The Bone Yard (Body Farm 6)

For some reason — the reference to the atrocities of the past, perhaps, or the similarities between this boy, who’d been lynched decades before, and Martin Lee Anderson, who’d been suffocated in 2006 —I thought back to my lunch with Goldman, the FSU criminology and human rights professor. Over our lunch of oysters, I’d thought it odd and contradictory that Goldman could be so cynical about the justice system and, at the same time, so idealistic — so naive, even — about the possibility of creating a society without prisons. Now I was beginning to share his cynicism, and I wondered whether — and hoped that — I might find my way to at least some of the idealistic antidote to the cynical toxins.

Vickery’s phone whooped. He snatched it from his belt and glared at the display, as if the phone itself were guilty of unforgivable irreverence. “Vickery. What?” His eyes darted rapidly back and forth, as if the words he was hearing were ricocheting wildly. “What?… When?… Oh, hell. Does the M.E. know?… Well, call him. Maybe too late, but maybe worth a try… Check for video cameras, visitor logs, everything… Okay, keep me posted… Damn it.”

He closed the phone. “That was Stevenson. I sent him up to Dothan to put some heat on Hatfield, who fiddled while reform school Rome burned. Take a wild guess what Stevenson was calling to tell me.”

Angie didn’t hesitate. “Hatfield’s dead.” Vickery nodded glumly. “So Stevenson interrogated him to death?”

“Didn’t get the chance. Hatfield died in his sleep last night, the nursing home director says.”

“How convenient,” she remarked, which I seemed to remember hearing her say once or twice before. “You suppose he had some help with that? A kink in his oxygen line? A pillow over his face?”

Vickery shrugged. “We’ll see what the M.E. says, if Hatfield hasn’t already been pickled — the funeral home picked him up early this morning. Ninety-year-old with emphysema croaks, it doesn’t necessarily raise a lot of red flags in a nursing home.” He had a point there. But so did Angie. Winston Pettis had been killed as we were closing in on the Bone Yard; someone had put a venomous snake in my bathtub; and now Hatfield had died as FDLE was starting to close in on him. If the ominous buzz surrounding us were any indication, Angie had gotten her wish: we’d managed to give the bees’ nest quite a whack.

She and I packaged up the hanged boy’s bones for shipment to Gainesville, along with the other five skeletons we’d already excavated. Angie asked Stu if she could take them as far as Tallahassee, where she could sign them over to a crime-lab assistant who would drive them the rest of the way. “I’d really like to sleep in my own bed for a change,” she said. Me, too, I thought, but my bed was a lot farther away than Tallahassee. “I’d like to remind my husband that I still exist, too.” Vickery encouraged her to leave at midafternoon. “Unless we find something new, I think we’re close to winding down here,” he said. “Go on. Have a nice evening with Ned.”

“Sure thing,” she said. “I’ll sweet-talk him with stories of boys being lynched and burned alive.” She shrugged. “But seriously, Stu, thanks for the breather. I’ll be back by eight for the morning briefing.”

“No rush,” he said. “Make it eight-fifteen.”

* * *

That night I called Miranda on her cell phone — a rare intrusion on her off-duty hours, which I knew were scarcer than they should be. “Tell me about the three bodies we have hanging from the scaffolds,” I said. “Are they all still up? Have any of them fallen yet?”

“No. Why are you asking? What’s wrong? You sound upset.”

“I think we found a lynching victim today,” I said. “A black teenager with a rope knotted around his neck.” I heard a gasp on the other end of the line. “I don’t understand it, Miranda. I don’t understand how people could do such terrible things to boys. Boys they were supposed to be helping.”

“Of course you don’t,” she said. “I’d worry if you did understand it.”

Chapter 26

Angie wasn’t back by eight, or by eight-fifteen. At eight-thirty, Vickery went ahead with the morning briefing, which was short and to the point. The good news was, FDLE’s forensic divers had recovered the GPS collar from the Miccosukee River late the previous day, along with a .45-caliber pistol that the Firearms Section would clean and test-fire, in hopes of matching the bullets from Pettis and Jasper. The bad news was, Anthony Delozier — the reform school “alumnus” who’d done graduate study at the state prison — had dropped off the radar screen. He’d missed two mandatory meetings with his parole officer, and no one in the rough-edged trailer park where he lived had seen him in the past ten days. Rodriguez raised his hand. “You think Delozier might have killed Pettis or Hatfield?”

“I don’t see him killing Pettis,” Vickery answered. “What would be his motive? Why would a guy who tells us to find the Bone Yard kill the very person who’s helping us find it? Hatfield, though — I can totally see him wanting to take out Hatfield. What’s the old saying about revenge? ‘A dish best served cold’? Delozier had years in Starke to cook it up and let it chill.”

It was nearly nine by the time Angie showed up, and Vickery had checked his watch and dialed her phone at least a dozen times by then.

“Sorry, Stu,” she said. “I fell asleep without setting the alarm.” She looked exhausted, as if she’d lain awake most of the night before finally nodding off. Or never nodded off at all.

“Is your phone on? I’ve been trying to call you for half an hour.”

“Sure, it’s always on.” She unclipped it from her belt. “Oh, crap; no, it isn’t. I shut it off when Ned and I went to a movie. I totally spaced out. Obviously. I’m really sorry.”

Annoyed, he waved her off, and she motioned to me to walk with her to the one grave we’d not yet excavated. As we walked, she powered up the phone, and once it was on, it gave a chirp. “Oh, great,” she said when she saw the display. “A text message from Don Asshole Nicely.” Her finger hesitated, then she pushed a button to call up the message. Her eyes narrowed, and then a hand went up to her mouth. She stared at the screen, as if something astonishing were unfolding there.

“Angie? You okay?”

“Jesus,” she said. “Read this and tell me what you think it means.”

She handed me the phone. The message read: “From: Don, May 31, 6:44 A.M. your right I killed Kate and I cant live with it. Im sorry.”

I reread the message. Three times. “Hard to know,” I said. “It might mean he’s ready to confess. Or it might mean he’s suicidal.” I handed the phone back. “Either way, I think it means you need to call the sheriff.”

She nodded, then scrolled through her phone’s contact list and hit a number. “Dis-patch,” came a woman’s flat voice through the cell-phone speaker.

“Hello, my name’s Angela St. Claire. I’m the sister of Kate Nicely, who died from a gunshot wound two weeks ago.”

In the background, I heard squawks and staticky radio transmissions, and the periodic beeps indicating that the call was being recorded. “How can I help you, ma’am?”

“I just got a text message from Kate’s husband, Don Nicely. I think maybe you should send somebody to check on him.”

“Why is that, ma’am?”

“He just text-messaged me to say that he killed Kate and that he can’t live with it anymore.”

“Could you repeat that please, ma’am?”

“I just got a text from my dead sister’s husband. Don Nicely. He says he killed Kate and he can’t live with it anymore.”

“And he sent you this text message just now?”

“Actually, he sent it a couple hours ago, but my phone’s been off, so I just now got it. He sent it at… hang on just a second… at six forty-four this morning.”

The dispatcher was silent for a moment, and I heard radio traffic in the background. “We’ll send someone to check on him. What’s that address?”