by P J Parrish
“I can’t understand you, Pierre.”
“You can fix, no?” Pierre asked, nodding at the sign.
“No,” Louis said, bracing for the usual fight with his landlord. He got a break in his rent for serving as Branson’s “security chief” but it meant putting up with Pierre’s attempts to turn him into his personal serf.
“No? No? J’ai d’autres chats a fouetter! You can fix!”
“No,” Louis said more firmly.
Pierre launched into a tirade of French as he began to tug on the tree limb.
“Pierre,” Louis said, “do you have a CB radio or something?”
“Quoi?"
“A radio. The phones are out and I have to call the sheriff’s department.”
“The sheriff? Forget that! I don’t have radio and I need you to help here!”
“I’ll help later. I have something important to take care of first.”
Louis turned and walked off, leaving Pierre yelling after him. He paused, looking at all the gawkers on the beach then decided to walk down to the Island Store. He went the beach route, walking slowly along the shoreline, scanning the sand and hoping that if there were more bones the shell scavengers would not know what they were seeing and would leave them alone. But he saw nothing in the trash-clogged kelp.
The store was open. A small crowd milled outside, a few dazed-looking tourists and locals jawing about the storm.It was hot and stuffy inside, the AC above the door silent. The shelves were stripped clean. Batteries, toilet paper, bottled water, and anything worth eating had been snatched up the day the hurricane warning went out. Louis suspected that Roberta Tatum had made a small fortune selling everything she’d had in her store, right down to the last bottle of Perrier.
Louis was eyeing a lone can of pinto beans when she came up to his side.
“Well, I see you survived,” she said. Her dark face was shiny with sweat, her hair hidden beneath a pink bandana.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Could have been a lot worse.”
Louis nodded. “You don’t have a CB radio or something, do you, Roberta?”
“Nope. Why?”
Louis hesitated but decided not to bring up the skull. “Got to get a hold of someone, that’s all.” He nodded to the can of beans on the shelf. “This all you got left?”
“I warned you to stock up. But you weren’t hearing me, were you?”
“I guess not.” Louis’s eyes went to the coolers along the back wall. They looked empty. He sighed and picked up the can of beans.
“Jesus, you’re pathetic,” Roberta said. “Come with me.”
He followed her up to the front counter. She reached beneath and tossed a loaf of wheat bread, a jar of Jif, and a package of Ho Hos on the counter.
She stood looking at him, hands on hips, a frown creasing her face. “Go on, take it.”
Louis grinned. “Thanks.”
“Next time, listen to what I tell you. You don’t screw around with a hurricane, even a small one. You hear me?”
“I hear you. You got anything to drink left?” Louis asked.
“Yeah, I got twelve cases of Coors back there that’s hotter than dog piss.”
“I’ll pass. How about a bottle of brandy?”
Roberta moved away and returned with a bottle of Remy Martin.
Louis shook his head. “I can’t afford that.”
Roberta rolled her eyes. ‘Take it, damn it. I saw an ad for booze the other day and I thought of you. Went something like claret’s for boys and wine’s for men. But brandy is for heros.”
“I’m no hero,” Louis said.
“Don’t I know it.”
Roberta leaned against the counter, fanning herself with a copy of the Island Reporter. Louis came to the store at least once a week but he hadn’t noticed until now that she looked thinner. Two years had passed since her husband, Walter, had been murdered, and he wondered how she was doing. Not that he would ask. Even though he had played the main role in finding Walter Tatum’s killer.
A man and woman came in, their sunburned faces animated. The woman was carrying a handful of shells.
“Could we bother you for a bag?” she asked Roberta.
Roberta gave her a cold stare, then snapped a plastic bag off the rack and thrust it at the woman. The couple left.
“Damn tourists, like buzzards picking through the garbage,” Roberta muttered, fanning herself again. “What the hell do they think they’re going to find out there anyways?”
Louis paused just a beat. “I found a skull.”
Roberta threw him a look. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m not kidding. I found a skull on the beach.”
Roberta stopped fanning herself. “What? You mean a head?”
“No, it’s a clean skull. It looks like a baby skull, but it looks old,” he added, as if that made it easier to accept.
Roberta came closer. “A baby? What did you do with it?”
“It’s back at my place.”
“It’s in your house? Where at?”
Louis shrugged. “In a chair wrapped in a shirt.”
“You just left a baby’s skull in your chair?”
“Well, it’s a comfortable chair.”
“That’s not funny.”
“C’mon, Roberta. It’s not like it’s...” He paused, watching her. “Like a fresh victim.”
Her black eyes pierced him. “You ever had a baby?”
“No.”
“Ever even been around one?”
Louis shook his head, but he was remembering a moment long ago. He’d almost had one.
Roberta let out a huff. “Didn’t think so.”
“Christ, Roberta,” he said, “I’ve seen bones, skeletons before. It’s no big deal. It’s just a skull.”
She began to stuff his groceries into a bag. “Yeah, just a skull you leave in your chair and make jokes about. It’s no joke. It’s what’s left of a baby. You hearing me?”
Louis felt his neck muscles tighten. “I’m hearing you.”
She thrust the bag at him. “I doubt it.”
Louis reached into his pocket for some money. Roberta shook her head when he held out the bills.
“Pay me later. The register ain’t working anyway.”
Louis hesitated, wanting to make things right but not understanding why Roberta was so bent out of shape in the first place. “I have to report it. You know anybody with a radio?”
“Nope.” She turned away, fanning herself with the newspaper again.
Louis picked up the bag and started out the door.
“Talk to Jay Strickland.”
Louis stopped. “He’s got a radio?”
“Should have. He’s a cop.”
“Where do I find him?”
“Last time I looked, he was out front. Can’t miss him. Red hair, like Woody Woodpecker.”
Louis stepped out into the sun. He spotted Strickland’s spiky red hair immediately in the knot of men in the parking lot. Strickland was wearing cutoff jeans and a faded Hawaiian shirt, but Louis could see the police radio sticking out of his back pocket. He approached and introduced himself.
Strickland gave him a handshake and an easy smile. “Kincaid, yeah. I’ve heard the other guys talk about you. I was hoping we’d get to meet sometime.”
Louis eyed the other men. “Could we talk in private, Officer?”
“Sure.”
As they moved away, Louis studied the deputy. He didn’t seem to be much older than his own twenty-seven years. Probably younger. Louis filled him in, and Strickland’s expression turned somber as he put on his cop face.
“Can you call it in?” Louis asked.
“Sure. But I can tell you no one can get out here for hours, because the causeway road is out. I’m only here ’cause I live over in Sanibel.” He nodded to an old green Vespa and grinned. “Rode over on my hog.”
Louis saw Roberta standing in the door, watching them. He waited, listening while Strickland called in to
his station and reported the skull. He heard the harried dispatcher say that no one could respond. Strickland clicked off and turned to Louis.
“Looks like I’m it,” he said.
They walked back to Louis’s cottage, Strickland wheeling the Vespa. Inside, Louis started to the kitchen to dump the groceries.
“It’s over there, in the chair.”
“Wow...”
When Louis turned, Strickland was holding the skull. “Hey, don’t pick it up, man,” Louis said.
Strickland set it down quickly. “Why not? Not likely to get prints off a skull that’s been in the water for so long.”
“You don’t know how long it’s been in the water. You should treat it like evidence anyway.”
“Yeah, okay. You didn’t find anything else with it?”
“Not a thing.”
Strickland knelt next to the chair. “It’s probably a newborn,” he said softly.
Louis came forward. “What makes you say that?”
Strickland pointed. “See the little holes on top?” “Pickax,” Louis said.
Strickland turned to look at him. “Pickax? No way, man. Those are fontanelles.”
“What?”
“Fontanelles,” Strickland said, standing. “Soft spots. Babies got ’em so their skull plates can compress while the baby travels down the birth canal.” He used his cupped hands to demonstrate, drawing one set over the knuckles of the other. “They don’t close up for months afterward, sometimes as late as two years.”
Strickland saw the incredulous look on Louis’s face and smiled. “My wife just had a baby.”
Strickland bent down, hands on knees, to look at the skull again. “Babies are so cool, man,” he said. “Jenny made me read this book on how it all happens, and it talks about fontanelles and stuff. Sometimes, the skull comes out kinda mushed up from the baby going down the birth canal.”
Louis suppressed a sigh. It was more than he needed to know.
“My daughter’s head looked like an upside-down Dixie cup,” Strickland went on, “so I made them wait a day to take the hospital photos. Ashley looked great then. Want to see her picture?”
Strickland had already gone for the wallet.
“Pretty,” Louis said when Strickland thrust out the picture. He didn’t add that he thought all babies looked like Karl Malden.
“Babies are so cool,” Strickland said again, more softly now. “It’s like when they’re lying there looking up at you, it’s like suddenly you get that you’re it. You’re life and death to them, man. You’re everything.”
Louis nodded like he understood. Strickland carefully put the picture back in his wallet.
“So,” Strickland said, “where exactly did you find the skull?”
“C’mon, I’ll show you.”
He took Strickland to the place on the beach where he had picked up the skull. The beach was crowded, the shell seekers now joined by the curious who had just come down to see what havoc nature had wrought. Offshore, three surfers were bobbing on their boards, hoping the choppy water would yield a ride or two.
Strickland looked at Louis. “Think we should secure the scene?”
Louis nodded. “That would be a good start.”
“How far you think we should go?”
“You’re the responding officer. You decide.”
“You got any tape?”
“No. Don’t you?”
“In my cruiser, but it’s sitting in my driveway with a tree on the hood.”
Louis turned and looked out across the beach.
Strickland drew in a breath Louis could hear. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “This is my sixth day on the job. Everyone else is tied up with other shit.” Strickland ran a hand over his stubbly hair. “I’d appreciate any help.”
Louis hesitated. He knew that in different circumstances, the whole beach would be roped off and a team of cops and techs would do a methodical search. But that wasn’t going to happen right now. Every cop in the county was probably tied up with storm duty.
“What are we going to do?” Strickland asked.
Louis nodded toward an elderly couple coming toward them, the man sweeping a metal detector over the sand. “Get them to help.”
“What?”
“People like to help.”
“What do we tell them?” Strickland said, hurrying beside him.
“Tell them we found an old skull and we’re looking for other bones.”
“That’ll gross them out.”
“No, it won’t. Trust me.”
Strickland went up to the couple and showed his badge. He watched their faces go from surprise to horror, then to interest. They started nodding, and moved away, gently kicking at the sand and whispering to each other.
Moved by his success, Strickland hurried on to another couple, then another, quickly building his team of curious volunteers.
Louis turned away and walked the beach, angling down toward the water, using a stick to search the debris. It occurred to him how strange it was that he had assumed the holes in the skull were the result of a pickax. That was the cop in him. A father had seen it differently.
He walked along, head down, stick poking the kelp. He was thinking of Roberta now and wondering why she had been so quick to take his dispassion for disrespect.
Like he had told her, he had seen bones before. He had seen the skeleton of a lynching victim lying in a shallow grave back in Mississippi. He had seen the bones of a murdered teenage girl laid out on an autopsy table.
It’s what’s left of a baby...
He had never seen a bone so small though. Maybe that’s why he had no answer for Roberta’s comment.
He looked down the beach. “Strickland! You find anything yet?” he called out.
“Nope,” the deputy yelled back.
“Keep looking.”
“I don’t think there’s —-”
“Keep looking.” Louis squinted out at the water. “Just keep looking, man.”
CHAPTER 4
The royal palms were still there. Seeing the towering trees lining McGregor Boulevard made him feel better somehow, as though the hurricane hadn’t really touched anything or anyone.
But Louis knew that wasn’t true. He could see that clearly now as he drove slowly down the boulevard toward downtown Fort Myers.
He had borrowed Strickland’s scooter and he kept it at a careful crawl, going up on swales and lawns to avoid the flooded streets and fallen tree limbs. It was oddly quiet, none of the usual traffic buzz, just the distant whine of chain saws or the chug-chug of generators.
Cars still sat abandoned in the street, and many trees were stripped or snapped, leaving homes baking in the hot sun, their windows blanked by big Xs of masking tape. The Buddha Bar and Grill, Giovanni’s Deli, the Market Cafe, they all still had their plywood up. Two days after Alina and Fort Myers still had a forlorn aura, like one of those whitewashed, fading rust-belt downtowns.
It was so hot it hurt to take a breath and the sky was a cruel bright blue. Power was still out in most neighborhoods, so people were outside, looking up at their battered roofs, dragging palm fronds to the curbs. Everyone was moving slowly. Except the kids. They were laughing, the big ones paddling canoes down McGregor, the little ones splashing in the water in defiance of mothers and health department warnings about snakes, rats, and microbes.
At the police station, Louis left the Vespa in a bike rack up near the door. He took a moment to run a hand over his sweating neck, looking at the empty parking lot. Normally, it was filled with green-and-whites, but every cop in the county was out on cleanup duty today. Even Strickland had been called in, but not before coming over to Louis’s cottage to tell him that Chief Horton wanted to see him.
They had news on the baby skull.
Louis was about to go in when the glass door opened and Al Horton came out, followed by a tall bald man in a suit.
“Kincaid!” Horton said, pulling up short. “Shit, I forgot you were coming i
n.”
“I got here as soon as I could. The roads —-”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Horton ran a hand over his unshaven jaw. He looked harried and tired. “Listen, it’ll have to wait. Mel and I gotta get going.”
Louis looked to the man in the yellow-tinted sunglasses and black suit, the name Mel itching his brain. He had heard through the grapevine that Horton had hired a new chief of detectives, some guy from Miami. He had also heard that bringing in an outsider had caused grumbling in the department.
“What about the skull?” Louis asked Horton.
“Later. I got a body washed up in some mangroves out in the sound,” Horton said, easing by.
“A body? Can I ride along?” Louis asked.
Horton stopped, running a hand roughly over his brush cut as if that might keep the brain neurons from shorting out. “Yeah, come on. We’ll talk on the way,” he said. “Meet you there, Mel.”
The detective glanced at Louis through his yellow lenses and turned away. He headed toward his car, a patrolman hustling after him. Louis noticed the detective catch the uniform by the shoulder and order him to drive.
Louis followed Horton to a white Crown-Victoria. “That your new guy?” he asked, nodding toward the other car.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, that’s Mel Landeta. Sorry I didn’t introduce you. Got a few other things on my mind,” Horton said as he slid into the car.
“Not very friendly, is he?”
Horton started the car. “What, you been listening to those baboons down at O’Sullivans? Landeta’s a good man. He’s not some old burnout.”
“That’s not what they’re saying, Chief,” Louis said. Even though he knew they were. “They just resent you going outside, that’s all.”
“Landeta’s just had a few rough years.” Horton thrust the shift into reverse. “And I don’t think we got enough chips in for you to be questioning my hires, Kincaid.”
Louis sat back in the seat without responding. No chips in? That’s how Horton saw it? They had worked Walter Tatum’s murder together. But that was as far as it had gone. And as far as it would always go, given the line that separated cops from private investigators.
They were back onto McGregor before Horton spoke again.
