The last visit had been to the parents of Flash Burden, the youngest of the men who had died in the mountains. They had gathered their son’s belongings from his apartment, and today, from cardboard box after cardboard box, they showed me trophies he had won — mostly for photography, but another boxful from amateur hockey. They proudly took me into a room which served as a gallery for photographs he had taken. These included stunning shots of wildlife, but also glimpses of city life that showed him to be a keen observer with a sense of humor. Frank had told me that he had liked Flash, and had liked working with him, but thought he was wasting his skills on police work. Seeing these photographs, I had to agree, and found myself wishing that Flash had never come along with us to the mountains.
As I was thinking this, his mother said, “These weren’t his favorites, of course. He was happiest if one of his photographs helped solve a crime or convict a criminal.”
I regretted none of these visits, but emotionally, each was a run through a gantlet flanked by grief and remorse, by terrifying memories and lost chances. Each renewed my anger toward Parrish, but also made me aware of how much I feared him. When I said good-bye to the Burdens and walked back out to the van, I was a little unsteady on my feet, and hoped Jack wouldn’t notice.
I found him cleaning out the van’s refrigerator.
“The secret life of millionaires,” I said.
He took one look at my face and put an arm around my shoulders.
“Sorry to make you wait out here so long,” I said, when I could talk. “You must wish you hadn’t agreed to do this.”
“Tough assignment, huh?”
I wasn’t ready to talk about it, so I changed the subject. “What possessed you to start cleaning the refrigerator?”
He wrinkled his nose. “There’s some kind of weird smell in the van.”
My eyes widened. “You smell it, too?”
“Not very strong, and not all the time, but yeah — something strange. I don’t mind it much, but . . . hey, why are you crying?”
So I told him about smelling bones after my visit to the map store. That led to telling him about imagining that I was seeing Parrish. “Christ, I’ve even made up a car for him to ride around in!”
He handed me a packet of Kleenex. I used every last one of them. When I had calmed down a little, he said, “Have you told Frank?”
I shook my head. “He worries enough as it is. He doesn’t need to walk around wondering if the bughouse will take Visa.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re crazy.”
I didn’t reply.
“What do bones smell like?” he asked.
“Sort of a subtle, dry, sweet smell. I can only smell it if the bones are what Ben calls ‘greasy.’ ”
“You know about it from the burials up in the mountains?”
“No. Those weren’t just skeletons — there was adipocere and other tissue, and a really overpowering smell of decay. But I’ve visited Ben at his lab at the university on a day when they were working with bones.”
“I’ve been smelling something that’s kind of a sweet, waxy smell. Do bones smell like that?”
“Could be described that way, I guess.”
“So let’s search the van.”
I hesitated, looking back at the Burdens’ house. “Let’s drive away from here to do it, okay? I don’t want to upset them if we do find something.”
He climbed into the driver’s seat, a big grin on his face. When I took the passenger seat, I asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Not funny — just pleased that I’ve finally convinced you that this could be a product of something other than your imagination, or you wouldn’t want to move down the street.”
“Don’t be so sure,” I warned. I looked in the mirror on the visor. The most horrifying thing in that van had to be my face — eyes swollen and nose a lá Rudolph. Still looking in the mirror, I opened the glove compartment and reached for my sunglasses.
My hand went into a pile of small objects before the smell hit me.
I screamed.
Jack slammed on the brakes.
Little bones spilled out of the glove compartment, onto my skirt, my feet, everywhere.
44
WEDNESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 13
Las Piernas
“The glove compartment,” I said. “I should have known.”
I was at home, sitting on the couch, being held by my husband. He was stroking my hair. Maybe I wouldn’t go back to work, I thought. Maybe I’d just stay home and sleep and wait for Frank to come home and stroke my hair. I sighed. Not likely.
I had opened the van door and leapt out into the street, a shower of small, straight bones falling all around me. After he managed to calm my hysterics a bit, Jack had used his cellular phone to call Frank.
The van was impounded to collect the fingerprints Nick Parrish blatantly left in it, and also to collect the remaining small bones of Jane Doe’s toes and fingers.
Ben showed up at the police department, with Jo Robinson in tow. I don’t know who had called him, but he had called Jo. My resentment didn’t last long.
I ended up talking to her about vanishing Parrishes, and I learned that people who had been attacked often had this experience of “seeing” their attacker, especially in times of stress or in public places.
When I was no longer shaking, she set up an appointment with me for the next day. For the first time, I looked forward to it.
The police checked out records of stolen dark green Honda Accords, hoping to establish Jane Doe’s identity.
When Frank couldn’t leave right away, Ben agreed to take Jack and me home.
Wondering how I was going to break the news about the van to Travis, I asked Ben why it should take so long to collect ten fingers and ten toes. “Ten? On each foot, it takes fourteen phalanges to make toes — and just the toes, mind you, not the whole foot. On each hand, fourteen to make fingers. That’s fifty-six bones if we find them in whole pieces.”
Trying to tease me into a better mood, Ben noted that he himself was able to get by with forty-two, which did indeed snap me out of thinking about the little bones of Jane Doe’s fingers, wondering what work those fingers might have done, and if they had ever stroked a cat or touched a lover or held something as fragile as they were.
On Ben’s behalf and hers, I let my anger toward Nick Parrish burn away a little more of my fear of him.
But as the evening wore on, even anger gave way to weariness. I was asleep when Frank came home, but woke up to talk to him while he made a late dinner for himself. Afterward, we spent time curled up on the couch.
“You know you can talk to me,” he said, “Yes.”
“Sorry. No more reprimands.”
“I deserve a reprimand for that.”
“No,” he said, pulling me closer. “No.”
In another regard altogether, it actually ended up being yes.
We did sleep then, a solid, deep, and renewing sleep that lasted through the night.
“You’re looking well today,” Jo Robinson said.
“Slept better,” I said, detecting a certain knowing quality in her smile.
At the end of this session, she said, “Your visits to the families of the men who were killed seem to have gone well. Better than you expected?”
“Much better.”
“Have you tried calling Officer Houghton?”
“Jim Houghton is the one survivor I can’t seem to track down. He quit police work altogether, and moved out of state. But a friend of mine who’s an investigator is going to try to find him.”
“You’ve made a good effort. I hope it works out. In the meantime, though, perhaps you should try to talk to the Sayres again.”
I won a struggle with an impulse to object. “Will you let me go back to work if I do?”
“Hmm. You want to make a deal, is that it?”
“Yes.”