Beneath the Bones Read Online Free PDF

argue for the latter, but I’ll be able to tell more once I’ve finished the autopsy.”
    Even when he was discussing such grisly details, Joanne thought Terry had a sexy voice. Low, soft, with a bit of a sardonic tone. She’d always thought that if he hadn’t chosen to go to medical school, he would’ve made a great late-night radio DJ. He was dressed in a blue windbreaker, jeans, and running shoes, and possessed the lean build of a marathon runner, though he didn’t compete. He was in his late thirties, ten years older than Joanne, and had chestnut-brown hair and matching eyes. His neatly trimmed mustache held more black than brown. When she’d first met him Joanne had thought the contrast in colors odd, but over the years she’d come to accept and even like it.
    “Is that all you’ve got to show us?” Dale said.
    “Show the
sheriff
, you mean.”
    While Terry tolerated Dale’s presence at crime scenes, he wouldn’t tolerate even a hint of dispespect toward Joanne’s authority. She was the youngest sheriff ever elected in Cross County — for all she knew, the youngest ever elected in Ohio. Most people in the county accepted her in the job, but there were some who thought her too young, especially for a woman.
    But there was no need for Terry to defend her. Not only was she perfectly capable of taking care of herself, Dale was the last person who’d deny her authority. After all, he’d been the one who’d convinced her to stand for election in the first place.
    Terry reached out, took hold of the bottom of the victim’s t-shirt, and pulled it up.
    “Now there’s something I didn’t think I’d see again,” Dale said, his voice nearly a whisper.
    Outside of old crime scene photographs, Joanne had never seen it before. Carved into the flesh of the victim’s stomach was a triangle, bisected with a jagged line that resembled a bolt of lightning.
    Joanne’s mouth went dry, and there was a roaring in her ears, like the sound of the ocean inside a seashell, but a hundred times louder. Nausea surged through her gut, and the bones in her legs felt like they’d turned to jelly. She felt a nerve-jangling tingle at the base of her skull, and she began trembling as if caught in the throes of a winter wind.
    She’d experienced these sensations too many times before, and she knew what they meant.
    “This is bad,” Joanne gasped. “Very bad.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    She sits naked on a cold stone floor, her body shivering to generate warmth. She’s so tired, and she wants to lie down, but she knows she can’t. The more of her skin that touches the stone, the faster her body heat will be leeched away. If she wasn’t so weak, she’d stand or crouch so that only the bottoms of her feet were pressed against the stone, but it’s taking what little strength she has left simply to stay awake. She may only be nine, but she understands one thing very clearly. If she falls asleep and slumps over onto her side, she will die.
    Darkness surrounds her, but she’s been in this place long enough — though she doesn’t know exactly
how
long — that she’s no longer frightened of it. At first she feared there was someone or something with her here in the blackness, moving slowly toward her inch by silent inch, reaching out with long cold fingers. But after hours of hearing nothing but her own breath and heartbeat, she knew she was alone. Then she began seeing ebon shapes in the darkness swirling and dancing before her eyes. Strange, amorphous forms resembling one-celled organisms viewed through the lens of a microscope. Illusions, she eventually decided. With nothing to see, her mind had created its own images, like a bored artist doodling on a blank piece of paper. At least for a time the inky swirls had provided some measure of entertainment, but after a while they’d vanished. Just like the emperor’s new clothes: once an illusion was revealed to be an illusion, you could no longer believe in it, even if you wanted