Inherit the Bones

Chapter Sixteen

The phone rang for a long time at the Bellingtons’. I was about to hang up when Ellen Bellington answered. She sounded harried, impatient to get off the phone.

“Of course we didn’t keep his things. We boxed them up and gave it all away, after the police came and poked their damn fingers through it, touching every little item they could,” Ellen replied in response to my question.

“What about his schoolwork, his papers? Did he have a journal, maybe a diary?”

She laughed, that harsh bark so at odds with her beauty. I was starting to believe that laugh was more representative of her true self, the ugly side she kept hidden.

“What do you think? He was sixteen.”

“Mrs. Bellington, we need to discover why Nicky disappeared three years ago. If we can figure out what he was doing at the time-”

“Nicky wasn’t doing anything, Gemma,” she interrupted.

I heard a low voice in the background and then a muffled sound, as if she’d covered the phone with her hand.

“I have to go. Frank, my father-in-law, he’s not well, I have to go to him,” she said. “Check with that basketball coach. Maybe he can tell you more. He was real fond of Nicky, too fond for my liking.”

Ellen hung up the phone with a force too strong to be an accident, and I rubbed my ringing ear.

Although school had not yet resumed, Cedar Valley High School ran summer classes through the end of August. I checked my watch; it was nearing four o’clock. I took a chance and called, and waited while an administrative assistant put me on hold and tracked down the basketball coach.

I paced the office and listened with one ear as Finn regaled Sam with war stories. He was beginning the one about Christmas Eve of ’09, and the drunken department store elf, when the hold music stopped and a male voice came on.

“This is Darren Chase.”

His voice was low and sounded like he’d spent some serious time down in the bayou; I heard in the ebb and flow of his words days spent on shrimping boats, in swampy wetlands, watching shell-pink and blood-orange sunsets over the Gulf.

I introduced myself and asked if I could see him regarding a student he had coached a few years back.

He said, “Well, sure, of course,” then added, “Which student?”

Damn. I forgot the Bellingtons still had not held their press conference.

“Mr. Chase, I’d rather not get into too many details over the phone. Can I buy you a coffee at Rick’s?” I said. “I can be there in twenty minutes.”

“Make it thirty, and a beer, my treat,” he said with a laugh. “Or is it doughnuts that you cops prefer?”

“Very funny, Mr. Chase. I’ll see you at four thirty then.”

I asked Sam to join me. Chief Chavez hadn’t officially made us partners on the case but what the hell, the kid was eager to learn and it never hurt to have a second set of eyes and ears. I didn’t want to put the mileage on my car, so I checked at reception and gave Sam a high five when the receptionist tossed me the keys to Olga.

Olga was a piece-of-shit Oldsmobile, a relic from the ’80s, but she was the hottest ticket around, on account of her working air conditioner and AM/FM stereo. We clamored into it and cranked the AC and headed over to Rick’s Café, a small restaurant that sat in the shadows of the ski lifts, at the base of a black-diamond run called Maverick’s Goose.

“I was thinking about what you said the other day, you know, dreaming about those kids, the McKenzie boys,” said Sam. He fiddled with the AC vents, opening and closing them like a kid himself. “Do you think we’ll ever know who killed them?”

I shrugged. “I hope so, but who knows? You have to understand, back in ’85, and then in 2011, when I found the skull, thousands of dollars were poured into the case. Hell, tens of thousands, and not just money, but time, effort, and energy. Finding those bodies opened old, deep wounds in Cedar Valley. There were people in town that would have preferred the bodies never be found. I guess they thought it was just easier to keep thinking maybe the kids had run away.”

“But if the Woodsman is still alive… well, that would be something, right? If there was some way to find him…”

I had to appreciate his enthusiasm.

“Of course. But we went over it, again and again. I haven’t given up, but I can’t let the past prevent me from giving all to the present. Take Nicky Bellington-we have an opportunity to find his killer and solve this case, here and now.”

“And what’s this Darren Chase got to do with it?” Sam asked.

“He’s the basketball coach at the high school. Ellen Bellington said that in the months before Nicky disappeared over Bride’s Veil, he was spending all his free time at practice with his coach. She hinted that perhaps there was something inappropriate going on.”

“Hinted?”

I nodded. “She didn’t come right out and say it, but she has her suspicions.”

“And do we? Have our suspicions, I mean? Is this guy on a list?”

I shook my head. “Nope. I checked before we left the station, he’s clean. Mr. Chase moved here from the Gulf about five years ago. He’s clean as a whistle.”

“Hmmm. Something to be aware of, at least. Just because there’s no record doesn’t mean something hasn’t happened,” Sam said. He stopped fiddling with the vents and began channel surfing the stereo. “Do you have any names picked out?”

I smiled. The name. Lately, the only thing Brody and I fought about.

“Well, it’s a girl. I like Elizabeth, after my mother. But Brody dated a girl named Eliza who was a real bitch, so he hates it. He likes Tara but spelled T-E-R-R-A, like the earth kind of terra, nerdy scientist that he is.”

“Different. I like it. But the name Brody’s different, too. His parents must have been hippies.”

I shook my head. “Nope. They were missionaries in China in the sixties and seventies. His mother came down with a terrible fever while carrying him and she almost died. They were in a remote outpost hundreds of miles from any kind of hospital, but the Buddhist villagers saved her life. They’d already settled on the name Matthew but his dad was so grateful to them that he switched it to Bodhi, after the Bodhisattva. But back in the States, when she delivered, the nurse misheard her and wrote Brody on his birth certificate.”

“Wow. That’s a crazy story,” Sam said, shaking his head. He settled on a country-western station and George Strait filled the Olds, singing about an oceanfront property in Arizona.

“After they returned to the States, they had four more children, all girls: Rachel, Mary, Naomi, and Sarah.”

Sam laughed. “Biblical names.”

“Except for Brody. Can you imagine? I think you guys would like each other; you’ll have to come over for dinner once he gets back from Alaska,” I said.

Just a few more days and he’d be home; unless, that is, he was planning to shack up with Celeste Fucking Takashima. Maybe she would take him back to Tokyo and they’d eat sushi naked, holding intense conversations deep into the night about geological anomalies and surface-level fissures.

Sam was looking at me funny.

“Sorry, I missed that?”

“Your house is up canyon, isn’t it? Sort of isolated up there.”

“Brody bought it ten years ago. Once we started dating, and fell in love, I sort of fell in love with it, too. It’s just beautiful and peaceful. And the wildlife is amazing; we’ve seen deer, of course, but also black bear and even a mountain lion once.”

“Is it on the grid?”

“Yes and no. We’re on a propane system and our own septic, but we’ve got Internet and cable and electricity,” I said with a laugh. “It’s not as out there as you might think.”

I pulled into the parking lot at Rick’s Café. It was empty save for a beat-up Subaru wagon. A tall man leaned against the driver’s door, a Red Sox ball cap pulled low over his ears. By his hip, the Subaru’s side mirror hung at an angle, held in place with duct tape. I noticed a rear fender was dented, as well.

We met him halfway between our cars and the restaurant. Late-afternoon heat rose from the asphalt. At the edge of the lot, two crows pecked at a dead squirrel. Their loud cackles filled the air and I turned away from the sight of them diving into the squirrel’s abdomen, their sharp beaks bobbing back up with bits of flesh.

“Mr. Chase? Thanks for meeting us. This is my partner, Sam Birdshead. I’m Detective Gemma Monroe,” I said. I had to crane my neck to look up at him. He was my age, give or take a year or two. His eyes were dark and framed with long lashes, the kind any woman would kill for. When he spoke, I again heard the Gulf in his voice, a low drawl that trod softly over the harder consonants and vowels.

“Darren. And it’s no problem,” he said. “Look, am I in some kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know, are you?” I asked. My intent had not been flirtation, but it sounded that way.

Darren just smiled and shook his head.

Inside Rick’s, we took a seat at a table by a window that looked out at the ski slopes, brown and drab and dusty in the summer heat. The ski lift chairs swung gently in the breeze, giant swing sets suspended high up in the air. A handful of mountain bikers crisscrossed their way down the slopes, small clouds of dirt and dust bellowing up from their back tires. We watched as two of the bikers almost collided. At the last second, one angled uphill and the other downhill. Darren and Sam watched them and made small talk while I leaned back and watched Darren. I was curious what he’d have to say about Nicky.

A waitress with hips like a Chevy dropped three menus in front of us. The laminated pages were sticky, as though they hadn’t been wiped down after the lunch crowd, and Sam put his down in disgust. He wiped the tips of his fingers on the edge of the tablecloth.

The waitress, whose nametag read “Michelle,” came back and placed three glasses of water on the table. The water was iceless, the glasses filled only halfway. Her right hip jostled the table as she shifted her weight. She waited silently, her pen poised above a small notepad in hands that were red and chapped and dotted with age marks.

“Three coffees, please,” I said.

She gave me a skeptical look.

“Two regulars and a decaf, then?”

I shook my head. “Three regulars, please. With some cream and sugar on the side.”

“Honey, you sure? I don’t think you’re supposed to have coffee if you’re expecting a little one,” she said.

She’d taken a step back and placed her reddened hands on her hips. In her black-and-white-striped polo shirt, she looked like a referee, and I expected to hear a whistle pierce the quiet restaurant.

“Hey, Michelle. How ’bout those coffees,” Darren said without taking his eyes off the mountain bikers.

The woman’s hands dropped from her hips and with a shake of her head she turned back into the kitchen.

The basketball coach took off the Red Sox cap and his hair, dark and thick, fell at an angle down his forehead. He finally turned from the window and looked at me in a way that I hadn’t been looked at in a long time.

“So, I think you mentioned a former student, right?” Darren asked. “Is it someone who graduated?”

I swallowed. “Sort of. Nicholas Bellington. Remember him?”

Darren jolted in his seat, and his mouth fell open. “Nicky?”

Sam jumped in. “So you knew him?”

In response, my partner got a withering glare from Darren.

He answered. “Of course I knew him. Not only did I coach him, he was one of the most beloved students at the school. And then, of course, when he died… well, let’s just say it would be pretty squirrely if I didn’t know who Nicky was.”

“Would you call him a good player? It sounds like he was at the gym a lot that spring.”

Darren’s eyes met mine again. He put his hands flat on the table and leaned forward, holding my gaze two seconds longer than what most would consider polite.

“Look, what’s this all about?” he asked.

Sam Birdshead started to reply and I kicked his leg under the table.

“Please answer the question, Mr. Chase,” I said.

“It’s Darren. My dad is Mr. Chase,” he replied. “This was three years ago, you know.”

I nodded. “I get the feeling you’re not the kind of man who forgets things, Darren.”

“You’d be right about that. Well, someone’s been telling you tall tales. Nicky quit the team right before Christmas. He wasn’t that great of a player. I would have tried to get him to stay, but…” He trailed off.

“But what?”

“He started missing a lot of practices. We talked and decided it would be best for everyone if he dropped out. I don’t think his parents even noticed, they were so busy with that campaign,” Darren finished.

“So, where was he if not at practice?” I asked. “What was he up to?”

Darren gave me a smile. “Would you believe he was at the library? He was working on a special project.”

“Which was?” I pressed.

He sighed. “Look, I told him I wouldn’t tell anyone, okay? I can’t break a promise, not one I made to a dead kid.”

“The dead don’t give a damn about loyalty, Darren. Would it surprise you to know that Nicky’s been alive and well these past three years?” I asked.

The coach’s reaction was nearly identical to the one he’d had a few minutes earlier. Another jolt, another drop of the jaw.

“It’s true. Alive and well, that is, until he had his throat torn open Monday afternoon,” Sam added.

Darren’s face turned ashen. “I don’t believe it.”

“Oh, believe it,” I said. “The mayor will be holding a press conference today.”

Michelle returned with three white mugs of steaming coffee, and a small pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar. I pushed one of the cups toward Darren. He took a quick sip and then swore as the hot liquid burned his mouth.

Tears welled in his eyes and I wondered if it was the coffee or the news of Nicky that brought them forth.

“We obviously can’t give you any more details, but you can see, right, how it might be important to get a picture of Nicky’s last few weeks and months? Before he went over that waterfall?” Sam asked.

Darren dipped a napkin in his water and brought the cool cloth to his lip. He shook his head and blinked away the tears so fast I decided they must have been from the burn after all.

“Look, Darren,” I said. “I don’t want to subpoena you.”

“Are you sure? It might be fun,” he replied with a smirk. “Look, all I can say is that Nicky was interested, and I mean, very interested, in some local history. He asked me about it once, and I told him to get with Tilly over at the public library.”

Sam glared at Darren. “Could you be more vague? What exactly was this local history?”

I glanced at the bikers as I waited for Darren’s reply. They seemed to have finished their rides for the day, as they were huddled en masse at the bottom of the slope. A few peeled off their jerseys, revealing lean sweaty torsos and a solitary sports bra.

The restaurant was quiet and when I turned back to the table, I saw Darren staring at me.

“What?”

He laughed. “I was just thinking how ironic it is, you asking what Nicky was researching.”

“Ironic?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, it means-”

I lifted a hand. “He knows what it means. Why ironic?”

Darren Chase stood and jammed the baseball cap down on his head. He threw a ten-dollar bill on the table and stretched and as his T-shirt lifted, I caught a glimpse of another lean, tan torso, this one fringed with tiny dark hairs that trailed down into the waistband of his jeans. I swallowed and blamed my raging hormones, and the fact that Brody had been gone for so long, on the thoughts that flitted across my mind.

“Because you were the one who found the bodies, Gemma. Nicky was fascinated with the Woodsman murders. He couldn’t get enough of them. From the time you found that skull in what, November? December? Until his death, that kid was obsessed.”

I pushed back from the table, shocked. “You’re kidding. Why?”

“He wouldn’t tell me,” Darren said. He shook his head. “Like I said, he came to me one day and asked how someone would go about researching cold cases, old crimes. It wasn’t hard to guess which crime he was talking about, so I pointed him in Tilly’s direction.”

Darren left. Sam and I silently watched him walk away. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t get the McKenzie boys out of my head.