Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

to get in touch with me around lunchtime to schedule the specifics of a meet. Then the judge made us leave our phones outside the courtroom, so I missed her calls.”

“Wait,” Lola said. “This missing girl was a source?”

“She was,” Lori said. “And I’m betting that when she couldn’t get hold of me, she set up a meeting at the shrine with Van Tyler.”

Lola watched the door where Levi Fawsey had been led away. “Pretty damned convenient for her to jump in the ocean and drown.”

Chapter 26

The throw rug in Dean Schimmel’s filthy apartment was too dirty for him to notice the muddy boot print.

A near-constant adrenaline dump throughout the day left him too exhausted to be jittery.

He kicked the door shut behind him, slouching under the enormous burden of the bone rattle. It may as well have weighed a hundred pounds. At least a dozen times he’d considered throwing the damned thing into the sea, but the notion of a half million – or even half a thousand dollars – made him hang on to it a little longer. Things weren’t going so well since he’d scooped up the rattle from the shaman’s grave, but then, they hadn’t been all that great beforehand either. Maybe it wasn’t the bone rattle that was cursed, but Schimmel himself. If that were the case, then maybe the rattle was a good thing.

Maybe, just maybe, things would start looking up.

Schimmel had a bunk in one of the ATCO trailers out at the Valkyrie mine. It was dry and comfortable enough, but still smelled like other people’s feet. On his off weeks, he lived in a miniscule efficiency apartment on Douglas Island, a couple of blocks from the Breeze Inn. He kept a spritz bottle of Febreze inside the front door, though there was no one here to blame for the stench but himself.

Childers was pissed at him. The guy had nothing against shooting a girl, but shooting the wrong girl meant they had probably scared his target away – and that made him mad. But what was Schimmel supposed to think? Some chick he’d never seen before came up the road fifteen minutes after the lawyer like they were going to meet. Dollarhyde and the others had the luxury of blaming him now, but every last one of them would have made the same call. They’d get over it.

Probably.

Schimmel gave the room a couple of squirts of Febreze and then headed for the bathroom. Experience told him to bring the bottle with him. For some reason, Schimmel’s body was programed to need the toilet every time he got within a block of his house. He could go for a day or two at the mine, but at home, all he had to do was cross the bridge to Douglas Island and his guts started to gurgle. The two gas station corn dogs he’d wolfed down earlier probably hadn’t helped.

He kicked off his pants, cracked open a Bud Light, and sat on the john, beer in one hand, air freshener in the other, staring at the peeling paint and thinking about the day.

It had taken Schimmel six hours to get home from the time they’d sped north away from the shrine. Childers got out at the Auke Bay Marina, where he picked up his motorcycle. It was there that Childers had gotten the call from Mr. Dollarhyde about the screwup. He’d told Schimmel to hide the skiff and they’d sort it all out in the morning, but it was obvious he was pissed.

Schimmel had slowed down near town, putzing past the abandoned tug boat that was anchored in the middle of the channel so as not to draw attention to himself. He’d loaded the skiff on a trailer at the marina north of the city, and then, covering it with a blue tarp, backed it in with a dozen other aluminum skiffs just like it.

He didn’t like it when Childers talked about “sorting everything out,” but he’d worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. For now, he had other things to worry about.

Anyone else would have taken one look at the grimy tub and run, or at the very least, run for some shower shoes. Schimmel knew it was dirty, but he reasoned that it was his dirt, so he’d be immune to whatever bugs it held. Naked and chilled, he reached behind the door and grabbed the towel hanging on the peg. It was stiff and slightly sour, but was cleaner than anything else he had. He dropped it on the magazine rack that still held a couple of water-crinkled National Geographic magazines from the previous renter. Schimmel had yet to crack one open, but it seemed cool to have reading material in the john.

The apartment was cramped and old, but the water heater worked very well. Steam rolled out from the shower curtain, fogging the mirror by the time Schimmel stepped into the grimy porcelain tub.

He bowed his head, feeling the super-heated water scald his scalp and neck, washing away three days of dirt and grit.

He caught a hint of the cheap coconut shampoo he preferred, the plain white store-brand bar soap in the caddy at eye level.

Feeling better, lighter, he grabbed the soap and began to hum.

Schimmel wasn’t much of a reader, but he’d heard somewhere that most guys only washed their crotch and their armpits when they showered, letting the spray of water clean everything else – more or less.

Fortunately for Dean Schimmel, he always started with his pits.

The initial sensation was one more of uneasiness than pain. Something… not quite right. The sting of hot water against his skin made him think he’d imagined it.

Right-handed, he’d raised his left arm and rubbed the bar of soap liberally around his armpit, sliding it across his chest before transferring to his left hand to repeat the process. Another sting, this one sharp enough to snap his eyes closed. He winced, horrified when he glanced down to see streaks of meat oozing red lines across