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

“You pissed me off,” Childers said, smug. “And you made me look bad by marking the wrong girl when we were set up at the shrine.”

“What?” His voice a stunned whisper. “I… I made you look bad? You hid razors in my soap because I made the same call anyone would have made?”

“About the size of it,” Childers said. He moved forward, lifting the bone rattle like a club – careful of his own footing.

Schimmel stepped back a hair, somehow catching himself, swimming in the air with his hands.

Childers gave a tired sigh. He was getting bored.

He took another step forward, holding the bone rattle out in front of him.

“Kill me if you’re pissed.” Schimmel stared at him, mouth open, eyes like dinner plates. “But razors?”

“I always wanted to see what would happen.” He shook the rattle again.

“But—”

“Ssshhhh,” Childers said, mimicking the whooshing sound, and gave Schimmel a little push.

Chapter 39

Levi Fawsey woke to the smell of frying bacon. His eyes felt as if they might pop out of his head from the hard-cry hangover. The bedroom was unfamiliar, with Hopi Indian dolls on the dresser and paintings of cactus on the walls. It took a minute for the haze in his brain to clear enough that he remembered where he was.

It came back to him in a rush. He’d gotten away.

He looked at the clock. He couldn’t believe he’d slept so late. Fear and the long run to the Jepsons’ house had used up his last ounce of energy. Still – he was here, safe and warm – and Donita was not.

He was lucky to be alive.

Levi had never met a mob lawyer until the chunky guy with the bald head and a fancy suit got him out of JPD custody. Well, maybe he wasn’t a mob lawyer, but a cartel lawyer. And wasn’t that the same thing? Levi knew this attorney sure wasn’t there to represent him. His father’s man – or more likely Harold Grimsson’s. Levi had seen more than his fair share of lawyers, DUIs, a couple of drug busts, but nothing since he’d gotten serious with Donita. He knew most of them in Juneau: the law-and-order ones who chided you for misbehaving; the flakes who came to court rumpled and unprepared like they’d been the ones who spent the night in the drunk tank. They always told you everything was going to be okay, though they seemed not to believe it themselves. And then there were the slick, cufflink-wearing big-money guys in silk suits and thousand-dollar shoes who would sell you to the wolves for a paycheck.

The guy who got him out of JPD’s mitts was one of those wolf-feeders. “There are things we need to discuss, Mr. Fawsey,” he’d said as they walked out the back door of the PD.

Levi was sure this was mob-lawyer talk for “somebody will be along in a minute to yank out your fingernails while they ask you some questions.”

Levi ran the other way before the door shut behind them, leaving Fancy Suit with an agitated frown on his fat face and a cell phone glued to his ear. He was calling out the cavalry.

Levi made it over six miles, spurred on by worry and guilt over Donita. His dad’s friends, the Jepsons, kept a summer house off Mendenhall Road. They spent every winter in Scottsdale and usually didn’t come back until April. Levi knew where the key was. His dad would eventually look for him here, but it would take time, hopefully long enough that Levi could come up with a plan. Donita had wanted to go to the police, but Levi had talked her out of it. If his dad was dirty – and he was dirty as hell – then there was no way to know who else was in on it – the cops, judges, prosecutors.

As it turned out, his dad was waiting for him in the Jepsons’ living room when he got there, glasses down on the tip of his nose, looking sad and angry and scared all at the same time. They didn’t talk right away. He told Levi to sleep. He’d keep watch and they would “straighten everything out” when Levi woke up.

And now his dad was downstairs in the kitchen, frying bacon like the old days when he worked at the fish hatchery – before Levi’s mom died and before his dad had become a senator and lost his soul. Maybe his dad’s soul had always been lost, but Levi had just been too young to notice. It didn’t matter. His dad was here now, cooking bacon – ready to straighten everything out.

Levi dressed quickly, putting on the same clothes he’d worn the day before since that’s all he had, and made his way into the kitchen.

His dad stood over a cast-iron skillet, white shirt untucked, sleeves rolled up. He still wore his reading glasses. A large mug of coffee sat beside a stack of folders that spread across the kitchen table where he’d been working, probably all night.

“What are we going to do, son?” he asked without looking up from the bacon.

“What do you mean?”

Now he glanced up, peering over the top of his readers. “I mean, what are we going to do about the girl?”

Levi didn’t plan to tell him where Donita was, or even let him know she was alive. His dad was up to his neck with Harold Grimsson. Donita knew it. Now he knew it too.

“Was she trying to go to the police?” his dad asked. “You should have called me. Trying to handle things yourself just digs a deeper hole for both of us.”

His dad was questioning him without asking questions that might implicate him. So far, he didn’t seem sure if Levi had killed the girl in order to protect him or hidden her out somewhere. And Levi couldn’t tell which option he preferred.

The senator moved the pan to a cold burner but didn’t bother to