The Bone Artists Page 5

  And the alcohol on his breath . . . Oliver glanced toward the hall leading back toward the elevators, convinced the police would be showing up any second to question Micah.

  The story came together slowly. They were driving back to Diane’s house, maybe a little faster than normal. They had broken curfew, and Micah was worried about upsetting her family. Diane didn’t care, she was having a good time. They were crossing the Causeway into the city and the driver came out of nowhere, gaining on him and then swerving, slamming into the driver’s side door before Micah could react. The car veered and hit the right-side safety rail. They skidded and skidded but didn’t go over into the water. A miracle, that. By the time the car stopped, Micah could hardly move. Airbag in his face. Car horns. Rubberneckers slowing down to see what had happened. To help. He was too dazed to get the car’s license plate. To even remember a color.

  And the worst part was, Diane was just silent. She had screamed, once, on impact, and then nothing.

  At that, Sabrina dropped to the floor. Oliver knew what she was thinking because he was thinking it, too. He scooped her into his arms, holding her, letting her hot, constant tears wet the shoulder of his T-shirt. The linoleum bit into his tailbone but he let it go, just holding. Just sitting.

  Then Sabrina’s family began to arrive and one by one they started to guide her away, question her, and one by one they began to look at Micah like he was a cockroach. Like it was all his fault.

  Oliver stood next to his father and next to Micah, none of them speaking. Sometimes Nick would pipe up to fill the air or offer to grab everyone coffee. It felt like nobody was speaking English, like nobody was making sense. Where did you put your feet when the Earth wouldn’t stop spinning? What did you say when a girl was dying down the hall?

  A nurse had come into the waiting room. Sabrina and her family swarmed, understandably, and Oliver went to join them, pausing when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He’d forgotten all about it. He was so dazed he didn’t even question who would be calling at that hour, and he didn’t bother to study the display before accepting the text and staring down at it.

  He couldn’t hear what the nurse was saying. He didn’t want to, didn’t need to.

  “My condolences,” it read, “—Briony.”

  Down the hall, the elevator doors dinged. It took Oliver a moment to focus his eyes, dazed. Just like he thought—the officers were here, two of them, striding toward their huddled group, eyes grimly determined and fixed on Micah.

  Sleep was a distant fantasy. Oliver couldn’t imagine dropping into bed anyway, simultaneously wired and exhausted. There was no turning his brain off, not now, not when he was spending the rest of this miserable night at a police station.

  He tore himself away from Sabrina and her family to ride with his dad over to the police station. The front of the building loomed high and pointed, the red brick facade reminding Oliver of an old schoolhouse. Traffic in and out at that hour was brisk, but the civilians being hauled in and out looked to be in varying states of drunkenness, some being taken out of the drunk tank, others going in.

  Micah among them.

  No, it was worse than that. He wasn’t falling over himself or slurring his words, but he was just tipsy or tired enough to belong nowhere near a moving vehicle. And he had been in one and Diane had been with him. Idiot.

  “You said it,” Oliver’s father said.

  He had said that last thing aloud then.

  Oliver shook his head, slumped over, shuffling into the station with his dad, knowing Micah was somewhere inside. “Maybe I should have stayed at the hospital.”

  “Sabrina has family, Micah doesn’t.”

  “Yeah, even so . . . I don’t know if he deserves us right now.”

  “Your friends don’t stop being your friends the second they screw up.”

  Oliver nodded. “Sure. He said it was someone else, someone trying to run them off the road.” He thought of the text from Briony and shivered. Inside, the police station was freezing cold, the noisy AC unit jacked up to combat the humidity outside. “But I guess he would say that, given . . . Idiot.”

  “Ollie—”

  “No, Dad, this isn’t the first time he’s been a screw-up. Trust me on that one.”

  A rumpled, coffee-stained officer directed them to the waiting area. He shrugged in response to their questions about Micah. No, he couldn’t say when he would be out. No, they couldn’t see him. Yes, a lawyer had been contacted for him. Yes, they were free to wait.

  Oliver paced, his dad watching him march back and forth under the harsh lights.

  “You have every right to be mad, what he did—”

  “It’s not just this. It’s . . .” The lying, the grave robbing, and now this. “Diane is dead, Dad.”

  “I know.”

  “Because of him.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “And he might have been drunk. Jesus!” Oliver put the might in there for Micah’s sake. Maybe they had been drinking earlier in the night and he’d spilled on himself. There could have been a bottle in the car that shattered in the wreck. Any number of possibilities could be true, but the knot in Oliver’s stomach told him none of them really were. He stopped pacing and turned to look at his father, chewing the inside of his cheek. “If someone is dead weight, how long do you hold on? What if they’re dragging you down with them?”

  Muffled voices down the hall cut short his father’s response. Oliver twisted around, jogging past the water cooler and coffee dispenser to the reception desk. He spotted Micah’s scruffy, dark head over the shoulder of a short, compact man in a trim suit. It was after five in the morning—how did anyone look that presentable at that hour?

  Escorted by officers, Micah was smiling, chatting and chuckling with the guy in a suit, whose briefcase and smart spectacles broadcast lawyer loud and clear. Not just lawyer, but pricy lawyer. Oliver couldn’t imagine where Micah had found the scratch to pay the retainer on someone like this.

  “Ollie!” Micah perked up the second he saw him, his brows tenting over his glasses. “You didn’t have to come here. I mean, I’m glad you did. It’s good to have someone here.”

  The lawyer snorted softly at that. The officers pulled away, leaving them in the waiting room while Oliver’s father hovered in the background.

  “I thought you were smoked,” Oliver said, relieved despite his misgivings. “But I knew you weren’t drunk. That’s not you. Sabrina’s going to—I mean she’s still pissed, yeah, but this wasn’t your fault.”

  Micah pursed his lips, glancing at his sneakers. “Look, there’s no pretty way to put this, man, but—”

  “But my client is smart enough not to comment further,” the lawyer said tartly, narrowing his eyes at Micah. “Just like we discussed.”

  “Right. Just like we discussed.” Micah shrugged as if to say, what can you do? and flashed Oliver a sheepish grin, scratching his whiskery chin. “You understand.”

  Understand? Understand?

  Oliver flinched, opening and closing his mouth until the right words, or some of them, came to mind. “Hang on, are you saying you were drunk and you got in that car with Diane?”

  “He’s not saying anything,” the lawyer replied, taking Micah in hand and jerking him toward the desk. “You need to be processed out, Micah, and this conversation is over.”

  “Micah—”

  “It’s going to turn out all right,” Micah said, giving another sheepish smile, one that ended swiftly. The lawyer manhandled him away, but Micah glanced over his shoulder, watching Oliver as he slid away. “Tell Sabrina I’m sorry, okay? Tell her I’ll . . . tell her I’ll make it up to her somehow.”

  Freedom!

  It was the first text from Micah in months. Understandable, given that he had been locked up in juvenile detention for the whole of the summer. Oliver stared at his phone, numb, tapping his foot under the table. The lunch rush had come and gone at the sandwich shop, the din of voices, laughter, and chewing rising and
then falling all while Oliver waited on his dad. He hadn’t expected the text from Micah, but then none of his friend’s time in juvie made much sense to him.

  There’d been no trial. Micah had pled guilty and gone away, but Oliver could swear he ought to be serving a longer sentence. First offense. Good conduct. He could imagine the answers Micah would give before even asking the questions.

  Staying with Grams in Shreveport. Catch up soon?

  Oliver didn’t respond. He didn’t know how. Whatever fond memories existed of Micah’s grandmother and her insanely delicious gumbo were now tainted. Sabrina was in therapy twice weekly, and Oliver had begun to wonder if maybe he should be going with her.

  He flicked Micah’s message away, checking instead for word from his father. His knee bounced faster as he scanned the deli, the counter, the chairs, the back entrance, and then the sidewalk outside. An hour late was nothing for his dad, but he had only texted once to mention the delay.

  “I get it,” Oliver muttered, fussing with his hair and running his tongue nervously over the scar on his lip. “Punishment. Real mature, dad.”

  His father wasn’t at all fond of the idea of Oliver leaving for UT Austin, and that was just one more tally in the SUCK column for the summer. As soon as Oliver had broken the news, his dad had grown distant, cutting back Oliver’s hours at the store more and more, either to prepare for the incoming separation or to make things harder on Ollie. Oliver had gotten the hint, picking up a few jobs on the side fixing friends’ cars, clinging desperately and guiltily to the cash he had made from helping Briony.

  Sometimes the urge to pick up the phone and text her, asking for work, broke his will to never, ever walk the seedy path again. But each time he almost crumbled, he remembered that text after the car wreck.

  Briony was involved somehow. How else would she have known so soon? Micah might have been drunk and stupid, but Oliver absolutely believed that someone else was involved.

  The waitress took another slow pass by his table, rolling her eyes when Oliver said he was still fine with ice water. He had long ago finished the brownie he’d bought to nibble on while he waited for his dad. But it was growing obvious that his father was a no-show. One last lunch together in August before school started, was that so much to ask?

  It was. It definitely was when you were leaving the family business—and New Orleans—behind.

  His phone jumped in his hands, and Oliver clasped it harder, fumbling before bringing it to his ear, his dad’s smiling face appearing on the display as the ring chimed.

  “You standing me up?” Oliver laughed, trying to lighten the very real accusation. “Not cool, man.”

  Static spiked on the other end and Oliver jerked his head away. The crackling died down, an incoherent voice rumbling through the static.

  “Your reception blows. Are you in the car or going under a bridge or something?”

  “. . .”

  “Dad? Hello? Call me back in a sec, see if that helps—”

  “. . . the bridge . . .”

  His voice was just a scrape, just a whisper. Oliver could hear the pain in it. “Dad? Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “I saw them. . . .” A wheezing breath. “I saw them follow me.”

  The line went dead after a few seconds of breathing and then silence. Oliver shoved the table away from him and ignored the looks he got, dashing for the door, trying his dad’s number again. No answer. He tried again, swearing, tumbling out of the shop and into the thick, wet humidity of August. Clouds sat low and dark over the city, clustered, the utter stillness of the air foretelling the rain to come.

  A siren began in the distance, somewhere to Oliver’s left as he tried his dad’s line again. This time someone picked up and then immediately ended the call. The siren screamed louder as it neared, cars gradually slowing and parting as one, then two, then three police cruisers sped by. Oliver sprinted to his car, palms slick with icy sweat as he struggled to back out and navigate the street choked with idling cars.

  He leaned on the horn, setting his jaw, heedless of the windows rolling down so drivers could scream at him as he weaved recklessly ahead. The bridge. If his dad was returning from an antiques delivery out of the city then Oliver could bet which route he would take on the return trip. The speeding police cars carved a path through traffic, and Oliver followed as closely as he could, flying through stilled four-way stops and traffic lights. There was nothing ahead of him but his father, somewhere, murmuring with that soft, pained voice.

  Their last lunch before Oliver went off to school, one cordial afternoon between father and son, was that too much to ask of the universe?

  He lost track of the minutes, driving with one hand and dialing his father repeatedly with the other, leaning hard toward the steering wheel as the threatening clouds above opened up, rain driving at the windshield. Buildings and neighborhood blocks gave way to nothingness; the unobscured, open view of the Causeway unfolded under the black clouds. He was close.

  The bridge. I saw them follow me.

  Oliver drove as far as he could, stopped within half a mile of turning onto the Causeway. A blockade went up as he watched, disobeying the police officer who stood in the downpour, directing with his hands for cars to turn around. Another set of police cars began the process of shutting down the traffic trying to flow toward the Causeway, preventing anyone from even approaching that lane of the bridge.

  His breath had caught long before he turned off the ignition. Beyond the blockade he could make out the remains of a shitty old white pickup truck. It had been pancaked into the side of the Causeway, one tire teetering precariously over the edge, a gentle nudge from dropping into the lake.

  Oliver parked wherever, leaving the door to his car open as he drifted out of it, wiping the rain from his eyes only as a formality, only because he needed to see. Flares cracked to life on the road, neon red fires kindling on the pavement, doing nothing to cut through the raincloud darkness. The officer directing traffic didn’t see him as he approached the yellow tape. Oliver ducked under, sneakers colliding with debris and crystalline chunks of glass that sparkled, reflecting the red flare light.

  His mind tricked him into thinking it was a different white pickup truck. Of course it was. Nothing was for sure until it was for sure. Nothing could convince him it was his dad’s truck until there was absolute proof. This was a coincidence until it was a tragedy. But he still couldn’t breathe. His pulse knew what his mind refused to accept.

  “Whoa, hey kid, you have to get back in your vehicle and turn around.” An officer intercepted him, a tall, thin woman with cowlike, sympathetic eyes and yellow hair. She ducked and took a closer look at him. “Hey? Sir? Can you hear me? Did you hear what I said?”

  “My dad,” Oliver murmured, staring past her. “That’s . . . that’s my dad’s truck.”

  “What? Are you sure about that?” She glanced around, at the truck and then at the ambulance and fire truck parked horizontally across the lane. “I need to see some ID, kid.”

  Oliver pulled his wallet out of his jeans and handed her the whole thing. He handed her his keys. He didn’t trust his hands to hold anything anyway. Her grip on him loosened and Oliver continued forward, as if he had no control over his own momentum, as if the twisted-up truck had caught him in a tractor beam. Something caught on his shoe and stuck, gluey. Oliver wiggled his leg but it wouldn’t come off. He stopped, watching as three drenched firemen cut away and wrenched off the truck’s folded-up door.

  What was it they called that thing? The Jaws of Life?

  A pale, limp hand slid into view, curled up on what was left of the passenger’s side seat. The flares crackled. The sirens all around him flickered and flickered, dying that single hand blue and then red. The officer behind him barked into her radio, asking for help, more help, more assistance, for Christ’s sake the guy’s kid had shown up, could she get some damn help already?

  Someone grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back. That same officer.


  “It’s my dad,” Oliver said, tugging against her. “It’s my dad!” He panicked, but she was strong, holding him, and soon two more officers jogged over to help her, restraining him as the EMTs hurried in after the firemen, a stretcher folded out and waiting behind them.

  He didn’t know what he was screaming anymore, just that he was screaming. He didn’t know what he was seeing, only that his father was being taken away in pieces.

  They carried him away. Forced him away. Wet through and freezing, Oliver couldn’t feel any of it. His throat felt raw, and when they sat him down in the back of an open ambulance, dry, brown blanket draped over his shoulders, he couldn’t even grasp the edges of the fabric with his trembling fingers.

  “How did you know to come here?” an officer was asking, gently. They were all perfectly nice to him now that he had stopped shrieking.

  Oliver didn’t answer. What did it matter? He couldn’t save his dad, and the reasons why seemed pointless to consider. He shifted, his sneaker scraping the pavement. That damn gluey bullshit was still stuck to his foot. Suddenly it was the only thing worthy of his attention. How dare it. How dare it annoy him right then? How dare anyone touch him or look at him or ask him anything at all?

  He bent down and blindly groped at the bottom of his shoe, tearing away the plasticky strip with a ferocious tear of his fist. He almost tossed it away, but the dark green color snagged on a memory. Unrolling the wad of torn plastic, Oliver stared down at the sticker. A bumper sticker.

  He couldn’t breathe again, and the cold and the rain and the officer touching his shoulder felt a million miles away.

  PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR ROLL STUDENT

  His phone buzzed in his pocket, the one item he hadn’t handed over to the police for safekeeping. The officer sighed and wandered away, giving up on Oliver and his dazed silence. When she was gone, Oliver retrieved his phone, realizing he should call Sabrina, call Micah, call anyone at all who could make sense of this for him.