The Bone Yard
by Walter Giersbach

There are woods in northeast Connecticut where you can step off the trail and disappear till a hunter trips over your body a year later. Locals call this the Forgotten Corner and love to spiel about the land that time passed by. In New Jersey, with a 7-Eleven at every corner, we call those places graveyards.

Sam Dexter is the chief of police up there in Branford. He’ll be out of a job in a year, replaced by state police troopers if the town can’t raise the money to pay him.

“Mikey,” he’d told me on the phone, “I don’t mean to beg, but I’d like you to come up and see what you make of a case I have. It’ll be the last straw if the state takes over this case.”

I needed to get away from Newark, which is becoming Murder City, U.S.A. Fortunately, the captain gave me a paid leave to recover from the last killings. I’d been five minutes too late to save a kid from the projects who was shot by his despondent father. Dad wouldn’t give up the gun and I didn’t feel so hot after murdering a murderer.

Next day I was in my car headed up the Parkway.

“Dr. Bone is one of two doctors here, Mike,” Sam explained when we were settled on his patio with a couple of cold beers. “Yeah, Dr. Neville Bone. That’s his real name. His wife went missing a week ago, along with the guy who runs a chili and hotdog stand at the edge of town. Put two and two together and you have a runaway couple. Bone believes they were having an affair.”

“Happens all the time, Sam. Easy enough to track them. Cell phone calls, credit cards, Social Security.”

His beefy face crinkled up in concern. “Jesus, that’s obvious, but it hasn’t happened. Yeah, they took their wallets and purse and some clothes. The owner of the chili dog shack—guy name of Nathan Crutchfield—he’s single. No one’s looking for him.”

“What about the doctor’s family?”

“Got a boy about 11 years old. Doc’s a nice guy who came down here from Mass General Hospital in Boston last year. Wanted to bring up the family wholesome like. Wholesome we got a lot of.”

I tipped down the last of my beer and looked invitingly at Sam for another. “You want me to see him, this doctor? Tell him Connecticut has to import detectives?”

“Christ, Mikey, you owe me from when we were partners patrolling the Ironbound Section! Tell him you’re a private investigator hired by the wife’s sister.”

“I think that’s against the law, Sam. And I’d need some background on the wife.”

“I’m the law in Branford! His wife Andrea came from Brookline. Some money there, Ithink. Her sister Amelia’s disturbed enough to hire a P.I.”

#

The doc’s house was down a street off the county road. The street turned into a one-laner with no yellow line. That became a dirt road. I get the willies when the sidewalk ends, and this was the woods out of some fairytale. Forgotten is right, and I swore as I slammed on my brakes. The car skidded to a stop three feet from a little girl standing in the road. Kid was barefoot wearing a skimpy blouse and cutoff jeans, neither of which would look good covered in blood.

“Jesus, kid, you could get killed playing in traffic.”

She looked startled, but didn’t flinch. Just clutched a handful of flowers harder before scampering off into the brush. The feral figure disappeared into the trees with her long hair waving goodbye.

Doc’s house was a hundred yards up around the next bend—one of those contemporary places that look like an explosion in a geometry class.

“I just heard from Chief Dexter in town,” the man said opening the door. “Said my sister-in-law Amelia had hired a detective. Well, I welcome every attempt to find Andrea and that bum she ran off with. Imagine a mother running away from her little boy!”

The doc was TV handsome—Hollywood casting for an intern to walk around with a stethoscope.

“What makes you think your wife and this Nathan took off together, Neville?” I asked.

He recoiled like a bug had bit him. Doctors do that when you don’t call them Doctor. “Because they’re both gone. Left on the same day. No goodbyes or go-to-hells.”

 

“You and your wife have any problems? Marital troubles? Or any enemies?”

He opened his arms wide as if to say “Who could have problems with a wife like mine?” and pointed to a framed photo of Andrea. The woman was stop-the-train beautiful, with a face carved out of ivory, a promising hint of cleavage and hair the color of cedar shingles on a Jersey shore bungalow.

He answered my routine questions, then I asked him to show me the house—their bedroom, the kid’s room, the basement they’d fixed up like a classy bar with paneling, mirrors and a shelf of booze.

“You a smoker, Neville?” I pointed to an overflowing ashtray in the basement playroom. “Gauloises cigarettes, and you a doctor. I’m shocked.”

“Andrea. I could never make her quit, so I banished her smoking to the basement.” He rubbed his face. “I miss her. God, how I miss her.”

That’s what they all say. It’s the standard response, maybe with a little choke in the voice.

“Where’s your son?”

“Alexander’s out playing in the yard or the woods, I think. I saw him there a while ago.”

“Who’s the little girl I nearly ran over driving up?”

He shook his head. “There’re no little girls here.”

The sound of a howling animal shredded the air. We both swiveled to gawk out the living room window. “What the hell is that?” I asked. “Last time I heard shrieks like that was when a broad saw her homeboy go down in a pool of blood.”

“Dog, I guess. We also get coyotes, and some people say the wolves are coming back.” He chuckled. “Maybe the Black Dog.”

#

“You live in a weird part of the world, Sam.” I tossed myself into the chair in his office. “Roads that look like cow paths, howling dogs, little ghost girls.”

“That’s why you’re here, Mike. A different point of view.”

“You said the Doc has a little boy?”

“Alexander. Nice kid. The kind with his nose in a book all the time.”

“Daughter? Straw-colored hair, and maybe 10 or 12 years old?

He shook his head. “Just the little boy.”

“They have a pet dog? What’s this about a black dog in the woods?”

Sam leaned back. “Oh, Christ, the locals will tell you this legend about a black dog roaming around. See it when you’re hiking and you or a loved one will die soon.”

“Must play hell with your real estate values.”

“Mike, listen, I got to check out a kitchen fire down the road. C’mon over for dinner tonight. I’ll ask the wife to do it up special.’

I waved Sam off to chase his fire and wandered down Main Street looking at the two-story buildings and dusty store windows. No need for surveillance cams in this town, there were a dozen eyes on the back of my neck as I sauntered up one side and back the next until I got to the chili and dog shack.

“Nathan Crutchfield?” I asked. The high-school-aged kid in the parking lot was leaning over the engine of a Honda Civic.

“Nathan ain’t here. Took off.”

“Fishing?” My joke. Isn’t that what the yokels did when the sun came out?

“Ran off with the doctor’s wife.” He wiped imaginary grease off his hands. “She was some looker. Guess she liked his brand of hot dog.”

The shack had a Closed sign in the door and stood like a defiant skeleton who’s owner had gone to Heaven.

“He got any relatives hereabouts? We’re old friends and I want to pay him back the fifty bucks I owe him.”

“Hell, might’s well give it to me ‘cause he got no one I know about.” High School Harry stuck his head back under the hood and made believe I was gone.

#

 

Driving out of town I passed rusted cars in front yards, scrawny dogs—none of them black—lying in the weeds, residents riding little mowers and watching me over their shoulders. The sign at the edge of town said it all: Founded 1794, Pop. 4,265. I wanted to add a line: Fuggedaboutit. Instead, I drove back to Doc Bone’s geometric pile of glass and shingles.

No one answered my knock on the door, so I strolled around back. The kid—Alexander—was lying in an aluminum recliner.

“Hey, Alexander, your dad at home?”

He put his book down and stared back through thick glasses. “Who’re you?” The book was an inch thick—a hardcover and no evident pictures. The kid could have stepped out of the 1950s, with his crew cut hair, khaki shorts and a tee that said Black Dog Martha’s Vineyard.

“Name’s Michael Mullally. Your Aunt Amelia in Boston asked me to talk to your dad. We’re trying to find your mom.”

“Aunt Amelia lives in Brookline, for god’s sake, and Dad’s in town seeing a patient.”

“Can you tell me about the last time you saw your mom?” I pulled up another chair.

“She kissed me goodbye so I could go catch the bus. I forgot my lunchbox, so she ran after me.”

“Was she home when you got back from school?”

He shook his head. “She made me peanut butter and jelly, and everyone knows schools don’t allow peanuts. Dad said she went off with Mr. Crutchfield.”

“Oh, by the way, Alex—can I call you that?—I almost ran over your friend coming up here earlier. Nice girl. I forget her name.”

“That’s not my friend. That’s Angelica, my sister. Can’t you get anything right?” The book kept drifting up toward Alexander’s glassy eyes. Every time I asked him a question he had to force it down into his lap.

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“Angelica’s my twin. Identical, not fraternal.”

“Your dad said you’re an only child, Alex. Why’d he say a thing like that?”

The boy did an exaggerated shrug of two skinny shoulders. “Maybe he doesn’t want to admit that he tried to kill Angelica. He’s in denial.” The book floated up to cover his face.

“But that’s terrible!” Here’s one for the shrinks, I thought, wondering if the county had any psychiatrists. “Why would he want to do that?”

The shrug returned from his limited repertory of gestures. “Same reason he killed Mr. Crutchfield and Mom. They saw the Black Dog—and that’s Dad. Angelica says she may be next, and that’s why she’s afraid to come home.”

“Can I chat with Angelica? I have a question for her.”

“She’s playing in the woods. Angelica!” he called. “C’mere!”

We both waited, Alexander calmly and me with chills crawling like insects up my back.

“She lives in a tent, down the path there between the hemlocks. I bring her food and Cokes and comics.”

“Think I could find it? Down that path?”

He nodded.

#

I went back to my car for a bottle of water, pack of Camels and my .40 Glock automatic. Alexander pointed silently to the path to set my course.

The path must have been invented by a drunken cow back in 1794. It went over hillocks and into gullies, through mossy swamps and around rocks. Half an hour later, I sat down on a flat rock and pulled out my phone to call Sam. I was going to be late.

I should have known there’d be no signal. AT&T had forgotten this place, too.

“Mr. Mullally?”

A squeaky voice floated down over my head. I looked up to a ledge ten feet high to see a girl staring back—the one I’d almost run over. She could have been Andrea minus 25 years, with a sunburned face framed by a haystack of hair. A second later, I realized I was looking at Alexander playing dress-up in a wig and skimpy tank top. Of course she—he—knew my name.

“Are you Angelica? Alexander told me where to find you.”

“Why?” She stretched the word into two syllables that went down a hill and up again. “You won’t tell my dad, will you?”

“Angelica, what happened to your mom? I think you have a pretty good idea.”

“She’s gone to Heaven. Mr. Crutchfield’s gone too. They tried to tell people Daddy was the Black Dog, and nobody listened, so he got ‘em good.”

“Where are the bodies—Angelica?”

“I told you! In Heaven with the angels. Don’t you ever listen?”

#

Sam didn’t dispute my report of the chat I had with Alexander and his alter-ego. I guess it confirmed his expectations. “Neville Bone killed his wife,” I said. “I think the kid could be called to testify. The couple may be buried out in the woods.” I flung my hand out in the general area of the hills. “Someone will trip over them in the fall—or never. Christ knows why he did it—maybe ‘cause they were having an affair.

“So Alexander invented a sister? To deal with the trauma?”

“Andrea had a wig that Alexander put on. I went back and found other hairpieces in Andrea’s closet. Girl’s clothes are easy enough to pull off someone’s clothesline. But it wasn’t entirely his imagination. I ran a check on Neville Bone, M.D. There was a twin sister who disappeared in a boating accident last fall. The doc lost her when the family was on Cape Cod. Andrea was hysterical and accused him of ‘manifest indifference to the welfare of a child.’ The Hyannis P.D. put it down as accidental drowning—body not recovered.”

“I guess that wraps it.” Dexter didn’t smile a lot, but I was rewarded with a nod of appreciation. “I’ll send it all up to the Attorney General. Family Services will pick the kid up for counseling. I’ll go out and collar Doc Bone in a minute.”

“Well, I can’t say my vacation wasn’t interesting, Sam, but give me a shootout in Newark any day over weird crap like you got up here.”

#

“You were in the Forgotten Corner? Interesting part of the state,” the barman at Foxwoods said as he put a cold one in front of me. Everyone comes down the funnel of I-95 to Foxwoods sooner or later, dropping their dreams in the slots and on the blackjack tables. The casino had a gas station where I filled the tank on the way and I was a sucker for a beer and half an hour on the one-armed bandits. Cold beer makes me wake up the way it puts other people to sleep. Who could sleep anyway with the ching-ching-ching of the slots?

“Basically,” he continued, “they got no rules up there. Cabin-in-the-woods mentality.”

“Explains the rust buckets and porch potatoes out on the county road.”

“They pretty much stay under control using common sense.”

I pulled out a pack of smokes and reached for the ashtray. State smoking ban hadn’t reached the casinos yet, but there ought to be a law against people sucking Gauloises. I picked the French butt out of the ashtray. They’ll kill you twice as fast as a Camel, but they weren’t the only thing that’ll kill people. Take Andrea, for example, who I saw coming out of the ladies room looking like the queen of Beacon Hill. I grabbed her arm as she passed me.

“Hold it, Andrea. Let’s have a drink and a little chat.”

“Let go of me! Bartender!” Her voice sounded like a swallow of 12-year-old cognac—golden and mellow even in her anger. She was a wonderful sight with her translucent skin and eyes that glittered like blue sapphires.

The barman stared at us, looking for Security and wiping a glass so furiously I thought it would break.

“I’m a police detective.” I pulled out my badge. “If you’re here and the doc’s in the slammer, where’s that leave Nathan? Under a pile of rocks?” My Glock was an inch away from my hand.

“How did you know my name?” Confusion began to fill those brilliant sapphires that stared back as me.

“Sam Dexter asked me to come up to Branford and look around. I admired your picture in the rumpus room, but not your taste in cigarettes.”

“You have to listen,” she said, bathing me with her perfumed breath. She sat down and I imagined my face was that barstool being smothered. “Yes, I had an affair and Neville tried to kill us. He stabbed Nathan. I managed to get away with just a bruised rib. He was insane!”

“You took off and left your kid to go crazy? Face the situation alone?”

“Neville doesn’t hate Alexander—only me. I’ll come back to my son—but in a few days. I’ll do anything if you’ll let me handle things on my own terms. Just another day to get over this and I’ll go back and testify against Neville.”

 

 

I flashed on the kid I couldn’t save in Newark. Some things deserve protection at any cost, and kids and abused wives rank high on my list. Alexander needed help his mom might deliver. Call me a middle-aged fool, but I felt no rush to collar Andrea. The doc was in custody. The kid in Family Services would be questioned by the prosecuting attorney. I’d call Sam shortly to tell him the babe was hanging out at the casino and he could do what he wanted.“I’ll buy you that drink now, Andrea, then I’m going to hit the highway. I’m a Newark cop and this isn’t my jurisdiction.”

“God, I love you—and I don’t even know your name.” She leaned over and dropped a wet one on my cheek.

#

Summer hung over the Connecticut shore like a fighter on the ropes as I waited for the valet to bring up my car. Newark would be frying too, but it was home.

And then my eye caught Alexander strolling by a concession, a preoccupied pre-teen tourist in a wig and cutie-pie dress. Everybody comes to Foxwoods.

“How’d you skip out of Family Services, Alexander?” I shot my hand up his crotch to get his attention.

She shrieked as my hand realized that was no boy under the skirt. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Andrea’s punch coming a second before it connected with my nose. Then she was all over me with claws and teeth.

“How dare you!” she spit out.

“I dare because your kid and I had a long talk,” I said, on my knees and holding off the wildcat. “I figured him for a loony—until just now when a dead kid come to life. Is this the daughter that drowned?”

“Run, Angie,” she shouted, kicking me in the knee.

The Glock jumped into my fist. “Don’t move, Andrea. I shot a street punk last week. I can pull the trigger on a woman just as well.”

#

“Neville’s the one with the big money—not Andrea,” I told Sam back in his office. “I called her sister in Brookline an hour ago. She’s frantic that her balloon mortgage will put her out in the street. My take on this is that Andrea wanted the doc charged with Angelica’s drowning so she could put him away.”

Andrea was in a cell. Angelica had fallen asleep in an office next door. Tomorrow, one would be transferred to the Windham County jail and the other would go home to a wholesome family life with dad and brother.

“Where was the little girl all this time?” Dexter had a hard time digesting my story.

“Hidden by a friend nearby believing some cockamamie excuse from Andrea. She embroidered the plan with her own apparent murder when the drowning charge didn’t work out. The chili dog guy was the schlemiel.”

“Just crazy what people come up with,” Sam said. “Thanks, Mike.” This time I got a smile.

“Look at it this way, Sam. You only have half as many bodies to look for now.”

#

I whistled my way down Main Street, happy to be driving back to Newark. But a mosquito bite still itched in the back of my mind. Something wasn’t right—the setup was just too complicated. I pulled a brody in the middle of the street and headed back up to Doc Bone’s house in the woods.

The place was empty, unchanged from the day I’d left Alexander. His book still anchored the lawn chair. A big fat book called One Hundred Best Murder Plots.

Alexander had done his research, underlining page 247 about a case that cast blame on an innocent man by faking his child’s drowning. Andrea had been the boy’s best student.

My first question to the kid should have been, “Are you the good twin or the evil twin?”