The Woods

I heard a car behind me. It was Muse. She pulled to a stop and got out.

“Here,” she said.

“What is it?”

“Master key. I got it from campus security.”

Muse.

She tossed it to me and headed back to the car. I put the key in the lock, knocked one more time, turned it. The door opened. I stepped in and closed the door behind me.

“Don’t turn on the light.”

It was Lucy.

“Leave me alone, Cope, okay?”

The iPod moved on to the next song. Alejandro Escovedo musically asked about what kind of love destroys a mother and sends her crashing through the tangled trees.

“You should do one of those K-tel collections,” I said.

“What?”

“You know, like they used to advertise on TV. Time Life presents The Most Depressing Songs of All Time.”

I heard her snort a laugh. My eyes were adjusting. I could see her sitting on the couch now. I moved closer.

“Don’t,” she said.

But I kept walking. I sat next to her. There was a bottle of vodka in her hand. It was half empty. I looked around her apartment. There was nothing personal, nothing new, nothing bright or happy.

“Ira,” she said.

“I’m so sorry.”

“The cops said he killed Gil.”

“What do you think?”

“I saw blood in his car. He shot you. So yeah, of course, I think he killed Gil.”

“Why?”

She didn’t answer. She took another long swig.

“Why don’t you give me that?” I said.

“This is what I am, Cope.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I’m not for you. You can’t rescue me.”

I had a few replies to that but every one reeked of cliché. I let it go.

“I love you,” she said. “I mean, I never stopped. I’ve been with other men. I’ve had relationships. But you’ve always been there. In the room with us. In the bed even. It’s stupid and dumb and we were just kids, but that’s the way it is.”

“I get it,” I said.

“They think maybe Ira was the one who killed Margot and Doug.”

“You don’t?”

“He just wanted it to go away. You know? It hurt so much, caused so much destruction. And then, when he saw Gil, it must have been like a ghost was coming back to haunt him.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“Go home, Cope.”

“I’d rather stay.”

“That’s not your decision. This is my house. My life. Go home.”

She took another long draw.

“I don’t like leaving you like this.”

Her laugh had an edge. “What, you think this is the first time?”

She looked at me, daring me to argue. I didn’t.

“This is what I do. I drink in the dark and play these damn songs. Soon I’ll drift off or pass out or whatever you want to call it. Then tomorrow I’ll barely have a hangover.”

“I want to stay.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“It’s not for you. It’s for me. I want to be with you. Tonight especially.”

“I don’t want you here. It will just make it worse.”

“But—”

“Please,” she said, and her voice was a plea. “Please leave me alone. Tomorrow. We can start again tomorrow.”

CHAPTER 40

DR. TARA O’NEILL RARELY SLEPT MORE THAN FOUR, FIVE hours a night. She just didn’t need sleep. She was back in the woods by six A.M., at first daylight. She loved these woods—any woods, really. She’d gone to undergrad and medical school in the city, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. People thought that she’d love it. You’re such a lovely girl, they said. The city is so alive, so many people, so much happening.

But during her years in Philadelphia, O’Neill had returned home every weekend. She eventually ran for coroner and made extra money working as a pathologist in Wilkes-Barre. She tried to figure out her own life philosophy and came up with something she once heard a rock star—Eric Clapton, she thought—say in an interview about not being a big fan of, uh, people. She wasn’t either. She preferred—as ridiculous as it sounded—being with herself. She liked reading and watching movies without commentary. She couldn’t handle men and their egos and their constant boasting and their raging insecurities. She didn’t want a life partner.

This—out in the woods like this—was where she was happiest.

O’Neill carried her tool case, but of all the fancy new gizmos that the public had helped pay for, the one she found most useful was the simplest: a strainer. It was nearly the exact same as the kind she had in her kitchen. She took it out and started in the dirt.

The strainer’s job was to find teeth and small bones.

It was painstaking work, not unlike an archeological dig she had done after her senior year in high school. She had apprenticed in the Badlands of South Dakota, an area known as the Big Pig Dig because, originally, they had found an Archaeotherium, which was pretty much a huge ancient pig. She worked with pig and ancient rhinoceros fossils. It had been a wonderful experience.

She worked through this burial site with the same patience—work most people would find mind-deadeningly tedious. But again Tara O’Neill thrived.

An hour later, she found the small piece of bone.

O’Neill felt her pulse quicken. She had expected something like this, realized that it was a possibility after the ossification X-rays. But still. To find the missing piece…

“Oh my…”

She said it out loud, her words echoing in the stillness of the woods. She couldn’t believe it, but the proof was right there, right in the palm of her rubber-gloved hand.

It was the hyoid bone.

Half of it anyway. Heavily calcified, brittle even. She went back to her search, sifting as fast as she could. It didn’t take long now. Five minutes later, O’Neill found the other half. She held up both pieces.

Even after all these years, the bone fragments still fit together like a jigsaw.

Tara O’Neill’s face broke into a beatific smile. For a moment, she stared at her own handiwork and shook her head in awe.

She took out her cell phone. No signal. She hurried back half a mile until two bars appeared. Then she pressed Sheriff Lowell’s number. He picked up on the second ring.

“That you, Doc?”

“It is.”

“Where are you?”