by J. A. Kerley
35
Nautilus was outside Owsley’s hotel at nine a.m., leaning against the vehicle and sipping tasteless motel coffee. The door swept open at nine ten, the Pastor looking harried, though it was only in the eyes, the smile a luminous crescent of teeth.
“Celeste and Rebecca returned from Mobile last night, Mr Nautilus. Celeste wants to spend the day visiting her sister in Tampa, shopping, girl stuff. My problem is Rebecca. I know she’s sixteen and all, but …”
“She’s been practicing her independence.”
“It’s the internet and Tweeter, Mr Nautilus, the misinformation and assault on Christian values from every quarter. Children today have forgotten to honor thy father and mother, as stated in, uh …”
“Ephesians,” Nautilus said. “Something in the sixes.”
“Ah yes, 6:2. Anyway, uh, Celeste and I would appreciate it if you could, uh, watch Rebecca today.”
The word babysitter flashing in his head, Nautilus raised an eyebrow. “You won’t be needing me, Pastor?”
“I’m flying to Key West today. I need you to drop me off at the airport in a few minutes. Celeste wants to head to Tampa pretty soon. Could you possibly …”
Nautilus glanced up at the Owsleys’ window and saw a part in the curtain, the kid looking down.
“Becca hasn’t experienced the park yet,” Owsley said. “As a saved man you understand that she should see the multifold glories of Hallelujah Jubilee.”
Feeling his eyes start to roll, Nautilus closed them instead. “Sure, Pastor. I’ll watch the ki— … Rebecca.”
Owsley laid his hands on Nautilus’s shoulders as if conferring magical powers. “You’re a blessing, Mr Nautilus. A gift from God.”
Nautilus dropped Owsley at the airport and returned to the motel. The kid was in the lobby, slouched in a chair and staring at the ceiling. She was wearing a white tank top and blue miniskirt and Nautilus figured they weren’t the clothes she’d been wearing the last time she saw Daddy. She’d affected more make-up than seemed necessary for the clear skin and pretty features but, given Celeste Owsley’s usage, maybe was genetic.
“I should check with your mother,” Nautilus said. “Tell her we’re—”
“Mama left for Tampa,” Rebecca yawned. “You’re keeping me prisoner today.”
“I hope it will be more fun than that.”
The kid unfurled from the chair, her face a mournful pout. “You’re supposed to take me to Holey-Moley land, right?”
“Wait ’til you see the Ark,” Nautilus said, aiming the kid toward the door. “It makes people faint.”
The first glimmer of interest. “Like fall over and hit the ground? Cool.”
The park opened at ten and they were through the gate a minute later. Tawnya appeared to have been tipped off, rolling into the parking lot in her golf cart before Nautilus set the parking brake.
“A blessed morning to you both,” Tawnya chirped. “This must be Rebecca. We’re so glad you could join us … Is it Becky?”
Rebecca grimaced.
“Rebecca! All right then! Do you still have your pass, Mr Nautilus? Good-good. And here’s yours, Rebecca. Anything you want, need, think of … it’s yours. Hop in!”
“I think we’ll walk, Tawnya,” Nautilus said, staring at the baby-blue cart emblazoned with logos.
The ebullient Tawnya waved, dashed off, turned and waved a second time. The pair went through the gate wearing the Joshua-level passes. Whatever the thing meant, it was heavy mojo, evoking immediate respect from park workers, like they were backstage passes to the Ascension. Nautilus figured there weren’t a lot of J-level passes issued.
The kid was quiet as Nautilus took her past the initial flurry of vendors and down the long esplanade into the park, the road branching right toward the rides and games, left into the biblical attractions.
“There’s an amusement park over there,” Nautilus said, nodding right. “Even a roller-coaster. You want to ride the coaster?”
“The last time I rode one I puked my guts up.”
Nautilus veered left. The concrete pathway turned to sand and cobbles as they walked backwards in time, the structures brown brick and rough timbers, Middle-eastern architecture circa zero AD. Actors in period garb wandered through the crowd, a kid leading a donkey, a girl carrying a basket of olives, a bearded youth pushing a handcart. Cameras clicked as delighted visitors – “guests” in park parlance – snapped pictures or posed beside the actors. Nautilus heard the awed comments: “Like walking with Jesus.” “I can feel the Spirit.” “That donkey is sooo cute.”
“What do you think, Rebecca?” Nautilus said.
“Lame. Can you take me to Disney World instead?”
“If your parents say you can go, I’ll be happy to take you. Until I get their permission …”
The girl stopped dead in her tracks, scowling. “Yeah, I’m screwed, like always. They treat me like a baby.”
“They’re concerned for your well-being.”
The kid crossed her arms and glared. “You said you don’t have kids. How can you know anything?”
Nautilus spotted an ice-cream vendor and pointed. “Hey, want an ice cream, Rebecca?”
“Don’t change the subject. I want an answer.”
Nautilus led the girl away from the incoming stream of wide-eyed pilgrims clicking cameras in every direction, taking shelter beneath a palm. “I have nieces and nephews and I worry about them. I’m transferring that feeling into the feeling parents have for their children. Ergo, I think your parents are concerned for you.”
“Air-go?”
“E-R-G-O. It means ‘therefore’, or ‘it follows that’. I have a feeling of love and protection toward my family, therefore I think that’s what your parents feel for you.”
The kid looked dubious. “When can I see people faint?” she said.
They continued down the lane to the Ark, perched on its grassy rise, the crowd ten deep at the perimeter fence. The show was about to start.
“God saw how corrupt the earth had become,” a stentorian voice intoned from hidden speakers, “and was full of violence, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out …’”
Many in the crowd followed along in bibles. If you didn’t think to bring one, there was a fine selection in the gift shop, starting at $19.99 for the pocket version, ranging up to $389.95 for the leather-bound version autographed by Amos Schrum. “Reverend Schrum’s Choice: A Bible That Does Everything!” the sign assured. Nautilus wondered if it scratched your back and made toast.
“… For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth …”
Sound effects were added: thunder, crashing waves. Some in the crowd began weeping, others fell to their knees.
“No one’s fainting,” Rebecca Owsley said, disappointed.
“Maybe the day has to be hotter,” Nautilus said. “But it’s warming up. Have hope.”
“… Then God said to Noah, ‘Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you – the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground – so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number.’”
The huge door in the side of the vast timber structure creaked open. Two by two the animals exited with their handlers – Noah’s family, presumably – sheep, goats, horses, zebras, dogs, cats, a pair of parrots on an actor’s arms, the pair of camels – one balking and whipping its head as the handler struggled to keep it under control, the animals notoriously temperamental, Nautilus recalled, mules with humps.
The elephants were last, trunks swaying as they ambled from the doorway to thunderous applause. Another crowd began
queuing in front of a kiosk selling 8 × 10 photos of the Ark with animals disembarking, $18.95, or the poster-sized version for $49.95.
Rebecca stared at the Ark, then turned to Nautilus. “Did you know there are over five thousand kinds of mammals in the world?”
“I knew there are a lot. I never knew how many.”
“Guess how many kinds of snakes there are.”
“Ninety-eight-point-six?”
“That’s body temperature. Stop being goofy. There are almost three thousand kinds of snakes. Species, they’re called. And since they were two-by-two, that makes ten thousand mammals that would have been on the real Ark and almost six thousand snakes.”
“The math is correct.”
“And there are like a bazillion kinds of bugs. Were they all in there? Where did they put them? And didn’t the snakes freak the other animals out?”
“I’m sure, uh, accommodations were made and—”
“There wasn’t room,” the kid said. A sly smile crossed her face. “Ergo it never happened, right?”
“Hey, want an ice cream?” Nautilus pointed to another vendor beside the photo kiosk.
“You’re really pushing the ice cream today, aren’t you?” Rebecca Owsley said.
36
I spent a solo night at Vivian’s, she on her third all-nighter in a row. I couldn’t sleep, bedeviled by pictures of young women burned alive, so I found a cell-phone app offering sleep-inducing sounds, like white noise, rain, waves, waterfalls, and so forth. I used the white noise, fearful my weariness and the sound of running water might make me wet the bed. I had a meeting with the department attorneys on another case, which took ninety minutes, with me mostly sucking down coffee and confirming the account of events.
I had fully awakened when I hit the office at 10.30. Belafonte was in the conference room poring over the cases like they were the Dead Sea Scrolls. I was barely in my chair when my cell went off, the call from Dr Ukulele Johnson, an expert in trace evidence. Johnson was Jamaican, about eleven feet tall and, though he’d left behind his Rastafarian religion when he entered college, he’d kept the goofy pot grin and dangling dreadlocks. As for the name, his mother liked Hawaiian music.
“Where you at, Uke?” I yawned.
“The morgue, helping set up new equipment. Got something for you to think about, maybe.”
“On my way.”
Belafonte and I headed to meet Ukulele under a sky so richly blue it couldn’t have heard of the murders. We met in Ava’s office, a modest room with two chairs, a desk, and a wall of handbooks and tomes. Like my pathologist friend Clair Peltier back in Mobile, Ava favored a vase of flowers on her desk, something bright amidst all the death and decay. Ava had a superbly analytical mind, and I wanted her in on anything to do with forensics, medical or otherwise.
Ukulele – pronounced ookoo-lay-lay – was already there, his elongated frame seated on a cushioned chair, hair cording down his back, legs crossed at his ankles. He wore bright pink slacks and a Hawaiian print shirt under the lab jacket and I figured that’s how Harry would have looked as a forensics expert, just a bit shorter and sans the dreads.
Ava was at her desk, Belafonte took the other chair, I closed the door and leaned against it. Ukulele pulled reports from a manila envelope and passed them around. “We started with the standard microscope,” he said, his voice rich and musical and with a reggae backbeat. “Then moved to the scanning electron scope, then to various chemical analyses. We found carbonate stone on four of the teeth. And, in one broken-off tooth, an actual piece of carbonate stone about the size of a grain of sand.”
“Carbonate stone?”
“Limestone’s the most likely source, Carson. Gypsum, perhaps. Or dolomite. Found anywhere there’s Karst geology. One big indicator of Karst is sinkholes.”
“Which are everywhere in South Florida,” Belafonte said.
I shook my head, perplexed. “You’re saying she was hit in the mouth with a rock, Ukulele?”
“With enough force to break four teeth off at the gumline.”
My mind saw a tomahawk, the kind in the old Westerns, a stick with a stone axe-blade lashed to one end. Then I recalled Ava’s use of the word “gauntlet”, which gave me an even worse image, the victims forced to run while someone or someones thudded at them with a tomahawk.
“We found black cotton fibers on two teeth, microscopic,” Ukulele continued. “It’s possible they came from a gag.” He paused and thought. “Or a cotton wrapping on her head.”
“If cloth was over her mouth,” Belafonte said, “how did the rock get on her teeth?”
Ukulele punched himself in the mouth in slow motion. “The rock hits the mouth and the teeth tear through the fabric. Like I said, we just have trace.”
Ukulele had to resume his work, the installation of radiology equipment. He unwound from the chair and headed back to his task.
“Limestone?” I said. “Rocks? What does it mean?”
Ava put a finger to her lips, the sign she was in deep thought. After several moments she grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen, scrawling for a few seconds. “A basic schematic of the tissue-damage sites …” she said, displaying a drawing loosely resembling a target, the centering circle fully shaded in, the next lighter, the third and outside circle lighter still. “The center represents the highest amount of broken vessels, capillaries, hemorrhage. The next circles represent diminishing damage.”
Belafonte stared at the shapes. “Always rounded?”
“Generally a circular or ovoid configuration. And in this general size as well. Think about it.”
Belafonte figured it out and sucked in a gasp.
“What?” I said, my sleep-deprived mind running at sixty per cent.
“The Bible,” Belafonte said. “Think punishment.”
It took a three-count.
“She was stoned,” I said. “Pelted with rocks.”
Nautilus and Rebecca lunched al fresco in the shade of a wide sycamore and ate lamb kebabs from the park’s Jerusalem Café. They were almost alone outside on the picnic tables, the day having climbed into the upper eighties and most of the faithful preferring the air-conditioned version of the Holy Land.
“Do you think this is where the lambs from the Ark go when they’ve misbehaved?” Rebecca said, twirling a cube of meat in her hand.
“I doubt it,” Nautilus said. “This is not bad lamb.”
It took the kid a moment to get the joke and she laughed. “This is more fun than I thought it would be.”
“There’s actually a lot to see. Like the—”
Rebecca shook her head. “Not because of all the Bible stuff. Because I like how you look.”
Nautilus set down his skewer and raised an eyebrow. “Pardon me?”
“When I look at your eyes I see you looking all around, like your eyes are taking pictures.” The kid demonstrated, eyes flashing side to side, seeming to linger on something for a moment, moving on.
“I’m simply observing,” Nautilus said. “This is a different experience for me and it makes me think.”
“I like to observe,” Rebecca said. “I like to think, too.” She paused. “But whenever I do, I get in trouble.”
“Which probably indicates that you’re thinking correctly,” Nautilus said, then wondered if he should have said it.
“What do you mean by that?”
He’d used up the ice-cream shtick. “I’ve got to hit the restroom,” Nautilus said. “I’ll be back.”
The restrooms were at a far corner of the food court. As he got to his feet, Nautilus saw Tawnya talking to a woman dressed in a rough-spun cowled robe. They were standing beside a pair of large trash containers on the far side of the restroom building, away from the walkways.
He was almost at the restroom door when he saw Tawnya’s hand slash out and slap the woman’s face. Nautilus moved closer, using a large bush as cover and pausing two dozen feet from the mini-drama.
“Shut up, bitch,” Tawnya said, not wearing
her toothy, sun-bright Welcome-to-Hallelujah-Jubilee face. This one was screwed up in anger.
The other woman said something back. Tawnya’s finger jabbed toward the woman’s eyes. “Fuck that. You do what I say or I’ll have your sorry ass on the bricks.”
Mumbled response. Some kind of challenge.
“You can try,” Tawnya said. “Who’s gonna believe a stupid hillbilly? WHO?”
More mumbles. The other woman sounded like she was crying.
“Leave?” Tawnya spat. “Be my guest, bitch. There’s the fucking gate. See how long you can make it on the street. I’m happy to have your sorry ass gone.”
More crying. Apology. The voice of subservience.
“That’s what I thought,” Tawnya said, in the cold voice of someone in total control. “Make that threat again and your bitch ass gets sued by more lawyers than your simple mind could count. Wash your face and get back to work.”
Nautilus backtracked to the restroom. Another observation.
37
“Stoned,” I said, still reeling from Ava’s supposition.
We were back at HQ, me pacing the room, Belafonte going through Darlene Hammond’s life, mostly documented in arrest reports. We were looking for a link outside of the hard life of runaways and the fall into prostitution and drugs. There had to be something.
“It fits, Detective,” Belafonte said. “Anointing oil, fire, the wrapping in wool – the ‘flesh of the lamb’, if you will. You said unbalanced religios use a mish-mash of symbols.”
I sat and pulled close a stack of files, the lives of three women reduced to symbols on paper. I’d been through them a dozen times, nothing. After five minutes I heard Belafonte clear her throat.
“Here’s something interesting. When Darlene got busted for hooking, another woman named Vera Garrido went down with her.”
“So what’s the big deal?” I asked. The MDPD didn’t tend to bust single working girls, preferring sweeps that net a dozen or more at a time. They’d pick a corner or an area, pack a wagon with hookers – some screaming and swearing, others giggling at the absurdity of it all – and haul them to the station. They were back at work within a day.