Free A Haunting of the Bones by Julia Keller Page A

in Larry’s demeanor. There was a subtle shift in him; the bullying insistence gave way to a sort of strained, earnest yearning. “You did love me, though—right? You really did?”
    â€œYeah. I did.”
    â€œSo what happened?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œThere’s nobody else?”
    â€œNone of your damned business—but no,” Jackie said. “I’m not in love with anybody else. I’m just not in love with you.”
    Larry stood there quietly, head down, studying the porch floor. Nothing more to say.
    A few minutes later Deputy Harrison arrived. She read him his rights and took him into custody for violating weapons statutes and for aggravated menacing.
    Bell had the sense that he’d put everything he had into this night, every last shred of emotional energy. It was a last-ditch effort to have the life he wanted. Would tonight mark the end of Larry Pratt’s quest? No telling. Bell couldn’t predict if he would give up or if he’d continue his campaign to win Jackie back. Bell hoped it was over. She hoped that, once he’d dealt with the charges against him, he would leave Acker’s Gap and never return. Work his way toward a new life. She hoped, for his sake as well as for Jackie’s, that he would learn to let the past stay right where it was—buried under layers of time, accessible only by memory.
    * * *
    The Sunnydell Nursing Home was located in a rural area in Combers County, about 125 miles from Acker’s Gap. It was one of dozens of such establishments that had popped up in recent years, as the number of old people without the financial means to move into new, purpose-built facilities continued to increase. Once a private home, Sunnydell had been outfitted with ramps and rails, ringed by a chipped brick walk with weeds nosing up through the seams, transformed into a place where the indigent elderly could come to die. It was an altogether depressing place, Bell thought as she turned into the gravel parking lot. The last stop on the night train.
    She’d made the drive in an hour and a half. After the events at Jackie LeFevre’s house the night before, Bell had been grateful to be on the road, glad to put some temporary distance between herself and the scene of such chaos and heartbreak. She had set off within minutes of receiving a phone call from Rhonda Lovejoy, announcing the results of her explorations.
    â€œCombers County,” were Rhonda’s first words to Bell that morning, even before a more standard greeting. “That’s where you oughta be heading if you want to talk to Evelyn Hickok—who, by the way, hasn’t been ‘Evelyn Hickok’ since about 1978. More on that later. For now, just get on the road, boss, and then put me on speakerphone so I can fill you in on the way.”
    As Bell drove, she’d listened to Rhonda’s story, breaking in from time to time to urge her assistant to stay on topic. Trying the name “Evelyn Hickok” in phone books and tax records had gotten her exactly nowhere, Rhonda explained; the tradition of women changing their names with each marriage made things a lot more difficult for a researcher. “But I remembered that you said she was an ornery old cuss, a real nasty piece of work,” Rhonda went on. “And people like that are apt to be in and out of civil court all the time with their nuisance suits. Sooner or later, they sue everybody—their car mechanic, their dry cleaner, their house painter. So I started checking court filings for a six-county radius, going all the way back to the early 1970s. Thank God this isn’t New York City or Chicago! Pretty mind-numbing stuff at first, but it got easier after the early ‘90s, when all those court databases were put online. I did a keyword search with ‘Evelyn.’ Figured the last name had probably changed.”
    â€œAnd?” Bell said. She was attentive to her