The Bone House Part 40

She tried to breathe. She tried to get the words out.

'I know who killed Glory,' Tresa told him.

'Troy, you stupid a.s.s,' Reich snapped. 'What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing?'

Troy shrank like a wilted flower in front of the sheriff. The boy opened his hand, and the gun dropped to the wet ground of the cemetery. It may as well have been on fire. 'I just - I mean, I thought I could make things right for Glory, you know?'

'You?'

'Yeah. I thought if no one else could stop him, then I could.'

The sheriff marched so close to the boy that he was practically in his face. 'Then do it already,' Reich told him.

Troy c.o.c.ked his head in confusion. 'What?'

'Shoot the f.u.c.ker.'

Mark wasn't sure he'd heard the words come out of Reich's mouth. Reich wasn't joking. He was dead serious. When Troy stood frozen in disbelief, Reich squatted and retrieved the gun and stuffed it back into the boy's hand. Like a robot following orders, Troy turned back toward Mark, but he could barely hold the b.u.t.t of the gun steady. Panic and fear made his entire body quake.

'Do it,' Reich ordered him. 'You p.u.s.s.y, get something right for once in your life. We'll ditch your boat, and you can go hide in my bas.e.m.e.nt, and we can figure out what to do with you. We're going to have to get you seriously lost.'

'Sheriff, what are you doing?' Mark asked.

'Shut up, Bradley. I'm waiting, Troy. Pull the trigger. Do it now.'

'I don't - I don't think I can,' Troy murmured, his voice broken.

Reich stepped in front of Troy impatiently and stripped the gun out of the boy's hands. 'Like I thought, no b.a.l.l.s. Jesus, what a waste.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Get the h.e.l.l out of here,' Reich told him.

'Where do I go?' Troy asked plaintively.

'My truck is on the highway. It's parked off the shoulder a hundred yards east of here. Climb inside and stay out of sight. Stay right there until I get back, got it? Do not move.'

Troy did as he was told. He ran, tripping over the ground like a clown, through the cemetery, land. He never looked back. Reich followed Troy's progress until he couldn't see the boy anymore, and then he re-aimed Troy's gun at Bradley's chest. Unlike Troy's wobbly hand, Reich's grip was solid and a.s.sured, and his arm was rigid.

'Now it's just you and me, Bradley,' Reich said.

'Sheriff, are you out of your mind?'

'Where's Tresa?' Reich asked.

'I don't know. She ran. Sheriff, if this is a joke, it's not funny.'

'It's no joke.'

Mark could see that it wasn't. Reich's intentions were deadly.

'Why are you doing this?' Mark asked.

'Because as long as you're alive, people are going to keep digging up ghosts. Once you're gone, you can take the blame for everything. If you'd died in that car accident like you were supposed to, the case would already be closed.'

'I can't believe you'd kill an innocent man,' Mark told him.

'I've killed plenty of men. They were innocent. You're not. Don't bother pleading for your life. I'm fresh out of mercy.'

'I didn't kill Glory.'

'Now you're just making me mad,' Reich growled.

'I don't care. I didn't do it.'

'Pete knew you were a liar.'

'I didn't kill Peter Hoffman either.'

Reich nodded grimly. 'That's the first true thing you said, Bradley, but it doesn't matter. I killed Pete. You gave me no choice.'

Mark felt the breath leave his chest. He knew with a terrible clarity that there was really no hope now. No chance of this ending well, of him walking away alive and free. Reich was no immature kid like Troy who was in over his head. When the sheriff ran out of bile, the gun in his hand would spit a bullet into Mark's heart.

'He was your best friend,' Mark said.

'That's right, I killed my best friend because of you.'

'Because of me?'

'Because you're a liar,' Reich told him. 'Because you had to hide behind a ghost in order to cover up your own crime. Pete was willing to give up everything to make sure you paid the price. I couldn't let him do that, but I'll make sure you pay. That's what Pete would want. That's why I can live with what I've done.'

Mark shook his head and slowly held up his hands. 'Sheriff, I swear I don't know what the h.e.l.l you're talking about.'

'He's talking about Harris Bone,' Cab Bolton said.

Reich whipped his light toward the voice that rose from the cemetery graves, but he didn't take his eyes off Mark or lower the gun even an inch. In the beam, Mark saw Cab Bolton ten feet away, next to the gray tower of a bell-shaped tombstone. Tresa huddled next to him, her face red with anger and tears.

'Bolton,' Reich hissed.

'What now, Sheriff?' Cab demanded. 'Are you going to kill me, too? First Hoffman, then Bradley, then me?'

Reich's eyes darted furiously between Mark and Cab. He was a man looking for a way out and not finding one.

'The girl, too?' Cab went on. 'Could you shoot the girl? How many more people are you willing to kill to keep the secret?'

'Get the h.e.l.l out of here,' Reich ordered him. 'Take Tresa with you. You have no idea what this is about.'

'Harris Bone,' Cab repeated. 'That's what this is about. Peter Hoffman couldn't handle the guilt anymore, could he? When he thought Bradley was hiding behind Harris to get away with murder; he decided to tell the truth. Hoffman wasn't about to let Delia Fischer get robbed of justice. He wasn't going to let some defense attorney use Harris to get an acquittal. He knew Glory didn't come face to face with Harris Bone in Florida. That was a lie. That's what he wanted to tell me.'

'G.o.dd.a.m.n you, Bolton,' Reich said. 'You couldn't let it go, could you? What the h.e.l.l did you do?'

'I found him, Sheriff,' Cab replied, i found him in that hole where the two of you left him to rot. Harris Bone never escaped. He never ran. You and Peter Hoffman killed him.'

In the miles since they left the county courthouse in Sturgeon Bay, Harris Bone hadn't said a word. He sat silently in the back of the squad car, his balding head hung forward, his hands and ankles cuffed. His jail clothes were baggy on his frame. Harris had never been a large man, but he'd shrunk inside his skin in the months since the fire, until he was almost a skeleton.

Reich watched his headlights tunneling through the night. He was south of Kewaunee in the midst of flat, dormant farmlands. It was January, during one of the frigid winter stretches, with temperatures falling into the teens below zero when the sun went down. The season had been mostly snowless, leaving the ground barren and hard, swept clean by the bitter wind.

He glanced in the mirror with hard eyes.

'You should look outside, Harris. You won't be seeing open country again for the rest of your life. Just eighty square feet of concrete for twenty-three hours a day.'

Harris didn't acknowledge him.

'I'd watch my back in there if I were you. Big-a.s.s gang killers don't like a man who burns up his wife and family.'

Harris finally looked up with sunken eyes. 'Shut the h.e.l.l up, Felix.'

'Oh, don't start mouthing off. That's a bad lesson. You shoot off your mouth in there, and bad things are likely to happen.'

'Thanks for the advice.'

Reich heard the sarcasm, and he didn't care. 'A lot of people think you're getting off easy, sitting on the taxpayer's dime for the next forty years. That doesn't feel like justice.'

'Is that right? What do you think, Felix?'

'If it were up to me, we'd gather volunteers and stone you.'

'Too bad it's not up to you.'

Reich nodded and studied the empty highway. 'Yeah. Too bad.'

Behind him, Harris closed his eyes, and his head fell back against the seat.

'I always felt sorry for you, Harris,' Reich called to him. 'Nettie was a b.i.t.c.h. Not that I'd ever say so to Pete. But there are some lines a man doesn't cross, no matter how much he hates his life. There are some things that when you do them, you stop being human.'

Harris leaned forward until his weary face was pressed against the steel mesh. 'What does that make you, Felix? How many babies did you kill during the war?'

Reich gripped the wheel fiercely. His lip curled into a snarl. 'Are you suggesting I'm the same as you? Is that really what you want to say to me?'

'I'm saying you can spare me the morality s.h.i.+t. I don't need it.'

Harris sank back and pretended to sleep. Reich studied the man's face and saw tears slipping down his cheeks. It didn't matter. He felt nothing for him. It was just as he'd said: there were lines a man doesn't cross. There were also things a man had to do when justice demanded it.

He was close to the rendezvous. Through the headlights, he spied the intersection at the county road, and he checked the odometer to count off one point seven miles. There was nothing but frozen land on either side of the vehicle. He and Pete had scouted the terrain weeks earlier as they made their plans.

Where to meet. Where to stage the escape.

Reich spotted the driveway leading to the farmhouse, miles from anything else around it. He slowed sharply and turned. In the back seat, Harris felt the change in direction and opened his eyes.

'What's going on?'

Reich said nothing. He drove into the rutted cornfield bordering the house and steered around the rear of the detached garage, where he parked the squad car with its right-hand door b.u.t.ted against the wall. From the highway, the car was invisible. It would be days before anyone found it.

'What the h.e.l.l are you doing, Felix?'

Reich heard it in Harris's voice. The first tremors of fear. The first horrified realization of what was about to happen to him.

Justice.

Reich got out of the car. The wind was ferocious, and the cold bit through his coat like a maneater. He opened the rear door and dragged Harris Bone into the night by the cuff of his s.h.i.+rt. Harris, who wore nothing except his prison scrubs, howled as the frozen air knifed his skin. The bound man hunched his limbs together. Reich yanked a billy club from his belt and swung it across the man's skull. Harris collapsed to his knees. Reich laid a boot on the man's back and crushed him forward on to the rock-hard dirt, where he twitched from the pain and cold. Harris tried to crawl, but Reich held him down.

'h.e.l.lo, Felix,' Peter Hoffman said. He was waiting for them beside the garage.

'No mercy tonight,' Reich replied.

'None.'

The house and land belonged to a retired couple who were away in the suns.h.i.+ne of Mesa and wouldn't be back in Wisconsin until after Easter. Reich had checked the house and garage three weeks earlier and found the couple's Accord parked inside for the season. Keys on a peg board by the door. He loved Midwesterners.

'Let's get it over with,' Pete said.

Reich marched to the side door of the garage. He didn't notice the cold, other than the p.r.i.c.kly bite of ice crystals in his nose when he breathed. He c.o.c.ked his leg and smashed the door inward with a swing of his boot. Just like Harris Bone would do. Inside, he pushed through spiderwebs and heard the scurry of rats in the rafters. He returned to find Harris on the ground, curled into a ball, and he lifted him bodily with both hands and threw him toward the garage door. Harris tripped in the shackles and fell with a whimper. Pete stepped over him into the garage, started the engine of the Accord, and popped the trunk. Reich grabbed Harris, pulled him on his heels, and dumped him into the rear of the car.

He slammed the trunk shut, locking Harris inside.

'Come on,' Reich said. He dug in his pocket for the keys to his squad car and threw them on the ground. He held out the keys to the cuffs and shackles to Pete, who stood by the driver's door with his hands in his pockets. 'You having second thoughts?' he asked.

'You know me better than that, Felix.' He took the keys.

Reich stared into his friend's face for a long time in the shadows. 'OK then.'

Pete drove. They headed north on the deserted roads, back toward Door County. Ten miles from the farmhouse, they pa.s.sed a bar with a handful of pickups parked outside the door. Pete continued past the bar for a quarter-mile until no one who ventured into the winter air would see them, and then he pulled on to the shoulder. Both men got out.

The wind poured over their bodies with an unforgiving fury. Pete dug his chin into his neck and pulled down his wool hat. Reich simply walked down the gully from the road into the dirt of the field. He wasn't even wearing a hat to cover the steel wool of his hair. His skin was already numb and white, but he didn't care.

Pete followed. 'You sure about this, Felix?'

'Just do it.' Reich squatted and found a fist-sized clump of earth that had frozen into jagged edges. 'Here.'