Bone Dust White (6 page)

Sissy’s eyes open a fraction. “We talked last night. He sounded real good.” She leans over the counter and flicks through a fashion magazine. In her bleached hair, black roots run two inches deep. She gives her mother a short look. “Ain’t heard a thing from Daddy, though.”

Trina wears a tight-lipped smile but Jared can see the tension around her eyes. Carl has been gone for over a year, and running the store, fishing camp, and gas station on her own is nearly killing her. She’s Jared’s age but it looks like time is wearing her down twice as fast. Jared does the math. Trina will be a grandmother before she’s thirty-three.

Trina punches the cash register with her chubby fingers. “National Guard, my ass. All he wanted was a few weekends a year away playing soldier with his buddies.”

Jared tries a smile. “Carl will be home and driving you crazy before you know it.”

Trina stares up at the television again. “They’ve just extended his tour. Another six months on top of the year he’s already been away.” She picks up the remote and turns up the volume. There’s another photo of Grace Adams. She’s sitting among her classmates wearing an unsteady smile and clothing that would look more at home on a 1950s housewife. Compared to everyone else she shrinks from the lens.

Jared points to the television and asks Sissy if she knows Grace.

Sissy struggles onto a stool and peers at him from behind a counter display selling condoms. “Yeah, I’ve known that freak all my life.” She pulls her chewing gum from between her teeth and twirls the long strand around her finger. “A total loser.”

Not sure he has the appetite for this, Jared stares down at his breakfast burrito. Steam comes out the side of the greasy waxed paper. He sounds apologetic when he speaks again. “She seems okay to me. She’s just a bit different, that’s all.”

Sissy smirks and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “Yeah, she’s different, all right.”

The bell over the door rings again and a few high school kids he recognizes slouch into the shop. Sissy sits up at the counter and calls them over. Within seconds, they’re all laughing at some inside joke about Grace Adams.

Trina throws Jared a sympathetic look.

“You take care, Trina,” he says, exiting the shop. “See you soon.”

Jared drives east along Main Street, tucking into the burrito between shifting gears. Music plays on the radio but he’s not paying attention. He turns it up when a song is interrupted by a news bulletin.

“Detective Macy Greeley of the state police has been brought in to assist local law enforcement, increasing speculation that interest in this case goes beyond Collier. Among the local community there have been no reports of missing persons for several months and here at WXKB we’ve received unconfirmed reports that a car with Canadian plates has been discovered in the Northridge neighborhood where the murder took place. Authorities have still been unable to interview the only known witness, Grace Adams.”

The area near Collier’s Town Square is known as Old Town, and for a few blocks along Main Street faded yellow ribbons are tied to every lamppost. Most of the businesses set up along the covered walkways cater to tourists who are passing through town on their way to Canada or the casinos on the nearby Indian reservations, but that’s just in the summer months. Collier’s winters are lean. Aside from a pizzeria and a bakery most of the shops only sell souvenirs. The locals don’t bother much with Old Town. The prices are too high, and most of the crap they stock is made in China.

Up ahead there’s a police roadblock. The towns of Walleye Junction and Wilmington Creek have sent in reinforcements. It’s freezing cold, and the sleet shoots down at a forty-five-degree angle, but the officers are huddled outside questioning everyone. Traffic is thick with eighteen-wheelers and early-morning commuters. Like everyone else’s vehicle, Jared’s truck slows to a crawl. A hundred feet farther on he’s pulled over by a cop bundled up in a long down coat and wearing a cowboy hat.

“ID and registration” is all the cop says, looking Jared full in the face with unblinking blue eyes.

Jared hands over his driver’s license, registration documents, and his paramedic badge. “You from Walleye?”

The police officer nods before looking over Jared’s paperwork. “Sorry about that,” he says, his mouth barely breaking out from a hard line. “We have to check everyone coming through.”

“No need to apologize. We appreciate the help.”

“Least we can do.”

Collier County Hospital is a dense block of cement that crowds the landscape as uncomfortably as a heavy meal. The stunted trees in the parking lot barely rise above the rooflines of the cars and a high barbed-wire fence separates the hospital from the Flathead River and train tracks, which run along the edge of town. The parking lot is a sea of slush but the temperature is dropping. The snow swirls in Jared’s headlights like summer pollen. He eases into an employee parking space and cuts the engine.

The lobby is unusually full, and he recognizes only a few of the faces.

The receptionist spots him and laughs as she fusses with her spray-mounted hair. “Hey, honey. When are you going to make an honest woman out of me?”

Jared pretends he hasn’t heard her say the same thing to him at least once a week for the past twelve years. “If your husband hasn’t managed yet I don’t think there’s much hope for you.” At the elevator he stops and turns to face her, going off script. “Say,” he says quietly, walking back to the desk with his coat tucked under his arm. “The girl that we brought in yesterday, Grace Adams, have you heard if she’s going to be okay?”

The receptionist takes a quick peek around, making sure no one is within earshot. “I’ve got reporters prowling everywhere. From what I’ve heard she’s up on the top floor in the private wing. Moved her out of ICU late last night.”

Jared raps the desk with his knuckles and thanks her.

Long, low-ceilinged corridors crisscross the hospital in a confusing maze. Over the years departments have been moved or shut down but no one has bothered to change the signs. Patients wander the hallways in their hospital gowns and slippers and families go round and round trying to find their sick relatives. Jared thinks of Grace up on the top floor, where they would have given their prize patient a private room overlooking the rooftop courtyard, and heads for the elevator.

4

The smell hits Grace first—disinfectant, meds, and sweat. Sound comes second. A heart monitor reminds Grace she’s still alive while her aunt Elizabeth’s familiar snoring provides another sort of comfort. Elizabeth is sound asleep, sitting in her usual chair, gold cross around her neck and wrinkles etching her face like fine lace. Grace runs her fingertips along the tubes taped to her left arm and closes her eyes again.

Her mother’s last words are the first ones she remembers.
You’ll have to be careful. They’re still looking for the money.

Panic swells in Grace’s chest until it feels as if her ribs might snap one by one like violin strings. She holds her breath, counting down from ten. All she can see is her mother lying broken on the forest floor. Grace opens her eyes and is relieved when the memory dissolves in the glare of the overhead lights.

Her thoughts dart to her chest. There are no bandages. She wasn’t the one bleeding. She’d been so cold. Those big snowflakes fell from the sky by the thousands. She gazed straight up into them, some in sharp focus, others blurred like white cotton balls, wet and pressed behind glass. It was like resting within a snow globe. She sets up the little tableau and changes her mind. It was nothing like any snow globe she’s ever seen.

On a side table, bottles of her prescription medicine crowd in with floral bouquets and get-well cards. Still wrapped in cellophane, the flowers smell of nothing. She reaches for a card attached to a bunch of pink carnations and notices Jared’s knitted cap. She picks it up, kneading it in her hands before bringing it to her nose. It smells of cigarettes and coffee. It’s warm in the room but she slips it on anyway, pulling it down over her dark, lank hair. The wool itches her forehead so she takes it off for a second so she can smooth her bangs underneath its brim. She steadies her hands by tucking them under her armpits and tries her best not to cry.

What was it her mother always used to say?
You don’t look pretty when you cry.

Something catches her eye, and Grace sees a stranger’s face swallowed up by the shadows beyond the door to her room. She tries to piece together the bits she’s seen but can only draw a caricature in her head—a sullen expression, pale complexion, and an angular jaw, but nothing more detailed. It was definitely a man.

“Who’s there?” she says, a little too late and projecting her voice no farther than the end of her bed. She hopes no one answers.

Grace squints, searching, giving up when she decides that whoever it was, is now gone. She pulls down Jared’s cap, almost concealing her eyes. Her heart sinks when she hears the familiar squeak of Sam Fuller’s cart, its one wheel still ungreased. As regular as a heartbeat, the noise rises above the din of foot traffic and voices of the hospital corridors. The squeaking cart stops outside and Sam walks in carrying a tray. His smile is a wall of veneered teeth. His wire-framed spectacles perch on an elongated face covered in liver spots and little else. He’s as bald as an egg. He looks from Grace to the tray and back again, his elastic face changing its message more than once. The smile is gone.

“You’re not George,” he says in a low voice. He squints his filmy eyes at Grace, inspecting her like she’s a specimen trapped under glass.

Grace shakes her head and wishes him gone.

As if he’s expecting to find the missing patient hiding behind curtains, Sam cranes his neck around the room like a curious lizard. Grace follows his eyes, imagining George’s shadowy profile behind the backlit drapes. Sam hovers with the tray held in midair, his old gnarled hands trembling. Grace decides it best to help him on his way.

“Maybe George has gone home,” she suggests. Her unused voice rakes against her throat and she falls into a fit of coughing.

His wire-framed eyes tilt forward and look down his nose at her. “George is never going home.”

She pulls her blanket up so it rests beneath her chin. “I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is. I’ve just woken up.”

“Grace Adams,” he says when he finally recognizes her from past visits. “You’re the girl from the woods?” His milky eyes go wide and he backs away a step, sucking his lips in around his teeth.

“What day is it?” she whispers.

Sam walks toward Grace again, the tray at waist level, friendly once more. “Same day it’s been all morning. Tuesday, just coming up to noon.”

I’ve lost a day,
she thinks. Grace sinks down farther into the bed. She wants Sam to go look for George somewhere else. The woods, the snow, her mother, the crows; it’s all coming back to her. Inside her chest, panic awakens like a giant spongy moth. She puts her fingertips to its powdery wings before it can take flight.

Instead of leaving, Sam holds up the tray and lifts the metal lid. The plate rattles and gravy pours across the rim. “We’ve got some nice mashed potatoes and roast beef today. I’m sure George wouldn’t mind if you took his order.”

She imagines lumps in the mashed potatoes the size and texture of mothballs. “No, thank you.”

He leans in so close she sees the crescent moons of sweat under his arms. His eyes are cold. “Is it true what they’re saying? That a woman was butchered.”

Grace clutches her hands tightly in her lap. They’ve been scrubbed clean. All she can remember is how dark and sticky they once were. She holds them out in front of her, checking them over carefully. All trace of her mother is gone. Grace doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes. She can tell from his breath he’s been picking at the mashed potatoes. They hear voices down the corridor and Sam backs away.

“You sure you don’t want some?” he asks once more, tilting his long face at the plate before looking at her chest. “You need your strength.”

She says
no, thank you
again and after a pause, Sam scurries off to look for George in other rooms. His cart rattles back down the hall, the one wheel still squeaking.

Grace’s hands tremble as she sips water from a paper cup. The taste is metallic on her tongue. Her thoughts jump to the gate key where it’s hidden in the silk-lined pocket of her kimono. It’s lying among the bracken, invisible under a thick layer of newly fallen snow. In the night animals could have dragged it away; or worse, he could have it.

Grace sees Jared standing at the door and blinks several times, hoping to erase the previous day from her thoughts.

Jared knocks lightly on the doorframe. “Feeling better?”

They regard each other across the small distance. Grace notices how his eyes droop down at the corners and wonders if he always looks this tired.

She wants to speak, say something coherent, but tears come too easily when she asks after her mother. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” is all she says.

“I’m sorry” is all he says.

Grace closes her eyes and pretends she’s elsewhere, but instead of fading, Jared’s footsteps come closer. When she looks up, Jared is reading her chart. He gnaws at a cuticle, and his forehead pinches up into a series of questions as he sifts through the pages. He takes his time flipping backward and forward then repeating his actions until he’s satisfied.

“You look young for your age,” he says as he hangs the clipboard back in its place.

She shrugs. This man has seen her breasts, her scar, and her medical history. He knows everything. She knows less than nothing.

“How old are you?” she asks, picking at the tape on her arm, feeling the hairs tug from their roots.

He tells her he’s thirty-two. “When I first saw you I thought you were much younger, but you’re nearly eighteen.”

Grace looks out the window. It’s snowing again. A long time ago her mother promised to take her away from Collier. In the intervening years Grace has often hoped her mother was someplace really warm, like hell. Other times Grace was more forgiving. Kneeling next to her aunt on Sunday mornings, she’d pray for her mother’s soul.