Ten thousand isles df-7

by Randy Wayne White

  Nora had stopped at the base of the mound. She was peering down into the gloom of a mangrove swamp, black muck and shadows, comparing what she saw with the xeroxed map she carried. She said, "Here we are."

  Meaning Dorothy's dig site.

  "It all looks the same to me."

  "Yeah. What we have to find is a real small area. What used to be a water court, but the shape is tough to see because of the mangroves. Even says in the notes that it's hard to find. What happened was, back when the state and developers drained the Everglades, it emptied some of the ancient lakes. The Calusa wouldn't have liked that. Expose the water burials, let all those evil spirits loose."

  We'd gone so quickly from sunlight to shadow, that my eyes were having difficulty adjusting. I saw what looked to be a shallow creek bed, black muck spiked with mangrove roots. Lots of low brush and vines and some kind of fern growing up. There were shell inclines on each side: the basework of more mounds.

  The creek bed looked exactly like a dozen other mucky areas we'd crossed, and Nora voiced the same question that was in my mind: "How could Dorothy have known? Out of all the places on this island, how could she have possibly known to dig here?"

  I remembered Tomlinson saying, She didn'tfind things. Artifacts called to her…

  Which made as little sense as the proposition that a teenage girl had found this place at random.

  As we maneuvered through mangroves around the base of the mound, Nora stopped so abruptly that I nearly banged into her from behind. Heard her say, "Oh my God. Oh my God! You were right."

  I said, "About what?" But then I saw what she meant.

  Treasure hunters had found the place, too.

  Thirteen

  With all the equipment the looters had ferried out, the site looked more like a small construction area. It looked as if it were being cleared and plumbed for a sewage system and parking garage in preparation for condos.

  Nora was moving from pit to pit, shaking her head. "These kind of people, they have no respect. It's ruined. They have absolutely destroyed the entire site."

  Yes, they had.

  This was a high-tech operation. A lot of time and expensive equipage had been invested.

  There was a golf cart-sized backhoe with a metal cage over the driver's seat and controls. The machine was painted blue on white with "Nokonia MX" in big black letters on the side. There were a couple of shovels propped against it.

  The backhoe had been used to dig a hole as large as the foundation of an apartment complex. They'd squared it off sloppily and dug down to sea level. The bottom was black muck, and water had seeped in, creating puddles.

  Beside the pit was a troughlike flume made of plywood and aluminum. The flume was elevated shoulder-high at one end, was terminated by a screen sieve at the lower end. Near the high end of the flume was a stocky Honda generator and a portable pump with a fire department-sized hose running from it.

  It is an old process; the same miners once used it to find gold: dump a bunch of mud in a sluice, jet some water, then watch the screen where the heaviest material separates naturally from the sludge.

  It was an obvious and effective little operation. Use the backhoe to load the flume. Use the pump to hose the mud down the gutter. Use the shovels to clear the residual sludge while someone searched the filtering screen for artifacts.

  "Know what I think we should do?" I could tell she was furious. Her movements had quickened; she couldn't stand still.

  I said, "This sort of thing's against the law, correct?"

  She was pacing now, looking at the generator, looking at the little backhoe. "Goddamn right it's against the law! A thing called the National Antiquities Act!"

  Profanity. The first time I'd heard her use it. I could tell she was unaccustomed to forming the words. They came out awkwardly; each syllable enunciated with the precision of a novice attempting to speak a foreign language.

  "The goddamn son-of-a-bitches! They're treating history like it's

  … like it's a piece of crappy junkyard!"

  I took pains not to show that I was amused.

  "Calm down, take a few slow breaths."

  "It makes me want to vomit what they're doing here!"

  "I know. I don't blame you. But there's something about this that doesn't make any sense at all."

  "Goddamn right it doesn't make any sense."

  "Now wait. Listen to what I'm saying. I'm talking about all this equipment. Think about it. I expected to find signs of fresh digging, sure, but nothing like this. Someone's going to risk all this equipment to find a few artifacts? To get this gear out here, they had to use a barge. People would have seen them bring it ashore. We're only a quarter mile from Marco. Sound travels over water. People would hear them. In other words, this is more like a public operation. I think they've probably got permits."

  "It's illegal, I'm telling you. I don't care if they used a helicopter to chopper it out. You can't intentionally destroy an entire…" She stopped for a moment. 'Jesus, you doubt what they're doing out here? Look at this goddamn stuff. You know what this is?" She kicked the side of a five-gallon can. I had to stoop to read the label. Carbowax.

  "This chemical, it's what we use to preserve wooden artifacts found in mud. We call it PEG for short, polyethelene something. I can't remember the rest of it. It prevents the wood cells from collapsing as they dry." She tested the lid of the can. "At least it hasn't been opened. Maybe they haven't had a reason to use it."

  "The totem I took from Dorothy. That's why it was so new-looking, it'd been treated?"

  "No, the totem's different. It was never touched. What she found is so darn rare. The wood it's made from, it's harder than most metals. Lignum vitae wood, you heard of it? It's so hard and heavy, it won't even float. Who knows how they carved it. Oh… God, look at this."

  She had knelt near the sluice screen over a pile of what appeared to be shells and calcified wood. As I got closer, I could see that I was mistaken.

  "These are bones. Human bones. Thrown away like trash because it's not what they're looking for. It's not gold. It's not something the son-of-a-bitches can sell."

  I watched her touch the bones with a care that approached reverence: a piece of mandible, molars worn flat, presumably from chewing food in this sandy environment. A length of femur scarred with a black fissure: a leg that had broken and healed badly. There were cranial chunks the size of coconut shell, though no intact skulls. There were bones from fingers and feet and scattered rib cages, all dumped in a pile.

  The size of some of the bones was distinctive.

  I said, "These are the remains of more than one person. The pelvis, the narrow opening, that's an adult male. A pretty big guy. But there're also two, maybe three children."

  She was touching the bones one by one, trying to put them into some kind of order. The indifference with which they'd been thrown into a heap seemed to offend her. "That's not normal. It's not common. They could've done something like that, but they would've needed a reason."

  "For adults and children to be buried in the same grave?"

  "They did it for royalty. Children to serve them in the afterlife. But underwater? A water burial, that's what's not common. Maybe if the guy who died was really powerful and his people feared him, it might make sense. They kill his children and bury them all together. They want to get rid of the whole line forever. I'm just guessing. There's nothing we've found to back me up on this. We'd have to do DNA to make sure." She'd stopped to inspect something. "Oh, shit, look at this-"

  What she was holding looked like a chunk of skull, but she told me it was actually something she called a a little god all the way from the Bahamas. Then she added, "You know what these bastards may have found here? They may have stumbled onto the evil guy himself. I think they've dug up Tocayo."

  I wasn't amused now.

  She didn't say anything for awhile, but kept digging through the mud with her fingers. "That's what makes me so damn mad. If there's a connection between
the Caribs and the Calusa, it's not going to be something obvious. There's not going to be a sign that reads, 'Look here!' It's going to be little bits and pieces tied together. Exactly the kind of subtle stuff these jerks stomp on and destroy. They're a type, they really are. It's like they got a sneaky gene."

  It took me a moment before I realized she was back on the subject of looters again.

  "They've got contempt for everybody and everything but themselves. Bastards like that are ruining our chances of connecting the travel routes. Out of pure selfishness, too." She took up the potsherd again and studied it for a long moment, stuffed it into her pocket. "Goddamn them. Goddamn them all to hell." She looked at me, looked at the excavating equipment. "You know what I'm going to do?"

  Some of the color had drained from her face. She was that angry.

  I said, "Nope. I know what you should do. Get on that cell phone of yours, call your colleagues at the museum and tell them you've got an emergency situation, get down here. Have them notify the sheriff's department, maybe send a fax. Put it on a formal basis to make certain they light a fire under the right people."

  She had an odd expression. It reminded me of a petulant child, the way her lips were pursed, but it was more than that. There was a quality of cold fury. "Oh, that's exactly what I'm going to do. You can bet on that, Marion. But first, I'm going to show them what it's like to be violated. That pile of bones, it used to be a person. A person who lived and breathed, not something to be treated like garbage."

  An adult male with children who'd been buried beneath water-I didn't remind her of the implications of that.

  I said, "Exactly why we need to get the law involved. Detective Parrish. he'd be the guy. The people who did this are the same ones who used the backhoe on Dorothy. Count on it."

  She said, "There you go. All the more reason to give them a taste of their own medicine."

  I watched her step carefully over the pile of bones. Watched her take one of the shovels and walk to the front of the backhoe. Then watched her swing hard from the heels and bash out a front headlight. She got a new grip on the shovel, swung just as hard and broke the second one, too.

  The vacuum explosion of glass spooked birds in the high tree canopy. Caused them to shriek and chatter as they took flight.

  She took a step back, as if savoring her handiwork. "What do you think?"

  "I think that was bad judgment. I think it was a very unfortunate thing to do."

  "Really."

  "Yeah. There's a chance you just tipped them off. They'll shut down the operation, which means the cops won't be able to catch them in the act."

  "I didn't think about that. But it's too late now, that's what you're saying?"

  "I think they'll notice a couple of smashed headlights."

  "In that case, I might as well keep going. As long as I shut the assholes down, why not do it right?" Without waiting for a reply, she walked to the generator and started hammering at it with the shovel. It took her awhile, but the cowling finally flew into pieces.

  By now she was breathing heavily; sweating, too, but she had a nice little smile on her face. "All through high school, I played fast pitch softball. Number three hitter. Can you tell?"

  "Oh, it shows, it shows. Pretty nice stroke, yeah. I still think you're making a big mistake."

  "Know something, Marion? You actually seem almost human when you smile."

  I'd never met a woman I'd so immediately disliked, but who, in the space of a few hours, had completely transformed my opinion. I liked her quirky sense of humor and her fierceness. Tomlinson had once described a woman I loved as an "extreme person." Nora reminded me of that. Style and lots of spirit.

  "Something about kooks, you people make me smile."

  "Weirdo. You keep getting it wrong. I said weirdo." She dropped the shovel and backed away from what was left of the generator. "So tell me something. Are you going to just stand there like a big goof or are you going to help me tear that trough thing apart?"

  "Flume. That's what it's called."

  "See? The bookish type. You know what it's called, but do you have the balls to help?"

  Someone was coming…

  We'd been at the dig site for half an hour or so when I heard the distant garble of voices and rhythmic snap of branch that told me people were approaching; walking and talking loudly, which suggested that they didn't know we were on the island. They seemed confident they were alone; were used to having the place all to themselves.

  No telling why they hadn't heard the crash of metal and wood as we destroyed their equipment. Probably because they were making so much noise themselves.

  Coming at us from the west, the cove closest to Marco, which is why they hadn't seen my boat. They seemed to be traveling along what may have been a path, because they were moving a lot faster than Nora and I'd been able to navigate the island. Probably the path created to transport the equipment. Moving so fast they were almost on us before we had time to react.

  When I heard them, I cupped my fingers around Nora's bony arm, pulled her close to me and said, "We've got company. Probably the looters."

  She'd heard them in the same instant. Her amber eyes had widened and become rounder, the characteristic reaction of fear as her brain tried to gather sensory data. It is a primitive response, signaled from deep beneath the cerebral cortex, an atavistic reaction. The brain seeks a quick answer so that it may make an ancient, ancient decision: Should we fight? Should we take flight?

  Our revulsion for snakes is stored in the same dark little crevice. Right there next to our panicked reaction to lightning and our dread of murky water.

  I whispered. "Stand your ground. Stay behind me."

  She said, "You sure? Boy, are they gonna be pissed off!"

  "Oh, I think that's an understatement. Furious is what they'll be."

  "Then let's get the hell out of here."

  "You want someone chasing you through this jungle? That's what'll happen. They take one look at this mess, they'll be hunting us. Panic's contagious. And what if they have a gun?"

  The voices were closer now. Adult voices; at least two males.

  Nora laced her arm under mine and pulled herself close. "Damn it, Ford, I don't think this is smart! But I'll tell you one thing"-she released my arm, began to search around in the brush, then stood, finally, holding a chunk of button-wood-'Tm not going to let them give me any crap. Not the bastards who did this."

  I released a long, deep breath; told myself to stay calm, don't react to her anger, because I'd have enough to deal with in a minute or two.

  What I would have preferred to do was hide in the brush; do some first-hand surveillance. Watch them to make certain they were the ones who'd been digging at this site. Listen while they went about their work; maybe discover what they'd found, if anything, what they hoped to find. Also, maybe find out what cemeteries they'd tried to rob lately.

  Let them incriminate themselves while we stayed back in the shadows, taking it all in.

  I looked at the mess that, minutes before, had been an efficient, high-tech dig site. The flume and the generator were in pieces. No way the pump would still work with all the sand Nora had jammed into its fuel tank. Same with the backhoe. Lots and lots of expensive damage, with air still hissing out of industrial tires, telling anyone with an ounce of sense that the person who'd slit those tires was still on the island, very close by.

  I said, "At least you didn't set their machinery on fire."

  Nora was holding the club like a bat, looking in the direction of the approaching voices. "Uh-huh, that's the one bad thing about not bringing cigarettes. You never have a lighter when you need one."

  Fourteen

  When the punk rockers came crashing down the path into the clearing, I stood facing them, wearing a big smile. I said in a loud, cheery, voice, "Well, well. Look who just stepped into our trap. You boys have some explaining to do!" Acting very friendly but vexed, like a school principal unhappy with their behavior.

/>   I wasn't certain it was the punkers at first. There were two males, no doubt about that, but they wore mosquito head nets and long sleeves. It gave them an entirely different look: forty-year-old beekeepers or butterfly collectors on expedition. They could have been that.

  But when they stopped, surprised to find us standing there, it allowed me a moment to observe the knobby hands of the leader; it was the tall guy with the dragon tattoo. Yep, and the distinctive body width of his slouching partner suggested he was the kid with the snake crawling up his arm.

  When categorizing strangers, the brain differentiates by that which is most obvious: Female/male, black/white, Dragon/ Snake.

  The chubby girls weren't with them?

  Yes… but only one. She came stumbling down through the brush, fanning at the haze of mosquitoes around her head net and making a woo-woo-woo wailing sound that I initially thought was sobbing, but translated after a few seconds of listening: "You two… hey, you two! Bastards went off and left me-!" But then she saw me and said very quickly, "Oh, shit!" and froze as if she was playing that old kid's game, statue.

  Her abrupt silence accentuated the hushed stares of the two men who'd stopped a few yards from me. We stood there listening to the birds and insect whine and steady thud-a-thud-a-thud of construction over on Marco.

  Dragon was closest; Snake a follower's pace or two behind. The girl now pulling in closer, using Snake as a shield. Dragon was the spokesman as well.

  "What'd you just say mister? I must'a not heard you right."

  I repeated myself, remaining cheerful but adding a condescending note, letting them know who was in charge.

  Dragon had an unexpectedly deep voice, the hint of a New Jersey accent, and his words were accompanied by a mysterious metallic clicking noise. It took me a moment to realize that, along with the horseshoe in his lip, he had something skewered through his tongue. A silver bead, it appeared to be. It kept hitting his teeth, which created the clicking. Tough to see through the netting.