Island of Bones

by P J Parrish

  Neil wheeled away and Louis opened the door to the trailer. It was dark inside, the sun kept out by dust-coated old plastic blinds. A wall unit wheezed away over the worn plaid sofa, keeping the place plenty cold but doing nothing to disperse the smell of dirty clothes and cigarette smoke. There was an under note of another odor that Louis couldn’t place, something fusty and metallic.

  “Sit down,” Neil said backing his chair in front of the television. He picked up the remote off the TV tray and turned down the sound on the game show. “Why are cops coming round asking about Em after all this time?”

  “We might have connected her disappearance to the recent death of another young woman,” Louis said.

  “That so?” Neil’s eyes had drifted to the TV. He was a big man, or had been at some point. He still had a barrel chest beneath the stained T-shirt and his arms looked like he might still lift weights. But his legs were withered like an old woman’s. Louis’s eyes went to his right foot. It was heavily bandaged, red, and swollen. Louis suddenly recognized the smell -— decay.

  Neil saw him looking at the foot. “Diabetes,” he said. “Probably gonna lose it.”

  Louis pulled a photograph from the file. It was a close-up of the coral ring they had found on Shelly Umber. “Did your sister have a ring like this, Mr. Fielding?”

  Neil took the photo, shook his head, and handed it back. “Em liked gold. Was all she ever wore.”

  “Were you and your sister close?”

  Neil shrugged. “I was four years older. You know how that goes.”

  Neil’s eyes drifted to the TV where Bob Barker was shoving a microphone into the face of a woman in a purple tube-top.

  “She disappeared when she was sixteen. Your stepfather told the police back in 1953 that she just ran away one night”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  Neil looked at Louis. “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why would your sister just leave?”

  “Kids run away all the time, don’t they?”

  “Did you?”

  Neil stared hard at Louis but finally he just shrugged and looked away. “I left, yeah.”

  Louis looked at Neil’s 1953 police interview. “You were seventeen when you left home, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “So, why’d you leave, Mr. Fielding?”

  He shrugged again. “I dunno. Didn’t get along with the old man, I guess.”

  “How about your sister? Did she get along with him?”

  Neil was silent, staring at Bob Barker. Louis was looking at the line in the old police report about the car accident. He was thinking about a drunken Cliff Parker driving off that dark two-lane highway, plunging his pickup into the black water. But he was seeing his own mother, Lila, seeing her and hearing her and smelling her the way she was when she would come home drunk.

  “Mr. Fielding,” Louis said, “was your stepfather an alcoholic?”

  Neil didn’t answer.

  “Is that why you ran away?”

  Neil’s eyes didn’t leave the television. Louis waited.

  “I got out,” Neil said.

  “What about Emma?”

  Neil’s pasty face had gone lax as he continued to stare at the game show.

  “Mr. Fielding?”

  “Where the hell do they get these cretins?”

  “What about your sister, Mr. Fielding?”

  “Higher, asshole!”

  Louis reached over, grabbed the remote, and clicked off the TV. Neil’s face swung toward him.

  “Talk to me, Mr. Fielding.”

  “I talked to the cops thirty-four years ago.” He shook his head slowly, looking away. “I don’t want to do it again. I can’t.”

  “Why, Mr. Fielding?”

  “Emma’s dead. What does it matter now?” Neil’s eyes shot back to Louis’s face. “Get out of my house.”

  Louis shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we’re finished.”

  Neil was gripping the arms of his chair. Louis watched his hands, watched the knuckles turning white.

  “Mr. Fielding —-”

  “Look, I can’t throw you out or I would. Now just leave! Please.”

  Louis focused on Neil’s face. His pupils were jumping, like there was something deep inside him fighting to get out.

  “Talk to me, Neil,” Louis said.

  Neil ran a hand through his sparse, oily hair. He was shaking his head slowly, deliberately.

  “Whoever killed your sister is still out there,” Louis said “We’re trying to find him. You can help.”

  Neil closed his eyes. “He killed her,” he said.

  “Who, Neil?”

  “My stepfather. That fucker killed Em.”

  Louis was silent. Finally Neil looked at him. His eyes were watery. “The fucker just wouldn’t leave Em alone. He kept at her and kept at her. And I couldn’t stop him. Then, one night I heard him going into her room again, heard her crying again, so I went out there in the hall and and —- ” Neil drew in a breath. “He was standing there with his pants off and his dick hard.”

  Neil took another deep breath. “I told him to do me, to do me instead and leave her the fuck alone. That was the only night he didn’t go into her room.”

  Neil ran a hand roughly over his face. It was quiet except for the wheezing air conditioner.

  “I left the next morning,” Neil said. “It was really early. The sun wasn’t even up. But Em heard me and came running out in her nightgown. She started to cry and said she wanted to come with me.”

  Neil stopped again, but Louis didn’t prod him. Finally, Neil let out a long breath.

  “I said, ‘Em, I can’t take you with me. I gotta go, Em. I gotta go.’ And she got so mad and screamed at me, ‘Just go then! Just go!’”

  Neil looked at Louis. “So I did.”

  His eyes held Louis’s steady for a second but then wavered and he looked back at the television.

  “Fuck it,” he whispered.

  Neil was quiet, hands hanging limp over the arms of the wheelchair, eyes fixed on the blank television.

  “Mr. Fielding, one last question,” Louis said. “Did you or your sister know anyone named Frank Woods?”

  Neil looked at him. “Woods? No, why?”

  “Nothing,” Louis said. He rose and placed the remote in Neil Fielding’s lap. “Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Fielding,” he said.

  Neil Fielding grabbed his pack of Marlboros and lighter off the TV tray. His hand shook slightly as he lit up a cigarette. He sucked in a quick drag and blew it out, not looking up at Louis.

  Louis let himself out, pausing to take in a deep breath of fresh air. He heard the sound of groans and Bob Barker yelling that the woman in the purple tube-top had just lost out on winning a brand-new, all-equipped 1987 Corvette.

  He got in the Mustang and started the engine. He sat there, his hands gripping the wheel. Finally, he slapped the car in gear and drove out, not looking back until the trailer had disappeared from his rearview mirror.

  CHAPTER 19

  Louis went through the glass doors of the Fort Myers Police Station, his notes on Emma Fielding in his hand. He didn’t have much to tell Landeta. Just that if Emma Fielding hadn’t been reported missing, she probably would have run away soon anyway. The question was, had Frank Woods played any part in her disappearance? Had he been able to lure a vulnerable girl with a promise of protection and security? But if she had gone willingly, why did Frank Woods keep the newspaper clipping?

  At the top of the staircase, Louis saw a uniformed officer coming out of Landeta’s office, pulling the door closed behind him.

  “Hey,” Louis said, “tell Detective Landeta Louis Kincaid is here to see him, would you?”

  The officer stuck his head back in. “Mel, Kincaid’s here.”

  “Tell him I’ll be a minute.”

  Louis stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at the lobby below. The minutes passed. Finally, he flipped open his n
otebook and read his notes on Emma, hoping maybe something would click. Nothing. Nothing but the same nagging question. Why hadn’t Emma Fielding —- or her body —- resurfaced after thirty-four years?

  He walked down the hall and took a drink of water from the fountain, then moved back to the stairwell. Landeta’s door was still closed.

  His eyes drifted down the hall. Small white signs stuck out from doorways, labeling the offices, ANIMAL CONTROL. COMMUNITY RELATIONS. CONFERENCE ROOM. BURGLARY AND FRAUD.

  At the end of the hall, there was a sign for RECORDS, with an arrow to the right.

  Louis looked back at Landeta’s closed door. Screw this.

  He walked down the hall toward Records. A plump redhead stood behind the counter. Her name tag said GEORGIA.

  “Georgia,” Louis said.

  She smiled, her eyes almost disappearing into her freckled face. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Louis Kincaid. I’m working with the Chief and Detective Landeta. I was hoping you could help me with something.”

  “Oh yeah,” Georgia said. “The Chief called us a few days ago. Said to give you whatever you want. What’ll it be?”

  “Missing persons information.”

  “From when?”

  Louis pulled out the Xerox copies he had made of the index cards from Frank’s drawer. “Sixty-four, sixty-five—”

  “Oh, wow. We don’t have those on computer. I’ll have to get into the storage, and I really can’t right now.”

  “I’ll look.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I should call Detective Landeta.”

  “He’s in a meeting. I’m doing this at his request.”

  She shook her head. “Boy, I know how that goes. I do lots of things at his request. Copy this, look for that, read me this. It’s like the man is helpless, for crying out loud.”

  Louis nodded. “I understand.”

  She leaned toward Louis, her breasts resting on the counter. “You know what we call him? Lemon-head. Kind of a combination of the yellow glasses and the bald head.”

  Louis grinned. “About the files...”

  Georgia waved him behind the counter. “C’mon. I’ll show you.”

  Louis followed her to the back and down one floor of concrete steps. She used the keys on her belt to open a door marked AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY. The door creaked and stuck, like it hadn’t been opened in a while. Georgia gave it a shove with her ample hip.

  “We call this place the dungeon,” she said. “We don’t put much stuff down here anymore, just the old junk and the cold cases.”

  Georgia hit a switch. The fluorescent light overhead fizzed, popped, and finally flickered on. One of the bulbs was burned out and the other gave out a feeble greenish light.

  “The files are sorted by date. You should start back there by the window,” Georgia said. “If you want anything copied, just bring it upstairs.”

  “Thanks.”

  Georgia left, swinging her keys and humming.

  Louis He headed down the rows of old black file cabinets toward the small dust-veiled window at the back, scanning the cabinet labels as he went. He heard a dripping sound and finally he saw an old janitor’s sink, black with grime and rust.

  The label on the cabinet next to it was covered in dust and he wiped it clean. January-February 1964. He had to give the drawer a hard yank before it finally opened with a scrape and a cloud of dust.

  All he had were the girls’ first names, so he scanned the file folder tabs for a Cindy or Cynthia. Nothing.

  He moved to the next drawer down. There was a Cynthia Shattuck file in the middle of the drawer. Inside was a single piece of paper, the responding officer’s report. It was three paragraphs. Stapled to the inside of the folder was the same photo Louis had seen on the index card in Frank’s office, but it was the original and it gave him a better look at Cindy Shattuck.

  She had been a plain girl, her thin blond hair worn in the poker-straight style favored by girls in the sixties. Her eyes were heavily lined in black and she was wearing a black turtle-neck sweater, like she was trying to look like Cher or one of The Beatles’ girlfriends.

  Louis scanned the police report. There was no follow-up report or disposition, so Louis assumed Cindy Shattuck had never been found.

  He set the file aside. Looking around, he spotted a small stool and pulled it over and moved on to the next cabinet. After almost two hours, he straightened and rubbed his neck. His nose was stuffy from the mold and his head was pounding from trying to read in the flickering green fluorescent. But he had found all the girls.

  Cynthia Shattuck. Born 1948, disappeared 1964. She would now be thirty-nine.

  Paula Berkowitz. Born 1945, disappeared 1965. She would be forty-two.

  Mary Rubio. Born 1957, disappeared 1973. She would be thirty.

  Angela Lopez. Born 1967, disappeared 1984. She would now be twenty.

  If any of them were still alive.

  All the files had photographs of the girls stapled to the insides of the folders, the same photos that had been given to the newspapers, the same photos Frank Woods had hidden in his office. All the folders had missing persons’ reports but only two had follow-up interviews.

  None had a disposition. None of these girls had been found.

  Louis stared at the four files. So thin. So incomplete. Buried down here for all these years, untouched until now. Just like the skull.

  He knew in his heart they were dead. But maybe he could try to bring them home. Scooping up the files, he went back through the rows of cabinets. Shutting off the light, he leaned into the door, pushed it closed and headed back upstairs.

  CHAPTER 20

  He started early again the next morning, the four folders on the passenger seat of his car. He had no particular reason for starting in chronological order of the girls’ disappearances, except that it seemed natural. Maybe he was looking for a pattern, a sense of what they had in common besides having vanished.

  Cindy Shattuck had lived in Matlacha and had been reported missing by a girlfriend in the summer of 1964. Louis had been unable to find the girlfriend but had finally traced Cindy’s mother, Nancy Shattuck, to a home in Cape Coral. She was now Nancy Buckle, married to a land developer.

  The Buckles lived in a new development, a place where any natural vegetation had been scraped away to make room for homes too big for their lots and too brazen to be called tasteful.

  The Buckle home was a yellow, two-story mini-mansion. The lawn was the size of a putting green, and there was a sign in front that read ANOTHER STUART BUCKLE CUSTOM HOME.

  Louis walked to the door, Cindy Shattuck’s folder in his hand. He rang the bell and heard a few bars of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” jingle inside the house.

  A woman appeared behind the door, her face close to the glass. Her heavily lined eyes blinked several times when he held up his state-issued private investigator’s ID card.

  He leaned close. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

  The door swung open. She was a small woman, dressed in emerald-green capri pants and a blue-green sleeveless top. She had reddish brown hair that sprouted from her head like unraveled cassette tapes. She was in her fifties but clearly not happy about it.

  “Mrs. Buckle?”

  “May I ask who you are?”

  “Louis Kincaid. Private investigator.”

  “What are you investigating?”

  “The disappearance of your daughter, Cindy.”

  The raccoon eyes ignited with a flash of shock. “Excuse me?”

  “Your daughter, Cindy?”

  “She didn’t disappear.”

  Louis slipped the report from the folder. “According to this, she did.”

  Nancy Buckle tipped a bright pink fingernail toward the paper. “What is that?”

  “A report taken by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office in Matlacha. Her friend Doris reported her missing August twenty-third, 1964.”

  “Doris was a stupid girl,” Nancy said,
crossing her arms. “They both were.”

  Louis tucked the folder under his arm and pulled out his small notebook. “Mind if I take notes?”

  “Not at all.”

  “So you’re saying Cindy didn’t disappear?”

  “No, I threw her out.”

  “Why did you do that, Mrs. Buckle?”

  “There were problems.”

  “What kind of problems? Drugs? School?”

  Nancy Buckle’s expression soured. “Men. The girl hung on every man I brought home. When she was little, they thought it was cute. Hell, even I thought it was cute. But when she turned sixteen, it wasn’t so cute anymore.”

  “So you told her to leave?”

  “Yeah. I caught her wagging her ass in front of my third husband Larry. Like the poor man could help himself with something like that prancing around every day in that little bitty place we had.”

  Louis fought to keep his expression neutral. “Did she stay in Matlacha after that? Even for a while?”

  “Have you ever been to Matlacha, young man?”

  “Been through it.”

  “Exactly. It’s a place you go through and keep going. I grew up there. I had Cindy at sixteen, and it was just her and me.”

  And all the uncles passing through, Louis thought.

  “Did she have a boyfriend she might have gone to?” he asked.

  “Probably. I was waitressing at the Snook Inn and sometimes she helped out there. Lots of guys passed through there -- tourists, fisherman, locals. She could have hooked up with one of them.”

  “What about her father? Could she have gone to him?”

  Nancy Buckle gave a harsh laugh. “You kidding me? She never knew him. I told you, I was sixteen. Boys leave. They don’t hang around once they fuck up your life.”

  The sun was suddenly very hot on his neck. He drew a thin breath and went on. “Did she take anything with her when she left?”

  “She had nothing to take except some old shorts and T- shirts, and I certainly can’t tell you if she took any of them. I only know I threw a lot of shit out later.”

  “Nothing personal? Jewelry?”

  “You want to know how screwy this girl was? She took her damn sock monkey.”