Island of Bones

by P J Parrish

  Louis came back to sit on the edge of the sofa. “How long?” he asked.

  Landeta gave a small shrug. “About ten years now. Retinitis pigmentosa is a kind disease. Your eyes commit suicide, but it takes a long time.” He unwrapped his hand to stare at his finger again. “Gives you plenty of time to...adjust.”

  Louis let his eyes wander around the room. No rugs to trip over, no knickknacks to knock off tables, no shadows to get lost in, no pretty pictures on the walls. Suddenly the place didn’t look so stylish anymore. It looked like survival.

  He started thinking back, his mind clicking on images of Landeta, trying to remember what the guy had done to cover up his problem. Back in the mangroves, asking all those questions about Shelly Umber’s body. Back in the office, asking him to read him the autopsy report, and at the cottage, telling him to read him the reports on the missing girls and then knocking over the glass of water.

  When they had been talking at O’Sullivan’s about making your own luck, and Landeta saying something about fate taking it away. And all those questions that had seemed so arrogant: Why don't you read me the report while I clean off my desk, Kincaid? What do you see, Kincaid? What does the scene look like?

  Louis felt a twinge of anger at being used. And something else, a heat moving up the back of his neck, as if it were radiating off of Landeta —- the heat of embarrassment, swirling around them both like the cigarette-stale air.

  “You want to leave,” Landeta said. He nodded toward the door. “Go ahead. Get out of here.”

  Louis rose. Landeta didn’t look up. Louis went into the kitchen, picked up the bottle opener and popped off the Heineken cap. He came back and sat down on the sofa and took a long pull of the beer. It was warm. He didn’t care.

  “Does Horton know?” he asked.

  Landeta shook his head slowly. “He called me right after the thing in Miami. I was going to tell him then. But then he offered me the job over here. Once I got here and started working again, I figured I could pull it off.”

  “This why you get Strickland to drive you everywhere?”

  Landeta nodded.

  Louis hesitated. “This why you left Miami PD?”

  Landeta sank back in the leather chair. The front of his white shirt was splattered with blood. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Louis could almost feel the man’s wariness.

  “Look, if you don’t want to talk about —-” Louis began.

  “Nah, I should. That’s what the shrink said.” He looked at Louis. “You ever seen one?”

  “A shrink?” Louis nodded. “Yeah, once. Up in Michigan after my partner got shot. Department policy, that kind of shit.”

  They were quiet. Landeta put his glasses back on and leaned his head back in the chair.

  “So what happened in Miami?” Louis asked.

  “I was still driving some then,” he said. “I knew the way to work by heart and if we had to go out at night, I’d have my partner drive. I knew I had to stop. I couldn’t even read the signs anymore. But giving up your wheels, shit, it’s like admitting you’re an old man.”

  Landeta paused. “Then one morning, I was driving into the station and the pursuit call went out. It was instinct. I took off after the guy. I never saw the kid in the other car.”

  “Horton told me the kid ran a light,” Louis said.

  Landeta shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I didn’t see him.” He took a deep breath. “The kid ended up in a wheelchair and the family sued. My chief found out about the RP. He told me he’d keep it quiet if I resigned. It was almost a relief.”

  The room was quiet. Outside, a siren wailed and faded. A mile from the station, an easy walk, Louis thought.

  “You want another beer?” Landeta asked.

  Louis shook his head.

  “I said do you want another beer?”

  Louis started to shake his head again then realized Landeta hadn’t seen it. “No, no, thanks,” he said.

  “So how much...?” Louis faltered.

  “How much can I see? I’ve got tunnel vision and what’s there is like looking through a shower stall that’s got soap scum all over it.” He held up his glasses. “The yellow lenses give me more contrast. So does having things in black and white. Like my clothes. Makes getting dressed easier.”

  He gestured to the television three feet away. “If I sit right in front of it and turn the contrast and brightness buttons on high I can see some TV, but lately it makes my eyes hurt.”

  Louis looked down at the beer bottle in his hands.

  “You’re just a flesh-colored blur,” Landeta said.

  Louis looked up.

  “What color are your eyes?” Landeta asked.

  “Gray.”

  “I was guessing blue for some reason.”

  Louis hesitated. “I’m black.”

  Landeta stared at him. Then he let out a huge bark of a laugh. “No shit? I thought you just had a good tan.”

  Louis laughed. The room grew quiet again. A clock chimed nine times. Louis looked for it but didn’t see it.

  “You going to tell Horton?” Landeta asked.

  Louis could hear it in the man’s voice. It was buried, somewhere deep under the layers of pride and macho crap, deep under all the stuff that started accumulating the moment you understood you were a boy, male, a man. It was buried there underneath the scar tissue around the heart, underneath that veneer they painted on you at the academy that eventually hardened over you like a tough blue shell. Buried there, underneath all of it, Louis could hear the vulnerability.

  “It’s not up to me,” Louis said.

  Landeta paused. “Did Horton ask you to babysit me?”

  The question was so unexpected Louis couldn’t think of a quick answer.

  “Don’t bullshit me,” Landeta said. “Did he?”

  Louis thought of what Horton had said about Landeta when they found Frank’s body. He can’t seem to get a feel for things and he's missing stuff.

  Landeta let out a long slow breath. “Never mind.”

  “You have to tell him,” Louis said.

  Landeta didn’t answer. He was just sitting there, holding his towel-wrapped hand. Louis set the beer down on the coffee table. He rose slowly.

  Landeta looked up. “You’re going,” he said.

  “To get another beer,” Louis said.

  Landeta looked up at him then concentrated on unwrapping the towel from his hand. The bleeding had stopped. He seemed to notice the blood on his shirt for the first time.

  “You need anything?” Louis asked.

  “Yeah, for you not to treat me like a fucking blind man.”

  “Shit, man. If we’re going to work this case together, you got to stop being a prick.” Louis shook his head. “All I’m asking is can I do anything for you?”

  Landeta just stared at him. And in the bright light of the white room, Louis could see his eyes clearly for the first time. They were a cloudy blue and rimmed in red, like someone’s eyes might look if they had been crying for years.

  But Landeta was smiling, an odd half smile that was closer to a grimace.

  “Can I do anything for you?” Louis repeated.

  “Yeah,” Landeta said. “Bring me back a Diet Coke with lemon. Then tell me what the sunset looked like tonight.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Before Louis had a chance to answer, Landeta pushed himself out of the Eames chair and disappeared into the bedroom. A few minutes later, Louis heard the flush of a toilet and running water.

  Louis rose and went to the kitchen, getting a beer and a Diet Coke. When he came back, Landeta was standing there. He had changed into a clean white shirt and there was gauze wrapped around his left hand.

  “Okay, let’s get started,” Landeta said.

  Louis hesitated. That was it? The guy just says he’s blind and that’s his excuse for being an asshole?

  “Here’s your Diet Coke. I couldn’t find the damn lemon,” Louis said, setting it on the table by t
he Eames chair.

  Louis went back to the sofa and sat down. He took a drink of the beer, pulled out his notebook, and slapped it down on the coffee table.

  Landeta heard it and looked over at him. “What’s your problem all of a sudden?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, I get it. You want an apology, right?”

  Louis didn’t respond for a moment then he nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I do. You treated me like shit.”

  Landeta just stared at him.

  “I know things are bad for you right now, but I was trying to help you,” Louis said.

  “I told you I don’t need help.”

  “With the case, man,” Louis said, “with the fucking case, that’s all. And you did need help with that.”

  Landeta turned away. He hit a button on the CD player, popping out the disk and putting it back in its case. “I’m used to working alone,” he said.

  Louis waited but Landeta was busy putting a new CD in the player. A second later, the sound of Ray Charles singing “Lonely Avenue” poured out of the speakers. Louis shook his head and started to pack up his notebook and books. He rose and started to the door.

  “Maybe it’s time I had a partner,” Landeta said.

  Louis turned. “What?”

  Landeta turned down the music’s volume. “I said, maybe it’s time I had a partner.”

  Louis hesitated then came back to the sofa. He set the books down on the coffee table. “I haven’t eaten all day. Is there a pizza place around here that delivers?” he asked.

  “Yeah, Fast Eddie’s down the street.”

  “Pepperoni and extra cheese. No anchovies. And you’re buying. Where’s your john?”

  Landeta pointed to a door. Louis went to the bathroom. When he came back, Landeta was hanging up the phone.

  “I got green peppers,” Landeta said.

  “I hate green peppers,” Louis said.

  “You can pick them off.”

  The music stopped and for a moment, the room was quiet, just the drone of the air conditioner in the window and a car horn somewhere outside. Ray Charles started into “Them That Got.” Landeta turned the volume down until the music was just a whispering stream.

  “Where do you want to start?” Louis asked.

  “With the missing girls,” Landeta said. “You never made me copies of your interviews with their families. I’m in the dark, so to speak.”

  Louis remembered back to the night Landeta had come to his cottage. Landeta had refused to look at them and wanted to take them with him. “Who do you want to start with?” he asked.

  “Emma Fielding,” Landeta said, settling into the Eames chair.

  Louis pulled out the reports he had written on each girl. “Emma disappeared in 1953. She was sixteen.”

  “So Frank was already with his wife then,” Landeta said. “It was a year after Diane was born, in fact.”

  “Serial killers often have wives or girlfriends,” Louis said. “Some have families and lives that look normal.”

  Landeta was staring off at the white wall. “Families,” he said quietly. “What was Emma’s family like?”

  “She was sexually abused by her stepfather,” Louis said. “Her mother and older brother both knew about it, and when the older brother finally ran off, Emma wanted to go with him. He kind of abandoned her.”

  Landeta nodded thoughtfully and said, “Let’s move on to the others.”

  “Cindy Shattuck, 1964.” Louis looked at his notes. “She lived with her mother in Matlacha. The mother kicked her out of the house because she thought she was flirting with her husband. No boyfriend, but Cindy worked in a restaurant in town where she could have met someone.”

  “That’s all? You can do better.”

  “Well, her mother is a piece of work. Told me if we ever found Cindy to tell her she was dead. And she said Cindy took only one thing with her —- an old sock monkey.”

  “Good. Go on,” Landeta said.

  “Paula Berkowitz. 1965. High school graduate, honor student, lived with her parents until she left home suddenly at age twenty without telling anyone. She only took one suitcase and they never heard from her again. Her aunt said she was overweight and possibly depressed or suicidal.”

  “Job?”

  Louis scanned his notes. “Cashier at a Winn-Dixie near her home on Pine Island.”

  Landeta looked over at him, as if expecting more.

  “She desperately wanted kids.”

  “Next”

  “Mary Rubio. Vanished in 1973. She was a foster kid who was placed in fifteen homes in two years. The foster mother I talked to only had her a few months but told me the girl was strange. Said Mary used to cut herself.”

  “Really?” Landeta said.

  “Her foster mother said it was a cry for attention.”

  “It is and it isn’t. Kids who do that are looking for a sense that they are alive, and to prove it they cut their skin.”

  “To see if they bleed?”

  “To see if they can feel. What else?”

  “The foster mother told me Mary would never have a real home with her and Mary knew it, so she left.”

  Landeta’s eyes closed briefly. “Tell me about Angela.”

  Louis picked up the last report “Angela Lopez, disappeared in 1984. Daughter of a Mexican migrant worker in Immokalee,” he read. “She was close to a woman she worked for, a woman named Rosa, who told me Angela made a date to go to Fort Myers and never came back.”

  Landeta looked at him and Louis could read the message: You can do better.

  “Angela told Rosa once that she never wanted her kids to grow up in Immokalee,” Louis said.

  Landeta nodded slowly. “So, what do you see? What do you see in all these girls?”

  “They were all running away from something,” he said.

  “And they were all desperate to feel connected to someone.” Landeta paused. “That’s a powerful human need.”

  “Except Shelly Umber,” Louis said. “She wasn’t running away from anything.”

  “But she was not vulnerable like the others.”

  “Explain,” Louis said.

  “You have to look at the times in each case,” Landeta said. “Emma disappeared in the fifties. Things were different then. Women were usually looking for someone to take care of them.”

  Landeta got up from the chair. “But by the sixties, girls were a little different. They weren’t all looking to get married. They were looking for other things —- excitement, a feeling of belonging to a family so they ran off to communes or Haight-Ashbury.”

  Louis was watching Landeta as he paced slowly around the room.

  “Take Cindy Shattuck,” Landeta went on. “In need of affection, especially from men, with a stuffed monkey as her favorite possession. She was a baby, put out on the street by her mother. And Paula...fat, unhappy, working in a dead-end job and dreaming of having a baby she could love.”

  “And Mary Rubio,” Louis said. “Looking for a family, any family.”

  “But now, times are different. Young women now are more independent,” Landeta said, “which brings us to Shelly Umber. A strong woman who wanted to be a doctor and climb mountains. She was the only one who didn’t go willingly. She might have been the only one who tried to escape. So Woods had to shoot her.”

  A sharp buzz made Landeta pause. “Pizza,” he said, moving to the door.

  He left and came back a minute later with the pizza box. He set it on the coffee table in front of Louis, flipping open the lid. The aroma made Louis’s stomach churn with hunger and he eagerly dug out a slice. Landeta did the same, taking it back to the Eames chair. Neither said a word as they devoured their food.

  Finally, Louis tossed down a crust and finished off the Heineken. “So except for Umber, you think they all went willingly?” he asked.

  “Not exactly. I think Woods seduced them into thinking he could give them what they needed,” Landeta said. “He was Daddy, the white knight, Prince Charm
ing, and Mr. Goodbar, whatever the girls needed him to be.”

  Louis was shaking his head. “Okay, I can buy that for Emma Fielding. Frank was young then. But he would have been in his thirties when he met Cindy and Paula. And in his forties for Mary Rubio.”

  Landeta nodded. “Yeah, and fifty-five when Angela Lopez disappeared.”

  They were both quiet for a moment. Landeta got another slice of pizza and went back to his chair. Louis did the same. When he had finished it, he looked at Landeta. He started to call to him but hesitated, unsure what to call him. Suddenly “Detective” seemed too formal, yet “Mel” wasn’t quite right either.

  “Hey,” Louis said.

  Landeta turned.

  “The old woman in Immokalee? She told me Angela was meeting a boy, not a man. Angela called him some Spanish name for ‘hunk.’ And she also said the guy was Hispanic.”

  “Well, what do you —-?”

  “Wait, wait a minute,” Louis said. He sifted through his papers, pulling out his notes on Jim Reardon. “Sophie’s father told me she ran off with Frank but he called Frank Mexican.”

  “He’s sure it was Frank?”

  Louis unclipped the old photo of Frank and Sophie from the report and held it out. “I showed him this picture. Reardon said this was definitely the guy Sophie ran off with. And he said Frank spoke a foreign language and had a Spanish-sounding name.”

  “Give me the picture,” Landeta said, rising. He held the photo up to his face and stared hard at it. Louis rose and went to the kitchen, tossing his empty beer bottle in the trash can. When he came back, Landeta had moved to a desk in the corner and switched on the black drafting lamp. As he pulled it closer, Louis saw it had a large built-in magnifier. Landeta was hunched over, peering at Frank’s picture.

  Landeta looked up. “Well, at least we know now why we couldn’t find Frank’s past. He must have changed his name.”

  “Do you think Frank could have taken on an accomplice?” Louis asked. “Someone younger who could have lured Angela?”

  “Beats the shit out of me.” Landeta took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then looked back at Louis. “When did you talk to Sophie’s father?”