Page 17 of In the Bones
Before him, the woman writhed like she felt trapped.
“Jenny,” Tim pressed, “who is she? Who did we find down there?”
Jenny Smith sucked in a breath and went rigid. Tim thought for a moment that something had obstructed her airway; beneath the tousled curls, Jenny’s skin was so red it looked sunburned, a shiny crimson mask. She emitted a sound between a growl and a moan and threw back her head as though she’d taken a kick to the jaw. The tendons in her neck bulged like boat lines. “I can’t,” she gasped. “Can’t be … I have to get out of here.”
Tim and Sol traded an urgent look. “Hey there,” said Sol, leaning forward. “Slow down. You OK?”
“Can’t … breathe.” Her entire body had started to shake.
“It’s a panic attack.” Tim had never experienced one himself, but Shana had. He’d seen it happen a couple of years ago, when she learned the local paper had published a caustic op-ed that called her competence into question. In an intimate moment, Shana had told Tim what that had been like. How her heart had felt like a water balloon pinned beneath a concrete slab. She’d been terrified, her body betraying her in ways that felt fatal. Tim didn’t wish that on the young woman before him, no matter what she’d done.
Their best shot at calming Jenny down was to get her outside. If the skeleton in the house was the source of her anxiety, they needed to change environments. Put some distance between her and the thing that triggered the attack.
“Let’s get her some air,” Tim said, and together he and Solomon ushered the woman out the front door.
The front yard smelled leafy and clean. A light breeze skatedover Tim’s skin, but Jenny was still quaking, her face soaked with sweat and tears. Tensing against the cuffs that held her hands behind her back, she thrashed like she was caught in a net. More than once the shifting pebbles on Mikko Helle’s driveway, marred by deep ruts from the police cars, caused her to stumble even as Tim provided support.
“Breathe,” he told her. “You’re OK. You’re good.” But Jenny had doubled over. All she could manage now was desperate wheezing and the occasional strangled wail.
From the corner of his eye, Tim caught sight of a neighbor at the tree line. The man was holding up his iPhone, the device trained on the scene.
“Get the hell out of here!” he shouted, sending the man scurrying back to his own property.
It was because of the man with the phone that Tim didn’t notice Solomon had shifted position and taken ahold of her hands.
Not until he heard the telltale metallic click.
Time slowed, then stopped as Jenny Smith flung out her arms, knocking both investigators into a stagger. The wheezing hadn’t stopped, yet somehow she was running, lurching wildly toward the copse of trees that separated Mikko’s property from the one next door.
“Stop!” Tim yelled, sprinting after her, tasting bile and feeling his chest go red-hot. He thought he might be able to hear her ragged breathing if he paused to listen, but that would put even more distance between them.
It took less than a minute for Tim to break through the tight knot of trees, but still he couldn’t see her. Tripping into the open road next to the water, he scanned left and right. No cars to be seen. No boats nearby, either. The road disappeared around the bend toward the lighthouse, and in front of him there was only sun-splashed water. Where the hell had she gone? Was it possible Jenny had doubled back and taken a route through the eastern neighbor’s yard, in the direction of the village? Had she kept running west? Around the corner, Tim knew, there was a smattering of houses that faced Lake Ontario, but the rest of the peninsula was all fields andwoodland. And if that’s where she was headed, Tim would need an army of troopers to find her.
He couldn’t say how much time passed before he conceded defeat and dragged himself back to the residence. As he paused to catch his breath and process what had happened, Jeremy Solomon burst from the trees.
“Shit,” Sol panted, shamefaced. His face and neck were hot pink. “I’m sorry. She looked like she was about to pass out. I didn’t think she’d flee, not in a million years.”
Tim raised his hand—not now—because, as frustrated as he was, he’d just noticed a new car in the driveway. A shiny white Tesla was parked by the front door.
“The homeowner,” he said to Solomon, mopping the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his jacket. “Mikko Helle. I think he’s back.”
SIXTEEN
Mac
To Mac, Mikko’s formal living room had the clinical, well-trodden feel of a doctor’s waiting area. She suspected the cream-toned furniture and white walls were meant to be chic, a nod to the man’s Scandinavian roots, but the light wood floors were filthy, a flurry of grubby boot prints left behind by state troopers and the BCI team, and all Mac could think about was whether her sister would be the one cleaning them up.
The last half-hour had been a blur of activity, some of which Mac still knew little about. She’d emerged from the basement at the same time as Tim and gone to the back yard to call Nicole, who’d been told to wait at home until she was summoned to the barracks. For a time, the house had been quiet. She’d seen Tim and Solomon with the intruder through the sliding glass doors, which were grimy as well. As she talked and paced the yard, the silence was punched through with shouts, a chorus of male voices coming from the front of the residence. She checked the great room, but it had emptied out, and when the investigators finally returned, they looked like they’d just run a half-marathon.
“We lost the phrogger,” Tim had said angrily, his crystalline eyes ablaze. “I put in a call to zone headquarters.”
The situation, Mac knew, was about to get complicated. It would be the highest-ranking zone sergeant who’d coordinate the effort to capture the subject. Road patrols, the sheriff’s office, and the US Border Patrol would all respond to the area. If the subject wasn’t found quickly, the BCI would work the intelligence aspect—not an easy task, considering they didn’t know the woman’s real name. If they came up empty, the media would be contacted to assist, and the whole county wouldknow they’d lost a prisoner. An administrative investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau was likely. Not a great situation in an election year, but here they were.
In the study, Shana was talking to the homeowner’s girlfriend. As for Mac, she was passing the time before the shit hit the fan by listening to Tim interview Mikko Helle.
“But how did this happen?” the man asked Tim. His T-shirt clung to the contours of his chest, and Mac swore she caught him admiring his own tattooed bicep when he ran a hand through his peroxided hair. “I only moved in here yesterday. How can there be a dead body in my basement?”
At first, when Mikko had returned to find his driveway parked full of police cars, he’d reacted as if the account about the squatter and the skeleton was a joke. Like local law enforcement had nothing better to do than prank the resident NHL star. He’d been sitting with his ankle crossed over the opposite knee, but Mikko’s attempt at feigning relaxation was belied by the nervous edge to his voice. His harrowing new reality seemed to be sinking in.
