The Bone House (20 page)

    They
were sending him a message. He could cover it up with paint, but no one was
going to let him forget.
Killer.

    Mark
picked up the ax, which was heavy and old. He weighed it in his hand. He felt
his anger rush back, and he threw the ax at the flaky white trunk of a young
birch tree, where it impaled itself, its handle quivering. He dug the ax out
and swung it again, making a deep wound in the side of the tree. He did it
again and again, wood and bark flying, until he ran out of breath and the
immature tree stood on nothing more than a ragged fraction of its trunk. He
wrapped his hands around the tree as if it were someone's throat and pushed
until the tree groaned and cracked away from its base and toppled into the
forest with a crash.

    
He staggered backward into his driveway. His chest heaved. His
face was flushed. The ax dropped from his hand.

    He
heard a noise from the road and swung round fiercely, expecting to see them
coming for him. The vandals. The punks. He was ready to take them on, hand to
hand.

    It
wasn't anyone from the island.

    A
purple Corvette was parked at the base of his driveway, looking oddly out of
place in the island wilderness. He saw a ridiculously tall man in a business
suit standing next to the Corvette's door, leaning on it and watching him from
behind sunglasses that made no sense on a dark day. He'd been watching as Mark
exploded with rage.

    It
was Cab Bolton.

    Cab
climbed back into the rented Corvette under Bradley's hostile glare. He had no
interest in having a conversation with Mark Bradley right now, but he wanted
the man to know he had followed him home. The investigation wasn't over, and if
Bradley thought he had escaped with his freedom that easily, he was wrong. Cab
also knew, watching Bradley erupt in fury with the ax, that his original
opinion of the man had been correct.

    Mark
Bradley had a temper. Push him hard enough, and he lost control.

    Cab
did a U-turn and returned to the road that led past Schoolhouse Beach and out
to the island's main highway beyond the cemetery. It occurred to him that he'd
been in most corners of the world, and he didn't think he had ever felt quite
as remote as he did now, on this island at the tip of the Door County
peninsula. The entire stretch of land north of Sturgeon Bay felt as if he were
driving through a winter ghost town, with shuttered storefronts and long
stretches of forest and dormant farmlands. It was beautiful and ominous, like a
transplanted corner of New England where someone had posted No Trespassing
signs to keep out the rest of the world.

    He'd
never spent much time in the Midwest. In his head, he'd always thought of it as
a place where winter lasted nine months, the cows outnumbered the people, and
the land was flat and endless. Nothing he'd seen so far had changed his mind.

    On
the way back to the ferry port, he found a Western-style saloon in need of
paint, immediately adjacent to the road. The sign said Bitters Pub. When he
parked in the gravel in front of the bar, his Corvette stood out like a Hot
Wheels play car next to the row of dusty pickups and hulking SUVs. He got out
and smelled a waft of pine blowing in with the cold lake air. Inside, the odor
of stale cigarette smoke choked the bar. He stripped off his sunglasses. He saw
a long oak counter with stools on his left, square card tables scattered across
a hardwood floor, and two pool tables at the rear. The walls were crowded with
knick-knacks like logging saws and skis.

    Three
men with huge bellies drank beer, played pool, and blew smoke rings. A bored
bartender, young and cute, eyed him in his expensive suit with a curious smile.
A grizzled fireplug of a man sat at the bar with a mug of coffee in front of
him. Cab approached the bar, and the bartender sauntered his way. She had her
black hair loose, and she wore a rust wool sweater and frayed jeans.

    'Help
you?'

    'I'm
looking for Sheriff Felix Reich,' Cab told her. 'One of his deputies told me I could
probably find him here.'

    The
girl nodded her head at the fireplug seated at the end of the bar. 'Sheriff,'
she called, 'somebody's looking for you.'

    Sheriff
Reich's head swiveled slowly, and he took the measure of Cab from head to toe
with the pinched expression of a man biting into a lemon. His eyes started at
Cab's spiky blond hair and moved down his long body, taking in his pinstripes,
tie, and polished loafers, and then traveled back up again, focusing on Cab's
manicured fingernails and gold earring. When he was done, Reich turned away to
study the steam rising out of his coffee cup, as if that was more interesting
than anything Cab was likely to say.

    'What
can I do for you?' Reich said. His voice was as gravelly as the back roads on
the island.

    Cab
took a seat two stools from the sheriff, with his back to the bar and his
stilt-like legs stretched out into the middle of the hardwood floor. He
balanced his elbows on the bar behind him. The white cuffs of his shirt, which
were closed with onyx cufflinks, jutted out from the sleeves of his suit coat.
He was accustomed to looking like an outsider and immune to the stares and
silence when he went somewhere he didn't belong. This place was no different
from a hundred others.

    'Sheriff,
my name is Cab Bolton,' he said. 'I'm a detective with the Naples Police in
Florida.'

    Reich,
who wore a heavy flannel shirt tucked into corduroys, sighed and slid sideways
on his stool. He wasn't a big man, but he was packed tightly into his clothes.
His face was weathered, as if he had a permanent case of frostbite, and his
blue eyes were hard and impassive.

    'A
detective?' he asked.

    'That's
right.'

    'Well,
Detective, if one of my cops came into work wearing an earring, he'd have a
choice. He could either yank it out and go home until the hole closed up, or he
could quit.'

    Cab
grinned, but Reich didn't smile back. He could see the old sheriff studying his
smile and thinking:
Look at how white those teeth are.

    'I
guess it's a good thing I don't work for you,' Cab told him.

    'What
did you say your name was?'

    'Cab
Bolton.'

    'Cab?
What kind of name is that?'

    'I
was named after my grandfather;' Cab replied, selecting a new explanation and a
new name to go with it. 'Cornelius Abernathy Bolton.'

    'Abernathy?'

    Cab
just smiled.

    Reich
grunted and reached for his coffee. 'You here because of Glory Fischer?'

    'That's
right.'

    'You
planning to arrest Mark Bradley?'

    'For
now I just want to find out more about him. About Glory, too.'

    The
bartender wandered closer and gave Cab an interested smile. She was about
twenty-five, with no ring on her finger. She had big brown eyes and round
cheeks. 'Can I get you a drink?' she asked Cab.

    Reich
gestured at the line-up of alcohol bottles behind the bar. 'Yeah, what is it
you people drink down in Florida? Mojitos?' He pronounced it
moh-jee-toes.

    'No
thanks,' Cab said.

    The
bartender winked. 'Maybe you want to join the club instead.'

    'What
club?'

    Reich
snuck a smile at the fat men playing pool. They drifted closer and the smoke in
the bar thickened. 'Detective, you're not just in a pub,' the sheriff
explained. 'This is the worldwide headquarters for the Bitters Club.'

    'Oh?'

    'That's
right. It was started on the island by Tom Nelsen back in eighteen ninety-nine.
Nelsen was convinced that Angostura bitters were an elixir of health. Sort of
like you Florida folks and orange juice. He drank a pint or so a day.'

    'A
pint
of bitters?' Cab asked.

    'It's
not exactly Guinness, but you get used to the taste. It's right up there with
motor oil. You don't have to down a whole pint, though. If you can put back a
shot glass of the stuff, you're in the club.'

    Cab
wasn't going to let this man win his macho game. 'Sure, set me up.'

    The
bartender smirked and reached under the bar. She placed a shot glass in front
of Cab and filled it with a black liquid that did look suspiciously like motor
oil. Cab brought the glass under his nose and smelled it. Reich eyed him
carefully, and so did the others, watching for his face to screw up with
distaste. He didn't react, despite the noxious aroma that would have awakened a
coma patient. He figured it was all or nothing. This wasn't brandy you sipped and
savored. He swirled the liquid in the glass, tipped it to his lips, and gulped
down the bitters in a single swallow. His lips pinched together involuntarily.
His throat contracted. The taste reminded him of chewing cigarette butts picked
out of the gutter.

    'Like
it?' Reich asked.

    'Great,'
Cab croaked.

    'Welcome
to the club.'

    'I'll
call my mom,' Cab replied.

    Reich
relaxed and smiled, as if Cab had passed a Door County test of endurance. 'So
give me the dirt, Detective. What exactly do you have on Mark Bradley?'

    Cab
played with the empty shot glass. His mouth still tasted like weedkiller.
'Honestly? Not much.'

    'I'm
sorry to hear it,' the sheriff replied. 'I couldn't nail Bradley for sexual
assault last year, because Tresa Fischer was so moon-eyed in love with the
bastard that she wouldn't say a word against him. You ask me, a teacher poles
one of his kids, he ought to be hauled off to a pig farm for castration. We
wouldn't have to worry about repeat offenders.'

    'You're
sure they were having sex?'

    'I
read the girl's diary. Her imagination's not that good.'

    'Can
you think of a reason why Bradley would kill Glory Fischer?' Cab asked.

    'I
can think of lots of reasons. Maybe he tried to rape her, and she fought back.
Maybe he just popped his cork and went off on the girl. Take your pick.'

    'You
may be right,' Cab told Reich, 'but right now, I can't even prove Bradley was
on the beach with the girl. We're still running the forensics, and I hope we'll
get lucky. Otherwise, we need to find somebody who saw something.'

    'So
what do you want to get done on my turf, Detective?' Reich asked pointedly.
'You're going to stir up a lot of people who are already hurting because of
what happened.'

    'I'd
like to find out if Bradley had some kind of previous relationship with Glory
Fischer. I'd also like to know if there was anything else going on in that
girl's life.'

    Reich
put down his coffee mug on the bar. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

    'Glory
saw someone she knew in Florida. It scared her. I want to know who it was and
whether it had anything to do with her death.'

    'Someone
she knew?' Reich asked. 'You think it was someone from around here?'

    'That's
what I'd like to find out.'

    Reich's
lips crinkled unhappily. 'My advice is to keep your eyes on the ball,
Detective. I spent a lot of time with Mark Bradley last year. Having him in the
middle of this thing doesn't surprise me at all.'

    'No?'

    'No.
That man is a powder keg.'

    'What
about Glory?'

    'What
about her?' Reich asked.

    'I
hear she had problems. Stealing, drugs, sex. Sounds like she ran pretty fast
for a nice country girl.'

    Reich
shrugged. 'Around here, there's not a lot to do in the quiet season. Kids get into
trouble. Glory had her share. People aren't going to take it too well if you
start dragging a nice girl's name through the mud. She's the victim here. Don't
you forget that.'

    'I
won't.' 'Delia Fischer is a good woman. She doesn't deserve to see her kids
treated like this.'

    'You
know her well?' Cab asked.

    'We're
both natives. Those of us who have been around here our whole lives know
everybody else, Detective.'