Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

Oh-ho, thought Pender, crossing his legs and turning casually to the right. A white couple was making their way down the aisle. The man was tall, late sixties, with long dangling arms and a graying beard, the woman shorter and younger, early forties, with an untamed nest of bushy, ginger-colored hair and a dumpy figure, except for a bosom not even her dowdy black dress could hide.

“Who are they?” he whispered to Holly; the service had just begun.

“Phil and Emily Epp,” she whispered back.

The name registered immediately-but only as a name that registered. It took Pender a few seconds to rummage through the case file in his head before he placed them as Apgard’s nearest neighbors, the ones who’d hadn’t seen or heard anything the night Hokey Apgard died. “What do you know about them?”

“Sshh, be quiet. I’ll tell you later.” Holly was always a little self-conscious in a church. No matter how nice the people were, she could never quite shake the feeling that somebody might stand up at any minute, point an accusing finger in her direction, and yell, Get the hell out of here, you killed Christ.

The two detectives, Felix and Hamilton, were already waiting in the chief’s office when Pender and Julian arrived after the funeral service. There was a copy of that morning’s San Juan Star on the desk. Pender picked it up and read the lead story under the headline Serial Killer Stalks St. Luke. They had it all, the count, the MO, even the nickname Machete Man.

“Perry Faartoft says he’s going to print everything he’s got tomorrow. I can’t blame him-he’s been scooped on his own reporter’s murder. I’m afraid it’s all coming out in the wash, gentlemen. I spent half the morning closeted with the governor, assuring him that everything was under control. My nose grew three inches.”

“Everybody I talk to t’inks it’s a down-islander, Chief,” said Arthur Felix, the skinny, jumpy junior detective.

“Everybody always thinks it’s a down-islander, Arthur-you’re going to have to narrow it down a little further than that. How about you, Edgar? Picked up anything at the Core?”

“No, but I noticed something at the church today. What do you know about a couple named Epps, live next door to Apgard?”

“That’s Epp-no s. Philip and Emily. Anthropologists. Moved to St. Luke around six years ago, along with their houseman, an Indonesian named Bennie something. They’re studying Carib remains. Why?”

“I happened to be looking at Apgard’s face when they showed up for the funeral. He looked away before I could get a read on it-but whatever he was thinking, it wasn’t thanks for coming.”

Detective Hamilton looked up-as slow at reading as he was at everything else, he’d just finished the newspaper article. “I questioned dem a’ready. Dey ain’ know shit.”

“Might be worth going back, ask them where they were Friday night.”

“Way ahead a ya, G-mon,” said Hamilton. He told them what Mrs. Dr. Epp, as he called her, had said about going to Puerto Rico for some convention this weekend.

“Check it out, verify they were there,” said Coffee. “But don’t ask them directly-we don’t want to alert them. Just ascertain whether they were on the boat, maybe call San Juan, see where the convention was held, find out where they stayed, get check-in and check-out times. If we can’t rule them out as suspects, we’ll bring them in and question them separately.”

“Waste of time,” muttered Hamilton.

“Let’s rule them out anyway.” Coffee turned back to Felix. “Any luck with that picture of the German girl yet?”

“Just came in dis mornin’, Chief-we’re printin’ it up now.”

“When it’s done, I want all available officers canvassing the island with it. Anyone who’s working anything else, pull them off it. Anyone on leave, call them in: all days off are canceled until further notice. If anyone on this island saw that woman even briefly, I want to hear about it. Edgar, do you have anything to add?”

“Just that I’m not at all comfortable with the direction this thing is taking. Our killer has gone from hiding his victims to dropping them off to leaving them at the crime scene. He even left the hand behind this time, which he’s never done before. Plus his cycle seems to be shortening. We had three murders in the last two years, that we know about, and two, possibly three, in the last week. As for your down-islander, Artie: our man is obviously mobile, and he obviously knows St. Luke like the back of his hand, so if he is a down-islander, he’s a down-islander with a vehicle who’s lived here long enough to know his way around like a native.”

“Tell me somet’in I don’ know,” replied Detective Felix.

Sure thing, thought Pender: you’re an incompetent asshole. But Hamilton was worse-apparently Julian busted him down to uniform two, three times a year, but hadn’t yet found anybody better to replace him. It was a ramshackle department, underpaid, and except for Julian and Layla, undertrained.

So after the meeting, alone with Coffee, Pender conceded that it might be time to blow the Garry Owen and call in the cavalry.

“The Bureau, you mean?”

Pender nodded.

“I already did.”

“You asked for help from the Bureau?”

“Yesterday.”

“Without telling me?”

“I didn’t want you to think I’d lost faith in you. Sherbridge said they have every available agent working counterterrorism. He put us on the list-perhaps by November, he said.”

“By November, the bodies are going to be stacked up like cord-wood,” said Pender. “Any chance of getting some help from Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands?”

“There’s no tradition of reciprocity-they look upon tourism as a finite pie. No, Edgar, I’m afraid this one is all ours.”

“Their loss,” said Pender, as if the flop sweat weren’t already flowing again. “We’ll just have to hog all the glory for ourselves.”

Nowadays you practically had to be a Hokansson or an Apgard to be buried in the old Lutheran churchyard. The Hokansson plot was prime real estate, nicely situated under a flaming red Never-Be-Thirsty tree, so named because you could squirt drinkable water from the unopened buds. They buried Hokey next to where her parents had been laid to rest-twice, once after their murder and a second time after Hurricane Hugo exhumed several of the twentieth-century occupants in ’95.

The interment itself was restricted to family. By the time the minister finished dust-to-dusting Hokey, Lewis was the soberest he’d been since waking up that morning, which was the soberest he’d been since fleeing the overseer’s house in horror the night before, which was too sober entirely. He couldn’t wait to get to that flask in the glove compartment of the Bentley. Should have put it in his pocket instead-after all, who the hell was going to say anything, grieving widower at his wife’s funeral?

It had shaken him, having the Epps pop up unexpectedly like that, and it hadn’t helped his nerves any when Phil took his hand in the receiving line as the crowd filed out of the church, pulled him close, and whispered into his ear that they needed to talk-ASAP.

But the FBI man, Pender, was watching Lewis from the back pew. “Thank you, I’ll miss her, too,” he’d said loudly, then used the Guv’s technique for moving people along a receiving line-shake their right hand with your right, usher them along with a gentle but firm pressure of your left hand on their elbow or upper arm.

But he couldn’t get it out of his head all during the interment service. Talk? With those ghouls? What did they have to talk about now? He’d fulfilled his end of the bargain-surely the best thing for all of them would be to break off any further contact as quickly and completely as possible, he told himself, as he tossed his ceremonial scoop of earth on the heavy, sealed casket. Ka-chunk.