Page 170 of Cold, Cold Bones
Birdie came and went.
Twenty minutes of straining and squinting, then I leaned back and rubbed my protesting eyes. Christ. What was I hoping to gain?
The name of the person who’d requested the Cruikshank file.
Right.
Retrieving the lens, I focused on the initials. Could come no closer than Herrin. Just as I decided the trio were OSA, I changed my mind to OSH, then DSA.
Frustrated, I gave up.
Birdie woke from his nap and began cleaning his ears.
Excellent suggestion. Approach from a different angle. Or return to a previous one that hadn’t proved fruitful.
Booting my laptop, I opened the file on every old case mimickedby the copycat murderer. The serial killer I stabbed in the eye in Montreal. The kid decapitated and eviscerated and tossed ashore at Lake Wylie. The man garroted, then hanged to suggest a suicide. The man whose detached head was encased in a bucket of concrete. The doctor poisoned and placed in his running car. The Afghan girl killed in a hit-and-run. Thank you Skinny for sending me the full jackets on each.
For the next several hours I plucked details like a mother fine-combing her kid for lice. Victims, witnesses, cops, places, dates—no entry was too obscure, no fact too seemingly unimportant or unrelated.
Slidell didn’t call. Ditto Ryan.
Shortly after ten, Birdie left for good. I soldiered on, the headache still a miserable companion.
I’d finished two files and was well into the one on the Lake Wylie torso when a signature on a witness statement caught my eye.
I read the entire interview.
Read it again.
No way. Couldn’t be what I thought.
I was staring at the screen when glass shattered somewhere in the house.
My alarm began wailing.
38
Birdie was crouched three treads down from the upstairs hallway, eyes wide, ears flat, nose testing the air. Below him, the first floor was cooling fast.
When I entered the parlor, a million distorted versions of myself bounced from fragmented glass blasted inward onto the couch and carpet. Among the shards lay my friendly garden snail.
“Sonofafreakinbitchbastard!”
Birdie whirled and shot out of sight.
Glass crunching underfoot, I crossed to kill the alarm.
“You’ve gone too far, you psycho prick!” I shouted into the sudden silence, then strode to the kitchen to get my phone. Not seeing it, I double-stepped up to my bedroom.
No mobile.
I was ripping another expletive when strains of the Ponderosa floated up from below. Racing back to the kitchen, I found the thing under my discarded sweater. Answered too late.
I listened to Ryan’s message.Ships in the night. Miss you,chère. Phone me back.
Sorry, buddy.
I punched in 911. Amped on adrenaline born of fury, my thumbs hit wrong. I tried again. Connected and reported the attack.
