Hidden Bones (Dead Remaining) Read online

  OTHER TITLES BY

  VIVIAN BARZ

  Forgotten Bones

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Vivian Barz

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542005784

  ISBN-10: 1542005787

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  For Mom, who never complains when I want to discuss murder. Again.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  “It works kinda like a slingshot in reverse,” said Gus, who favored being known simply as the Man Who Gets Things Done—in these parts, where personal information left you as vulnerable as a double-wide in a tornado, the less anyone knew about you, the better. “See, ’stead of flinging up, the bottom part of the trunk snaps down after you make the cut—kinda like a big manhole cover. Most people don’t realize trees leave craters in the ground when they fall over, specially these old redwoods. They’re rooted deep, so everything gets yanked out. Could drop a car down into some of the holes I’ve seen.”

  A car. Yah, right. Wouldn’t that be nice?

  “Is that so?”

  It was a question delivered with an impatient sigh that might be construed as threatening, if one’s ears were attuned to such things. Gus’s ears sure as hell were perked for danger, but it was a detail he was not going to let anyone in on. Just as with personal information, a smart man didn’t go offering up his opinion in situations such as these, and he, though a far cry from what hoity-toity folks over in Seattle might call an “intellectual,” was no dummy.

  “Yup.” Gus’s knees popped as he hoisted the machine from the soupy mud that squished around his worn rubber boots like diarrhea. It was a heavy mother, the Eversharp 298X. American tough and built to last, toothy steel nasty enough to gnaw straight through a man’s thigh if he didn’t watch what he was doing.

  “You got lucky with that big storm last week,” Gus continued, yelling to be heard over the wind. It had picked up something fierce, screaming blasts of ice against earlobes, the clouds blackening swirls overhead. If he didn’t get the show on the road, they’d be standing around in pissing rain. “A few more fell down that way, in an area that’s, um, privater.” Gus jerked his stubbly chin toward the opposite end of the trail. “But this sumbitch is the heaviest, so I figured it’d work best. In the long run, you know. Course it’s up to you.”

  “Best get to it, then.”

  Gus nodded to show that he was on it, though he didn’t make eye contact, fixing his attention a little higher, on brows and forehead. There was something about that reptilian gaze that made him uneasy, its unapologetic indifference. A gaze that would probably hold the same expression at a carnival as it would at a day care massacre, the infected brain behind it absorbing the world with the kind of cruel detachment only a true psychopath was capable of.

  Gus spat a gob of chaw from the side of his mouth and then swiped his cleft lip clean on his shoulder. It was a dirty habit, chewing tobacco, but it was an improvement—albeit a slim one—over the cigarettes he’d recently quit smoking for what could easily be the fiftieth time in his adult life. He used the chain saw to gesture toward the crater. “I’m going to need the, uh, the thing.”

  “Go,” the Boss barked at one of the two lackeys in attendance for the festivities—there were three if Gus included himself, which he didn’t—a twentyish kid who used to play for Clancy High’s football team. Not too bright, but he had a decent arm. Not decent enough to get a scholarship to UW, though, like some of his teammates had. Kelly something. Now Kelly stocked shelves down at Ah, Nuts and Bolts!, the town’s only hardware store, owned and operated by one pun-loving Gilly Bolts.

  Kelly the failed football player trotted a few yards to the beat-up van they’d arrived in (“they” not including the Boss, who might have materialized right there among the evergreens like a forest goblin for all Gus knew) and yanked the back double doors open with a screech. He hollered down the cab at the loafing driver, who had uttered not a single word during the ride over and who Gus was unfortunate enough to know firsthand stank of onions and motor oil. A real piece of work, that one. More rotten teeth than good, more zits on his face than clear flesh. Gus would suspect the stringy-haired creep had been helping himself to five-finger discounts of Pop C, but he was too much of a fat ass to be on uppers; the van rose almost a foot now as he oozed out from behind the wheel.

  Not to mention, that shit would never fly. Even think about stealing from the Boss, and you were as good as dead.

  The two flunkies went about unloading the cargo with a series of grunts and profanities, their incoordination jarring the van to and fro. Gus nearly broke out in crazy giggles as he thought of those bumper stickers he used to see plastered all over shaggin’ wagons way back when he still had a full head of hair and was too young and stupid to concern himself with trifling matters like the long-term effects of smoking cigarettes. If this van’s a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’!

  He always did that, lost it at the worst moments. Times like when he was scared out of his ever-loving mind. He swallowed hard, not particularly relishing the notion of getting himself killed—and he had no doubt that he would be killed if he took it upon himself to suddenly crack up in present company.

  The cargo was a lumpy mass of duct-taped shower curtain. It was transparent plastic but decorated with a cartoony theme that would be best described as ocean disco: sparkly seahorses, eyelashes comically long; octopuses swinging platform-heeled tentacles; goldfish la-la-laahing into microphones. A dead yellow eye winked out between two contorted starfish that were meant to be dancing. Gus couldn’t bring himself to look away. What he could manage was a gnash of teeth to the inside of his cheek. The tang of copper flooded his taste buds, and he commanded himself to please, oh dear God, not scream.

  Because to scream would be worse than laughing.

  The two men set the mass down at the edge of the crater with an oof, both wiping their hands on the fronts of their jeans straightaway, as if they were disgusted at h
aving to touch the thing. Gus wished he could wipe his brain clean down the front of his coveralls, since he was disgusted, too, with everything he had and was about to witness—disgusted with himself for even being there. But it wasn’t as if he had a choice in the matter, now did he? He was hardly in any position to make demands. Or refuse any.

  Kelly produced a buck knife from a sheath at his hip and went to work slicing apart the cheap plastic. It didn’t take long, and might have even taken much longer if his greasy sidekick had offered a hand. Which, of course, he hadn’t.

  He couldn’t have been more than nineteen, the dead Native boy who gaped up at them with an erupted volcano for a face, mouth frozen in a coagulated shriek of gore. He was naked, scarred all over, and muscular in a cage fighter sort of way, with Fuck da Haters inked in wobbly cursive across his chest. He was, Gus saw, missing both his kneecaps.

  And his tongue.

  Probably some kid from down on the rez. Gus had heard that older boys were being recruited—older open to interpretation much the same way recruited was, but word on the street was that the ripe picking age was sixteen—despite the futile efforts a few of the braver elders were making to keep young tribal members from turning to a life of crime. It was all about the money, honey, and in Clancy, with a population hovering just below six thousand, legitimate, decent-paying jobs were few and far between. The boys worked as Pop C manufacturers, mainly, cheap chemicals destroying lungs before they’d even had the chance to finish developing. Sometimes they worked as dealers, like this kid probably had, spreading addiction across neighboring reservations like cancer.

  Gus could sense the Boss’s gaze smothering him, squeezing him like a vise, assessing his behavior with a mistrustful eye. Had someone in town said that he’d been flapping his gums? Because he damn well hadn’t. He knew what happened to those who ran their mouths about the operation; he only had to look at the brutalized kid in the mud if he needed a reminder. He also knew what happened to the ones they loved—sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, children—which was the scariest prospect of all.

  Aware that he was being watched, he studied the kid with blandness that took great effort to feign. At least this poor bastard was dead, which wasn’t always the case. Losing a tongue and kneecaps was something Gus never wanted to experience in this lifetime or the next, but he imagined being trapped alive beneath a two-ton tree trunk, waiting days for death to come, would be the worst punishment of all. A man would lose his mind, praying for the bliss of suffocation.

  Grunting, he pulled the cord. The Eversharp sputtered defiantly in a plume of unhealthy gray smoke and then growled to life—the thing was almost as old as he was, and it would probably outlive him by a hundred years. He nodded at the stinky driver.

  Mr. Personality stepped forward, planted his work boot firmly on the dead kid’s hip, and kicked him into the hole. Gus swept an arm out, indicating that everyone should take a few steps back. He then cut the tree about six feet up from the roots. Its stump snapped back down over the hole, just as he’d said it would, sealing the boy forever in a forest tomb.

  The Boss nodded in approval and then silently walked off into the trees.

  Slowly, Gus let out his breath. He felt bad for the kid—sure he did. But, still, he thought: Better him than me.

  CHAPTER 1

  Had Eric Evans still been at Warrenton, the large private university he’d been employed at back in Philadelphia once upon a time, he would have been thrilled to see that the enrollment numbers had spiked into the triple digits for his Introduction to Geology course for the upcoming semester. But, for his latest teaching gig at Perrick Community, a tiny Northern California college with a student body barely reaching one thousand, it was a different story.

  The number, in fact, prompted a jerky double take at the computer screen, resulting in a few slops of coffee launched from his GEOLOGY TEACHERS ROCK mug onto the desk. He mopped it up with a curse and the paper towel he’d been using as a makeshift plate for the towering stack of Girl Scout cookies he’d just inhaled. He deposited the soppy mess into the wastebasket, sat back in his creaky desk chair, and stroked the stubble on his chin he’d been too lazy to shave during the past week despite Susan’s protests that it was starting to feel like sandpaper when they kissed.

  Eric’s first thoughts were of the faculty at the college, who’d been far more gracious than one would expect them to be in their treatment of him following the traumatic events at Death Farm, where he’d nearly met his demise at the hands of a serial killer. Most had offered commiserations when the press began showing up on campus and chasing him with video equipment and microphones, screaming questions as he strode, and on some days ran, across the quad to do the job he’d been paid to do. How they’d learned of his involvement in the infamous case remained a mystery, since he and everyone else involved had remained tight lipped about the situation.

  As the harassment continued and later expanded to other faculty and his students, the commiserations were replaced with put-out questioning—When will it stop, do you think?—as if he’d personally invited reporters to be there. Eventually, the vultures, with fresher tragedies to exploit, stopped circling, and his colleagues began to warm to him once more. But now, lo and behold, here he was testing their patience again by poaching their potential students, albeit unintentionally—because no way that many individuals had awakened on enrollment morning with a sudden and urgent need to study geology.

  Really, it shouldn’t come as a surprise, he thought sourly. With today’s youth being as celebrity obsessed as they were, anyone with a modicum of fame was thought to be worthy of attention, even a pseudocelebrity like a college professor purported by the press to have psychic abilities. Eric snorted at the notion, closed out the enrollment screen, and returned to the mystery novel he’d started to pen at his therapist’s behest.

  So far, the only “mystery” was why he’d thought it would be a good idea to begin with. He was only three thousand words in, which may sound impressive to a layman but was actually minuscule considering that an average commercial mystery novel comes in at about seventy to ninety thousand words, give or take. At the rate he was going, he’d have it finished sometime around his fiftieth birthday. Having a creative outlet was supposed to relax him, but so far it was having the opposite effect.

  Eric had concluded that seeing a therapist for treatment might not be a bad idea once he could no longer count on the digits of both hands and feet the number of wakeful nights he’d suffered since he’d been held prisoner, never mind the brutal nightmares that came once he did manage to sleep. Then there was the unrelenting anxiety and his latest fixation: three little seconds. Not thoughts of the ghostly dead boy who’d haunted him day and night, and not of the insects that had crawled all over his flesh down in the darkness—but of the idea that, had police arrived only three seconds later, he would be dead.

  He obsessed over all the activities he was unable to do in less than three seconds on any given day: Pouring a cup of coffee, four seconds. Dead. Tying his tennis shoes, six seconds. Dead. Buttoning his shirt, nine seconds. Dead. Peeling an orange, unlocking his office door, running a comb through his hair . . . dead. Dead. Dead.

  Susan, who’d been staying over so much lately that she was practically a resident at Casa de Evans, had no idea about the three-second thing. He had no intention of letting her find out. His schizophrenia was already scary enough for her to deal with, he imagined, and she had plenty of trauma on her own plate—though she always swore that she was fine, just fine, whenever he asked.

  He was about halfway to the kitchen to grab what few cookies were left in the box when his phone blurted to life on his desk. “What’s up, Prof?” It was Jake.

  “Mr. Bergman, haven’t heard from you in a while. I almost thought you’d forgotten about your dear old professor now that I no longer have grades to lord over you,” Eric teased.

  “Sorry,” Jake said, but not flippantly. “The band’s been practicing a ton—we’
ve even gotten a few new songs written.”

  “You’ve got to strike while the iron’s hot.”

  “Exactly. We’ve also booked a couple shows up north, which is kind of why I’m calling.”

  “Do tell.”

  “First, how are you? Bonnie says that I can sometimes be a little self-centered, so now I’m making a point of asking about others first before I start yammering about myself. I’m not self-centered, am I? I don’t think I am,” Jake said. “That last part was a joke, me asking about being self-centered. See what I did there?”

  Eric chuckled. Bonnie was the girl Jake had been seeing for the past month or so. She had flaming red hair and stood a good foot and a half taller than the dwarf violinist, but he thought the two made a cute couple. Maybe not a forever couple, but cute enough for the time being. “Must be the musician in you, accustomed to the spotlight,” he said, and Jake made a guilty oops sound. “How are things with Bonnie, anyway?”

  “Eh.” Now Jake was being flippant. “We’ll see how it goes, but if I were you, I wouldn’t go investing in any wedding china for us. Just sayin’.”

  “Noted. And, since you asked . . . I’m fine-ish.”

  “Reporters showing up at your house again?” Jake guessed.

  “Thankfully, no, but I’ve got a ton of students enrolled in my class next semester. Funny, since before all this hoopla, I had to practically beg students not to drop the class.”

  “Can’t say I didn’t see that one coming.”

  “I don’t know why I didn’t, though, not after the way I was stalked on campus.”

  “Some psychic you are.”

  “Good one. So, what’s this about your shows?”

  “Oh,” Jake said, as if he’d forgotten why he’d called. “We’ve booked a show in Clancy!”

  Outside, a plane flew by overhead, sounding close enough to shave a few shingles off Eric’s roof. Surely there was some kind of law against that. California, he’d found, had laws against many things that might seem arbitrary in other states; a person could find themselves on the receiving end of a hefty fine if they didn’t watch what time of day they watered their lawn, for example. There was also a head-scratching amount of Proposition 65 cancer warnings he couldn’t seem to escape no matter where he went: This coffee / paint / salad bowl / tennis ball (take your pick here of almost anything at all) contains chemicals which are known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Californians, it seemed, were especially susceptible to cancer.