Beneath the Bones (8 page)

But instead he gritted his teeth harder until his fillings started to ache, and he forced himself to breathe evenly as he struggled to concentrate on taking the next photograph. Sheriff Talon was depending on him to do this job, and Ronnie had never let her down before, and he sure as hell didn’t intend to now.

“Something wrong, Ronnie?” Marshall asked. Underneath the man’s tone of cool detachment, Ronnie thought he heard dark amusement. “You seem a trifle uncomfortable.”

The burning sensation increased, and Ronnie ground his teeth together so hard one of the fillings in his back molars cracked. A tiny lance of pain shot through his tooth, but it was nothing compared to agonizing fire blazing across his skin. The camera shook in his trembling hands, making the world seen through the viewfinder appear as if it were caught in the throes of an earthquake. His breath now came in ragged gasps. It felt as if he’d been coated head to toe in liquid flame.

“I can make it go away.”

Ronnie heard Marshall’s words as if they came from a great distance, and though he had no rational reason to believe them, he did. Ronnie’s family had moved to Cross County when he was eleven. He was a clean boy even then. An
especially
clean boy. But he hadn’t yet taken to washing his hands so many times a day that the skin became red, chapped, and fissured with cracks. Hadn’t yet started wearing the surgical mask when he went outside, the mask that would become his second — and in some ways truest — face. After he started school, it wasn’t long before the other children began telling him stories about the Crosses with ghoulish enthusiasm. They lived in a castle outside town, their kids were all home-schooled, they didn’t attend any of the churches in town, and some folks said they had a family chapel of some sort in their fortress home. But to whom — or what — they prayed to, no one knew. Warnings came with the tales as well, passed along with none of the mischievous glee of the stories. The kids turned dead serious, and their hushed tones and furtive glances around as they spoke — as if they feared someone, the
wrong
someone — might overhear, frightened young Ronnie more than all the lurid rumors about the Crosses combined.

When a Cross asks you to do something, you should. But when a Cross
tells
you to do something, you’ve got to
.

There would be a pause then, and the advice-giver’s voice always fell to a whisper.

They can
make
you
.

And so now, over forty years later, Ronnie believed Marshall could do as he said, believed from the top of his flaming scalp to the bottoms of his fire-seared feet.

“Something’s happening, Ronnie. Something that involves Family business.”

Though it was difficult for Ronnie to make out Marshall’s voice through the red haze of pain that enshrouded his mind, he was still able to hear the way Marshall stressed the word
Family
.

“Joanne’s good at what she does, and normally we’re content to let her go about her job without any interference on our part. But whatever’s going on is too important for us to stand by and wait for the wheels of justice to turn on their own. Joanne won’t like us taking an active hand in her investigation, and because of this, she will no doubt be reluctant to share whatever information she discovers. That’s where you come in, Ronnie.”

Ronnie’s breath was coming in ragged bursts now —
huh-huh-huh-huh-huh! —
and a far-off corner of his mind that wasn’t consumed by pain and terror wondered if he were on the verge of hyperventilating.

“I need someone to keep me apprised of Joanne’s progress. Someone who’ll tell me everything — and who will of course keep our arrangement secret from the good Sheriff. Do that for me, and the pain will go away. It won’t even be a memory.”

Ronnie wanted to tell Marshall yes, wanted to cry out that he’d do anything, anything at all, if Marshall would stop the pain. But Marshall Cross didn’t understand who he was dealing with. Ronnie lived a life of complete control: ordered, regulated, sterilized … as germ-free, contact-free, and disturbance-free as it was possible for a human being to get. Ronnie wanted to say yes and end the agony, but he wanted to do right by Sheriff Talon even more.

And he understood control.

And so he fought to ignore the pain that held him in its blazing grip, and he managed to gasp out a single word.

“Nuh … No.”

Marshall’s gaze filled with regret. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Ronnie. I truly do. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”

Ronnie felt that odd pressure inside his head again, and suddenly as if a switch had been thrown somewhere inside his brain, the pain ceased. The sudden absence of sensation was so startling that he drew in a gasping breath. He stood stunned for a moment, not quite able to bring himself to believe it was really over.

And it wasn’t.

His hands were ungloved, his face unmasked, and he stood naked in the morning sun. But his skin wasn’t completely exposed to the air. He was covered with thick, foul-smelling, brownish-green muck, and with horror he realized he was slathered in feces. And that wasn’t the whole of it. Wriggling white things that could only be maggots crawled in and out of the filth, and Ronnie could feel them writhe against his skin. He held his breath to keep from inhaling the stench, and he squeezed his eyes shut to keep the maggots from getting at his eyes. He tried not to think of the millions … no,
billions
of germs that were crawling all over him right now, furiously seeking a way to get inside his body where they could begin to multiply.

The pain had been agonizing, but Ronnie could deal with pain. After all, it was just a sensation, and sensations could be ignored. But
this
… this was too much for him. He started shuddering and couldn’t stop. Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes, their moisture doing little wash the muck from his face. The camera, which he hadn’t realized he was still holding, slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground. Seconds later, Ronnie was down on his hands and knees. Another few seconds after that, he whispered a single word.

It turned out Ronnie had been wrong about Marshall Cross. He’d known precisely what sort of man he’d been dealing with.

Joanne found Debbie standing behind the counter, wiping her eyes with a handful of napkins. She tried not to think about everything Debbie might’ve touched on her way inside — the front door handle, the counter, who knew what else — and the evidence she might’ve destroyed by doing so. Instead, she walked over to the counter and sat on a stool directly in front of Debbie.

“You okay?”

Debbie dabbed at her eyes one more time before nodding.

“Tell me what else happened last night,” she said.
“Please.”

Joanne knew she shouldn’t, that she should first question Debbie about what had happened here at the café so that her memory wouldn’t be compromised. She would undoubtedly interpret what happened here at the café differently once she learned about the murder. Maybe only in some small, unimportant ways, but maybe in some major ones. It was a mistake, and Joanne knew it, but she decided to tell Debbie what she wanted to know. The woman had suffered so much over the years, and Joanne couldn’t bring herself to add to that suffering, even if only for a few moments.

She thought Debbie might start crying again as she listened to the details of last night’s murder, but instead the woman grew calmer the more Joanne spoke. When she finished, Debbie regarded her silently for a moment, her expression unreadable.

“You don’t know who the boy is … was?”

“Not yet. And so far no missing persons reports have come in.”

“And he had Carl’s mark on him. But he wasn’t found on the Deveraux Farm.”

Joanne didn’t respond, as she sensed Debbie wasn’t asking questions so much as thinking aloud.

“It’s sad,” said Debbie. “I mean, someone died last night, and I should feel sorry for him, but my first reaction is to hope that maybe Carl wasn’t a killer after all. That someone else was responsible and my baby was innocent. I know he was guilty. He told me so, and I believed him. But here I stand, ready to forget all of that on the slim chance my boy’s memory might be redeemed.” Debbie gave Joanne a small, sad smile. “Pretty goddamned pathetic, huh?”

“Not at all. It just means that despite everything, you still love your son.” Joanne paused and took a breath as she prepared to shift gears. “I hate to do this right now, but I have to ask you some questions about what happened here last night.”

“Sure, I understand. You want me to brew some coffee?”

Joanne wanted to say that Debbie shouldn’t touch anything else in the café, but then she figured what were the odds that whoever had broken in last night had messed with the coffee machine? Besides, given how little sleep Joanne had last night, she needed all the caffeine she could get.

“Sounds good.”

Debbie went to work and a few minutes later the two women sat side by side at the counter, two steaming mugs of coffee in front of them, the rich aroma hanging pleasantly in the air. The atmosphere seemed far too cozy, too
normal
, considering what they were about to discuss. Joanne started with the question that had been foremost on her mind since the moment she’d received Ronnie’s call.

“Why did you wait until this morning to report the break-in?”

Debbie held her mug cupped in her hands, and she gazed down at its contents as if she might find answers, or at least a measure of reassurance, in its black depths.

“I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I was scared. So scared that I guess I didn’t want to face it, you know? It was easier to tell myself that it was just another cruel practical joke that had gone too far. By the time I walked home, I’d convinced myself that it was no big deal, and I decided to come in early today and clean up the mess before opening.”

Debbie had lived out in the country for decades, but a couple years ago — after one too many rubber knives coated with red-paint blood had been left in her mailbox — she’d sold her house and moved into another on the south side of town, where there were neighborhood watch programs and more regular sheriff patrols. A longish walk, but still doable for an out-of-shape middle-aged woman, especially if she was wired from adrenaline.

“What changed your mind about reporting the incident?” Joanne asked.

“After I got home, I couldn’t sleep. I just lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, going over what happened, and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed different than all those other times. It probably sounds stupid, but even though I never saw anyone during the break-in, I could
feel
their hatred. It was like the air was thick with it, you know? Like the way it gets when a storm’s rolling in.”

Joanne couldn’t have put it better herself. A storm was indeed descending on Cross County — a goddamned big one. And she wondered if there was anyplace where its citizens could find shelter.

• • •

Dale started to move past Tyrone, intending to leave the alley and rush across the street to Ronnie’s aid. But Tyrone grabbed hold of his arm and held him back.

“Wait,” Tyrone whispered.

Dale hesitated long enough to see Ronnie push back onto his heels. The deputy sat like that for a moment while he got himself together, and then he gathered up the camera he’d dropped, along with the pieces that had broken off. He stood, swaying for an instant as if he might collapse again, but then he grew steadier, and it looked like he was going to be able to remain on his feet.

“What happened?” Dale asked.

“You know. Marshall did something to him.”

It was a simple declaration, but one fraught with meaning. Tyrone was right. Dale did know, better than almost anyone — anyone whose surname wasn’t Cross, that is. But as intrigued as he was to know the precise nature of what had been done to Ronnie, he needed some information from Tyrone first.

“You were about to tell me what you saw last night.”

Tyrone smiled. “I was?” But then he went on to tell Dale what he had witnessed from his vantage point sitting in the doorway of Holloway’s Cards and Notions.

Dale listened as Tyrone talked, but he continued watching what was happening across the street. Ronnie put the damaged camera back in his cruiser and removed the evidence kit from the trunk. As the deputy started to work on gathering evidence from the vandalized Ford, Marshall climbed into his Hummer, started the engine, and pulled out of the parking lot. Marshall gave Ronnie a last look before driving away, but the deputy ignored him and continued with his work. Dale wondered how much effort it had cost Ronnie to do that.

When Tyrone finished, Dale turned to him and said, “And that was the last time you saw the person who broke in?”

“It was a quiet night after that. Until the paramedics left the county building and headed out for the murder site, that is.”

Dale thought about Tyrone’s description of the person he’d seen break into the Caffeine Café. Medium height, slender build, dressed in a gray hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and running shoes. Head and face obscured by the hood and the night’s shadows. It didn’t occur to Dale to question any of the details Tyrone supplied. He knew the man’s attention to specifics was scrupulous, and his memory unimpeachable. If any human on the planet had a brain that was the equivalent of a security camera, it was Tyrone Gantz.

The description wasn’t especially helpful, but it was something to start with. Beyond the fact that it wasn’t someone tall or fat, there wasn’t a lot to go on. Even the person’s gender was indeterminate. And of course there was no guarantee the person in the hoody was the same one who’d later killed that boy out on a country road. Though whoever it was would’ve had ample time after scaring Debbie to commit the murder. A couple of hours, at least.

A thought occurred to Dale then. Maybe whoever it was had wanted to do more than simply frighten Debbie. Maybe he or she had intended to kill Debbie and had muffed the job. In which case, maybe the boy had been only a substitute, someone on whom the killer could take out the frustration of botching the attempt on Debbie. But if the boy had been simply a target of opportunity, why had the killer taken his wallet? To pick up a few extra bucks or to delay having the boy identified? Dale was certain Joanne would find out who the boy was eventually, but if the killer wanted to keep the boy’s identity a secret, then the sooner they discovered who he was, the better. If there was only some way to speed up the process …