Bones (39 page)

Simone Vander has materialized on the beach. From nowhere.

The camera in Travis Huck’s button captures her willowy frame floating forward.

I think of a mermaid rising from the ocean.

As she gets closer, the bag in her hand takes shape. Large, paper, Trader Joe’s logo. Everything right on course, so far so good.

Simone’s clothes are dry, maybe a walk-on-water miracle?

So-thin girl, dry hair fluffing in the breeze. She walks along the beach. Bare feet mold to the sand. Walking with confidence, a rich girl accustomed to private silica, ambling, loose-limbed, swinging the bag, not a care in the world.

Huck stands there.

Milo says, “Where the hell did she come from?”

Aaron Fox says, “Don’t know. Camera is great for up close but past a certain point, you lose clarity in the long image.”

As if in illustration, Simone steps within fifteen feet of Huck, stares at him, stops, and her facial features clarify. Maybe a bit more tense than her easy walk had suggested. Green overtones don’t help. Bones sharper than I remember.

But still, a pretty girl.

The outfit she’s picked is SoCal Cutie 101: sprayed-on, low-riding jeans, dark middy blouse revealing a drum-tight belly, bangle bracelets, big hoop earrings.

Two
pierces in her navel. The breeze blows dark hair away from her left ear, revealing a solitary diamond glinting from cartilage. The feed is that good.

Huck doesn’t move and for several seconds, neither does Simone.

“Travis.” The sound’s a bit grainy and her voice seems high, distant, muffled. As if she’s talking through a mouthful of whipped cream. Or blood.

“Simone.”

“Where will you go?”

“Not important.”

Simone smiles, steps closer, swinging the bag. “Poor Travis.”

“Poor Kelvin.”

Simone’s smile freezes. “Your little buddy.”

“Your little brother.”

“Half brother,” she says.

“Gook brother,” he says.

She gives a start, her eyes narrow, backtracking, trying to figure out where he got that.

She says, “Didn’t know you were a racist.”

“I heard you say it, Simone.” Something has changed in Huck’s voice. Deeper. Tighter.

Fox catches it. “Sounds like he’s working himself up. He goes for her, we’re too far to stop it.”

No one in the room answers him.

Simone Vander says, “You stalked me.”

“I did.”

She laughs at the shameless admission. “I fuck you four times and you can’t get over it.”

“Five.”

“Four. Loser. The first time was a joke. You have to actually put it
in
before you
spooze
to call it fucking.” She laughs harder. The tail end of her cruel mirth is softened by the fizz of an incoming wave.

She walks closer to Huck.

“You are such a dickbrain
loser,
Travis.”

“I know.”

His flat agreeability enrages her and her eyes turn to surgical incisions. She stops, sinks into the sand a bit, shifts position and finds higher ground. The bag swings wider. “You think you can escape your loser self by admitting that you’re a loser? What’s that, some rehab bullshit?”

Huck doesn’t respond.

“You’re a loser, a retard, a dickbrain preemie burnout. So don’t go thinking you can mess with me, Travis. Only reason I’m here is because I feel sorry for you, okay? And guess what the first thing you’re going to do when you’ve got my money?”

Silence.

“Take a guess, retard.”

Silence.

Simone tosses her hair, holds the bag in both hands. “The first thing you’re going to do — and you’re going to do it soon — is take every penny I give you and shove it up your nose or shoot it totally into your veins. Maybe we’ll both be lucky and you’ll totally O.D. What do you think, honey? Wouldn’t that be a good solution for everyone?”

Huck doesn’t answer.

The ocean rolls.

I wonder if he’s sweating. Moe Reed is. Milo is. Dark circles have spread under the armholes of Aaron Fox’s white-on-white silk shirt.

My scalp is sodden, my mouth is dry.

Another wave comes in, a big one, crashing.

Simone says, “Just do it, Travis. Like Nike says. O.D. yourself and put everyone out of their misery.”

“Why’d you do it, Simone?”

She laughs. “Why did I fuck you? Good question, Brain-Dead.”

“Why’d you kill them?”

Simone doesn’t confess, nor does she deny. She appears to glance past Huck, as if expecting company.

The four of us tense.

Moments pass.

Huck says, “All of them. Kelvin. How did you get yourself to that point?”

Simone’s laughter is sudden, shrill, unsettling. “You know how neat I am, honey. Comes a time, dirt has to go.”

Huck doesn’t speak. Maybe stunned. Or smart enough — with enough experience as a therapy patient — to use the silence.

Simone swings the bag. Arches her back, appears to be flaunting whatever chest she has.

Aaron Fox says, “She never stops. First time I met her, she was all sex.”

Simone says, “Catching up’s been fun, stud, but let’s just do this.”

Huck doesn’t answer. Simone appears distracted by the ocean. “Now you’re a dickbrain dumbie, too?”

Silence.

Fox says, “Say something, dude, keep her stringing along.” His jaw is tight and all his insouciance is gone and I catch a sense of what he was like working homicide.

Simone steps closer to Huck, just out of arm’s reach. A steady button-camera says Huck remains still.

He hasn’t budged since we planted him on the sand.

“Just like that,” he says.

“Like what?”

“You pay me, you’re free of sin.”

“Sin?” says Simone. “What the fuck is that?”

“Sixth Commandment.”

“What’s — oh, thou shalt not yadda yadda yadda.”

“All for money,” says Huck, with sympathy in his voice.

“Nothing sweeter.”

“It was more than that,” says Huck. “You’re jealous of Kelvin. Always were.”

“Jealous,” she says, as if the word is foreign.

“He’s got talent. You’ve got issues.”

Simone stares into the camera. Her chest heaves. She smiles. “You know what my issue is, Travis? Being here with a dickbrain like you so I can give you money so you can go shoot it up your arm or jam it in your nose. So cut the talk — you always wanted to talk.”

“You were nice to me so you could set me up.”

“Nice to you?”

“Pretending.”

“Sweetie,” she says, “you are so set-up-able.”

“So you could clean house.”

“Sweep, mop, polish,” she singsongs.

“Your dad gave you everything, Simone. You could have everything without killing them.”

“Really?” she says. “Everything for me and nothing for her? You
are
retarded.”

“There’s enough to go around, Simone.”

Simone thrusts the bag at him. “Take it and shut the fuck up.”

She grows smaller in the camera’s eye. Huck has retreated a foot or so.

“Take it!”

Milo slants forward.

Moe Reed mutters, “Go, go, go.”

Huck says, “All because you wanted the gold for yourself.”

Simone smirks. “I’ve
got
the gold. Loser.”

“A kid, Simone. You hugged and kissed him and played with his hair. You hugged Nadine. Now they’re gooks?”

“They were always gooks—”

“You
kissed
them.”

Simone laughs. “Like in the Mafia —
The Godfather.
You get kissed before you get blown away.”

“Was it easy, Simone? Did you look in their eyes — did you look in Kelvin’s eyes?”

Simone laughs louder. “What’s the big deal? Everyone dies the same.”

“Keep talking,” says Milo.

Huck says, “You looked into his eyes.”

“The eyes change,” says Simone, and her own orbs illustrate by taking on a dreamy look. “It’s like watching the light go out. There’s nothing like it.” Arching her back again. “I watched the light go out in
her
eyes and I
came.
”

Milo pumps a fist. “
Got
her!”

She drops the bag on the sand. “Here’s what you want. Have a bad life.”

The camera doesn’t falter.

“What, you think I’m punking you, loser? C’mere, look.”

“What did you do with them, Simone?”

“Ate ’em,” says Simone. “With fava beans and Chianti… what did we
do
? We jammed dynamite up their asses — who cares? Take this and crawl like the maggot you are.”

She bends toward the bag, inserts her hand, comes up with a bound wad of bills.

Tosses it.

Huck doesn’t budge. The money lands on the sand.

Simone stares at it.
“What?”

“It’s fine,” says Huck. “Leave it and go.”

Simone studies him.

“Leave it and go,” Huck repeats. “Have whatever life you think you deserve.”

“What’s that, a curse, some kind of hex?” says Simone. “From you, a curse is a blessing.”

She turns to leave. Stops, rotates. Jams her hand into the bag and comes up with something that isn’t money.

Long and thin; she holds it aloft.

“Oh, shit,” said Fox, as she charges Huck.

The camera captures her eyes, hot and frigid simultaneously. The blandness of her face as she thrusts the knife.

Huck’s hands shoot out into the camera’s eye as he grabs for the weapon.

Simone lunges, twists, grunts, blood spurts.

Huck says nothing as she continues to stab him.

Milo runs toward the deck stairs that lead to the beach, Reed races on his heels, overtakes him.

Aaron Fox gapes at the screen.

I catch the look on his face as I run after Milo and Reed.

See him right now, and you wouldn’t know he was ever a confident, elegant man.

The sounds from the screen, wet, thumping, insistent, fill my ears as my feet hit the sand and I’m well out of range and hearing is no longer relevant.

When we get to the spot where Simone Vander has attacked Travis Huck, he is sitting on the sand, cross-legged, like a yogi. His face is calm as he watches blood rain from his hands and arms and chest.

Simone is stretched out several feet away, inches from the water’s edge, flat belly exposed to the moon, twin pierces winking.

The knife protrudes from the side of her neck. Long-bladed, wooden-handled kitchen utensil. Her body is twisted as if in escape. Her eyes are white and dull.

Moe Reed stoops on the sand, like a baseball catcher. Checks, needlessly, for a pulse.

He stands up, shaking his head, joins Milo at Travis Huck’s side.

The run has left Milo panting. Struggling to keep up with Reed, he managed to call for an ambulance.

He and Reed attend to Huck, tearing off their shirts to use as tourniquets. Within seconds Milo’s undershirt and Reed’s broad, bare chest are slathered with blood.

Huck seems amused by the fuss.

Two bound packets of money lie on the sand. Later, we’ll discover both are bundles of singles covered by twenties at both ends.

Seventy dollars each.

Aaron Fox shows up, surveys the scene. Approaching Simone’s body, his look says she’s something alien and slimy, washed up by the tide.

A wave rolls over her, leaves a coating of foam on her face that dissipates as bubbles burst in the warm night air.

No lights have gone on in the neighboring houses. This is a haven for weekenders. By sunrise all blood will be laundered by the ocean, but now the sand is gummy.

Fox and I stand around as Milo and Reed, working silently, in perfect concert, reduce spurt to seep. Huck turns pale, then an odd off-white, begins to nod off.

Milo braces him and Reed holds his hands. The young detective says, “Hang on, pal.”

Huck looks at Simone’s corpse. Moves his lips. “Uh-ah-uh—”

Milo says, “Don’t talk, son.”

Huck’s eyes remain fixed on Simone. He shrugs. Leaks.

“Don’t move,” says Moe Reed.

Huck mutters something.

“Shh,” says Milo.

Huck’s head sways. His eyes close.

He forces himself to form words.

Says, “I did it again.”

I’m thinking about that as movement from the beach house grabs my attention.

Brief flash of activity below the house, where a bulb fastened to the bottom of the deck casts weak light on the pilings and the bulkhead beneath the main structure.

Something shifting. No one else notices. I go over.

A Zodiac raft hangs on chains from a rafter. Behind the boat is a door, slightly ajar, cut flush with the plywood that veneers the bulkhead.

No lock, some sort of storage space, it probably blew open.

But no wind, tonight. Maybe it’s been that way for a while.

I make my way between the pilings, smelling salt and tar and wet sand. Enter the cave-like space created by the overhang of the deck. The Zodiac is fully inflated. Other things dangle from the rafters, like sausage at a deli. A small metal rowboat, two sets of oars. An old Coca-Cola sign, rusted beyond easy recognition, nailed to a listing, warped crossbeam.

Things go better with…

I approach the door. Barely wide enough to squeeze through. No movement, no light from within, and unlikely to be deeper than the few feet allowed by the bulkhead.

Blown open, who knows how long ago.

I swing the door open, just to be sure.

Come face-to-face with a black figure eight.

Double shotgun barrel. Above the lethal tube, a face, slack in spots, unnaturally taut in others.

Hairless. No eyebrows, no lashes.

A visage turned mask-like by the tickle of indirect light.

Bald head, pale eyes. Dark T-shirt and sweats, dark running shoes.

Big diamond ring on one of the fingers gripping the trigger.

What I can see of the shotgun’s stock is shiny and burled. Engraved metalwork elevates the weapon to art. A whole different level from my father’s bird-slayer.

One of the pricey weapons Simon Vander got rid of when his new wife asked him to.

Buddy Weir’s diamond ring bounces as his finger tightens.

“Easy,” I say.

Weir mouth-breathes. It’s his turn to sweat.