Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

Vijay Winstone was the responding officer. Normally he’d have been glad for something to do, but his goal that night had been to get through his shift without getting wet. Buncha crazy hippies, was his first reaction.

He asked if they were sure they’d searched every building.

Yes, they were sure.

And the child was last seen when?

The auntie had tucked her into bed around eight o’clock, read her a story. She was there when the brother, the armless boy, went to sleep at nine, and wasn’t missed until around ten-thirty.

Did anybody see or hear anything out of the ordinary during those ninety minutes?

Car left like a bat out of hell between ten and ten-thirty, reported Miss Blessingdon, a nurse at Missionary who lived down by the lane-she could narrow down the time, she said, because she’d been listening to the BBC news on the radio.

And Pender? When was the last time anyone had seen him?

Shrugs all around. Vijay got on the squawkbox (and in his old Plymouth cruiser it really did squawk) and asked the desk sergeant about Pender.

“Lef’ here around eight. Ain’ seen nor heard from him since.”

“Maybe you’d better call de chief,” said Vijay.

“Maybe you’d better call de chief,” said the desk sergeant.

“No phone line out here.”

“I’ll patch you t’rough.”

“Give me a few more minutes-I’ll get back to you.”

Vijay, who didn’t want to spend the rest of his career working night shifts, would have to be awfully sure there was a problem before he called the chief at home so close to midnight. But as he slipped the microphone back into its wire cradle, someone banged on the window of his cruiser. It was the armless boy, the brother of the missing girl, knocking with his head to get Vijay’s attention. Vijay rolled down the window.

“What is it, buoy?”

“Come quick, see what I found.”

Vijay pulled up the hood of his department-issue yellow slicker, stepped back out into the rain, followed the barefoot, dripping wet, pajama-clad boy down the lane and around the side of the A-frame to the right of the lane. Holding the butt end of a pencil flashlight in his mouth, the boy shined the beam downward. Vijay followed with the more powerful beam of his eighteen-inch cop torch/truncheon, illuminated a department-issue semiautomatic pistol lying in the brush beside the muddy path just beyond the A-frame.

“Dot’s Pendah’s gun, sah,” said Marley, unconsciously slipping into deep dialect.

Vijay patted him on the shoulder. “Good work, wait here, don’t let nobody touch nuttin’.” Then he stripped off his own slicker and draped it over the boy’s shoulders, buttoned the top button under the boy’s chin to hold it on, raced back to his cruiser, snatched up the microphone, and told the desk sergeant to patch him through to the chief.

Standing in the rain outside the cave entrance, Lewis and Emily went through one more round of Alphonse and Gaston before Lewis acceded to her demand that he go first. He didn’t think she knew about the grenades, but he didn’t want to take the chance of inflaming her suspicions. And his options were limited-if he killed her then and there, he might not have time to uncork and heave the grenades before Phil or Bennie came out to investigate the sound of the gunshot.

He pocketed his gun, started down the tunnel on his hands and knees, flashlight bumping the ground as he crawled. What he saw encouraged him: the floor of the tunnel was solid rock, as he’d remembered, but the walls and ceiling were boulders and dirt, with roots showing through in places. It certainly looked as if a grenade would bring it down-the hard part was going to be preventing the grenade from rolling all the way down the slope and exploding in the first chamber instead of sealing the tunnel. Have to either hold it a couple seconds or roll it slow. Or maybe blow them all to hell with the first grenade, then leave the second near the mouth of the tunnel and run lak fuck.

Lewis emerged into the first chamber. Reflected by the shiny black wall, helmet lamps and flashlights illuminated the sandy floor, the dragon’s-tooth stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Pender and the girl were to the left of the tunnel opening, sitting with their backs against the wall. Bennie was holding the gun on them. Phil and Bennie had taken off their backpacks. Phil was digging through his trying to find something with which to tie up Pender. They were all still dripping wet.

Emily emerged from the bottom of the tunnel, pushing her backpack ahead of her. She stood up, stretched to her full five feet three inches, arched her spine, pressed her thumbs against the small of her aching back.

“Did you bring some rope?” Phil asked her.

“ I wasn’t planning to have to tie up anybody.”

“Neither was I,” said Phil quickly, flashing her a meaningful spouse-to-spouse warning glare. Apgard didn’t know he’d snatched the girl on purpose, much less why. Probably wouldn’t approve, either. Most people wouldn’t-then again, most people weren’t as free from societal constraints as the Drs. Epp. “Didn’t we leave some rope in the cross chamber last time?”

“I think we did. Bennie?”

Bennie half turned. Pender, who’d been waiting for his chance, launched himself upward, diving for the gun. His foot slipped on the sand. Bennie sidestepped nimbly, pistol-whipped Pender once across the back of his already battered skull as he came flailing by, and again as he fell unconscious to the cave floor, bleeding profusely from a nasty scalp laceration.

Phil had to laugh. “Guess we won’t be needing that rope after all,” he said.

“He’s still breathing,” said Emily, pointedly.

It took Phil a second-then he realized what she was hinting at. After all, he had the little girl’s dying breath to look forward to. Might as well tie Pender up in case he regained consciousness, keep him around for Emily. She’d always liked the big strong ones. “I’ll go get those ropes.”

“I’ll help you.”

“Don’t bother, I-”

Emily gave him a meaningful spouse-to-spouse glare of her own. “I said, I’ll help you.” She had a few things she wanted to talk over privately-such as, how far did he think they could trust Apgard? She had gotten some pretty hinky vibes off him out there-it wasn’t hard to tell he didn’t approve of their taking the girl.

So after instructing Bennie in Indonesian to keep Apgard there, Emily switched on her headlamp again, followed Phil down the first winding passage, and caught up to him in the second chamber. They picked their way around the obstacle course of purple traffic cone stalagmites, and were halfway down the slightly narrower second passageway-the white walls of the third chamber had just appeared in the beam of their headlamps-when they heard the explosion behind them.

It didn’t take Julian long to figure out where Pender had gone after leaving headquarters. He sent a squad car out to Estate Apgard. Nobody home at the overseer’s house; Dodge van in the driveway. Nobody home at the Great House; dark blue Bentley in the stable.

Upon receiving this information, the Chief issued a BOLO for Apgard’s black Land Rover. If it was still on the road, they’d find it-it wasn’t that big an island, and there weren’t that many miles of road. But if it was off road, they’d either have to wait for the FBI to send a chopper from Puerto Rico, assuming they had one to spare, or rent one from Island Tours, at a hundred and fifty bucks an hour, plus fuel.

Julian’s mind was racing. What else could he accomplish by telephone? Of course: get Judge Seaman out of bed to issue a telephonic warrant for all Apgard’s property, then send Hamilton and Felix out, one to toss the Great House and the other the overseer’s house.