Bones (45 page)

She listened again, her expression darkening. She held the phone away from her ear while Giles was still talking, and pushed the off button. She snapped the phone shut, tossed it none too carefully to Jason, who made a fumbling catch.

"Mrs. Sayre--" I said, the name sounding strange to me, but she had already pivoted on her heel and marched back toward the porch.

At the door, she turned and called out, "If you do plan to kidnap him, please don't bother to send a ransom note." She slammed the door shut.

"Now can we go?" Jason said.

"Jack Fremont, meet my impatient friend, Jason Sayre."

"Hi--can we go?"

"Just where is it you're so anxious to get to?" Jack asked.

"Anywhere! Just get me away from her," he said.

Jack smiled at me and said, "Better get in, Irene. Buckle up, Jason."

Jason leaned back with a sigh when we finally pulled away from the curb.

"The park okay?" Jack asked.

"Sure," I said, then turned to Jason. "Is that all right with you?"

"Finally," he said dramatically, "someone asks me what I want!"

"Well?"

"Yeah, I like the park."

"When did your dad get married?" I asked.

"To Susan?"

"Is that your stepmother's name?"

He nodded. "She wants everybody to call her Dixie, but that's a crock--she isn't even from the South. She's lived with us since Gilly moved out. My dad was at her place before that."

"So she's not your father's wife?"

"She is now. They got married just after you found my mother."

"What?"

"Yeah," he said, looking away from me, down at his hands. "The day you came and told him about that killer, he called Susan up and told her it looked like they could finally get married."

Dumbstruck, I looked over at Jack. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror, not at traffic, but at Jason.

"As long as they couldn't find my mother, he had to wait seven years," Jason went on, kicking out his feet as if straightening his legs, but the look on his face said he wished his Timberlands were connecting with someone.

"Oh," I said, understanding dawning. "Because legally, your mother had not been declared dead?"

"Right. Susan thought my dad could have made the courts hurry it up, but Dad said it would be really bad for his business because people would be mad at him--because you had written all those stories and everything. So he had to wait to get his little hottie. Wait to get married to her, anyway. She wanted him to marry her the day after they said the body was my mom's. He made her wait a week."

"She used to be his secretary?" I asked, remembering the comment that had made her blush.

"Yeah."

We stopped at a corner market and bought some fresh fruit and a soda for Jason, bottled water for Jack and me. We drove to the large park that forms part of the eastern border of the city, found a shady spot, and began an impromptu picnic. Jason's cell phone rang; he spoke briefly to a friend and hung up.

"I guess it beats two tin cans and a wire," Jack said.

I laughed, but Jason asked what we were talking about, so we explained a little something about the olden days.

"And that really works?" he asked.

"We'll set up a demonstration a little later," Jack said.

He picked at the grass, then without looking up, said, "Did you find out something more about my mom?"

"Oh--no, I'm sorry. That's not why I stopped by to see you."

"It's not?"

"No. I just wanted to see how you were doing."

"Oh."

When he didn't say anything more, I added, "I also wanted to apologize for not coming by sooner."

He shrugged, frowned down at the piece of grass he was pulling on. "Why should you? You never even knew her."

"But I know your family."

He leveled a flat, cynical gaze at me. "Do you?"

I thought of today's revelations. "Not very well, perhaps--but enough to know that what happened to your mom has been hard on everyone in the family."

He laughed. "Hard on everyone? No way. I'm the only one who really loved her."

"I don't think that's true--"

"Who then? My dad? Oh, pul-eeeze. He was getting it on with old Suze. He probably thinks my mom's murder was the best thing that could have happened."

"Jason, I've seen--"

"His tears? He's a phony. And you know who's a bigger phony? Gilly. Learned it from him--only she's even better at it than he is. She even fooled you. She hated my mom. Hated her." He shook his head. "They hated each other."

"When she first met me, Gillian admitted that she had trouble with your mom, that there were arguments."

"Trouble? Arguments?" he said angrily. "You think it was all some teenage thing?"

It had seemed exactly that way to me, and to everyone I had talked to at the time Julia Sayre disappeared.

"So why did Gillian hate her?" Jack asked.

"How should I know?" he said, but with less hostility than he had shown me. "She's cold. She doesn't care about anybody or anything."

"For four years," I said, "Gillian has been the one to call me, to ask if there has been any news of your mother. In that time, other people have gone missing, but no one took the trouble your sister took to find the person she loved."

"Don't say 'loved,' " he snapped. "She didn't love my mother. She hated her. She was mean to me. She's mean to everyone. She's a user. She even used you, and now you're talking to me like that was something good. She just wanted attention. You gave it to her."

"When's the last time you talked to her?" I asked.

"Years ago. She moved out a long time ago."

"Do you miss her?"

"No."

"She hasn't been back to visit you since she moved out?"

"No. It doesn't matter. She's still weird. I see her every now and then--I mean, you know, see her when she's hanging out in different places. I saw her here once," he said, vaguely pointing toward another part of the park. "Didn't even say hello to me. Which is fine," he added quickly. "I don't want her to come anywhere near me."

"I'm sorry," I said, "I didn't realize . . . I didn't realize that you were so angry with her. Or with me."

And everyone else on the planet, I thought. But he said, "I'm not mad at you. Gilly fools people all the time. So does my dad." He sighed. "I wish I didn't live in Las Piernas."

"Why not?"

"Everybody knows what happened to my mom. Kids at school, it's like, the only thing they know about me. They either want to ask me about it--like, if it's true my mom's finger was cut off, shit like that--or they're all freaked out about it. I can't just be a normal person."

"They've acted like that for four years?" Jack asked.

"No," he acknowledged. "Just when it first happened. And now."

"So they might get over this?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Maybe they're just scared that the same thing might happen to their moms," Jack said.

"Maybe," he said. "But I still hate living here."

"Where would you like to live?" I asked.

"With Grandma," he said. "I miss her. I wish I could go live with her."

"Have you asked your dad if you could?" I asked.

"He says he would miss me too much. I think he's just worried about what people will think."

"Do you remember when Nick Parrish lived in the neighborhood?"

He shook his head. "I was little when he moved. Gilly remembers him. I think she used to go over there to see the lady or something."

"The lady? His sister?"

"Yeah." He hesitated, then said, "I knew it was Nick Parrish a long time ago. Before the cops knew."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't know his name," Jason said, "but I had seen him."

"When?"

"Before my mom was killed. He was staring at our house one time when Gilly was baby-sitting. I was kind of little then, too--well, a third-grader, is all--but it scared me."

"Did you tell anyone?"

"I told Gilly. She went out and looked for him. But by then there wasn't anybody there."

"You didn't tell the police?"

"I didn't get too good a look at him," he admitted.

"What did you see?"

"I just saw this man in a car. But later, I figured it out--you know, when Gilly remembered he used to live on our street. It was too late," he said sadly. "Besides, who's going to believe a kid? It's like Gilly said, no one would take a kid seriously."

He reached into the bag of fruit and picked out an orange. He studied it in his hand, then hurled it hard against a tree trunk, where it landed with a pulpy thunk, then managed to cling to the tree for a few seconds before dropping to the ground. When I turned to look at Jason in surprise, he ducked his head, but not before I saw that his face was twisted up--in anger, but not anger alone.

"The other day, I threw something hard like that," I said. "I thought it would make me feel better, but it didn't, really."

"What did you throw?" he asked, talking to his ankles.

"A computer monitor."

He looked up, eyes damp but wide. "Get out!" he said admiringly. "A computer monitor?"

"Yes. Really stupid thing to do. Someone could have been seriously injured by what I did. I ended up feeling worse than I did before I threw it."

"So why did you throw it?"

"I was angry. Angry and blaming myself for things that had gone wrong, I suppose."

"Things that were your fault?"

"Some of them. Some were things that I really could have changed, could have done better. But a lot of it probably would have turned out the same way no matter what."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, for example, I thought I should have figured out what Nick Parrish had planned up in the mountains."

"How could you? Even the cops didn't know. A bunch of them died."

"Yes, and maybe that was my fault, because I suspected Nick Parrish of being up to no good. Sort of like you suspected the guy in the car of being up to no good."

"But maybe if I had told my dad instead of Gilly . . ."

"Was your dad home?"

"No."

"So maybe the man in the car would have been gone by the time your dad got home. Even if your dad had called the police that night, they would have said, 'Is the man in the car doing anything?' and if your dad said, 'No,' that would have been that. Maybe it wasn't even Parrish out there that night."

"Maybe," he said, without conviction.

"It troubles you anyway, doesn't it?"

"Yeah."

"I kept hoping that the thoughts that were troubling me would just go away. They didn't. So now I'm trying to talk about them a little more. It's hard."

"Really hard," he said, looking back at his shoes.

"Who do you talk to when you're upset?"

He didn't answer for a long time, but he finally said, "My grandmother, sometimes."

"Maybe you should call her a little more often. Maybe talk to your dad about visiting her for a while."

"Okay."

We picked up our trash--including the smashed orange--and left the park. Before taking him home, Jack stopped at a hardware store to buy a length of wire. Next he drove us to an Italian restaurant where he was apparently well known. Although the dining room was empty at this late afternoon hour, we were welcomed back into the kitchen, where Jack talked the busy cook into giving him the other essentials for a tin can telephone. The cook even washed out the cans, and added supervision to Jason's efforts to assemble the parts.