by Don Prichard
“The other three sailed to the island in the second boat?”
“Yes. I’m guessing an ocean current took all four of us there.”
“Why didn’t you use the boats to leave the island?”
“Mine cracked apart; the other needed repair. The monsoon hit and we had to delay sailing.”
The captain stood at the window. “Sun is setting. I suggest we start gathering the three bodies tomorrow.”
They exited the cave, and Jake pointed to the far end of the trench. “Burial cave is down there. You want to wait until tomorrow?”
“We’ve got flashlights.” Lee pulled his from his belt. “Let’s go.”
“How about a pistol?” Jake scanned the six men for weapons. “Just in case a python is at home.”
“Part of our equipment. No worries,” a guardsman said.
Ten to one they’d wet their pants at the size of the beast. Jake nodded and led the way.
Chapter 3
“No door on a pulley this time.” Jake knelt in the trench and shoved aside vegetation concealing a hole barely larger than his head. “Their escape tunnel in case the enemy overran them. You’ll have to squeeze in on your belly, but it will open up to where you can walk at a stoop. Who wants to go first?”
Detective Lee grinned. “Be our guest.”
“Then I’ll need a flashlight and pistol. Until we get to the burial chamber, there’s no room to see around me to shoot any lurking critters.”
The captain motioned one of the guardsmen to cede his flashlight and pistol to Jake. The edge of the hole scraped solid rock against Jake’s shoulders as he scrunched them to his neck and wiggled inside. He grunted at the extent of the flashlight beam down the tunnel. Sure beat the scanty light from the twisted grass torches he’s used his first time in. He rose to a stoop and counted twenty footsteps forward. Behind him, the excited murmurs of the guardsmen ricocheted off the walls. Halloween would be a tame holiday after this adventure.
“Turn right and you’ll enter the burial chamber,” he called over his shoulder. “You’ll be able to stand, but don’t go all the way in until we check for snakes.” The voices behind him quieted.
One by one the men filed into the chamber. Their flashlight beams brightened the room with details that had escaped Jake’s paltry torchlight. Goosebumps erected every hair on his body. As if choreographed, the men’s breaths punched into the chamber in one horrified gasp, followed by gags as the foul odor of decayed flesh hit their nostrils.
Encircling the chamber were niches cut into the stone wall. Twenty Japanese soldiers, empty eye sockets gaping above grisly grins, lay with uniforms rotted by flesh in every niche but two. Tucked against the side of each soldier were items of battle gear and a few personal possessions. Jake focused his flashlight on each alcove, ending with a thorough search of the two empty ones. “All right, no snakes,” he announced.
“Look, but do not touch, do not take,” the captain bellowed. His voice boomed off the walls as if the twenty ghouls had joined in.
Hands over their mouths and noses, the men visited the niches and whispered comments. With the enhanced light of his flashlight, Jake discovered several photos on or near the soldiers. Photos of family. Sadness gripped his chest. Family who for forty years had wondered what had become of their loved one. Or who had died never finding out.
Lee approached and stood at his elbow. “Is there an escape tunnel out of here?”
“At least two. Difficult to maneuver, and both end in the jungle. The sun will be down.”
“Let’s save it for tomorrow then, if there’s time,” the captain said. “We should return to the ship now.”
Jake led them back through the tunnel to the trench. Tomorrow they would trample through the jungle to two corpses only days old. Worse ghouls than the ones in the cave. The thrill of a storybook adventure would continue for the excited guardsmen.
But not for him.
Not if he ended up arrested for killing a man.
***
A storm roared in at night and shot cannonball waves at the Coast Guard cutter. “Because we violated a gravesite,” the men whispered.
“You can moor in the cove, Captain.” Jake was feeling white around the gills himself. “It’s more than deep enough, and certainly calmer. A good night’s rest will make a hard task easier tomorrow. Sounds like some of the men are on edge already.”
The captain didn’t protest. He put down anchor in the cove, and boat and men settled down at once. Didn’t help Jake sleep much. Problems with solutions he couldn’t control always set him into a wrestling match with God, the equivalent of Jacob’s the night before he encountered his brother Esau. Tomorrow was Jake’s Esau.
After an early breakfast, the same guardsmen accompanied Jake and Detective Lee to the beach. This time they carried two body bags. The third corpse was midway down the east coast of the island, where it was easier to sail the cutter than tromp through miles of jungle.
Their feet sank into the sodden beach, leaving footprints and disturbed sand in their wake. Slogging up the stream that emptied into the cove, they passed the three lone trees where Jake had hung by his wrists. Further inland, they slipped through an opening carved by the survivors into the dense vegetation bordering the stream. A narrow, trampled path snaked through thicker and taller vegetation toward the towering trees of the jungle proper. The pungent odor of rain-bathed wood and leaves savoring the morning sun welcomed them, as did a committee of tiny, winged insects determined to explore every orifice on their heads.
The first corpse was easy to locate. The nasty smell of decomposing flesh as good as pointed an arrow at it. The body, covered in a shroud of competing insects, lay several feet off the path. “I used the choke maneuver to subdue him,” Jake explained, “then tied his hands and feet together with his shoelaces behind his back. If I’d killed him, I wouldn’t have bothered to restrain him to prevent his escape.”
“Clear the body for photos,” the captain barked. Three of the guardsmen dispersed what bugs they could while the fourth guardsman snapped pictures.
Detective Lee leaned closer to the corpse. “I know that man. Miguel Galit.” He stepped back and swatted at a battalion of blowflies attacking his face. “He’s been in and out of jail more times than I have hairs on my head. I suspect the second corpse will be his sidekick, Philippe.”
An electric current zapped from Jake’s heart and sizzled across every nerve in his body. Suddenly, hope was a reality. Miguel’s criminal record, the shoelaces obviously tied to avert escape—Jake’s innocence was an easy conclusion.
“Why a choke maneuver?” Lee’s voice was stiff.
Jake blinked. “He had a pistol, so I came at him from behind. The other pirate had captured Eve, and I had to hurry.” What was Lee’s problem? Jake huffed and turned back to the path. Best keep his mouth shut and take them to the next corpse. A confrontation with the detective would not help Jake’s case.
“Bag him,” the captain instructed his men. “We’ll get Miguel here on our way back with the second corpse.”
A ways down the path, Jake left it to follow another one not as obvious. Within moments, they entered the rain forest, a hothouse of tree trunks that soared like skyscrapers to a leafy canopy obscuring sun and sky. Hoots and screeches from the canopy’s denizens slammed their eardrums. He hoped the detective was a city boy and would find the surroundings unnerving.
They rounded a twist in the trail, and sunlight spotlighted the jungle through a hole in the canopy. The tree that had occupied it lay toppled into a taller tree’s branches, forming a steep but accessible bridge to the tree. Jake led them to a mound at its base. A second battalion of blowflies occupied it.
Jake tipped his head back and squinted against the sunlight. “He fell from up there.”
Lee followed his gaze. “What was he doing in the tree?”
“Eve broke loose from him and fled to it. He climbed up after her.”
“Handy that he fell.”
Jake’s jaw stiffened. “She said she didn’t push him, if that’s what you’re inferring.”
“Did you see it happen?”
“No. I found her after she descended. She scraped dirt and leaves over him to hide his death from the other man.”
“Whew, that was quite a fall.” The captain nodded his head at the corpse. “Evidently he landed feet-first.” One of the man’s femurs protruded from his abdomen, staking him in a crouch in the humus of the forest floor. “Is it Philippe, Detective?”
Lee nodded. “Bag him, and let’s pick up Miguel. I want to get the third body before dusk.”
Bearing the two body bags between two guardsmen apiece, the group returned to the cutter, Jake leading the way, then the detective, followed by the four guardsmen and the captain. It was a dour funeral procession that Jake couldn’t shake off as being his own. Perhaps with the third corpse, Detective Lee would relent and come around to Jake’s side.
Chapter 4
Again, memories pinched Jake’s heart as the Coast Guard cutter anchored off the beach where the four castaways had arrived a year ago. He had dragged himself out of the ocean, broken-hearted at the death of Ginny, aching to join her in death if only God would take him home. Instead, God purposed him with the protection of three women’s lives, created a family from the pieces of their shattered souls, and comforted Jake with a new love.
A love who now lay in an induced coma. Who might awake to an unjust incarceration for murders she hadn’t committed. Or to a fiancé incarcerated for a murder he hadn’t committed.
From the motorboat, Jake’s view of the gravesite was lost in the expanse of white sand fronting a lineup of sentinel palm trees. The men landed and left behind a guardsman to putter alongside their onshore search. Evening shadows grayed the sand by the time Jake spotted the four sticks marking the grave.
The body the guardsmen dug up was badly deteriorated. “I found him a few days after we landed on the island,” Jake said. “From his clothing, I guessed he was a sailor. His throat was slit.”
The captain examined the corpse. “Might be the sailor lost at sea from a freighter last year. Rumor had it he was murdered.” His eyes rounded, and he shot a glance at Detective Lee. “Murdered by that scum Jojo after an argument in a card game.”
“Jojo!” Jake exclaimed. “That’s the brute who tied me to the tree and kidnapped Eve!”
Detective Lee pursed his lips. “Looks like we have a pretty clear picture of what happened on the island. We’ll talk to Eve tomorrow and see if she learned anything about the disappearance of the yacht’s owners and first mate before she got shot.”
It was all Jake could do not to shout, Halleluiah! “I can see her, talk to her tomorrow?”
“You and Betty and Crystal.” Lee said. “We’ll call them from the airport and tell them to meet us in the hospital waiting room.”
Jake stuck his hand out, and Lee shook it.
***
“Eve’s gone!”
Weary from his two days on the island, Jake braced himself as Crystal Oakleigh sprinted across the recovery waiting room and threw herself into his arms. Behind her, Betty Parker’s distraught face and full-body sag in a waiting room chair confirmed the child’s news.
He swallowed the spike of alarm that zapped from his stomach to his throat. “Whoa there, pumpkin! Let’s check it out at the nurses’ station. They probably took her to X-ray or—”
“No, Jake!” Crystal’s chest heaved a sob. “They took her away after you left for the island.”
He released Crystal and wheeled to confront Detective Lee, who had accompanied him to collect Betty and Crystal for the visit to Eve’s room. Or at least that’s what the detective had told him.
Lee back-stepped out of Jake’s reach. “They’re mistaken.”
Supporting herself with the cane Jake had made on the island, Betty shuffled over to them, her fluff of white hair bobbing as she shook her head vehemently. “No sirree, young man, my niece is not mistaken.” She stopped in front of Lee and glared at him from fatigue-darkened eyes. “U.S. Marshals took her. Eve’s nurse told us so.”
The surprise that flitted across Lee’s face was genuine. It was the only thing that kept Jake from grabbing him and shoving him against the wall.
“I’m checking this out.” Lee strode out of the waiting room, with Jake, Betty, and Crystal close on his tail. At the nurses’ station, Lee halted and drew himself into a stiff stance in front of the nurse on duty. He flashed a badge at her. “Room number for Eva Gray.”
The nurse riffled through two files before answering him. “She’s been dismissed.”
“On whose orders?” Lee barked. “This patient is under arrest.”
The nurse’s eyes widened. Shoulders crunched forward, she huddled over the second file.
“By order of the United States, sir.” She pulled a piece of paper from the file and slid it across the counter to the detective.
Before Lee could pick it up, Jake flattened it under the palm of his right hand. “U.S. Marshals,” he read out loud. “Eight o’clock p.m. yesterday via ambulance to Villamor Air Base.” Heat, lava hot, suffused his face. “What’s going on, detective? You sent her to the United States as a prisoner while you and I were on the island?”
“I know nothing about this.” Lee grabbed the telephone next to the nurse. “But heads will roll when I find out who allowed this to happen. She was my prisoner!”
Jake’s body quaked with anger. Lungs and diaphragm punched air in heaving volleys. Eve, gone!
“Jake.” Betty’s fingers touched his cheek, directed his eyes to hers. “Find out where she is.” She let the words sink in. “We’ll go after her.”
Go after her. Yes. He grabbed Betty in a fierce hug.
Chapter 5
“Eve’s alive.”
The two words hit drug lord Danny Romero like a bullet between the eyes.
His head recoiled and he clutched the phone to his ear to keep from dropping it. The shadows of his office swooped in on him like awakened ghosts. “How …?”
“Philippine Coast Guard found her on a stolen yacht four days ago. Shot in the head.”
“Four days, and you’re just now telling me?”
“I called as soon as I found out.” The voice on the other end quavered. “U.S. Marshals brought her to the United States last night. That’s the first anyone here in Chicago knew of it.”
Romero’s knees gave way. He dropped into his chair, heart pummeling his chest. He had to open his mouth to breathe without rasping. She can’t be the only one still alive. He steadied his voice. “Who else was on the yacht?”
“Two Filipinos. A convict and a ship’s officer, both dead.”
Romero cursed. “What happened?”
“No one knows. She’s had brain swelling and has been put in an induced coma. Doctors are reversing it today. She’s under minimal security at Cook County Hospital. You could finish her off before—”
“No!” His hands shook. “Not until we know her story. If she’s alive, my son could be alive.”
A spasm of coughing choked off his words. Irritation that the informant knew about his emphysema and was waiting for him to catch his breath—maybe even hoping he’d drop dead right there on the spot—made it worse.
“Stay on top of it,” he finally hissed. He slammed down the phone and leaned back in his chair, chest tight, eyes closed. Four days! Four days since Eve surfaced in the Philippines equalled four days of lost opportunity to get to her. But now she was in Chicago. On his turf. Within his reach.
Basta! Enough! He straightened his back and cautiously inhaled a deep breath. He needed a plan, but this time it had to be flawless.
***
The noise drew her upward—up and up, beckoning her through the darkness until at last she could reach the light to discover it. The sound deepened as she drew nearer—a muffled rumbling, far away and low like thunder. She opened her eyes and squinted. Bright light framed a dark figu
re next to her. It turned toward her and she saw the face of an aged man.
Dad?
She closed her eyes, and her heartbeat filled her ears with a thrum of joy as she sank back into darkness.
When she heard the noise again—his voice, she was sure—she opened her eyes immediately. Her heart swelled at the sight of him. He sat in a chair next to her, holding her hand. She was in a hospital bed. She peered around the room—what was she doing in a hospital?—and returned her scrutiny to him. His head was bowed and his eyes squeezed shut, yet he was talking. His voice was familiar somehow, deep and rumbling, like thunder rolling off a distant mountaintop.
She waited for him to look at her. His hair was white, combed straight back, his face somber. When he saw she was awake, he smiled, and the leathery skin around his eyes and mouth crinkled into a thousand tiny smiles.
“Hello there!”
“Dad?” She held her breath.
“I’m George Peterman, chaplain at Cook County Hospital.”
“Oh.” Disappointment swept through her like water swirling into a deep chasm.
“I’ve been praying for you.”
She tried to remove her hand, but he brought his other hand over hers and started patting it. She gazed at him dully. “Why?”
His face sobered again. “I’ve been praying for your life.”
He pointed to an area behind her, and she twisted far enough to glimpse an army of medical instruments standing guard over her. She traced wires and tubes to her right arm and her chest. Her eyes darted back to the chaplain.
“You’ve been out four days,” he said. “You’ve had a lot of people worried.”
Who? she wanted to ask. Then she remembered she couldn’t remember. Not anything. Not anyone. She glanced at the chaplain. Not even her father.
***
Dusk squeezed the bright square of her hospital window into an empty shadow of gray. She stared at it, identifying with it—hollow tube of flesh and bandages to hollow square of glass and aluminum.
