Bad Bones (Claire Morgan) (7 page)

“Well, are you or not? Cat got your tongue, you sissy punk?”

Afraid, Punk finally said, “No, sir. I ain’t gonna cry no more. Not never.”

“Well, guess we’ll see about that. Git up and git in that ring. Now!”

Punk looked around for Bones, but he couldn’t see him anywhere. He hadn’t shown up for the practice bouts. Pa was gonna kill him if he didn’t come soon. Where was he, anyways?

Dragging himself out into the center of the dirt ring, he looked around again, hoping that Bones would show up soon. He couldn’t fight long without his tag team partner. He didn’t know how to win or duck the punches or evade the jabs. And who was he gonna fight with, anyway, if Bones didn’t come?

“You ready, kid,” Pa said, and then he put up his own fists in front of him like a boxer. Oh, God, no, he was gonna have to fight his pa! That was the worst thing of all. He had seen his pa beat up his oldest brother until he couldn’t get out of bed for a week.

“I—I—don’t know. I just started learnin’—”

“You are a sissy, ain’t you? Don’t you worry none. I ain’t gonna kill you, unless you won’t fight with me.”

Punk just stood there. His pa frowned and came over and slugged him hard in the stomach. He bent over double, holding his gut, the breath knocked out of him, but then his pa was back, picking him up bodily and throwing him down on the ground. He kicked him in the side, and Punk cried out with pain. “Well, you sure didn’t last long, now did you, Punk? C’mon, git up on your feet and hit me. Hit me as hard as you can. I’ll let you. Go ahead. Do it, or I’ll knock your teeth plumb down your throat.”

So Punk dragged himself up and weakly doubled his fist. He swung out at his pa’s stomach, but missed entirely. Laughing at him, Pa slapped him up the side of his head with his open palm, one side and then the other, until he fell down again. He groaned, and this time he didn’t get up.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, here came Bones, flying to the rescue, attacking their big pa as if he wasn’t twice his size. Fists pummeling, yelling the most awful obscenities, he hit his pa between the legs, hard with his fist, causing him to lurch over and fall to his knees. Punk sat back and watched as Bones began to kick Pa in the side, harder and harder, with the toe of his leather work boot. Then he pushed the big man down onto his back, grabbing him around the throat and riding him like a cowboy as Pa tried to buck him off.

Punk smiled to himself, thinking that Pa deserved to get hit like that, but now he was afraid for Bones. His pa was surely going to kill him for messing him up so bad. And that was against the rules of the ring, anyways, to kick anybody down there in the crotch. For that, Bones was gonna be punished so long and hard that he might even die.

But then, after a few minutes, Pa rolled over and held his arms up in the air. To Punk’s shock, he was laughing, even though Bones’s blows were still landing all over his chest and face. “Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Pa cried out, pleased. “You boys need to be more like old Bones here. Bones is gonna be a champion someday, and that’s for sure. Bones has no fear. You don’t see him cryin’ and snivelin’, now do you? He’s the best of the lot of you. The rest of you just suck. So you can all go without dinner tonight because Bones and me, we’re goin’ into town to McDonalds and then to the movies.”

Then he stood up and picked up Bones and boosted him on his shoulders and carried him away like he was the winner and the best fighter in the world. Punk lay back in the dirt and stared up at the clear blue sky. He pulled in a deep breath and tried to stop the bleeding of his nose with his fingertips. He didn’t care where his pa was going, he didn’t care what he did there; he was just glad he was gone. He hoped he had a wreck and died and never came back again.

 

 

But Pa eventually did come back and all the brutality continued for a long time to come. As the years passed by, Punk toughened up more and more. It took lots of bruises and injuries and bloody noses, but he got stronger and braver and better. Pa rarely whupped him anymore, or any of the other boys, either, because they were all now as big and brutal as Pa was. One time, they got a visit from a police officer, and he told Pa that his boys had to start going into town to attend school. But Pa said he was homeschooling them, and the cop left and had not come back again. So they had their school lessons every morning, and the rest of the day, they sparred in the new chicken-wire cage that Pa had constructed inside the barn. They practiced all week for the Saturday night matches out in the pasture, and they all had begun to win. They were famous in the neighborhood. Famous for winning cage fights and for Pa’s cruel dog fighting business.

One night when Punk was out in the barn, feeding the dogs, with Banjo at his heels, Pa came inside and shut the door behind him. He had his whip in his hand, and Punk looked at it and then at his pa’s face. Pa was frowning and looking at Punk out of very mean eyes. Punk could smell the booze on his breath, lots of it. Pa let them all drink with him now, even the youngest ones. He let them do whatever they wanted to do, smoke, drink, stay out all night hunting and fooling around and knocking mailboxes off their posts, but only if they fought hard on Saturday and won their matches.

“Time for you to learn how the dog fights go, Punk Boy.”

“Okay.” Punk put down the pail of dog food and waited. Pa was unpredictable when he was drinking so early in the day. He got real nasty and ugly and cruel. That’s when he was the scariest. That’s when he lost control and hurt them the most.

“Git over here, boy. Wassa matter wit’ you?” Pa’s voice was slurred. His face was red and flushed and his eyes were watery. He had really hung one on that day. He was smashed.

“Yes, sir.” Punk was beginning to wish Bones would show up and calm Pa down. He was the only one who could, but he had disappeared again, off somewhere by himself, doing whatever he did when he went off alone. Punk always felt a lot safer when Bones was around to protect him. Bones was Pa’s favorite kid by far. Bones hardly ever got in trouble or was punished for anything, no matter how bad it was. Pa said that Bones was his golden goose.

Punk stood silently and watched his pa open the gate and grab a big Rottweiler named Demon by the collar and drag the whining dog out to the beating post. He put him on the short leash, and the dog whimpered and moved nervously from side to side, well aware of what was coming. Pa beat his best fighting dogs daily to make them mean. It made Punk want to vomit, and he always tried to comfort them when Pa was done and left them lying there, all cowed and pitiful and snarling at any kind of human contact.

“Okay, boy, it’s your turn to learn to whup these curs into shape. You ain’t near good enough in the ring as Bones is. You ain’t never gonna amount to nothin’. You hear me, boy. You ain’t worth spit.”

Punk looked down at the whip in his pa’s hand and then at the cowering, terrified dog. He set his jaw. “I ain’t gonna do it. I ain’t gonna whup no helpless, tied-up little dog.”

First Pa looked absolutely stunned, and then Punk could almost see the terrible rage gushing up out of him, like it always did when one of the boys defied his orders. “What did you say to me? What did you say, you little turd?”

“I ain’t gonna whip no dogs. Not ever. And I ain’t gonna let you do it, neither.”

Another shocked stare, and then Pa threw back his head and laughed down deep inside his gut. But then he sobered and the mean look came back. “That so? How you gonna stop me, boy?”

“Just go back in the house and go to bed, Pa. You’re drunk. Sleep it off. Let me be and go about finishin’ up my chores.”

When he turned around and picked up the bucket again, his father came at him, raining down blows with the leather whip. He hit Punk in the face before Punk could dodge the assault, and blood oozed from the long red weal down his left cheek. He kept on hitting Punk with the whip, and Punk tried to catch it in his hand and pull it out of his grasp. He finally shoved his pa and got the whip away from him, but then Bones was there, his guardian angel flying in to the rescue, and he grabbed the heavy pail and swung it forcefully against their pa’s skull. It hit with a sickening clang, and Pa went down on his knees and then fell face-first in the straw.

“I’m getting’ out of here before he wakes up,” Bones said. “Come on, run.”

Punk took the time to put poor quivering Demon back in his pen, and then he headed out to the woods at a run in search of his twin. There was gonna be hell to pay for knocking their pa out, but it was worth it to see him lying there bleeding on the ground. He deserved it. In fact, Pa deserved to die for all the beatings and cussings and mean things he did to all of them. And maybe he would. Maybe Punk and Bones could kill him together and free all their brothers from his constant cruelty. Maybe that’s what they should do. Happy at that thought, he ran out across the pasture after his brother, whom he could just barely see now, way far ahead of him. Yeah, they needed to kill him. They needed to do it together. Punk laughed out loud. He had never been so excited.

“Man alive, I can’t get enough of this sunshine. I almost forgot what it looked like. You know, blue sky, glitter and sparkle off the snow, and the water in the lake actually moving.”

“Well, don’t get used to it, Bud. It’s supposed to drop below zero again tonight with more snow on the way.”

“I can never remember the weather bein’ this cold and snowy since I moved up here. Think I’ll just move back down to Atlanta where the weather gods are kinder and love Southern accents.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. I’ve got way too much invested in you. I’m not gonna break in any new partners, believe me.” Besides, she probably couldn’t find another guy in his right mind willing to take her on, considering her record of attracting vicious serial killers and lunatics.

Bud shot a quick look at Claire. “Aha, you do love me, Morgan. C’mon, just admit it. I knew it all along, to tell you the truth. And tell you somethin’ else, you’re never gonna find another guy like me to have your back. I am something special.”

Claire smiled. “True, all true. You’re one of a kind, all right, but what kind? That’s the pertinent question.”

Bud grinned. “You just don’t wanna admit how much you rely on my sense of calm and my good common sense. Hell, you might’ve slapped old Dazz up the side of the head about that ring thing, if I hadn’t taken over and brought everybody down a notch.”

“You’re probably right. I still might, if I ever get another shot at him. The jerk.”

They were driving up into the hills surrounding the lake, searching for Blythe Parker’s address, but not having the best of luck. “Do you even know where Sky View Ridge is?”

Bud said, “You know good and well that I know everything about everything. I read books. I watch the Discovery Channel. Be patient. We’re almost there. And I can tell you one thing, we’re workin’ our way up into some verrrry pricey neighborhoods about now.”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

And Claire could tell. All she had to do was peer out the passenger window at the passing pricey scenery. Large wooded tracts, each and every one, all with fancy lantern-lit brick entrance gates and paved driveways that wound up through big snow-laden oaks and elms and ended at veritable mansions barely visible from the road. “I find it a tad hard to believe that a puny little cage fighter lives up here with the Trumps and the Buffets.”

“Maybe he’s manor born. Or more likely, maybe she is.”

“Guess we’ll soon find out. There’s his mailbox, right there, see it? Over on the right.”

Bud pulled up and stopped beside it, a fancy white lacey thing that probably cost mucho buckeroos. They were on a rural lake road now, one too isolated to suffer a lot of traffic. None, to be exact. Claire had certainly never been up there before. The sun had melted off some of the snow and ice on the side of the road, so they turned in the driveway without any trouble. The entrance road was pretty much scraped clean, unlike most of the others they had passed along the way. Walls of snow lined each side. “Man, I do not want to do this to this poor lady,” Bud said. “So you’re gonna do the talkin’ this time, right, Claire?”

“Thanks for nothing.”

“Hey, I do my fair share. You’re just better at this sort of thing. Bein’ a woman, and all that.”

“Yeah, right. I suspect I can do it better than Dazz would.” But the fair share part was right on, especially since she’d spent several months down in New Orleans with Black, and not so long ago, either. Bud was her best friend, for sure. Bud and Harve both. She could always depend on them. No questions asked, just like Black. Well, Black asked a lot of questions, no doubt about that, but he was always there when she needed him. “I know you do your share of the work. You’re the best, Bud. I depend on you.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about.” But Bud looked happy, noticeably pleased as punch as he started driving up through the snowy woods. He slowed down the Bronco when the house came into sight. He stopped and they both just stared at it. “Whoa. Good grief. Remind me to take up cage fighting. Then I won’t have to marry that ugly rich gal.”

Claire thought the house looked more like an estate. Big and sprawling and modern, with dark cypress wood and miles of shining glass and angular clean lines. Lots of walls made entirely of plate glass, and dozens of doors and windows faced one sweet view of the lake from as high a vantage point as Black’s penthouse. Claire glimpsed a woman in one of those giant windows, wearing a short white dress and standing motionlessly as she stared out over the lake. A wife worrying about her husband? Probably so. And for very good reason.

Bud followed the circular drive to a little decorative oval fish pond which probably held some seriously chilly goldfish and stopped at the bottom of a flight of steps that led up to a front porch covered by a fancy pergola made out of huge cypress beams. Somebody had shoveled off the snow up there, too. They both got out and clunked their doors shut. They gazed up at the house looming a good three stories above them. And yes, they were slightly in awe. It was a very unusual structure, more than impressive, really. Like something Black might buy for its architectural interest but that Claire would hate because it looked cold and empty and soulless to her. On top of all that, it was plain bizarre looking.

The ground floor appeared to be a spacious garage, similar to the one at Black’s house on Governor Nicholl’s Street in the New Orleans French Quarter, which had been built up high in case of flooding. But there was no way in hell that this place could ever flood. It was up way too high on the cliffs, cliffs that were very similar to the ones in Ha Ha Tonka State Park and in other parts of the lake. It occurred to Claire at that point that their victim could’ve been thrown off that very selfsame cliff and later dumped at the park. But why? She couldn’t think of a good reason. She walked the short distance to the edge of the cliff, which really wasn’t all that far from the front porch, and looked down, way down. Far below, the ground was covered with deep snow and barely visible brambles and thickets and bushes, all of which could hide a body forever. Claire moved away from the edge and walked back to Bud where he waited at the bottom of the staircase. He didn’t like heights so he tended to let her check them out. Suddenly very interested in meeting that pensive lady in that upstairs window, they started climbing the steps.

Claire didn’t have to wait long. Before they were halfway up the steep staircase, the same woman appeared above them on the landing. She was hugging herself, her arms crossed over her chest, apparently cold sans a coat in that very short dress. “You’re the police, aren’t you?” she called down to them. Her voice was trembling a bit, and each excited breath she took looked like smoke in the bitterly cold air. She started wringing her hands and shivering all over. She looked as if she were teetering on the precipice of a nervous breakdown, one of gargantuan proportions.

Claire glanced at Bud and then looked back up at the woman. “Yes, ma’am. We’re detectives at the Canton County Sheriff’s Office. We’d like to talk to you, if that’s okay.”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Are you Mrs. Blythe Parker?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. My husband’s dead, isn’t he? Tell me, tell me the truth!”

“Maybe we could come inside and talk to you. Would that be all right?”

The woman did not look good. In fact, she looked like hell warmed over. She pressed both hands over her mouth and gave a strangled sob. She knew all right. Women’s intuition? Or maybe if you had a cage fighter for a husband, you had a tendency to expect the worse. They clomped their way up to the porch, trying to stamp snow off their boots along the way. Mrs. Parker stood back and allowed them to precede her through a pair of eight-feet-tall French doors made of beautiful stained glass etched in the design of a majestic leaping buck.

The inside of the home was about what Claire expected. Purest of luxury, to be sure. Nicholas-Black-Luxury, in fact, and that meant pretty damn luxurious. Dark shiny hardwood floors that looked like wide planked bamboo, maybe, dark iron chandeliers dripping with crystals, low black leather couches, teak tables, damask easy chairs, original paintings, framed photographs consisting mostly of shots of the lake and the beautiful Ozark hills. Yep, the whole bit. Somebody in the Parker brood had beaucoup dollar bills and didn’t mind spending them. No doubt about it. Something told Claire that the poor guy lying all broken up and lifeless downtown on that cold autopsy table had not forked out the dough for such a place. If not him, then who? Again, her distrust of the super wealthy began eating a hole in her comfort zone.

The woman had started crying now and was hiding her face in her open palms while she boo-hooed. She was tall, even taller than Claire, who stood around five feet nine. She was extremely pale, EXTREMELY needing capital letters to describe it, with unreal-looking porcelain white skin, platinum white hair, cut very, very short, almost buzzed, and gelled up slightly on top near her forehead. Almost albino-ish, in fact, except that her eyes were green, a bright, piercing, artificial green manufactured by tinted contact lenses, bet on it. So green, in fact, that both she and Bud were in danger of becoming mesmerized by them. Sort of Wizard-of-Oz-Emerald-City-greenish. Who knew, maybe the woman was hiding some weird pink eyes under those lenses. Or was that an old albino wives’ tale?

Truth be told, the woman’s flesh looked so white, especially in that white dress, that Claire suspected that if she were to lie down on the snow, all one would see would be those magnetic X-Men eyes. She was thin, too, wafer thin, and in need of a Quarter Pounder with Cheese Value Meal, Supersized, and a full bag of Snickers bars and an M&M McFlurry, all in the worst way imaginable. All of which also gave Claire some vivid hunger pangs. However, their hostess was indeed slight with very small, sharp features, very canary bird-like, in fact, which pretty much described every other part of her, too. A gorgeous, rare bird that seemed fragile and ethereal and in need of a hearty refill of her seed bowl. A bird that looked terribly frightened at the moment and close to losing all vestiges of composure. Claire couldn’t have thought up a better name for the woman standing in front of them, either. She looked exactly like a Blythe should look.

“They killed him, didn’t they? Paulie’s dead, isn’t he? They finally got him! Tell me, tell me, tellllll mmmme!”

Whoa there, doggie. That last part was shrilled out and echoed up through the wide wooden spiral staircase behind them. Claire frowned a little. Okay, this wasn’t going according to plan, or smoothly, even. Paulie Parker’s wife was not going to let Claire ease out a slow and tender homicide notification. She apparently already knew, and had been expecting bad news. She hadn’t asked for their badges. She hadn’t asked anything but that one pertinent question. So, so be it. “Yes, ma’am, I’m very sorry to have to tell you. We found your husband’s body yesterday and did not identify him until today. We came here as soon as we could. We are both just so sorry for your loss.”

Now the woman just stood there and stared at them out of wide, shocked, and scary-as-hell green eyes. If Blythe Parker had somehow known in her heart, she sure didn’t want to believe it now. They all remained standing, just inside the front door, in a stilted silence, a pretty horrible stilted silence at that. No sounds came from around them in the house at all, not even a clock ticking. At length, Bud said, “Maybe you should sit down, Mrs. Parker. This has got to be quite a shock for you.”

Blythe Parker seemed to awaken from a trance and stumbled her way over to a deep and soft, blue-and-white-and-gray chevron-patterned chair with a matching hassock. She just dropped down into its depths, as if her legs had given out from under her. Tears were gushing out big–time now, streaming down both pale cheeks, but she made no sounds of grief or horror or despair, as if she had learned long ago how to weep in complete and total silence. Creeeepy, you betcha.

Still, Claire could see that the absolute grief overwhelming the other woman was quite real, which made her slightly unsure on how to proceed with the interview. She also sensed something very peculiar was going on inside that spacious and frigid-cold-looking mansion atop the hill. “Again, let me say that I’m so sorry about your husband, Mrs. Parker.”

Claire gave the poor lady a few moments to compose herself. Claire needed a few more moments herself. She took a deep breath, thrown for quite a loop, which was not something that happened every day, or ever. She considered Blythe, who had become calm now and had turned her head to stare out the windows at the sky, which was now dark with snow-threatening gunmetal clouds lining the horizon like layers of gray agate. Blythe had not asked her what happened, as if she already knew. But what did she think? What the hell was going on? She hated to be intrusive, but the woman did not speak again, but sat silently, looking all heartbroken and collapsed in upon herself, like a whipped puppy or a flopped soufflé. It was hard to watch. Claire and Bud exchanged a significant glance. Said glance told her that Bud was not going to say a word, not on a bet. So neither did Claire.

Complete quiet reigned for almost five minutes, which seemed more like five hours. Then Blythe Parker spoke up, her eyes never leaving the windows. “I knew they’d kill him. Sooner or later.”

Okay, a remark like that was always interesting, especially to two hard-nosed homicide detectives who had found a dead body beaten to a pulp with lots of bones protruding through the skin. “I guess we’re gonna have to know exactly who you’re talking about, Mrs. Parker.”

“My ex-husband’s people. I guess he finally got to him.”

Bud and Claire stared at her. A very bad feeling began to take shape inside Claire’s gut, sorta like the first twinge of nausea that heralded a horrendous three-day stomach flu. Things were sliding downhill very fast and very hard. She had to ask a lot more questions of this very white lady, all of which were going to complicate their case, but she had to do it.