The Bone Man (9 page)

“It’s in the case,” I said.

“In the caves? Where? Which cave, goddammit?” Face bright red, scored with my nails, eyes boiling fury turning icy and calm. Very calm. Happy, almost. He pulled a gun
from its sheath above his ankle. “First, the left kneecap. A crippling bite. Here . . .”

A cacophony of windows breaking and wood shattering and screams. A woman. Carmen.

I twirled. In the doorway, there she was. “No!”

The boom of a gun, and I ran to Carmen, expecting to see blood bloom on her shirt. But her eyes stared past me, and I grabbed her and shoved her to the floor.

Silence. The pounding of my heart.

I was afraid to look, knew he was standing over us, the stubby barrel of his gun pointed at us.

“Ma’am?” Footsteps. “Ma’am?”

I tuned my head. Boots. I followed up the leg and found the face of a police officer. Dan’s son, Riley.

“I . . . hello,” I said.

“Tally, get off.”

Carmen was talking.
Get off?
Oh. Right. I rolled onto my back, stared at the beautifully painted ceiling done in . . . What was I thinking?

“Tally?”

An arm around my shoulders, helping me sit up.

“Carm?” Tears fell down her face. “I’m okay. Are you?”

She sniffled. “Ayuh. Just peachy.”

“Stop stealing my lines.” I hugged her tight.

We helped each other up. Across the room, the man who’d attacked me lay on his back, blood seeping into the wood floor from the hole in his chest.

“Thank you, Sergeant Riley,” I said.

Lips compressed, he nodded. “Timely.”

“Yes. The alarm?”

He shook his head. “This lady here.”

“Oh, Carm.”

“Ma’am—”

“Call me Tally, please.”

“Ma’am.” His eyes soft and sad. “I’m sorry, but you have the right to remain silent. Anything you do or say . . .”

Carmen and I sat on the same bunk in the cell in the Edgartown jail. The thin mattress smelled, and the air was thick with old sweat and cheap antiseptic. Through the bars and glass, we could see black thunderclouds scudding across the gray sky.

Technically, we’d been told, we were in the Dukes County Jail, which was
in
Edgartown. Somehow, the finer points of the jail locale failed to move me. Yet the thing was, I felt safe. From my years of practicing psychology, I knew I was experiencing a sort of post-traumatic stress disorder. It felt good to be in an enclosed space where no one could get at me. Or so my psyche imagined.

I lay down and dozed. Again I saw Didi’s body in that pool of blood and her writing on the floor that . . .

I sat up abruptly, scratched my scalp. I’d found it.

“Blood fetish,” I said.

“You’ve been dreaming, Tal,” Carmen said.

I nodded. “Yeah, in a way. That’s what Didi had been writing with her own blood on the floor. She wrote
bloodfet
. See? She’d been starting to write
blood fetish
.” I
swallowed a sob. “She didn’t get to finish the words. And that’s what the thug demanded I find—the blood fetish.”

She rested a hand on my shoulder. “So what does it mean?”

I walked across the cell trying to piece together something, anything. “I have absolutely no idea. I’ve collected fetish carvings for years, but I’ve never heard of it. Never. You heard the guy ask for it, yeah?”

She pursed her lips. “Actually, no, Tal. So what?”

I heard his voice—clear and ugly—in my mind. “I guess it shouldn’t matter, but . . .” I sat beside her, took her hands in mine. “See, no one but me saw Didi’s bloody words. They were gone by the time forensics got to her office. Somebody wiped them away. I have no idea who. I’m the only one who saw the words and now I’m the only one who heard that thug ask for the blood fetish.”

“So?”

“I don’t know. It feels . . . odd, is all. I can’t explain it.”

Carmen laughed. “To much woo woo, if you ask me. Or maybe not enough.”

“What the hell’s woo woo?”

She waved her hands. “The supernatural. Creepiness. You know, woo woo.” She lifted a finger to my cheek, but didn’t touch. Concern lined her face. “It’s looks okay, Tal. The EMTs did a great job. And I watched the doc at the hospital sew it. You’re all set. Yup suh. All set.”

I gave her a quick hug. “Don’t worry, Carm. It’ll be quite fetching.” I began to pace the cell, counting the steps. “A faint scar and all. I refuse to snivel.”

Carmen stood and wrapped her hands around my shoulders, effectively stopping my pacing.

“Oh, go on,” she said. “Snivel.”

I had trouble meeting her eyes. I shook my head. “He was about to blow out my kneecap with his nine millimeter. Thanks, Carm. Thanks for the rescue.”

“You’da done the same for me, Tal.” She bit her lip, stifled a sob.

“It’s okay.” I hugged her again, tight. “Really. I’m fine.”

“It’s not okay. I shouldn’t have left to get the cops. I . . .”

“You didn’t have a cell. The shop phone was off. What were you supposed to do, yodel?”

She laughed, looked at my face. She was smiling. “Tally, you’re a piece of work. When I think about it. Shit. Without the cops, we’d be dead.”

“That you would,” came a male voice.

We turned. Dan stood outside our cell, a crooked smile on his face. The guard smiled. “You ladies are out of here. Good thing I have some pull on this island.” He laughed. “They didn’t charge you. At least, well, not yet they haven’t. So I thought I’d take you home for some chowdah.”

The guard swung open the door.

I stepped forward, then hesitated. What if Izod got out? What if he came after me and . . .

I looked from the guard to Dan to Carmen. I shook my head. “I’m being silly, but . . .”

“He’s dead, Tally,” Dan said. His face grew tight and grim. “You saw him. Drowned in his own blood.”

“Oh. Okay.” So how come I still didn’t feel safe?

Carmen took my hand and tugged and out we went.

Dan wrapped an arm around our waists. “Belle’s made a huge meal. Ha! It’s gonna be delish. And a friend of yours is here, Tally. Rob Kranak.”

Oh, hell
.

The following night, a gorgeous sunset dressed the Vineyard in party colors that turned the sea almost painfully beautiful. I was glad I’d brought my camera. We sat on State Beach, just the two of us, Kranak and I. A sweet wind blew from the east, ruffling the frizzed corkscrews of my hair that I hadn’t captured beneath my ball cap. My
feet were bare except for their red paint, and I squished my toes in the chilly sand.

When I closed my eyes, I heard the whisper of the sea. That was all. I rested my good cheek on my knees. The wind brushed my damaged cheek like a lover’s caress. I could sit like that for hours.

Kranak held my hand in his beefy one. He’d doffed his shoes, but still wore the thin brown socks I knew he’d purchased at Brooks Brothers. I knew a lot about Kranak. Why he wore suits instead of more casual wear. Why he no longer hid his diabetes. Why he thought he was in love with me, but wasn’t really. And why he was so furious with me, he shook with it.

“You never told me who called you,” I said.

“Riley and Dan. We’re old pals from Dan’s law enforcement days. He wanted me to check out the scene. And you.”

He’d brought his CSS kit, and earlier he had gone over Delphine’s shop and home with a Kranak-like precision. And now we sat on the beach, holding hands, saying nothing, until . . .

“Does Cunningham know?” he said in an almost-reasonable growl.

“About me being cut? No. Not unless Carmen told him, which is possible.”

He snorted. “You tellin’ me that you’re afraid he’ll think less of you because of that . . . ? Jesus, Tally, the guy cut you. I’d like to fucking rip his—”

I squeezed his hand, then wrapped both of mine around my knees. My eyes clung to the sunset. “He’s dead, Rob. So it’s over. And I didn’t call Hank because he’d hotfoot it down here, just like you. Then he’d yell at me really, really quietly, which is far worse than anything you can dish out.”

“Oh,
yeah?
”

He wore sunglasses, like Nicholson, which meant he probably couldn’t see a damned thing. They made him feel
less vulnerable, and I understood that. “Christmas, Rob. Everything isn’t a contest with Hank!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Music came from down the beach. I saw a couple holding hands, him carrying a picnic basket and an old-fashioned boom box; her, a blanket. In their own world. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. I ached to taste Hank’s lips on mine.

Why hadn’t he told me about moving to Boston? “Let’s, just for a few minutes, talk about the case. Okay?”

He cradled my jaw and turned my head. He searched my eyes, seeing things I didn’t want seen. He slid his sunglasses from his face, to make sure that I saw the pain in his. Hard as it was, I held his charcoal eyes, although I desperately wanted to look away.

“I am sorry,” I said. “I know I’ve upset you with this. I’ve upset me, too. We just wanted to—”

“Don’t.” His eyes narrowed.

Now would be when we kissed. Except we wouldn’t. We’d learned from past mistakes.

“I know what you were doing, Tally,” he said. “I get it. Every fucking time you get in trouble like this, it takes years off my life.”

I nodded. A friend was killed. Murdered. Didi. She’d been his friend, too. “I can’t change. Not this.”

“I’m glad we’re not lovers, Tal.” He dropped my hand.

“Me, too. It’s better.” Funny how much it hurt.

He turned toward the sunset. “I’m getting cold. Let’s wrap this up.”

“Sure,” I said. His brusque tone was painful, but I had to live with it. My choice. But it was still hard. “What did you find at Delphine’s antique shop?”

“Some blood on the floor in that room you call the artifact room.”

“Human? Old? New? What?”

“Human. New, not old.”

A catboat scudded across the waves, sail billowing, jib flying. I pointed. “Pretty catboat, eh?”

He tsk-tsked. “See the jib? It requires that bowsprit, that pole extending forward from the vessel’s prow. So, even though it looks like a catboat, it’s really rigged like a sloop. Traditionally catboats were gaff rigged. Now they use the more modern Bermuda rig.”

“You do love your sailboats, don’t you?”

“I live on one don’t I?”

“Because it takes you away from everything.” I lifted my camera and snapped off a dozen shots. My dad would have loved to sail here. I pictured him at the tiller of our small Blue Jay. I’d swear he acted as if he were captaining a schooner. I shook my head. I loved those glimpses into the past, but they never helped with the now.

“How much blood did you find?” I asked.

“Not a lot.”

“I don’t see her being killed there,” I said.

“Her? That Delphine woman you keep talking about?”

“Yes.”

He raked a hand through his crew cut. “Who knows? Plastic on the floor, like a drop cloth, some escaped. We don’t know she’s dead, Tal.”

I removed my glasses, rubbed my eyes. “I know. But I believe . . . What does Zoe say?”

Kranak jiggled his foot.

“What?” I said. “I told you, the guy thought I was Zoe. Obviously he hadn’t met her. Is she okay?”

“She’s vamoosed.”

The following day, Friday, with Riley, Dan’s son, as police escort, Carmen and Kranak and I again went over every inch of Delphine’s shop. I’d brought Penny along, and let her sniff her happy heart out. She was certain to react to anything unusual. At the same time, Carmen and I removed
every single Zuni fetish from the damaged case. Amazing, but most had survived the crash intact.

We found a safe haven for them in a long case in front. We began to replace the carvings one by one, using the care each deserved.

The Zuni or Shiwi, as they’re also called, are
the
preeminent fetish carvers, just as the Hopi were famed for carving Katsinas and Navajo for their fabulous weaving of rugs.

The Zuni call fetishes
wemawe
, and most are carved for collectors, although some are part of the complicated Zuni religion. Those religious fetish carvings represent the animal they depict, with the animal’s spirit residing in the stone. Of course, they say it’s all about the relationship between the carving, the carver, the stone, and its owner.

I always marveled at the carvings and their beautiful diversity. I held a mountain lion and walked him to his new case. Mountain lion was the hunter god of the North. The one I held was carved from angelite, a bluish-violet stone. The figure had a smiling face and highly animated body, left paw raised, haunches tight as if to leap. His eyes were coral, his bundle a lapis arrowhead, with some turquoise and abalone tied to the sinew that bound the arrowhead to mountain lion’s back. Jeff Tsalabutie had carved him, and he was highly collectable. As we handled them, I recognized many of the stones—serpentine and travertine, pipestone and turquoise, jasper and azurite, as well as carving media such as mother-of-pearl and amber and jet. I held bears and mountain lions and badgers and moles and eagles and wolves, the classic six directionals of the North, South, East, West, Above and Below.

But the Zuni carved much more, and I saw skunks and dinosaurs and horses and dolphins. Not so classic. I knew almost all of the carvers, too, as each fetish in the case was modern and carved for purchase, and not a Shiwi ceremony. I carried another carving, this one done by Aaron Sheche. The carving was contemporary, but old—Aaron
was deceased—and this, too, was a mountain lion. As with many of the Sheche family carvings, it resembled fetishes from the late 1800s found in a classic book by Frank Hamilton Cushing. Carved from yellow jasper, it was a highly subjective piece, intended to resemble old-style fetishes.

“Look, Carm.” I held up the Aaron fetish and the Jeff T. one. “Aren’t these mountain lions cool?”

She tilted her head. “Yeah. I see one looks like a mountain lion, but that other one?” She pointed to Aaron’s carving. “What makes you say it’s a mountain lion?”

I ran my finger across the back of the fetish. “See how the tail goes up and over the back, almost to the shoulders? That represents a mountain lion’s tail. All the classical carvings of mountain lions indicate the tail going up and over the back.”