Bones of Contention

by Jeanne Matthews

  Somebody banged on the door. She grabbed Seth’s gun, moved the chair, cracked the door to the length of the chain and peeped out. It was the bearded man in the turban who’d checked her in. She unfastened the chain and let him in.

  “What happened?”

  She showed him the bullet hole in the bed.

  He said, “This is unprecedented.”

  What the hell was she supposed to say to that? Were there hotels where getting shot at was precedented? She said, “He jimmied open the sliding door and shot at me through the gap.”

  “Who?” His eyes were riveted on the Glock.

  She put it back in her tote. “I don’t know who.” It could have been Bill or Wendell or the man with the shaven head who’d tailed her from Pine Creek or the man-shaped shadow across the billabong. “Did you call the police?”

  A woman with wild dark hair and a disheveled sari appeared in the door. “What’s wrong, Sandhu? What is that smell? Did someone set off a firecracker?”

  “I don’t know. Go unlock the lobby door for Koolatong.”

  He stood in the door as if to prevent Dinah from escaping and the woman broomsticked down the hall.

  “I have called the police,” said Mr. Sandhu. “We shall see.”

  Why were they sore at her? Did they think she’d asked to be shot at? Did they think she got off on bullets singeing her hair?

  A burly black man in a crisply ironed uniform shouldered through the door and introduced himself as Sgt. Koolatong of the local police. His brow was scarless, she was relieved to note, but deeply lined, as though the burden of keeping the peace in Jabiru weighed heavily on him.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She showed him the hole in the headboard.

  He leaned over the bed and inspected it minutely.

  Mr. Sandhu said, “This has never happened before. This is a first.”

  There were times when the screaming-meemies seemed the only logical response. With near-superhuman effort, she fought the urge. “Will you give me a light, Sergeant?”

  Sandhu wagged his finger. “This is a non-smoking room. That is the rule.”

  This was the thanks she got for stifling a screaming fit she was perfectly entitled to have? This was what she got for being considerate of the other guests? “I thought this was a non-shooting hotel, but your rinkydink door didn’t stop it from happening.”

  The sergeant took her lighter and lit her cigarette.

  Sandhu picked up the pieces of the luggage rack she’d laid in the door track. “You are a troublesome person. I will add this damage and the hole in the bed to your room bill.”

  “Mr. Sandhu, you cannot fathom how troublesome I will become if you add one cent to my bill.”

  “We shall see,” he said and marched off in a pet.

  “Sue me,” she fumed under her breath.

  The man on TV said that shearers who shear more than 200 sheep per day are called gun shearers.

  Sgt. Koolatong said, “I know who you are, Miss Pelerin. Inspector Jacko Newby asked me to assist his man to watch out for your safety.”

  “He…what? He has someone watching me?”

  “As well as the Community Police. This shouldn’t have happened. I am responsible. The Inspector will be very unhappy.”

  “What does the Inspector’s man look like, Sergeant?”

  “White, brown hair, late twenties.”

  “How about your man?”

  “Black, sturdy build, late thirties.” He slipped on latex gloves and began digging the bullet out of the headboard.

  “No facial scars?”

  “No, why?”

  “I seem to have more tails than a trick kite.” She should have known she couldn’t give Jacko the slip that easily, but if the skinhead who’d been bird-dogging her wasn’t his man and Bill wasn’t Koolatong’s man, who were they?

  The opening bars of Night Fever detonated from the sergeant’s cell phone. Disco. The incongruities in the Top End just wouldn’t quit. She felt as if she’d been beamed onto another planet where the life forms and the language were vaguely reminiscent of Earth, but the total effect was insane.

  “Yes, sir. Yes, she’s unhurt. I realize that, sir. No. No, I won’t let it happen again. Here she is.” He handed his phone to Dinah. “Inspector Newby.”

  Jacko was going to be hacked off that she’d run away and gotten herself shot at, not to mention costing manpower that could be used to better purpose. And when she told him about the stolen flash drive, he’d go apeshit. Well, she deserved it.

  She took the phone. “Hi.”

  “The sergeant informs me you’ve had a fright.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know you’re spooked, luv, but are you all right? No large-bore holes in your chassis?”

  She laughed. She hadn’t expected kindness. It pulled the rug out. She sat down on the bed and almost choked up. “No. I haven’t looked in the mirror to see if my hair’s turned white, but otherwise I’m okay except for a bad case of the shakes.”

  “Who wouldn’t go quivery in the knees after such a close call? But I hadn’t thought you’d be attacked or I’d have had you in protective custody.”

  “Why did you have me tailed then?”

  “You’re too much of a chancer, luv. I don’t know what you think you’re about up there, but your rellies are all of a twitter since you left. They seem a bit narked with you. What did you do to get on the outers? Didn’t suss one of them for murder, did you?”

  “Maybe. I took a computer memory stick out of Wendell’s briefcase. It contains files that make it look like Wendell’s and the doctor’s fish processing business was a front for a drug-running operation. I think they’re using Black Point as a drop site. Somehow Bryce Hambrick must have caught on to their scheme and they had him killed.”

  “So drug-trafficking was their lurk.” He made it sound as if all of a sudden everything clicked. “But wasn’t your Uncle Cleon the one who touched the doc to bring Wendell into the bizzo? Drew up the partnership agreement, as I understand it. Surprising a man as shrewd as Cleon wouldn’t tumble to their criminal doings.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” Surprising if a man as shrewd as Cleon wasn’t the mastermind and ur-trafficker. But she wasn’t ready to hear it out loud. The ramifications were too painful. “I’m sorry if I’ve caused trouble by running off with the evidence, Jacko.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For the nonce, I’ve pinched Wendell for Fisher’s murder.”

  “But why? On what evidence?”

  “His fingerprints came up clear as a rubber stamp on the filleting knife. And if his take under Fisher’s will weren’t motive enough, six weeks ago he took out a two million dollar life insurance policy on the doctor naming himself the sole beneficiary.”

  Dinah rubbed her head. Something didn’t square. Wendell wouldn’t make that blatant a mistake, would he?

  Sgt. Koolatong extracted one of the slugs from the headboard and held it up to the light in a pair of needle-nose pliers. She felt scared and vulnerable. All she wanted was to curl up in a fetal ball and hibernate.

  Jacko kept his voice calm and low-key. “Anything you can tell me about the bloke who took a shot at you, luv?”

  “No. But I think a man with a shaved head has been following me and a Nigerian named Bill singled me out for some kind of a scam.”

  “You’ll be all right, Dinah. I’ll hive off and be there in a couple of hours. Sgt. Koolatong will stand guard until then. Does that work for you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That works for me.” How could it not? She’d dodged a bullet and now the pros were taking over. Once she relinquished Wendell’s memory stick, she’d be hors de combat, a civilian, no longer the bumbling amateur making believe she was V.I. Warshawski. “Jacko…?”

  “Ay?”

  “How are the others…the rest of the family taking Wendell’s arrest?”

 
“It’s crueled the party for one and all, luv. But we’ll yack about the rellies over brekkie.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  Sgt. Koolatong bagged the bullet, dusted the glass door for prints, stationed a uniformed sentry outside her door, and went back to his office.

  Dinah tried to collect herself. She brewed a pot of coffee and sat down to wait for Jacko and brekkie. The sheepathon was still going on. Who knew there was so much to know about sheep peeling? In 1892, a man named Jackie Howe had peeled 1,437 sheep in 44 hours and 30 minutes and one week later, 321 sheep in 7 hours and 40 minutes using hand-shears. His record lasted for 58 years until another man using machine-shears outgunned him.

  She drank coffee and paced and tried to get some traction under her slippery thoughts. If Jacko had found her so easily, maybe Wendell had, too. Maybe before Jacko pinched him, he’d placed a call to his accomplice in Jabiru and ordered him to kill her and get back the flash drive. If the information it contained incriminated the other members of the gang, they’d want it regardless of what happened to Wendell. But why hadn’t they just robbed her as she was leaving the restaurant? Trying to shoot her while she slept was sadistic. And pointless. For all their meanness, they hadn’t gotten what they were after.

  Job’s tears! Suppose they came back and tried again before Jacko arrived? Suppose they overpowered her guard and came through the door shooting? But that made no sense. The people who wanted the flash drive wouldn’t shoot her until after they found it, which meant that somebody else was gunning for her. Who? Why? Her brain felt as if it were flopping around loose inside her cranium. She rubbed her temples and ran her eyes around the room. At least she could make sure Wendell’s crowd didn’t find the flash drive.

  She grabbed her tote and ran her hand across the bottom. The flash drive was small, but it made a conspicuous bump. She scrabbled through her cosmetic bag for tweezers and tweezered the stick through the hole in the lining. Where wouldn’t they look? It would almost fit into the hole made by the bullet, but that was no good. Inside the overhead light? Inside the toilet tank? She could tape it to the underside of the desk. Too easy.

  Where then? The electrical outlet with the exposed wires. She moved the bedside table and got down on her hands and knees. How to wiggle the stick through the hole without losing it in the interstices of the sheetrock and insulation, and how to do it without being electrocuted in the process?

  Dinah Pelerin, wannabe interpreter of ancient cultures and conservator of Native American myths, fried by a hot wire while secreting stolen evidence.

  She got up, took a roll of adhesive tape out of her bag, cut a longish strip, and went back on her knees. Keeping clear of the loose wires, she winkled the stick through the hole with her index finger and with a piece of tape stuck to her middle finger, she affixed the stick out of sight on the other side of the wall. No one would think to look there and, if they did, they wouldn’t see anything but an unfinished electrical socket. Feeling pleased with herself, she got up and started to dust off her jeans.

  Shit! She’d found the missing moth smushed on her right knee.

  There was a knock on the door. “Miss Pelerin, it’s Sergeant Koolatong.”

  She grabbed a towel out of the bathroom and was scrubbing the pus-colored moth innards off her knee as she swung open the door. “Ser…”

  A gassy rag clapped over her face. She clawed at the rock-hard hands that held her. Her lungs burned. She had no feet, no bones, and then there was nothing.

  Chapter Forty-three

  The noise woke her. Squawking, screeching, grunting. Her eyes slotted open. She was lying on her side on the gritty floor of a van or truck. One of the rear doors had been left open and she could see blinding-white sand and, in the distance, blue water with whitecaps. She was parked beside the ocean. Or a sea, or a wavy lake. She ruled out the possibility it was a mirage only because she didn’t think optical illusions made noise, and those waves were definitely whooshing. The sound could be heard above the squawking and screeching.

  Her hands and feet were tied and her throat burned from the residual effects of the gas that had been used to knock her out. How many hours and miles ago was that? She rolled onto her back, raised her head off the floor, and scoped out the front of the van. It had only a driver’s seat, currently unoccupied. The rest of the space was stacked with wire crates and camping gear. She pushed herself into a sitting position and tried to recall the face she’d glimpsed in that fraction of a second before the gassy rag blinded her. She was pretty sure it belonged to Bill. She wondered if he’d killed her bodyguard. She wondered what fate he, or his higher-ups, had in mind for her.

  Not death. At least, not right away. The inside of the van was too hot for comfort, but somebody had left a door open so she wouldn’t be baked alive. Her hands were tied in front, the bindings snug, but not tight enough to cut off circulation or restrict movement. Did they think that anyone dumb enough to be taken in by Bill’s jive would be too dumb to untie a simple overhand knot? Did they think a girl would be too dainty or sissified to gnaw rope? Or did her kidnappers intend her to escape and run off down the beach?

  She scooched her bottom along the floor of the van until her back was against the wall, drew her knees up to her chest, and began to work loose the rope around her ankles with her fingers. It wasn’t much of a trussing. The knots pulled apart with minimal effort. In just a few minutes, her feet were free and she used her teeth to loosen the rope around her wrists. She wriggled her hands free and looked herself over for signs of wear and tear. Other than a few minor abrasions, everything seemed to be in working order.

  The cacophony outside sounded like a zoo at feeding time and she got up on her knees to look out the side window above her head. What she saw both astonished and appalled her. Rows of wire crates like the ones in the van sat under a long canvas canopy and each crate held some eye-popping bird or reptile. Nearest to her, she saw parrots with blue heads, orange breasts, and green bodies; black cockatoos with resplendent red tails; a vibrant green snake with pale blue spots and a confetti of white speckles down its back; and some kind of a wading bird with long orange legs and a ruff of iridescent black feathers. This was no private menagerie. These creatures had been poached from the surrounding forest by the owner of this van and his cohort. There were no doubt collectors who would pay dearly for some of these beauties.

  Crouching low, she moved to the opposite side of the van and looked out the window. A green cabin-style tent had been erected at the edge of a clearing skirted by tall, scraggly trees. There was no one in sight. Either her captors were taking a siesta in the tent or off in the bush trapping more birds. Poachers. Bill might have nothing whatsoever to do with Wendell or drugs.

  The heat inside the van was enervating and the stench from the dirty crates and animal droppings was making her nauseous. Sweat trickled out of her hair and dripped into her eyes and her throat felt parched. She took stock of the van’s contents. Gas cans, shovel, plastic tarp, boxes of canned goods, a large searchlight probably used for signaling incoming boats, and thank you, Jesus, a six-pack of bottled water. She unscrewed the cap on a bottle, took a long, luxurious drink and splashed the rest over her face and hands. She opened a second bottle and drank half of that.

  Her thirst assuaged, she turned her mind to the business of escape. If her kidnappers worked for Wendell, then she was probably in the vicinity of Black Point and the water she was looking at was the Arafura Sea. If they were independent poachers with a sideline in kidnapping, she could be anywhere, but most likely somewhere in Kakadu. She could take off down the beach and hope to find a house or a settlement. But which direction and how far? Or she could follow the truck’s tracks and ditto the hope part.

  Was it too much to hope that somebody had left the key in the ignition? Keeping low, she went to the front. Incredibly, the key was there. What was wrong with this? She didn’t like to look a gift horse in the mouth, but relying on a piece of luck too good
to be true was what had landed her in this unholy mess.

  She considered the situation in front of her—a sandy dead-end littered with a few logs of driftwood. The poachers had apparently pitched their tent where the dirt track they rode in on met the sea. She searched the glove box and the side pockets in hopes of finding a map marked “You are here.” No luck. Evidently, Fate wasn’t going to overdo the serendipity. She’d have to wing it.

  How deftly could she turn this buggy around? It would be a tight squeeze. Assuming she didn’t get mired in deep sand or collide with a log or a tree, she’d still have to dodge the tent and accelerate fast enough down the track to keep someone from jumping onto the hood or grabbing a door handle and holding on. At the sound of the engine, whoever was in that tent would come running.

  The back door of the van was hanging open. The birds were still making a ruckus, but the sound of a slamming door would be heard. Moving back to the rear, she grabbed the ropes she’d cast off and quickly lashed the door to its mate. She returned to the front, slipped into the driver’s seat, belted herself in, and hit the electronic door lock button. She thought, this must be what the astronauts feel like before blastoff.

  She took a deep breath, let off the brake, and turned the key. The engine thrummed to life. She stomped on the gas and the van lurched forward. She wrenched the wheel hard to the right, but the turning radius was too wide. She sideswiped a tree, backed up, and kept turning. As she straightened and jounced toward the track, the shaven-headed man ran out of the tent in front of her with a gun in his hand. Panicked, she veered into the tent, which collapsed like a soufflé across the windshield.

  She jumped out, ready to run for her life, but her assailant was flat on his back under the crumpled canvas and the gun lay loose at her feet. Instinctively, she grabbed it and drew a two-handed bead on his head, like one of those C.S.I. chicks.

  Holding his left arm and grimacing, he struggled out from under the canvas and got to his feet. “You crazy bitch, how’d you get loose?” His voice was sharp and searing, like acid. He looked older than she’d thought when she first saw him in Pine Creek. Lines fanned out from around his eyes and his mouth puckered as if he tasted acid.