Read Online The Bone Box by Gregg Olsen - Free Book Online Page B

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 Jo’s blood on his shirt and hands, his fingerprints had been recovered from the knife, and Birdy’s eyewitness testimony had put him fleeing the scene of the grisly homicide in Ponder’s cabin.
    Yet he said he didn’t do it.
    Surprised that she’d devoured half of the roll, Birdy pushed the plate away just as a call came in with a 509 area code, eastern Washington.
    â€œWaterman,” she said.
    â€œDr. Waterman, I hope you don’t mind the intrusion,” a man’s voice said. “This is Ken Holloway. I’m the guard you talked to at the prison. You know, about your cousin?”
    â€œOf course. Is everything all right? I didn’t leave my ID behind, did I?”
    â€œNo. Not that. It’s about Tommy. He’s been admitted to the infirmary. They might take him out of here to Spokane. He’s not doing so hot. After you left, he changed his family contact info to your name. Not changed. Actually gave a family contact. The spot on his file had been empty since he got here.”
    Birdy felt sick and it wasn’t the cinnamon roll, which was now expanding in her upset stomach. “What can I do?”
    â€œNothing,” he said. “He wanted me to give you a message. He wanted me to tell you that ...” The man’s voice grew soft. For a second, Birdy thought he might be crying.
    â€œAre you all right, Sergeant?” she asked.
    â€œYeah,” he said, his voice clipped in an obvious attempt to snap out of his grief. “He just wanted me to tell you that even if you don’t believe in him all the way yet, he’s grateful knowing that someone out there thinks he matters.”
    Birdy asked, “Will you let him know I got the message? Tell him that I’m doing my best. I don’t want to give him false hope.”
    â€œHope is never false,” he said. “Hope is what keeps the innocent from killing themselves. Hope is what makes me think that justice will be done.”
    She hung up and looked at the time on her phone. Pat-Stan was waiting for her.
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    Patricia Stanford produced an old audiocassette from the box of things she’d taken when she’d hobbled out of the Clallam County Sheriff’s department. It had been kept in an envelope with the date and Tommy’s first name scrawled on it in pencil. On the top right-hand side, a red ink stamp read: EVIDENCE.
    Pat-Stan offered her some coffee, but Birdy declined. She was sick to her stomach.
    â€œIf you have any Rolaids,” she asked. “I’ll take a couple.”
    â€œAlka-Seltzer all right?”
    Birdy nodded. Pat-Stan went into her kitchen and returned shortly with a fizzing glass of water.
    â€œLemon lime,” she said.
    As Birdy drank it, she couldn’t help but think of Pat-Stan’s need to collect some things from her office, her own kind of a Bone Box, maybe. She wondered if there were hundreds, if not thousands, of law enforcement people who carried away the flotsam and jetsam of cases that niggled at them too.
    â€œWhy Tommy’s tape?” she finally asked.
    Pat-Stan inserted it into the player. “I guess I took things that bugged me. Things that I wasn’t really sure about.”
    Birdy didn’t tell her about her own stash. Pat-Stan, in some ways, was a kindred spirit. Maybe law enforcement was