Read Online Birdy Waterman 01 - The Bone Box by Gregg Olsen - Free Book Online

and Pat-Stan called to the women fighting over the hankies that she’d be right over. She looked back at her visitor.
    “I really don’t want to get into it,” she said.
    Birdy pushed harder. “Does it have anything to do with Tommy’s case?”
    Pat-Stan waited a long time. Uncomfortably long. It was one of those awkward pauses that usually invites an exit from an uncomfortable conversation.
    “Probably,” she said. “No. Yes. I mean, I don’t know. Jim was not just a jerk yesterday. His jerkdom has been a long time coming.”
    “What about Tommy?” Birdy asked.
    Pat-Stan pretended to search her memory. “I can’t say. Really. I don’t exactly remember.”
    “Please,” she said.
    “I’ve said all I should. I really do wish you luck. Don’t know how it can help Tommy. He’s served more than his time, that’s for sure. Can’t give back all those years.”
    “Do you think they should be given back?” Birdy asked.
    Again, a long pause. Pat-Stan clearly wanted to spill her guts right over that tacky display case, but she held back the best she could.
    “I will say this and it’s against my better judgment. I transcribed his tape and I can tell you this.... When I saw his statement at trial I noticed that it was slightly different. Some parts were omitted.”
    “I have his statement here,” Birdy said, pulling out the file.
    “I don’t have my glasses and I wouldn’t remember exactly. Just something kind of bugged me. I told Detective Derby about it, but he dismissed it as a clerical error. That really angered me because, well, I was the clerk.”
    “What was different?” Birdy asked.
    Pat-Stan shrugged. “Don’t remember. Check the tape.”
    “Video?”
    “No, audio. We taped all the interviews. Policy.”
    This interested Birdy. The transcripts—no matter who did them—didn’t sound completely like Tommy. “Where are the tapes?” she asked.
    “I’ve got some. When I left, I was so mad that I took a bunch of old case files. Don’t lecture me. You’ve never lost a leg and then had your boss tell you that it would be best if you sat at a desk for the rest of your life. I get off at five. House is a mess, but I do the best that I can. Come over.”
    She wrote down an address on Hawthorne Avenue and went down the narrow aisle. No one would have known that she’d lost a leg. Pat-Stan had practiced her gait. She might have lost a limb, but she had never lost her sense of pride. As Birdy Waterman saw it, despite its place in the “sin” category of the Bible, pride could be a very good thing. Pat-Stan was angry about the contents of the report.
    Anger, Birdy knew, could be a good ally.

C HAPTER N INE
    With a little more than an hour to kill, Birdy found a coffee shop that made ginormous cinnamon rolls. Even though the time of day was so wrong for that kind of indulgence, the forensic pathologist with a sweet tooth ordered one.
    “Heated with butter?” a pleasant young man behind the counter asked.
    “If I’m going to die from sugar overload, might as well go all the way,” Birdy said.
    As she drank her coffee and ate the gooey roll at the table in the back of the café, she reread her own statement and compared it against what Tommy told the detectives.

    I was smoking pot and drinking beer that afternoon in the woods alone. I had talked to Anna Jo Bonners about meeting me at the cabin so we could mess around. Anna Jo didn’t show up so I hung out by myself. I heard a scream coming from the cabin later and I went inside. I found Anna Jo Bonners in a pool of blood. I was scared that whoever had hurt her was still there so I grabbed the knife. I ran out of the cabin and hurried down the trail where my cousin Birdy found me. I don’t know why I picked up the knife, but I threw it away before my cousin came up to me. I did not kill her. I really liked Anna Jo. I think I might have loved her even.

    All of the evidence supported the contention that Tommy was the killer. He’d had Anna