Bonegrinder Read Free Page B

left the body,” he said, not knowing himself if he was trying to humor old Bonifield. “…Make things easier.”
    “He were still alive when we found him, I told you, screamin’ on about what come up outa the lake an’ attacked him. When he quit screamin’ an’ closed his eyes we didn’t know if he be dead or not, so we figured we oughta bring him on in to Doc Amis.”
    “Uh-hm. If he’s as tore up as you say and wasn’t dead at the lake,” Wintone said, “he’s bound to be now after the ride over rough road in Joe James’s pickup truck. You shoulda sent somebody in to get the doc.”
    What passed over old Bonifield’s lined face unsettled Wintone. A kind of fear and shame that suggested that maybe none of the men had had the courage to stay at the scene of whatever had or hadn’t happened to the boy. And Wintone knew that none of them were cowards. Old Bonifield’s wild story, in those few seconds, gained a certain chilling credibility.
    Brakes squealed outside and a tinny-sounding door slammed. Through the slanted blinds Wintone saw the dented black roof of Joe James’s rusty pickup truck. Car doors slammed. Old Bonifield had already shuffled his stooped, whipcord figure out the door, leaving it hanging open for Wintone like an unfriendly invitation.
    As he stepped outside, the heat hit Wintone like a soft hammer that continued to press. He was reminded again that he was forty-one and tilting to overweight.
    “See here now, Sheriff!”
    Bonifield was leaning over the bed of the old pickup and pointing, a look of triumph on his creased and stubbled face, a glint of wildness in his surprisingly alert blue eyes.
    Joe James, a heavyset man with a red face and no eyebrows, stepped aside for Wintone to move in close. “He were dead when we hoisted him into the truck, Sheriff,” James said with a sad tension. “Figured it best to stop here first.”
    “Figured right,” Wintone said, staring at what was in the bed of the pickup. Wintone had seen a lot. He looked away. Bonifield had said the boy’s eyes were closed. The eyes of the dead thing in the pickup bed were open. Maybe the jarring ride had done that.
    “Boy about twelve,” Sonny Tibbet said. He had been in the truck cab with Joe James and was with him when the screams had led the men to discover the boy on the bank of Big Water Lake. “Wonder what did that to him, did all that an’ took his leg near off? …”
    “Somethin’ bad,” Bonifield said, “real bad….”
    “Animal?” Joe James ventured.
    Bonifield spat. “Animal, hell! Boy said it come up outa the lake at him, said that ’fore he died.”
    The sun seemed to be getting hotter by the second, and already an unpleasant odor was rising from the bed of the truck.
    “Take the remains on to Doc Amis, Joe,” Wintone said. “Take Bonifield, too. Sonny, come on into the office. Cool in there.”
    Sonny Tibbet was a shade over Wintone’s six foot two, even a shade huskier, but not as hard a man. He owned the sawmill his dad had owned before him, and he had Wintone’s respect. They went back a way together, back to when they were in school.
    Sonny squinted and yanked at a lock of curly black hair. Old habit. “Is cool in here,” he said, settling down into the hickory chair opposite Wintone’s desk.
    Wintone sat and rolled a ball-point pen back and forth between his thumb and little finger over the scarred mahogany desk top, trying not to think of what he’d seen in the pickup bed. He leaned back in his creaking wood chair and got right to official business. Cold facts were best for burying nightmare images. “What all happened down at the lake, Sonny?”
    “We was goin’ down to inspect our trout lines we put out last night. Old Bonifield had some lines out, too, an’ me an’ Joe James met him on the path to Lynn Cove.” Sonny bunched his body in a way Wintone didn’t like. “That’s when we heard the screamin’, an’ another sound, like splashin’ an’ a kind of