THERE WERE TWO reasons why Ryan didn’t finally break down and tell Ricki Valentine that BoneMan was waiting for him to show at the Crow’s Nest Ranch in western Texas. The first was that he knew that for all their good intentions, the FBI could not save Bethany.
The second was that he knew there was a chance he could. However small the possibility, as long as he could wrap his mind around it he would keep his mind, his body, everything that was within him singularly focused on giving that possibility room to grow.
He’d learned that he couldn’t break an innocent man’s bones to save his daughter, but he would break every bone in his own body to save her.
Under any other circumstance he would never look at iron shackles and think of them as a possibility, but he’d put his mind to just this possibility from the moment they moved him into the holding cell in the downtown precinct and locked the restraints around his wrists.
The cell was one of five used to hold prisoners in transit, not the kind he’d seen on television with a bunk bed, a toilet, and a sink. Steel bars ran along the hall wall and white concrete completed the ten-by-ten room. A single bed sat in the far corner and a chain shackled to the prisoner’s wrist kept them from being able to reach the bars.
“Why the chain?” he’d asked the two guards who’d accompanied him to the cell.
“To keep you from running home to mommy,” one said with a grin.
The other was more directed by protocol. “Prisoners stay chained at all times in the cage. You need to use the bathroom, you let us know. You stand facing the wall, we come in, secure you with handcuffs, take off the chains, lead you to the toilets, and return you.” He dropped a bucket on the floor. “Need to piss, use that—we’re not orderlies.”
The guards had shoved him roughly into the room and attached the chain to his left wrist using an inch-wide strap of steel that locked into place with a keyed latch.
A new facility that gave each prisoner his own toilet was near completion. In the meantime they had the system down to a science that Ryan tested within ten minutes of his arrival.
“What is it?”
“I have to use the bathroom.”
“You just got here. Why didn’t you go while we had you out? Now you want me to drag you to the latrine and wait for you to mess yourself?”
“Unless you want me to do it here.”
The guard, a short balding man who liked to walk with his hand draped over the forty-five on his waist, swore.
“Palms on the wall.”
Ryan faced the wall and placed both hands on it while the man opened the cell door.
“Hands behind your back, one at a time.”
He complied. Handcuffs were quickly latched to his wrists and the shackle unlocked. It fell to the floor with a loud clang.
“Turn around.”
He was marched to the latrine, where he faced another set of procedures, but his mind was back on the cell. Back on the shackles.
Five minutes later he was secured by them once again.
As long as he was fixed to the chain, there was no way out of the cell. Once out of the shackle the guard took other precautions that would make a struggle a losing proposition.
He sat on the bunk, stared at the thick band of steel that ran around his wrist, and let BoneMan’s drawing fill his mind. On the drawing had been one bone that supported the thumb, the ball at the base of his thumb, the trapezium. He rubbed it, feeling the faint outline beneath his flesh.
If he could break the trapezium, his whole hand would collapse a full inch. The drawing on the wall had made as much clear. He might also need to collapse one of his metacarpals to squeeze his hand through the shackle.
But if he could stomach the pain, he stood a better than even chance of surprising the guard and taking his weapon.
A strange notion occurred to him as he sat on the bed, lost in the prospect of breaking his own bones. His daughter had suffered nothing less at the hand of BoneMan. In a way his own pain in breaking the bones in his left hand so that he might have at least some hope of going to her felt justified.
It was the least he could do. And he knew how to do it. Right here using the leverage provided by the bed, the shackle itself, and his full body weight, he might be able to break his bones.
The idea swallowed him.
“I DON’T LIKE it.” Ricki lifted the bottle of Corona as if to take a drink. Instead she waved it to punctuate her point. “This feels like the Phil Switzer takedown to me. Right circumstances, right motive, right everything, but wrong man.”
Mark Resner shook his head. “He may not be BoneMan, but he’s guilty, isn’t he? And I agree with Kracker, this town needs a guilty man behind bars right now, even if he isn’t the one who we were after two years ago.”
They sat in the Tattle Tale, a Fourth Street pub in downtown Austin that would be standing room only on weekends thanks to live music and college students from the nearby University of Texas. Tonight, a lone piano serenaded a sparse, more mature crowd.
To their right the hour hand on a three-foot antique clock had nearly completed its climb to the midnight mark. Even on weeknights, Austin, Texas, live music capital of the world, did not sleep. She and Mark, on the other hand, did, and they’d agreed to call it quits at twelve.
“You know the DA’s gonna do everything in his power to pin it all on him. And while we’re at it, you know he was the one who did this the last time.”
“Did what? Plant the blood evidence?”
She took a drink and set the bottle down without bothering to respond. “Problem is, nothing eliminates Evans. I’ve been through the evidence we have on BoneMan a hundred times—the times, the places, the forensics—none of it clears Evans. Not even the phone we found in the quarry. The calls came from another cell phone in the same area. He could have called himself.”
“But?”
“But you look in his eyes and you tell me.”
A wry smile slowly spread over Mark’s face. “You like this guy?”
“Please. Like you said, he’s guilty.” She lifted her bottle again, turning it in her hands, peeling back the corner of the label. She felt… respect. Nothing romantic in the least.
Mark leaned back. “You gotta admit though, there’s something pretty compelling about a father who’s so desperate to save his daughter.”
“Assuming that’s what he’s doing,” she said.
“Isn’t that what you’re saying?”
She sighed and leaned back to match his posture. “There was a look in his eyes when I interviewed him two months ago in his hotel room, before all this went down. He’d just laid out the DA, which I can’t say disturbed me too much, and his marriage was on the ropes. He had a hundred reasons to be furious. But he just sobbed. It broke my heart.”
“Like I said, you do think he’s telling the truth.”
She looked at him for a moment. Not so long ago she might have retreated into his arms for comfort on a night like this. Now she was alone, not so unlike Ryan.
Ricki shifted her eyes away from Mark and watched the piano player. “If I had to pick a side? Yes. I think he’s telling the truth. I think he took Welsh because he was told that if he didn’t, his daughter would die.”
“And we’re making a mistake by not taking him up on his offer.”
Eyes back on him. “If I’m right, yes.”
“Well, we’ll know soon enough, won’t we?”
“How so?”
“When we find the girl’s body, the coroner will tell us if her bones were broken before or after we took Evans into custody. With any luck, you’ll be able to safely conclude that she was killed after Evans was taken into custody and clear him of at least that much. You still have the DA to contend with.”
It was an ugly prospect but true. The fact that they were sitting here with their feet up while Bethany was still out there was enough to make Ricki swear off this cursed line of work for the last time.
“If he’s not BoneMan, a jury will excuse him for what he did to the DA. After what he’s been through—probation, maybe a short sentence, but no one’s going to lock up a tormented father for too long, not after so many fathers have lost their daughters to BoneMan. He’ll be public hero number one when this is all over.”
“That’s a big if.”
“What is?”
“If he’s not the BoneMan.”
She set the half-empty bottle down and checked her phone in case she’d somehow missed a call in the ruckus.
“No call?”
“No. But he claims the killer gave him until daybreak. We can be anywhere in the state in matter of a couple hours. He’s got till three or four in the morning before he runs out of time.”
“What could possibly change between now and three in the morning? Why not just tell us now, assuming he’s going to tell us anything at all?”
“We could change,” she said. “We could change our minds. The DA could have second thoughts. After leaving Evans, I laid out all of the reasons for letting Evans take this last shot, wearing a location transmitter, and Kracker promised to pitch my reasoning to Welsh one more time.”
“Not a chance, not after his dog and pony show with the press this afternoon. Welsh already has his mind on the next election.”
However depressing, neither of them could argue.
Ricki dug out a five-dollar tip and set it on the table. “Then let’s hope we get a call from Evans before four this morning. I have to get some sleep.”
“You talk to anyone down at the station lately? He awake?”
“Half an hour ago, just before I got here, and yes, he’s awake. Just sitting there. You coming?”
“Go ahead, I’m going to finish my drink. Call me if you hear anything.”
Ricki walked down Fourth Street toward the Trulucks, where she’d valet parked her car. She handed the attendant her ticket and called the station while she waited. Johnson, one of the guards on night shift, answered and agreed to take a quick look.
He returned thirty seconds later and confirmed that Evans was still awake, lying down now, but he wasn’t going to sleep any time soon.
“How’s that?”
“He just don’t have that look,” Johnson said. “He staring up at the ceiling like he’s expecting it to cave in at any minute. Sweating up a storm.”
“Sweating?”
“His whole shirt is wet.”
She frowned. Good. He was sweating it out, literally. Maybe he would change his mind.
Ricki reached her apartment at twelve-forty in the morning, called Kracker one last time on the chance he would pick up, and sat down in front of the television to let off some steam when he didn’t.
She checked her TiVo and watched a bit of Letterman, then kicked off her shoes, lay down in the corner of the couch, and let exhaustion push her slowly toward sleep. They would call; she’d given them all her numbers.
If there was any change at all, they would call.
LETTERMAN STILL GRINNED on the monitor when Ricki jerked upright out of a dead sleep half an hour later. Two AM. She grabbed her cell phone on the coffee table.
“Yes?”
“Agent Valentine?”
“He’s talking?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Evans! Evans is talking.”
“Um, no… no ma’am, no. I’m calling for Assistant Director Kracker. Can you hold the line?”
“Kracker? Sure.”
Kracker? At two in the morning. The DA had agreed then. If so, they had to hurry. She kept the phone to her ear and pulled on her boots.
Dropped the phone. Picked it up off the carpet and lifted it to her ear. “Hello?” Nothing.
Then Kracker’s familiar low voice filled her ear. “Ricki?”
And she know immediately that something was wrong. She stood.
“What is it?”
“Ricki, I’m at Burt Welsh’s house. God help me, I don’t know how we let this happen.”
“What?”
“He’s dead. It looks like the work of BoneMan.”
Her heart hit hard and seemed to stop, then kicked in steady. “Dead?”
“He was found a few minutes ago after an anonymous call reported a murder at his house.”
“Found how? How do you know this was BoneMan?”
“He was found on his bed, tied off to the posts, naked. All of the bones in his extremities are broken. God, he looks like. …” Kracker’s thick voice failed him.
“No blood?”
“No. No bleeding except from his head where he was hit, hard enough to put him out. I hope he was out.”
The revelation made her legs feel like rubber. “Ryan told us this would happen.”
Silence.
“He warned us that BoneMan wanted Welsh dead. The father of lies. Right? When Ryan failed to meet his demands he went after Welsh himself and then he made the call because he wanted us to find him. He doesn’t want us pinning his work on Ryan.”
“He’s dead, Ricki. For God’s sake, the district attorney of Austin, Texas, was just brutally murdered in the same manner as the victims he’d sworn to avenge. And it happened right under our noses! Do you have any idea how this looks?”
But Ricki couldn’t care less how it made anyone look. Her mind was suddenly full of one thought, and one thought only.
“What about Ryan?”
“He’s locked up in—”
“Have you called down there?”
“He’s in a cell, Ricki.”
“But have you checked?” she demanded with enough force to rattle her phone.
Pause. “No. My first call was—”
“I’ll call you back.” She pressed the end button. Quickly scrolled down the recent calls log, selected her last outgoing call, and hit send.
The phone rang seven times without an answer. She hung up, checked that she’d dialed the right number, and called again. This time a receptionist picked up after ten rings.
“Please hold.” That was it. The woman abruptly cut the line and placed her on hold. Ricki holstered her Glock and headed to her car. Fired it up and pulled out onto the street. Still nothing but a silent line.
She cursed, hung up, and called Kracker back.
“Kracker.”
“I need your help. Do you have an alternate line to the Eighth Street station? The main line isn’t responding.”
“What do you mean, not responding?”
“I mean something’s going down there and I need you to connect me!” she yelled.
“Hold on.”
He punched her off. She pulled onto MoPac and headed south. The highway was nearly empty at two in the morning, and she took the car up to a hundred. According to state law, any speeding infraction over a hundred miles an hour earned the driver an immediate escort to jail. That’s where she was headed anyway.
She’d covered a mile before Kracker came back on with the sound of a ringing phone behind his voice.
“Ricki?”
“Here.”
“I’m conferencing. This is the only number I have on me so I’m not—”
“Fourteenth Street Prison Division, please hold—”
“Mort Kracker, FBI here. What’s your name, son?”
“Sergeant Joseph Spinelli.”
“Fine, Joseph. I need to speak to someone in charge.”
“I’m… This is about the incident?”
“What incident?”
“I’m sorry, it’s a bit of a zoo down here. We had a prisoner break out of a cell. He knocked out a guard and managed to get out of the station before an alarm was sounded. The night chief—”
“What prisoner?” Ricki demanded.
“Evans,” the man said. “The prisoner who took the district attorney.”
But of course. They should have expected nothing less. She took the car up to a hundred and ten.
“When?”
“About half an hour ago,” Spinelli said.
“As of now, consider the scene part of a federal investigation,” Kracker snapped. “Lock it down. Do you understand me, Sergeant Spinelli? We’ll have an evidence response team there within half an hour. Don’t let anyone touch anything. This is a federal matter now.”
“The chief would like to talk to you, sir.”
“Put him on.”
“Hold on.” He set the phone down with a clunk.
“Ricki?”
“I’m already on my way, sir. Tell them I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
RICKI HELD THE shackles in her gloved hands, slowly turning them over, mind spinning with the story they told. Mark Resner had just arrived after she’d woken him with the news.
A crime scene investigator was already dusting and probing, but there were very few unanswered questions to investigate. They all knew what had happened.
They knew who the prisoner was; they’d put him in the cell themselves.
They knew that he’d managed to get out of his restraints. They knew that he’d called for the guard so that he could use the bathroom. They knew that Johnson had responded to the request and had, by all appearances, followed proper protocol by unlocking and entering the cell only when the restrained prisoner was safely against the wall with his shackled hands in plain sight.
They knew that Evans had overpowered Johnson and rendered him unconscious before the guard could raise an alarm. The prisoner had then taken the man’s gun and his uniform and made it all the way out of the building before another guard had gone looking for Johnson and found him in the cell in his boxers.
They also knew that Ryan had taken Johnson’s keys and that his white Honda Accord was missing from the parking lot out back.
What they didn’t know was where Ryan had gone.
Or how he’d managed to get out of his restraints.
Mark stared at the flat steel ring in Ricki’s hands. “You’d think they could come up with a more efficient way of restraining prisoners.”
“It’s a temporary arrangement. They don’t hold prisoners here very often, only special parties on the request of the DA.”
“Special parties? Is that what our man is?”
“Their term, not mine.” She turned the black shackle over and tried to slip her hand into the small opening, but it wouldn’t go. Maybe with a little Vaseline.
“Evans isn’t a small man. His hands have to be quite a bit larger than mine.”
“Only one way out.”
“He broke his thumb.”
“At the very least.”
She handed the restraint to Mark. “That’s what I call commitment.”
“He seems to be developing a taste for this.”
Ricki looked at him. “I don’t think anything could be farther from the truth. I think there’s nothing in the world that terrifies him more than the thought of his daughter’s bones being broken. To the point where he’s willing to break his own with his own hand, for the slimmest chance to save hers.”
“Well, that’s one way to look at it.”
“He was here, locked in chains when BoneMan killed Welsh. Ryan Evans is a father who will do anything to save his daughter. That is now the only way to look at it.”
Mark nodded, point conceded, and dropped the shackle on the bed, where it clanked in its chains. “Back to square one,” he said.
“A Honda Accord speeding on a back highway somewhere. At least it’s not black.”
“Somehow I don’t think it’ll matter. By morning the Accord will be long gone and Evans will be with BoneMan.”
The idea sent a shudder through her bones.
“God help him.”