Birdy Waterman 01 - The Bone Box

things Birdy remembered Tommy saying before they hauled him away after sentencing was, “I loved her. Doesn’t anyone remember that? I loved Anna Jo. I would never have killed her. I didn’t do this.”
    Over the years, in case after case, Dr. Birdy Waterman would hear similar statements from the convicted, but never would they be so personal, so directed at her ears. Tommy had been family. When he went away to Walla Walla, his disappearance caused a rift between sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins. No one who lived on that part of the Makah reservation was ever the same. People didn’t talk about it. Ever.
    Birdy watched a squirrel as it zipped up the craggy bark of a towering Douglas fir. A hawk flew overhead. The wind found its way through the evergreen canopy. The land all around her was as it had been when she was a girl. The place, she knew, should feel like home. But it didn’t. It never could. A place where one feels unwelcome can never feel like home. Thinking of Tommy, Anna Jo, the trial, her mother, she wondered if there would ever be a way to fix any of it.
    She walked back to her car and drove over to her sister Summer’s brand-new mobile home, but no one was there. Same at her brother Ricky’s place—a small wood frame house that he’d built himself. She decided not to let it pass through her mind that they’d avoided her on purpose. She was their sister—their blood. They had to love her too, didn’t they?

    It was dark when she returned to the bungalow on Beach Drive. Birdy had driven all the way through with only a single stop for gas in Port Angeles. It was after nine when she finally pulled up. Too dark, she thought, to feed the neighbor’s cat as she’d promised to do while they were away in Hawaii downing rum-infused tropical drinks—a prospect that seemed more than appealing right then. Birdy made a mental note to get up extra early to feed Jinx before the Coopers got home and found out that their next-door neighbor was an untrustworthy cat sitter.
    Knowing Pat and Donna Frickey, there could be no crime worse.
    Birdy took a beer from the refrigerator and a package of chicken-flavored Top Ramen from the cupboard. She took a drink from the bottle and unwrapped the ramen with no intention of cooking the noodles. She ate it dry, like a big fat brick of crispiness—a habit she’d acquired growing up on the reservation and having to make do with a package of the Asian dried noodles for two out of three meals of the day.
    The message light on her answering machine caught her eye. There were three messages. She pushed PLAY.
    “... Election Day is fast approaching and we want to make sure that the Citizens for a Lovely Port Orchard can count on your support for our transportation levy ...”
    Birdy sighed and pushed DELETE. The Lovely Port Orchard group would be better served by focusing on cleaning up the streets they already had than on building new ones , she thought.
    Then next message came from her mother, probably just after her visit.
    “I’m sorry, sweetie. You really caught me off guard about Tommy. I think you should just leave him be, but you never listen to me anyway. Love you.”
    The word “love” came out of her mother’s mouth in a cough. The voice message was so like her mother that it brought a smile to Birdy’s face. While Natalie Waterman hadn’t invented passive-aggressive behavior, few would dispute that she had perfected it.
    The last message sent a chill through Birdy’s bones.
    “Dr. Waterman, if this is you, I want you to know that you’ve caused enough trouble for Tommy and his family. If you know what’s good for you—and I bet you do—you’ll stay away from him.”
    The voice was unfamiliar. Birdy played it again. It was hard to determine if the caller was male or female. It was breathy and soft, the kind of voice that required concentration in order to fully comprehend.
    She scrolled back on the caller ID function of her machine. The call had come from a pay phone at the tribal center—which wasn’t much of a surprise. After telegraph, tele-native was the fastest mode of communication known to man. Someone from the Makahs had heard from her mother that she was going to see Tommy, and not only that, they didn’t want her to.
    Not at all.
    “If you know what’s good for you ...”

C HAPTER F OUR
    Tommy was barely forty, but he looked closer to sixty. Maybe even older. If DOC Inmate 44435-099 had once been the most handsome boy on the