Bone by Bone

"What about William Swahn? He went to UCLA."

"I never met him, but I knew who he was. Always saw him walking around with Sarah and little Belle. He tended to stand out even on a campus the size of a city. He was thirteen, maybe fourteen years old, and he looked younger. Geeky little kid. Big feet, big brain."

"Mrs. Winston was in her twenties then," said Oren. "Why would she hang out with a little boy?"

"I thought I just explained that. Sarah was very kind to freaks. Like him. Like me." Mavis Hardy's voice held no rebuke. "And years later, when that little boy was all grown up, I'm sure it was kindness on Sarah's part to have Addison represent him. That was a nasty business with those cops down in LA."

Ha

This gentle trap brought out no response. The woman only shook her head and shrugged to say she didn't know. Even with the evidence of the post office photographs, he could not be certain that she was lying.

"After I graduated, years went by before I ran into Sarah again." The librarian looked down at the open journal in her hands. The drawings in this early one had a light and fanciful touch. "I've got the hang of it now. She pointed to a sketch. "That grouse hen must be me. It's a bird that puffs itself up when it's frightened." She turned a few more pages. "And this one seems to be frightened all the time-silly old thing." With a half-smile, she gently closed the journal and opened another. Mrs. Hardy did not look up from the pages when she said, "Here I am again-in the woods with my binoculars. And this pale yellow songbird must be Sarah. The clue is the fledgling redbird. Who could that be but little Belle? So Sarah told you about our field trips. I never told anyone."

Field trips? Ha

"Sarah used to visit Coventry years before Addison built the lodge. This area is birder heaven. She'd drive up on the weekends and stay at the Straub Hotel. I wasn't so much changed in those days, still ski

"And all you two ever talked about was birds?"

"Oren, what else would we have in common?" She spread her arms as an invitation for him to look at her life, to see her as she was in those days-and these days.

"You said that Swahn and Mrs. Winston were friends in college. I thought his name might've come up in conversation."

The librarian shook her head. "I think I was the first one to mention William Swahn. That was a long while ago, more than twenty-five years. I saw his name on a list in a newspaper article. I told Sarah that he was graduating from the police academy. That made her happy. She said it was always his big dream to become a policeman. A year later, William moved to Coventry, and he wasn't a policeman anymore. That's when Sarah told me he'd been wounded down in Los Angeles."

"So she saw a lot of him after he moved here?"

"Well, he used to have di

Oren was hardly paying attention anymore. He was doing the math on Mrs. Winston's long-ago estrangements from Swahn and the librarian.

Mrs. Hardy flipped backward through the pages, then stopped and stabbed the heart of a drawing with one finger. "Here," she said. "The dead lark seems to mark the begi

When Dave Hardy entered Peck's Roadhouse, a cluster of patrons was gathered at one end of the bar and watching another repeat of the news. The volume was loud. One more time, he saw the film of Sally Polk and the reporters. This version was cut to make it look like a formal press conference-more like Polk's own idea instead of a media ambush.

The voice of a studio guest rode over the action on film, and this celebrity author profiled a child killer for the viewing audience. The bones of the female victim were never mentioned. Dave supposed a young boy made a more sensational story.

The camera cut to a photograph of Josh Hobbs as he was in life, that silly grin. The guest author was also smiling. "As you can see," he said to the anchorman, "Joshua was delicate-almost pretty, if you get my meaning. I believe he attracted a predator who couldn't handle a boy with more muscle."

The anchorman was professionally livid. "So we can't rule out a pedophile who might be handicapped in some way."

And the next shot was predictable, the old clip of Swahn, branded by i

Dave Hardy had grown to loathe that woman.

The volume of the TV set was turned up, the better to hear the questions shouted out from the crowd of reporters. "Does Swahn have a criminal record? Does he like little boys? He's a homosexual, isn't he?" But the only sound bite from Sally Polk was, "No, he didn't take a lie detector test. Cut from this new version was her statement that Swahn had never been asked to take a polygraph exam.

The current image was a studio shot that Dave had not seen in the earlier viewing. A psychiatrist was pointing out that the overwhelming number of pedophiles were heterosexual. And furthermore-

No one in the bar could hear the rest. Riding over the voice of reason, a chorus of voices shouted obscenities. A beer bottle hit the television screen.

The bartender, a man of many tattoos and a short temper, reached under the bar and pulled out a shotgun, yelling words to the effect that the unruly patrons should take their business down the road-or die.

In keeping with the judge's instructions, Mrs. Winston's birder journals had been left behind on the library shelves, where they would be safe from Sally Polk's warrants.

Ha

"I'd like to know why she kept her relationship with Mrs. Winston a secret." The librarian had not been willing or able to tell him. "Swahn went to di

"Oren, I think you can figure that one out. You've spent enough time with Addison." She steered the car away from the curb. "Maybe Sarah and Mavis had something in common besides birds."

"You think Ad Winston beats his wife?"

"No, that's not it." Ha

"I do," he said. "And do you still hustle the tourists?"