Dance of the Bones

S.D.: That’s how we found you, Ms. Horn, because of the pendant. Calliope Horn is a distinctive name. We were able to locate you through your driver’s license records. Unfortunately, we’ve found no trace of Mr. Myers. No birth records; no driver’s license. Are you sure Ke

C.H.: That’s the name he gave me. I didn’t exactly ask him to show me his ID. As for his license, he told me he lost it. Because of a DUI, I think.

S.D.: Do you know where he came from? Or do you have any idea who his next of kin might be so we can notify his family?

C.H.: (shaking her head) He came from somewhere in ­Arizona. Phoenix, I think. Or maybe Tucson. I told him Phoenix was a place I’d always wanted to visit. It sounded warm.

I remembered seeing notes in the murder book that Sue had checked with authorities in both Phoenix and Tucson, looking for someone named Ke

S.D.: Do you remember when Mr. Myers left town?

C.H.: May 1, 1983.

S.D.: You remember that date exactly after all these years?

C.H.: Yes, I remember it. When you’re in love, you remember things like that. At least I do.

S.D.: How did you and Mr. Myers meet?

C.H.: We were both homeless and living in a tent city up on the hillside just east of I-­5. A shelter had been cobbled together using old tarps and pieces of canvas. There must have been twenty of us or so living in camp at the time, but I didn’t really notice Ke

S.D.: What happened then?

C.H.: We hit it off and started hanging out together—­and drinking together, too. We were both drinkers then. ­Eventually we started to trust each other, but I don’t think either of us ever expected to fall in love. A homeless camp doesn’t sound very romantic. (laughter) But it was for us. ­People teased us and said that we walked around in a fu

It turned out Ke

S.D.: What did you get sent up for?

C.H.: I’m sure you’ve got my record right there in front of you.

S.D.: Tell me anyway.

C.H.: Domestic violence. Manslaughter. I killed my ex. Ray came home drunk and was beating the crap out of me. He tried to choke me. I kicked him in the balls hard enough that I got loose. He liked to play ball with the guys, and his baseball bat was standing in the corner of the living room, behind the front door. I grabbed that and bashed his skull in.

We’d both been drinking that night. I had enough cuts and bruises that it should have been considered self-­defense, but I had a worthless defense attorney, and the prosecutor argued that I had hit him more than once after he was down. Which was true. I hit him way more than once.

Taking a deep breath, I had to stop reading for several long minutes. I couldn’t continue, not when I knew what had happened to Sue much later. I found myself once again reliving her last moments frame by frame, fighting it out with her enraged and fully armed ex-­husband in a battle that had ended with both of them dead.

Throughout the Calliope Horn interview I read enough between the lines to realize that Sue suspected Ke

Finally gathering my roiling emotions, I returned to the text.

C.H.: Now I get it. That’s what this is all about and why I’m here, isn’t it. You think that just because I bashed Ray’s head in that I killed Ke

S.D.: You’re not under arrest, Ms. Horn. You’re free to go anytime you wish. We’re hoping you can help us locate Mr. Myers’s next of kin. So you were both living in the homeless shelter at the time he disappeared?

C.H.: Yes.

S.D.: Did Mr. Myers have a beef of any kind with someone from the camp?

C.H.: No, he didn’t, not at all. I wasn’t the only one who thought he was a good guy. So did everyone else.

S.D.: Did you have any ex-­boyfriends hanging around at the time?

C.H.: No, I didn’t. Nothing like that—­no boyfriends of any kind.

S.D.: At the time Mr. Myers left, did you report him as missing?

C.H.: No, I didn’t. At first I didn’t worry because he said he was going to Arizona and that he’d be back in a ­couple of weeks after he did whatever it was he had to do.

S.D.: How was he pla

C.H.: He didn’t have a car or a driver’s license and he didn’t have money for plane fare. I figured he was going to hitchhike.

S.D.: At some point, you must have realized that he was gone for good. Why didn’t you report him missing then?

C.H.: Because the cops would have laughed at me. You can’t go missing from a homeless shelter. Most of the ­people in homeless shelters are already missing from somewhere else. Besides, by then, I’d finally tumbled to the fact that he probably had a girlfriend on the side. I figured he’d hooked up with an old flame and that he’d gone back to Arizona to be with her.

S.D.: What girlfriend?

C.H.: I don’t know for sure that she was his girlfriend; I just assumed that’s what she was. A few days after Ke

S.D.: Did Mr. Jacobson describe her to you?

C.H.: Sort of. He said she was well dressed and classy looking—­definitely not homeless. I didn’t pay that much attention at the time because, you know, I still thought Ke

S.D.: Do you know where we can find Mr. Jacobson?

C.H.: No idea. Homeless ­people come and go. They don’t leave forwarding addresses.

S.D.: So you don’t know for sure that Mr. Myers and the unidentified woman were involved in a relationship of some kind?

C.H.: I don’t have proof positive, no, but that’s what I believe.

S.D.: You said there were two matching pendants—­engraved pendants. If you were both homeless, where did he get the money to buy them and have them engraved?

C.H.: Beats me. Probably worked as a day laborer somewhere to get it.

S.D.: You mentioned that Mr. Myers had a drinking problem?

C.H.: We both did, but by early spring we were working on getting sober. Then, all of a sudden, he was gone. When I realized he was gone for good, I fell off the wagon in a big way. I was furious that he’d left me for someone else and was spending the happily ever after he’d promised me with her. That’s what I always believed until just now when you told me Ke