Inherit the Bones

Chapter Forty-three

Four hours later, I’d called most of the contacts in Annika’s phone. A different picture of her was forming in my mind than the one I’d carried with me over the last few weeks. Most of the people who answered my calls were reluctant to talk much, once I told them why I was calling.

The picture I got was of a young woman; smart, beautiful, gifted with every grace possible since birth, but cold in spirit and mean as a snake.

Cruel but controlled.

One of the girls I spoke to had been a fellow student in Annika’s English lit class the previous spring. She used words like master manipulator and sociopath, and I felt the knots in my stomach twist harder and harder.

“She even had our professor under her thumb. I don’t know what she said to him, but he was so cowed by her that she got an A after missing half the semester. The days she was there, she’d sort of saunter in and bully people,” the young woman told me. “I always thought that one day she might just come in and start shooting.”

I was at my desk, the phone to one ear, taking notes with my free hand. “What do you think made her tick? Why did she act that way?”

Silence on the other end and then the young woman sighed. “Honestly? I think she was bored.”

Chief Chavez checked in before he left for the night. There’d been no word from the kidnappers. I caught him and Finn up on the latest with Annika.

“Do you know what you’re saying? This is totally nuts,” the chief said.

I knew it was nuts. The whole case was nuts.

I said, “I’ve talked to dozens of people. They all say the same thing-and these are people she kept as contacts in her phone! No one crosses Annika Bellington, certainly not back East. Maybe she’s different here, at home, but there? Half these people are scared to death of her.”

Finn added, “She manipulates them to get what she wants and then lords their weaknesses over them. Classic bully behavior, Chief. Narcissism to the extreme.”

Chavez sighed as he loosened his tie, and then removed it completely. He took a seat at the edge of my desk, his hiked-up pant legs exposing a pair of mismatched socks. He held the tie in his hands, his fingers running back and forth along its silk edges.

We still hadn’t told him our suspicions that Frank Bellington was the Woodsman. I didn’t know why we were waiting, Finn and I, except that when we did break the story, we wanted to tell the whole story.

And without knowing who kidnapped Annika, or why, the story was incomplete.

“Okay, okay, I get it, Annika’s not the nicest person around. Look at her mother, the girl probably never had a chance,” the chief said. “What’s your plan?”

Finn and I looked at each other and then answered in unison, “Work the case, Chief.”

It was soon too late to continue calls to the East Coast due to the time difference. I decided to make one last call, to a Peter Dillen, whose phone number was saved in Annika’s phone contacts list under the nickname “Honey Bunches.”

I figured he had to be the notorious garage band boyfriend Pete, so I left a message and asked him to call me back as soon as possible.

We reconvened at nine o’clock the next morning. As I walked into the station, Finn met me with a cup of tea in one hand and a piece of paper in the other hand.

“For me?”

Finn handed me the tea and the paper. I took a few sips and read the scribbled message: call Joe Fatone at the circus A.S.A.P.

“We’re leaving town, Deputy,” Fatone said when I got hold of him ten minutes later.

I leaned back against the counter and cradled the phone against my shoulder, peeling an orange. I’d found it in the staff lounge next to a snack-size package of crackers I planned to eat next.

“On whose authority?”

“Chief Chavez’s,” Fatone continued. “He cleared us this morning. He said you all got what you needed from the crime scene and that he’d get in touch if you needed anything else.”

I sighed. Yes, we had what we needed evidence-wise, but the thought of the circus packing up and leaving left me glum. There were unanswered questions there. I’d never know the real truth between Lisey and Tessa, if all their drama really was about a complicated love triangle.

“Well, c’mon by, then, if you’ve got time,” Fatone said. I heard ice clink in a glass and he swallowed, the sound loud and clear through the phone. “I’ve got something for you.”