Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

The moon had dropped behind the ridge when Lewis reached the high wooden fence at the end of the pasture. He slipped sideways through the narrow stile. The path began to rise almost immediately; Lewis switched on the white LED beam as sharp-smelling turpentine trees closed out the sky.

The forest path had been cleared in the 1700s as a thoroughfare for the wagons hauling Apgard cane up the hill to the windmill at the summit of the ridge. As a boy, Lewis used to play at driving imaginary slave-, mule-, and ox-drawn wagons with his great-great-grandfather’s old bullwhip. As a man he’d used the path on his Peeping Tom expeditions to the Core.

The fingernail moon was just setting behind the sea when Lewis reached the stone ruins at the summit. The blades and works of the windmill itself were long gone, but the stone tower still stood. Say what you would about those old slave-driving Danes-they knew how to build.

Lewis switched off the LED and used the red laser and the starlight to guide him down the other side of the ridge, then switched off the laser as the lights of the Core winked into view through the trees.

Holly’s cabin was about the size of a double-wide trailer, with a plank floor, plywood walls left open around the top for ventilation (fine-mesh plastic screening kept the bugs out-and in), and a corrugated tin roof. The bedrooms were on either end. The middle room served as kitchen, dining, and living rooms-some long-departed, ingenious Peace Corps carpenter had fitted it out with counters that folded up and a table that folded down.

There was neither running water nor electricity in the cabin. Holly did most of her cooking in the big, open-sided communal kitchen down by the lane, which had both electricity and water, plus a big iron restaurant stove, an enormous refrigerator (all contents labeled with the owner’s name, and woe betide the poacher), two industrial-sized sinks, and two long trestle tables.

But the Golds usually ate as a family, back in the cabin. Mealtimes, therefore, involved considerable schlepping, of which Dawn did a major share, sometimes cheerfully and sometimes with a sigh, a toss of her tawny plaits, and a put-upon trudge. Marley was the family dishwasher-it occasionally gave Core newcomers a start to see him sitting on a high stool, with a dishrag in one foot and a plate in the other, but they always got over it.

Holly had to leave for work right after dinner. Her remunerative weekend nights at Busy Hands still provided the bulk of her income. Usually she let the kids stay in the cabin by themselves, and arranged for either Dawson or one of the other Corefolk to check in on them, supervise bedtime, be available for emergencies. But not with the Machete Man on the prowl. Tonight Dawson would stay in the cabin with the kids and sleep in Holly’s bed. This worked out well for all concerned. Though Dawson wouldn’t have admitted it under pain of torture, she wasn’t exactly thrilled about the idea of sleeping alone in the first hut this side of the forest.

Friday nights were the busiest night at the ’Hands. Six masseuses, and the waiting room crowded with down-island men. Depressed as the St. Luke economy was, there were islands in the Caribbean that were more depressed still, and many of their men found their way to St. Luke. Those that didn’t find work moved on. Those that did lined up at the post office every Friday to purchase money orders to send home to their families on Antigua or St. Vincent or St. Lucia. Afterward they made the rounds of the Frederikshavn bars, and after that, many of the ones who for religious, sentimental, or hygienic reasons didn’t seek out one of the down-island whores on Wharf Street, ended up at Busy Hands.

Holly of course didn’t know much about the men who sought their pleasures on Wharf Street, but the ones who came to the parlor were surprisingly polite, even shy, once they were on the table with their clothes off. They all called her Miss Holly, they were all appreciative of her legitimate massage work, and while most, though not all, wanted extras, they usually kept their hands to themselves, and not even the drunkest had ever spoken to her like that schmuck at Blue Valley.

And serial killer or no serial killer, Busy Hands was probably one of the safest places on the island-Mrs. Ishigawa had an armed bouncer on the premises every night, two on weekends. But when Holly left work that night, she found herself locking all of Daisy’s doors, which she’d never done before, and her Mysterian prayers for Daisy’s clutch to hold out were more heartfelt than usual.

Holly made it home without incident. After parking Daisy just inside the gate, which no one had bothered to lock-it wasn’t like the killer was going to come driving up the lane-she climbed the hillside and let herself into the darkened cabin. She checked on the kids first, standing in the doorway for a few moments listening to them breathing in their sleep. Dawnie sounded a little nasal; Holly hoped she wasn’t coming down with a cold.

She tiptoed into her own bedroom. Dawson was asleep under the covers, facing the wall. Holly undressed quietly, so as not to wake her strictly platonic friend, and changed into her bathrobe, which was hanging as usual on the bedside chair (also her desk chair, given the dimensions of the room).

On her way out, Holly grabbed the string shower bag containing toothpaste, toothbrush, a towel, a bath brush, bottles of Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Soap, shampoo and conditioner, a box of Cobra brand mosquito coils, a lighter, and the old Sucrets tin in which she kept her roaches-she’d smoked the last of the chronic two nights earlier.

But she’d only gone a few steps when it suddenly occurred to her that perhaps waltzing blithely into the night wasn’t the brightest move in the world, with a serial killer on the loose. She hurried back to the cabin, tiptoed into the kids’ room, and rummaged through the shoebox containing Marley’s miscellaneous treasures-marbles, foreign coins, stones, seashells, empty shell casings, etc.-until she found his silver referee’s whistle, which she slipped into her bathrobe pocket.

The Crapaud was an echoing, tin-roofed, cinder-block building with a sloping cement floor for drainage, sinks and shower stalls on one side, and a row of toilet stalls behind swinging green wooden doors on the other.

Holly closed the door quickly to keep the mosquitos out. She shined her flashlight around-the Crapaud was empty. She settled into her favorite stall, smoked a good-sized roach, and browsed an old Rolling Stone by flashlight (each stall boasted a magazine rack) while sitting on one of the thrones. No flush plumbing-the toilet seats were mounted over holes above a deep black stinking pit into which lime was thrown at irregular intervals.

By this time, Holly was used to the pit, but she’d never really gotten used to the cold showers. She entered the stall, hung her bathrobe on the peg, balanced her flashlight on the window ledge, pointing down, turned the tap, and was dancing furiously under the resulting flow of cold water when she heard the creaky Crapaud door being opened.

“Help me.” A man’s voice, barely audible.

Holly turned the water off. “Who’s there?”

“Help me, please God, help me.”

She put on her bathrobe, wrapped the towel around her hair, grabbed her flashlight, and opened the stall door.

They heard the whistle from one end of the Core to the other. Ruford Shea, dressed only in high-rise bikini underpants, was the first to reach the Crapaud; by then Holly was sitting on the floor with Fran Bendt’s head in her lap. She had wrapped the belt of her bathrobe around Fran’s right forearm, which had been severed at the wrist. Ruford helped her twist a tourniquet using the handle of her bath brush; by the time they’d stopped the bleeding they were covered with blood, and the cement floor was slippery with it.