Billy's Bones (30 page)

When Tom tried to call out to the others, he discovered his throat had closed up. But the two policemen were at his side almost instantly, peering down at the well.

“Kevin…?” Burbank started to ask him something, but when the three of them turned around, it was immediately obvious to them that Kevin wasn’t going to be much help. He was crouched down with his hands over his head as if shielding him from something. “Are you okay?”

“I just need a minute.” Kevin gasped. He exhaled slowly and then drew a long breath in through his nose. Burbank looked baffled by his behavior, but Tom knew he was going through the deep breathing exercises he’d learned, trying to calm himself.

“Let him be,” Tom said quietly when he’d found his voice again. It wouldn’t help for him to hover over Kevin like a mother hen, as much as he wanted to.

“We’re losing the light. Joe, help me drag this off.”

The sound the rotted wooden cover made as the policemen dragged it off was sickening, reminding Tom of breaking bones and tearing flesh as it snapped and popped and all but disintegrated in their hands. The debris on the cover rained down into the black hole underneath. He leaned forward, reluctant to see what was inside but unable to stop himself. It didn’t matter. The gray twilight couldn’t begin to penetrate the darkness at the bottom.

Chief Burbank pulled a Maglite off his belt and clicked it on. Tom leaned forward again as the chief shined the light down into the well. The bottom was dry and only about thirty feet deep, but with all the leaves and earth that had fallen in over the years, there wasn’t much to be seen.

Burbank found a palm-sized rock nearby and threw it down. It thudded into the dirt at the bottom. “Looks pretty solid,” Burbank muttered. “I wish I’d brought a rope.”

Joe told him, “I have one in the trunk of my cruiser.”

“Can you find your way back?”

The officer pointed out where the ruins of the cabin could be seen and said, “I’ll go down if you want to lower me.”

Burbank looked down into the well with a skeptical expression on his face. “You sure?”

“There’s a tree right over there. We can tie one end of the rope to that. It’ll be safe.”

Burbank frowned but said, “All right. But hurry up. We won’t have the light much longer.”

While Joe set off for his car at a moderate clip, considering the terrain, Tom couldn’t resist going to check on Kevin. He was sitting cross-legged on the ground now, his eyes closed as if he was meditating.

“How are you doing?” Tom sat down beside him.

Kevin opened his eyes and smiled wanly at him. “I’m okay, counselor.” But to Tom’s surprise, he reached out a hand and took one of Tom’s in his, regardless of the policeman standing not ten feet away from them. They sat together like that for a while, not speaking, as they waited for Joe to come back. Chief Burbank glanced over but seemed to realize they needed a moment alone.

It wasn’t long before Tom heard the leaves rustling behind him and turned to see Joe returning, a bit out of breath, with a coil of orange nylon rope draped on his right shoulder. The two policemen tied one end of the rope around a solid birch, and Joe fashioned a sort of harness out of the other end, looping around and between both legs and around his waist.

“Tom, I need you to help with this,” Chief Burbank said, and Tom got up to join them.

The chief had Joe walk around a second tree once to wrap the rope around it. This would act as a bit of a brake, with Burbank and Tom feeding the rope out slowly on one side of it and Joe lowering himself down into the well on the other side. Tom suspected it wasn’t necessarily the way a professional would do it, but Joe and Chief Burbank seemed to think it would be safe enough. Tom stood a couple of feet behind Burbank and held the rope taut as Joe climbed into the well. In the meantime, Kevin sat on the ground, staring at the well as if he expected… well, Tom couldn’t really imagine what was going through his mind. He seemed to be holding himself together, at least.

After a long time of slowly feeding the rope out, it went slack between the well and the tree, and Joe called up to them, “I’m down! The ground is solid.”

Tom and Burbank dropped their end of the rope on the ground and went to the edge of the well to peer down. Joe had brought his own Maglite with him, of course, and he was crouched down on the pile of debris, illuminating it with the light.

When he didn’t say anything immediately, Burbank shouted down impatiently, “Well? What do you see?”

“There’s something…. Looks like a sneaker.”

Tom flinched at the words, and even Burbank had grown pale. Tom looked over at Kevin, but he was still staring intently at the well, his expression unreadable.

Then suddenly Joe cried out, “Jesus Christ! Lift me up! Lift me up!”

Burbank grabbed the rope and started hauling him up, demonstrating a surprising strength. “Get behind the tree and pick up the slack in case I slip!” he ordered Tom.

Tom did so and was surprised to see Kevin rush in behind the chief and start pulling on the rope too. With the two of them pulling and Tom picking up the slack, it only took a minute or so for Joe’s head to appear over the edge of the cement enclosure. He struggled to find a handhold while Burbank and Kevin grabbed his clothing and hauled him up and over.

When he hit the ground, Joe hurriedly scrambled away from the well and stood there with his hands braced on his knees, catching his breath. “Jesus….”

“What happened?” Burbank asked.

Joe took a couple more breaths to steady himself and then answered, “The sneaker was embedded in the ground, so I started to wiggle it free. And then….” His voice cracked, and he had to swallow hard. “Christ, Randy! There was a foot in it!”

“A foot?” Burbank asked grimly.

“Well, there were leg bones sticking out of it.” Joe winced at the recollection. “I mean, I know that’s what we were looking for. I thought I could handle it. But the sneaker… it was so small. Like a kid’s shoe….”

Burbank went over to him and clapped a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. We’ll have to call in a forensics team to get him out. I’m going to catch hell for letting you go down there and stomp around as it is.”

“You could’ve stopped me.”

Burbank snorted. “If you hadn’t volunteered, I would’ve had to come back tomorrow and do it myself. There’s no way I’d call in the state boys without verifying there was really a body down there.”

Kevin was still standing near the well, peering down into it, and Tom approached him, concerned. The bottom of the well was pitch-black again, now that Joe’s flashlight no longer illuminated it, and Tom couldn’t help shivering as he looked down into the darkness. The thought of young Billy laying down there, forgotten for twenty-five years, both chilled and saddened him.

The same thought must have been going through Kevin’s mind because he spoke softly into the black depths. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I took you to the shed that night. I’m sorry I couldn’t talk that son of a bitch into taking me, instead of you. I’m sorry I couldn’t
kill
him. And I’m….” His voice failed him, and he took a moment to take a breath. “I’m sorry I forgot you. Somehow… that almost seems worse than everything else.”

He looked up and seemed to notice Tom standing beside him for the first time.

“It’s getting dark,” Tom said, unable to think of anything else.

Kevin nodded. “Let’s go home.”

Twenty-Eight

T
HE
investigation went on for a few months. Part of the problem was identifying the body. Billy hadn’t lived in Stark long enough to have gone to any dentists in the area, which meant there were no dental records to match up with the skeleton retrieved from the well. There were rotted fragments of clothing, but nothing that could provide a clue to his identity. A state forensics team had concluded the skeleton was most likely a young male, and it wasn’t unreasonable to assume it had been lying at the bottom of the well for over two decades. The well appeared to have dried up long ago and there hadn’t been any animals larger than mice down there, so things were fairly preserved. The labels in the clothing and the materials in them were likewise consistent with that estimate, though it was impossible to narrow it down more than a decade.

Chief Burbank appeared to believe it was Billy Sherrell, but he would have preferred something more concrete than Kevin’s twenty-five-year-old—and somewhat shaky—eyewitness account to put in the case files. The partially disintegrated remains of a twenty dollar bill in the pants pocket did seem to corroborate Kevin’s story, however.

It took time for the Groveton police to track down where Billy’s father had moved to, but they eventually located him just over the Vermont border, near St. Johnsbury. They brought him in to answer some questions and see if he could identify the scraps of clothing and what was left of the jackknife.

“He doesn’t want to talk to you,” Chief Burbank told Kevin when he and Tom stopped by the department one afternoon. Kevin had gotten it into his head that he needed to talk to Mr. Sherrell to somehow atone for his part in what had happened. “I don’t think he blames you, specifically, but… to put it bluntly, he thinks Billy would have been better off if he’d never met you.”

Kevin took the news stoically, though Tom was so used to reading his expressions by now that he could see it was a huge blow to him. All he said was, “He’s right.”

Sue Cross was also questioned by the police. Kevin had given his permission to discuss anything related to Billy’s death that she’d learned in their sessions, as well as to provide information about the validity of recovered memories. The fact that a body had been recovered might have been considered proof enough by some, but as Chief Burbank pointed out, there was still the possibility Kevin had known where the body was all along and simply pretended he couldn’t remember.

According to Sue, the chief barely survived that conversation with his testicles attached. “As if I couldn’t tell the difference—after all the work I’ve done with survivors—between someone who’s telling the truth and someone who’s faking it!”

But the hardest part was bringing Mrs. Derocher in. Tom and Kevin weren’t there during her interview, of course, and they weren’t told anything about what was discussed. But the chief did tell them later that it was “very uncomfortable.” And a few days later, Kevin received a letter from his mother in the mail at his trailer.

Kevin,

I have been tolerant. I have tolerated your moodiness and your hostility to me and your father. I tolerated your petty vandalism and your not-so-petty foray into arson. I tolerated the enormous expense of your treatment program. But my tolerance is at an end.

Your father doted upon you. He loved you more than I think he loved me. When you were young, I could understand. You were a beautiful, affectionate child. But why he continued to adore you through all of your misbehavior as you grew older is beyond me. I have no doubt that your hostility toward him in your teenage years played a part in his suicide.

And now you honor his memory with this slander—accusations of sexual depravity and murder! Why the police would choose to believe these disgusting lies about a man who served his community selflessly his entire life and gave his family everything is incomprehensible. I’ve heard rumors through the staff here about you and your “friend.” I can only imagine you’ve projected your depravity onto your father, now that he’s no longer here to defend himself. And as to the murder, perhaps the police should be asking more questions about why you were the only person who knew where the body was hidden.

You are no longer my son. I’ve already met with my lawyer to have you removed from my will, and I’ve informed the staff that you are no longer allowed to visit me.

Please respect my wishes.

Ellen

Kevin had brought the letter with all his other mail to Tom’s house before reading it, and afterward he shoved it into Tom’s hands and stormed out onto the back deck. Tom assumed that meant he could read it. He wished he hadn’t.

He gave Kevin a few minutes alone to cool down, but he couldn’t restrain himself for long. Kevin was in the hot tub by the time he walked out onto the deck, Shadow scampering along at his heels. It was midwinter, and the yard was blanketed in snow, but Tom had discovered hot tubs were a year-round thing, as long as he could survive being naked long enough to get in and out of the water. The deck had been shoveled and swept, so at least it was dry.

Tom removed his robe in silence, shivering a bit, and slipped into the water.