Dead Asleep (5 page)

Chapter 7

E
mma drove herself home in one of Carrow's spare Jeeps. Carrow had decided to give it a little more time before he notified the island doctor. He'd offered to drive her back but she waved him off. He'd continued drinking steadily the entire time that she was with him and she didn't want a repeat of the wild ride up the hill.

Her house and grounds were filled with sounds, but good, natural ones rather than crashing glass and incoherent screams. Tree frogs sang their up-and-down tones and moths fluttered around the solar-powered lights that lined the driveway. The ocean waves made a rhythmic rumble as they washed against the beach below. She used her key and stepped into the cool foyer. The lights were low, the house quiet. Despite the apparent peacefulness, or maybe because of it, Emma retrieved her gun from the cabinet and made another quick circuit of the house before entering her bedroom. She grabbed her nightgown from a hook behind the bathroom door, dropped her clothes in the hamper, placed her gun within reach on the nightstand, and fell asleep in minutes.

She woke the next morning when a bar of sunlight shot through the edge of the wooden shutters on the window and landed on her face. A quick glance at the clock told her it was almost nine, far later than her normal rising time of seven. The late night had taken its toll. She yawned, stretched, and headed to the armoire to get some clothes. She opened the panels.

A human skull sat on the shelf.

Emma swallowed the shriek of surprise at the sight of it. It stared back at her with its black hole eyes. It couldn't have been placed there before she and Moore took their turn around the house, because she'd opened the armoire to get the gun. Somebody had entered after she left for Carrow's. The idea that an unknown intruder had waited and watched made her skin crawl. She wondered if the priestess was the culprit.

Emma kept her eyes on it while she opened a drawer beneath. She pulled out a pair of shorts and a top and dressed. She removed a pair of running socks and put them on her hands, took a deep breath and lifted the skull from the shelf. Holding it out in front of her, she walked with it through the hall and into the kitchen, where she placed it in the stainless steel sink. It looked authentic, but she knew that it likely was not. The sharp intake of breath behind her told her that Latisha Johnson, the cook, was back.

Emma turned and saw her standing next to a large man in army green overalls. The deliveryman had a large water balloon on his right shoulder. His skin was pale and his head shaved clean. A name tag embroidered on his shirt read carl. He gave Emma a dull look and glanced at the skull with the same lack of curiosity.

“You should remove that immediately,” Johnson said. “It brings death. It shouldn't be in the house.”

“Where do you want me to set this up?” the deliveryman asked.

Johnson didn't respond. The stark fear on her face prompted Emma to once again pick up the skull. Its black socket eyes seemed to watch her. She carried it past both Johnson and the deliveryman. Johnson cringed away as Emma crossed next to her, but the man just flicked his eyes between the skull and Emma. He stared at it with an impressive calm.

“Lady, I got fifteen more deliveries to make. Where do you want this?” Emma heard the man ask again as she went out the back door, taking care to walk on the grass rather than the gravel of the driveway. The lawn felt warm under her feet. Hearing footsteps behind her, she looked back to see Johnson following at a safe distance. Emma kept going toward the garage, past the large green delivery truck parked in the driveway with the words springfed water emblazoned on the side. Once she reached the garage, she placed the skull gently on one of the tables. Johnson came to stand next to her.

“Miss Emma, you should leave. That's a message.”

Emma had no doubt that it was, but she was intrigued that someone would go so far to try to frighten her, and in such a bizarre fashion. Wild men hacking at her with machetes scared her; Halloween props did not. She put her hands on her hips while she contemplated the skull. The deliveryman appeared behind Johnson holding a clipboard.

“Voodoo bokor killed my neighbor when I lived back in Haiti,” the man said. He stepped closer to Johnson and thrust the clipboard at her. “Free trial is thirty days. You don't like it you call the company and I'll come back and take it away. Need to sign.” He handed Johnson a pen. While she read the paper on the clipboard, the man looked at Emma. “You don't mess with a bokor. They bad. That skull means the evil one comes to get you.”

“I don't believe in voodoo,” Emma said. The man held her gaze with his dull eyes and emotionless face.

“Voodoo bokor gonna kill you,” he said.

“That's enough!” Johnson snapped out the command. “I'll have no such talk around me.” The man shifted his look to her.

“Sorry, ma'am,” he said. He flashed Emma a sour look, turned and sauntered away. Emma watched the truck reverse down the driveway and disappear out the gate. Johnson frowned.

“What an unpleasant man,” she said. She folded the yellow contract copy that he'd given her. “I'm not sure that I believe in voodoo either, but I do believe that humans have an almost unlimited drive to destroy each other when they want something that someone else has.”

“Interesting choice of words. What do you think they want to take from me?”

“I think they want to stop you from collecting the plants.”

Emma thought so, too. It was the only logical explanation for both the man's destruction in the garage and the skull in her bedroom.

“It's not going to work. The contract I have requires that I collect them, analyze them, and deliver my results in record time. I'm not giving up. My company needs this contract. After breakfast I'm going to pay a visit to Security. Find out who is currently on the island.”

Half an hour later she returned to the garage. She started the car and shifted it into reverse.

“Don't you leave that awful thing in here! Take it with you,” Johnson called to her from the driveway's edge. Emma nodded.

“Could you hand it to me?”

Johnson shook her head. “Oh no, I'm not touching it.”

Emma sighed before putting the car back into park. She returned to the skull, put the socks back on her hands, and placed it down into the foot well. Then she reversed out of the driveway and headed to the airport.

Terra Cay was only twenty miles long and four miles wide. The mangrove swamp sat on the farthest end and the airport ran along the length. The short landing strip created a challenge for pilots, because it ended at the base of one of the hills. A mistake in landing could mean smashing into a wall of rock and dirt. Inclement weather only increased the risk. Several planes had crashed over the years, killing three pilots and four passengers. Extending the strip was not an option, because the other end managed to butt up against a bog. The area was chosen for the landing strip precisely because it was unsuitable for any other use.

Island Security was located in a small clapboard ranch house a quarter mile up the hill from the landing strip. It had the advantage of being close to the airport and in full view of arriving airplanes. This was also its disadvantage. Emma winced at the noise of an incoming plane. She parked in front of the building and lifted the skull out of the foot well. She closed the door with her foot and headed up the stairs to the front porch of the house. The door opened before she knocked.

“Latisha told me you were on your way,” Moore said. He looked down at the skull in her hands. “Bring it in. We'd like a look at it.”

Emma moved through a narrow hallway and into the main room on her right, which was large and airy. Potted ferns and soft yellow walls made the room inviting, as opposed to imposing. Most of the island kept this image of tropical living without a care in the world. Several desks placed in rows held computers and phones. In the back there was another, rectangular office that ran along the width of the room. It had a picture window through which Emma could see two large flat screen televisions. One was set to the Weather Channel and the other displayed a view of the small airport immigration office and its baggage claim area, which was open air and covered only by a roof.

A dark-skinned man in a short-sleeved white shirt with an Island Security logo on the front sat at one of the nearby desks. He looked about thirty-five years old, with neatly trimmed hair and a tiny earring in one ear. He stood. Emma placed the skull on one of the desks and couldn't help but think how incongruous it looked in the sunny office.

“I'd like you to meet Waylon Randiger. He's my second in command here.” Moore indicated the man in the short-sleeved shirt. Emma removed the socks and shook his hand.

“Is it real?” Randiger asked.

She shook her head. “No.” She put the socks back on her hands and turned the skull over. There was a smoothed edge of the skull that bore the remnants of a manufacturer's stamp that someone had tried to file off. “It's fake. A good fake, but fake nonetheless.”

“You took pains not to get your fingerprints on it,” Randiger said, “but I'm sorry to say that we'll not be able to take an impression here. We don't have the tools.”

“I think it's teenagers playing a prank,” Moore said.

“The man in the garage was no teenager,” Emma said.

Randiger looked at her in surprise. “What man?”

Moore gave Randiger a sidelong glance. “Ms. Caldridge was attacked by a man when she interrupted him in the process of destroying some of her things in the garage.”

“And a woman who claimed to be a voodoo priestess.”

“Voodoo? Was there an offering?” Randiger said.

Emma nodded. “A dead rooster and now this,”

Randiger frowned. “Whoever is doing this has to be stopped.”

Moore waved her into a chair next to his desk.

“Can you give me a detailed description? I'll enter it into our database.”

Emma glanced over and saw that the office had a Springfed watercooler in the corner. For a moment she toyed with the idea of telling Moore about the deliveryman's comment, but decided against it. What the man had said wasn't relevant to the investigation, and she decided to stick to the facts. She ran down the intruder's basics, including the keening noise he made while chasing her. She described his strange, twitching face and upturned eyes.

“Was he staring up at the sky?” Randiger asked.

Emma nodded. “All the while he was swinging at me. It was creepy.”

“It sounds as though he was mentally unbalanced,” Randiger said.

“He had dreadlocks.” Moore said this as if it was significant.

“So not an islander,” Randiger said.

“Why not? Do none have dreads?” Emma asked.

Randiger shook his head. “None. And we don't have anyone claiming to be a voodoo priestess living here. They must have come from off island.”

Moore frowned at the skull. “We're just past peak season, which ended on January sixth. Most of the owners have left already. Gone back to their main houses. While we register everyone arriving by plane, it is possible some could dock at night and sneak in that way.
Doubtful,
” Moore emphasized the word, “but definitely possible.”

“And the staff?” Ellen asked. “How do they arrive?”

“By boat if they come from a nearby island, or plane if not. It's not likely that they would bring troublemakers, though, because jobs here are coveted. Every staff member is given a thorough background check by us before they are allowed to accept a position.” Moore shook his head. “I'm still inclined to think the skull is the work of a teenager. Maybe one that is still home from school and wants to create some excitement while here.”

“If he's not an islander and not staff, how else could he have gotten here? Boat?”

“Maybe from the mangrove side, where no one could see them land a boat,” Moore said.

Randiger pursed his lips while he thought. “Only way to access the mangrove by boat is to pass over the blue holes first. No one I know would willingly take that route.”

“Why not?” Emma said.

Randiger looked surprised. “I presume you've heard the stories.”

“That they're loaded with phosphorescent minerals that glow blue?”

“That they're guarded by a giant sea monster that will suck you down into the depths, never to be seen again.”

Emma wasn't sure if Randiger was kidding. “Sea monster? Are you serious? First I'm attacked by a voodoo priestess and next you tell me there are monsters in the water? Just what is going on here?”

“Hey, you're on an ancient island that was uninhabited for most of its existence. Stories are to be expected.”

“She's going to dive them,” Moore said. Emma paused. She hadn't yet told anyone on the island of her plans to dive the holes. She wondered where Moore had gotten that information.

Randiger looked alarmed. “I don't advise that. Why do you need to go there?”

“I'm collecting plants indigenous to the island. My lab, Pure Chemistry, is always searching for new plants that we can utilize in high-end cosmetic products. The mangrove has unique forms of algae and seaweed that contain ten times the normal levels of vitamins A and D as well as some indigenous mud composed of minerals in an unusual concentration. We're assuming the minerals wash in from the blue holes. I'm not too concerned about monsters.”

“It's folklore, granted,” Randiger said, “but I can't help but think it derived from an actual event and the story just got more fantastical over the years. We did have a boat go missing a year ago.”

“But that could be completely unrelated.”

“Maybe. But others have spoken about a creature that lives in the holes. It's been described as similar to a kraken from old sailor lore.”

“Something that pulls boats into the deep, never to be seen again?” Emma said.