Bones Never Lie (Temperance Brennan, #17)(50)

The car’s interior smelled of wet leather and wool. Stale cigarette smoke.

“Look for the Passumpsic Cemetery.”

The first words Ryan had spoken in almost two hours. I was good with it. After he’d relayed what he knew, which was virtually nothing, we’d both burrowed deep into our own thoughts.

Occasionally, I’d check my iPhone. An email with an attachment arrived from Slidell just past noon. I downloaded and enlarged the image.

You’ve seen pictures of Charles Manson. No matter what his age is, his eyes send a frigid wind knifing straight through your soul. His hair may be shaggy or shaved, his cheeks full or gaunt. You feel like you’re gazing straight into the heart of evil.

That’s how it was with Pomerleau. She was in her teens when the sole existing photo was taken. Now she would be thirty-nine.

The computer had softened the jawline, drooped the lids, and broadened the lips and facial contours, transforming the child face into that of a woman. Still the eyes looked stony cold, reptilian, and unfeeling.

As they had on our last encounter. When she’d doused me with accelerant, then coolly lit a match.

I did as Ryan asked. We’d just passed through St. Johnsbury, were now seeing mostly farm fields, trees, a few clusters of homes.

“There.” I pointed to the cemetery. It was old, with headstones and pillars, rather than ground-level plaques for the convenience of mowers. A perfect Poe tableau in the wintry gloom.

Maybe a quarter mile more, then Ryan slowed, signaled, and made a left from Highway 5 onto Bridge Street. We passed a church, a general store and post office combo, a gray building with an old red auto seat on the porch and a red plastic kayak affixed to the top of the front overhang. Passumpsic was written in white on the kayak’s side. A wooden sign above the door identified the Passumpsic River Outfitter, LLC.

Just beyond the outfitter was a bridge, a narrow latticework of metal girders and wooden beams painted green. Not the covered New Englander I’d envisioned. The Passumpsic River looked dark and menacing as we crossed over. On one bank, an ancient brick power station.

Soon the road’s name changed to Hale. Forest took over on both sides. Lofty pine, less lofty spruce. Hardwoods, their branches nude, their bark black and sparkly wet.

Then there were no homes, no barns. Just the Hundred Acre Wood.

Seven minutes of silence, I kept checking my watch. Then Ryan made a right beside a battered post that at one time may have held a mailbox. A sign nailed to a tree said ORNE in letters sun-bleached to the color of old denim. Below the truncated name, an equally faded fleur-de-lis.

The track was little more than an absence of trees and two ruts undecided between mud and ice. As the Jeep bounced and swayed, I braced myself with palms to the dash. My fillings were loosening when Ryan finally braked to a stop.

Across a clearing, maybe ten yards distant, sat a small frame house that had seen better days. Single-story, once probably yellow with white trim. But, as with the mailbox, the paint was long gone.

The front door, accessed by one concrete step, was propped open with a rock. The windows visible on the front and right were boarded on the inside with plywood. To the left, up a slight rise and nestled under a stand of tall pines, stood three sheds, one large, two small. Dirt paths connected the trio to one another and to the house.

Parked in front of the house was a Hardwick PD cruiser. I assumed it belonged to Umpie Rodas. Beside the cruiser was a crime scene truck. Beside the truck was a black van with double doors in back. My gut told me the vehicle had ties to a morgue.

“Tabernac!”

I swiveled toward Ryan, ready to be livid for what he’d held back. He looked as surprised as I felt.

“What’s the deal?” I asked.

“Damned if I know.”

“Rodas didn’t tell you?”

“He just said they’d found something we needed to see. Sounded distracted.”

“No doubt. He was busy making a whole lot of calls.”

I raised the hood of my parka to cover my head. Pulled on gloves. Got out and started toward the house. The wind was gusting hard, blasting sleet at my face like fiery little pellets. My mind was racing, running possibilities. Senseless. I’d know in seconds. Behind me, Ryan’s boots made swishing sounds in the slippery leaves and grass. Mimicking my own.

A uniformed cop stood inside the front door, thumbs hooked in a belt half hidden by a substantial roll of fat. His hat and jacket bore insignia patches saying Hardwick PD.

The cop straightened upon seeing us.

“Dr. Temperance Brennan.” I flashed my LSJML security card as Ryan badged him. “Rodas requested our presence.”

The guy barely glanced at our IDs. From another room, I heard the sound of drawers opening and closing. “He’s in the big shed out back.”

“Thanks.”

“Tight security,” Ryan said when we’d rounded the corner of the house.

“It’s rural Vermont.”

We followed the path up the hill. Added ours to dozens of boot prints in the half-frozen muck.

The shack was made of unpainted boards barely maintaining contact. The roof was rusted tin, louvered at the top, curling free of the nails securing it at the bottom.

The shed’s two barnlike doors were thrown wide, and its interior was visible in bright detail. The scene looked surreal, like a movie set lit by an overzealous gaffer. I assumed portable lights had been brought in and set up.