Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [58]
He kept track of everyone who died. He had since he was young. Every year he wrote down the total of the people who had died in the county. Last year, twenty-eight people had died. It was a high year, but nowadays more people lived in the county. You had to keep that in mind.
One summer he tried to count the stars. No one had told him you couldn’t do it. He worked on it for nights, mapping out the sky, working on a section at a time, but the sky moved. He never told anyone what he was doing. Finally, after a couple of months, he gave up.
The next year, in high school, he learned that it was impossible. The teacher told them about the layers of stars on stars, the possibility of the universe being shaped like a saddle, the concept of infinity, and he had felt like he was looking down a well that had no bottom.
The light had leaked from the sky. It was time for him to make his delivery. He stood up in the field and walked down to the house. The new people who had the house had worked hard on it. He hoped it would be their house someday. They deserved it. The house was not bad. It was just what happened in it.
He had brought the bones back to where they had been severed from their bodies.
As he walked up to the house, he saw a little girl sitting on the front steps with a kitty in her arms. The kitty was sprawled against her and she was waving its tail back and forth under her nose. They both seemed quite happy.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Jilly.”
She didn’t seem afraid of him. He was surprised she wasn’t in bed yet. Her light brown hair hung to her shoulders in a cloud of soft curls. How easy it would be to take her by the hand and walk away with her. But that wasn’t in his plans. He would let her be. She could be his messenger.
He handed her the tin.
“For me?” She smiled at him. “Can I open it?”
“Sure,” he said.
He watched as she attempted to pry open the tin. It was pretty stuck together, but she seemed determined. He was sure she would get it open. At least it would keep her busy for a while. Before anyone else came out and found him standing there, he slipped away into the starlit night.
Sitting on the front steps of her house, Claire could feel a light breeze picking up. It felt like good sleeping weather. She was exhausted. She had to get up early to beat the boys from Madison into work. She felt that old competitive edge creeping into her life. The one she really needed to beat was the man behind all this.
When the phone rang, she wished she didn’t have to answer it. She had talked to Meg a few minutes earlier and there was no one else she wanted to talk to. It was probably work.
Claire answered, “Watkins.”
“He was here,” a woman’s voice shouted at her over the phone.
“Who is this?” Claire asked, not recognizing the voice, not knowing what the woman was talking about.
“You need to come up here. This is Celia Daniels. He was here, I don’t know how long ago. He handed—in person—handed Jilly a tin full of bones. I found her outside playing with them.”
Claire turned and hit the door with her hand. “Who was it? Did she recognize him?”
“All Jilly can tell me was that it was a man and he was wearing a hat. She’s so little. I’m trying not to scare her.”
“Have you called the sheriff?”
“No, I called you first.”
“I’ll be right there. Is your husband home?”
“Yes, he was already sleeping. I just woke him up.”
“Lock the doors. Stay put until we arrive. Don’t try to find him. He might still be there and he might be dangerous.”
After calling the sheriff and asking him to meet her at the Danielses’, Claire decided not to waste the time putting her uniform on. She knew it was against the regulations, but time was of the essence. She grabbed her keys, slung her gun and holster over her shoulder, jumped into her car, and