The body inside it had been laid on the metal autopsy table. As Chet inspected the victim with gloved hands, Will surveyed the rest of the contents of the barrel, which had been tipped out onto a plastic sheet once the body had been removed.

  Sand. A helluva lot of it. They’d all agreed it looked too clean to have come from the beach. More than likely, it had been purchased at a hardware store. But they would send it to the lab for further analysis to be certain.

  Buried in the sand, they’d uncovered a Nikon FA camera with a cracked lens and an undeveloped roll of film that Will couldn’t wait to get his hands on once it had been dusted for prints.

  And from the left hand of the mummified corpse, Chet had removed the ring with a cheap red stone and placed it next to the camera.

  According to Chet’s initial assessment, the yet unidentified Jane Doe was a young Caucasian adult female with a medium build. Her skin, rubbery. Her blonde hair, matted. As Chet had predicted, as soon as the corpse had been exposed to the air, decomposition had begun. Will had never seen anything like it in his life, and hoped he never would again. Reduced to a shell of skin and bone, he wondered what dreams and hopes had once fluttered inside her head. What possibilities had died with her in that barrel.

  Chet motioned them over. “Take a look at this, guys.”

  The red cotton on the girl’s T-shirt had darkened to a dingy brown, but the logo on the front remained legible: 1984 Summer Olympics.

  JB staggered back. “Do you really think she was in that barrel for over three decades?”

  Chet nodded. “It’s certainly possible. Her clothing looks to be from that era. The stonewashed jeans. The high-top sneakers. Even that camera is a fossil.”

  “Hey, easy there,” JB said. “I prefer the term ‘relic’, myself.”

  Will shook his head at his partner. But he’d done the math too. Back then, Will would’ve been fifteen years old with peach fuzz and braces. JB, somewhere between wives one and two. In other words, a lifetime ago. “Do we know how she died?”

  Chet cupped the girl’s head gently in his gloved hand. “See that?”

  Will forced his eyes downward to a tear in the sickly yellow skin.

  “A two-inch-long laceration to the back of the head. And there’s another here. And here.” Chet pointed to two more nasty gashes. “Blunt force trauma, likely caused by a heavy object, possibly with a sharp edge. We’ve got multiple skull fractures, and the bloodstaining indicates she was alive when these occurred.”

  Chet directed the overhead light onto the girl’s extended arm. “I see splotching on both wrists, too. Could be bruising. And what looks to be a cutting-type wound on her abdomen. I want to run the body through an x-ray before I draw any conclusions. But, given the circumstances, I’d classify these wounds as highly suspicious.”

  “Damn right, it’s suspicious.” JB guffawed. “You can’t very well stuff yourself into a barrel.”

  As Chet prepared the body for the x-ray machine, Will fled the autopsy room in search of fresh air. He shed his gloves and pushed through the double doors into the brisk March evening. The parking lot had emptied, but the lights of downtown Fog Harbor twinkled like fireflies in the distance. It rankled—always had—the way death, however brutal, changed nothing. While Jane Doe had been entombed in the basement, the world marched on. Even now that she’d been discovered, the world kept right on marching. Her killer included. It took a special kind of sicko to stuff a dead girl in a barrel and walk the other way
.

  Desperate for a distraction, Will checked his phone. Still nothing from Olivia. Which must’ve meant it hadn’t gone well. He thought about calling. But if he called, he’d have to hear her voice. If he heard her voice, he’d make an ass of himself trying to make her feel better and she’d laugh out of pity. If she laughed, he’d just end up liking her more.

  “Anything from Olivia?” JB asked, craning over his shoulder.

  “No.” Will tucked his phone inside his pocket. “Why?”

  “Because you started getting all googly-eyed like usual.”

  “Can we just do our jobs, please? Dead girl. Barrel. Remember?”

  JB shrugged. “Suit yourself. I figured we’d wait for Chet to finish up, then head over to the station and see if we can track down the prior homeowners. We should get the prints back from the lab tomorrow, along with that film from the camera.”

  Will nodded. “Why don’t you head home? Spend a little time with Tammy. I can start making calls.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I thought you’d be happy.”

  “And let you handle the investigation? You’ll muck it by morning, City Boy.”

  Chet burst out the door, still wearing his gloves and white coat, but without his usual calm demeanor. His eyes were wide. His jaw tensed.

  “What the hell?” Will heard the shock in JB’s voice as Chet doubled over and vomited.

  Wiping his mouth on his coat sleeve, Chet didn’t look up, delivering the news to the freshly mowed grass. “She suffered several skull fractures. One of the blows was so severe, it caused an intracranial hematoma. There’s a laceration, probably a knife wound, to the upper abdomen. The right wrist is broken. The left is sprained. Makes me wonder if Weatherby’s story had some truth to it. She might’ve actually been locked up down there.”

  JB let out a low whistle. “Cause of death, homicide?”

  Chet nodded, drew in a ragged breath, and met their eyes.

  “There’s something else. It’s the reason I’m out here puking my guts up. Hasn’t happened since my first day on the job. I couldn’t help but think of my own daughter.”

  Will braced himself, waited for the worst.

  “Upon x-ray, I located a fetus. A close to full-term baby boy.”

  “Come again?” JB’s mouth hung open.

  “That poor girl was going to be a mother.”

  Three

  Olivia Rockwell had never seen her father cry. Not when he crashed his Harley and had to wear a neck brace for six months. Not when her mother slapped his face so hard it left a palm print on his cheek. Not when the cops hauled him away to prison for murder. Not even the first time he held her little sister, Emily, in the miserable prison visiting room. No wonder Olivia had always kept her own tears securely dammed; stoicism was in her DNA.

  But now, the tears streaking Martin Reilly’s face couldn’t be denied.

  The parole board could do that to a man. Make him wait twenty-seven years. Plus another two hours when the hearing before his ran late. Then reduce him to a puddle in a moment, with a single question. The tattoo on his forearm—a distorted clock face with no hands—made perfect sense now.

  “What happened on the afternoon of May 3, 1992?”

  Olivia’s father wiped at his face, his sniffling broadcast through the pin-drop quiet boardroom by the microphone on the table. Olivia wished she hadn’t called in a favor with the District Attorney. That she hadn’t made the five-hour drive from Fog Harbor to Valley View State Prison in San Francisco, where her father had been transferred ten years ago. That she’d waited out in the hallway with her sister, Emily. But that very question had chased her like her own shadow. To finally be rid of it, she needed the answer.

  Her father reached clumsily for the microphone. It screeched back at him when he cleared his throat into it, and Olivia winced. It struck her how small he looked. How insignificant. Prison could do that to a man too.

  When his eyes found hers in the corner of the room, she smiled at him. She could give him that much at least.

  “I—I’m sorry. Up until my psych eval a couple months back, I’d never talked about any of this stuff. As you can tell, I’m not too good at public speaking, but I’ll give it my best shot.” He paused. “Back in ’92, they called me Mad Dog. I belonged to a—”

  Commissioner Portee raised his finger, stopping her father mid-sentence. Olivia pitied her dad then, knowing broad-shouldered, good ole boy Portee and his partner, Deputy Commissioner Alleva, held the proverbial keys to his freedom on their nondescript black leather belts.

  “Why ‘Mad Dog’? That’s quite a nickname.”

  “Well, I was quite an asshole.”

  Commissioner Portee chuckled, surprising her. Maybe her dad would be better at impressing The Man than she thought.

  “I never backed down from a fight. In fact, I welcomed it. I’d swing until the other guy hit the ground and keep on going. I wanted everyone in the Double Rock Projects to fear me. And for the most part, they did. There was no line I wouldn’t cross.”

  “You were in a gang, is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir. The Oaktown Boys, just like my daddy. God rest his soul. My father-in-law too. To me, the gang was like family. I’d have taken a bullet for any of them. A few weeks before, Chris Desoto—we called him Baby Face—got hooked up for a murder at the Double Rock. Word got out that Tina had seen the whole thing go down. That she’d ratted him out and was planning to testify against him.”

  “Did you know Tina Solomon?”

  “We all did. Her mom had her working the streets before she turned eighteen. Tina’s mom had a coke problem. Eventually, so did Tina. She needed money and there were only so many ways to make a living in the Double Rock. I sold drugs. Tina sold her body. She was a hooker. I mean, prostitute.”

  “Had you ever used her services?”

  Her father took a gulp from a bottle of water on the desk. His eyes cut to Olivia and back again. She held her breath, watching his throat constrict and expand before he spoke. She recognized this moment. The one where the rubber met the road.

  “It’s hard for me to admit, but yes. I had a drug problem myself back then. Alcohol too. Hell, I had all sorts of problems. But the biggest one was me. I can’t make any excuses. I lived up to my nickname. Running around on my wife. Behaving recklessly. Hurting people. Shirking my responsibilities as a father.”

  Olivia felt a sharp ache in her chest.

  “What happened next, Mr. Reilly? After you heard Tina had seen the murder?”

  “A few of us got together and decided I’d put the squeeze on her. Slap her around a little, so she’d shut her trap. That’s all it was supposed to be.”

  Stiff in their suits, the commissioners nodded at him as if they understood. But Carmen Sanchez, her dad’s attorney, had warned Olivia that both men had a background in law enforcement, and Olivia could see it in their faces. The blatant skepticism. The thinly veiled judgment.

  “That day, I drove around the neighborhood looking for her, but I couldn’t find her at the usual spots. So, I headed back to the Double Rock, thinking she might be there. But no such luck. After a while, I just gave up.”

  “You went back to your apartment?”

  Her father nodded. “I knew something was wrong right off the bat. Tina was lying on the floor of my living room, bleeding out. I ran over, not thinking. Grabbed the knife, left my fingerprints all over it. It was bad. Real bad. And my little girl, Olivia—well, she’s not a little girl anymore—she walked in and witnessed the aftermath. She was only eight years old. I take full responsibility for my actions. The decisions I made caused Tina’s death. But I want to be clear today. I was set up. It wasn’t me who cut her throat.”

  The memory flickered across Olivia’s mind’s eye like a photo in a viewfinder. Her father gripping the bloody knife. The teenaged boy they called Termite at his side. All of it, come and gone in a blink.

  Commissioner Portee raised one bushy eyebrow. “Wh
o was it then, Mr. Reilly?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “Both. I want to be honest with you. I really do. But I can’t put my life at risk. Or my daughters’ lives. I’ve already put my family through enough.”

  “Sounds like you’re still making excuses, Mad Dog. Either you’re lying to us today or you’re protecting a murderer. Neither one makes you fit for life on the streets, now does it?”

  Her father slumped, defeated. His heavy sigh, the sound of hope leaving his body. Olivia dug the points of her heels into the floor and forced herself to stay seated. She wondered why anyone had ever deemed her worthy of a Ph.D. in psychology—chief psychologist at Crescent Bay State Prison, no less—when she couldn’t even find the right words to say how she felt. Only that she desperately wanted to run from this room with its savagery disguised as decorum. From the two stuffy barbarians at the helm. From her spineless father, too.

  Commissioner Portee paid no mind to her father’s drooped head or his trembling shoulder, as he addressed the room with the same voice he’d used to order a chicken sandwich during the lunch break.

  “We’ll take a brief recess before we render our decision.”

  Once the decision was made, they took her father out first. Two officers led him through a side door and into the hallway, where he’d be locked inside a holding cell until he returned to his bunk in the dormitory with a hundred other men just like him. Olivia watched him shuffle past her, both relieved and disheartened she couldn’t speak to him. Emily would’ve waved or reached for his hand, but Olivia kept both of hers clasped in her lap.

  Her former patient, Drake Devere, had once told her that to survive a life sentence you only had to learn to wait. The thought of Drake somewhere out there, biding his time before he found her again, made her skin crawl. But, as her father returned to the belly of Valley View State Prison, Olivia figured Drake had it right. Commissioner Portee had issued the board’s verdict in that same hold the mayo tone.