The Skeleton Box Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  BRYAN GRULEY

  “Bryan Gruley is a gifted writer, and in The Skeleton Box he’s turned his gifts to the secrets and lies that ultimately rip apart Starvation Lake. . . . Gruley writes elegiacally about small-town America, but his deepest love is for its newspaper.”

  —SARA PARETSKY

  “Gruley knows how to drag you kicking and screaming into a story so gripping that you’ll probably devour it in one gulp.”

  —CHICAGO TRIBUNE

  “An author who has mastered the conventions of his genre. Discriminating readers will be anxiously awaiting the third book in this promising series.”

  —ASSOCIATED PRESS

  “A major talent.”

  —HARLAN COBEN

  “Bryan Gruley is off to a phenomenal start!”

  —MICHAEL CONNELLY

  “Bryan Gruley: Remember the name. You should be hearing it often in the future.”

  —SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

  Does Gus Carpenter really want to know what’s inside the skeleton box? In Anthony– and Barry award–winning author Bryan Gruley’s gripping new novel, Gus must decide if the truth is better off dead and buried.

  Mysterious break-ins are plaguing the small town of Starvation Lake. While elderly residents enjoy their weekly bingo night at St. Valentine’s Catholic Church, someone is slipping into their homes to rifle through financial and personal files. Oddly, the intruder takes nothing—yet the “Bingo Night Burglaries” leave the entire town uneasy.

  Worry turns into panic when a break-in escalates to murder. Suddenly, Gus Carpenter, editor of the Pine County Pilot, is forced to investigate the most difficult story of his life. Not only is the victim his ex-girlfriend Darlene’s mother, but her body was found in the home of Bea Carpenter—Gus’s own mother. Suffering from worsening dementia and under the influence of sleeping pills, Bea remembers little of the break-in.

  With the help of Luke Whistler, a former Detroit Free Press reporter who came north looking for slower days and some old-fashioned newspaper work, Gus sets out to uncover the truth behind the murder. But when the story leads him to a lockbox his mother has kept secret for years, Gus doesn’t realize that its contents could forever change his perception of Starvation Lake, his own family, and the value of the truth.

  BRYAN GRULEY is reporter at large for Bloomberg News and the author of The Hanging Tree and Starvation Lake. Formerly the Chicago bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, Gruley shared in the Pulitzer Prize given to the newspaper for coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks. He has won the Anthony, Barry, and Strand Awards and was nominated for an Edgar Award for best first novel. He lives with his wife in Chicago.

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  JACKET DESIGN BY CALVIN CHU

  JACKET PHOTOGRAPH © ANDREW LE/GETTY

  COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

  ALSO BY BRYAN GRULEY

  The Hanging Tree

  Starvation Lake

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Bryan Gruley

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Touchstone hardcover edition June 2012

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  Designed by Renata Di Biase

  ISBN 978-1-4165-6366-2

  ISBN 978-1-4165-6402-7 (ebook)

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  for kimi, karen, kathleen, mike, and dave

  and in memory of our father

  Father, forgive me, for I have sinned. I have succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, to the venal allure of physical pleasure, to the enrapture of lust and all that goes before it, and with it, and alongside it. I have let sin reign in my mortal body and I have obeyed its desires. I have committed atrocity and tolerated it and sought the false and sinful asylum of denial. I have made company with men who would do the same while demanding my silence and wicked acquiescence. I seek your divine mercy and everlasting forgiveness as I write these things down on the twenty-first day of August in the year 1950. . . .

  MARCH 2000

  ONE

  4TH BINGO BREAK-IN STRIKES FEAR INTO TOWN OF STARVATION LAKE

  By Lucas B. Whistler

  Pilot Staff Correspondent

  The Bingo Night Burglar may have struck again.

  In what appears to be the fourth such break-in since the New Year, the Pine County Sheriff’s Department said an intruder entered the home of John and Mary Hodges on Sunday evening while the retired couple was at bingo at St. Valentine’s Catholic Church.

  The burglary wasn’t technically one because, as in previous break-ins, nothing was taken. As before, the intruder appears to have rummaged through file cabinets and desk drawers containing personal and financial documents.

  “I don’t know why, but that’s even scarier than if they walked off with our TV,” said Mary Hodges, 178 Little Twin Trail.

  Pine County sheriff Dingus Aho released a statement saying, “The department is treating these various incidents as burglaries.” He declined to comment further. All four break-ins have occurred while the occupants of the homes broken into were at bingo. Police have no suspects.

  Bingo attendance has declined, while sales of padlocks have soared at Kepsel’s Ace Hardware. “Starvation Lake is scared,” said County Commissioner Elvis Bontrager. “Sheriff Aho ought to start doing his job, or we’ll find someone who will.”

  Befor
e a Jan. 9 break-in at the home of Ted and Gardenia Mapes, Starvation Lake hadn’t had one since 1998. B and E’s followed at the homes of Bill and Martha Nussler on Jan. 16 and Neil and Sally Pearson on Feb. 6.

  “I hope the police catch somebody soon,” Sally Pearson said. “One of these times, somebody could get hurt.”

  TWO

  We ignored the first knock. The punk who drove the Zamboni had been barging in and yelling at us about leaving empties in the dressing room. So we started locking the door.

  “Soupy?” I said. “Cold one?”

  I reached into a plastic bucket filled with ice and fished out a Blue Ribbon. My squad, the Chowder Heads of the Midnight Hour Men’s League, had just beaten the Ice Picks of Repicky Realty, 7–0.

  “Pope shit in the woods?” Soupy said. I tossed him the beer. He slumped on a bench between Wilf and Zilchy, his hair a sweaty blond tangle, his hockey socks bunched around his ankles. The room smelled of mildew and tobacco dip. I grabbed myself a beer, the ice stinging my knuckles, and dropped my goalie mask into my hockey bag.

  Soupy hoisted his can toward me. “You stoned them tonight, Gus. When’s the last time you had a shutout?”

  I shrugged. “I think I was still living downstate.”

  I had left our little northern Michigan town, Starvation Lake, in the 1980s and worked at a big Detroit newspaper. I came home after getting in some trouble on the job. I could have gone a lot of places—Battle Creek, Toledo, Daytona Beach. But I returned to Starvation.

  I’d been back only two and a half years, and at times it felt as if I’d never left. Which was frightening, if I let myself think about it. At other times I felt as if I’d wanted to come back all along, as if I had some unfinished business, some question I had to answer about myself. Meantime, I played goaltender at night and spent my days as executive editor of the Pine County Pilot, circulation 3,876 and falling.

  “Speaking of goalies, where was Tatch?” Wilf said.

  Tatch was the Ice Picks goalie. He’d been a no-show that night.

  “Goalies,” Soupy said. He took a pull on his beer, the liquid clicking inside the can, then thrust it up over his head. “The hell with them. How about them Rats?”

  Most of us had played for the River Rats, the local youth team, as teenagers. We’d lost the 1981 state final on a goal I should have stopped.

  “State finals, baby,” Wilf said, “right here in beautiful Starvation Lake.”

  There was another, harder knock at the door. Then a voice.

  “Police. Open up.”

  “Hell, it’s just Skipper,” Soupy said. “Game tomorrow’s at seven. Pregame at my bar. The Enright’s Pub shuttle will leave for the rink at six-thirty sharp. Adult beverages will be provided.” He looked at me. “You coming?”

  “Yeah, right.” As a Rats assistant coach, I didn’t drink much before games.

  “Pussy.”

  The door swung open and Pine County sheriff’s deputy Skip Catledge stepped into the room. I saw the Zamboni punk slink away with a ring of keys. The deputy pointed at me. “Get dressed.”

  “He wasn’t drinking, Skip, honest.”

  “Shut up, Soup. Let’s go, Gus. We have a situation.”

  I thought of my mother. She was watching TV in her pajamas when I left for the game. Our next-door neighbor, Phyllis Bontrager, had come to sit with her.

  “A situation where?”

  “I’ll be outside,” the deputy said. “In two minutes, I’ll come in and haul your butt out.”

  Cop flashers blinked in the distance as Catledge steered his sheriff’s cruiser off Main Street and onto the beach road along the lake’s southern shore. The lake itself was invisible in the blackness beyond the naked trees. Twin bands of packed snow ran down the asphalt lanes between the steep banks on both shoulders.

  The deputy, his hat perched on the dashboard, had spoken barely a word since we’d left the rink. He had had me sit in the front next to him. Not a good sign.

  “Are those flashers where I think they are?” I said.

  “We’ll be there in a minute.”

  Half a mile ahead, the flashing lights obscured my mother’s little yellow house. I imagined what might have happened. A greasy pan Mom had left burning on the stove. A fireplace flue she had neglected to open. A door she had forgotten to lock. Dammit, Mother, I thought, then immediately felt bad about it. We’d never had to lock our doors in Starvation Lake. Then the break-ins had begun.

  “Why no siren?” I said.

  “No need to wake up the whole town.”

  “Skip, if it’s—”

  “Gus, I don’t know, OK? Sheriff told me not to call him and he hasn’t called me. He’s probably keeping it quiet so every old lady with a scanner doesn’t show up to watch.”

  “Watch what?”

  He stepped harder on the gas. The trees and houses flew past, cozy log cabins and plank board cottages built in the 1940s and 1950s, and makeover mansions of red brick and cut rock and cantilevered decks built in the 1990s. We were heading to Mom’s house, all right. There were no flames that I could see. I told myself Mom was all right.

  Catledge grabbed his hat and set it on his head. We slowed. A hundred yards ahead, another deputy emerged from the shadows along the road shoulder, a flashlight beam bouncing in front of him. Catledge blinked his headlights. The beam waved us through.

  Some of Mom’s neighbors stood along the road, pajamas and bathrobes sticking out from under winter coats. As we passed, one spied me and shook her head and brought her hands up into a clasp at her face.

  “Christ,” I said. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Static crackled on Catledge’s shoulder mike. I heard the Finnish lilt of the sheriff’s voice. “Deputy,” it said. “Did you collect Mr. Carpenter?”

  Mom’s house sat on a snow-covered bluff overlooking the lake. Now it was surrounded by five police cars, two ambulances, and a fire truck. The swirling blue and red lights striped the aluminum siding and roof shingles. Why two ambulances? I thought.

  We stopped at the end of Mom’s driveway. One ambulance was parked there. The other waited in the snow in Mom’s front yard, one of its twin rear doors swung open. I saw sheriff’s deputies moving around in the light blazing inside the house.

  As I climbed out of the cruiser, I heard a woman’s sob, sharp and halting, as if she were trying not to cry. I knew that sound. I looked in the direction of the ambulance in Mom’s yard.

  “Darlene,” I said, then louder. “Darlene.”

  A door slammed. The ambulance eased out of the yard onto the road. I turned to Catledge. “Where’s Darlene?”

  Darlene Esper was another Pine County sheriff’s deputy. She was also my ex-girlfriend and the daughter of Phyllis Bontrager—Mrs. B to me—the next-door neighbor who had been with my mother that night.

  “I don’t know,” Catledge said. He took my elbow and nudged me toward the house. “The sheriff’s waiting.”

  “I heard her in that ambulance,” I said. “They must have—shit. Is Mrs. B in that ambulance?”

  Pine County sheriff Dingus Aho stepped into the muddy snow outside the sliding glass doors to Mom’s dining room, a walkie-talkie squeezed in one pork-chop hand. He was a big man who looked bigger silhouetted against the backlit wall.

  “I can’t go in?” I said.

  Dingus shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s a crime scene.”

  “It’s my family.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I had glanced into the kitchen as I passed, noticed a glass casserole soaking on the counter next to the sink. Yellow police tape was strung everywhere. The dining room, except for a cop flashlight resting on the table, looked to be in order. Beyond there, officers wearing latex gloves shuffled in and out of the bathroom next to Mom’s bedroom.

  “Where’s my mother? Is she in one of those amb—”

  “No. She’s fine. Phyllis Bontrager is on her way to Munson.”

  Munson was the medical center in Traverse C
ity, forty miles west. You didn’t go there for cuts and bruises.

  “What happened?”

  “There was a break-in.”

  “I want to see my mom.”

  He hooked his walkie-talkie on his belt. “Calm down.”

  “What’s the big fucking secret, Dingus? It’s another Bingo Night Burglary, isn’t it?”

  Dingus stepped toward me. The sweet aroma of Tiparillo floated off of his handlebar mustache. “Watch your language,” he said.

  “You mean ‘bingo night’?”

  My newspaper had made the connection between the break-ins and bingo night. That had not pleased the sheriff, who was up for re-election and didn’t appreciate headlines reminding voters that he had no clues, no suspects, no idea why someone was breaking into homes, rifling through personal papers, and then leaving empty-handed. “Bingo Night Burglaries” was catchy and I’d heard people saying it at the rink and Audrey’s Diner and Fortune Drug and imagined that it might help circulation.

  “We’re not sure what happened here,” the sheriff said. “As I’ve said, bingo night is a coincidence. There’s bingo every night somewhere around here.”

  Mother had been waiting when Darlene, the sheriff’s deputy, had arrived, heeding Mom’s 911 call, he told me. Darlene found her mother lying unconscious on the bathroom floor. Questioning my mother so far had proved fruitless.

  “She’s a little confused,” Dingus said.

  “You know Mom’s got memory issues.”

  She was going on sixty-seven. Her memory had always been selective, but now she wasn’t always certain what she should be selecting. Sometimes she was all there, sometimes hardly at all. The illness played tricks on her, and Mom tried to play tricks back, often in vain.

  “I understand.”

  “Is Mrs. B going to be all right?”

  The sheriff looked away, into the house. “Doc Joe’s on his way to Munson.”

  Doc Joe Schriver was the county coroner.

  Mrs. B had been stopping by at night to make sure Mom had turned off the stove, doused the fire, and done whatever else she needed to do before bed. Sometimes Mrs. B stayed for a while and sat in the rocking recliner to read while the fire died. I pictured her sitting there in her favorite winter sweater, the red one knitted with the shapes of reindeer heads.