Free The Bone Garden: A Novel by Tess Gerritsen

else gives a bloody damn.”
    “What can you tell me about the bones?” she asked.
    “Not a thing.”
    Then why are you calling me
?
    “I’ve been looking into it,” he said. “When Hilda died, she left about thirty boxes of old papers and books. No one else wanted them, so they came to me. I admit, I just shoved them aside and haven’t looked at them for the past year. But then I heard about your mysterious bones, and I wondered if there might be something about them in these boxes.” He paused. “Is this at all interesting to you, or should I just shut up and say goodbye?”
    “I’m listening.”
    “That’s more than most of my family does. No one cares about history anymore. It’s always
hurry, hurry, hurry
on to the hot new thing.”
    “About those boxes, Mr. Page.”
    “Oh, yes. I’ve come across some interesting documents with historical significance. I’m wondering if I’ve found the clue to who those bones belong to.”
    “What’s in these documents?”
    “There are letters and newspapers. I have them all right here in my house. You can look at them, anytime you want to come up to Maine.”
    “That’s an awfully long drive, isn’t it?”
    “Not if you’re really interested. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other whether you are. But since this is about your house, about people who once lived there, I thought you might find the history fascinating. Certainly I do. The tale sounds bizarre, but there’s a news article here to substantiate it.”
    “What news article?”
    “About the brutal murder of a woman.”
    “Where? When?”
    “In Boston. It happened in the autumn of 1830. If you come up to Maine, Miss Hamill, you can read the documents for yourself. About the strange affair of Oliver Wendell Holmes and the West End Reaper.”

Six
    1830
    R OSE DRAPED HER SHAWL over her head, wrapped it tight against the November chill, and stepped outside. She had left baby Meggie nursing greedily at the breast of another new mother in the lying-in ward, and tonight was the first time in two days she’d left the hospital. Though the night air was damp with mist, she inhaled it with a sense of relief, grateful to be away, if only for a short time, from the odors of the sickroom, the whimpers of pain. She paused outside on the street, breathing in deeply to wash the miasma of illness from her lungs, and smelled the river and the sea, heard the rumble of a carriage passing in the fog. I’ve been locked away so long among the dying, she thought, I’ve forgotten what it is to walk among the living.
    Walk she did, moving swiftly through the bone-chilling mist, her footfalls echoing off brick and mortar as she navigated the warren of streets, toward the wharves. On this inhospitable night, she passed few others, and she hugged her shawl tighter, as though it offered a cloak of invisibility against unseen eyes that might regard her with hostile intent. She picked up her pace, and her breath seemed unnaturally loud, magnified by the thickening fog that grew ever denser as she moved toward the harbor. Then, through the rush of her own breathing, she heard footsteps behind her.
    She stopped and turned.
    The footsteps moved closer.
    She backed away, her heart hammering. In the swirling mist, a dark form slowly congealed into something solid, something that was coming straight at her.
    A voice called out: “Miss Rose! Miss Rose! Is that you?”
    All the tension drained from her muscles. She released a deep breath as she watched the gangly teenager emerge from the fog. “Dash it all, Billy. I should box your ears!”
    “For what, Miss Rose?”
    “For scarin’ me half to death.”
    From the pathetic look he gave her, you’d think she
had
boxed his ears. “I didn’t mean to,” he whimpered. And of course it was true; the boy couldn’t be blamed for half of what he did. Everyone knew Dim Billy, but no one wanted to claim him. He was a constant and annoying presence on Boston’s West End,