Bonegrinder (17 page)

He studied her elegant, lean figure, the curve of her hip on the chair. Melanie was at the lake fishing. The desire to make love to Cheryl here in the quiet motel room while they had the opportunity awakened in Peterson’s loins, but he was sure she’d reject him. And an unsuccessful attempt at seduction might undo whatever rapport they’d achieved in the last few days.

The opportunity for reconciliation was eluding him. They would be starting for home soon, probably tomorrow evening. A quiet panic moved through Peterson.

Footsteps sounded on the pavement outside. Peterson thought it might be Melanie returning from the lake, but it wasn’t. “Glad we came here?” he asked his wife.

“Melanie seems to be enjoying herself. You were right about that.”

“Only that?”

“I think so, Bill.” Cheryl put the stack of color brochures aside on the small desk. She had hesitated.

Peterson reached to the table by the bed for his pack of cigarettes and lighter. As he touched flame to tobacco, he watched Cheryl’s thin shoulders, the line of her cheek against the sun-bright drapes. “Carl isn’t for you,” he said.

Cheryl turned in the small wooden chair to face him squarely, the light at her back. “I haven’t changed my mind, Bill.”

“But you’ve thought about it.”

“I’ve never really reconsidered …”

Peterson shook his head. “You must have. The very fact that you’ve thought about the matter means you’re not sure.”

“It means I’ve thought about it,” Cheryl said simply, “as I promised you I would.”

“If you’ve thought about it objectively,” Peterson said, “you know Carl isn’t for you—not on a permanent basis.”

Peterson felt a dark frustration as he saw Cheryl’s face assume its now-familiar dispassionate mask, this time the smiling variation that revealed nothing.

“Not much in this world is on a permanent basis, Bill.” She sat very still against the light, as if solidified by the truth of her statement.

“But some things are certain,” Peterson said firmly, “and one certain thing is that Melanie will be harmed by what you’re proposing.”

“Maybe not in the long run—maybe it will be just the opposite. I’m as concerned as you are with Melanie’s welfare, but she wouldn’t be the first child of divorced parents.”

“But damn it, I’m her father! Me!” Peterson stood up from the bed. He was getting excited, and he didn’t want that. “You just don’t seem to realize the seriousness of what you’re considering,” he said in a softer but vibrant voice. “I don’t want Melanie to suffer.”

“I don’t want anyone to suffer,” Cheryl said, “either her or you. This isn’t easy for me.”

“And it isn’t right for you.”

“That’s for me to decide.”

“But you can’t decide, can you? Not for sure.”

Uncertainty shattered the mask of her set features. “What you’re doing to me …” she began, but the doorknob rattled and she broke off.

Melanie rushed through the opened door, dropping her fiberglass fishing rod outside with a clatter. Her chest was heaving and her thick glasses magnified the fright in her eyes.

“Did you run here all the way from the lake?” Cheryl asked.

Melanie nodded, more frightened than breathless from running. “I was fishing and I heard something….“

“Heard what?” Peterson asked, moving next to her and resting his hand on her shoulder. He didn’t know if the heartbeat he felt was Melanie’s or his own pulse.

Melanie looked up at him. “I heard some splashing, real near me, then a—” She made a low, gravelly, moaning sound from deep in her throat.

Cheryl’s face was older now, creased with concern. “The stories in the papers, Bill …”

“That’s ridiculous!” Peterson snapped. He bent and patted Melanie’s back, pressed her to him for a second. “You probably heard a fish or frog jumping,” he said gently, “or some quirk of the wind.”

“But I did hear something!”

“Nature is never quiet, Melanie. There are always things to hear if you’ll listen.”

“Maybe you ought to listen to Melanie,” Cheryl said.

“I’m telling her there isn’t any reason to be afraid,” Peterson said, “and there isn’t. But if it’ll make you feel better,” he said, stooping to talk to his daughter, “we’ll go to some other part of the lake. I know a place where they’re supposed to be biting on any kind of bait.”

“Is it close?”

“No, pretty far.”

“Good.” Melanie had calmed down now. She raised the tail of her cotton shirt to wipe the perspiration from her forehead and eyes while Peterson held her glasses. He kissed her on the cheek and she smiled. It made him feel proud and useful to be able to erase her fears with his reassurances.

“Why don’t we go out and get some breakfast first,” Peterson said, glancing up at Cheryl.

“Pancakes?” Melanie asked.

“Pancakes it is,” Peterson said. “But definitely fish for supper!”

He was glad to hear Melanie laugh, gladder still to receive the hint of a smile from Cheryl.

When they’d finished breakfast the Petersons returned to the motel to change clothes and get their fishing equipment. Then they drove down a rutted, tree-lined road to the boat dock where their flat-bottomed aluminum rental boat was tied.

After loading the boat Peterson cautioned Melanie to stay seated, unknotted the docking rope and pushed away from the worn-out automobile tires lashed as buffers to the wooden dock. He started the outboard motor, adjusted the throttle and steered the boat out into the lake, then headed south parallel to the increasingly rugged shoreline. The lake was relatively calm today, a blue-green reflective plane of wavering, distorted images. Formless clouds drifted overhead casting vast indistinct shadows.

The motor wasn’t very powerful, but the flat-prowed boat managed surprising speed, the small waves spanking the aluminum bottom with metallic slapping sounds.

Melanie was in the bow, slumped forward so she could drag her hand through the cool water. Cheryl sat in the middle of the boat, facing backward, toward Peterson. She was smiling. The breeze carried cool flecks of water against Peterson’s face as the flat bow struck the low waves, and everything seemed fine.

When they had traveled south for about twenty minutes, Peterson cut back on the throttle and steered in closer to the bank. The trees grew down to the water here, some of their trunks partly submerged and moss-coated. Thick growths of tall reeds covered much of the lake in near the bank, and green algae lay thick on the calm surface. The forest had a dense, almost tropical look, deeply shadowed, as if the darkest of nights lay just inside the line of trees.

Peterson steered out farther onto the lake, cutting the motor. The boat drifted in abrupt silence as he opened his large and many-compartmented tackle box and sorted through his array of equipment. He baited both Cheryl’s and Melanie’s hooks, then his own, and he cautioned against dropping anything or striking any part of the metal boat body, thereby drawing attention to their presence as the vibrations traveled down and out through the lake water.

They sat quietly then and fished. Peterson reached into the portable cooler, drew out a cold can of beer and sat sipping it as he felt the rising heat of the sun reflect off the metal boat. Occasionally he passed the cold can to Cheryl, who didn’t divert her eyes from the water as she sipped. She’d always been patient in her fishing.

An hour passed. Cheryl and Melanie had gotten a few nibbles, but only Peterson had caught anything, a small rainbow-hued sunfish worthy only of being tossed back into the lake. Melanie was beginning to squirm on the metal bench seat as she became bored. Just when she suggested finding another spot, her bright red-and-white cork bobbed violently—but she didn’t notice.

Peterson and Cheryl agreed to Melanie’s idea, and the three of them drew in their lines. Their movements caused the boat to rock and the sun-heated aluminum to creak.

After handing his half-full beer can to Cheryl, Peterson adjusted the throttle and yanked the starter cord on the outboard motor.

The motor coughed twice, didn’t start,

Peterson tried again, yanking the cord harder, with the same result. He unscrewed the gas cap, saw that the tank was almost full. Bracing his left foot against the boat’s stern, he yanked with all his strength on the starter cord and the motor sputtered its way to life.

The stern dropped as he steered in a semicircle to head farther south, keeping roughly the same distance from the bank. Peterson accepted the cold beer can from Cheryl and sipped on it, spilling some of the beer down his shirt front as the boat dipped and bucked on the lake surface. The cool liquid and the breeze of motion made Peterson realize how warm the sun had become; soon it would be too hot to fish from the metal boat.

Then he saw what he’d been looking for. A thick finger of land, overgrown with trees, extended about a hundred yards out from the bank. He pointed the raised bow of the boat toward the jutting land and yelled to Melanie over the snarl of the motor.

“We’ll let you out there for about an hour—see if you can show us up and catch more fish.”

She blinked behind her thick glasses and grinned acceptance of the challenge.

Peterson worked the boat in close to the bank, then tested the depth of the water with an oar. Carrying her fishing rod and the can of bait, Melanie waded to shore, glancing back as she leaned into water well above her knees.

“Be careful,” Cheryl called to her. “Fish right here and don’t stray!”

Melanie nodded and waved to them with the bait can as Peterson turned the bow back out toward the lake.

Peterson knew this might be his last opportunity to talk calmly and rationally with Cheryl, without interruption. When he got well off the bank he cut the motor, letting the boat bob in the warm silence. Cheryl knew what he wanted, didn’t bother to put her line in the water.

As they talked the boat drifted, beyond the point of ground jutting into the lake, out of sight beyond the deep-shadowed line of trees that seemed to lean into each other as if whispering green secrets. Peterson and Cheryl were heedless of where they were as they leaned like the trees toward one another.

Above the line of trees a large, solitary crow rose in the thick air, flapping its black wings awkwardly as if sending dark signals.

“A
NOTHER’N!”
O
LD
B
ONIFIELD SHOUTED
to Wintone.

Bonifield was trailing Frank Turper as they crossed the street to intercept Wintone, Turper with his head bowed and a sad, thoughtful cast to his small, dark eyes. Wintone stood with his arms crossed, waiting for the two men and feeling the dread settle into him, hoping he’d misunderstood what Bonifield had shouted.

They were both out of breath when they reached Wintone. Turper had been almost running ahead of Bonifield. There was dark spittle on Bonifield’s unshaven chin.

“You wasn’t in your office,” Turper said, breathing deeply and standing hands-on-hips. “Got a phone call sayin’ to find you, tell you there’s been another Bonegrinder killin’ …”

“Out past Lynn Cove,” Bonifield added. Muscles danced along his lean jaw as he worked his tobacco. “You best hurry.”

“Who did the phoning?” Wintone asked Turper.

“Somebody from the boat dock, didn’t leave no name. Just said nobody answered the phone in the sheriff’s office an’ to find you an’ send you. Said Bonegrinder had killed another.”

Across the street stood two men watching the obviously excited conversation. Wintone recognized the paunchy form and lumpy features of McKenna, the reporter from the
Globe Dispatch.
It came as no surprise to Wintone when he saw McKenna and the other man step into the street and walk toward them.

“That all the man on the phone said?” Wintone asked. “Nothin’ else?”

Turper shook his head quickly. “Nothin’ else.”

Bonifield spat. “You best hurry.”

“Hurry is what I’ll do,” Wintone said, starting to jog back to where the patrol car was parked. When he’d gone a few steps he stopped and turned. “See if you can keep this quiet for a while …”

But old Bonifield was already running with his quick-limping gait toward McKenna and the other man, who was wearing a brown business suit and carrying a camera.

As he drove over the lake road, Wintone kept a close watch on his rear-view mirror. Occasionally, through the plume of dust behind the patrol car, he glimpsed the grill and hood of a big light blue or gray car following him closely. The car followed him beyond Lynn Cove. Then Wintone ignored it, concentrating completely on the road ahead.

A sun-darkened man in a sleeveless white T-shirt was waiting for him on the road shoulder, waving his arms and moving out toward the center of the road. Wintone braked the patrol car beside him, rolling down the window while the car was still rocking in the dust that drifted to catch up with it.

“’Round that bend, Sheriff,” the man said, “then you’ll have to walk.”

Wintone drove forward a hundred feet and took the bend in the road slowly, stopping among several parked cars. He noticed the Greers’ white Volkswagen, one of its doors hanging open like a mouth gaped in surprise. As Wintone got out of the patrol car, he saw the big blue-gray car, a late-model Oldsmobile, parked behind him. McKenna was behind the steering wheel, and beside him in the front seat were the brown-suited man and Bonifield.

“I’m the one that phoned,” the man in the sleeveless T-shirt said. “Down this way, Sheriff.” Without looking back he moved off through high weeds toward the lake.

There were over a dozen people gathered on the bank, most of them wearing that expression common to scenes of violent death, a combination of pity, revulsion and fear. But Wintone saw no body. A green metal Jon boat was grounded at an angle in the shallows off the bank, a rope dangling from its flat bow.

Then Wintone saw the man standing off to the side. The others stole quick glances at him, as if they were embarrassed by his presence. He was leaning against a thick tree trunk, his arms thrown about his head to hide his face. There was mud on his shoes and pants legs, and he was wet but for splotches of dryness from the sun. The disheveled, dark hair that showed on the back of his head was wet, individual droplets glistening with jewel brightness.