Inherit the Bones

Chapter Fifteen

The station was quiet when I returned. Sam Birdshead sat typing at one of the computer terminals; he had split the workload with another officer and finished interviewing most of the circus employees from the list of names Joe Fatone had prepared for us.

The window shades were drawn against the glare of the southern afternoon sun and the old wooden ceiling fan was on, creaking and groaning and looking as though it might fall at any moment. The fan made a rhythmic whoosh every few seconds that slowed my pulse, syncing it with the scalloped blades. The room was cool and dark and empty, save for Sam and I.

I’ve often thought being a police officer is akin to being a clergyman, and at that moment the station felt like the hallowed sanctuary of a church.

“Where is everyone?” I asked Sam. I sat down and leaned back and lifted my legs up until my feet were on my desk. With my belly, it was an awkward maneuver and for one horrible moment I thought Sam was actually going to grab my ankles and hoist, but he had the good sense to just watch.

“Armstrong and Moriarty took a call on an accident in Pine. I don’t know where Nowlin is,” Sam said. “I think the chief is in his office.”

I nodded. “Get anything good?”

Sam shook his head. His expression was so hangdog I had to laugh.

“Don’t worry about it, that’s part of the deal. For every hour you spend on a case, you might get a minute of gold. Just remember that gold makes those fifty-nine other minutes of sweat and tears and blood and bullshit all worth it.”

“I guess. It’s strange, I get the impression that Fellini’s is like its own little society, and everyone belongs to a class, and the classes don’t mix,” Sam said. “For example, the grunts and the glitter don’t ever get together.”

“The grunts and the glitter?”

“Yeah, the performers like the clowns and the acrobats, the showmen. They’re the glitter, and the grunts are the guys like this Pat Sheldon I talked to, the cooks and the mechanics and the trainers,” Sam said. “The grease in the wheels of the big machine that is the circus.”

Hadn’t Tessa said something about that? She’d said it was like a totem pole, with the gassers on the bottom.

“Did this Sheldon mention the gassers?” I asked.

Sam nodded with surprise. “How’d you know about them? They’re the worst, apparently. The gassers, and the guys who run the kiddy booths; Sheldon called them the peddies.”

“The peddies?”

“Yeah, as in peddlers, or pedophiles, depending on if you think they’re just selling wares or if they’re manning the booths to get up close and personal with the kiddos.”

I winced.

“Well, after I called you from Fatone’s, I went and saw Reed’s girlfriend, Tessa,” I said. “We ought to take a look at her roommate, Lisey. Seems there was a bit of a love triangle.”

Sam perked up. “Oh yeah?”

I nodded. “Yeah, but not the way you’re thinking. Lisey apparently has a thing for Tessa.”

“You thinking this Lisey killed Reed in some kind of jealous rage?” Sam asked. “That’s pretty violent for a crush.”

He stood and stretched and handed me an open bag of peanut M &M’S.

“You’d be surprised what can happen when love’s involved,” I said. I knocked back a handful of the chocolates and noticed they were all brown, red, or green candies. “The worst things I’ve seen were between people who loved each other. Did you pick out all the blue and yellow M &M’S?”

Sam looked at me, aghast. “I would never do that.”

“Well, someone did. Did you get anything else?”

Sam shook his head. “Not much. Same stuff we’ve been hearing, sweet kid, liked everyone, blah blah blah.”

I stopped him. “No, not blah blah blah. This is good, and important, and we can’t forget it, no matter what else we discover. Consistency tells us a lot, Sam. People are creatures of habit. Everything we know about Nicky thus far tells us he was a good kid, sweet, gentle-natured. Everything we know about Reed thus far also tells us he was a good kid. And what does that tell us?”

Sam shook his head and shrugged. “Well, we’d expect that, right? Since it was the same guy?”

“It tells us that even though Nicky went to drastic, extreme measures to change his appearance-the tattoos, the piercings, the hair dye-he didn’t, or couldn’t, change his personality. On the outside, Nicky became Reed. On the inside, Nicky stayed Nicky.”

I stood and walked to the back of the station, where a whiteboard stretched the length of the wall. I erased a few scribbles and a tiny unflattering cartoon of what looked like Chief Chavez and a pack of ponies and rummaged around the markers until I found one that wasn’t dried out.

I drew a long horizontal line and then added a tick mark along it.

“Three years ago, in the summer of 2012, Nicholas Bellington left home for a camping trip and he never came back. He was presumed to have died when he what-fell? Tripped? Was pushed? Jumped?-over Bride’s Veil. His body was never found.”

Sam nodded. He grabbed a marker and some distance from my first mark, added another tick. “Two days ago, Nicholas Bellington, living under the alias Reed Tolliver, turns up in his hometown murdered. This is all we can say for certain, right?”

“Right.” I drummed my marker against the wall, thinking. “I think we need to consider the possibility that Reed wasn’t the target.”

“You mean Nicky was the target. Someone discovered who Reed really was and that’s why he was killed; not for something Reed did but for something Nicky did.”

Pleased, I nodded at Sam. “You’re sixteen. You survive a fall that would have killed anyone else, and then you run. But you don’t run to your parents, your school, or your church. Instead, you run as far away as you can and then you change. You change your name, your hair. You destroy your face with tattoos and piercings to the point that if your own mother saw you on the street, she’d walk right by you. Why?”

The room was silent save for the rhythmic whoosh of the ceiling fan. It paced our thoughts like a giant metronome. Whoosh, whoosh. Whoosh, whoosh.

“You’re scared. You do all that because you are scared to death,” a voice whispered into my ear. I jumped and turned around. Finn Nowlin had crept into the room in that silent way of his and he stood, looking at us. Then with a wolfish grin he reached around me and slapped up the window shade on my left. Sunlight streamed into the room and I thought about Finn’s words.

I knew there were shades of fear, the same as there are shades of like, and love, and anger, and desire. I was grateful in that moment to have never known the level of fear that Nicky must have felt, to do the things he did.