Island of Bones (2 page)

Her name was Alina. She was born during a sultry summer thunderstorm somewhere near Mali, a thing no one cared about in a place few had heard of. In Senegal, she inhaled the cool ocean breezes and in the Cape Verde Islands she found her fury.

By the time she reached Hispaniola she was a killer.

The first hurricane of the 1987 season turned out to be the most deadly in decades, ravaging the Caribbean, littering the beaches of Haiti with fishing boats and bodies. Then she sped through the Florida Straits, turned north and slammed into the southwest coast of Florida. Finally, Alina died, drifting away as a depression somewhere over Chesapeake Bay.

And now the shell seekers were out, celebrating her wake.

Louis watched them as they walked the beach. Every so often, someone would stoop, pick up a prize, and hold it up to the white morning sun before dropping it in a net bag. But mostly they walked, heads bowed, shoulders stooped, criss-crossing silently across the sand to the dirge-like drone of the waves.

The beach was a mess. The d
unes had been eaten away almost up to his cottage, the sea oats beaten down, the sea grape trees snapped and stripped. About a hundred yards to the south, a sailboat lay heeled over in the sand, its mast bent like a straw, the halyards looped and tangled.

Louis looked back at his cottage. It was still standing, though last night he was sure it wasn’t going to survive. Around midnight, the guy on the radio was trying to sound cool as he reported the wind was up to 110 miles an hour and that Alina was coming up out of the Florida Straits on a north-northeast course aiming right at Sanibel-Captiva. The cottage’s roof was leaking, the old boards groaning. Finally, Louis put Issy in the cat carrier and ran down the street in the pelting rain to take cover in Timmy’s Nook. He had sat out the storm in the restaurant drinking warm Heinekens in the dark with Bev and Carlo, listening to the
bam! pop! fizz!
of electrical transmitters blowing, watching the night sky turn acid green.

His first hurricane.

Bev, who had lived in Florida all her sixty-some years, called it a “pissy little blow job, nothing like Donna back in sixty.” He didn’t tell her it had scared the living shit out of him.

But he had survived. And now...

God, had the sky ever been bluer? Like it had been stripped clean and repainted. He drew in a deep breath of sea spray, looking again at the shell seekers. They always came after a big storm, Bev had told him, a horde descending on the beach to comb through the debris kicked up from the sea.

He wondered if anyone
had died in the storm. The electric and phones were still out, so there was no way to tell yet. And the two-lane road that ran the length of Sanibel-Captiva was covered in sand and downed trees.

He glanced at his watch. Eight A.M. He had been awake all night, but he wasn’t tired. There was still a charge in the air, the kind that came when something bad missed you and kept going, a bullet, a botched love affair, a speeding car.

His stomach rumbled. There was nothing to eat in the cottage and Bev had told him not to open his fridge because who knew how long the power would be out?

He decided to walk up the beach and see if anything was open.

Fish carcasses. Driftwood. Great green ropes of kelp.

Beer bottles, a broken lawn chair, rusted cans, a car tire.

A dead seagull. Milky-eyed fish. Blue-bubbled Portuguese man-of-war.

Chunks of Styrofoam, plastic flowers, a broken flip-flop.

Millions of shells. A mosaic of pink, yellow, purple, blue. All sizes and shapes. Geometric swirls, regal conchs, butterfly-winged coquinas. He had never seen so many different shells.

Louis stopped abruptly, his eyes on the wet sand.

It was big, much bigger than the other shells. That was what had made him stop. That and the color —- a mottled rust that didn’t quite look like any other shell.

He knelt and brushed away the seaweed. He drew back sharply.

It was a skull. Small, very small, maybe the size of a softball. And human. He could see that now as he carefully lifted away the last of the seaweed.

It was wedged sideways, half buried in the sand. The waves crept up, sending a gentle stream of sea foam into the nasal cavity and out again.

Louis sat back on his legs, staring at the skull. He quickly scanned the surrounding debris but saw no other bones, no clothing, no evidence of a body. Just this tiny skull.

He squinted out at the gulf water, still churning green from the storm. Damn, where had it come from? A boat? A drowning?

Voices...a couple was approaching, heads down, the man sweeping a metal detector across the sand. The beach was already crowded and more people were coming. He was too far away from his cottage and couldn’t call the cops anyway.

He looked back at the skull, then out over the gulf. He
couldn’t leave the skull here for someone else to find. There was no choice. He quickly pulled off his T-shirt and spread it on the sand. Picking up a stick, he wedged it carefully in the eye socket. He extracted the skull from the sand and placed it on the shirt. Wrapping it up, he stood and hurried back to the cottage.

Setting the
bundled shirt on the chair near the door, he picked up the phone. Still dead.

He walked back to the chair and unwrapped the shirt, staring at the skull. Damn
...there were two holes in it that he hadn’t noticed back on the beach. He squatted down to get a better look.

One hole right on the top about the size of a quarter and a second smaller one farther back. The holes were shaped like diamonds, and both were too perfectly formed to look like they had been made by accident. They reminded him of a wound profile he had seen in his police academy textbook. The wound had been made by a pickax.

With a sigh, he rose. Who would hit a baby hard enough to drive an ax through its skull? And where the hell had the skull come from?

He thought of Bev and her stories about Hurricane Donna. The storm had been so fierce, she said, that boats harbored in Pine Island Sound had been found ten miles inland, wrecked along the banks of the Caloosahatchee River. Someone had found a roulette wheel on Fort Myers Beach that was eventually traced to a casino in the Bahamas.

The skull could have come from anywhere. Louis knelt down again to stare at it. It was so small. So sad. And probably so far from home, wherever that was.

Louis set out a bowl of water and Tender Vittles for Issy and left the cottage, heading up the sand path that wound through the other cottages. Maybe Pierre had a radio he could use to call the sheriff. Up near the office, he saw Pierre standing out in the road, staring at the “Branson’s on the Beach” sign. A slash pine had fallen across it, knocking it down.

Pierre saw him coming and pointed at the sign. “Look!
C’est foutue!
” He gestured wildly at the tree limbs and debris littering the grounds. “
Un vrai foutoir
!”

“I can’t understand you, Pierre.”

“You can fix, no?” Pierre asked, nodding at the sign.

“No,” Louis said, bracing for the usual fight
with his landlord. He got a break in his rent for serving as Branson’s “security chief” but it meant putting up with Pierre’s attempts to turn him into his personal serf.

“No? No?
J’ai d’autres chats a fouetter!
You can fix!”

“No,” Louis said more firmly.

Pierre launched into a tirade of French as he began to tug on the tree limb.

“Pierre,” Louis said,
“do you have a CB radio or something?”

“
Quoi?
"

“A radio. The phones are out and I have to call the sheriff’s department.”

“The sheriff? Forget that! I don’t have radio and I need you to help here!”

“I’ll help later. I have something important to take care of first.”

Louis turned and walked off, leaving Pierre yelling after him. He paused, looking at all the gawkers on the beach then decided to walk down to the Island Store. He went the beach route, walking slowly along the shoreline, scanning the sand and hoping that if there were more bones the shell scavengers would not know what they were seeing and would leave them alone. But he saw nothing in the trash-clogged kelp.

The store was open. A small crowd milled outside,
a few dazed-looking tourists and locals jawing about the storm.It was hot and stuffy inside, the AC above the door silent. The shelves were stripped clean. Batteries, toilet paper, bottled water, and anything worth eating had been snatched up the day the hurricane warning went out. Louis suspected that Roberta Tatum had made a small fortune selling everything she’d
had in her store, right down to the last bottle of Perrier.

Louis was eyeing a lone can of pinto beans when she came up to his side.

“Well, I see you survived,” she said. Her dark face was shiny with sweat, her hair hidden beneath a pink bandana.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Could have been a lot worse.”

Louis nodded. “You don’t have a CB radio or something, do you, Roberta?”

“Nope. Why?”

Louis hesitated but decided not to bring up the skull. “Got to get a hold of someone, that’s all.” He nodded to the can of beans on the shelf. “This all you got left?”

“I warned you to stock up. But you weren’t hearing me, were you?”

“I guess not.” Louis’s eyes went to the coolers along the back wall. They looked empty. He sighed and picked up the can of beans.

“Jesus, you’re pathetic,” Roberta said. “Come with me.”

He followed her up to the front counter. She reached beneath and tossed a loaf of wheat bread, a jar of Jif, and a package of Ho
Hos on the counter.

She stood looking at him, hands on hips, a frown creasing her face.
“Go on, take it.”

Louis grinned. “Thanks.”

“Next time, listen to what I tell you. You don’t screw around with a hurricane, even a small one. You hear me?”

“I hear you. You got anything to drink left?” Louis asked.

“Yeah, I got twelve cases of Coors back there that’s hotter than dog piss.”

“I’ll pass. How about a bottle of brandy?”

Roberta moved away and returned with a bottle of Remy Martin.

Louis shook his head. “I can’t afford that
.”

Roberta rolled her eyes. ‘Take it, damn it. I saw an ad for booze the other day and I thought of you. Went something like
claret’s for boys and wine’s for men. But brandy is for heros.”

“I’m no hero,” Louis said.

“Don’t I know it.”

Roberta leaned against the counter, fanning herself with a copy of the
Island Reporter
. Louis came to the store at least once a week but he hadn’t noticed until now that she looked thinner. Two years had passed since her husband, Walter, had been murdered, and he wondered how she was doing. Not that he would ask. Even though he had played the main role in finding Walter Tatum’s killer.

A man and woman came in, their sunburned faces animated. The woman was carrying a handful of shells.

“Could we bother you for a bag?” she asked Roberta.

Roberta gave her a cold stare, then snapped a plastic bag off the rack and thrust it at the woman. The couple left.

“Damn tourists, like buzzards picking through the garbage,” Roberta muttered, fanning herself again. “What the hell do they think they’re going to find out there anyways?”

Louis paused just a beat. “I found a skull.”

Roberta threw him a look. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m not kidding. I found a skull on the beach.”

Roberta stopped fanning herself. “What? You mean a head?”

“No, it’s a clean skull. It looks like a baby skull, but it looks old,” he added, as if that made it easier to accept.

Roberta came closer. “A baby? What did you do with it?”

“It’s back at my place.”

“It’s in your house? Where at?”

Louis shrugged. “In a
chair wrapped in a shirt.”

“You just left a baby’s skull in your chair?”

“Well, it’s a comfortable chair.”

“That’s not funny.”

“C’mon, Roberta. It’s not like it’s...” He paused, watching her. “Like a fresh victim.”

Her black eyes pierced him. “You ever had a baby?”

“No.”

“Ever even been around one?”

Louis shook his head, but he was remembering a moment long ago. He’d almost had one.

Roberta let out a huff. “Didn’t think so.”

“Christ, Roberta,” he said, “I’ve seen bones, skeletons before. It’s no big deal. It’s just a skull.”

She began to stuff his groceries into a bag. “Yeah, just a skull you leave in your chair and make jokes about. It’s no joke. It’s what’s left of a baby. You
hearing me?”

Louis felt his neck muscles tighten. “I’m hearing you.”

She thrust the bag at him. “I doubt it.”

Louis reached into his pocket for some money. Roberta shook her head when he held out the bills.

“Pay me later. The register ain’t working anyway.”

Louis hesitated, wanting to make things right but not understanding why Roberta was so bent out of shape in the first place. “I have to report it. You know anybody with a radio?”

“Nope.” She turned away, fanning herself with the newspaper again.

Louis picked up the bag and started out the door.

“Talk to Jay Strickland.”

Louis stopped. “He’s got a radio?”

“Should have. He’s a cop.”

“Where do I find him?”

“Last time I looked, he was out front. Can’t miss him. Red hair, like Woody Woodpecker.”

Louis stepped out into the sun. He spotted Strickland’s spiky red hair immediately in the knot of men in the parking lot. Strickland was wearing cutoff jeans and a faded Hawaiian shirt, but Louis could see the police radio sticking out of his back pocket. He approached and introduced himself.

Strickland gave him a handshake and an easy smile. “Kincaid, yeah. I’ve heard the other guys talk about you. I was hoping we’d get to meet sometime.”

Louis eyed the other men. “Could we talk in private, Officer?”

“Sure.”

As t
hey moved away, Louis studied the deputy. He didn’t seem to be much older than his own twenty-seven years. Probably younger. Louis filled him in, and Strickland’s expression turned somber as he put on his cop face.

“Can you call it in?” Louis asked.

“Sure. But I can tell you no one can get out here for hours, because the causeway road is out. I’m only here ’cause I live over in Sanibel.” He nodded to an old green Vespa and grinned. “Rode over on my hog.”

Louis saw Roberta standing in the door, watching them.
He waited, listening while Strickland called in to his station and reported the skull. He heard the harried dispatcher say that no one could respond. Strickland clicked off and turned to Louis.

“Looks like I’m it,” he said.

They walked back to Louis’s cottage, Strickland wheeling the Vespa. Inside, Louis started to the kitchen to dump the groceries.

“It’s over there, in the chair.”

“Wow...”

When Louis turned, Strickland was holding the skull. “Hey, don’t pick it up, man
,” Louis said.

Strickland set it down quickly. “Why not? Not likely to get prints off a skull that’s been in the water for so long.”

“You don’t know how long it’s been in the water. You should treat it like evidence anyway.”

“Yeah, okay. You didn’t find anything else with it?”

“Not a thing.”

Strickland knelt next to the chair. “It’s probably a newborn,” he said softly.

Louis came forward. “What makes you say that?”

Strickland pointed. “See the little holes on top?” “Pickax,” Louis said.

Strickland turned to look at him. “Pickax? No way, man. Those are fontanelles.”

“What?”

“Fontanelles,” Strickland said, standing. “Soft spots. Babies got ’em so their skull plates can compress while the baby travels down the birth canal.” He used his cupped hands to demonstrate, drawing one set over the knuckles of the other. “They don’t close up for months afterward, sometimes as late as two years.”

Strickland saw the incredulous look on Louis’s face and smiled. “My wife just had a baby.”

Strickland bent down, hands on knees, to look at the skull again. “Babies are so cool, man,” he said. “Jenny made me read this book on how it all happens, and it talks about fontanelles and stuff. Sometimes, the skull comes out kinda mushed up from the baby going down the birth canal.”

Louis suppressed a sigh. It was more than he needed to know.

“My daughter’s head looked like an upside-down Dixie cup,” Strickland went on, “so I made them wait a day to take the hospital photos. Ashley looked great then. Want to see her picture?”

Strickland had already gone for the wallet.

“Pretty,” Louis said when Strickland thrust out the picture. He didn’t add that he thought all babies looked like Karl Malden.

“Babies are so cool,” Strickland said again, more softly now. “It’s like when they’re lying there looking up at you, it’s like suddenly you get that you’re it. You’re life and death to them, man. You’re everything.”

Louis nodded like he understood. Strickland carefully put the picture back in his wallet.

“So,” Strickland said, “where exactly did you find the skull?”

“C’mon, I’ll show you.”

He took Strickland to the place on the beach where he had picked up the skull. The beach was crowded, the shell seekers now joined by the curious who had just come down to see what
havoc nature had wrought. Offshore, three surfers were bobbing on their boards, hoping the choppy water would yield a ride or two.

Strickland looked at Louis. “Think we should secure the scene?”

Louis nodded. “That would be a good start.”

“How far you think we should go?”

“You’re the responding officer. You decide.”

“You got any tape?”

“No. Don’t you?”

“In my cruiser, but it’s sitting in my driveway with a tree on the hood.”

Louis turned and looked out across the beach.

Strickland drew in a breath Louis could hear. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “This is my sixth day on the job. Everyone else is tied up with other shit.” Strickland ran a hand over his stubbly hair. “I’d appreciate any help.”

Louis hesitated. He knew that in different circumstances, the whole beach would be roped off and a team of cops and techs would do a methodical search. But that wasn’t going to happen right now. Every cop in the county was probably tied up with storm duty.

“What are we going to do?” Strickland asked.

Louis nodded toward an elderly couple coming toward them, the man sweeping a metal detector over the sand. “Get them to help.”

“What?”

“People like to help.”

“What do we tell them?” Strickland
said, hurrying beside him.

“
Tell them we found an old skull and we’re looking for other bones.”