The Bone Bed

and in white, with no pretenses or cordiality.
    “He assaulted you five years ago in Charleston, South Carolina.” She fires the shot she’s saved. “He came to your house late at night and tried to rape you, and you never reported it to the police.”
    There’s a note of triumph in her voice, and I’m sure I’m not imagining it.
    “Why would you tell us anything now that might get him into trouble if you refused to do it then, after what he did?” she says.
    “You don’t know the facts.” I hear footsteps on the front porch.
    “I’m asking you for them.”
    I don’t answer, because I won’t.
    “Are you aware of what the statute of limitations for sexual assault is in South Carolina?”
    “I’m not.”
    “You haven’t exceeded it,” she says.
    “It’s not relevant.”
    “So you’re still protecting him.”
    “You don’t have the facts,” I repeat.
    “Here’s a fact. He used to be into treasure hunting. Yet something else you know about him,” Burke says, and it’s what she’s been waiting to do.
    It’s why I’m here inside this house with you.
    “And Peggy Stanton had Civil War buttons on her jacket. Did Marino bother to mention to you that he’d been tweeting a woman who collected antique buttons?”
    “I’ve seen no evidence of an antique-button collection in this house,” I answer, with no emotion she can detect.
    “You’re not going to talk to me about what he did to you.”
    “I’m not.”
    “Do you understand the problem I’m having? And it’s not as if I enjoy bringing this up. I’m sorry—” Douglas Burke starts to say, as the front door opens wide and rain blows in.
    Benton is carrying something wrapped in a towel.
    “If he’d really attempted to rape me, I can assure you he would have succeeded.” I don’t care who hears. “Pete Marino is a very big man, and at the time this occurred, he was armed. So if he’d intended to physically overpower me or put a gun to my head to make me do what he wanted, he could have. But he didn’t. He stopped what should never have started. But he stopped.”
    Benton and Machado drip on the plastic-covered rug beneath the French chandelier, and the towel is dirty and wet, and I notice gray fur peeking out.
    “A broken-out window with no screen,” Machado says, and what he just overheard seems etched in the air. “You know, near the ground, and the garage doesn’t have an alarm, maybe the cat somehow pushed it open and pushed out the screen. So I guess it’s been in and out of the garage all this time, made a bed in a box in there. Probably plenty to eat around here, or maybe people were feeding it.”
    I take the cat from Benton, short-haired gray-and-white, with gold eyes and flat ears, a Scottish Fold that looks like an owl, the flea collar around its neck faded and old.
    “No tag,” Benton says, and the look he gives Burke is piercing.
    “Obviously an indoor cat. A girl. What’s your name?” I wrap her in a clean towel, and she doesn’t resist me. “I see. You’re not going to say.”
    She’s thin and dirty but seems in relatively good shape, her claws very long and curled and needle-sharp.
    “Well, it didn’t get out of the house on its own.” Benton looks at me, and he knows what just happened. “And she certainly wouldn’t have abandoned it.”
    Peggy Stanton wouldn’t have put her cat outdoors and then left town, and his rage is simmering.
    “So who let her cat out?” He pulls off his white hood and runs his fingers through his hair. “Someone who has no regard for human life but wouldn’t hurt an animal.” He bends over to take off his boot covers. “Had it been left in the house, it would have starved to death. So he came back. He let himself in. He knew her alarm code. And he had her keys.”
    “There was an open bag of treats on the counter.” The cat has tucked its head under my chin and is purring. “Treats to lure her so he could let her out, perhaps?”
    “Where are these treats?” Machado takes off his boot covers, and they are wet and dirty from walking outside.
    I indicate the bags of evidence I’ve set on the entryway table.
    “If he needed to lure the cat, then he wasn’t someone familiar,” Benton says.
    “Did she run from you?” I ask.
    “Came right up to us when we were inside the garage.”
    “Well, she seems very friendly but maybe wasn’t with him. Maybe she sensed something that made her wary,” I reply, as I wonder what I’m going to do with