The Bone Box

CHAPTER SIX

It had been a quiet day in the Kitsap County Morgue, which meant it had been a good day. No one who worked there ever cursed their jobs because there was “nothing to do.” An empty chiller meant a day without carrying the hurt of someone else’s loss. A child. A wife. Even a friend. Birdy was in the midst of finishing up a supply order that needed to be filled when she looked up from her desk to see a woman in an orange North Face jacket and black jeans. The color combination was definitely on the Halloween side of the fashion wheel, which might have been intentional. The holiday was only a week away.

“You don’t remember me, Dr. Waterman,” the woman said, her voice soft and nearly reverential. She was slightly built, with the facial features of a Makah-intense eyes slashed above with eyebrows that never needed any help from Maybelline, and, most strikingly, a pronounced nose.

Birdy looked her over, racking her brain. Who is this? There was something familiar about her, but Birdy couldn’t come up with a name.

“I’m Iris,” the woman said. “I used to be Iris Bonners. Married to Randall Rostov now.”

Birdy nodded. “Of course, I remember you,” she said, a little unconvincingly, as she worked hard to reel in some kind of memory. She did recall Randall Rostov; he was the son of the first Makah to run a whale-watching business catering to the tourists from Seattle. If Iris hadn’t said her maiden name, she would never have guessed who she was.

Iris was Anna Jo Bonners’s little sister. She had been three or four grades behind Birdy in school, a gap of enough measure to ensure that their paths seldom crossed. It didn’t matter how small a school was. And the reservation school was small by any standards. Only eighty students graduated with Birdy-and only three of those went on to college.

“It’s okay if you don’t,” Iris said, taking off her jacket to reveal a cascade of black hair that had been tucked inside. “I was a lot younger than you.”

Birdy smiled, a recollection finally coming to her. “I do,” she said. “I actually do. Weren’t you a dancer? I remember hearing that you went off to study dance back east. New York?”

Iris nodded. “Yes, I was. Back then. Made it as far as Milwaukee. A far cry from New York, that’s for sure. Now I work in the bar at the casino. In the bar. So much for my brilliant career. But look at you.”

Birdy deflected the compliment, if that’s what it had been. With some of the people on the reservation mad at her for getting a medical degree and not returning to work in the free clinic, it was hard to know if Iris really thought her career had been brilliant or a betrayal.

“Coffee?” Birdy asked. “I was about to pour myself a cup.”

Iris shook her head and declined. “Too late in the day for me. And really, I don’t have much time. The longer I wait to get to the point of it all, the greater the likelihood that I won’t be able to get up the nerve to tell you what I think you need to know.”

Birdy scooted back into her chair, her eyes riveted on Iris. “Okay. No coffee. Sit down. Talk to me, Iris.” She motioned to Iris to take one of the chairs across her desk.

“I’ll stand,” Iris said. “And first of all, before I say anything, I want you to know that as sorry as I am about everything, I’m also scared. Really scared. I have two kids. This can’t come back to me. Promise.”

“Promise.”

“I hope I can trust you, Birdy. I’m hoping that given your job and your education, you’ll be able to keep a confidence.”

“I will,” she said.

For the next twenty minutes, refusing to sit, Iris Bonners Rostov talked about her sister, how much she loved her, how she was sure they’d have been close.

“Not like you and your sister,” the younger woman said.

“That’s right, my sister and I aren’t close,” Birdy said, swallowing the sentence in one bitter gulp.

Birdy wondered why Iris had needed to make the jab. People often needed to hurt someone as a way to take away their own pain. Putting the hurt on another person sometimes made them feel better, if only by comparison.

“Iris, you came a long way to tell me something you think might be important,” Birdy said.

“I did,” she said, “but really I’m scared.”

“It’s about Tommy, isn’t it?”

She nodded, but stayed quiet.

Birdy pushed for an answer. “Iris, what?”

Iris took a breath. “I don’t know that my sister really loved Tommy. I know it is wrong to talk bad about the dead, but it seems to me that Anna Jo has had a long enough time to adjust to what she did-wherever she is.”

“I’m sure she’s at peace,” Birdy said.

Iris looked away. “Not after what she did, maybe not.”

“What did she do?”

“She cheated on Tommy. She was seeing someone else. I think that’s why Tommy killed her. He must have found out.”

The disclosure came out of nowhere. Birdy had thought that Iris was going to say something against Tommy, another reason why no one should forgive him, or that he’d gotten what he deserved.

“I didn’t know she had another boyfriend,” Birdy said. “I’ve never heard that before.”

Iris’s eyes were back on Birdy’s. “Well, she did,” Iris said. “She had two guys on a string. Tommy and the other guy.”

Birdy got up. The intensity of what Iris was saying made her feel silly sitting in her chair while Iris stood, coat on, ready to drop the bomb and run away.

“Do you know his name? Was it someone from home?”

Iris shrugged a little. “I never saw him. She never said his name. Not to me. I don’t think he lived on the reservation, because I’d never seen him or his car. Whenever he came to get her, she had to walk all the way down the lane to be picked up. I don’t think she wanted our parents to meet him. Maybe he was black or something. I don’t know. My dad was kind of a racist and that wouldn’t go over real big with him.”

Black?

“What makes you think he was black?”

Iris looked around the room. “Nothing really,” she said. “I was a kid and I just tried to figure out why it was that my sister hid him from everyone in the family.” Iris shifted in her chair. She was on a roll now and Birdy wasn’t about to stop her. “I thought we’d meet him after she died, you know, he’d come over and pay his respects at the house. That never happened. We never saw him. Not even one time.”

“So you think Tommy killed her because he was jealous of this other man?”

“That’s the only thing that makes sense to me. I remember my mom telling me that the police caught Tommy red-handed. He must have killed her for something. Anna Jo was hurt pretty bad. He must have been mad.”

Twenty-seven-stab-wounds mad to be exact.

“Did you ever see Tommy threaten her? Act jealous? Angry?”

“That’s the hard part. I always got the impression that he loved her, was gentle with her. The other guy always made her cry. One time I remember going into her bedroom when she was on her bed crying. I asked her what was the matter and she said she was in big trouble. I asked her what kind, and she said, ‘boyfriend trouble.’ ”

“What do you think she meant by that?”

“I don’t know. That was the last time I saw her. The next day she was dead.”

After Iris left, Birdy went home to the Bone Box.