Inherit the Bones

Chapter Thirty-four

Sam Birdshead lost his leg at midnight, about the same time that Frank Bellington died in his sleep. News of both events came by text message early the next morning. Chavez let me know about Sam; Bull sent me word about Frank.

I called Bull right away, before I got out of bed.

“I’m so sorry. I know you were close to Frank.”

Bull sighed into the phone. I heard a cuckoo clock chime in the background and knew he must be in his study. “We certainly were, once upon a time. It’s hard to grieve when I know he’s with our Lord Jesus now, but I would’ve liked to speak with him one last time.”

“What would you have said?”

Bull was silent.

I watched through the open bedroom window as the rising sun overpowered the gray morning light with vibrant shades of pink and orange. It was going to be a beautiful day. Seamus jumped on the bed and nuzzled into my hip. He curled himself into a tight ball and I scratched behind his ears, glad for the companionship.

“Bull?”

“I would have asked him if he had made peace with our Savior. Frank was a complicated man, Gemma. He had demons, secret demons, more than anyone really knew.”

I sat up in bed, the cover falling from my shoulders. “Bull, what happened, all those years ago? Why did your friendship with him end? Why did Julia tell me to stay away from him?”

Bull inhaled sharply. “When did she say that?”

“She called me a few days ago, after the news conference the mayor and his wife gave, about Nicky’s murder. Julia told me to ‘stay away from that man,’ and I have to assume she meant the mayor or his father. Why would she say that?”

Bull coughed and I heard another noise in the background, the familiar set of beeps and commands of a computer starting up. He was definitely in his study, a room he kept a few degrees colder than the rest of the house. It was his private space, his retreat, a room lined with his volumes of state-revised statutes and other legal tomes.

“Why don’t you come by the house; there’s a few things we should talk about. Your grandmother made a quiche, it’s delicious,” Bull said. “By the way, Brody e-mailed me. Gemma, I don’t like the idea of you all alone in that house, being so isolated. You want to stay with us for a few days? I can make up your old room.”

“Brody e-mailed you, huh? He can’t seem to find the time to get in touch with me,” I said. “Did he tell you Celeste Takashima is with them, in Denali?”

“No! What? Brody wouldn’t…”

“Don’t ‘Brody wouldn’t’ me, Bull. You know damn well he would. You men all think with your little brains. I’m fine staying here, but I’ll come down and see you guys. I’ll be there in an hour.”

I showered and dressed quickly. Before leaving the house, I called Chief Chavez. He had gone home to catch a few hours of sleep and a change of clothes and then returned to the hospital. Chavez said Sam was resting comfortably after his surgery. Sam’s prognosis was good; he faced months of physical therapy but he was alive and he would heal.

I drove to Bull and Julia’s house. The streets were quiet as I made my way through town. I saw empty parking lots and just-waking stores. A lonely bus passed me on its way headed somewhere south, a single passenger silhouetted by the interior dome lights. It was a woman, young, with long pale hair and a dark scarf wrapped around her neck. She looked cold and lonely and I hoped she was making her way somewhere warm and happy.

I wondered, not for the first time, if that’s what I should do. Head south, to a warmer clime, maybe a little border town on the beach. Raise my daughter in a place that I don’t associate with so much death. It would be a place where winter never fell, where the sun shone and the beer was cold and the ocean came to our toes and then receded and then returned in a never-ending pattern. We could learn to surf and she would spend summers with her father, in exotic locales around the world.

As I pulled into the driveway of my old childhood house, though, the dream of leaving floated away as quickly as it had come. They say you can never go home again, and I’m too afraid that might be true, to ever really leave.

This is home, for better or worse, in good times and in bad, till death do us part.

Bull met me at the front door with a plate of quiche and a cup of hot cocoa. He wore a bathrobe, a navy blue-and-black plaid wrap that clashed with his green pajamas. The robe was last year’s Christmas present from Brody. I remember Bull modeled it for us, right after he unwrapped it, and then we all took turns wearing it, pretending the hallway was a runway.

“I haven’t had hot cocoa in years.”

“You always used to drink cocoa when you were a girl, Gem. When I first met you, you were six years old and cute as a button, until you heard the word no. Then Lord help us but you were a little terror. I learned very quickly never to say no to you when it came to cocoa,” Bull said. His expression grew sad. “I guess you couldn’t stay my little girl forever, could you?”

I shook my head. “Cedar Valley never was never-never land. Where’s Julia?”

“Mrs. Delmonico took her to the mall. Julia was getting antsy about her face creams. I would have taken her, but I think your grandmother’s tired of this old mug.”

I forgot I had promised to take Julia shopping. “So, she’ll be gone a few hours?”

Bull nodded. He watched me behind his dark-rimmed glasses, his eyes unreadable. The lines and shadows in his face were obvious, though. He was tired.

We show the world what we want it to see, don’t we? I saw a man slowly changing from old to elderly; a man who had lived most of his adult life defending, protecting, and upholding the laws of the land. A man who was learning law and order don’t translate so well to chaos of the mind. Julia’s memory and emotions would come and go until she’d seem a stranger.

Bull would walk alongside her on her journey, but I could see, in his weariness, the terrible toll it would take on him.

“I’ll have to catch her another day. I take it we should meet in your chambers?”

His “chambers” was the nickname we’d given to the small study just off the front living room. I’d always loved touring his real chambers at the courthouse and after he retired, it felt appropriate to rename the study.

It was where we’d had all our serious talks, after all. I learned about the birds and the bees in that study. It was where I received an hour-long lecture on the dangers of drunk driving after I came home late one night from a high school party, blasted out of my mind on cheap wine and marijuana. It was where we’d talked, after Julia’s diagnosis, about next steps and future plans.

We took our usual seats in the study; Bull behind the desk, me on the leather couch. I set the hot cocoa down on the coffee table. The thought of drinking the thick, sweet chocolate made my stomach turn.

I took a bite of the quiche. “This is pretty good.”

“Your grandmother always was a good cook. It’s a funny thing, moving from a state of bachelorhood to a state of matrimony. It hasn’t always been easy, Gemma, but I wouldn’t trade my family for anything. That’s the most important thing in this world, besides friends and faith,” Bull said.

He loosened the belt on his bathrobe. “Don’t ever retire, honey. I’ve gained fifteen pounds and an ache in my ass since I left the bench.”

I set the quiche down and clasped my hands in my lap. “Family, friends, and faith, huh. Sounds good in theory. What happens when it all goes sour in real life?”

Bull sighed. “What do you remember, Gemma?”

“What do I remember when?”

“Come on, we’re both talking about the same thing here. What do you remember of Frank Bellington, of Louis Moriarty, Jazzy Douglas… the other guys?”

I closed my eyes and thought. “I remember Frank was a wise guy with a penchant for candies. Louis was bigger than life, I remember he always had his piece on him, in a shoulder harness. Julia hated that he brought it around the house. Jazzy was the first black man I remember seeing in my life. The others are sort of blurry.”

I opened my eyes. Bull was nodding.

He said, “Frank always did like the sweeter things in life. Candy, money. Women. Louis was just trying to make it as a single dad, his wife split when the boy graduated high school.”

“Danny Moriarty.”

Bull was surprised. “How did you know that?”

I shook my head. “You first, Bull. The truth.”

“I’ve never lied to you, Gemma.”

“Yes, you have. I don’t care about that. I want to know what broke up your little group. Was it something to do with the Woodsman? Did one of you kill the McKenzie boys and the others knew, or guessed?”

Bull’s face paled. He leaned forward and gripped the edges of the desk. I saw the color go out of his fingers. I tensed, ready to run, but then Bull sat back and covered his face with his hands. To my surprise, he started weeping.

“It was horrible. It was maybe ten years after the McKenzie boys disappeared. You were probably eight or nine years old. I don’t know. We were downstairs, in the basement, knee-deep in a poker game, all of us drunker than a bunch of sailors on leave. Your grandmother kept sticking her head down and telling us to shut up. Frank got up at some point, needed to use the facilities. After ten or fifteen minutes, one of us sobered up enough to realize he’d been gone a long time. I came upstairs. Frank was gone. Your grandmother was sobbing in the kitchen.”

Bull paused to take a tissue from the box on his desk and blow his nose.

“What happened?” I didn’t remember any of this.

Bull wadded up the tissue and threw it in the small, metal trash can next to his desk. “I asked Julia the same thing. She refused to answer, just kept crying. Then I asked where Frank was. I was dim-witted, drunk and stupid. I didn’t put two and two together.”

“He attacked her?”

Bull nodded. “Thank God he was too drunk to do much more than paw at her. He left bruises on her jawbone, her arms. She was able to push him off with a slap and a few sharp words and Frank sobered up enough with the slap to realize what he was doing. He fled, distraught, embarrassed.”

“Jesus.”

Bull pointed a finger at me. “Gemma, I mean it. Don’t take His name in vain in this house. But yes, your reaction is appropriate, given the circumstances. Of course, I was beyond furious. I wanted to chase Frank down, give him a beating he wouldn’t forget. Julia was distraught but even then, her kindness shone through. She begged me to let it go, said Frank was too drunk to realize what he had tried to do. She wouldn’t let me go after him.”

“So that was it? Did Frank ever apologize?”

Bull shook his head and took a sip of his hot cocoa. “Julia made me swear that I would forget it happened. Of course, I couldn’t, so things just took their natural course. A deep coldness seeped in between Frank and me and as a result, the poker group fell to the wayside. I’m not very good at keeping secrets, though, and I ended up telling Lou. He was aghast and embarrassed and the whole damn thing was just a big mess. Friendships ruined over a night of cheap whiskey.”

“Do you think Frank could have assaulted other women? This probably wasn’t his first time, Bull. You should have gone to the police.”

“And told them what? It would have been Frank’s word against Julia’s. Most of the people in this town were in his pocket, from real estate developers to the mob, and half the folks in between. He was the most powerful man in the valley. She was just a homemaker. And Julia was mortified at the thought of a scandal. She just wanted to forget the whole thing. Frank didn’t really do anything…”

“Bullshit! He tried to rape her. If you hadn’t been in the basement… if she hadn’t managed to stop him…”

Bull sighed. “I’m not proud, Gemma. But you’ve got to understand, this man was one of our closest friends. There was alcohol involved. It was a shock and we tried to do the best we could with what we had.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Do you think there were other women?”

Bull sat back and steepled his fingers. “I don’t know. I think…”

“Yes?”

“I think so. Over the years, I’ve watched Frank. He hid it well, most of the time, but I think a deep violent streak ran through that man,” Bull said, nodding. “I’m almost positive there were others.”

“Rose Noonan?”

Bull sat up. “Rose? No, oh no. Gemma, Frank may have been violent, but he wasn’t a killer.”

“Before that night, I bet you thought he wasn’t a rapist, either,” I said, biting my lip. “Bull, you worked a lot of cases, first as an attorney, then a judge. You and I both have seen the damage that comes when the beast in man’s true nature emerges. Killers, rapists: they’ve got mothers, partners, brothers and sisters. Friends. And every single one of them is always shocked when they find out their son, their husband, is not the person they thought.”

Bull was shaking his head but there was a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. He leaned forward. “Something has bothered me about that woman’s murder, Gemma, for years. I read the autopsy report on Rose Noonan. Her body wasn’t, uh, fresh when it was dragged out of the river.”

I’d never read her autopsy report but I remembered Finn had said something along the same lines, something about difficulty determining her date of death. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, maybe the boys weren’t the first victims that summer. Maybe Rose Noonan died first.”

I chewed on the inside of my lip, thinking. “So Rose first, then the boys. I don’t know that it does make a difference.”

Bull shook his head, frustrated. “Of course it makes a difference, Gem, if it was the same killer. He kills her first, then the boys. But he purposefully stages it so her body is found second. Why do that? She was new to town, lived alone in a studio apartment south of the tracks. She had no friends, knew only a few people. No one reported her missing. She could have been dead a month or two before her body was placed in the river. Maybe her body was dumped, sometime after the boys went missing, to throw us all off. Looked at that way, it changes things, doesn’t it? You’re the detective; doesn’t it change things?”

“I don’t know. She was raped and strangled. The boys were killed by blows to the head. She was dumped. The boys were buried. Either it makes a difference, or it doesn’t. If the Woodsman killed both Rose Noonan and the McKenzie boys, what’s the connection? What’s the motive? Crimes of passion are usually single events. Rarely do we see someone progress to a serial killer based on one heat-of-the-moment killing,” I said, thinking out loud. “Did you know Louis Moriarty’s son was interviewed for the McKenzie murders?”

Bull took another sip of his hot cocoa and nodded. “Everyone was, Gemma. Me included.”

“Louis has been giving me grief about digging around in the past,” I said. “Jesus, that would be something, if Lou’s son was the Woodsman and Frank killed Rose Noonan. And they all went right on living here in town, innocent as could be.”

Bull stood. He tightened his bathrobe belt and went to the window, his hands deep in his bathrobe pockets. An expression crossed his face that I remembered well from watching him on the bench. It was the expression of a man at odds, wrestling with his base instinct to trust and love his neighbor, and his seasoned experience that no man is above sin.

I waited.

“Gemma, I wish I had more answers for you, but I don’t. Lou struggled with Danny for years. He was a headstrong young man, and he gave Lou and Ella a real tough time. I think Lou himself always wondered if Danny could have killed those boys. It was a relief when Danny graduated high school and left Cedar Valley. He was sort of the town bully, but we didn’t call it that in those days. He was just the tough kid everyone shied away from,” Bull said. He scratched at the back of his head and then checked his fingernails. “As for Frank, well, you’re right, of course. I never thought he was a killer. I never should have thought I knew him well enough to say one way or the other.”

Bull paused, then continued. “But just because a man is weak in the bedroom doesn’t make him a killer, Gemma. You know that better than anyone.”

My face flushed and I stood up and grabbed my purse.

“Thanks for the breakfast, Bull. Say hi to Julia when she gets home. And thanks for talking to the police, finally. I hope it’s a weight off your self-righteous chest.”

Bull stared at me, sad. “I’m sorry, honey, that came out all wrong. Brody is nothing like Frank Bellington. He adores you. He regrets what he did.”

I nodded. “Sure. I’ll see myself out.”