Bone by Bone

27

Alerted by the cowbells on the judge's bedroom doorknob, Oren took the stairs two and three at a time, bare-chested, barefooted and zipping his jeans on the run. His father stood before the front door, shod in sandals and wearing a sweatshirt pulled over pajama pants. Frustrated by three dead-bolt locks, he scratched on the wood with a clawed hand. The sleepwalker's imaginary box was cradled in one arm.

Oren gently turned him around and held him by the shoulders. There was anguish in the old man's eyes when he said, "I need another miracle."

"You and me both." Oren embraced him and held him close. Out came the words he could only say when the old man was asleep. "I missed you. God, how I missed you." He breathed in the tobacco scent trapped in his father's beard. This moment was the homecoming he had ached for, and he did not want it to end.

The judge began to cry.

Hannah appeared in her purple bathrobe. "This is my fault. I forgot to drug his whiskey."

"Get the key," said Oren. "Unlock the door."

The housekeeper shuffled off in fuzzy purple slippers to return minutes later, wearing sensible shoes and holding the key, two jackets, Oren's cowboy boots and a whiskey bottle. "First aid," she said, by way of explaining the bottle. She wrapped one jacket around the judge's shoulders.

After pulling on his boots, Oren unlocked the door and placed his father's hand on the knob so the old man could open it by himself.

Once outside, Hannah pulled two small flashlights from the deep pockets of her robe. Guided by these beams, she and Oren followed the sleepwalker down the porch steps. They woke the yellow stray in passing, and now they were four. The dog made no sound as he trotted along at the judge's side, only lifting his snout, sniffing for a scent of change in the air, something odd and maybe dangerous.

Inside the garage, his father became anxious again. The Mercedes was locked.

The housekeeper folded her arms. "I'm not giving up that key."

The judge let go of the door handle. Two by two, Oren and Hannah followed the old man and the dog. They left the garage and walked down the driveway to the road. After a hike of ten minutes, the small parade turned onto a dead-end street with only one address. The graveyard gate was open, no locks to thwart Henry Hobbs on his mission, but there were many obstacles, small marble stones to trip over and large monuments to collide with.

"Don't worry," said Hannah, reading Oren's mind again, annoying habit. "This part of the cemetery hasn't changed at all. Whatever year the judge is walking through, he'll do just fine. It's probably daylight in his dreams."

The judge neatly skirted every headstone along his path and came to rest before the Hobbs family plot, which held a hundred years of generations. He unlatched the small iron gate and stepped inside to sit down by the grave of Oren's mother. The yellow stray sprawled on the grass beside him.

"Compared to Horatio, that dog is a freaking genius," said Hannah. "He knows when to be still."

Oren entered the gated plot and sat down tailor fashion. By the light of the moon, he watched his father's face. The judge woke from the dream to see that it was not day but night, and he wore the same shy expression Oren had seen at the close of the last episode. The judge stared at his wife's headstone and then discovered his son seated beside him. This time, there could be no retreat into sleep and forgetfulness.

Finally, wits gathered, the old man said, "When will they give Josh back to us so we can have a proper funeral?"

"It won't be long," said Oren.

"I guess you believe me now." Hannah stood behind the judge, arms folded in a pose of I told you so. "You were walking in your sleep."

"I suppose that would explain a lot." The judge fished through the pockets of his jacket.

Hannah ended this search by producing two cigars and a pack of matches from thin air. After handing over the whiskey bottle, she further amazed them by opening her hands to reveal a tiny glass standing on each palm. All of the housekeeper's clothes had deep pockets, the props of her best magic act: producing what was needed at the moment, be it bandages for a boy's skinned knee or shot glasses.

Oren took a proffered cigar from his father and unwrapped the cellophane. "I've never smoked one before."

"Nothing to it." The judge bit off one end of his own cigar, and his son did the same. He struck a match and lit both stogies, warning, "Don't inhale, boy. Just let it run around your taste buds, and then let it out." He opened his mouth to blow a perfect smoke ring in the still air. And then he blew a ring within a ring, a thing that had once delighted his son.

And it still did.

"Hannah can do three," said the judge. "But she never upstaged me in front of you and Josh."

"You talk in your sleep, sir." Oren filled his mouth with smoke and exhaled it with his next words. "You asked for another miracle."

"Well, that can't be right. I'm opposed to all things mystical. I most particularly do not hold with miracles." The judge looked around to see that Hannah had wandered away to visit the gravestones of old friends. He poured whiskey into the shot glasses and handed one to his son.

"Sir, you asked for another miracle."

"But there never was a first-" The judge, lost in thought, stared at his wife's gravestone. "No, I'm wrong. There was a miracle-more like a joke. The miracle of the rain-it happened right here. I know you remember the Reverend Pursey."

"Yes, sir, I do."

"Anointing you as a teenage archangel-that wasn't the craziest thing he ever did. But I had a few words with him over that." The judge smiled at this memory. "That loony old bugger. Oh, but what a showman. He packed his church every Sunday. One time, he accused Ad Winston of being the devil himself. Addison was so pleased. A lawyer can't buy advertising like that."

"Sir? You went to church?"

"No, I never do. But I'm not your typical atheist, either." Henry Hobbs absently stroked the dog's fur, and the animal loved him back, nuzzling his hand. "The way I see it-it doesn't matter if God invented man or man invented God. It's a done deal, and you might as well try to uninvent the isosceles triangle. But a bona fide miracle defies logic in both camps. A man-made god precludes miraculous acts. And a true god wouldn't allow them. Why shake man's faith in sweet reason? Take the Reverend Pursey. He was shaken witless by the miracle of the rain."

Oren exhaled a blue cloud and sipped from his shot glass. In faraway places, this was something he had imagined time and again, sharing smoke and whiskey with his father and listening to the old man's oral history of family and town.

The judge slapped the ground with one hand. "Pursey's miracle happened right here on this very spot. It was the day of your mother's funeral. Well, the sky's clouding up. The rain's coming any minute, and everybody knows it-umbrellas at the ready everywhere you look. And the Reverend Pursey's building up to the high point in his eulogy. Then the first raindrops fell. Oh, how that pissed him off. He looks up at the sky, a real nasty look like a warning. Then it begins to pour-a solid wall of rain. Well, Pursey's drenched, and people are surprised he doesn't drown when he opens his mouth. His eyes roll up toward heaven. He shakes one fist and yells, 'Knock it off!'

"And the rain-just-stopped.

"Damndest thing, a rare thing, but not unheard-of. You see, the rain didn't taper off. It was more like a giant faucet in the sky got turned off." The judge snapped his fingers. "That quick. So the miracle of the rain figured into a lot of church sermons after that. And then it became the punch line to a joke on a crazy old fool. Every time it rained, you'd see people stop on the street to shake their fists and yell at the sky and laugh- how they laughed. Now, if that's a miracle in your book, I'd have to say your standards are really low."

Father and son smoked cigars by the light of the moon and shared the whiskey for as long as it lasted.

Addison Winston aimed his flashlight beam at a patch of ground behind the stable. He held out the shovel to Isabelle. "Shall we dig it up?"

"You put it there."

"Ask your mother who buried it. Oh, that's right. You can't, can you? It might send her poor fragile mind right over the screaming edge. Belle, you have a first-rate brain, and this is simple logic. If I had evidence to hide, why would I bury it on my own land? I would've thrown it into the sea. But your mother's clearly an amateur in all things criminal. Or maybe her mind wasn't working right the night she buried it."

Isabelle sank the shovel a few inches into hard ground. "All right- logically-it shouldn't still be here." She used one foot on the metal edge to sink it deeper. "Why didn't you dig it up and get rid of it?"

"Well, it helps if you think like a lawyer. It's evidence that goes to your mother's state of mind-insanity. I thought it might come in handy if, by some miracle, Cable Babitt ever got to thinking like a real cop. He might wonder why you'd fake an alibi for Oren Hobbs. I wondered about that myself when you were sixteen. There's two ways to look at it-from the law's point of view. Either you killed Josh and you needed an alibi for yourself-or you knew for a fact that Oren didn't do it… because you knew who did. Sorry I can't help with the digging or the disposal. That would make me a material witness. I wouldn't be able to represent your mother if it comes to a trial."

"Mom would never hurt Josh." Isabelle lifted a shovelful of dirt and then another. "They were friends."

"Her friendships end badly. Look at poor William. After you left town, he'd drop by for dinner at the usual time, and your mother would lock herself in her room. No apology, not one word of explanation. That was shabby."

The shovel clinked against a metal object. Isabelle knelt down to scoop the dirt away with her hands. She could hear her restless horse moving in his stall on the other side of the stable wall.

"And now," said Addison, "back to your phony alibi for Oren Hobbs. How could you know he was innocent? You must have seen your mother when she came home from the woods that day-the day Josh disappeared. She was all sweaty and exhausted. Burying a corpse is hard work. You might recall all the blisters on her hands."

Discarding the shovel, Isabelle lifted a camera from the hole. It was crusted with dirt, and the metal was pitted like a sponge. Every mechanism was jammed. She set it on the ground and wiped her hands. "I can't open the back."

"Looking for a roll of film? You think maybe the boy had time to snap a picture of your mother?" He handed her the flashlight and stooped to pick up the shovel. "Good thinking, Belle. No telling how long film might hold up." He made a swing with the shovel and brought it crashing down on the camera.

Now it was easy to lift the broken back, but there was no roll of film inside. Isabelle aimed the flashlight beam at the open compartment. A small piece of torn film was snagged in the spool. "My mother didn't kill

Josh. Mom knows how to operate a camera like this one. Somebody else ripped out the roll-and botched it."

"A prosecutor will argue that she panicked."

" Addison, did you ever try to rip something like this, a piece of plastic or a negative? It's not easy." She stared at the mangled snatch of film, all that remained of Josh's last roll. "This was a violent act. And the killer knew nothing about cameras."

"Like me?" He squatted down beside her. "Burying the body-that's what made the blisters on Sarah's hands. Remember how beautiful her hands were?" He pointed to the camera. "Your mother brought home that little souvenir the following day. She waited for the cover of night to put it in the ground. Sarah was drunk by then, and she couldn't find the key to the toolshed. No shovel. She dug the hole with a spoon and her bare hands. That was just hell on her manicure. You remember the broken fingernails? You even asked her how she broke them. Is it all coming back to you now?"

Isabelle dropped the camera back into the hole.

"What are you doing? Belle, this is the time to get rid of it. If we wait too long, your mother might dig it up herself. She's coming apart. Throw it into the sea."

Isabelle shook her head. "Bad idea."

"All right, here's a better one. The grave in the woods. There's no one guarding it anymore. And now that they've closed up the hole, it's the perfect hiding place."

"No, Addison, I don't think so. That would be tampering with evidence. So you'd better hope I never testify in court. I'd have to say that I saw you smash the camera with this." She took the shovel from his hands and steeped it into the pile of loose dirt. "It was all so long ago. I can't say I remember seeing blisters on Mom's hands," she lied, "or broken fingernails."

She filled in the hole and tamped it down with the flat side of the spade. "And the camera's buried on your land, isn't it? What a crazy thing to do. And you knew where to dig. You led me right to it."

Isabelle handed him the shovel. "If this ever comes back on you, Addison, you can always plead insanity." And that plea might ring true.

She picked up the flashlight and switched it off, not wanting to see his face. Was he grinning in the dark?