One fingerprint. One careless little man, one lousy fingerprint, and my life is ruined. The last of the fucking Apgards. He looked around the drawing room. Satiny dark green wallpaper, gilt dado rail and cornices. Stately grandfather clock, bronze sun/moon pendulum ticking off the seconds. And over the fireplace—the old Danes couldn’t conceive of a house without a fireplace, even in the tropics—hung the ancestral portraits.
Don’t say hung. Don’t even think it. St. Luke still had the gallows. They’d done the Blue Valley boys one at a time. The Guv had described the proceedings in vivid detail when Lewis came home for spring break his second year in prep school. It was the hang-man’s first job in years. He’d botched the first one—the boy had strangled to death. Took him forever. Pissed and crapped and shot a load. Put the fear o’ God into the other ones, I’ll tell you that, me son, said the Guv.
The fear o’ God. The Guv was always talking about folks getting the fear o’ God put into them. Lewis didn’t fear God, because he didn’t believe in him. But God Almighty, he feared the gallows.
He pushed himself up from his chair, crossed the room toward the fireplace, his footsteps cushioned by the thick carpeting. He looked up at the oil painting of Great-great-grandfather Klaus Apgard. People always said Lewis favored him—which was why he still hung in the place of honor, dead center over the mantel. The eyes in the portrait were turquoise like Lewis’s, and they followed you around the room. They’d often given Lewis the willies as a boy.
Klaus had known some hard times too, thought Lewis. It was on his watch that the slaves had risen—he’d seen the family fortune through emancipation and the collapse of the cane industry.
To Klaus’s left was Great-grandfather Christian, the last Danish governor of the island. Married an American heiress to infuse the failing Apgard fortunes, and persuaded the Danish government to throw in St. Luke for lagniappe when it sold the Virgin Islands—Sts. Croix, John, and Thomas—to the United States in 1916.
To Klaus’s right was the portrait of Grandfather Clifford B. Apgard, Sr., the first governor of the newly minted U.S. territory. His favorite song was “The Bastard King of England.” Lewis had always associated the first verse with the first Guv—he ruled his land with an iron hand though his morals were weak and low. And accordingly, his son, Lewis’s father, whose portrait graced the staircase landing, had been a pillar of rectitude.
Five generations of Apgard men, thought Lewis, turning away from the fireplace and catching sight of himself in the gilt-framed mirror against the far wall. A planter, three governors, and a gallows-bird.
But there was still time. If the Epps and Bennie disappeared before they were arrested—poof! vanished!—there’d be no way to tie Lewis to any of this. He thought of the two hand grenades up in his bedroom and remembered the words of Bungalow Bill: Pull the pin, toss it in. No damn cave, no damn Cong.
On his way upstairs he passed his father’s portrait. The old man was frowning as usual. “Don’t worry, Guv,” said Lewis. “The family honor is—”
Safe with me, he was about to say. But he’d just thought of another possibility: what if Pender suspected the truth? The Epps had that alibi for Bendt’s murder—Pender might have figured out that Lewis was involved. But there was no evidence to link Lewis to the Epps—maybe Pender was trying to outsmart Lewis, to panic him into doing just what he was about to do: pick up the Epps and Bennie, tell them they were about to be arrested, and offer to hide them in the cave until he could figure out a way to get them off the island. (Boom.)
In that case, the cops might be waiting at the end of the lane. Wouldn’t do to drive right past them with the Epps and Bennie in the car—that’s just what Pender wanted Lewis to do.
The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. Why else would Pender have told him about the fingerprint and asked him his advice?
But if Pender was trying to entrap Lewis, that made his countermove—getting rid of the Epps tonight—even more urgent. What to do, what to do, what to do? Lewis paced the landing. How to get the Epps to the cave without being seen with them? If they drove away alone, they might be followed or stopped, and could implicate Lewis. If he drove them away, they might be followed or stopped, and Lewis would have implicated himself.
Was there a third option? Lewis asked himself.
There’d better be, was the answer. There’d goddamn well better be.
4
Pender’s plan, of course, was to spook Apgard into making a move tonight—warning the Epps, trying to hide them, get them off the island, something like that. At the end of the Apgard driveway he turned and parked the cruiser a hundred yards or so down the Circle Road behind a stand of coconut palms. He got out, trotted down to the end of the driveway, looked back, couldn’t see the cruiser. He could barely see the palm trees.
He returned to the cruiser. The rain was falling as it had fallen all day, no harder, no softer, no gusts, no letup. Pender had never known anything like it in the States for sheer consistency and staying power—it was like living under a freaking waterfall.
Although it had been years since Pender had worked a lone stakeout, it didn’t take him long to get the feel of it. He left the motor running to power the windshield wipers and the defroster, then sighted in the binoculars, poured himself a cup of 7-Eleven coffee, opened a prewrapped turkey sandwich, and settled down to pay attention with intention, the way Sheriff Hartung had taught him back in Cortland County.
But he was out of practice. His mind wandered. He found himself thinking back to those early days. How proud he’d been, the first time he’d donned the uniform. Back then, Dawson would probably have thought of him as a pig. That’s okay—he’d have thought of her as a dope-smoking commie.
His mind drifted back to the previous night. If she hadn’t already told him who she was, he’d have recognized her from her picture in the Ten Most Wanted when they were making love—she looked twenty, thirty years younger in afterglow. Sweeeeeet. And she’d already told him she’d be waiting up for him tonight. Lying there in her Quonset or his sleeping loft. So what was he doing sitting in the front seat of a squad car two full years after retirement, when he had a beautiful woman waiting in bed for him?
Good question, Pender told himself. If you’d asked it more often when you were younger, you might still be married to Pam.
Or maybe not. Because the answer would have been the same: trying to stop the bad people from killing the good people.
5
Chaos in the overseer’s house. Emily had taken Apgard’s call. “Get out now,” he told them. “Bennie left a fingerprint on the machete—if the cops aren’t on their way, they will be soon. Grab what you can carry, leave the house by the back door. Cross the pasture, keeping the north fence and the sheep cotes to your right. At the far end of the pasture is a stile. The other side of the stile, a path leads up into the rain forest. Follow it over the top, past the ruins of the windmill tower and down the other side.
“When you reach the Core, skirt around the clearing, circling downhill to your right. Take the path into the woods until it forks at the outhouse, follow the left fork until you come to the cars parked under the flamboyant. I’ll be waiting in the Land Rover. I’ll take you to the cave, hide you out, bring supplies. In a few days they’ll come to the conclusion you’ve made it off the island, and the heat’ll die down. Then we’ll get you off the island for real—I can get hold of a boat.”
“Why don’t you just pick us up here?”
“They might be watching the driveway. I’m safe enough—I don’t think they suspect me yet, but they’ll tail you for sure. And if they do pull me over, the car will be empty—they’ll have to let me go. Listen, there’s no time to argue. I’m throwing you a lifeline here. If you want it, meet me in the Core parking lot one hour from now. If you’re not there, the hell with you—I’ll try to save myself.”
It was a lot to swallow. The three conferred briefly, agreed they had no reason to disbelieve Apgard, and n
o better plan. Bennie didn’t think he’d left a fingerprint, but couldn’t swear he hadn’t, so the bug-out began.
Phil and Emily filled their backpacks with food, water, extra batteries, toiletries, toilet paper, anything they could stuff into their packs. Bennie slipped his well-worn copy of Moby-Dick, a few personal items, and a sleeping bag in a waterproof vinyl stuff bag, into his old canvas knapsack, then grabbed a flashlight, the fireplace shovel, and a box of Ziploc freezer bags, and hurried down to the old Danish kitchen. He removed the Maubey Soda sign over the oven hole, tossed it aside, lifted out the grate, and began digging up his treasure: four coffee and one oatmeal can containing a total of five hands altogether (not bad, considering the Epps had insisted he leave behind all the trophies he’d collected in California), and a strongbox containing a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills.
Transferring the money into freezer bags took only a few minutes. The hands took longer—he had to pry the lid off each can to make sure there were twenty-seven bones in each (offering an incomplete hand would have been an unforgivable insult to the ancestors waiting on the other side of the abyss), before transferring them, one set of bones at a time, into freezer bags, which he then vacuum-sealed by sucking the air out before closing the little plastic zipper.
There was, however, no need to count the bones in the last can—after spending only five days wrapped in the poultice of turpentine tree leaves Bennie used to loosen the skin from the flesh and the flesh from the bones, Mrs. Apgard’s hand was still intact. Bennie unwrapped the poultice and slipped this most recent trophy into a bag; when he sucked out the air, the shape of the plastic conformed to the shape of the hand, as if it were a second, transparent skin.
The sheep pasture was a quagmire, threatening to suck the rubber boots off their feet at every step. Phil’s glasses kept fogging up. The waterproof hooded ponchos were heavy and unbreathing—by the time they reached the stile they were nearly as wet inside as out from trapped perspiration. Their boots were heavy with clinging mud as they entered the rain forest.
Under the trees there was some measure of relief from the pelting rain. It dripped steadily, but the violence of its fall was broken by the forest canopy. The climbing was hard going, though. They trudged up the steep muddy trail, Emily in the lead with the light from her helmet lamp set to LED white, Bennie bringing up the rear. Phil’s breath was ragged when they reached the ruins at the top of the ridge. They had to wait for Bennie to catch up—the weight of his knapsack was obviously a burden for the slender old man.
By then Emily’s own back was killing her. It had been giving her trouble ever since her boobs blossomed at age fourteen. Breast reduction surgery had been recommended by more than one doctor, but she’d as soon have cut off her nose. As would Phil. She agreed to a short rest.
The rain was drumming hard again, up above the forest canopy. They ducked into the mill tower, shucked off their packs, and rested for a few minutes in what little protection was provided by the conical walls before starting off again on the downhill leg of their journey.
6
Headlights. Coming down the long drive leading from the Great House. Pender grabbed the binoculars from the passenger seat, focused in as best he could through the rain and the windshield wipers. Land Rover. Apgard at the wheel. No passengers visible, but three people could easily have been hunkered down in the back.
Pender slumped in his seat as Apgard reached the end of the driveway, then sat up again when the Rover turned in the opposite direction, toward town. With no backup for the tail, he couldn’t afford to be spotted, but neither could he afford to lose Apgard. He counted to one thousand three, then pulled out without turning on his headlights.
Fortunately that section of the Circle Road was relatively straight, and there was no other traffic. He gave the Rover a long lead, close enough to keep the subject’s taillights in view, too far back to be spotted in the subject’s rearview mirror.
The Rover’s right turn signal flashed (how very law-abiding, thought Pender), then the brake lights. Pender hit the accelerator, caught up just in time to see the red taillights disappearing up the Core Road. When they were out of sight he switched on his parking lights—the reflection from the rain-shiny black tar surface provided just enough illumination to keep him from drifting into the boggy cane piece.
The Crown Vic followed the Rover at a distance of a few hundred yards. Just before he reached the Core gate, Pender shut off his parking lights again, steered the car off the road to the right, into the drainage ditch by the side of the lane, switched off the engine. Most of the cabins down by the lane were dark. There were a few lights up on the hillside to his right. One of them was Dawson’s. He pictured her sitting up on her narrow foam pallet, reading Mrs. Dalloway by the soft glow of the oil lamp.
The bright yellow slicker was not made for a foot tail at night. Pender splashed through the muddy gully by the side of the lane, using the tamarind trunks to shield him from the parking lot—the junkyard, everybody called it—at the far end. He circled behind the A-frame across from his, then followed the path leading down from the Crapaud, approaching the junkyard from the side. He saw the Land Rover parked under the flamboyant tree, facing the lane for a quick getaway.
Apgard was behind the wheel. A lighter flared, illuminating his face; the bowl of his corncob pipe glowed red for a moment. Pender stepped sideways, off the open path, and crept closer, keeping to the side of the A-frame for cover.
7
Phil groaned. The three were crouched in the brush at the top of the clearing, trying to get their bearings.
Emily: “Sshh. What?”
“I just remembered, I left my manuscript next to the typewriter.”
“I know. I found it—it’s in my pack.”
“Whew, thanks. I swear, sometimes I think I’m getting senile.”
“What about Bennie, leaving that fingerprint behind? Whatever would you boys do without me?”
“I wouldn’t even want to—”
Bennie shushed both of them, pointed to a light bobbing up the hill toward them. They ducked deeper into the undergrowth. The light angled away from them. They saw a little girl in a shiny red slicker and red rain boots, holding an umbrella in one hand and a powerful flashlight in the other, disappearing down a path leading into the woods below them to their right.
“That must be the path Lewis meant,” said Emily. They left the cover of the undergrowth, trotted around the periphery of the clearing and followed the girl up the path, which forked at a tin-roofed building with a bare lightbulb burning over the door.
Phil pointed Bennie toward the left fork, leading downhill, told him to go on ahead, see if the Land Rover was there yet. “We’ll be along in a sec.”
Moving silently as always, even under the crushing weight of his knapsack, Bennie disappeared down the path. Phil turned to Emily. “I—”
“Don’t even ask.”
“I’m not asking, I’m telling you. I want her—I want to take her with us.”
“It’s insane.”
“Why? We’re already blown. Peached. Screwed. If they catch us, how many times can they hang us? And if they don’t, if we’re going to have a chance to get away, I’m going to need the strength. I need that girl, Zeppo—I’ll turn into an old man, waiting in that cave.”
“It’s too risky. If she screams, we’re done for.”
“Then we’ll have to make sure she doesn’t scream, won’t we? Not that anybody’s going to hear her over this storm.”
When she was little, Dawn used to be afraid to go to the Crapaud at night. It wasn’t on account of silly Roger the Dodger’s shit eel joke that he told all the newbies: she knew there was no such of a thing. But around the time Mommy got sick, Dawn started having nightmares with one thing in common: they all happened in the Crapaud. Sometimes it was bigger and more echoey, with a high distant ceiling like the airport, sometimes it was more like a cave. Some dreams there’d be a monster hidin
g in one of the stalls—something she never saw for the whole nightmare, but she knew it was there.
After Mommy died, Dawn used to dream she was still alive, calling to Dawn from one of the stalls. But when Dawn opened the door, the stall would be empty, and she’d hear her mother calling for help from deep down in the dark stinky pit, only the dream-Dawn would be too scared to look over the edge.
But it had been a long time since she’d had one of those nightmares. And besides, six and a half is much too old to have your auntie or your big brother or Dawson go with you every time you have to poop. Which for some reason they had done all weekend, like she was a baby or something. Of course, everybody was acting weird all weekend, men walking around with guns and keeping torches burning all night. Auntie Holly said it was like a drill, like the fire drills they had at school, but Dawn found it very unsettling anyway, and was glad to find that things had gone back to normal when she got home from school that afternoon.
She shoved open the Crapaud door, put the umbrella down on the sloping concrete floor, open and upside down, and spun it around a few times like the world’s biggest dreidel before making her way to the last toilet stall, known as the kiddie hole. This one had a booster step nailed to the wooden platform and an extrawide seat with a narrow hole to keep little tushies from slipping through.
Dawn hung her red slicker from the hook, hiked up her nightgown, and settled down to read a Curious George book from the magazine rack by flashlight. But the Crapaud was too cold for reading—she finished her business as quickly as possible, wiped, washed, grabbed her umbrella, and stepped out into the rain again.
Twenty-Seven Bones Page 23