Kathy Reichs - Break No Bones

I yanked on jeans and a T, pulled my hair back, slapped on mascara, and hurried downstairs.

Pete was gone, I assumed to continued actuarial torture. Boyd and Birdie were in the kitchen, eyeing each other over an upended cereal bowl.

Birdie split when I appeared. Boyd sat. He had milk on his snout.

"You're busted, chow."

I placed the bowl in the sink, poured coffee, and checked my arm. A bruise was starting that would eventually grow to spectacular proportions. And colors.

When I unpegged his leash, Boyd went berserk. I ran him out to the curb. The yard was littered with palmetto fronds and other debris.

After watering the Dumpster, the mailbox, and a fallen branch, Boyd started up the road. I tugged him back to the house. He twirled the eyebrow hairs. Are you nuts?

"Payback for the Cheerios caper," I said.

The brow hairs went crazy.

I downed a granola bar and headed for MUSC. The sheriff was waiting by the morgue door.

Gullet took the James Island connector over the Ashley and headed south. Shortly, signs gave directions to Folly Beach.

As he drove, Gullet shared what he knew. It was little more than he'd told me on the phone. Fishermen. Barrel. Body.

I asked why the coroner had requested my presence. Gullet speculated that the corpse would be less than pristine.

I gazed out the window, letting houses, trees, and utility poles blur. Gullet initiated no further conversation. I noticed he kept sneaking glances at my elbow.

I remembered Pete's Sunday morning car. Last night's bottle. What the hell. If someone was bent on harassing me, it might help for the sheriff to know. I told him what had happened.

"You raise some hackles around here?" Gullet asked in his usual flat tone.

"I pissed off a reporter named Homer Winborne."

"Winborne's harmless."

"And a developer named Richard Dupree?"

"Surprised the State Department hasn't pressed ole Dickie into service. Man's a born diplomat."

"Is he harmless?"

Gullet hesitated. "Mostly."

Mostly? I let it go.

Fifteen minutes after crossing the Ashley River, Gullet veered onto a small road cutting through marsh. On both sides, spartina and needlerush arrowed from sparkling amber toward an immaculate blue sky. Lowering my window, I breathed a primeval perfume of growth and decay. Oysters. Fiddler crabs. A million invertebrates older than time.

Buoyed, I gave communication a go.

"Did you know that South Carolina has more marsh acreage than any other Atlantic Coast state?"

Gullet looked at me, then back at the road.

"The lab boys finished with Pinckney's wallet."

"Anything in it besides the license?"

"Nothing much. Bunch of coupons for buy-one-get-one-free meals, a grocery store discount card, a lottery ticket, sixty-four bucks, and a Trojan Magnum XL."

"Pinckney was an optimist."

"In more ways than one."

For the rest of the trip I observed egrets, bodies white amid the rippling green grass, spindly legs rising from the dark mudflats.

When Gullet pulled the Explorer to a stop, I had only a vague idea where we were. Ahead were two shacks shaded by an enormous yaupon holly. Beyond the shacks, a wooden pier jutted into what I guessed was either the Stono River or some tentacle of an Atlantic estuary.

Two vehicles were present. A cruiser with lights flashing, radio sputtering, and a black panel truck.

Red-winged blackbirds rose in a squawking gaggle as Gullet and I climbed from the Explorer. A uniform left the cruiser to greet us. I recognized the hawk nose and razor creases. Deputy H. Tybee.

"Sheriff. Ma'am." Tybee touched his brim to each of us. "Gentleman named Oswald Moultrie discovered the DOA while checking his crab pots this morning. Lives yonder." Tybee raised his chin to the first shack.

"Thought they'd stumbled on Blackbeard's lost treasure?" Gullet was staring past Tybee toward the pier.

"I don't know the answer to that, sir." Humor was not Tybee's forte. "Following your orders, we've secured the site and left everything as we found it."

"You got statements?"

"Yes, sir."

"Who lives in the other shack?"

"The one with the red awning belongs to Moultrie's brother, Leland."

I followed Gullet as he left Tybee and walked toward the water. I could see that the inlet was narrow, at points barely wide enough to allow the passage of two boats. The tide was out, leaving the pier high above the bank. The rickety wooden structure reminded me of the egrets, rising from the mud on long stick legs.

Two men sat smoking under Leland's awning. They looked like clones. Black. Wiry. Gray plastic glasses. The Brothers Moultrie.

Lee Ann Miller and another sheriff's deputy were at the shore end of the pier. Gullet and I joined them. Greetings were exchanged. The deputy's name was Zamzow. He appeared close to being sick.

As I walked to the pier, my nostrils picked up a sharp, rancid odor mingling with the smell of salt and decaying vegetation. Behind me conversation continued. Speculation on how the barrel had gotten up the creek. Suggestions concerning the best way to retrieve it.

Blocking the voices, I focused.

The pier was outfitted with a wooden platform for scaling and gutting fish. Flies were holding a jamboree on its surface. Two rusted crab pots lay to one side of the platform. A long-handled ax leaned against the other.

I looked down.

The water was dark green, the mud black and slime-slick. Tiny crabs darted this way and that, moving sideways, claws brandished like gladiator shields. Here and there, I could pick out the three-prong pattern of bird tracks.

The barrel lay half submerged, a dead thing beached by the storm. Boot prints led to and from it. The surrounding mud was chaos, churned by the Moultries' efforts to drag their booty up the incline.

A chain looped the barrel. Some links were corroded, most looked solid. I noted nicks in both the barrel and chain.

The barrel's lid lay on the mud, inner side up. A deep gouge buckled one edge.

Inside the barrel, I could see a hairless scalp, a face, the features eerily pale in the muddy brown water.

I was ready.

"Looks like an oil drum," I said, rejoining the others.

"Rusty as a coffin nail," Miller said. "Any logo or lettering is probably long gone."

"The barrel may be old, but the chain's not. Get close-ups and bag the ax. They probably hacked through the links with the blade, then knocked the lid off with the blunt side."

"Leland claims the thing popped open on its own," Deputy Zamzow said.

"Right," I said.

"How do you want to handle the body?" Miller asked. "I'm thinking we should take the whole shooting match."

"Absolutely," I agreed. "We don't know what's in that barrel."

Miller gave one of her mile-wide smiles. "When I heard 'barrel,' I brought the stinky van and an acre of plastic sheeting. I've hauled one or two of these babies in my time."

Gullet spoke to Zamzow. "Get your vehicle in here."

The man hurried off.

Gullet turned to Miller. "You got chains?"

"Rope."

"Waders?"

Miller gave a decidedly unenthusiastic nod.

"We'll run lines round the thing, haul her up the bank, then get her onto a hand truck."

Miller looked at the creek. "Could be snakes in there."

"Cottonmouths, maybe even a water-lovin' rattler or two." Gullet's voice held not a trace of sympathy.

Miller crossed to the van and returned with waders and two coils of yellow polypropylene rope. Dumping them at our feet, she began shooting scene photos.

With Zamzow hand-signaling, Tybee positioned the cruiser. Then Zamzow tied two lines to the bumper and ran each out to the end of the pier.

Tybee stayed at the wheel. Miller and Zamzow rejoined Gullet and me. No one made a move for the waders.