Bone Music

“This is my meaning, Doctor,” she says. “This is the truth of who I am. I’m not here to show you fear. I’m here to see yours.”

She releases his arm and gives his opposite shoulder a light shove that sends him stumbling backward into a coffinlike vessel sitting a few feet from the operating table. Now that she’s free, she’s seeing it for the first time. It’s a vacuum pump chamber—just like the one she saw online, the one he probably stole from the Bryant Center. The entire thing tilts away from her. From his wheezing breaths and glassy eyes, it’s clear the impact has stunned Pemberton as badly as his blow to the head stunned her in the parking lot. The chamber’s tilting. When it goes over to one side, he goes with it like a pile of bones.

She starts toward him.

The dogs are barking their asses off, but none of the men could give a shit. Later I’ll laugh about this, Luke thinks. They’ll all laugh about how they stood in the dark outside a serial killer’s gate, ignoring vicious dogs while they watched Charley beat the living shit out of Pemberton on a tablet Luke held in his sweaty, trembling hands.

It wasn’t like they weren’t ready to break in. They were. The problem was, the damn gate didn’t have a pedestrian entrance. Just a sliding one for cars. So there was no lock to shoot off. They were trying to figure out how to distract the dogs while one or more of them jumped the fence, Luke trying to hide the tablet from the guys so they didn’t panic with each moment Charley didn’t fight her way free of the table.

In other words, they were about to kill the dogs.

Then Charley broke the serial killer’s wrist, and Luke started shouting at everyone to stop, and everything changed.

And now they’re just standing there, watching. Watching what shouldn’t be possible.

And Rucker’s saying the Lord’s Prayer under his breath.

Or maybe it’s a Hail Mary; Luke isn’t sure. He’s never been religious.

Maybe he will be after all this.

Suddenly the dogs’ attention shifts. They start running toward the fence off to their left, the one that faces the downhill slope. It takes all Luke’s effort to look away from the tablet, and he has to blink in the darkness. It looks for a moment as if the brush on the far side of the fence has come to life. He thinks maybe it’s the guys from the surveillance post, the ones who stopped responding after they were fifteen minutes out.

But these are not the guys from the surveillance post.

These guys are outfitted for war.

The first dog goes down with a high-pitched whine. Felled by something swift and silent. Not a bullet, some kind of dart. Apparently Brasher’s not the only one averse to hurting dogs. Then the second and the third. As soon as the barking fades, Luke hears a growling, chest-rattling sound. Realizes it’s coming from above.

There’s a blast of air and a blaze of light, and suddenly the four of them are grabbing on to each other and stumbling backward as a giant helicopter barrels down on them, runners extending in the moments before it touches earth. The downdraft deafens him. Marty’s gray mane has come loose from its ponytail. It dances up into Luke’s face, forcing him to bat it away.

The chopper lands in such a way as to pin them in between the gate and wherever the thing’s spinning blades end. He’d love to know where the fuck that is exactly. They all would, so they keep stumbling backward toward the gate. Just then there’s a fireworklike blast off to his right. The falling spikes of the steel gate force them all to jump back in the direction of the chopper, which causes Marty to scream, “Jesus Fucking Christ. Make up your goddamn minds, assholes!”

The soldiers from the brush are streaming across the house’s yard now, automatic weapons raised. Helmets, visors, maybe even night vision goggles, Luke can’t be sure. He counts five or six of them at least. And not a single one has the insignia of a law enforcement agency.

Then the door to the helicopter opens, and the man who steps out looks vaguely familiar. He’s dressed in a long black trench coat like something out of The Matrix—a powder-blue button-up, collar flapping in the wind—and big, chunky black boots that are probably some designer’s expensive imitation of Doc Martens.

Cole Graydon, CEO of Graydon Pharmaceuticals. He read about him in the file Kayla brought.

Cole approaches him. For a delirious second, he thinks the guy’s actually about to shake his hand. Three SUVs pull up behind the chopper. At least seven men emerge. All military-grade scary. Not combat ready like the guys who just took down the dogs and poured across the yard. But they’re packing. And maybe that means if Luke doesn’t shake the guy’s hand, he’ll end up with one right between the eyes.

“Your passkey,” Cole Graydon says.

Luke’s genuinely stumped.

Cole points to his own eyes and gives Luke a broad smile.

Luke digs into his pants pocket, hands Cole the digital key.

Cole takes it, extends his other hand.

The tablet. He wants the tablet.

He wants their connection to Charley.

As if reading his mind, Cole says, “Don’t assume the worst of us. It will serve no one.”

“Too late,” Luke says.

Cole laughs. “How’s this? Stay out of our way, and no one will die.”

Behind Cole, three of his guys part their windbreakers, revealing Glocks in hip holsters.

Luke hands over the tablet.

“Thank you,” Cole says with a smile; then he turns and starts walking over the fallen gate toward the house.

“I wouldn’t mess with her if I were you,” Luke calls after him. “She’s in kind of a mood.”

“Oh, I won’t.” Cole turns. “Far from it. Quite the opposite in fact.”

Then with another smile as gracious as the one he probably gives at board meetings, he starts for the house, his own private army on his tail.

“Where is Elle Schaeffer?” she asks him for the fourth time.

She’s not sure if his spine is broken. She’s not sure if she cares.

He’s sprawled on the toppled vacuum chamber, still blubbering like a baby. The pleasure’s going out of it for her. The delight she’s been taking in his misery is fading. She toys, briefly, with the idea of trying to provoke him in some way. To draw out some evidence of his evil so she can pounce on it. Pounce on him. But he’s broken. If not physically, then mentally. She’s never seen someone truly snap, never borne witness as another human loses his mind in the course of one swift and devastating episode. How many victims of the Bannings did just that during their confinement and rape, yards from where she ate, slept, and daydreamed?

Does this square that terrible debt in some way?

She’s been prodding his face. Grazing it. Treating it just the way he treated hers. Now she grips both sides of his chin in her open palms. Gently. But even that makes him shudder and sob.

“Where is Elle Schaeffer?”

His bloodshot, tear-filled eyes cut to the left.

For the first time, she really surveys her surroundings, surveys this basement of horrors where at least two women lost their lives in a brutal, agonizing way. One wall is dominated by a utility sink and lockable metal supply closets that look like they could survive a bomb blast. To the left, the direction he just looked, are double doors to what looks like a giant walk-in freezer.

She heads to it, observes the lock, grabs both handles, one in each hand, and pries the doors open with minimal effort. The lock mechanism tears in half and falls to the floor at her feet. A blast of refrigeration hits her. The space is large enough to park a car in. And they’re all in there. All three of them. Elle’s body is still strapped to an operating table just like the one Charley escaped from, but her face is missing.

Toward the back, what remains of Sarah Pratt and Kelley Sumter sit side by side on a bench. Their missing faces reveal frozen eyeballs staring out from exposed muscles and tendons. But the rest of their flesh is intact. They sit upright, held that way by lengths of wire that secure them to the ceiling overhead. They are something between mannequins and puppets. Still being molded and formed into their final poses, destined perhaps for a rendering similar to the exhibit at the Bryant Center, only for the depraved delight of one man.

Charlotte is amazed to discover that even in this heightened state she is still capable of tears. That even as she lays her hand gently on Elle Schaeffer’s collarbone, as she wishes the woman some peaceful rest, that Zypraxon in full bloom in her veins does not rid her of grief or pain, for these women, for those who met their end in the Bannings’ root cellar.

For her mother, who loved “Angel of the Morning.” Who might have patched things up with her father again, if only for her sake.

She hears him behind her. Coughing, wheezing, struggling to his feet. She knows even as she turns that he’s going to try some pathetic, last-minute defense.