Bone Deep. Janice Kay Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ howling from a hole beneath the porch to circle his car, froth splattering the window and claws scratching the paint job as he slowed.

      Since their tails wagged furiously as they waited for him to get out, Grant took a chance and opened the door. Apparently he was the high point of their day. He petted, told them they were good dogs, and they happily bounded ahead of him across the frozen yard to the trailer.

      He’d have thought the pandemonium would bring someone out, but when he knocked a voice yelled over the din of a television, “Leave it on the porch!”

      “Mr. Camp?” He knocked again.

      After a long pause, the door opened. Grant’s first thought was to wonder why this kid of Wally Camp’s wasn’t in school. He’d seen the traffic near the high school as he went by and knew this wasn’t a holiday or in-service day.

      But then he saw the hand, dangling at the kid’s side as if he no longer knew quite what to do with it.

      Wally, a scrawny redhead, had to be older than he looked.

      He’d better be, Grant thought with quick pity. Other wise, who the hell had let him operate a saw?

      Though it was now late afternoon, Camp looked as if he’d barely rolled out of bed. He hadn’t shaved in days, leaving patchy growth on his gaunt jaw. From the odor wafting out, he hadn’t remembered to shower, either.

      “I thought you was the UPS guy,” Wally said. “Sorry.”

      “It’s okay. Wally Camp?”

      “That’s me. Dad’s not here, if’n it’s him you want.”

      Huh. He had arrested a Camp one time, after a bar brawl, if his memory served him. Robert? Ray? Grant could see the family resemblance. Apparently Wally was used to cops coming calling.

      “No, I’m here about your hand,” he said.

      “My hand?” Wally echoed, forehead creased. Then his voice quickened with hope. “You mean, you think the mill committed some kind of crime?”

      Grant shook his head, pity seizing him again. Along with it came uneasiness that made him want to back away. He should have phoned, not come in person. He didn’t want to see this kid’s misery.

      “No. Sorry. We’ve had a finger bone show up where it shouldn’t be, and I understand you’re the only person in town who has lost any fingers in the recent past.”

      Wally Camp gave a bitter laugh. “So I’m famous now, huh? Too bad that don’t pay the bills.”

      Grant regretted having raised the subject at all. He could see that the kid’s hands weren’t big enough to have bones the size of the one in Grant’s pocket.

      Obligated to say something, he asked, “You getting physical therapy for that hand?”

      Wally gave a dispirited shrug. “Yeah, but what’s the use? Doctors say the nerves ain’t growing the way they was supposed to. And it’s my right hand.”

      Grant wanted to be gone so bad, keeping his feet rooted to the porch required a physical effort. “You’re getting disability, aren’t you?”

      “I’m twenty-three. What am I gonna do for the rest of my life?”

      What decent answer could he give? It wasn’t any help to say, “one of these days that mill’s going out of business, too, and then you’d be starting over anyway.”

      Because at least he would have been starting over with two good hands.

      “Did they even try to attach your other two fingers?” he asked.

      Wally shook his head. “They was chewed up pretty good. I heard ’em say there wasn’t nothin’ left to save.”

      Grant thanked him for his help and left, accompanied to the main road by the two dogs, who cheerfully pretended to be chasing him off their property.

      He felt lousy about the visit and kept thinking, Bet I made his day.

      Since he’d failed to find the owner of a missing finger, his speculation inevitably circled back to Kat.

      Grant made himself be analytical. Did Kat know damned well where that bone had come from this morning? Would it have vanished immediately if her employee hadn’t unexpectedly walked in on her?

      If so, she was an amazing actress. Grant would swear she’d been shaken to her core.

      Hugh Riley had disappeared from the face of the earth that morning four years ago, after driving away from the nursery just before 10 a.m. He didn’t get pulled over by the highway patrol or cross the Canadian border, he didn’t use his ATM card, he didn’t show up at any nursery or plant farm, including the one he’d supposedly planned to visit. Not one single witness had reported seeing his truck. He pulled out of the nursery, turned west toward I-5, and apparently crossed into some other dimension.

      A single tear had slipped down her cheek that day as her voice sank to a whisper. “He didn’t signal. That’s one of my pet peeves, when other drivers don’t. I watched him go, and was irritated because he didn’t signal.” Her teeth sank into her lip so hard, Grant had expected to see blood. “And there was hardly any traffic. He didn’t even have to wait, so no one else would have seen his blinker anyway. It was just…” A shudder racked her, and she didn’t finish.

      Just his usual carelessness? Just a slap in my face, because he knew I was watching and liked to piss me off?

      It hadn’t seemed to matter, what she didn’t say.

      And still didn’t.

      Grant’s problem was, he hated not being able to figure out where this damn bone had come from. But like it or not, that was police work. Hell, that was life. Not all mysteries got solved.

      Live with it, he told himself.

      “THE PATHOLOGIST AT THE hospital says the bone is human,” Kat told Jason Hebert. “Right now, Chief Haller is leaning toward thinking someone lost a finger accidentally.”

      “Whoa.” Her young employee curled his hands into fists, as if making sure none of his fingers were hanging out there in danger. “That would really suck, wouldn’t it?”

      “Yes, it would. Fortunately, we don’t use many power tools here. Now, hadn’t you better get back to work?” She nodded at the handcart loaded with forsythia that he had been hauling to the front. With their early, cheerful yellow bloom, they sold as fast as they could be put at the entrance to draw attention.

      “Oh.” He blushed and bent to pick up the handle. “Yeah. Sure. I just wondered. You know.”

      “I don’t blame you,” she said, smiling. “It was a weird thing to find.”

      “Yeah.” He grinned. “Too bad it wasn’t in the bonemeal!”

      She pretended to laugh, and he must have been convinced, because he chuckled as he pulled the heavy cart away.

      God. She wished Grant would discover some county road СКАЧАТЬ