“That’s awful chummy of you,” Leonard said.
Hanson shrugged. “I’m divorced. I’m lonely. And I got nothing better to do.”
“Why don’t I think that’s why you’re here?” Leonard said.
“You’re one suspicious sonofabitch,” Hanson said. “Your uncle’s house is involved. Possibly your uncle. You found the body. I thought it would be only fair I kept you informed.”
“Don’t pay any attention to Leonard,” I said. “He was raised in a barn.”
Hanson took a sip of his tea and frowned. He put the cup down, said, “We had a forensics guy come in from Houston. He’s taken the bones back with him, but he looked them over here, gave us a preliminary report. He could revise his opinion somewhat, he gets a good look, but the forensics guy says the skeleton in the box belongs to a nine- or ten-year-old boy. and he probably died of severe trauma to the head. After that, the body was cut up to fit into something small.”
“The trunk,” Leonard said.
“No,” Hanson said. “Originally, the body was in a cardboard box. On the bones were paper fibers and remnants of a kind of glue found in cardboard. Could I have some more tea?”
His cup was half-full, but I poured him some more.
“You’re saying the body was put in a cardboard box, then the box was put in the trunk?” Leonard said.
Hanson shook his head. “Nope. There’s not enough remains of the cardboard in the trunk for it to have ever been put in there whole. What about that sugar?”
I got Hanson the sugar bowl and a spoon.
“You got a longer spoon? You can’t stir good with these short ones.”
“No wonder you’re divorced,” I said. “And no, no teaspoon.”
Hanson stirred sugar into his teacup. He said, “The body was put in the cardboard box originally, but by the time the bones were put in the trunk, the cardboard had, for the most part, disintegrated. Some of the cardboard fibers stayed with the bones. Another thing. The clay on the bones doesn’t go with your uncle’s dirt beneath the house. The dirt found on the bottom of the trunk.”
“Then the body was moved from somewhere and put in the trunk?” Leonard said. “And before it was moved, it had been in the ground for some time.”
“Looks that way,” Hanson said. “But that doesn’t let your uncle off the hook. Sometimes a murderer kills in one spot, moves the body, buries it, then moves it again. If your Uncle was sick, he might have thought about the body enough he wanted to be near the corpse, went and dug it up. Put it here.”
“Uncle Chester wasn’t sick,” Leonard said. “That kind of thing isn’t sick anyway, it’s sickening.”
“I’m not saying anything concrete about him,” Hanson said. “I’m just speculating. We don’t even know this was a sex crime. It could have been murder, flat and simple.”
“Does it matter?” I said.
“Yes,” Hanson said, “it does. It’s a sex crime, it may not have ended with one victim. It was a murder, maybe a blow struck in anger, whatever, this could be the whole of it.”
“Can the forensics guy tell from the skeleton if the child was sexually molested?” I asked.
“No,” Hanson said. “Least not preliminarily, and I doubt later. Just not enough left to work with. He did determine the child was killed some eight or nine years ago.”
“The magazines in the trunk indicate a sex crime, though, don’t they?” Leonard said.
“They point that direction,” Hanson said.
“Any take on the magazines?” I asked. “Were they buried as long as the body? Seems to me, had they been, they’d have gone the way of the cardboard box.”
“Smart question,” Hanson said. “They were added to the trunk in bad condition, but not bad enough to have been recovered with the skeleton when it was moved from its grave to the trunk. They weren’t in the ground as long as the corpse.”
“So you haven’t any proof this skeleton is tied in with the child disappearances?” I said.
“Nope. Other than circumstantial. Leonard’s uncle talking about child murders, a skeleton being found here. Children missing in the community over the years. That’s it, really.”
“What do you think, Marvin?” Florida asked.
“I don’t know,” Hanson said. “It do be a puzzle, and I hate them. Agatha Christie shit. Never can figure that stuff out.”
“Any chance I might see those files about the missing children?” Leonard said.
“I don’t think so,” Hanson said. “What good would that do?”
“Seeing them, knowing my uncle like I did, maybe I might see something that’ll shed some light.”
“I doubt it,” Hanson said.
“Very conscientious,” Leonard said. “But sounds to me you could use all the help you could get. I think maybe you might even be asking for help.”
“Well,” Hanson said, “the subconscious is a tricky sonofabitch, but my conscious mind knows better than to bring a civilian in on this. To be honest, after all this time, someone figures out exactly what happened here, even who the child is, it’ll be an accident. That’s how most of this gets solved, by accident. If it gets solved.”
Hanson tipped his teacup up and got up from the table. “Gentlemen. Lovely lady, who I apologize to again for my past rudeness, and stupidity. I have to go. I have work to do.”
“Tonight?” Florida said.
“Every night,” he said. “It’s either that or watch TV, so I take files home and work.”
“Considering most of it gets solved through accident,” I said, “any of what you do matter?”
“Very little,” Hanson said, “very goddamn little.”
18.
That night, with the rain heavy on the house, a sweat-cooled sheet drawn over us, I held Florida in my arms and had the sad, dreamy sensation that no matter how tight I held her, she would soon slip away.
I kissed her on the nose, and she opened her eyes and blinked and closed them again, said softly, “Can’t sleep?”
“No,” I said.
“Horny?”
“Not really.”
She opened her eyes again and looked at me. “It’s the rain.”
“I guess so.”
“What’s the matter?”
“How are we, Florida?”
“What?”
“How are we? You and me?”
“We’re OK.”
“I mean, really?”
She eased out of my arms and raised up on one elbow. I couldn’t see her features clearly in the dark. “We’re how we’ve always been.”
“And how is that?”
“You’re not going to get complicated.”
“Maybe.”
“We haven’t been together that long.”
“Long enough for me.”
“The cliche is women are the ones who always want to get married.”
“I didn’t say anything about getting married.”
“But if we get serious, that’s what you mean?”
“I guess so.”
“Every guy I’ve dated has been ready to put a ring on my finger, Hap. A few dates, especially if they get a piece of ass, they want to tie the knot.”
“I don’t want to hear about that part… dating. Is that what we’re doing?”
“Yes, we’re dating. We’re fucking too, but that’s sometimes part of dating.”
“I thought we made love.”
“Oh, Hap. Don’t get technical.”
“Fucking’s technical. Making love is the same as the flow of a river. A cloud in the sky.”
“Where in hell did you get that shit?”
“I think the big-cheese monk on Kung Fu said it to Grasshopper. Ever watch that? David Carradine didn’t know kung fu from shit.”
“Before my time. I’m twenty-nine.”
“No shit?”
“You think I look older?”
“No. I just thought you were older. Lawyer and all.”
“See, Hap, way it works, some of us go to high school, get out, go to college, and in my case, law school, then go right into gainful employment. Some of us.”
“Is there a hidden slight in that?”
“Some. Hap, I like you. I like you a lot. You’re funny. You’re a decent guy. You’re not bad looking, and you make love beautifully. But you don’t strike me as a secure bet.”
“You’re boiling it down to financial prospects. What happened to love?”