The Bone Field

by Debra Bokur

  She looked closely at the cover of the top magazine in the stack, noticing that the publication date was several years old. Visible through a wide doorway into the back of the house was a kitchen, and a second arched opening that revealed a room where the end of a piano could be seen.

  “Please, make yourselves comfortable.” Bill gestured to the sofa, noticing Kali’s gaze. He smiled, but there was reservation in the expression. He sat down in one of the two matching easy chairs that faced the sofa from an identical angle, separated by a small table. The chair and sofa arrangement was clearly positioned to maximize ease in conversation between those who might be seated there. Kali wondered if Bill had a lot of guests who stopped by to pass the time with him.

  Walter sank down into the thick cushions of the sofa. Kali sat next to him, facing Bill, her attention caught by a large glass figurine of a rearing horse rising from what appeared to be a bouquet of pink glass roses. Bill sat back in his chair, following her eyes.

  “Bit of a time capsule, isn’t it?” She felt her face flush, suddenly aware that she’d been staring and that Bill likely thought her rude. “I’m sorry, it just . . .”

  “Doesn’t seem like the home of an old bachelor?” He laughed softly. “I’m afraid I don’t have much of an imagination—or strong opinion, for that matter—when it comes to these things. Everything is exactly as it was when I lost my wife some years ago. I dust and sweep and polish when I remember to, but otherwise things stay the same.” He hesitated, then reached out with one hand to finger the edge of a candy bowl on the table between the chairs. “I find it oddly comforting. There are no surprises.”

  Kali nodded, thinking of the glass coffee press on her kitchen counter. It was still in exactly the same spot where Mike had kept it, and she liked knowing that it was there; an imperfect yet unbroken thread to past mornings that had been filled with banter and companionship.

  “I understand,” she said quietly. She looked at him closely, trying to guess his past occupation. She noticed the long fingers of his hands, and thought of the piano she’d glimpsed, and of the music playing in the background. “Are you a music teacher?” she asked.

  He tilted his head slightly, smiling. “Yes. Was, at least.” He lifted his hands from where they rested in his lap. “I escaped arthritis in my fingers, but I’m afraid my wrists weren’t so lucky.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Did you teach here in the local school?”

  “No, privately. Before I moved here with my wife, I played in a community orchestra in Northern California and taught at the high school in our town. Once we were here, it was easier to have students come to me, at the house. There were some young people, but a surprising number of adults as well.” He paused. “Am I in some kind of trouble for joining those other people at the old pineapple farm?”

  Walter shook his head. “We’re just gathering information.”

  Kali remembered Tomas’s mention of the loss of a child. “You moved here with your wife from California. Was it just the two of you?”

  He hesitated. “Yes, it was only the two of us—my wife, Linda, and I. But we had an adult daughter who already lived here with her husband. Lily. Our only child. She was what brought us to Lna‘i, you see.”

  He looked away. Kali followed his gaze to a trio of photos in matching silver frames set among a display of silver spoons. The center photo showed a much younger version of Bill beside an attractive woman, with a third person standing between them. The youngish woman in the center bore a strong familial resemblance to Bill and the older woman. All three faces looked happy and at ease.

  “Our daughter’s husband, Matthew Greene, was a scientist who worked for one of the big chemical companies. They were both thrilled when he found out he was being sent to Hawai‘i to test and monitor some new soil fungicides and plant herbicides his company had created. They were supposed to make the pineapple plants stronger, and increase the crop yield.”

  Kali listened, remembering reports that had surfaced about the plantation workers falling ill, and a growing number of sicknesses and cancer cases among them. Rumors had circulated that the illnesses were the direct result of exposure to the sprays used on the crops, despite denials from the chemical company. She glanced at Walter, and their eyes met. She knew that he also was thinking of the chemical controversy.

  The sunlight fell in a shaft across Bill’s cheek, creating a thin river of brightness that spilled downward across his chest and one leg, and onto the floor by his feet. He was smiling.

  “We came over to visit as soon as Lily and Matthew found out he’d be here for a while, and we had such a wonderful time. Matthew’s company had said he’d likely be here for about three years. We made one more trip during that time, and he gave us a tour of the operations and we got to explore the island. My wife, Linda, and I stayed on for another week to visit Maui and O‘ahu, and we fell in love with all of it—the people, the places. The extraordinary beauty of it all.”

  He looked down at his hands and lowered his voice. “But things changed. Lily grew ill, you see. And, unfortunately, we began to suspect that Matthew was abusing her. She refused to talk about it. She was finally hospitalized for depression, following what seemed to be an attempt to take her own life with an overdose of pills. We came back to help at once. When the weeks dragged into months and she didn’t get better, we rented a small house to be close by.”

  “Was she able to leave the hospital?” Walter asked.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice strained. “Once she’d been discharged, we tried to get her to leave Matthew and come back to California with us, but she refused.” He took a deep breath. “So we sold our home on the mainland and bought this place.” His eyes wandered around the crowded room. He laughed, but it lacked joy. “Linda insisted on shipping everything over. She wanted it to be just like home, I suppose. A sense of the familiar, what she saw as a continuation of normal. But then Lily died. A fall down a stairway was the official cause of death, but I’ve never believed it. I think Matthew was responsible.”

  Walter frowned. “Did you express this to the police?”

  “Oh, yes. But they didn’t seem to take it seriously.”

  Kali watched Bill’s face closely. “You must have been devastated.”

  “Destroyed,” he said.

  “Did you ever confront your son-in-law with your suspicions?

  “I was going to,” he said.

  “But?”

  The silence lengthened. Kali gave him time to gather his thoughts, knowing that it was better not to interrupt the flow of memories. Finally, he raised his head and turned to her.

  “He disappeared before I had the opportunity.”

  The words fell like darkness. Bill sat back, the shaft of light no longer illuminating his face. There were other shadows there as well. Kali and Walter waited.

  “It was I who reported him missing. My wife and I had been away for a few days. When we returned, I went to talk to him, but he wasn’t home. His house looked as though he’d simply gone out one day and had forgotten to come back.”

  Now Kali spoke, trying to recall if she had seen the surname Greene on Hara’s missing-persons list. “What year was this?”

  “December of 1997. The announcement had come in late summer that the fruit company was shutting down operations. They were too small to compete with the big companies, though they also tried moving their operations to places where labor was cheaper. Eventually, they simply went out of business. All of this meant that the chemical company Matthew worked for would likely be recalling him to the mainland.”

  “Was he bothered by that?”

  “No, I don’t think he minded. After he went missing, there was an investigation, but nothing ever turned up. There was no sign that he had ever left the island. Then, when I heard about the bodies . . .”

  Again he fell silent, as though not wanting to put his thought into words.

  Walter spoke quietly. “When did you lose your wife?”

&n
bsp; “Ten years ago. An accumulation of grief, I imagine. Some people would find that improbable, but I believe it’s true. One day, she reached her limit of dealing with the sorrow she’d held on to for so long. Then she was gone.”

  Inside, Kali’s own grief stirred in response. She acknowledged it, then pushed it away. The acute sense of loss that she held constantly at bay subsided, its sharp edges buried, for now, by the loss experienced by a stranger. She watched his face, focusing on his reactions.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said. “I don’t have children of my own, so I can only imagine the toll such a loss would take. Have you thought of anything over the years—anything, however small, that you haven’t already shared with the police—that you’d like to tell us now? Any reason that someone may have wished to cause your son-in-law harm?”

  Bill shook his head. “No, nothing I haven’t already shared with the authorities. The police initially thought it might have been a case of misadventure—that he’d drowned and the currents had pulled him out to sea, or that he’d fallen off a cliff into some deep ravine while out hiking. He used to go to that beach up at Polihua, where the undercurrent is so notoriously powerful. Be he was never found.”

  She looked over at Walter, who nodded imperceptibly. She pulled her phone out of her bag and opened the image of the anchor sent to her by Tomas, then passed the phone to Bill.

  “Can you tell me if you’ve ever seen anything like this before?”

  He took the phone, squinting slightly as he studied the photo. Kali watched his face as he turned the phone slightly, looking at it from another angle. There seemed to be surprise in his expression, but he quickly recovered his composure. Kali felt the energy in the room shift.

  “There was a church here for a while,” he said, his voice guarded. “They came around to people’s houses. Witnessing, I think they call it.” He looked up, but he didn’t meet her eyes. “They all lived together.”

  “Do you mean it was a commune?” Kali asked.

  He hesitated. “If you like. Commune, cult. Difficult to say. They talked a lot about the Bible, and they passed out brochures. I think they may have used this symbol in their outreach.”

  She watched him. He seemed suddenly restless. He turned his head slightly, and his gaze suggested that he was looking far away into some other place or memory.

  “Do you recall their name?”

  Bill said nothing. After a moment, he looked up, as though startled from his reverie to find other people in the same room.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  Kali rose to her feet. As Walter stood up beside her, Bill also stood and led the way to the front door. He turned to Kali, his voice hesitant. “Can you perhaps share anything with me about what you’ve found out there on the old farm?”

  “Not at this time, no.” She watched as his eyes clouded over. “But I promise you we’re doing everything we can.”

  “If you’re willing,” said Walter, “it would be very helpful if you could help us locate someone from your son-in-law’s family who could provide a DNA sample, or any existing dental or medical records.”

  Bill nodded. “Of course. I would be happy to do that.” He faltered, looking at Kali. “It would be good to know, one way or the other. You understand?”

  “I do,” she said. She reached into her bag, removing her wallet and offering him a card. “Officer Alva will be in touch with you later today or tomorrow morning about locating a DNA sample, so please gather any contact information you have on family members of your son-in-law. And please feel free to call me directly at any time. We’ll speak again, as soon as I have something definitive to share with you.”

  He stood next to the door, opening it and stepping aside so that she and Walter could walk out. Kali took a few steps down the paved pathway, then stopped and turned back to him.

  “I’m very sorry about your wife,” she said. “And your daughter. Whatever happened, I know it must have caused your family great pain.”

  He nodded. “Thank you.”

  She reached the car and climbed inside, feeling the heat that had accumulated in the seat penetrate her shoulders and the backs of her legs in a molten burst, as familiar and comforting to her as Linda Bragden’s embroidered pillows and knickknacks were to Bill. She understood that the material things crowding every surface of his home provided an association for Bill to the family he had loved and lost. And, she considered, his home also bound him to a man who was likely not missed at all. She looked back at the closed front door.

  Walter climbed in beside her and slammed the door.

  “Loss or not, he’s hiding something,” she said.

  “Yep,” said Walter. “No doubt about that.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Instead of heading immediately back to the pineapple field, Kali kept south on Highway 440, known locally as Manele Road. The presence of Lna‘ihale volcano was strong here, its long spine towering through cloud forest in a roughly north-south direction to her left, its slopes covered with densely growing ferns and thick groves of trees that were punctuated by majestic Cook pines. She knew that though the volcano’s last eruption was more than a million years ago and that it was usually referred to as extinct, it was, in actuality, merely dormant, and wondered if it would ever stir again during her lifetime.

  “Now what?” asked Walter, as they passed the turnoff to the plantation and kept driving.

  “Maybe nothing,” she said. “But let’s at least go and see.”

  The petroglyphs that Tua had referenced were located on a slope on the volcano’s side. She drove for about ten minutes before pulling the car over onto a clear patch of rough ground that had plainly been used as a parking area by others. They got out, making their way toward a hill rising above the plains of Palawai Basin, following a rugged track leading upward. The footing was slippery, and their feet skidded on the loose scree that covered the path’s surface. Walter grumbled in protest as he kept up with her.

  It didn’t take long to find what Kali was looking for. On the face of a giant rocky monolith rising from the ground at the foot of the volcano was a collection of ancient petroglyphs. The original carvings had been desecrated in areas, and other, newer graffiti carvings had been added, but she had no difficulty identifying the original art. Her grandmother had written about these petroglyphs, commonly known as the Luahiwa carvings, and had interviewed other historians and archaeologists in the preparation of her highly respected work on Hawaiian culture. She’d read to a younger Kali from the book’s pages, and Kali had studied the photographs closely. Eventually, her grandmother had taken her across the channel to see them for herself, and to offer a child’s point of view on what the carvings represented.

  Even among learned academics, there was no consensus on their meanings. Kali had been taught that they were likely a record of life on the island—a time capsule of events that were significant to the island’s inhabitants, ranging from a collection of warrior figures, various animals, and boats. She searched among them, finally pinpointing the anchor carving that Tua had referenced. It was located not far from the carving he’d mentioned of what appeared to be a vessel of some kind, set into the stone face about eight feet from the ground and measuring nearly six inches across its base. Like a few of the other petroglyphs, its outline had been darkened by someone who’d dragged a burnt matchstick along the edge to define the shape and features—a practice frowned upon by historians attempting to protect the area from alteration and damage.

  Kali and Walter studied the anchor image, comparing it to the photo of the anchor charm stored on her phone. Other than the slightly uneven lines of the stone carving and the small hole in the metal anchor, they were very much the same. She punched in Tomas’s number, waiting for his answer as she and Walter followed the stony path back to the car.

  Tomas’s voice sounded even more tired than it had the last time they’d spoken.

  “Don’t tell me you’re lost,” he said. “I won’t believe you,
though I would understand completely if you were at least trying. It’s hotter than hell here in the fields.”

  “Funny you should mention hell,” she said. “Do you remember a local church group here that used to go around knocking on people’s doors?”

  He laughed. “That description’s not specific enough, I’m afraid.”

  “This particular church isn’t active anymore, but they were while the pineapple production was still strong. Also, Bill Bragden’s son-in-law went missing after Bragden’s daughter died. Bill made some allegations about domestic abuse. Do you remember hearing anything about that?”

  There was silence as Tomas mulled over her questions.

  “That was too long ago for me,” he finally said. “I think you should talk to Bobby Keawe. He’s retired now, and is in pretty poor health, but he was Lna‘i’s Maui County cop back then. He’s in a nursing home over on O‘ahu near his kids and their families, but he’d be happy to talk to you, I’m sure. I’ll bet he’s been following the news here pretty closely.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Had a stroke. Can’t live alone anymore because of partial paralysis, but there’s nothing wrong with his memory.”

  “Do you know if Keawe worked the missing persons case?”

  “He was the only cop here at the time, so he was bound to have been involved.”

  “Okay. Text me his contact details?”

  “Will do. Where are you, anyway?”

  “Up at the Luahiwa petroglyphs. Something very like our anchor is carved into the big rock up here.”

  There was a low whistle from the other end of the phone. “Damn. Why didn’t I think of that connection?”

  “There may not be any.”