Bones (50 page)

"Now, even though you locked your doors like a good girl this time, I do need to let you know that locks won't stop me. I've left something a little perishable--or should I say, 'Parrishable'?--for you in the van."

I turned back toward the van and shouted for Frank.

"I think Ben Sheridan will enjoy it," Parrish went on. "Tell him I did. And tell him that I'm about to take you out of his reach."

There was a click. After a slight pause, the pleasant recorded voice on the voice mail service said, "To repeat this message, press one. To delete this message, press two. To save this message . . ."

But pleasant voices were beyond my hearing at that moment. I tossed the phone on the lawn as if I had suddenly found myself handling a snake; I hurried to open the sliding side door on the van.

Frank ran out of the house with Deke and Dunk. "Irene?" he asked frantically. "What's wrong?"

I pointed toward the phone as I crawled into the van and saw him go to pick it up.

"Irene, no!" he shouted, as I opened the refrigerator.

Too late.

A little light went on inside the tiny, aquamarine-colored space.

A human skull stared back at me.

** CHAPTER 50

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2:45 A.M.

Las Piernas

I've tried, but even now I cannot remember most of what happened in the first few minutes immediately after I saw it. I vaguely recall that at some point Frank held me tightly by the shoulders and shouted at me, angry in his fear for my safety, his terror over imagining what trap I might have sprung by responding so unthinkingly to Parrish's taunting.

He was right, of course--I never should have touched it.

He tells me I responded to his ranting by calmly saying, "I thought he only cut off her fingers and toes. I didn't know she was decapitated."

"He didn't decapitate her! That's how we knew her hair and eye color!"

Suddenly unable to stand, I sat down on the porch steps.

He closed the van door, then sat next to me, keeping an arm around me as he called the police. Cody, my cat, came outside and sat on my lap. Deke and Dunk had our feet covered.

To some degree, the arrival of the detectives and the crime scene unit roused me from my cocoon of numbness, so that by the time they left I was feeling more myself. I had told them what I could--that Parrish had probably dialed my number at work, and the call had been forwarded; that the van had been locked; that yes, there were security cameras on the parking lot at the Express, but they were notoriously inadequate.

The officers called the paper, and learned that three weeks earlier, Leonard had dutifully reported that the camera that covers the parking lot had been vandalized. Wrigley's response had been to post a larger sign that said, PARK AT YOUR OWN RISK. OWNER OF LOT ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR LOSS OR DAMAGE TO VEHICLES OR THEIR CONTENTS. Nor for additions to their contents, evidently.

The next morning--technically, the same morning, but after we had been asleep--we found ourselves a little shy of each other; Frank for losing his temper, me for losing my mind. All the same we never moved far from each other, nor were we out of each other's sight for more than a few moments at a time. Gradually, feeling safer than I had at three in the morning, I began to relax, we began to talk, and by the end of the day, something like balance returned.

"I wish Rachel were in town," he said on Saturday night.

He wasn't longing for another woman--he wanted to hire a bodyguard. His partner's wife was a retired homicide detective and completely capable of kicking ass if need be. But Rachel's work as a private eye had taken her out of state that week.

Though there was a patrol car in front of our house, Frank wasn't just worried about my safety. "I don't want you to feel scared," he said. "You should have company."

I didn't object, which, as far as he was concerned, was probably the most worrisome thing that had happened that day.

On Sunday morning, I awoke to see him putting on his suit. "Sorry--I was trying to let you get a little more sleep. I have to go in. But Ben's going to come over with Bingle--okay?"

I told him that I'd enjoy seeing both Ben and his dog.

I thought I was telling him the truth, but while Bingle would have been welcomed to stay, by midday, I was ready to send Ben packing.

It was around one o'clock when I ventured to ask him if he was the one who was trying to make the identification on the skull.

"Yes, I am," he snapped at me, "and no, I don't know whose skull it is. I'd rather not guess. Especially not in front of a reporter."

"Go home," I said.

"What?"

"Go home. I am barely holding it together here, buster, and you keep making rude remarks. At least two dozen today, and I don't see any end to the supply you seem to have so handy. So get lost."

He frowned, and said, "If I've offended you, I'm sorry."

"Thank you very much. Very sincerely said. Good-bye."

"I'm not leaving."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not. Stop being childish."

"Get the hell out of here!"

"If it were just for your sake, believe me, I'd go. But I promised Frank I would stay with you."

"If you don't get out of here, you won't have to worry about Parrish killing me. By the end of the day, I'll want to kill myself!"

"That's a horrible thing to say!"

"You're right, it is. And I accept that as the highest plaudit from the Master of Horrible Things to Say! Excuse me while I go to make a note of it in my special Horrible Ben Sheridan Diary! I keep it in our special Make Tribute to Ben Sheridan Shrine Room! Be right back--maybe!"

I stomped off into the bathroom and shut the door with a bang. I locked it and turned around.

Someday, when I am very wealthy, I am going to build a house with a bathroom that will allow a person to have a snit fit in it in true comfort. I wasn't wealthy that day.

In fact, everywhere I looked, there was some change we had made to accommodate Ben's disability when he stayed with us. My hands itched to pull it all apart.

I looked in the bathroom cabinet for something that I could break without feeling bad. Nothing. Not even a computer monitor. I sat down on the edge of the tub, head in hands.

I heard him walking quickly down the hall. His gait sounded odd to me, as if he was favoring his right leg. I forgot about that when I heard him take hold of the doorknob and try to turn it.

"Don't you dare try to come into this room!" I shouted.

"Come out of there now!"

I took hold of a towel, stuffed it in my mouth, and screamed into it.

"Are you screaming into a towel?"

It almost struck me as funny. Almost.

"Open this door," he said.

I didn't answer.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Don't ask me if I'm all right, you insincere bastard," I said. "You don't really give a shit. I'm tired of taking crap from you. I'm tired of everything!"

I heard him walk off, then walk back. He was definitely limping.

Suddenly there was a loud bang, and the middle panel of the three-panel bathroom door splintered into pieces as Frank's long-handled flashlight came crashing through it. Outside, all three dogs were barking.

Ben's hand reached through the hole in the door and unlocked the doorknob.

I stared up at him in amazement as he opened the shattered door.

"Why in God's name did you do that?" I asked.

"I wanted to apologize."

It hit me first. I started laughing. He started laughing. I nearly lost my perch on the tub.

The doorbell rang. I went to answer it, wiping tears from my face. It was one of the patrolmen.

"Mrs. Harriman?" he asked, looking past my shoulder, then back at me. "We heard a loud noise--and the dogs. Are you all right?"

"Oh yes," I said, straining to keep my composure.

The officer looked at me warily.

"I made the sound," Ben said sheepishly. "I broke a door."

"I locked myself in the bathroom and couldn't get out," I said quickly. "Dr. Sheridan kindly rescued me."

"Oh," the officer said, and after a fleeting look back at Ben, left us.

We had cleaned up the wood splinters and tacked some brown parcel paper over the opening in the bathroom door when I saw him wincing and rubbing his thigh.

"Ben, rest for a while."

I half expected an argument, but he moved off to the couch. By the time I walked into the living room, all the color had drained from his face.

"I think I overdid it yesterday," he said. "Lately, I've noticed that's the only time the phantom pain really bothers me."

"You tried to keep up with Bingle's SAR group?" I asked.

He nodded. "I would have been fine, I think, but just when I got home they called to tell me about the skull, so I went into the lab, too. I stayed on my feet too long."

"So why are you keeping your rig on? Take it off."

"Some protection I'll be to you then."

"You're right--besides, it's better entertainment to watch you writhe in agony."

He smiled a little. "More entries for your Horrible Ben Diary."

"That bathroom door would probably still be in one piece if you had just admitted that pain was making you crabby. Give me your car keys and I'll get your chair out of the trunk."

"Do you still have that extra set of crutches here?"

"Yes."

"I'll just use those," he said, reaching down to push the release button on his prosthesis.

There were two basic sections to Ben's rig: the socket, worn over the end of his leg, and the Flex-Foot itself. A liner between his skin and the socket held the socket on by suction. A long metal pin extended from the bottom of the socket and fit into a clutch lock, which in turn was attached to his Flex-Foot. By pressing the button on the lock, he removed everything except the socket and liner. The socket and liner couldn't be pulled off, they had to be slowly rolled off. While he went to work on those, I got the crutches.

After bringing him an ice pack, I let the dogs in and fed them.

Frank came home, looking as if he was highly amused over something and greeted me by telling me that it was all over the department that his wife had alarmed the surveillance unit by getting stuck in the bathroom. Ben looked so mortified that I decided to hold off telling Frank the whole story until we were alone.

We invited Jack and Ben to have dinner with us. Afterward, we let Ben have the couch again, and he tried the ice pack once more.

We sat in companionable silence. Cody was on my lap, Deke and Dunk moved back and forth between Frank and Jack, and Bingle refused to let any of them near Ben. Ben had his eyes closed and was stroking Bingle's ears. "Tell me the rest of Parzival," he said.

"Jack could tell it better," I said.

"No, go ahead," Jack said. "You've read it more recently."

So I told of how Parzival went to Wild Mountain, and noticed that the Fisher King suffered some ailment, but having been warned by his mentor not to appear overly curious or to ask others too many questions, Parzival made no inquiries about the Fisher King's health.

I described the great feast in the hall of Wild Mountain, during which the Holy Grail itself was brought forth. Parzival noticed that all the people of the castle looked to him in anticipation, and he was filled with curiosity about all that he had seen--but remembering his mentor's admonitions, he asked no questions.

The next day, after a night of disturbing dreams, he awoke to find himself alone. Thinking it rude of his hosts to abandon him without so much as a servant to help him dress, he donned his clothing and went into the courtyard, where his horse was saddled, his sword and lance nearby. Angry now, he mounted and hurried to the drawbridge. But as he reached the end of it, someone gave the cable a yank, so Parzival nearly fell into the moat. He looked back to see a page, who cursed him and called him a fool. "Why didn't you ask the question?" the boy asked, shaking his fist at the knight.