Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

The Epps adjourned to their bedroom while Bennie tended to Apgard’s head injury. They were both shaken by their landlord’s revelations. Nor was Apgard’s having seen them with Tex the worst of their problems-it was what he’d told them afterward, about the two bodies washed up under the cliffs, that had them close to panic.

Phil recognized immediately what had happened. The moment the bedroom door closed behind them, he told Emily about hearing the splash when they dumped Arena’s body into the Oubliette.

It was probably something they should have foreseen, he said in a whisper. They’d been careless. In their relief at having solved the disposal problem that had plagued serial killers since time immemorial, they’d forgotten their basic geology. Underground rivers-that’s what had carved out the caverns in the first place, after the Pleistocene era. And even underground rivers have outlets and run eventually to the sea, don’t they? Or at least they do on a tiny island like St. Luke.

Obviously the rising water from the most recent hurricane had somehow floated the bodies up and out to sea, which meant their most important line of defense had been breached. The surest way to escape detection, they’d learned over the years, was to ensure that the deed itself went undetected.

Too late now. Neither the Jenkuns girl’s disappearance nor her reappearance had sparked the kind of intense investigation that had probably begun as soon as the police discovered that they had a serial killer on their island. Now anybody without an alibi could be considered a suspect-the cops might be showing up at the door of the overseer’s house anytime.

So although they had of course been somewhat offended by Apgard’s initial offer-they weren’t contract killers, for the love of God-on another level, a counteroffer wasn’t entirely out of the question. “Tit for tat, quid pro quo, strangers on a train and all that,” Emily whispered to her husband.

“Or maybe we should just kill them both, seal the cave, and get the hell off the island.”

“That’s certainly another possibility,” said Emily. “But we’re the nearest neighbors-there are bound to be questions if they both disappear simultaneously. And you have to admit we’ve been awfully blessed so far. Perhaps Apgard showing up like this is lalu’a tonua.” Lalu’a tonua -the hand of destiny, in Niassian.

“You think so?” said Phil.

“I feel it,” replied Emily. “In here.” She took Phil’s big, bony, hairy-knuckled hand and pressed it against her pudgy lower belly, above her womb.

And although some might have seen it as contradictory for trained scientists like the Epps to be swayed by so unscientific an argument, for a scientist, a true scientist, data always trumps theory. If something is true, it’s true, whether you can explain it or not. Emily’s womb had never been wrong before: that was good enough for both of them.

But even with accurate data, there was still room left for interpretation. Don’t make the counteroffer, Phil suggested-just accept Apgard’s initial offer, and wait until after the deed was done to let him know what it was really going to cost him.

Because when it came to murder, Lewis Apgard was about to learn, you paid the piper what he asked, and you danced to his tune until he said you were done.

Second morning on the island; a pounding at Pender’s door.

“Good mornin’, Edgar! Are you awake?”

Eight o’clock, according to the watch on the nightstand, next to the motionless gecko. “If I ain’t, I’m dreaming about you. That can’t be a good sign.”

Julian pushed the door open. He was already in uniform-pressed khaki pants, pressed khaki short-sleeved shirt with navy blue tabs at the shoulders; no rank, no insignia. He handed Pender a mug of steaming coffee under the mosquito net. “Time to get cracking, me son. I just got off the phone with the Machete Man-we may have another victim on our hands.”

“He called you?”

“No, I called him, what do you think?”

Pender took a life-giving sip of hot coffee. “Get me up to speed.”

“A call came in twenty minutes ago. Man’s voice, muffled. ‘It took you so long to find the others, this time I’m going to give you a hint. The old mill tower.’ Hangs up before I can ask him which one.”

“Your home number-it’s listed?”

“Always has been.”

“And you didn’t recognize the voice?”

“He spoke in a whisper, used a phony British accent.”

“That tells us something then,” said Pender.

“What?”

“That he’s not British. Do I have time to take a shower?”

“Make it a quick one-bodies don’t keep well in these latitudes.”

In the bad old days, when King Cane ruled St. Luke, every plantation had its own grinding mill, Julian explained to Pender as they drove east along the southern arc of the Circle Road. Some were powered by wind, some by steam, some by oxen, some by slaves-and every last one of them had been rendered gradually obsolete after emancipation and the development of the sugar beet made growing cane economically unfeasible.

There were only a few producing cane fields left on the island, said Julian-you can’t make decent rum from beets. But there were still at least a dozen old mill towers standing, or falling, in various states of repair, all across the island. “I have my people checking out each of them, but the most likely spot for a body drop is the tower on Sugar Loaf Hill. It’s isolated but well-known and easy to drive to-I reserved that one for us.”

“Lucky us,” said Pender.

Sugar Loaf Hill was a rounded lump standing alone in the middle of a burned-out autumnal canebrake. The tower was conical, crumbling, thirty feet in diameter at the bottom, ten at the jagged top. Great round stones were tumbled about at the base, along with broken fingers of mortar, dry worm castings, sandwich wrappers, broken bottles, empty pop and beer cans, used condoms. Julian parked the Mercedes at the bottom of the little hill. Pender followed him up the slope and around the ruins to the arched doorway. A date was chiseled into the lintel stone in triangular strokes: 1792.

Julian squatted just outside the archway; Pender peered over his shoulder into the dimness. Inside, no grinding wheel, no mill works. Just a round dirt floor speckled with grayish white bird shit, and a naked corpse lying on its side in the center of the room, with its back to the doorway and its head resting on its outstretched right arm, which had been severed at the wrist. The end of the stump was covered with swarming blackflies. Their buzzing was the loudest sound in the ruins, with Pender’s heavy breathing a close second.

“Caucasian,” said Julian-the corpse’s skin was tanned all over, but the hair was whitish blond in the light pouring through the broken top of the tower.

“Female,” said Pender-there was no mistaking the cellolike curve of a woman’s back, the narrow waist, the flaring hip, the heart-shaped ass.

“I’ll be right back,” said Julian. “Don’t muck up my crime scene.”

As Julian hurried back down to his car to use the police band radio-no cell service on St. Luke as yet-Pender stepped carefully into the tower and circled wide around the body, keeping to the perimeter of the conical stone walls so as not to disturb any transfer evidence left by the killer. There were no visible footprints except for his own, which meant the killer might have swept his way out of the tower-but you never knew what a good criminalist could pick up.

“Hello there,” murmured Pender as he approached the corpse from the other direction. “Tell me a little about yourself.”

But she didn’t have much to say, other than that she was, or had been, a Caucasian female, between twenty-five and forty years of age, tall, slender, with long, blond hair that matched her pubic hair. Full body tan, no bikini line, no stretch marks. No marks anywhere, except for a few old tomboy scars on her knees-and of course the missing hand.