BoneMan's Daughters (25 page)

Alvin wiped a generous portion of Noxzema on his right palm and began to apply, beginning at the back of his neck and working
his way down over his unblemished chest. He could feel the beginnings of stubble growing around his nipples, and this bothered
him some, but it couldn’t be helped.

There was one thing that bothered Alvin, two things that drove him insane. The smell of body odor after three days without
a bath. And cologne.

The medicinal smell of camphor associated with Noxzema, however, was the incense of the gods.

He used the contents of half the bottle to smoothe his skin from his neck down to his ankles. At one point a small ladybug
had lighted on his naked hip, and he’d flattened it with a loud smack.

A quick check through the binoculars assured him that Evans hadn’t heard the strike. He’d used a stick to scrape the remnants
of the bug from his skin before resuming the application of Noxzema between his legs and behind his knees, all the way to
his ankles.

Satisfied that he was clean, Alvin dressed, then looked at his subject again.

No movement. Was he sleeping?

He was tempted to go down and talk to the man. Why not? He couldn’t afford to be seen yet, naturally. But why avoid the pleasure
of talking to the man instead of leaving the note in his car as he’d planned?

Alvin took his time, letting the idea grow slowly inside of him until he didn’t think he could delay much longer. He thought
about reapplying, but the desire to hear the fear in Evans’s voice was so great that he couldn’t even concentrate on thoughts
of reapplying, however enjoyable such thoughts might be.

Yes, why not? It was time to talk to Ryan Evans.

HE’D DONE EVERYTHING he could think to do, which was precisely what BoneMan wanted him to do, Ryan thought. But none of this
made the task at hand easy or even manageable.

He’d kept telling himself as he’d driven west two nights earlier that he was doing the right thing, that he hadn’t lost his
mind, that he was making the kind of move that would give him the highest likelihood of recovering his daughter alive.

That with each mile the Taurus rolled west, his daughter drew closer, although he felt sure he was leaving her behind, hidden
in a hole somewhere. He wanted to be close to her bedroom, he wanted to walk around her room and touch her photographs and
schoolbooks.

He’d pushed the speed limit as much as he dared and pulled into the campground early the next morning after a five-hour drive.
Driving through the darkened camp, following the bright twin beams from the headlamps, he’d suspected that he’d made a mistake.
And when he’d finally guided the car under a large pine and turned off the engine, the silence had crushed him with the fierce
certainty of utter failure.

He’d sat unmoving in the car until dawn broke. But the rising sun had brought nothing except for more silence.

He’d walked around the camp, relieved to see that he was one of only three campers in the entire ranch. Then he’d climbed
to the highest point behind his small clearing and scanned the horizon for most of the day.

All the while he replayed his message, begging the BoneMan to come. Surely he’d heard. Ryan had kept up with the radio coverage
of his incursion into the country station, and he’d taken hope in the fact that anyone who turned on a radio in Texas now
knew of his challenge.

You’ve taken the daughters before. I know your work. I sat with the children for three days and I heard their bones break.
Now take the father. You know that’s what you need, to destroy the father.

I’ll be waiting where they make their home, BoneMan. Find me before they shoot me out of the sky.

But what if BoneMan didn’t take him up on his challenge? Or what if the man was less intelligent than Ryan had assumed? What
if he was in a gully even now, scratching his head, wondering what Ryan had meant when he said he would be where they made
their homes?

Then again, BoneMan’s choice of the crow could hardly be the product of an uneducated man. Throughout history the crow had
been identified with the messenger of God, whether for good or for evil.

In India, for example, in the Mahabharata, the messengers of death were drawn as crows. The Celts, the Japanese, and the Chinese
all identified the crow as a good omen from God. Whether good or evil, the black bird was identified with the forces of creation
and destruction wherever it was found.

BoneMan saw himself as a messenger to society, flying high for all to see, and he wanted Ryan, the father of his latest victim,
to join him. Ryan had gone one step further by calling BoneMan to find him at the Crow’s Nest.

He’d managed to fall into an exhausted sleep the second night, but when he woke the next morning to the sound of birds chirping
in the nearby trees, a depression he didn’t think possible had swallowed him.

There was nothing to do but wait. An agonizing wait that consisted not of hours or minutes but of seconds. Each one ticking
off slowly. He’d listened to the radio to get the latest news on the case, but there was no news. Bethany was gone. BoneMan
was gone. Ryan Evans was gone.

He’d chanced a quick stop at a gas station halfway across the state and paid cash for several loaves of bread and lunch meat,
but he’d lost his appetite and had to force himself to eat after a day of fasting.

There was nothing to apply his mind to. No course of action to take. No puzzle to solve. He sat on the ground with his back
to the big tree and prayed to God, the same mantra, over and over.

Please, help her be safe. Keep her alive. Just keep her alive. I’m sorry
.

He tried to remember what he was sorry for but after a while even this began to fade. Yes, he’d failed Bethany. Perhaps if
he’d been in the house that night, the killer would have thought twice. Perhaps if he’d been a loving father, the killer wouldn’t
have chosen Bethany in the first place.

Perhaps if he’d slept by the front door with a shotgun cocked in his elbow, ready to blow the head off of any demented maniac
who dared step one foot in his home…

He spent some of the time imagining how he might kill BoneMan. He might put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. He might
hit him in the face until it became bloody and lifeless. He might jab him in the eyes with a sharp stick, then shove the stick
up into his brain. He might take a rock and crush his head.

He thought about how he would rescue Bethany. About how she would rush into his arms and weep into his neck. About how he
would sweep in with a shotgun, end BoneMan’s life with a load of buckshot, then pluck his daughter from the jaws of death.

Mostly, he imagined how he would crush the man who dared cost his daughter one night of sleep. The thoughts made him wear
his jaw tired from all the grinding.

But after hours of contemplating the manner in which he could kill BoneMan and save his daughter, he was left with only himself.
Alone. Useless. Seated in the hot sun.

Hopeless.

The desperation that had sent Kahlid on a mission to kill children to save many more children. It was a sickness, and Ryan
began to wonder if he’d been infected with it.

ALVIN FINCH WALKED up the hill fifty yards, then cut to his right, working his way around so that he could come up behind
Evans without being seen. His heart was beating in his chest like a fist, and he began to sweat—something he hadn’t counted
on so soon after applying the lotion.

It took him twenty minutes to position himself directly behind some boulders to the rear of the man, who still had not moved.
If the man surprised him and tried something foolish, he would use the gun in this pocket, but with the daughter safely stowed,
Evans couldn’t risk anything stupid.

“Do not turn around, Ryan Evans,” he said.

The man jerked upright, but he did not turn around.

“That’s good. Just stay where you are. Don’t try to stand up. Just stay seated.”

The man was stiff like a board. Alvin would prefer to see his eyes, but he couldn’t risk showing his own face yet.

“You’re a smart man, Mr. Evans. It worked. You called to me and now here I am. That’s pretty good if you think about it. Pretty
amazing, isn’t it?”

But after two days of sitting in fear and trepidation, the poor man couldn’t get his vocal cords going.

“Say something,” Alvin said.

“Yes,” the man said.

He sounded pretty rational, after all.

“You know who I am?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think you’re me, like they say?”

The man hesitated, as if seriously considering this possibility. Could it be true? Alvin thought about it for a moment then
decided that anything was possible.

“No,” the man said.

“I agree. But they are right about one thing. I have your daughter and I am going to break her bones. Unless—”

“I’ll do anything.”

“I’ve been watching your daughter through the cracks in the wall and I think I’m going to have some challenges breaking her
arms without breaking her skin; it’s so frail you know. So soft. She looks like she’s never had to work a day in her life.”

The man said nothing, but his body was now trembling.

It was such a strange and wonderful sight.

Alvin peered out at the shaking man and let him quake for a while.

“If you bring me the father of lies, I’ll give her back to you. I’ve given you some directions on this note that I’m going
to leave back here. You either have the stomach for this or you don’t, so I’m only going to give you until morning. Bring
me the father of lies and I can show you how to break his bones. Or do you already know how to do that?”

The man didn’t respond.

Alvin set the folded blue note on the rock and backed away silently.

It took him only five minutes to reach his truck and another two before he was on the gravel road again, cutting a line due
south to the place of hiding. The father had spoken back there as he retreated, but Alvin didn’t hear him, nor did he care.
He was on his way now. Back to the hole.

Back to daughter.

THE JOY THAT swept through Ryan at the sound of that voice was like cool water to parched lips in a cracked, barren wasteland.
It was soft but perfectly clear. Like the voice of an angel. There could be no mistake. BoneMan had come! Everything Ryan
had prayed for, all of his waiting, the hours of hopelessness, they’d all delivered him BoneMan, and he nearly shouted out
in his thankfulness.

The many ways he’d considered killing BoneMan flooded his mind at once now. The breaking, crushing, shooting, slashing—all
of it at once to make sure that the voice behind him was truly dead.

He became aware that he was trembling. The air remained silent for some time and he just sat there, shaking. Then the man
spoke again.

“If you bring me the father of lies, I’ll give her back to you. I’ve given you some directions on this note that I’m going
to leave back here. You either have the stomach for this or you don’t, so I’m only going to give you until morning. Bring
me the father of lies and I can show you how to break his bones. Or do you already know how to do that?”

Father of lies… father of lies… Ryan didn’t have to look at a blue note to know who the father of lies was.

“Yes,” he said.

There was no response.

“Hello?”

Still nothing.

The man had left! Ryan turned around and stared at an outcropping of rock ten yards behind the tree against which he’d been
leaning. There on the closest rock that rose three feet lay a folded slip of blue paper. His heart rose into his throat, thinking
of the man, standing right there just a moment ago.

He stood slowly. Then bounded up to the rock, ripped the note off the surface, and ran for the black Taurus.

He slid behind the wheel, slammed the door closed, and unfolded the quartered note with quaking hands.

BoneMan’s handwriting. Scrawled in block letters.

FATHER OF LIES.

MENARD–7 MILES SOUTH

WEST–2 MILES

BENEATH THE CROWS

I’LL BE WATCHING, FATHER.

He sat, staring at the piece of paper for a full minute, maybe two minutes, maybe five minutes, in part because he knew what
he was expected to do now, in part because he wanted to give BoneMan as much time as he needed to get away.

The man was on foot, making his way back to his vehicle. What if Ryan ran into him? This wasn’t the kind of man who would
turn over the location of his daughter just because he’d been caught red-handed.

And this location on the blue slip of paper wasn’t where he’d find his daughter, he knew that. BoneMan would be watching and
would bring her in only if and when Ryan complied with his demands.

He fired the car and backed it hastily over a bush before whipping it in a dusty circle and angling down the dirt path that
led out of Crow’s Nest Ranch.

No sign of any other vehicle. Good. He didn’t need any attention. He certainly didn’t need the involvement of any authority
beyond what BoneMan was demanding.

Ryan pulled up to the highway and looked first left, then right. No cars.

He glanced at the round clock on the dash. Ten minutes past noon. It would be dark in seven hours.

He shoved the accelerator to the floorboards, shot out onto the blacktop, lined the car up between the yellow dashes and the
white edge, and took the Taurus up to ninety. Out here west of Fort Davis, cops would be scarce—not so as he closed in on
Austin, where he was still public enemy number one. There were only so many roads leading into Austin, and the FBI would be
waiting on all of them, with arms open wide, waiting for BoneMan to rush into their trap.

He had to make good time while he could. After three days of stillness the rush of the wind sounded like the voice of God,
roaring out of the sky to save this one.

Texas was dry this time of year, a near desert. He kept his head down and gripped the wheel tightly and sped into their arms.
But he had no intention of giving himself up, not now when he finally had at his means the way to save Bethany.