Bone by Bone by Carol O'Connell Read Free Book Online Page B

around town. We’ll start here.” He led them up the steps of the Coventry Bank, a modest two-story landmark that dated back to the mill-town days. In the small lobby, a triptych of photographs hung on the wall. Ferris pointed to an image of himself standing in line to make a deposit more than twenty years ago. “This is me when I was young and beautiful.”
    A reporter said, “So you knew Joshua Hobbs personally.”
    “Oh, yes. In fact, I liked these photographs so much I bought a set of prints from the boy.”
    “What was he like?”
    “Very sensitive. An artist.” He shrugged to say, You know the type.
    The day he had purchased those custom prints, there had been no conversation. Joshua Hobbs had been edging back toward the door from the moment of his arrival. Without a word, the young photographer had handed over the pictures and held out his other hand for the check. Ferris had blinked but once, and the boy had vanished.
    A few weeks later, following a second, more permanent vanishing, Ferris had begun his comeback book, the story of a tragedy in a small town. It had opened with descriptions of townspeople, haggard and tired, marching past him in the streets, homeward bound after another fruitless day of searching the woods for a lost child.
    Outside on the street again, a reporter broke into Ferris’s reverie and pointed toward the library. “Any pictures in there?”
    “I couldn’t say. No one in Coventry ever goes to the library.” And, lest they find this fact too intriguing, he marched them down the sidewalk with a lie of something more interesting at the other end of the block. As they walked, his mind was on the abandoned manuscript in his desk drawer, and he was already planning his rebirth as a serious author.
    Ferris opened the door to a tourist-trap restaurant and the din of luncheon conversations and tin silverware. He ushered his charges inside, where more examples of Joshua Hobbs’s work were hanging on the walls above the heads of the patrons. However, Ferris was not featured in any of these pictures, and he never even glanced at them. He was looking at an interior vision of literary prizes, love-struck critics, and the naked adoration of readers waiting in line for his autograph on the book-tour circuit of his imagination.
    A reporter stood before him, asking, “Mr. Monty, did the sheriff have any suspects when the boy disappeared?”
    Here, Ferris had to pause, needing a bit of time to weigh his invitation to the birthday ball against everlasting life on the bestseller list. His unfinished manuscript contained his best writing. Twenty years ago, the book had been so promising, but it had no finish.
    Until now.
    “Mr. Monty? Any suspects that you know of?”
    With this prompt from another reporter, Ferris Monty went careening down glory road. His lost muse was found and coaching him from the ether when he said, “There was one suspect . . . Joshua’s brother. Oren Hobbs was seventeen years old at the time. You’ll have to ask the sheriff why the boy was never arrested.”
    The reporters were waiting on his next words, tensing, extending microphones toward him and all but levitating off the floor. Then one of their number asked, “Any theories about that, Mr. Monty?”
    “Oren’s father was a sitting judge in those days. I’m sure the old man’s influence had something to do with it. In any case, the boy was allowed to leave town, and he’s been gone for twenty years. But that old miscarriage of justice was rectified this morning. The sheriff took Oren into custody only minutes before you arrived at the judge’s house.”
    How gratifying to see the press corps scatter like cockroaches, reporters and cameramen scuttling off to their vehicles to hunt down the sheriff in Saulburg for their next sound bite. However, Ferris was writing this scene in his head, and it had yet to play out in real life. The reporters were still standing there, staring at him.
    “Well, what are you waiting