Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

“There’s a tropical storm out there, in case you haven’t noticed,” said Pender.

“And in here, me son, you’re rainin’ all over the parade. Tomorrow morning I’m going to hold a press conference that will simultaneously reassure the public, keep the cruise ships coming, and still leave enough wiggle room to cover me rass, in the unlikely event you’re not entirely full of shit. But we’d all better pray to the gods of tourism that you are, because the Caribbean Princess is docking at the end of the week, and according to the governor’s office, they’re already talking about rerouting to St. Croix instead.”

“And if another little girl like Hettie Jenkuns goes missing?” asked Pender.

“I kiss your hunch in the middle of Government Yard and we start all over.”

Julian went home. Pender closeted himself in his basement office, and with the case files in front of him and the ghosts of the drowned convicts of Hurricane Eloise looking over his shoulder, he scribbled notes on a legal pad, trying out one Machete Man scenario after another, subjecting each one to a check against the facts on file, then discarding or altering it when it failed to conform to those facts.

This was known as the floating point strategy, but the point Pender started from, and the point to which he kept returning, was the Apgard murder. It was the pivotal moment in the Machete Man’s career. It marked a change in the concealment pattern. It brought in a suspect with a motive for the first time, then eliminated him with an airtight alibi.

And except for the actual cause of death being a machete, the following murder, the Bendt murder, had so little in common with the previous ones that it might as well have been committed by someone else entirely. Hand left behind-no souvenirs. Up to then, the Machete Man had been a collector. For the collectors, the souvenir assumed critical importance for various reasons-self-esteem booster, fetish, a way to reexperience the thrill. For the Machete Man, leaving the hand behind was the equivalent of a bank robber leaving the money behind.

Another big difference in the Bendt murder was that there had been no attempt at abduction. Again, for varying reasons-intimacy, control, sexual abuse, torture-almost all serial killers were abductors. If they weren’t, they were usually snipers or serial poisoners.

But the two were different personality types, and killed for different reasons. It would be as out of character for an abductor to commit a hack and run like the Bendt murder as it would be for a collector to leave his souvenir behind.

So forget all the other murders, especially the multiple in the lime grove, and run the old mind-tape all the way back to Hettie Jenkuns, then forward to the Apgard murder. The pivot point, as previously noted. Wife dies, you look long and hard at the husband. What condition was the marriage in? Does he have a lover? Did she? Had he suffered financial reverses? Was there much insurance on her? Because even if he has an alibi, there’s always the possibility of a contract job. Or a trade-off: criminals aren’t the only ones who know about the famous Hitchcock scenario.

And if it was one of those Strangers on a Train deals, thought Pender, he’d had two “persons of interest” in mind since yesterday. The neighbors, the Epps. Who hadn’t seen or heard anything the night of the Apgard murder. And who had offered no alibi for Mrs. Apgard’s murder, but had an airtight alibi of their own for the subsequent, even more anomalous Bendt killing.

Of course, it was still only a hypothesis-and a muddled one at that. He didn’t know whether the original Machete Man was Apgard, one or both of the Epps, Ruford Shea, or someone else entirely, or how many copycat killings there had been-somewhere between none and four-or what had actually taken place in the lime grove.

All he was sure of was that he had to come up with something tonight, something that would convince Julian not to announce publicly that the danger was over and that everybody could relax and let their guard down.

Unfortunately, he had no way of knowing that as far as the Corefolk were concerned, it was too late-their guard was already down.

The news traveled fast. The police had all but dismantled Ruford Shea’s cabin looking for evidence when Holly returned with the kids after school, so everybody at the Core knew. With the storm still pissing buckets at suppertime, the communal kitchen, its tarps rolled down to cover the open sides, became the gossip nexus. Rain drummed steadily on the tin roof, the good old sixties’ smell of brown rice and veggies cooking in toasted sesame oil filled the kitchen, and the following conversation, or a variation thereof, was repeated a dozen or more times:

“I can’t believe it.”

“I know. He seemed like such a nice guy.”

“But you know, that’s what the neighbors always say, whenever it turns out there’s a serial killer living next door.”

“Yeah. And remember the time when Ruford thought somebody had been going through his cabin-how mad he got? Started waving that machete of his around, I thought he was going to kill somebody then and there.”

“Yeah, I always had my doubts about him after that. These down-islanders can be so volatile.”

Unless of course a down-islander was taking part in the conversation, in which case these down-islanders became dose St. Vincent men.

But the talk was harmless enough. Collectively and individually, they felt themselves betrayed; collectively and individually, they healed themselves as bio-organisms do, by forming scar tissue around the injured places. The real danger came when they let down their guard. Collectively and individually, literally and figuratively. Ding-dong, the witch was dead. No more convoys to the Crapaud, no more standing watch, no more tiki torches on the hill or lights in the tamarind trees.

As for Dawson, whipsawed by two conflicting needs, for security and for love, she didn’t know what to think, how to feel. The night before had been wonderful, and this morning, at the Crapaud, she’d seen what she had hoped to see in Pender’s eyes, heard what she had hoped to hear in his voice. It was like that old Shirelles song, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” And although the L-word hadn’t made its first appearance yet, clearly the answer had been yes.

So happy as Dawson was to learn that the danger to herself and her neighbors had passed, her emotions were decidedly mixed. Because everybody knows that after the trouble in town is cleared up, the Lone Ranger always rides off into the sunset.

Holly had no such contradictory emotions. She had no reason to doubt what Detective Hamilton had said, and she couldn’t wait for things to get back to normal. Tomorrow morning, she’d work at the rest home. Tomorrow afternoon she’d work at Blue Valley. And tomorrow night, she promised herself, she would do something for herself: she would drop by the Beda Club and buy the new barmaid a drink.

Because if Holly had learned one lesson from this whole Machete Man episode, it was that old one about gathering rosebuds while ye may. And if Holly was any judge of women, that new barmaid, whom she’d met at the clothing optional beach at Smuggler’s Cove yesterday-the one with the butch haircut and the killer bod, who claimed to own all of Tracy Chapman’s CDs, and to have seen every movie Jodi Foster had ever made-was a rosebud ripe for the picking.

With time running out and the rain still coming down, Pender raided the equipment locker for binoculars and stopped off at the island’s only 7-Eleven for sandwiches and a thermosful of coffee before driving out to the Great House.