Birdy Waterman 01 - The Bone Box

files. Don’t lecture me. You’ve never lost a leg and then had your boss tell you that it would be best if you sat at a desk for the rest of your life. I get off at five. House is a mess, but I do the best that I can. Come over.”
    She wrote down an address on Hawthorne Avenue and went down the narrow aisle. No one would have known that she’d lost a leg. Pat-Stan had practiced her gait. She might have lost a limb, but she had never lost her sense of pride. As Birdy Waterman saw it, despite its place in the “sin” category of the Bible, pride could be a very good thing. Pat-Stan was angry about the contents of the report.
    Anger, Birdy knew, could be a good ally.

C HAPTER N INE
    With a little more than an hour to kill, Birdy found a coffee shop that made ginormous cinnamon rolls. Even though the time of day was so wrong for that kind of indulgence, the forensic pathologist with a sweet tooth ordered one.
    “Heated with butter?” a pleasant young man behind the counter asked.
    “If I’m going to die from sugar overload, might as well go all the way,” Birdy said.
    As she drank her coffee and ate the gooey roll at the table in the back of the café, she reread her own statement and compared it against what Tommy told the detectives.

    I was smoking pot and drinking beer that afternoon in the woods alone. I had talked to Anna Jo Bonners about meeting me at the cabin so we could mess around. Anna Jo didn’t show up so I hung out by myself. I heard a scream coming from the cabin later and I went inside. I found Anna Jo Bonners in a pool of blood. I was scared that whoever had hurt her was still there so I grabbed the knife. I ran out of the cabin and hurried down the trail where my cousin Birdy found me. I don’t know why I picked up the knife, but I threw it away before my cousin came up to me. I did not kill her. I really liked Anna Jo. I think I might have loved her even.

    All of the evidence supported the contention that Tommy was the killer. He’d had Anna Jo’s blood on his shirt and hands, his fingerprints had been recovered from the knife, and Birdy’s eyewitness testimony had put him fleeing the scene of the grisly homicide in Ponder’s cabin.
    Yet he said he didn’t do it.
    Surprised that she’d devoured half of the roll, Birdy pushed the plate away just as a call came in with a 509 area code, eastern Washington.
    “Waterman,” she said.
    “Dr. Waterman, I hope you don’t mind the intrusion,” a man’s voice said. “This is Ken Holloway. I’m the guard you talked to at the prison. You know, about your cousin?”
    “Of course. Is everything all right? I didn’t leave my ID behind, did I?”
    “No. Not that. It’s about Tommy. He’s been admitted to the infirmary. They might take him out of here to Spokane. He’s not doing so hot. After you left, he changed his family contact info to your name. Not changed. Actually gave a family contact. The spot on his file had been empty since he got here.”
    Birdy felt sick and it wasn’t the cinnamon roll, which was now expanding in her upset stomach. “What can I do?”
    “Nothing,” he said. “He wanted me to give you a message. He wanted me to tell you that ...” The man’s voice grew soft. For a second, Birdy thought he might be crying.
    “Are you all right, Sergeant?” she asked.
    “Yeah,” he said, his voice clipped in an obvious attempt to snap out of his grief. “He just wanted me to tell you that even if you don’t believe in him all the way yet, he’s grateful knowing that someone out there thinks he matters.”
    Birdy asked, “Will you let him know I got the message? Tell him that I’m doing my best. I don’t want to give him false hope.”
    “Hope is never false,” he said. “Hope is what keeps the innocent from killing themselves. Hope is what makes me think that justice will be done.”
    She hung up and looked at the time on her phone. Pat-Stan was waiting for her.

    Patricia Stanford produced an old audiocassette from the box of things she’d taken when she’d hobbled out of the Clallam County Sheriff’s department. It had been kept in an envelope with the date and Tommy’s first name scrawled on it in pencil. On the top right-hand side, a red ink stamp read: EVIDENCE.
    Pat-Stan offered her some coffee, but Birdy declined. She was sick to her stomach.
    “If you have any Rolaids,” she asked. “I’ll take a couple.”
    “Alka-Seltzer all right?”
    Birdy nodded. Pat-Stan went into her kitchen and