Turtle Island (2 page)

‘Sure, if we ever have a son I'll send him here.’ Charles
pulled his wife closer. ‘Seems our daughter is the school genius,
though that's not surprising with our genetic pool.’

‘Hey, Mr Modesty, be careful or we may have to widen the door
frames.’ Narla leaned up and kissed Charles gently on the
lips.

‘Please, please don't hurt me. I promise I won't tell anyone,
if you just let me go.’

Stephen England was lying face down on a mattress that smelled
of car oil and stale urine. He was tethered by rope to his wrists
and ankles. He was naked with his legs and arms spread-eagled, tied
to the corners. He didn’t even know if anyone was in the room with
him or how long he had been there. He had slipped in and out of
consciousness for three days, losing track of time. The black
canvas bag over his head allowed no daylight to pass through and if
it did, it would only confirm that he was alone in the dark. He
listened for a reply, waiting to hear some confirmation, any
confirmation that he wasn’t alone. Silence greeted his plea, a
silence that only heightened his fear. If he shouted would he come
back and if he did, that would mean more pain, more humiliation,
but what if he was gone, maybe somebody would hear him, come to his
aid.

Stephen began to cry, the frustration of his predicament
overwhelmed him.

The resonance of the heavy metal door opening suddenly focused
his mind, the sound sharpened England’s senses in a way that he
really wished wouldn’t.

Leroy crawled into bed at four thirty am; his mind was too
unsettled for sleep, disturbing images from the Polaroid's
infiltrating any resting moment.

‘I hope she was worth it.’ Leroy’s girlfriend, Lia, said in
the best sarcastic voice she could muster at such an unearthly
hour.

‘Nah, she don’t do that thing you do with your tongue.’ Leroy
joked. He lay on top of the sheets, the sticky heat wrapping his
body like a honey laced shroud. Unable to sleep, he watched
daylight transcend from night. The few hours until Lia rose seemed
like a lifetime. Leroy sat watching the ceiling change hue as the
light filtered through brightening the paintwork. All the time he
was thinking. The morning solace concentrated his mind perfectly,
until the trill of the alarm broke his train of thought.

Devoid of light and disorientated in time, Stephen England
found himself wishing for death. The last time he was here was the
worst. The most painful, the most degrading. England tried not to
think of the humiliation of being raped, urinated on, and sodomised
with everything from a beer bottle to a wire brush. The pain of the
latter bringing blissful unconsciousness.

The door clanged open again and fear paralysed Stephen. Hands
roughly turned back the black canvas hood on his head, exposing
Stephen’s mouth and nostrils. The rank smelling fetid air smelled
fresh when free from the confines of the coarse hood. Fortunately,
he could not see the hammer that smashed his teeth, shattering them
and turning his gums to a bloodied pulp. He felt the second blow,
but was unconscious by the third.

The sensation of his head being roughly jerked back woke
Stephen. He immediately gagged on the blood in his mouth and
coughed, spitting out blood and teeth into a mass gooey puddle on
the mattress in front of him. His tongue tried to access the
damage, pieces of pulped gum flapped loosely inside his
mouth.

He screamed. ‘Kill me now…please.’ But it was unintelligible.
Just a bloody gargled sound as his tongue pushed against air and
gums.

There was a blinding flash, followed by another, then another.
A voice whispered. ‘Smile…you’re dead.’

Some things you never get used to. Paedophiles, child victims
of murder, rape and sodomy; Britney Spears singing, the phone
ringing in the middle of the night. All of these things disturbed
Georgina O’Neil, but tonight it was the phone that disturbed her
most. Her hand automatically scrabbled for the phone receiver in
the dark. The shrill of the ringing was obscenely loud in the quiet
of the night. She wanted to quieten the noise before the dead
awoke; sometimes it’s just too late.

‘This better be good.’ She lifted the phone to her ear.
‘Hello?’

‘Agent O’Neil?’

It was a little after one o’clock in the morning, within two
hours she would be on a plane flying south from Maryland, throwing
up for the best part of the journey. Turtle Island…She had never
even heard of it.

Jo-Lynn Montoya peered from under the bed sheet. ‘Tell me it's
Saturday.’ Her voice has a raspy croakiness to it, brought about by
the heat of the night.

‘
It's Thursday, hon.’ Rick answered.

Jo-Lynn's sleepy face emerged into daylight. She squinted,
allowing a gentle introduction to her eyes. Eyes that were as deep
brown as her skin, her hair was dyed from its normal black to a
lighter brown and had been straightened with the help of a perm.
The style softened her natural African-Caribbean look to a more
Western-European look. A concession to fashion, and reluctantly;
acceptability in a predominantly white Anglo-Saxon area.

Rick bent down and kissed his wife good morning. ‘Hi,
hon.’

‘Don't you Hi, hon me. You missed Ray's match last night. He's
as mad as hell and I ain't far behind him. We moved here to spend
more time with Ray. He needs his father now more than
ever.’

The recollection of his son’s semi-final basketball play-off
caused Rick to groan aloud.

‘
You know I wouldn’t have missed it, if it wasn't for
something really important.’

‘I know, but you try explaining that to an eight year old
boy.’

‘I'm in the shit.’

‘You got it.’

Rick took a deep breath. ‘Did he win?’

‘They lost by four points and he missed three baskets, two
were penalties. You can wake him up.’ Jo-Lynn sat up, her cream
coloured floral print silk nightdress clinging to her body with a
mixture of static and perspiration. She looked hot in more ways
than one, though her body language warned him that for the moment,
her body was going to be one playground that was out of bounds as a
punishment; at least for today.

Rick stood up, dressed only in his white Calvin Kline shorts;
Jo-Lynn secretly admired his toned, well-kept body, as he put on a
pair of jogging bottoms.

‘Be gentle with him. He cried himself asleep last night.’
Jo-Lynn added.

‘
Make me feel great.’

Rick left the room and headed for his son’s bedroom. He opened
the door quietly and peered through the gloom. Ray was submerged
beneath a light summer quilt. Posters of Michael Jordan adorned the
wall. Attached behind the door was a mini basket ball hoop, the
sponge ball he used to slam dunk was tossed on the top bunk once
inhabited by his older sister, Jordan.

Rick sat on the bed. His son started to stir.

‘Hey champ, how's thing's?’

A bleary eyed boy sat up and hugged his father. ‘Hi,
Dad.’

‘I'm sorry I missed your game last night.’

Ray looked up. His brown eyes huge and forgiving. ‘I'm glad...
I stank.’

‘I hear we have to work on your penalty shots.’

Ray smiled, embarrassed. ‘Yeah.’

‘We’ll get out in the yard at the weekend.’

‘Promise?’

Rick crossed his heart with his index finger.
‘Promise.’

The telephone rang and Jo-Lynn called her husband from the
bedroom.

‘Gotta go champ.’

As he walked down the hall, Rick couldn't help but feel that
he had let his son down. The sad truth was that he had.

Jo-Lynn had the phone to her ear and was talking to the caller
when she saw Rick approaching. She cut her conversation and handed
the phone straight to him. ‘Here he is now.’

Rick took the phone; it was his chief, Norman
Fusco.

Within twenty minutes he was behind the wheel of his Chrysler
heading for Cape Gardeau. Someone had dragged up a body while
fishing.

The roadblock and road closed sign heralded to Montoya that he
was at last in the right vicinity. Murder victims cause 1.9% of
traffic congestion, suicides 2.7%. The queue of cars ahead told him
he was close. It was an hour’s drive from his home so Rick was
surprised to see Leroy LaPortiere’s Volkswagen parked in the
temporary make shift car park, which in normal times was the picnic
area.

He parked alongside and headed out, up a hill, over toward the
wetlands guided by a police officer's directions to where the body
had been found.

LaPortiere was up to his thighs in water, wearing an overlarge
pair of fishermen’s waders. Rick recognised the tanned balding head
that belonged to his boss, Norman Frusco. Frusco was standing on
the drier bank by the marsh. Frusco waved recognition to
Rick.

Rick acknowledged Frusco before shouting to Leroy. ‘Hey,
Leroy, mind the gators.’

‘Very funny, Rick. Why don't you get your black ass in
here?'

‘You know I can't swim, otherwise...’ Rick's sentence trailed
away, noticing that Leroy's attention was firmly on events behind
him.

Rick turned to see a young white woman, late twenties he
guessed, dressed in a smart burgundy skirt and matching jacket,
white blouse and Wellington boots.

Georgina O’Neil clumped over the brow of the hill and headed
straight toward Frusco.

Her hand was outstretched to greet Frusco. Before she was
within range, they made contact. Her grip was firm and the shake
vigorous.

‘Captain Frusco.’ Georgina introduced herself. ‘Agent O’Neil.
My people informed you of my arrival.’ She said as matter of fact,
not debate.

Her hair was jet black, stylishly cut but more for
practicality than fashion. In the field she had learned it paid to
be pragmatic rather than vain. Her eyes were blue and lit with
spirit, her skin Celtic white, inherited from her
Father.

‘Where's the body?’

‘Over by the bank.’ Frusco walked with Agent O’Neil down the
incline. ‘Did you have a pleasant journey down here Agent
O’Neil?’

‘To be honest, Captain, I can't stand planes they make me air
sick. I would have driven but for the need to be fresh at the
scene.’

They stopped by the body, which was encased in a
bodybag.

‘I gotta warn you; fresh is not a word I would use to describe
the body.’ Frusco crouched down and unzipped the bag. He leaned
backwards as the aroma of decomposition wafted up.

Agent O’Neil held her breath, and then exhaled before
breathing through her mouth. Some agents used tiger balm to keep
the stench of putrefaction at bay; Georgina would have too but for
an allergic reaction. The pungent aroma of rotting flesh permeated
in to the air. O’Neil could taste the corruption.

‘Where's the guy who found the body?’

Frusco looked around, spotting the fisherman on the bank side.
‘He's over there…feeding the fish’

O’Neil turned and saw the man spewing the contents of his
stomach directly into the river.

‘Lucky fish.’ O’Neil watched the heaving body of a man dressed
in fisherman’s garb with waders up to his chest. He wore an army
camouflage jacket open to the waist, exposing a matured beer belly
that strained the cotton material of his Budweiser tee
shirt.

Rick moved down the bank side to talk with Leroy, some twenty
yards away from Frusco and O’Neil.

‘What do you make of that?’

‘F.B.I.’ Rick looked on as Agent O’Neil crouched down joining
Frusco; she hitched her skirt up slightly, allowing herself to
balance effortlessly.

She eased the body bag open.

‘Phew! Quite a mess.’ A bloated, swollen head greeted her, his
skin was a grey, blue colour. The hair on his chest and around the
genital area was matted with algae. There was a large tear in the
stomach where the fisherman who found him had accidentally hooked
into, but there was no blood, just loose flapping skin lying over
exposed intestinal tissue.

‘Looks like he's been fish food for some time. Vermiculation
evident.’ O’Neil scanned the body.

‘Teeth and tongue removed, his genitalia has trauma, though I
think that's mostly Gator related. These jagged marks here?’ Her
latex gloved finger probed and lifted serrated folds of skin where
the victim’s lips once were. ‘These seem pre-mortem. See how
uniform they are. It’s almost as though the victim’s lips have been
cut off.’

O’Neil was zipping up the bag and telling Frusco to ship the
body to the morgue for an autopsy as Montoya and LaPortiere
arrived.

Divers continued to swim around the shallow marshlands; some
policemen, dressed in waders like Leroy's, fished around with their
hands, searching the silt bed.

‘Agent O’Neil, May I introduce you to my two leading
investigators on this case. Detective Rick Montoya and Detective
Leroy LaPortiere.’