BoneMan's Daughters (33 page)

“Do you like it?” the man asked softly.

No, but I want to like it.

Confusion nipped at her mind. She swallowed and said what she knew he wanted her to say.

“Yes.”

“I thought it might frighten you.”

“It should, shouldn’t it?”

“It’s nearly perfect. The others were disturbed by me.”

There was a sadness in his voice but there was also a soft crackle of anger, she thought. And in that moment she thought she
understood Alvin Finch more.

She was in the presence of a powerful man who thought nothing of taking or giving life. A beast, a Lucifer, as he called himself.

Yet he was as needy as she was. Alvin Finch only wanted to be needed. Loved. And absent of either, he resorted to deflecting
his pain by killing.

Just like a teenager might resort to deflecting the pain of rejection by cutting. People did a lot of crazy things to be wanted.

“How could anyone be disturbed by your skin?” she asked.

He only breathed. She couldn’t make the mistake of sounding patronizing, as mother would say.

“When you force girls from their homes and tie them up, they don’t react in reasonable ways,” she said. “They would be disturbed
by anything.”

“Or they were jealous,” he said.

She lifted her hand, saw that it was shaking, and lowered it. “Could I touch it?”

It took him a moment to decide. “Yes. Yes, I want you to touch it.”

“My hands are shaking. I’m not used to this. I’m nervous.”

“It’s better that way.”

She reached out her trembling hand and touched the flesh above his right nipple. It was cold, and when she traced the tips
of her fingers over the skin, she was surprised by how smooth it felt.

For a dizzying moment Bethany felt more wonder than fear. She told herself that it was because she wasn’t thinking clearly
after being trapped down here for so long. That the sudden comfort she felt by touching his skin was because her mind had
been broken by him.

That he broke bones, but more than bones. He broke minds and he’d already started on hers.

But she didn’t resist his pull.

“What kind of lotion did you say you use?”

“Noxzema,” he said.

There was a connection between them, she thought. He’d chosen her and now in her own way she was choosing him. The seven girls
before her had not responded this way.

She ran her fingers over his skin, distracted by the thought that she wasn’t repulsed by the feeling. This man had the power
to give her life or take it and for the moment she set her mind and emotions on his power to save her.

She lifted her other hand, responding to a strong desire to slide her arms around his large chest and pull him to herself.
To beg for his mercy. To vow her companionship.

The emotions were all mixed up and she hated herself for feeling even the slightest attraction but she also knew that her
life was at stake.

So she placed both hands on his chest and drew them slowly down his sides.

“Your mother must have known what she was talking about.”

He didn’t immediately respond, perhaps surprised by her boldness.

“She had very beautiful skin,” he said. “I killed her.”

Bethany felt a jolt of alarm course through her veins. Of course, that was it. Alvin Finch was jealous of his mother and her
skin. She made him feel bad about his failing. Unable to make himself look like her, he even killed her and was killing his
mother with each girl he killed.

That’s why he called himself Satan. Alvin was Satan, who’d fallen from the grace of the one who’d given him life.

And in her, he’d found someone who understood that betrayal, surely not to the degree that had pushed him to such rage.

“Does your father deserve to die?” he asked.

Bethany looked up into his eyes and let the darkness behind them pull at her.

“He’s already dead to me.”

“And does he deserve to be dead to you?”

“He was never there. When I was young I used to call out and he was never there to hear me. He’s been dead to me for a long
time.”

“Then would you break his bones?”

She didn’t like the direction he was taking her, but she felt powerless to resist. And here with BoneMan, having touched his
flesh and understood his rage, she felt she could be brutally honest.

“I try not to think of him.”

“Why? Because he angers you?”

“Yes, that’s part of it. I don’t like the thoughts I have when I think about him.”

“What thoughts?”

She shrugged. “Sadness.”

“Anger?”

“Yes, some anger.”

“Because he abandoned you.”

“Yes.”

“Then would you break his bones?”

She wanted him to stop these questions so she said what he wanted her to say.

“Yes.”

“Then you know how I feel.”

She was surprised to see a tear snake down his right cheek. There was a bond between them. Surely he hadn’t done this with
the other girls.

Encouraged and even a little hopeful, Bethany slowly slid her hands over his sides toward his back, aware of the gooseflesh
that now covered his skin.

“What do you want from me, Alvin?” she asked softly.

He was breathing heavily and his flesh was quivering under her fingertips.

“What will make you happy?” she asked.

He lifted his hands, gripped her wrists in a steel-like vise grip, and pulled them off his body. He stared at her wrist, the
back of her right wrist where she’d cut herself.

“What is this? You… you cut yourself?”

His sudden anger terrified her.

“You filthy whore, you cut yourself?”

“No…”

“How could you do such a thing?”

“I… .” What could she say? She felt a fresh tear slip down her cheek.

Alvin stared at her and slowly his face softened. “I would never let this happen to you. I would never leave you alone to
feel that kind of pain.”

He breathed steadily, easing his grip on her wrists.

“If you ever do that again, I will break every bone in your body.”

“I won’t.”

He was trembling.

“I would like you to be my daughter.”

Then Alvin Finch turned, left the room, and locked the door behind him, leaving his neatly folded shirt on the floor.

Bethany walked to the bed, sank slowly to the thin mattress, and began to cry.

THERE WERE TWO reasons why Ryan didn’t finally break down and tell Ricki Valentine that BoneMan was waiting for him to show
at the Crow’s Nest Ranch in western Texas. The first was that he knew that for all their good intentions, the FBI could not
save Bethany.

The second was that he knew there was a chance he could. However small the possibility, as long as he could wrap his mind
around it he would keep his mind, his body, everything that was within him singularly focused on giving that possibility room
to grow.

He’d learned that he couldn’t break an innocent man’s bones to save his daughter, but he would break every bone in his own
body to save her.

Under any other circumstance he would never look at iron shackles and think of them as a possibility, but he’d put his mind
to just this possibility from the moment they moved him into the holding cell in the downtown precinct and locked the restraints
around his wrists.

The cell was one of five used to hold prisoners in transit, not the kind he’d seen on television with a bunk bed, a toilet,
and a sink. Steel bars ran along the hall wall and white concrete completed the ten-by-ten room. A single bed sat in the far
corner and a chain shackled to the prisoner’s wrist kept them from being able to reach the bars.

“Why the chain?” he’d asked the two guards who’d accompanied him to the cell.

“To keep you from running home to mommy,” one said with a grin.

The other was more directed by protocol. “Prisoners stay chained at all times in the cage. You need to use the bathroom, you
let us know. You stand facing the wall, we come in, secure you with handcuffs, take off the chains, lead you to the toilets,
and return you.” He dropped a bucket on the floor. “Need to piss, use that—we’re not orderlies.”

The guards had shoved him roughly into the room and attached the chain to his left wrist using an inch-wide strap of steel
that locked into place with a keyed latch.

A new facility that gave each prisoner his own toilet was near completion. In the meantime they had the system down to a science
that Ryan tested within ten minutes of his arrival.

“What is it?”

“I have to use the bathroom.”

“You just got here. Why didn’t you go while we had you out? Now you want me to drag you to the latrine and wait for you to
mess yourself?”

“Unless you want me to do it here.”

The guard, a short balding man who liked to walk with his hand draped over the forty-five on his waist, swore.

“Palms on the wall.”

Ryan faced the wall and placed both hands on it while the man opened the cell door.

“Hands behind your back, one at a time.”

He complied. Handcuffs were quickly latched to his wrists and the shackle unlocked. It fell to the floor with a loud clang.

“Turn around.”

He was marched to the latrine, where he faced another set of procedures, but his mind was back on the cell. Back on the shackles.

Five minutes later he was secured by them once again.

As long as he was fixed to the chain, there was no way out of the cell. Once out of the shackle the guard took other precautions
that would make a struggle a losing proposition.

He sat on the bunk, stared at the thick band of steel that ran around his wrist, and let BoneMan’s drawing fill his mind.
On the drawing had been one bone that supported the thumb, the ball at the base of his thumb, the trapezium. He rubbed it,
feeling the faint outline beneath his flesh.

If he could break the trapezium, his whole hand would collapse a full inch. The drawing on the wall had made as much clear.
He might also need to collapse one of his metacarpals to squeeze his hand through the shackle.

But if he could stomach the pain, he stood a better than even chance of surprising the guard and taking his weapon.

A strange notion occurred to him as he sat on the bed, lost in the prospect of breaking his own bones. His daughter had suffered
nothing less at the hand of BoneMan. In a way his own pain in breaking the bones in his left hand so that he might have at
least some hope of going to her felt justified.

It was the least he could do. And he knew how to do it. Right here using the leverage provided by the bed, the shackle itself,
and his full body weight, he might be able to break his bones.

The idea swallowed him.

“I DON’T LIKE it.” Ricki lifted the bottle of Corona as if to take a drink. Instead she waved it to punctuate her point. “This
feels like the Phil Switzer takedown to me. Right circumstances, right motive, right everything, but wrong man.”

Mark Resner shook his head. “He may not be BoneMan, but he’s guilty, isn’t he? And I agree with Kracker, this town needs a
guilty man behind bars right now, even if he isn’t the one who we were after two years ago.”

They sat in the Tattle Tale, a Fourth Street pub in downtown Austin that would be standing room only on weekends thanks to
live music and college students from the nearby University of Texas. Tonight, a lone piano serenaded a sparse, more mature
crowd.

To their right the hour hand on a three-foot antique clock had nearly completed its climb to the midnight mark. Even on weeknights,
Austin, Texas, live music capital of the world, did not sleep. She and Mark, on the other hand, did, and they’d agreed to
call it quits at twelve.

“You know the DA’s gonna do everything in his power to pin it all on him. And while we’re at it, you know he was the one who
did this the last time.”

“Did what? Plant the blood evidence?”

She took a drink and set the bottle down without bothering to respond. “Problem is, nothing eliminates Evans. I’ve been through
the evidence we have on BoneMan a hundred times—the times, the places, the forensics—none of it clears Evans. Not even the
phone we found in the quarry. The calls came from another cell phone in the same area. He could have called himself.”

“But?”

“But you look in his eyes and you tell me.”

A wry smile slowly spread over Mark’s face. “You
like
this guy?”

“Please. Like you said, he’s guilty.” She lifted her bottle again, turning it in her hands, peeling back the corner of the
label. She felt… respect. Nothing romantic in the least.

Mark leaned back. “You gotta admit though, there’s something pretty compelling about a father who’s so desperate to save his
daughter.”

“Assuming that’s what he’s doing,” she said.

“Isn’t that what you’re saying?”

She sighed and leaned back to match his posture. “There was a look in his eyes when I interviewed him two months ago in his
hotel room, before all this went down. He’d just laid out the DA, which I can’t say disturbed me too much, and his marriage
was on the ropes. He had a hundred reasons to be furious. But he just sobbed. It broke my heart.”

“Like I said, you do think he’s telling the truth.”

She looked at him for a moment. Not so long ago she might have retreated into his arms for comfort on a night like this. Now
she was alone, not so unlike Ryan.

Ricki shifted her eyes away from Mark and watched the piano player. “If I had to pick a side? Yes. I think he’s telling the
truth. I think he took Welsh because he was told that if he didn’t, his daughter would die.”

“And we’re making a mistake by not taking him up on his offer.”

Eyes back on him. “If I’m right, yes.”

“Well, we’ll know soon enough, won’t we?”

“How so?”

“When we find the girl’s body, the coroner will tell us if her bones were broken before or after we took Evans into custody.
With any luck, you’ll be able to safely conclude that she was killed after Evans was taken into custody and clear him of at
least that much. You still have the DA to contend with.”