Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

Fortunately, the best way to cure flop sweat is also the best way to catch a serial killer: hard work, total immersion in the minutiae, and a determination never to give up.

And it wouldn’t hurt to be a little closer to the action, either, Pender decided. He found Julian out behind the Crapaud, helping Layla collect samples of bloodstained vegetation, on the theory that if Bendt had put up any sort of struggle, the Machete Man might have shed some of his own blood. He told Julian what he had in mind.

“Are you sure? There’s no indoor plumbing, you know.”

“I’ll rough it.”

“Your choice,” said Julian. “I’ll square things with Ziggy.”

“She won’t mind,” said Pender. “You know what they say about houseguests and fish.”

“Good morning, Agent Pender,” Apgard, sleep-tousled, in rumpled shirt and shorts, met Pender at the door and ushered him into the drawing room.

“Good morning, Mr. Apgard. Sorry to have to bother you.” Julian had insisted Pender take a cruiser to use for the duration, instead of the Vespa. Pender had had the switchboard operator patch him through to Apgard on his way over from the Core, to let him know he was coming.

“Not at all. What was it you needed to see me about?”

Pender answered with a question of his own. “When did you last see your tenant, Francis Bendt?”

“Let me think-Thursday? No, Wednesday-I remember because that was the second of the month, the day after his rent was due. We had a drink at the Sunset, he gave me a sob story, I told him pay up or move out, he paid up. Why?”

“He was murdered last night.”

“My God, no!”

“We think it’s probably the same man who killed your wife. And another of your tenants, a Mr. Arena, has been reported missing.”

Lewis was genuinely thunderstruck this time-it hadn’t occurred to him before that the Epps might be behind Arena’s disappearance as well. “Cheese-an’-bread, that explains that.”

“What explains what?”

“Arena missed his rent, too, this month. First time ever for him. I’m…I can’t…Excuse me.” He crossed the room, opened the glass-fronted liquor cabinet, poured himself a shot of Reserve. “How about you, Agent Pender?”

“I’ll pass.”

Lewis tossed back his first shot of the morning, then sent a friend down the hatch after it. “Were there any clues this time? Do you have any suspects?”

“A few promising leads,” said Pender. That was FBI-speak for zilch. “The reason I’m here, though, is that I’m concerned about the safety of the rest of your tenants at Estate Tamarind-and of course that’s the first place we’re looking at in terms of suspects. And since it looks as though I’m going to be down here longer than I’d anticipated and I’ll need a place to stay anyway…”

“Say no more. Why don’t you take the A-frame at the end of the lane, on the left. Electricity, sleeping loft, gorgeous view.”

Pender asked what it was going for. Apgard said he wouldn’t think of charging him. Just catching whoever was doing this would be payment enough. And the furniture in the storage shed behind the kitchen had all belonged to deadbeats and skip-rents, he added-Pender was to help himself. Pender thanked him, asked him where he could pick up the key to the A-frame.

“No key required,” Apgard replied. “Didn’t seem to be much point putting a lock on a door of a house with plastic screens for walls.”

That last comment continued to resonate with Pender as he left the Great House, bound for the strip mall to stock his new digs. Screen walls, no locks. He decided maybe he’d accept Julian’s offer of a gun to go along with the squad car. Something with double action for a quick double tap. And big. A forty-five at least. Three-fifty-seven Magnum would be even better, Pender decided. Guy’s swinging a machete at you, you don’t just want those first two rounds knocking him down, you want them knocking him backward. Especially if you have plans for that right hand of yours-plans that don’t include separate burial.

You don’t avoid authority successfully for over thirty years by hanging around crime scenes. The previous night Dawson had donned her backpack and lit out for the forest before the police arrived, and had stayed there until the coast had cleared back at the Core.

Or until she thought it had cleared, anyway. The Core seemed to have returned to normal-there were no cops on the hillside-but when she walked down to the kitchen to get her homemade yogurt out of the communal refrigerator, there was a green-and-white police cruiser parked alongside the usual collection of junkers, under the flamboyant tree at the end of the lane.

Her heart started pounding. Fight or flight. Flight or flight, more like it. She spooned a couple of dollops of yogurt into a cereal bowl from the drying rack, sprinkled some wheat germ on, and hurried back up the hill. But not fast enough. She heard a man shouting her name, turned, and saw Pender strolling toward her down the dappled lane. “Dawson!”

My God, she thought-who dresses that man? Yellow-and-green Hawaiian shirt, blue-and-white-plaid Bermudas, orange-and-white flip-flops. His legs were nearly as white as his Panama hat. “Hey, Ed.”

He caught up to her. “Did you hear, we’re neighbors. I just moved into that A-frame at the end of the lane.”

“Welcome to the Core,” said Dawson.

“Thank you. Which one’s your house?”

“That Quonset at the top of the clearing.” She pointed.

“Looks nice and cozy.”

“Cozy-that’s the word.” The floor of the round hut was less than twenty feet across.

“Listen, I was wondering if I could ask you something.”

“I suppose.”

“It’s just, I don’t really know very many people here. And I still owe you for saving my keister the other day. So I was hoping maybe you’d let me take you out to dinner tonight.”

“It’s really not necessary,” said Dawson.

“I know-but it’s a damn good excuse for asking you out,” said Pender. “You’re not going to make me have to think up another one, are you? Because I will if I have to.”

That threw Dawson for a loop. The truth, she thought-what a concept.

Pender wanted to try local cuisine. Dawson suggested the Raintree Room, just outside of Frederikshavn, about a quarter of a mile up the dundo road. Dundo meant darkened, she explained, for the way the forest canopy closed out the sky.

The dundo road-Hettie Jenkuns. “Is there a cemetery up that way?” he asked Dawson. They were in his police cruiser; he’d turned off the two-way radio.

“The old slave burying ground.”

“I’d like to take a look.”

“Just keep driving. Watch for a turnoff on the right, after we pass the public grove.”

THE GOVERNOR CLIFFORD B. APGARD, SR. PUBLIC GROVE, according to the roadside plaque erected by the St. Luke Historical Preservation Society. A few acres of gnarled lime trees-little Key limes.

No plaque marked the turnoff for the slave burying ground-just a rutted dirt track, and even that narrowed until the cruiser could no longer pass. Which meant the Machete Man had to have known this place existed beforehand, thought Pender-he hadn’t just stumbled on it. Which meant in turn that he was either a local or knew something about local history.

Of which Dawson was a fount. Pender followed her down a footpath that opened out onto a level clearing with an enormous baobab tree in the middle. “They say in the old days they used to hold Obeah rituals up here,” she told him. “You know, torches and drums and dancing, maybe sacrifice a chicken under the Judas Bag tree.”

“The what?”