Bonegrinder (11 page)

“Claude’s what I’m here about,” Wintone confirmed. He felt he should apologize to Sarah for his anger at their last meeting, yet he still resented her intrusion into his most private thoughts. He figured it best to let the matter lie.

“It was like the Larsen boy …” Sarah seemed to blanch even paler. The red flower on her dress was like a splash of blood. “The same kind of horrible injuries … the lower bone in his right arm was crushed almost flat. Doc Amis said he’d never seen that sort of injury except in industrial accidents.”

“Is the doc in?”

Sarah nodded, pressed an intercom button. “Billy Wintone is here.”

Doc Amis’s voice said over the intercom that he’d be right out.

“Looks like business is slow,” Wintone said, glancing at the waiting room’s empty vinyl chairs.

“Is slow right now,” Sarah said. “In a town this size where you know most everybody, you’re glad to see it slow.”

Wintone smiled at her. “Same way with my business.”

“Maybe things’ll slow down even more for you with all those tourists an’ such leavin’ the area. Leastways you’ll only have this Bonegrinder thing to take up your time.”

“Way it looks, it’s gonna take up a lot of my time. I really figured it’d be over with the Larsen boy … one of those unexplainable things that just happens every so many years somewhere or other.”

Sarah seemed to look into herself, shook her head in a series of quick little tremors as if cold. “Lord, what could it be?”

“Everybody has a theory,” Wintone said, “but what they want is some real live late-night horror-show creature bent on killin’. Or that’s what they wanted till a few days ago, when it looked like they got their wish.”

“Claude Borne described it, didn’t he?”

“As best he could.”

Sarah appeared thoughtful. “Nothin’s ever been spotted in the lake before, but then this end of the lake’s been left pretty much alone. An’ the country’s wild, frightening.”

Wintone was surprised to hear her say that; she’d been raised here.

Doc Amis came into the waiting room, gray, erect and noble. Wintone often thought that many a politician would give up his graft to look like the doctor.

Wintone nodded to him. “Claude Borne,” he said.

Doc Amis slipped the fingertips of his right hand into a vest pocket. “He died of massive internal hemorrhaging. He was broken up inside, Billy.”

“Outside, too,” Wintone said.

“Either way it’s loss of blood, loss of life.”

“Was Claude one of your patients, Doc?”

Doc Amis nodded, keeping his gray eyes fixed on Wintone. “Most everyone in these parts is, one time or another.”

“What was wrong with him?”

Doc Amis seemed to consider answering for a moment. “Cirrhosis of the liver, almost to the serious stage.”

“How were you treating him?”

“High-protein, high-carbohydrate diet supplemented by vitamin-B complex and liver extract.”

“What about alcohol?”

“I prohibited it.”

“How long ago?”

The doctor walked to a file cabinet, pulled open a drawer and checked inside a yellow folder. “Almost a year,” he said. “Borne had shown some improvement, too.” He replaced the folder and shoved the long drawer shut, shaking his head. “Hell, I should have let him drink and enjoy himself.”

“You shoulda told him not to go fishin’.”

“Everything’s a lot simpler lookin’ back on it,” Sarah said, fixing her gaze on Wintone, then looking down and rearranging some envelopes on her desk.

“Was there any alcohol content in Claude’s blood?” Wintone asked the doctor.

“None whatsoever. He wasn’t drunk, Billy.”

“Bad as he was hurt, could he have been … rational when he told me what happened to him?”

Doc Amis chewed on his lower lip, shrugged. “I wasn’t there, so I don’t know. If his speech was normal, coherent—in other words, if he seemed rational—he might well have been rational. I don’t say that you can assume he was.”

“Have you told the newspapers any of this, Doc?”

“Nothing but cause of death. I try to avoid those reporters; they have a way of twisting your meaning. Some of them, mind you, not all.”

Wintone thanked him, said good-bye to Sarah and left.

Claude Borne hadn’t been drinking; there was plenty of proof on that count. Let Mayor Boemer and the rest of them yammer all they wanted. If they tried to give Wintone trouble or tell the newspapers that Borne was drunk the night of his death, Wintone would release the news of the autopsy report, the jug of sweet cider and Helen Borne’s statement.

In a way Wintone wished that Borne had been drinking. But he hadn’t been, and he
had
seemed rational just before his death, when he gave his account of what happened to him. That part of it bothered Wintone. About the only thing in the whole business that didn’t bother him was the knowledge that people were packing up and leaving the Colver area. The fewer remaining, the fewer he had to worry about. All the way back to his office, Wintone couldn’t help thinking of how rational Claude Borne had seemed.

C
HERYL
P
ETERSON STOOD LOOKING
out the wide window of a room at the Starvue Motel, looking out past the trees at the edge of the graveled lot to the dual-lane highway. She wished now she hadn’t agreed to her husband’s idea of a last idyllic Ozark fishing trip.

“I don’t care for this place,” she said without turning.

“It was the best I could do,” her husband explained. His voice was even, without any hint of irritation, as if he didn’t want to upset her.

“They got different channels on the TV,” Melanie said, her words punctuated by a series of loud clicks as she punished the channel selector.

“The forest fire was bigger than I thought,” Peterson said. “All that’s left, really, is the south part of the lake, and when I phoned for reservations every place was booked up. This is as close as we could get.”

Cheryl stood still at the window, bright light penetrating her professionally fluffed hair. “It looks to me like everybody on the highway’s going the other way.”

Peterson told Melanie to pick a channel, then leave the TV alone. He sat on the edge of the bed. It was a soft bed, and the room was large, newly carpeted and clean. The lake was only a ten-minute drive away. He didn’t know what Cheryl was bitching about. He’d done the best he could, and still she bitched.

“It’s getting hot out there,” Cheryl said to him. “You can tell just by looking that it’s hot.”

“While it’s still early, let’s get out of here and get some breakfast, then we can go explore Colver.”

“On the map it doesn’t look like there’s much to explore.”

“How about the motel restaurant for breakfast?” Peterson asked.

Cheryl turned away from the window. “It doesn’t matter.”

Peterson was getting tired of listening to her say that things didn’t matter. Her attitude suggested that she was involved in some sort of minor ordeal that had to be endured.

“Will they have pancakes?” Melanie asked.

“Sure they will,” Peterson said.

As they walked across the gravel lot toward the restaurant, he noticed several cars laden with luggage and camping equipment passing on the highway, going north. Only a single car passed headed south. Maybe there would be some vacancies now closer to the lake.

Alan Greer and his wife Kelly found a place to stay very close to the lake. Ten minutes after they’d checked in at Higgin’s Motel, Alan pulled his wife down onto the double bed with him. Kelly’s resistance softened, was displaced by eagerness. Still drained by the outside heat, they made love with an easy, slow rhythm, his fingers inserted like pitchfork prongs in the mass of her dark hair. Together they worked to make it last a long time.

Alan watched her afterward as she quietly rose to go into the shower, a lithe and beautiful girl with elegant legs and something of the feline to her movements, each step unconsciously precise. Despite serious, dark eyes there was a perpetual good humor about her full lips, as if she couldn’t resist enjoying life.

The abrupt thunder of the shower running in its metal stall roared through the tiny cabin. Alan raised himself on one elbow, then effortlessly shifted his weight and stood. He stepped into his jockey shorts, then without knowing why smoothed the worn bedspread. Short, but well-muscled and flat-stomached, he was twenty-six, two years older than Kelly. There was a curved scar near the small of his back from a motorcycle accident three summers ago. After a few more rides to convince himself that he’d exorcised his fear, he no longer rode motorcycles.

Alan walked across the threadbare carpet to where the largest of the suitcases lay near the long dresser. He unlocked and opened the suitcase carefully and examined his photography equipment, working the zippers on the leather cases with practiced ease. He’d forgotten nothing, and everything was in order. With a brief smile he ran a hand through reddish brown, curly hair that grew in bright defiance straight out from his head.

This was an opportunity, to be in on the birth of an Ozark legend, while it was current news. If he could somehow get a photograph of Bonegrinder it would advance his photography career by a long step. He didn’t really expect to be that lucky, but even the lush green and hilly wildness of the Ozark country would make a superb subject for a color spread in one of the leading specialty magazines. And the right sort of shot would be in demand by the major newspapers.

Alan picked up the leather case containing his thirty-five millimeter Honeywell Pentax, hefted the expensive camera and case in his hand, then replaced everything in the padded suitcase. After spinning the combination lock on the closed suitcase, it occurred to him that there could only be so much hot water and he joined Kelly in the thundering shower.

When they had toweled dry and were getting dressed, she said, “This is a homey cabin. Everything’s a little worn but comfortable.”

“Just like home, only everything works,” Alan said, buttoning his shirt.

Kelly crossed the room barefoot and began brushing her long, damp hair before the dresser mirror. Alan was glad to see her smile at him. She hadn’t wanted to come here, thought the Bonegrinder idea was a bad one and maybe a dangerous one. But he had explained to her the possibilities in the venture, and at least the likely sale of some Ozark shots to the travel magazines to help pay for the trip. And they weren’t that far away, so reluctantly she had left Kansas City with him early this morning in their five-year-old Volkswagen, and here they were. Alan was determined that if he did nothing else he would relieve her of her apprehension. He thought he’d made a pretty good start.

Alan slipped his boots on and sat quietly until Kelly finished brushing her hair.

“What now?” she asked. “Dinner?”

“There still good light out there,” Alan said, glancing at the window. “Let’s walk around awhile and look things over.”

Kelly tied a narrow red bandana about her brushed hair, giving her dark features a faintly Indian look knocked out of kilter by her slightly upturned nose. She waited at the door automatically while Alan got his camera.

He was pleased that she was impressed with the beauty of the country, though she said there was more of a wildness to it than farther north, where they had vacationed several years ago. That wildness of sun and deep shadow appealed to Alan’s camera eye.

They walked to the lake road, then through a clearing to the lake itself, and there the primitive wildness that Kelly had felt, had almost scented, was stronger. The barely rippling water was brackish and carpeted with patches of darkly luminous green, and the tall reeds stretching out from shore seemed to form patterns of unnaturally deep shadows. The stench of decay was here, subtle movement on the fungus-laden surface of a fallen limb that seemed to be grasping at the water with crooked, leafless branches.

“It’s shallow here,” Alan said. “Most of the southern part of the lake is shallow near the shore. It’s not exactly prime resort area.”

Kelly picked up a damp broken branch, tossed it to the side. It landed almost silently in the brush near the bank. They heard a frog leap and hit the water with a solid, plunking splash.

“I wish we hadn’t come,” Kelly said.

“Don’t decide too quickly,” Alan told her, unable to restrain the irritation in his voice. “This is a particularly gloomy spot, but so what?”

“So let’s leave it.”

“A few shots first,” Alan said, removing the Pentax from its case.

Kelly craned her neck to look up at the tall trees on either side of them. The trees seemed to arch over her, bending long limbs toward her rather than toward each other. She turned to look with relief at the open, graying sky above the wide lake.

But the lake itself seemed ominous, its flat surface dull and possessive. Glimmers of light on the lazily rising and falling expanses of water seemed to suggest movement below. There was nothing visible on the lake’s surface, not a boat or floating debris of any sort, as if everything had somehow been claimed from below, drawn irretrievably down into darkness. Kelly was surprised to find herself wishing she could see a rusty beer can floating out there, anything. Almost anything.

“This is near where the fisherman, Claude Borne, was killed,” Alan said, replacing his camera in its case.

“Cheering.”

“I want some shots of where the other one was killed, the first one, the boy.”

“Does it have to be this evening?”

“No, the light’s failing.”

They turned away and walked along the barely discernible path through the clearing, back toward the narrow road. Alan knew that Kelly felt the same uneasiness he was feeling with their backs to the lake, the same unreasonable urge to walk faster. He placed a hand on her shoulder, pulled her toward him so that they walked close together. She smiled up at him and he kissed her forehead, which was cool and damp. He realized that he was perspiring heavily himself. The heat hadn’t fallen with the sun.

“We haven’t seen anyone, Alan. Where are they?”

“Frightened away by the second death, the woman at the motel office said.” He knew he wasn’t reassuring Kelly, but she deserved the truth. “There’s still a lot of superstition down here, but no reason to let it affect you.”