Death Du Jour

by Kathy Reichs

  My daughter wasted no time in confirming her suspicions regarding tomorrow’s plans, then pummeled Sam with questions.

  “How long have you directed this primate center?”

  “Longer than I care to think about. I worked for someone else until about ten years ago, then bought the damn company for myself. Just about went to the poorhouse, but I’m glad I did it. Nothing beats being your own boss.”

  “How many monkeys live on the island?”

  “Right now about forty-five hundred.”

  “Who owns them?”

  “The FDA. My company owns the island and manages the animals.”

  “Where do they come from?”

  “They were brought to Murtry Island from a research colony in Puerto Rico. Your mom and I both did work there, somewhere back in the early Bronze Age. But they’re originally from India. They’re rhesus.”

  “Macaca mulatta.” Katy pronounced the genus and species in a lilting, singsong voice.

  “Very good. Where did you learn primate taxonomy?”

  “I’m a psych major. A lot of research is done using rhesus. You know, like Harry Harlow and his progeny?”

  Sam was about to comment when the waitress arrived with plates of fried clams and oysters, boiled shrimp, hush puppies, and slaw. We all concentrated on spooning sauces onto our plates, squeezing lemons, and peeling a starter batch of shrimp.

  “What are the monkeys used for?”

  “The Murtry population is a breeding colony. Some yearlings are removed and sent to the Food and Drug Administration, but if an animal isn’t trapped by the time it reaches a certain body weight, it’s there for life. Monkey heaven.”

  “What else is out there?” My daughter had no reservations about chewing and talking at the same time.

  “Not much. The monkeys are free-ranging so they go where they want. They set up their own social groups and have their own rules. There are feeder stations, and corrals for trapping, but outside camp the island is really theirs.”

  “What’s camp?”

  “That’s what we call the area right at the dock. There’s a field station, a small veterinary clinic, mostly for emergencies, some storage sheds for monkey chow, and a trailer where students and researchers can stay.”

  He dipped an oyster in cocktail sauce, tipped back his head, and dropped it in his mouth.

  “There was a plantation on the island back in the nineteenth century.” Small drops of red clung to his beard. “Belonged to the Murtry family. That’s where the island gets its name.”

  “Who’s allowed out there?” She peeled another shrimp.

  “Absolutely no one. These monkeys are virus-free and worth mucho dinero. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who sets foot on the island is cleared through me, and has to have a shitload of immunizations, including a negative TB test within the last six months.”

  Sam looked a question at me, and I nodded.

  “I didn’t think anyone caught TB anymore.”

  “The test isn’t for your protection, young lady. The monks are very susceptible to TB. An outbreak can destroy a colony quicker than you can say jackshit.”

  Katy turned to me. “Your students had to do the shot bit?”

  “Every time.”

  Early in my career, before I was lured into forensics, my research involved the use of monkeys to study the aging process in the skeleton. I’d taught all the primatology courses at UNCC, including a field school on Murtry Island. I’d brought students out for fourteen years.

  “Hm,” said Katy, popping a clam into her mouth. “This is going to be O.K.”

  * * *

  At seven-thirty the next morning we stood on a dock at the northern tip of Lady’s Island, eager to go to Murtry. The drive had been like traveling through a terrarium. A heavy mist covered everything, blurring edges and throwing the world slightly out of focus. Though Murtry was less than a mile out, I looked across the water into nothingness. Closer in, an ibis startled and lifted off, its long, slender legs trailing behind.

  The staff had arrived and were loading the facility’s two open boats. They finished shortly and took off. Katy and I sipped coffee, waiting for Sam’s signal. At last he whistled and gave a come-on gesture. We crumpled our Styrofoam cups, threw them into an oil drum turned trash barrel, and hurried down to the lower dock.

  Sam helped each of us board, then untied the line and jumped in. He nodded to the man at the wheel, and we putted out into the inlet.

  “How long is the ride?” Katy asked Sam.

  “The tide’s up, so we’ll take Parrot Creek, then the back creek and cut through the marsh. Shouldn’t be more than forty minutes.”

  Katy sat cross-legged on the bottom of the boat.

  “You’d do better to stand and lean against the side,” Sam suggested. “When Joey throttles down, this thing jumps. The vibration’s enough to rattle your vertebrae.”

  Katy got up and he handed her a rope.

  “Hang on to this. Do you want a life vest?”

  Katy shook her head. Sam looked at me.

  “She’s a strong swimmer,” I assured him.

  Just then Joey opened the engine and the boat surged to life. We raced across open water, the wind snapping hair and clothes and ripping the words from our lips. At one point Katy tapped Sam’s shoulder and pointed to a buoy.

  “Crab pot,” yelled Sam.

  Farther on, he showed her an osprey nest atop a channel marker. Katy nodded vigorously.

  Before long we left open water and entered the marsh. Joey stood with feet spread, eyes fixed straight ahead as he twisted and turned the wheel, piloting the boat through narrow ribbons of water. There couldn’t have been more than ten feet of clearance in any of the alleys. We leaned hard left, then hard right, twisting through the cut, our spray showering the grass to either side.

  Katy and I clung to the boat and to each other, our bodies pitching with the centrifugal force of hard turns, laughing and enjoying the thrill of speed and the beauty of the day. Much as I love Murtry Island, I think I have always loved the crossing more.

  By the time we reached Murtry the mist had burned away. Sunlight warmed the dock and dappled the sign at the entrance to the island. A breeze teased the foliage overhead, sending splotches of shadow and light dancing and changing shape across the words: GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. KEEP OUT. ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE.

  When the boats were unloaded and everyone was inside the field station, Sam introduced Katy to the staff. I knew most of them, though there were a few new faces. Joey had been hired two summers earlier. Fred and Hank were still in training. As he made introductions, Sam gave a quick rundown of the operation.

  Joey, Larry, Tommy, and Fred were technicians, their primary duties being day-to-day maintenance of the facility and transport of supplies. They did painting and repair, cleaned the corrals and feeder stations, and kept the animals supplied with water and chow.

  Jane, Chris, and Hank were more directly involved with the monkeys, monitoring the groups for various types of data.

  “Like what?” Katy asked.

  “Pregnancies, births, deaths, veterinary problems. We keep close tabs on the population. And there are research projects. Jane’s involved in a serotonin study. She goes out each day to record certain types of behavior, to see which monkeys are more aggressive, more impulsive. Then we run that data against their serotonin levels. We’re also looking at their rank. Her monkeys wear telemetric collars that send out a signal so she can find them. You’ll probably spot one.”

  “Serotonin is a chemical in the brain,” I offered.

  “Yes,” said Katy. “A neurotransmitter thought to be correlated with aggression.”

  Sam and I exchanged smiles. Atta girl!

  “How do you gauge whether a monkey is impulsive?” Katy asked.

  “He takes more risks. Makes longer leaps, for example, high up in the trees. Leaves home at an earlier age.”

  “He?”

  “This is a pilot study. No gi
rls.”

  “You may see one of my boys in camp,” said Jane, strapping a box with a long antenna to her waist. “J-7. He’s in O group. They hang around here a lot.”

  “He’s the klepto?” Hank asked.

  “Yeah. He’ll snatch anything that isn’t nailed down. He got another pen last week. And Larry’s watch. I thought Larry’d have a stroke chasing him.”

  When everyone had stowed his or her gear, checked assignments, and gone out, Sam took Katy on a tour of the island. I tagged along, watching my daughter become a monkey spotter. As we meandered along the trails, Sam pointed out the feeder stations, and described the groups that frequented each. He talked about territory, and dominance hierarchies, and maternal lines while Katy held binoculars to her face and scanned the trees.

  At feeder station E Sam threw dried corn kernels against the corrugated metal roof.

  “Hold still and watch,” he said.

  Soon we heard the swish of foliage and saw a group move in. Within minutes monkeys surrounded us, some remaining in the trees, others dropping to the ground and darting forward to pick up corn.

  Katy was enthralled.

  “That’s F group,” said Sam. “It’s small, but it’s run by one of the highest-ranking females on the island. She’s a ball buster.”

  By the time we got back to camp Sam had helped Katy design a simple project. She organized her notes while he got a bag of corn for her, then she headed back out. I watched her disappear into a tunnel of oak trees, the binoculars banging against her hip.

  Sam and I sat on the screened porch and talked for a while, then he went to work and I got out the CAT scan draft. Though I tried, I found it hard to focus. Sinus patterns held little appeal when I could look up and see sunshine on a tidal estuary and smell air laced with salt and pine.

  The staff came in at noon, Katy among them. After sandwiches and Fritos, Sam went back to his data, and Katy returned to the woods.

  I resettled with my paper, but it was still no go. I drifted off after page three.

  I woke to a familiar sound.

  Thunk! Rat a tat a tat a tat a tat. Thunk! Rat a tat a tat tat tat.

  Two monkeys had dropped from the trees and were running across the porch roof. Being as inconspicuous as possible, I opened the screen door and eased myself out and onto the steps. O group had entered camp and was resting in the branches above the field station. The pair that had wakened me now leaped from the field station to the trailer and settled on opposite ends of the roof.

  “That’s him.” I hadn’t heard Sam come up behind me. “Look.”

  He handed me the binoculars.

  “I can make out the tattoos,” I said, reading the chest of each monkey. “J-7 and GN-9. J-7 has a collar.”

  I passed back the glasses and Sam took another look.

  “What the hell’s he got? You don’t suppose the little shit’s still toting Larry’s watch?”

  Another handoff.

  “It’s shiny. Looks like gold when the sun hits it.”

  Just then GN-9 lunged and gave a full, openmouthed threat. J-7 screeched and flew off the roof, launching himself from branch to branch until he was out of sight behind the trailer. His treasure slid down the roof and into the gutter.

  “Let’s find out.”

  Sam dragged a ladder from under the field house and propped it against the trailer. He brushed away spiderwebs, tested his weight on the first rung, then climbed up.

  “What the hell?”

  “What?”

  “Sonofabitch.”

  “What is it?”

  He rotated something in his hand.

  “I’ll be goddamned.”

  “What is it?” I tried to see what the monkey had dropped, but Sam’s body obscured my view.

  Sam stood motionless at the top of the ladder, his head bent.

  “Sam, what is it?”

  Without a word he climbed down and held the object out for my inspection. I knew instantly what it was and what it meant, and felt the sunshine go out of the day.

  I met Sam’s eyes and we stared at each other in silence.

  ISTOOD WITH THE THING IN MY HAND, UNWILLING TO believe what my eyes were telling me.

  Sam spoke first.

  “That’s a human jaw.”

  “Yes.” I watched lacy shadows slide across his face.

  “Probably an old Indian burial.”

  “Not with this dental work.” I rotated the mandible and sunlight glinted off gold.

  “That’s what got J-7’s attention,” he said, staring at the crowns.

  “And this is flesh,” I added, pointing to a brown glob clinging to the joint.

  “What does that mean?”

  I raised the jaw and sniffed. It had the dank, cloying odor of death.

  “In this climate, depending on whether the body was buried or left on the surface, I’d say this person has been dead less than a year.”

  “How the fuck can that be?” A vein throbbed in his forehead.

  “Don’t yell at me. Apparently everyone who comes to this island does not clear through you!”

  I glanced away from him.

  “Where the hell did he get it?”

  “He’s your monkey, Sam. You figure it out.”

  “You damn well better believe I will.”

  He strode toward the field station, took the stairs two at a time, and disappeared inside. Through the open windows I heard him call to Jane.

  For a moment I stood there, hearing the click of palmetto fronds and feeling surreal. Had death actually penetrated my island of tranquillity?

  “No!” cried a voice in my head. “Not here!”

  I heard the whirp of the spring as the screen door flew open. Sam emerged with Jane and called to me.

  “Come on, Quincy. Let’s round up the usual suspects. Jane knows where O group goes when it’s not in camp, so we should be able to pick up J-7’s collar. Maybe the little bugger will give something up.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Son of a buck, I’m sorry. I just don’t like body parts showing up on my island. You know my temper.”

  I did. But it wasn’t Sam’s outburst that held me back. I smelled the pine and felt the warm breeze on my cheek. I knew what was out there and didn’t want to find it.

  “C’mon.”

  I took a deep breath, as enthused as a woman on her way to a meeting requested by an oncologist.

  “Wait.”

  I went into the field station and rooted in the kitchen until I found a plastic tub. I sealed the jaw inside, hid the container in a cabinet in the back room, then left a note for Katy.

  We took a trail behind the field station and followed Jane toward the center of the island. She led us to an area where the trees were the size of offshore rigs, the foliage a solid canopy overhead. The ground was a plush of humus and pine needles, the air heavy with the scent of decaying vegetation and animal matter. A swish in the branches told me monkeys were present.

  “Someone’s here,” said Jane, turning on her receiver.

  Sam searched the trees with his binoculars, trying to make out tattoo codes.

  “It’s A group,” he said.

  “Hunh!”

  A juvenile crouched on a branch above me, shoulders down, tail in the air, eyes fixed on my face. The sharp, throaty bark was his way of saying “back off!”

  When I met his gaze the monkey sat back, ducked his head, then raised it diagonally across his body. He repeated the bob several times, then spun and did a cannonball into the next tree.

  Jane adjusted dials then closed her eyes to listen, face tense with concentration. After a while she shook her head and continued up the path.

  Sam scanned the treetops as Jane stopped again and rotated clockwise, totally focused on the sounds in her headset. Finally,

  “I’ve got a very faint signal.”

  She veered in the direction in which the cannonballer had disappeared, paused, pivoted again.

  “I think h
e’s over near Alcatraz.” She pointed toward ten o’clock.

  While most of the trapping pens on the island are designated by letter, a few of the older ones have names like O.K. Corral or Alcatraz.

  We moved toward Alcatraz, but just south of the corral Jane left the path and cut into the woods. The vegetation was thicker here, the ground spongy underfoot. Sam turned to me.

  “Watch yourself near the pond. Alice had a mess of babies last season, and I suspect she’s not feeling sociable.”

  Alice is a fourteen-foot alligator who has lived on Murtry for as long as anyone can remember. No one recalls who named her. The staff respects her right to be there and leaves her to her pond.

  I gave Sam a thumbs-up sign. While they do not frighten me, gators have never been creatures whose company I sought.

  We weren’t twenty feet off the trail when I noticed it, faint at first, just a variation on the dark, organic forest smell. Initially I wasn’t sure, but as we picked our way closer the odor grew stronger, and a cold band tightened on my chest.

  Jane cut north, away from the pond, and Sam followed, binoculars trained on the overhead branches. I held back. The smell was coming from straight ahead.

  I circled a fallen sweet gum and stopped. I could see a belt of brush and scrub palm bordering the pond. The forest grew silent as Jane and Sam pulled away, the rustling of their feet fading with each step.

  The odor of decaying flesh is like no other. I’d smelled it on the jaw, and now the sweet, fetid scent tainted the afternoon air, telling me my quarry was near. Barely breathing, I pivoted as Jane had done, eyes closed, every fiber fixed on sensory input. Same motion, different focus. While Jane was tracking with her ears, I hunted with my nose.

  The smell was coming from the direction of the pond. I moved toward it, my nose following the odor and my eyes on reptile alert. Overhead a monkey barked, then a stream of urine trickled to the ground. Branches stirred and leaves fluttered earthward. The stench grew stronger with each step.

  I drew within ten feet, stopped, and trained my binoculars on the thicket of scrub palm and yaupon holly that separated me from the pond. An iridescent cloud formed and re-formed just outside its border.