Bob Appleton had aged since last summer, his cheeks had sunken, and he spoke slowly, as if forming words were painful. “Frankly,” he said, “I wish they’d never found those bones. Finding those bones took away hope, and I would rather have died hoping that Corinne was alive.”
Then he turned and put his arm around his wife’s shaking shoulders and led her back inside their white clapboard house with a porch and a steep peaked roof, a house that looked remarkably similar to the Stones’ old farmhouse.
Chapter Four
Lucy was still thinking about Corinne Appleton when she got to work on Wednesday morning. She couldn’t understand why the police hadn’t been able to identify her abductor. These were small towns, after all, where everybody supposedly knew everybody. It seemed incomprehensible that such a monster could go unrecognized for so long. So when Ted asked her to interview Rick Johnson, the hiker who had found Corinne’s remains, she was eager to talk to him. But when she finally got him on the phone, there was less than an hour to go before deadline. It wasn’t that he was particularly elusive. It just happened that there were thirty-one R, Rick, and Richard Johnsons in the phone book.
“Boy, you’re a hard guy to find,” she began, after identifying herself. “Have a lot of reporters been calling?”
“No. You’re the first,” he said. “I’m the last one in the book ’cause my wife’s name is Zephira.”
Lucy smiled, pleased to have a scoop. “Well, I really appreciate your talking to me. Can you tell me how you happened to find the bones?”
“Well, I’m a real nature enthusiast,” he began. “I like to hike and I’m a bit of a bird-watcher and this is the season for May warblers. I was hoping to add a few to my life list. So I wasn’t looking at the ground. I was following this old logging road that I know and looking up in the trees when I tripped on something. I looked down and saw it was a bone. Looked like a rib to me. I figured it was from a deer or maybe even a moose, but then I noticed this little bit of cloth kinda stuck on it, and then I knew it wasn’t from no deer, and when I looked around, I saw there were some more bones. I had my cell phone, o’ course, so I called the state police. It took a while for ’em to find me. They had to kind of triangulate off a fire tower, Bald Mountain, and a dirt road. The road’s still in pretty good shape, and it’s been a dry spring, so it wasn’t too muddy.”
“Did you suspect it was Corinne’s bones? Is that why you called the state police?”
“Nope. I didn’t put two and two together. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure exactly what town I was in, and I didn’t want to call the wrong department. The lines get kinda blurry out there in the woods, and I was kinda distracted by a black-throated blue. I mean, I was close enough to touch it. Amazing.” He paused. “But the cops, the staties, they said it might be this Corinne who disappeared last summer.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Well, they were congratulating me and telling me what a hero I was for calling, but I didn’t see it that way. I’ve got daughters myself, and I’d sure hate for them to end up like that. I guess the crime scene guys found more, but all I saw, really, was a couple of bones. They were pretty brown. You might o’ thought they was sticks, but I’ve been in the woods enough to know what bones look like. Mostly though, this time o’ year, you see deer, the weak, old ones that didn’t make it through the winter. It was kind of a shock to see that little bit of cloth with the pink flowers. To tell the truth, I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since. I keep worrying about my girls.”
“I have daughters, too,” said Lucy. “I know what you mean.” She was typing as she spoke and apologized for keeping him waiting. “Just one more question. Where exactly did you find the bones? Was it far in the woods?”
“Nah. As it turned out, it wasn’t far at all, but I didn’t realize it, because I started in from the Gilead side. You know the town of Shiloh?”
“Sure.”
“Well, you know Main Street, and then there’s that side road by the church that runs back to the town highways department? Behind the library?”
“Yup.”
“Well, the pavement ends at the highway department, but the road continues on up into the hills there. They keep it clear ’cause o’ forest fires, you know? It’s no problem getting a car in there.”
Lucy was stunned. “So she was there, all that time, only a mile or two from home?”
“Sad, isn’t it?”
“It’s tragic,” said Lucy. “I wonder why all those search parties didn’t find her sooner?”
Rick’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I wondered that myself, but the cops said she might not have been there when everybody was searching. She might’ve been held captive somewhere, something like that, maybe for months, even.”
Lucy had heard a lot of theories about Corinne’s mysterious disappearance, but this was the worst. “I didn’t think of that. That’s horrible.”
“Yeah,” Rick replied. “That’s why I can’t sleep.”
It didn’t take Lucy long to write up the interview after she’d thanked Rick for his time and hung up, and she shipped it to Ted a minute or two before the old Regulator clock on the wall read twelve o’clock. Her work done, she headed for the IGA to do her grocery shopping, but her mind was on Corinne as she wheeled the cart around the aisles. She simply couldn’t believe—she didn’t want to believe—that the poor girl’s body had been lying there all along, only a short distance from home.
What a bitter pill for Corinne’s parents, she thought, pausing in front of a display of detergent bottles. They were on sale, a two-for-one introductory special, and Lucy debated whether she should risk trying the new brand. It was supposed to be good for the environment, but would it clean Bill’s work clothes? Why was she even wasting time like this, she wondered, unless it was to escape thinking about Corinne? She quickly loaded two of the biodegradable jugs into her cart and rounded the corner, heading for the checkout. She was just beginning to unload the cart onto the conveyer belt when she noticed Bar and Tina meeting at the newspaper rack.
Watching, she couldn’t help thinking it was really a clash of cultures, East meets West, Right meets Left, something like that. As usual, Bar’s short blond hair was stiff with hair spray, and she was wearing a pastel knit suit with a knee-length skirt and pumps. Tina was her exact opposite, with long, flowing hair, naturally streaked with gray. She was wearing loosely cut slacks and a flowing jacket that practically screamed natural fiber, topped with an oversize handcrafted necklace. The one thing they did have in common was the phony smile each woman had pasted on her face as they both reached for the last copy of the Boston Globe. Appropriately enough, Tina had the left side, and Bar the right. Neither one seemed inclined to let go.
“It’s my paper,” said Bar. “I was here first.”
“No, you weren’t. I was first,” said Tina, tossing her long hair over her shoulder. “Besides, I’m a subscriber, but the driver missed me this morning.”
“That’s not my problem,” said Bar, speaking in a low voice and enunciating clearly. “I always buy my copy here. I’m a regular customer, so it’s mine by rights.”
“That’s so typical,” fumed Tina. “You think you can have everything you want, including my table at brunch!”
“Admit it. You took that table just to spite me.”
Tina shook her head. “Can’t you let it go? I had nothing to do with it. Jasper just happened to seat us there.”
“I don’t believe it for a minute.”
“Why? Is he on your payroll or something?” Tina smiled. “If you want to know what I think, I think Jasper seated us there