The Bone Man (38 page)

“Delphine,” I said.

“
Oui
. In the flesh.” Laughter poured from her lips.

“Penny!” I blurted out.

“She’s alive.” She pulled over another straight-backed chair and straddled it.

Relief made me lightheaded. “Where?”

“There.” She pointed, and I saw Amélie asleep on a couch with Penny sprawled across it, her head resting on Amélie’s lap.

“You are dead,” I said. “You were dead. What’s going on?”

“I assure you, I am not dead.”

That was obvious. I took in the room. Comfy. A small kitchen, three couches, two beds with curtains like in a hospital. Several work tables with potsherds resting on them. Tubs of water, giant mortar and pestles. Another table with heat lamps. Naked pots beside some paints. One was half painted with Old Ones’ motifs. A man sat at that table, and he dipped a stick into the paint, then applied some to the pot. Shelves on the wall with whole Anasazi pots and bowls and other pottery items lining them. And on yet another table, a smaller one, the Zuni manuscript from the library alongside a pair of leopard-print eyeglasses and a grouping of modern fetishes. My fetishes.

“I get it,” I said. “Of course.” I couldn’t stop looking at Delphine.

“What do you get, Tally?”

“What you’re doing. It’s so simple. You’re crushing the old Anasazi potsherds, then reconstituting them into clay and making new pots that you’re selling as antique. That’s why the carbon dating is inaccurate. You reconstruct the Old Ones’ pots using spring water, right? Have a potter make new ones. And you’re all set.”

She nodded.

“And that’s how you got the skull in the pot. You put it in there before you made the thing.”

Her aristocratic face flushed. “
I
did not do that stupidity. Gerard did.” She gestured to the pot painter, who looked up and winked at us. I recognized the handsome guy from National Geographic: Zoe’s boyfriend, Jerry Devlin. “Stupid, Gerard.”

“It was a joke,” he said. “I know it was stupid.”

Her Gaelic shrug of “whatever” boggled my mind.

“Whose skull?” I said. “Whose skull was in the pot?”

She waved a hand. “The woman who Gerard replaced at the museum. We had to make an opening, you see?”

“She must look just like you,” I said.

“Moi?”
Delphine said. “
Non
. Not at all.”

“You have killed so many people,” I said. “Didi, the governor, his aide, many, many others. I . . . What the hell, Delphine? Weren’t you making enough money at your shop? To kill all those people. How could you? For what?”

“Shut up, you stupid woman. You really think I made money at my shop in genuine antiquities? What a fool. They don’t matter.” She frowned. “Except for you! Not that we didn’t try, eh?”

I’d found Death, and she made no sense to me. None.

She held out her stained and roughened hand. “Give it here, and I won’t kill your dog. See? Easy.”

“Not so easy,” I said.

She shot me a dark look and reached down for the knife, the one I’d taken from her henchman.

Her cell phone rang the Harry Potter theme. She checked it, leaped from the chair, and flipped open the phone. Barking into the phone, she walked over to the man painting the pot. She sat on the bench beside him and finished her conversation. When she flipped the phone closed, she rested a hand on the painter’s shoulder, kissed him, and he left.

All that time, I’d tried to chew my way out of the nylon straps holding my hands. I’d made zero progress when she turned back to me.

“Let’s focus, Tally, shall we?” She again sat on the chair facing me, legs widespread, hands on the chair back. A smirk marred the lovely face of the woman I thought I’d known.

“Trust me,” I said. “I’m focused.”

“Ah, the woman with quips.”

“I’ve got to do something, since I have no idea what’s going on. A woman I thought I knew is a pot thief and murderer. From what I saw at your home, you love your daughter, yet she’s been starved and beaten and abused.”

Delphine rubbed her neck, and for the first time I saw a vulnerability. Something was off, and it had to do with Amélie.

“Why did you do that, Delphine?” I said. “Why hurt your sweet daughter?”

She slapped my face so hard my neck snapped backward. Black night and stars blinded me for a moment. When my vision cleared, Delphine was shaking her hand.

“That hurt,” I said. She’d split my lip, and warm blood trickled down my chin. I tried to wipe it using my shoulder.

“Here.” She leaned close and dabbed at me with an embroidered handkerchief. “Sorry. I don’t like being out of control. Amélie knows nothing about me. This. Nothing. I had two of the men take care of her, as she was jabbering on way too much, just like always. They got a bit carried away. They’ve paid. Oh, yes.” The anger in her black eyes looked feral. She was mad. Delphine could hide an army of corpses here, and they might never be found.

“Why, Tally?” she said. “Why could you not let things alone?”

“Me?” I’d heard that one before. Many times. “You killed my friend Didi and the governor and others. But I also believed you were dead, killed by the same person who’d murdered Didi.”

Delphine’s sculpted eyebrows shot up. “What would ever make you think that?”

“Didi’s reconstruction. It was your twin. I was sure you were dead.”

“That?” She pointed to her left, and there, lying on its side on one of the tables, was Didi’s re-creation from the skull.

“Yes,” I said. “That.”

She retrieved the clay head and sat it on her thigh. “I don’t understand.”

I didn’t, either. I stared at the re-creation. The face looked
nothing
like Delphine. A stranger in clay stared back at me.

I shook my head, wished I could rub my eyes. I blinked again and again to clear my vision. But it remained the same. Not Delphine. “I . . . I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Let’s get on with it,” she said. “I want Amélie out of here before she awakens.”

So she intended to keep her daughter forever in the dark. I doubted that was possible. “Fine,” I said. “I still don’t know what we’re getting on with.”

“Simple,” she said. “I really never took you for being stupid. The blood fetish, of course.”

“Ah. I know something about it, ever since you’ve been looking hot and heavy for it. It has been you, yes?”

“Of course. It’s all I want.”

Swell. I was supposed to give her some mythical fetish. “Here’s what I know. Well, not even know, but what I read.”

Delphine leaned forward, an eager child. “Yes. You must see, my dear, how you’re a part of all this?”

“All what? My hands are numb.”

“A shame. Let me say one more time, where is the blood fetish?”

“In my pocket, of course.”

Time stopped.

I am back in the Navajo school library. Kai smiles at me. I read the description of the fetish and how it runs red with the enemies’ blood. The Bone Man had written the book. The Bone Man has carved the fetish
.

Could he possibly be the young man in my vision, who’d loved the crippled girl?

I am in Chaco. The young warrior and the young woman are saying their farewells. I see the mountain lion fetish, and then later, the fetish again, when I am with Gimp. Only with Gimp, the fetish has changed. It now wears a bundle of obsidian and turquoise and heishi
.

I breathed out, my mouth forming an
O
.

“Don’t do that!” Delphine barked.

I refocused. “Do what?”

“Whatever. We searched your pockets. There was no fetish.”

“Of course there is,” I said. “Why do you want it so very much?”

Her eyes lost focus. “Ah, yes. The blood fetish. I learned about it when I began collecting American Indian art. An old man told me, the old trader.”

“The one you had killed?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “He wasn’t so smart. It’s incredibly powerful. It can rule others, bring great wealth and power.”

I almost blurted that she was being absurd. Given the look of madness in her eyes, it was a good thing I hadn’t. “So you want the power.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course. And the beauty. After all, it’s carved from a huge ruby.”

A ruby. Swell. I thought I could pull something off with my rock. A ruby, eh? “Ah, of course. If you cut my bindings, I’ll show it to you.”

Amélie moaned, and Delphine ran over to her. She kneeled in front of her daughter and felt the girl’s forehead with her palm. The gesture challenged my ideas of her as a stone-cold murderer. But that’s just what she was.

A sudden memory of Niall’s daughter at the inn. A pretty blond girl even younger than Amélie. Delphine had tossed Niall and his daughter aside like refuse. I knew what I had to do.

“Hey, Delphine,” I said. “Let’s get going here, huh?”

She looked over her shoulder. “What’s your rush to die?”

“I like bringing the inevitable closer.”

She stood, brushed the dust off her black pants, and strode over. “A stupid attitude.” She had a gun in her hand, a small one that she waved at me. She crouched down, lifted the big knife, and cut the plastic binding my wrists.

They snapped apart, and the blood cascaded into my hands with painful force.

“Hurts, doesn’t it? Get the fetish, and let’s get done with this.”

I figured I could get the stone, show it to her, and convince her it was the real blood fetish. After all, she’d never seen it. Either that, or I could bash her on the head with it. Two brilliantly stupid plans, but I was fresh out of ideas.

I slid my hand into my pocket and . . .
Cripes
. Not there. I moved my fingers around. Nothing. Nope, not there at all. I tried the other pocket. Same deal.

I glanced at Delphine, whose thunderous expression reminded me of a death mask I’d once seen in a museum.

I looked around on the various tables, chairs and . . . There it was, on the table next to us, along with a pack of my gum and fifty cents. I leaned over, but couldn’t reach it.

With what little feeling had returned to my fingers, I waggled them at the stone. “There it is. That’s it.”

“Don’t move.” The gun she had pointed at my face never wavered.

She walked over to the table, looked back at me, and pointed. “This?”

I nodded. “That’s it.”

“Do you take me for a fool?”

I wanted to say yes. “Of course not.”

“Does this look like a ruby to you? Or a carving? Or both?”

“It’s the blood fetish,” I said with as much certainty as I could muster. And for a moment, I believed it as truth, knew it to be so. It
was
the blood fetish.

“Now, you die.” She aimed the gun and reached for the stone at the same time.

I held my breath, and the world ended. But not as I’d imagined.

Delphine dropped the gun, shrieking, “It burns!”

All I could do was watch as she tried to release the
stone, shrieking and screaming and fighting the pain that began to consume her. Fire arched her back as it flew up her arm to engulf her. I leaped to help her, tripped and fell, with the chair on my back. I was still bound by the ankles.

I began to crawl to her as she writhed on the floor, her body a mass of flame, screaming and screaming for help and forgiveness, hollering, “Oh, God” over and over and over, slapping her hands at herself, as if trying to put out the flames consuming her.

And in one hand, I saw it. The blood fetish. Nothing like the rock I’d brought home, but instead, Mountain Lion—Guardian of the North, Chief of All the Directions, the Greatest of All Hunters.

An angry roar came from mountain lion’s mouth, its fiery tail flicking back and forth, its arrowhead and turquoise bundle strung around its neck, like an adornment, the arrowhead stabbing Delphine’s heart.

I had almost reached her when a roar, more suffocating than all the others, filled the room with sound and blinding light. Delphine was being ripped apart.

I snapped my eyes closed, covered my ears.

And then silence. Absolute.

I opened my eyes. My egg-shaped stone rocked back and forth on the floor. No fire. No heat. No anything. Just Delphine. On the floor, as if asleep.

I didn’t believe she was asleep.

Still on my belly, I swiveled around. There were Amélie and Penny, both snoring on the couch. I gingerly touched my lip. Split, now swollen. There was Didi’s reconstruction that looked nothing like Delphine.

I hadn’t imagined it. Not any of it.

I reached for the stone, touching it first with only the tips of my fingers. It welcomed them, and I wrapped my hand around the stone, Delphine’s obsession—the blood fetish.

I retrieved the knife and cut the bonds around my ankles. I ran over to Penny and Amélie. Both were fine and sleeping soundly. I ran over to Delphine.

She was gray as death, eyes open, milky white. For a moment I couldn’t look at her. Then I turned back and pressed two fingers to her neck. No pulse. Icy cold, not a sign of blood anywhere.

I didn’t understand any of it. But that didn’t matter. I went in search of Delphine’s phone, called, and waited for the troops to arrive.

Days later, I still failed to comprehend what had happened in Delphine’s workshop. But I had learned a few things that settled at least part of my mind.

Aric, Hank, and I sat around the fireplace one evening, doing a wrap-up for Aric’s FBI files and Hank’s state police records. It was incredibly tedious, but it had to be done. So both men wrote while I yapped, and we all sipped some Vino Verde from Portugal.

“Delphine’s workshop.” I shivered. “One of the all-time creepy places.”

Hank chuckled. “What do you expect, it used to be the Salem Jail, babe. Lots of ghost stories about that place.”

I made a gagging sound. “I know. You told me. Too ironic. Still creeps me out.”

“I guess it creeped Gerard out, too,” Hank said. “He spilled his guts fast as I’ve seen anyone in trade for his life. He confirmed what you said about the skull belonging to one of the former curators at the museum.”

“Massachusetts doesn’t have a death penalty,” I said.

“No,” Hank said. “But there’s a federal one, and that’s how we threatened to prosecute. He’s done forever.”