Bones Never Lie (17 page)

“This is my colleague, Dr. Temperance Brennan.” Ryan left it at that.

“A doctor?” She glanced at me.

“Dr. Brennan works at the medico-legal lab.”

The turquoise eyes went wide. The fingers curled tighter. Why such fear? I felt a sense of unease.

“My wife has health issues. You got something to tell us?”

Bernadette turned at the sound of her husband’s voice. “I’m okay, Jake.”

Jake placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder. He was muscled and toned beyond what I’d expect of a guy just spraying for bugs. His forearm was inked with an intricate Asian design. I wondered if his gesture was meant as support or warning.

“May we talk inside?” Ryan asked.

“Of course. Please,” Bernadette said.

Jake stepped back, his expression unchanged. As we passed, he lingered to close the door.

Bernadette led us down a wide hall and turned right through an archway into a small living room with a bay window in front and a fireplace at the far end. The decor was not what I’d visualized.

Every wall was white, and off-white plush carpeting covered the floor. The sofa and armchairs were upholstered in ivory cotton trimmed with pale piping. The room’s only color came from throw pillows and paintings. Both featured bright geometric designs.

Bronze sculptures of indeterminate form covered the mantel. A reindeer skin lay in front of the hearth.

The end and coffee tables were made of glass and antique brass. A sole photo sat on one. Its frame was mother-of-pearl edged with silver, the quality much higher than that of the image it housed. The picture was grainy, maybe taken with a cellphone or inexpensive camera, then blown up beyond what the pixels could handle.

The subject was a tall young woman, maybe nineteen or twenty, on a boat with a harbor or bay behind her. She was wearing a turtleneck and jacket, a bead necklace with some sort of pendant. The wind was lifting the jacket’s collar and blowing her long dark hair across her face. She didn’t look happy. She didn’t look sad. She was pretty in a disturbingly detached sort of way.

Her face was more fleshy, her breasts fuller, than when I’d last seen her. But I knew I was looking at Tawny McGee.

Ryan and I did our usual and sat on opposite ends of the couch. Bernadette took an armchair, fingers clasped like red-tipped claws in her lap. Jake remained standing, arms folded across his chest.

“May I get you something? Coffee? Tea?” Bernadette’s offer sounded rote, insincere.

“No, thank you,” Ryan and I answered in unison.

A cat appeared in the doorway, gray with black stripes and yellow-green eyes. A notch in one ear. A scar on one shoulder. A scrapper.

Bernadette noticed. “Oh, no, no, Murray. Shoo.”

The cat held.

Bernadette started to push to her feet.

“Please let him stay,” I said.

“Get him out of here,” Jake said.

“I own a cat.” I smiled. “His name is Birdie.”

Bernadette looked at Jake. He shrugged but said nothing.

Murray regarded us a moment, then sat, shot a leg, and began cleaning his toes. Something was off with his upper left canine. I liked this cat.

Bernadette settled back, spine stiff, neck muscles standing out sinewy-hard. She glanced from Ryan to me, back to Ryan. Hopeful we had news. Frightened we had news.

I understood that yesterday’s call was undoubtedly a shock after so many years. But the woman’s anxiety seemed out of proportion. The shaking hands. The terrified eyes. I didn’t like what I was sensing.

“Your home is beautiful,” I said, wanting to reassure.

“Tawny likes things bright.”

“Is this Tawny?” Gesturing at the woman framed in mother-of-pearl.

The parakeet eyes looked at me oddly. Then, “Yes.”

“She’s grown into a beautiful young woman.”

“You’re sure about the cat?”

“I’m sure. Do you have other pictures?”

“Tawny hated being photographed.”

As with the Violettes, Ryan allowed silence, hoping one or the other Kezerian might feel compelled to fill it. Neither did.

Murray switched legs. Behind him, through a matching archway across the hall, I noted a dining room of identical footage with an identical bay window. The table was glass. The chairs were molded white acrylic and made me think of the Jetsons.

When Bernadette spoke, her words were not what I expected. So far, nothing was. “Is she dead?”

“We have no reason to think that.” Ryan indicated no surprise at the question.

Bernadette’s shoulders rounded slightly as her expression melted. Into what? Relief? Disappointment? I really couldn’t read her.

Jake spread his feet. Frowned his frown.

“But we have new information,” Ryan said.

“You’ve found her?”

“We haven’t determined her exact location. Yet.”

Bernadette’s knuckles blanched as her fingers tightened again.

Ryan leaned toward her. “I promise you, Mrs. Kezerian. We are closing in.”

“Closing in?” Jake snorted. “You make it sound like the play-offs.”

“I apologize for my poor choice of words.”

It struck me. Unlike the Violettes, the Kezerians were asking no questions about the nature of the “new information.” Or about Pomerleau’s movements over the last decade.

Jake pinched the bridge of his nose. Again crossed his arms. “If you have nothing to tell us, why are you here?”

“We were hoping Tawny might agree to an interview.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath. Looked at Bernadette. Her face had gone as white as the walls around us.

In my peripheral vision, Jake’s arms dropped to his sides. I ignored him and focused on his wife. Bernadette was trying to speak but managing only to swallow and clear her throat.

I reached out and took her hands in mine. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I thought you’d come to tell me you’d located Tawny.” More swallowing. “One way or the other.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.” I didn’t.

“Who we talking about here?” Jake demanded. “Who is it you’re tracking?”

“Anique Pomerleau,” Ryan said.

“Sonofabitch.”

“Tawny’s not here with you?” I asked Bernadette.

“I haven’t seen my daughter in almost eight years.”

“OH, GOD.” A
tiny sob bubbled from Bernadette’s throat.

“I am so sorry,” I said. “Obviously, Detective Ryan and I were unclear.”

“You’re here about the woman who kidnapped my child?”

“Yes,” I said. “Anique Pomerleau.”

Bernadette slipped her hands free of mine and extended one back toward Jake. He made no move to take it. “You came to question Tawny?” she asked.

“To talk to her.”

Bernadette brought the unclaimed hand forward onto the armrest. It trembled.

“We were hoping—” I began.

“She’s not here.” Bernadette’s voice was flat, as though a door had slammed shut somewhere inside her. She began picking at a thread poking from the piping.

“Where is she?”

“Tawny left home in 2006.”

“Do you know where she’s living?”

“No.”

I glanced at Ryan. Tight nod that I should continue.

“You haven’t heard from your daughter in all that time?”

“She called once. Several months after she moved out. To say she was well.”

“She didn’t tell you where she was?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

Bernadette kept working the errant strand. Which had doubled in length.

“Did you file a missing persons report?”

“Tawny was almost twenty. The police said she was an adult. Free to do what she wanted.”

Thus nothing in the file. I waited for Bernadette to continue.

“It’s crazy, I know. But I figured that was the reason you’d come. To tell me you’d found her.”

“Why did she leave?”

“Because she’s nuts.”

Ryan and I looked past Bernadette toward her husband. He opened his mouth to continue, but something on our faces made him shut it again.

Bernadette spoke without taking her eyes from the thread she was twisting and retwisting around one finger. “Tawny endured a five-year nightmare. Anyone would have issues.”

My gaze slid to Ryan. He did a subtle “Take it away” lift of one palm.

“Can you talk about that?” I urged gently.

“About what?”

“Tawny’s issues.”

Bernadette hesitated, either reluctant to share or unsure how to put it. “She came back to me changed.”

Sweet Jesus! Of course she did. The child was raped and tortured her entire adolescence.

“Changed how?”

“She was overly fearful.”

“Of?”

“Life.”

“For Christ’s sake, Bee.” Jake threw up his hands.

Bernadette rounded on her husband. “Well, aren’t you Mr. Compassionate.” Then to me, “Tawny had what they called body-image issues.”

“What do you mean?”

“My baby lived in conditions you wouldn’t wish on a dog. No sunlight. No decent food. It all took a toll.”

I pictured Tawny in my office, overwhelmed by a trench coat cinched at the waist.

“She didn’t grow properly. Never went through puberty.”

“That’s understandable,” I said.

“But then her body, I don’t know, started playing some kind of high-speed catch-up. She grew very fast. Developed large breasts.” Bernadette shrugged one shoulder. “She was uncomfortable with herself.”

“She was irrational.” Jake.

“Really?” Bernadette snapped. “Because she didn’t like to be seen naked? News flash. Most kids don’t.”

“Most kids don’t go batshit if their mother accidentally peeps them in the crapper.”

“She was making progress.” Cold.

“You see what I’m dealing with?” Jake directed this comment to Ryan.

“You knew about Tawny from the day we met.” Bernadette’s tone toward her husband was acid.

“Oh, you’ve got that right. And we haven’t stopped talking about the kid since.”

“She was seeing a therapist.”

“That asshole was part of the problem.”

Bernadette snorted. “My husband, expert on psychology.”

“The quack took her to the cellar where they caged her. In my book, that’s over-the-top fucked up.”

That surprised me. “Tawny and her therapist visited the house on de Sébastopol?”

“Perhaps the treatment was a bit harsh.” Softer, almost pleading. “But Tawny was doing well. She was attending community college. She wanted to help people. To heal the whole world. When she called that one time, she said she was back in school.”

“But she didn’t say where.”

“No.”

I glanced at Ryan. He was studying Jake.

“How did you two get along?” he asked.

“What? Me and Tawny?”

Ryan nodded.

Jake’s voice remained even, but the set of his jaw suggested his annoyance was no longer just with his wife. “We had our spats. The kid wasn’t easy.”

“Spats?” Bernadette snarled. “You two hated each other.”

Jake sighed, impatient with accusations clearly aired more than once. “I did not hate Tawny. I tried to help her. To make her understand that life involves boundaries.”

“Be honest, Jake. She left because of you.”

“She never embraced me as a father, if that’s what you mean.”

“You drove her away.”

The Kezerians exchanged a glance boiling with anger. Then Bernadette turned back to me. “Tawny moved out after a blowup with my husband. Stormed upstairs, packed her things, and left.”

“When was that?”

“August 2006.”

“What did you argue about?”

“Does it matter?” Jake’s voice remained level, but something unreadable flickered in his eyes.

“Where do you think she went?” I asked Bernadette.

“She often spoke of California. And Australia. And Florida, especially the Keys.”

“She could have gone anywhere she wanted, right, Bee?” Jake’s mouth pursed up in a humorless smile.

A flush climbed Bernadette’s throat, splotchy red against the colorless skin. She said nothing.

“As a final adios, Tawny helped herself to the stash my wife kept in her closet.”

“How much did she take?” Not sure why I asked.

“Almost three thousand dollars.” Jake flicked two fingers off his forehead in a goodbye salute. “Adios and fuck you.”

Ryan asked a series of questions. Did Tawny ever mention Anique Pomerleau? Did she make friends during the two years she lived in Montreal? Was there a person at the college in whom she might have confided? Did they have any names or numbers of anyone with whom she worked, attended class, or interacted in any way? Might it be helpful to speak with her sister, Sandra? Was Tawny’s room intact enough to warrant a visit? The answer to each was a definite no.

Ryan concluded by asking them to phone him if Tawny contacted them. If they remembered anything she’d said about her captor or captivity. The usual.

Then, placing our cards on the coffee table, we rose to leave.

Mrs. Kezerian escorted us. Mr. Kezerian did not.

At the door, we assured Bernadette that we were doing everything possible to find her daughter’s abductor.

And Tawny? she asked.

Ryan promised to send out queries.

Not a single question about Pomerleau. About where she was. About how or why she’d surfaced.

And that was it.

I’d never felt more discouraged in my life.

It was four-thirty by the time we wound our way out of Dollard-des-Ormeaux. Lights were on in most of the homes we passed, yellow rectangles warm against the thickening darkness. Here and there, electric icicles or colored bulbs heralded the coming of a season that would bring joy for some, a reminder of loneliness for others.

Traffic on the Metropolitan was heavy and slow. We crept east, taillights ahead, double beams behind, through cones of illumination thrown by halogens arching over the highway.

Like frames on an old movie reel, Ryan’s silhouette flashed into focus, receded into shadow. He offered nothing. The silence in the Jeep grew deeper and deeper.

“Not exactly
Happy Days.
” When I could take it no longer.

“If I was the kid, I’d have left, too.”

“Do you think Jake could be physically abusive?”

“The guy’s an arrogant bastard.”