Twenty-Seven Bones (26 page)

Nightclothes and rain gear, general alarm. Every building in the Core was searched. They soon spotted the SLPD cruiser parked down by the gate. Roger the Dodger grabbed the microphone off the dashboard, explained the situation as best he could. After a few minutes of confusion, during which the night desk sergeant, who doubled as switchboard operator and night dispatcher, was under the impression that Pender was being accused of kidnapping a six-year-old girl, a patrol car was dispatched to the Core.

Vijay Winstone was the responding officer. Normally he’d have been glad for something to do, but his goal that night had been to get through his shift without getting wet. Buncha crazy hippies, was his first reaction.

He asked if they were sure they’d searched every building.

Yes, they were sure.

And the child was last seen when?

The auntie had tucked her into bed around eight o’clock, read her a story. She was there when the brother, the armless boy, went to sleep at nine, and wasn’t missed until around ten-thirty.

Did anybody see or hear anything out of the ordinary during those ninety minutes?

Car left like a bat out of hell between ten and ten-thirty, reported Miss Blessingdon, a nurse at Missionary who lived down by the lane—she could narrow down the time, she said, because she’d been listening to the BBC news on the radio.

And Pender? When was the last time anyone had seen him?

Shrugs all around. Vijay got on the squawkbox (and in his old Plymouth cruiser it really did squawk) and asked the desk sergeant about Pender.

“Lef’ here around eight. Ain’ seen nor heard from him since.”

“Maybe you’d better call de chief,” said Vijay.

“Maybe
you’d
better call de chief,” said the desk sergeant.

“No phone line out here.”

“I’ll patch you t’rough.”

“Give me a few more minutes—I’ll get back to you.”

Vijay, who didn’t want to spend the rest of his career working night shifts, would have to be awfully sure there was a problem before he called the chief at home so close to midnight. But as he slipped the microphone back into its wire cradle, someone banged on the window of his cruiser. It was the armless boy, the brother of the missing girl, knocking with his head to get Vijay’s attention. Vijay rolled down the window.

“What is it, buoy?”

“Come quick, see what I found.”

Vijay pulled up the hood of his department-issue yellow slicker, stepped back out into the rain, followed the barefoot, dripping wet, pajama-clad boy down the lane and around the side of the A-frame to the right of the lane. Holding the butt end of a pencil flashlight in his mouth, the boy shined the beam downward. Vijay followed with the more powerful beam of his eighteen-inch cop torch/truncheon, illuminated a department-issue semiautomatic pistol lying in the brush beside the muddy path just beyond the A-frame.

“Dot’s Pendah’s gun, sah,” said Marley, unconsciously slipping into deep dialect.

Vijay patted him on the shoulder. “Good work, wait here, don’t let nobody touch nuttin’.” Then he stripped off his own slicker and draped it over the boy’s shoulders, buttoned the top button under the boy’s chin to hold it on, raced back to his cruiser, snatched up the microphone, and told the desk sergeant to patch him through to the chief.

Standing in the rain outside the cave entrance, Lewis and Emily went through one more round of Alphonse and Gaston before Lewis acceded to her demand that he go first. He didn’t think she knew about the grenades, but he didn’t want to take the chance of inflaming her suspicions. And his options were limited—if he killed her then and there, he might not have time to uncork and heave the grenades before Phil or Bennie came out to investigate the sound of the gunshot.

He pocketed his gun, started down the tunnel on his hands and knees, flashlight bumping the ground as he crawled. What he saw encouraged him: the floor of the tunnel was solid rock, as he’d remembered, but the walls and ceiling were boulders and dirt, with roots showing through in places. It certainly looked as if a grenade would bring it down—the hard part was going to be preventing the grenade from rolling all the way down the slope and exploding in the first chamber instead of sealing the tunnel. Have to either hold it a couple seconds or roll it slow. Or maybe blow them all to hell with the first grenade, then leave the second near the mouth of the tunnel and run lak fuck.

Lewis emerged into the first chamber. Reflected by the shiny black wall, helmet lamps and flashlights illuminated the sandy floor, the dragon’s-tooth stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Pender and the girl were to the left of the tunnel opening, sitting with their backs against the wall. Bennie was holding the gun on them. Phil and Bennie had taken off their backpacks. Phil was digging through his trying to find something with which to tie up Pender. They were all still dripping wet.

Emily emerged from the bottom of the tunnel, pushing her backpack ahead of her. She stood up, stretched to her full five feet three inches, arched her spine, pressed her thumbs against the small of her aching back.

“Did you bring some rope?” Phil asked her.

“
I
wasn’t planning to have to tie up anybody.”

“Neither was I,” said Phil quickly, flashing her a meaningful spouse-to-spouse warning glare. Apgard didn’t know he’d snatched the girl on purpose, much less why. Probably wouldn’t approve, either. Most people wouldn’t—then again, most people weren’t as free from societal constraints as the Drs. Epp. “Didn’t we leave some rope in the cross chamber last time?”

“I think we did. Bennie?”

Bennie half turned. Pender, who’d been waiting for his chance, launched himself upward, diving for the gun. His foot slipped on the sand. Bennie sidestepped nimbly, pistol-whipped Pender once across the back of his already battered skull as he came flailing by, and again as he fell unconscious to the cave floor, bleeding profusely from a nasty scalp laceration.

Phil had to laugh. “Guess we won’t be needing that rope after all,” he said.

“He’s still
breathing,”
said Emily, pointedly.

It took Phil a second—then he realized what she was hinting at. After all, he had the little girl’s dying breath to look forward to. Might as well tie Pender up in case he regained consciousness, keep him around for Emily. She’d always liked the big strong ones. “I’ll go get those ropes.”

“I’ll help you.”

“Don’t bother, I—”

Emily gave him a meaningful spouse-to-spouse glare of her own. “I said, I’ll help you.” She had a few things she wanted to talk over privately—such as, how far did he think they could trust Apgard? She had gotten some pretty hinky vibes off him out there—it wasn’t hard to tell he didn’t approve of their taking the girl.

So after instructing Bennie in Indonesian to keep Apgard there, Emily switched on her headlamp again, followed Phil down the first winding passage, and caught up to him in the second chamber. They picked their way around the obstacle course of purple traffic cone stalagmites, and were halfway down the slightly narrower second passageway—the white walls of the third chamber had just appeared in the beam of their headlamps—when they heard the explosion behind them.

It didn’t take Julian long to figure out where Pender had gone after leaving headquarters. He sent a squad car out to Estate Apgard. Nobody home at the overseer’s house; Dodge van in the driveway. Nobody home at the Great House; dark blue Bentley in the stable.

Upon receiving this information, the Chief issued a BOLO for Apgard’s black Land Rover. If it was still on the road, they’d find it—it wasn’t that big an island, and there weren’t that many miles of road. But if it was off road, they’d either have to wait for the FBI to send a chopper from Puerto Rico, assuming they had one to spare, or rent one from Island Tours, at a hundred and fifty bucks an hour, plus fuel.

Julian’s mind was racing. What else could he accomplish by telephone? Of course: get Judge Seaman out of bed to issue a telephonic warrant for all Apgard’s property, then send Hamilton and Felix out, one to toss the Great House and the other the overseer’s house.

Anything else? Call Layla, get her out to the Core.

Anything else? He kept asking the question until he ran out of answers, then went back up to the bedroom to get dressed. Ziggy was sitting on the side of the bed loading her little pearl-handled twenty-two revolver, which she’d happily unloaded when he’d called her that afternoon with the good news that the Machete Man scare was over.

She glanced up. “Don’t blame yourself,” she told him, though he hadn’t said a word.

“Do I have a clean uniform?”

“In the closet.” Ziggy put the gun back in the drawer, slipped a shawl over her nightgown, found her slippers under the bed. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

“Don’t bother.”

“It’s no bother.”

“The little girl—it’s Marley’s sister.”

“Marcus’s friend Marley? The…?” She waved her arms ineffectually, discovered it was impossible to indicate Marley’s condition by using your hands.

He nodded.

“Why?”

“Maybe she saw them. Maybe they’re just sick bastards.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” she said again.

“Woman, I heard you the first time,” he told her.

Lewis watched Emily receding down the narrow passageway, the light from her headlamp casting a squat shadow behind her. With her gingery hair squashed down and sticking out from under the miner’s helmet, she had sort of a Bozo the Clown look going, at least from behind.

Now!,
he told himself—there won’t be a better chance. “Look, Bennie, I have to get out of here before somebody spots the Rover. Tell them I’ll be back sometime tomorrow, as soon as—”

“No.” Bennie had hunkered down to light a Coleman lantern. He glanced over at Pender, who was still breathing, still bleeding, then back up at Lewis. “Ina Emily say you stay, wait ’til they come back.”

Lewis slipped his right hand into his trench coat pocket. “If somebody spots the Rover, me son, we’re all screwed.”

“You wait.” Bennie turned back to the lantern.

“Sure, whatever.” Lewis angled around to keep his body between Bennie and the grenade he had just removed from his pocket, and found himself looking down at the girl in the red slicker huddled against the wall. She stared up at him. Her pale eyes, enormous in that little heart-shaped face, met his. Behind him, the Coleman hissed, flared white, casting a giant black shadow-Lewis over the girl and onto the shiny wall. Forget her, he told himself, just bail. Lewis angled around a little farther, so Bennie couldn’t see the shadow of the grenade, squeezed the striker lever against the barrel-shaped body the way Bungalow Bill had showed him, then pulled out the pin.

Lewis glanced over his shoulder, saw that Bennie had put his gun down while he adjusted the lantern flame. He turned back to the girl, who was staring at Bennie. Forget her, he told himself, but when she looked up and their eyes met again, he jerked his head ever so slightly in the direction of the tunnel.
Go,
he mouthed.
Run.

The next portion of Bennie’s life would be measured out in seconds. Maybe eight seconds, total. Not a long time, except perhaps to a professional bull rider.

Begin: he’s turning the tiny wheel on the Coleman to lower the flame. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees movement. He glances up, sees a flicker of red: the girl is crawling toward the tunnel. One second elapsed.

Bennie reaches for the gun next to him as Apgard begins to whirl to his left. Two seconds.

Bennie’s hand closes around the gun. As he raises it, he sees a dark roundish object in Apgard’s right hand. Apgard bowls it underhand; it rolls in Bennie’s direction. Three seconds.

Bennie throws himself to the side, tries to squeeze off a shot, but the gun is on safety. The grenade, its striker lever released, has rolled across the floor of the cave toward the inner passageway. The striker has ignited the percussion cap inside the grenade; the fuze has begun to burn. Four seconds.

The girl is scrambling up the tunnel on her hands and knees, Apgard behind her. The grenade comes to rest in the mouth of the inner passageway. Bennie glances back and forth between the grenade to his left and the tunnel to his right. In about the time it takes a synapse to fire, Bennie grasps the magnitude of the choice that now confronts him. To the right, up the tunnel, safety, freedom; to the left, down the passageway, Ina Emily and the spirits of his ancestors. Five seconds.

Bennie drops the gun, grabs his knapsack, throws it ahead of him into the passageway, dives over the grenade—six seconds—hits the ground rolling, scrambles down the passageway dragging the knapsack behind him. Seven seconds.

Bennie throws himself flat, using the bulky knapsack for as much cover as it will provide. He hears a
tick-boom!
behind him—that would be the fuse inside the grenade setting off the detonator that in turn set off the plasticized PETN explosive. Eight seconds have elapsed, but it will be another ten seconds or so before Bennie looks up to see Ama Phil and Ina Emily standing over him. Their mouths are moving, but no sound emerges over the roaring in his ears.

No matter. On the other side, his ancestors will make him whole again. Providing, naturally, that he has crossed the bridge with enough tribute. That’s why he’d risked one-eighth of what might have been the remainder of his life in order to bring his backpack along: for Bennie, all that mattered in this world was his money, his hands, and of course Ina Emily’s dying breath.

Holly’s life had not been without its difficulties, even tragedies. She had been outed—humiliatingly—in high school by a girl she’d loved and trusted. She had buried both parents. She’d left behind everything she knew and loved in California to bury her sister and care for her niece and nephew.

But this—knowing your child had been kidnapped while you were locked in your room smoking dope—this was despair. Biblical, tear-your-hair-out and rend-your-garments despair.

If possible, Marley was in an even deeper circle of hell. Watching out for Dawn had only been Auntie Holly’s job for a couple years—it had been Marley’s ever since he could remember. And he was the one to whom their mother had whispered,
Take care of your sister
—it was practically the last thing she’d said.

When he’d heard Holly screaming in the Crapaud he had raced out into the storm in his pajamas. He’d banged on doors with his feet until there were no doors left to bang on, gone as deep as he dared into the forest, calling for his sister until his voice was hoarse, then searched the Core with his flashlight in his mouth until he spotted Pender’s gun by the side of the path behind Andy’s A-frame. And when Officer Winstone draped the yellow SLPD slicker over his shoulders and told him to watch over the gun, a team of oxen couldn’t have dragged Marley away, at least until Marcus Coffee’s Auntie Layla arrived to take charge of the crime scene.

For Dawson, who’d loved Dawn since birth and Pender since last night, Mysterianism just wasn’t cutting it any longer—she found herself praying for the first time in years to a God/Goddess/Whatever.

“Listen,” she told the God/Goddess/Whatever. “This isn’t about me. But I’ll make you a deal anyway—let them live, let them be okay, let this just be some kind of a misunderstanding, I don’t care how you work it, and I’ll…I’ll…”

But there was only one thing Dawson had to offer that any G/G/W she could have respected or believed in would have accepted. So she offered it—then she put on her poncho again, grabbed her twelve-volt lantern, and walked back out into the rain to search for her friends.