The Bone Orchard: A Novel

The shore was closer than I’d expected. I whacked my outstretched arm on a rock as I tried to take one more stroke. I felt two hands close around my wrist. I looked up into Dani Tate’s gray eyes and found myself being pulled to the rock where the injured girl was crouched, crying and shivering.

“Is she dead?” the girl shrieked. “Oh my God, she’s dead!”

I didn’t have the strength to push the unconscious girl onto the ledge, but Tate was able to get her by the armpits. I held on to the lip of the rock with my bleeding hands while Dani used her back to hoist the teenager onto dry land.

The other girl tried to reach for her friend, but Tate shoved her out of the way. She placed the driver on the ledge and began giving her chest compressions. Frothy water gushed from the senseless girl’s mouth every time Dani leaned on her chest.

I made another effort to push myself onto the ledge, and this time I had the strength. I couldn’t have spoken if I’d tried. It was all I could do to catch my breath.

“She wasn’t texting!” the other girl kept saying.

Bright mountain-climbing ropes fell down around us. I saw men’s boots, legs, and rear ends overhead. Rockland firemen were rappelling toward us.

I heard coughing. Dani Tate leaned back on her heels as the driver vomited water from her lungs. I had no idea how Tate had managed to get herself down that cliff, but the front of her sweatshirt and pants were gray with limestone dust.

My hands were a bloody mess. When I glanced up again, I found Dani Tate staring at me over the prone body of the coughing girl. “Has anyone ever told you you’re f*cking insane?”

It was the first time I’d ever seen her smile. She actually had very pretty teeth.





33



An EMT bandaged my hands. Then Tate and I both gave statements to the Rockland police. We watched firemen help both girls into an ambulance that had arrived belatedly at the scene. And then we were free to go.

I turned to Tate as she started the engine. “I swallowed about a gallon of that toxic water. I feel like I should have my stomach pumped.”

“You’ll live,” she said.

“Good job with the rescue breathing.”

“You saved her as much as I did.”

She should have smiled more often. It made you feel like there was a real person under all that hardness, one who might be worth getting to know.

I had poured the water out of my boots and wrung out my socks, and one of the fireman had given me a towel, but I was still soaked to the skin. I turned up the heater, and the dampness my hair gave off caused the passenger window to mist over.

“When you jumped in, how did you know you wouldn’t land on a rock?” she asked.

“I didn’t think about it. I just acted. People say I have a reckless streak.”

“You could have killed yourself.”

“There are worse ways to go than trying to rescue someone.”

She fell silent until we reached her house. She idled the truck in the driveway. I reached for the door handle, but she grabbed my wrist. For a small woman with little hands, she had a surprisingly firm grip.

“Kathy told me you were involved in two use-of-force investigations,” she said.

“That’s right.”

She let go of my wrist. “Cleared both times?”

“Yes.”

“Did the inquiry panel treat you like you were guilty of negligence when they brought you in for questioning?”

“That’s just their standard approach,” I said. “The process seems more prosecutorial than it is. Jimmy Gammon didn’t give you and Kathy any choice when he raised his shotgun. The AG’s panel will decide you acted in self-defense.”

“How can you say we did the right thing? You weren’t even there.”

“I know Kathy. If she says she acted in self-defense, then she did.”

She brought her fingers to her mouth, and I noticed for the first time that Dani Tate was a nail chewer.

“Did she ever talk with you about the first guy she shot?” she asked.

“Decoster?” I settled back against the seat. “Kathy said it was a domestic violence call. I guess the guy had been beating his wife with the buckle end of his belt. When Kathy arrived, he grabbed a butcher’s knife from the kitchen and came after her with it.”

“Nothing else?”

“Only that he weighed three hundred pounds.”

“She told me that, too.”

Kathy had always been closemouthed about that particular incident. In general, she didn’t tend to spend much time talking about the past—hers or anyone else’s—and seemed to grow annoyed whenever I waxed nostalgic in her presence. “What’s past is past,” she used to say. “Why worry about what you can’t change?”

To which I’d respond with a maxim of my own: “Just because you’re done with the past doesn’t mean it’s done with you.”

Dani Tate stopped her nibbling. “She was my age when it happened. Right out of warden school.”

“She probably wanted to reassure you.”

“I guess so.”

She turned off the ignition, and I took it as a signal that she considered the conversation to be over. I opened the door and slid out, leaving a wet stain on the newly vacuumed fabric.

“Don’t be intimidated by the Gammons’ money and political connections,” I said.

Her face hardened again into its less appealing aspect. “That’s easy for you to say.”

She didn’t say good-bye, just clicked the automatic garage opener and drove inside. I found myself staring at a closed door and thinking that she might well be right. The review board was unlikely to hang Kathy out to dry, given that she’d just been wounded in the line of duty. But you couldn’t have asked for a better scapegoat than Danielle Tate.

My boots made a squishing sound as I crossed the road to Eklund’s car. I needed to change clothes yet again, which meant heading back to Kathy’s house and doing some laundry. I should also craft an apology to the Reverend Davies for losing her revolver. All things considered, I doubted she would mind my carelessness.

* * *

My phone buzzed on the drive back to Appleton. The text befit the person who had sent it to me: blunt and to the point.



Seacoast Security informs me that you have not been in residence at Moosehorn for the past four days, putting you in breach of our contracted agreement. Please remove your possessions from my buildings by end of business Friday. Combination locks will be changed on that date and you will not be permitted on the grounds w/o escort.

Billy had been right about my foolishness in accepting Elizabeth Morse’s job offer. I had never been more to her than a replaceable drone in a hive that was already buzzing with impotent worker bees.

I was officially homeless, I realized.

Maybe I could share the guest room with Kurt Eklund—if he ever reappeared.

* * *

Ten minutes later, I found myself passing the VFW Hall in Sennebec and noticed a single car in the lot: a Ford Taurus with two American flags, one protruding from the top of each front window. Kurt said he’d been playing poker at the hall the night his sister was attacked. I’d never thought to follow up on the story.

The front door was locked, but inside I heard what sounded like a vacuum cleaner. It hurt my knuckles to knock, so I resorted to kicking with my still-wet boot.

After a minute, I heard the vacuum stop. The door opened, and a short man peered out. He was dressed in chinos, a button-down shirt, and sneakers, and he was wearing bifocals and one of those U. S. Navy baseball hats that displays the name of the veteran’s signature ship. Evidently, this old gent had served aboard the USS Philippine Sea (CV-47).

With my longish hair and beard, scabbed face, and bandaged hands, I must have appeared to him as a wandering beggar who had just fallen into a lake. “Are you trying to kick down the door, young man?” he asked.

“You’ll have to excuse me, sir,” I said, showing him my bloodstained knuckles. “I have trouble knocking.”

“You been in a fight?”

“Not exactly.”

My answers weren’t doing much to reassure him of my character or intentions. “We don’t do handouts here, if you’re looking for money,” he said, glancing at the puddle of water forming around my feet.

“Actually, I’m looking for a man. His name is Kurt Eklund.”

His wrinkles deepened when he frowned. “Does he owe you money, too?”

“You haven’t seen him recently, have you?”

“Not for the past week. He wore out his welcome here pretty fast. You can’t run up a drink tab and have people spotting you chips and then sneak off without paying.”

I massaged my injured knuckles with my fingers. “So Eklund wasn’t here three nights ago, playing cards?”

“Is that his alibi?”

“His alibi for what?”

“He strikes me as someone who can’t keep his stories straight. The man has a problem with alcohol.”

I gave a nod. “You wouldn’t know if he has any particular enemies? Maybe there’s a club member he owes a wad of cash?”

He narrowed his eyes at me through his bifocals. “What did you say your name was again?”

“I didn’t.”

“That’s what I thought.” He took a step back into the unlighted building and closed the door.