Bone by Bone Read online

  Bone by Bone

  CAROL O'CONNELL

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 2008 Carol O’Connell

  The right of Carol O’Connell to be identified as the Author of

  the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 7657 5

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  Carol O’Connell is the author of ten previous books, nine featuring Kathy Mallory, and the stand-alone novel, Judas Child. She lives in New York City.

  Praise for Carol O’Connell:

  ‘Kathy Mallory is a marvellous creation and Carol O’Connell is a major new talent’

  Jonathan Kellerman

  ‘Carol O’Connell is a gifted writer with a style as quick and arresting as Kathy Mallory herself ’

  Richard North Patterson

  ‘ . . . A classic New York cop story, tough, dark, moody, violent. At its centre is Kathleen Mallory, a cop with a barely-repressed crooked streak, and one of the most interesting new characters to come along in years. Carol O’Connell has a distinctive voice and a great eye for the city and its streets’

  John Sandford

  ‘O’Connell turns in a virtuoso combination of detection and suspense . . . her best book yet’

  Roz Kaveney

  ‘True thrills don’t come cheap, but they sometimes come as well-written and mesmerising as this’

  Frances Fyfield

  ‘Carol O’Connell proves once again the enduring power of Mallory’

  Karin Slaughter

  ‘Kathy Mallory, NYPD, is one of the most unique, interesting and surprising heroines you’ve ever come across in any work of fiction’

  Nelson DeMille

  ‘There ’s never been a fictional detective like Kathy Mallory . . . You won’t read another crime novel quite like this all year’

  Val McDermid

  ‘Mallory is one of the most original and intriguing detectives you’ll ever meet’

  Carl Hiassen

  ‘Intriguing, original and disturbing . . . a very good, powerful story of crime and detection’

  The Times

  ‘Bewitching Bayou Gothic . . . I have rarely read a more original and haunting murder scene’

  Independent

  ‘Sustained by the unforgettable personality of its heroine . . . Witty, unusual and memorable’

  Guardian

  ‘The mystery genre expands in all directions, adaptable enough in this prime example to encompass paranormal trickery as well as real wickedness. The central and compelling character is Mallory, a female cop with attitude born of her own abandonment into New York’s main streets as a child. Familiar with greed and brutality, she has no conscience now. The question is, does she have any heart at all, or is her surface sophistication a veneer grafted on to the soul of a psychic savage? Her progress is enthralling; her followers beautifully observed in fine, controlled prose’

  Mail on Sunday

  ‘A stunning debut . . . A gritty, convincing New York novel with a heroine who looks like becoming an established favourite’

  Daily Mirror

  ‘Most remarkable . . . What makes the book memorable is the distinctive style of writing’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Well-drafted and original story; interesting characters; compelling narration’

  Daily Mail

  ‘This is a cracking good thriller. O’Connell’s characters have an individuality and depth often missing from this genre, and she has created a woman detective, Kathy Mallory, with real presence’

  Sunday Express

  ‘Carol O’Connell has succeeded in doing something new with the convention and produced a highly original plot. A deeply satisfying read which will whet readers’ appetites for a sequel’

  Time Out

  ‘O’Connell writes in a dense, terse prose, and the plot gathers pace nicely, wrapping up insider dealing, black magic and computer hi-jinx in a richly detailed detective story’

  The Big Issue

  ‘Carol O’Connell delivers goosebumps’

  Vanity Fair

  ‘Mallory is both mysterious and as real as a fist in the face’

  Harper’s Bazaar

  ‘Mallory’s Oracle is more mystical than mystery. Part cosy whodunit, part police procedural, the book also contains generous dashes of surrealism, hints of the occult and a touch of horror . . . When a first novel evolves into a series, it usually proves to be the best or the worst of all the books that follow. My guess is that Mallory’s Oracle, while a powerful novel, will not prove to be this series’s pinnacle. And, given the book’s excellence, the pinnacle promises to be a high one indeed’

  New York Times Book Review

  ‘The gifted O’Connell – who’s now at the height of her considerable literary powers – combines all of the above in a brilliant, not-to-be-missed performance.

  Wow!’ Booklist

  ‘A terrific find: a tightly wrapped, expert combination of suspense, mystery and show-stopping character’

  New York Times

  ‘O’Connell sets the standard in crime fiction’

  Publishers Weekly

  ‘Intelligent, honed and haunting’

  New York Daily News

  ‘O’Connell has raised the standard for psychological thrillers’

  Chicago Tribune

  ‘Memorable characters and blazingly original prose. Once again, O’Connell transcends the genre’

  Kirkus Reviews

  This book is dedicated to men and women who stood in harm’s way, to those who came home with the damage that shows and also the damage that no one sees and no one else can know.

  Many thanks to those who helped me with my research, among them an entire army that operates from a five-sided building and prefers to go nameless on this page (something to do with not going through proper channels for an interview.) And
thank you, Mr Hanlon of Hanlon’s Razor.

  ONE

  A batty old man of the cloth had once described the Hobbs boy as a joke of God’s: an archangel of the warrior cast and a beacon for women with carnal intentions.

  An angel.

  Would that he had wings.

  Oren Hobbs, now a man full grown, opened his eyes in the dark and took deep breaths to quell the panic. Every time he dreamed, he died. Neither awake nor asleep, he was caught, for a second or two, between the nightmare of going home again and the solid world, where he had arrived – where a dog was barking in the yard.

  He lay sprawled upon the old horsehair sofa. The upholstery smelled of tobacco and spilt whiskey, the best-loved vices of his father and the housekeeper. These stale odors were cut with a slice of a cool, sweet air from the open porch window. He had forgotten to lower the sash after climbing inside, and now Oren recalled that the door to the house had been locked against him for the first time in memory. Still drowsing, his eyes were slow to pick out the surrounding shadows of furniture that took on familiar form but no detail.

  What the hell?

  One of the shadows scuttled across the carpet, agitated and flapping its wings like a gray moth – a moth that could skin its shin on the coffee table and whisper curse words.

  Memory guided Oren’s hand to a lamp, and he switched it on the better to see a woman wrapped in a purple robe with great floppy sleeves. ‘Hannah?’

  Nearing sixty, the housekeeper was a small, slight figure beneath that oversized garment – the same old bathrobe. She might be as tall as a ten year old, but only if she stood on her toes. The long braid of black hair had gone to iron gray, and her smile lines had deepened, but she seemed otherwise unaltered by the past twenty years. Her heart-shaped face had no sag to it.

  Pixies aged so well.

  ‘Oh, damn it.’ Her wide-set hazel eyes blinked in the lamplight as she leaned down to rub her wounded shinbone.

  He followed her lead of a whisper that would not wake the old man, who was near death. ‘Hannah, it ’s me – Oren. Sorry if I scared you.’ Rising from the couch, he stood barefoot in his sweatshirt and blue jeans. At thirty-seven years of age, he might be the one more changed by time. She looked him up and down, and shook her head, as if she could not reconcile him with the longhaired boy who had left this house when he was seventeen. His dark brown hair was shorter now, and a strand of it covered one blue eye.

  He nodded toward the open window, the evidence of his housebreaking. ‘I got in late, and I didn’t want to—’

  ‘Hush.’ Hannah held a veined hand in the air, frozen there, and he fancied that her ears were attenuating, straining to hear something. Her attention was rewarded with the bark of a dog very close to the house – and then the sound of something dropped, an object clattering to the floorboards of the front porch.

  The housekeeper jumped as if a cannon had sounded.

  Oren walked toward the foyer, one hand outstretched to grab the doorknob.

  ‘Don’t go out there!’ Hannah switched off the lamp in the front room.

  He had a feeling that she had played out this little drama before. ‘What’s going on?’

  More barking came from the yard.

  The front door would not open. In the dark of the foyer, he found a bolt by touch, but he could not undo the lock. Oren returned to the predawn gloom of the parlor. He found his duffel bag and pulled out a gun. This was reflex, and he thought better of it. Best not to shoot somebody’s pet on his first day back in town. He put the weapon away and closed up the bag. Zip – gone. ‘It ’s OK, Hannah. Go back to bed. It ’s just a dog.’

  ‘That’s not our dog,’ she whispered, creeping closer. ‘Horatio died ages ago.’

  As he moved toward the open porch window, Hannah reached out with both hands to catch him and snatch him back.

  Too late.

  Oren climbed outside. The sky was early-morning gray, and the tall trees had no colors yet. Smooth, worn boards were cool beneath his bare feet as he hunkered down before the gift that had been left at the edge of the porch – a lower jawbone, bare of flesh and laced with teeth.

  Even without the evidence of a silver filling in one molar, he would have known that this bone belonged to the skeleton of a human being. He was well acquainted with human remains in every stage of decay.

  TWO

  As the sky brightened in the east, Oren could see that this was no innocent find of the barking dog. An animal would have left wet traces of saliva, but the jawbone was dry. It had been dropped on the porch by someone who walked on two legs.

  He peered into the woods, looking for signs of trespass, trails in the air, left there by waving ferns and low branches. After delivering a present like this one, a pervert might linger awhile to watch the reaction – and the dog might betray its master with one more bark. Oren sat down on the porch steps to wait – and listen.

  The smell of moist earth wafted up from a garden that ran the length of the porch. Nothing had blossomed yet, but it was certain that the old man had planted the bulbs of lilies, dahlias and gladiolas. Come a fine warm day in high summer, all of them would rise up in a riot of bright yellow blooms. On this early June morning, the bulbs were still hiding and biding their time. Oren’s mother had been partial to yellow flowers, or so he had been told. There were no memories of her – only of this enduring ritual of gardening, the only sign that his father was a fool for love.

  How much time had passed, he could not say. Behind him, he heard the door unlatch, then the creak of a floorboard, and now he caught the aroma of coffee. He looked up to see his tall, lanky father standing over him, holding two steaming mugs.

  Not dead yet, old man?

  Far from it. The retired judge appeared to be enjoying robust good health, though he was no longer impervious to cool mornings. Henry Hobbs wore a flannel shirt over his faded jeans. His feet were shod in replicas of the old sandals with crepe soles that had allowed him to sneak up on boys who were up to no good. For this reason alone, Oren and his little brother, Josh, had often wished that the judge would wear shoes and socks like other fathers. A long ponytail had also been the old man’s trademark. Now his head was bald. As compensation, he had allowed his beard to grow long. The wispy white ends of it moved with a gentle current of air.

  Bowing, almost courtly, Judge Hobbs handed one of the coffee mugs down to Oren, and then joined his son on the steps. The two men sat, side by side, in companionable silence, as if twenty years had been but an hour’s separation – as if a human jawbone had not been left out in plain sight on the porch, resting there between them.

  The sun was up, and the color of their surroundings had ripened into lush forest green. Yellow wildflowers peppered the meadow.

  And the jawbone had a reddish cast.

  A flock of crows rose up from a nearby tree, screeching. Khaa! Khaa! Cowp-cowp-cowp! His father watched their flight. ‘Damn birds. I never did need an alarm clock.’ With the same nonchalance, the old man said, ‘So you’ve come home.’

  ‘Well, yeah.’ Oren sipped his coffee. ‘I thought you were dying.’

  ‘What?’ The judge turned to face his son. ‘Hannah told you that?’

  ‘No, sir. She never spelled it out in her letters.’ Yet she had left him with the impression that a funeral was pending – just a crazy inference drawn from her line about shopping for coffins.

  The judge waved one hand, dismissing this notion. ‘I’ll outlive her. She drinks more than I do.’ He flicked a ladybug off the rim of his coffee mug, proof that he was not blind – except to the skeletal remains of a human being only inches from his elbow.

  The door opened, and Hannah rushed out onto the porch in a racket of wooden clogs. Bending low, she covered her employer’s shoulders with a woolen afghan.

  ‘Stop fussing over me,’ said the judge, though he snuggled into the wool, grateful for the warmth. When his housekeeper had gone back inside and the door had banged shut behind her, he turned to his son. �
��Damn, she’s in a state this morning.’

  Oren lightly tapped the fleshless body part that perched between them on the edge of the porch – just a hint that this might be the cause of Hannah’s distress.

  ‘Well,’ said the old man, oh so casually, ‘it’s not like she hasn’t seen that kind of thing before.’

  That much Oren had already surmised, but he would not take the bait and ask an obvious question. Lessons of boyhood had made him into a patient man. In a contest of sorts, he sipped the dregs of his coffee – slowly – then looked up to the sky and said, ‘I heard the dog died.’

  The judge nodded. ‘Horatio was lame and half blind when he chased down his last squirrel.’ He drained his coffee mug and set it down beside the jawbone. ‘Never heard a car pull up. How’d you get here, boy?’

  ‘Planes and taxicabs.’ Even if he had waited another twenty years for this reunion, his name would still be Boy. ‘I got out of the cab on the highway and walked for a while.’ Last night, he had thought it best to sneak up on this place of profound pain and night terrors and the best times of his life. Oren smiled somewhat insincerely. ‘It was late. I thought the noise of a car might disturb a sick old man on his deathbed.’