Birdy Waterman 01 - The Bone Box

trivial and one overriding. She was grateful she drove a Prius—gutless as it was, she’d been racking up the miles and was grateful that she needed to fill up only twice in the past week. Forensic pathologists are on a budget too. She was also thinking about the right starting point to find out what she could about Anna Jo Bonner’s murder and what role her cousin had truly had in it. Blood doesn’t lie.
    Not usually.
    It came to her that the person to see was none other than Clallam County Sheriff Jim Derby. Twenty years ago, Jim had been the lead detective, albeit a young and inexperienced one, on the Bonners murder case. Since that time, he’d made a name for himself. A very big name. For the past ten years he’d served as the sheriff, an elected position he won by a landslide. At the moment he was preparing to run for Congress. His campaign motto had already been trademarked on his website: CONGRESSMAN DERBY: WINNER TAKES ALL.

    Jim Derby was a flinty-eyed man with angular features and Sharpie eyebrows that only added to the hard-liner-against-crime persona that he’d earned rather than manufactured over a decade of law enforcement. Property crimes and drug manufacturing had been his primary challenges in the county in the very northwest corner of Washington state. His thick wavy hair had receded a little, allowing his scalp to catch the light of the fluorescents, and his belly hung over his oversized belt buckle like a floating shelf. If he had any enemies in the community or in the sheriff ’s department, none were bold enough to speak out against him. Jim Derby didn’t suffer any fools, which was one of the reasons state Republican Party leaders thought he’d be the no-nonsense candidate to defeat Democrat Casey Laughton, who’d held the office for four terms.
    Derby’s office was completely impersonal save for a portrait of Mrs. Derby and their son, and a row of bobblehead sports figurines that commanded the majority of a shelf next to the window. The joke in the sheriff’s office was that when “the sheriff talks, you just nod.”
    Birdy had called ahead and Sheriff Derby had agreed to clear some time for her.
    “I’ve followed your career,” he’d said. “Glad to see you made something of yourself.” The words tumbled out a little patronizingly, but Birdy took them at face value.
    “Thanks,” she’d said, almost adding Glad you did too.
    “Not sure what I can tell you. Things change, time marches on, memories fade.”
    “That’s fine. To be honest,” she’d said—a phrase she hated because it signaled that everything else must have been a lie—“I’m not sure what I’m looking for.”
    It was true. She wasn’t. All she knew was that her cousin had compelled her to help him. She wondered if her own sense of guilt had driven her to. She’d never lied about what she’d seen, but her statement to the sheriff and at trial was crucial.
    She’d read the statement before heading up to Clallam County.

    I had been cutting wood for my family. It was around three p.m., but it could have been later. I don’t know the exact time because I don’t have a watch. I heard a noise of someone coming down the trail toward me. He was screaming. I didn’t know who it was at first. I was scared. I turned off my chain saw. I stared to run and then I heard my name. It was my cousin Tommy calling to me. I went to him. He was bloody. He was crying. He was saying that “she’s dead. It’s my fault. She’s dead.” I asked him who and he didn’t answer for a long time. Then he said it was Anna Jo Bonners. I started to cry and then I ran away. I was so afraid about what happened, I ran as fast as I could. I got home and my mom told me not to say anything. The next day the sheriff found my chain saw and questioned me. I agree that this is what happened and is true.

    It was signed with a signature that was half printed and half cursive, and dated. It was her signature, at least as she’d used to write it. Yet something didn’t seem quite right. Birdy remembered how a kind lady with short blond hair had sat in the small room while then-detective Derby urged her to “get it all down” and “don’t worry about the mistakes because Patricia can fix them later.”
    Patricia. The name played in her head, but she couldn’t come up with any more. Who was Patricia?
    When she walked into Derby’s office, she was instantly reminded of the days leading up to Tommy’s trial. It was strange. The