Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

The Great House stood silent and empty-Lewis had let it be known there would be no reception. Let the Twelve Danish Families and the Hokansson cousins and the Ladies Who Golf feed their own faces and drink their own booze-Lewis was condolenced out.

What he really wanted to do was get drunk and laid, but he’d reached that point where rum only seemed to sharpen his senses. He kept seeing things he really didn’t want to: the bones in the coffee can; Hokey in the morgue; Bendt’s hand palm up in the ivy, blood-spattered fingers curled.

Of course, getting laid wasn’t a real strong possibility either, Lewis realized as he shucked off his black suit and tossed it in the direction of the hamper. He wasn’t even all that horny-or if he was, it was a strange kind of horny. It wasn’t so much sex he desired as desire itself. He tried unsuccessfully to masturbate in the shower, conjuring up every woman he had ever fucked, or seen fucking, and always coming back to the dick-shriveling thought of Hokey in the shower. Oh how we danced on the night we were wed, oh how we fucked on the night that she died.

After his shower, and a nap that left him more tired than he’d been before he lay down, Lewis changed into shorts, rubber sandals, and a T-shirt and went down to the kitchen to make a sandwich. There was carved ham in the meat bin, sliced Swiss in the cheese bin, and half a loaf of Sally’s homemade bread in the bread box. And in the freezer were two full bottles of white Reserve, one of which had the words MR LEWIS scrawled on the label-apparently his snooty cook wasn’t comfortable sharing a bottle with her boss. Of course with Hokey gone he could fire her now, but he didn’t want to lose Johnny, her husband, as well.

Lewis took his sandwich and his rum out back to the pool. Daylight was fading rapidly-and in the tropics, rapid means rapid. Within half an hour the sky was black straight up, midnight blue around the rim, splashed with fat round stars. He turned on the pool lights-it looked inviting but he wasn’t supposed to get his bandage wet. He kicked off his sandals and sat at the shallow end, dangling his bare feet in the warm water, watching the ripples spreading outward. His mind started flashing on the words fait accompli. Fait a-fucking-compli. Rest of your life ahead of you, me son.

Then a rustle in the oleander bushes. “Hsst. Over here.” Bennie, from next door, crouched in the shrubbery so he couldn’t be seen from the house. “They wanna see you. They say why you no come over.”

“Tell them I think we should stay away from each other for a while. No calls, no visits, until things blow over.”

“You tell ’em.”

“I don’t think you quite have the picture here, Bennie.” Lewis climbed out of the pool, looked around for a towel to dry his feet. “How can I tell them if-”

Bennie gone, mon.

Struck out on the Epps: the alibi held up. Uniforms had begun canvassing the island with Frieda Schaller’s picture, which would be in the next day’s paper, but Julian admitted privately to Pender that for the locals, trying to pick one tourist out of the descending horde from a holiday cruise ship was like trying to identify a single longhorn a year after the stampede.

They more or less struck out on Fraulein Schaller’s credit card, too. The German police had already pulled her records: there was only one charge on St. Luke: a twenty-five-dollar dinner at Captain Wick’s. “A popular tourist spot-there’s a live sea turtle chained to a cement wading pool in the courtyard,” said Julian.

The restaurant was located about halfway between Frederikshavn and the Core, on the Circle Road. Pender volunteered to stop off on his way home, interview the staff, show Schaller’s picture around.

The first thing he noticed when he pulled into Captain Wick’s nearly deserted parking lot was that it was on the side of the building, not out front. There was no valet service and the lot itself couldn’t be seen from inside the restaurant, which made it an ideal place to pick somebody up without being seen.

Pender could picture the contact between the killer and the vic: Can I give you a lift back to your ship, Fraulein? It can be dangerous around here at night. And the taxis are so unreliable.

His mind continued to spin off the scenario as he walked around to the entrance. Had the vic also been trolling? For companionship? Sex? Romance?

Swinging half doors led to an open-air courtyard. The outdoor tables were all unoccupied. The giant sea turtle had one of those just-shoot-me looks. So did the maitre d’, when Pender made the obligatory joke about not ordering the turtle soup, and his forced laugh was a terrible thing to hear. But he didn’t recognize Frieda Schaller, and neither did anyone else on staff. At least no one who was working Sunday; the turtle wasn’t talking.

Like Apgard, Pender made himself a sandwich for dinner; like Apgard, he ate it al fresco, on the patio. The rain tree at sunset was exquisite, but after a few minutes Pender found himself jonesing for a football game. He wondered how the ’Skins were doing, and if Spurrier was still playing musical quarterbacks. First week of October, the leaves would be just starting to turn, back home. He felt as if he’d been away for months.

Which he might be yet, for all the progress they were making on the investigation. For a while there, he’d really thought he was on to something. That look in Apgard’s eyes when he saw the Epps at the funeral-Pender couldn’t stop thinking about it. But they all had airtight alibis. Or did they? Apgard had an alibi for his wife’s murder, but not for Bendt’s. The Epps had an alibi for Bendt, but not for Mrs. Apgard.

And such good alibis they were. That in itself was somewhat suspicious. In his thirty years as an investigator, one thing Pender had learned was how rare a good alibi was, especially at night. Hell, he himself didn’t have an alibi for either night.

At the meeting this afternoon they had all spoken of the killer as a he, singular, but the more Pender thought about it, the better he liked the idea of a conspiracy. Overlapping alibis. The Epps and Apgard. They scratched his itch, he scratched theirs.

Of course at this point it was only a hypothesis, but definitely worth checking out, especially in the absence of any other, more likely, hypotheses. Tomorrow then, Pender promised himself, he would interview the Epps and their mysterious Indonesian companion. Apgard, too. Check his alibi for Bendt, theirs for Mrs. Apgard.

And if they didn’t have alibis, or if he got the chill during the conversation (always trust the chill, was one of Pender’s mottos), maybe he’d put some pressure on. The opposite of an affective interview-he’d see if he could make them squirm, react, do or say something incriminating. Old cop trick: invent some imaginary evidence, a fingerprint, a shoe print, see how they reacted. Conspiracies were often easier to crack than single perp crimes, because you could turn the conspirators against each other.

Darkness fell. The mosquitos arrived with a vengeance. Pender went back inside, cracked the seal on a bottle of Jim Beam. The knee-high refrigerator hadn’t succeeded in making ice yet, so Pender didn’t bother with a glass.

The first slug tasted so good Pender sucked in a great whoosh of air afterward just to taste the fumes. The second went down easier still, and the third had him feeling convivial. He pulled his wide-brimmed Panama down low on his brow, buttoned his shirt collar, rolled his shirtsleeves down, pulled out his shirttails to cover his kidney holster, then smeared insect repellent on every inch of skin that was still uncovered except his eyes. He left the A-frame by the front door, and strolled down the starlight-shadowed lane.