Inherit the Bones

Chapter Thirty-nine

Angel Chavez fumed. “What the hell is going on?”

We stared at him. The suit he’d worn to Frank Bellington’s funeral was rumpled. A coffee spill roughly the shape of Italy stained his white dress shirt. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks unshaven.

The chief asked again, “What the hell is going on?”

The small conference room was hot; there were too many of us in it. Finn, myself, Moriarty, Armstrong, Chief Chavez, two secretaries, and Mayor Bellington’s chief of staff, that somber old bird whose name I could never remember. Her navy dress was impeccable, her pearls-Pearl Gold.

That was it. That was her name. No wonder it never stuck.

She was the first to respond to the chief. “Angel, if I may?”

He nodded and took a seat and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Pearl Gold removed her eyeglasses and folded them in her right hand. As she spoke, she tapped the pair against the palm of her left hand, one tap for each sentence. Her skin was an origami artist’s practice paper; thin, delicate, full of lines and creases.

“Mayor and Mrs. Bellington believe something has happened to their daughter, Annika. They are terribly worried. She’s not responding to the countless messages they’ve left on her cell phone.”

I asked the obvious question. “When was the last time they spoke with her?”

Pearl Gold shrugged. “The last time anyone remembers seeing her was at the funeral this morning. Her car is at the house, and her clothes and personal effects seem untouched. She’s simply… gone.”

“A few hours? And we’re already worried?” Louis Moriarty asked.

Pearl nodded. “Unfortunately, we are in this case. Annika wouldn’t have missed out on her grandfather’s service this afternoon.”

Moriarty said, “Let’s think about this. The girl is what, eighteen? Nineteen? She’s young, cute. She probably found herself a boyfriend and she’s holed up somewhere with him.”

“That doesn’t sound like Annika. And she’s got a boyfriend-he’s a band guy in New Haven,” I said, remembering the first conversation I’d had with her. “Paul, or Pete. He goes to Yale, too.”

Pearl Gold cleared her throat and attempted a smile. “Erm, yes, it’s not exactly like Annika to up and run away. But she has done this before; she and Nicky, when they were quite young, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. They left a note that said they were running away from home. The mayor and his wife didn’t worry, though, you see, because the children had taken sleeping bags, tents, a loaf of bread, and two jars of peanut butter. They knew when the children got tired of peanut butter sandwiches they’d come home.”

Chief Chavez stood and paced the tiny room. “I’m guessing the Bellingtons have checked, and there’s no peanut butter missing this time?”

Pearl Gold nodded. “Correct. The only thing missing is Annika.”

“Her brother was murdered less than two weeks ago, I think we need to take this seriously, Chief,” Finn said. He didn’t bring up the Kirshbaums; we’d agreed to stay quiet on that until we knew more. There were still too many unanswered questions. We didn’t know who the Woodsman was. We didn’t know who his partner was.

Partners. That word was dancing across my mind a lot. Brody and I were partners-what kind of trust was there? Moriarty and Finn, Finn and I. Partners could be friends, too, like Bull Weston and Frank Bellington and Louis Moriarty.

Did the Woodsman have friends? Was he a regular old guy, someone who’d been a monster once and who had found a way to still those demons?

The chief stopped pacing and sat down. “I agree; we need to take this seriously. The clock starts now. She’s an adult, so we’ve got a forty-eight-hour window before this goes official. Pearl, you let the Bellingtons know we’re going to do all we can. Finn, Gemma, keep working on the Nicky case. Lou, take Armstrong and give Avondale a hand. We got shit on Sam’s hit-and-run, which means we’ve still got a would-be cop killer out there.”