Twenty-Seven Bones

by Jonathan Nasaw

  The ground beneath the severed wrist was dry, which meant this was a body drop and not a murder scene. Pender squatted down, took off his hat and waved it to shoo the flies away so he could get a better look at the wound, but they ignored him. Her other arm, her left arm, was drawn up at her side, bent at the elbow, the fingers splayed out stiffly as if she were modeling her diamond-studded gold wedding band. (Robbery not a motive, Pender noted.) Close to full rigor, somewhere between ten and twelve hours postmortem, at a rough guess.

  “Edgar?”

  Pender looked up, startled. Julian was standing in the arched doorway with his daughter Layla, a handsome young woman with light brown skin, bright green eyes, and wavy brown hair.

  “And whom do we have here?” asked Layla.

  “You tell me.” Pender stood up, backing away from the body as the other two walked in his footsteps around the perimeter of the chamber.

  Layla drew her breath in sharply. “Daddy, is that…?”

  “Oh shit,” said Julian, and for a moment there, as he started to raise his arm, then put it down hastily, it looked to Pender as if he’d forgotten that Layla was a grown woman, and a trained criminalist to boot, and was trying reflexively to shield his little girl from a terrible sight.

  2

  “Shortly after my seventh birthday the Guv sent me away to boarding school in the states.” Lewis and Dr. Vogler were in Lewis’s study for their third appointment. Vogler had offered to postpone it when he learned of Lewis’s head injury, but Lewis said no, he’d just as soon get it over with. And of course it kept his mind off…things he didn’t want it on.

  They’d begun the session out by the pool, with Lewis’s Miami Dolphins cap covering his bandaged crown, but a morning shower blowing in from the west had passed briefly over the island. By the time the sun returned to dry things out, they had already moved inside.

  “Then came prep school, then came college: for the next fifteen years I saw my home island only during Christmas and summer vacations, and it wasn’t until I flunked out of Princeton my junior year that I returned to St. Luke for good.

  “When I turned twenty-one, the Guv moved me into the old overseer’s house and put me in charge of collecting rents. Looking back, I can see now that my marriage was all but predestined, Hokey being a Hokansson and me an Apgard, but since she had undergone the same boarding school, prep school routine that I had, we’d rarely met as children. I remember her only as a tall girl in a party dress; she remembers me only as a brat in short pants. But we ran into each other again at a dance at Blue Valley the year I came back, and it was love at first sight.

  “Even then, I don’t know if I’d have asked her to marry me quite so soon if it hadn’t been for the Guv’s offer, upon the event of my marriage, of the deed to the overseer’s house, several choice plots on the ridge, and a substantial property in the middle of the island known as Estate Tamarind, which included a working cane piece that stretched from the Circle Road to the old Peace Corps training village at the edge of the—”

  A rap at the study door. “Mistah Lewis?”

  “Yes?”

  The houseman opened the door. “Beg pardon, Mistah Lewis.”

  “What is it, Johnny? You know I don’t want to be disturbed when I’m with—”

  Johnny had just come on duty. Still buttoning his white tunic, he crossed the room to whisper into Apgard’s ear. Apgard whispered a reply behind his hand, then turned back to the psychiatrist, who was already glancing at his watch. “I’m sorry, Dr. Vogler, a situation seems to have developed.”

  “No problem. I’ll have to charge you for the full hour, though.”

  “I’m sure you will,” said Lewis.

  The white-jacketed butler—houseman was the St. Luke title—showed Coffee and Pender into the drawing room, which was decorated in gilt and green, with ancestral portraits hung on the wall above the enormous fireplace. Pender stopped at the edge of the handsome carpet and toed off his muddy Hush Puppies. He and Julian had been caught in the same storm that had driven Apgard and Vogel inside. Within five minutes, as they struggled to help Layla set up a crime scene tent over the body, it had turned the dry earth around the mill tower to mud—so much for tire track imprints—and five minutes later it was gone, leaving the sky a clear, innocent, what, me rain? blue.

  Pender settled himself onto an uncomfortable antique chair with bentwood arms, bowed legs, and a dark green, pancake-thin cushion. “Nice joint.”

  “Not going to be much consolation to Lewis when he finds out his wife has been murdered,” said Coffee, whose shoes had somehow remained immaculate.

  “You seem pretty sure he’s innocent. He is the husband, after all.”

  “You’d have to know the guy,” Coffee replied. “Lewis Apgard’s no Machete Man. The only way he could kill somebody would be to charm them to death.”

  Superficial charm, thought Pender—a characteristic shared by many psychopaths. “Do me a favor anyway—grill him about his whereabouts before you break the news.”

  “I’ll let you do it,” said Julian. “Lewis Apgard is a very influential man on this island—I’d like to keep my job a bit longer, if that’s all right with you.”

  The drawing room doors opened. Apgard strode into the room wearing shorts and a blue-and-yellow-striped rugby shirt with the collar turned up in back. He was unshaven, his dark blond hair sticking out from under his aquamarine baseball cap, and when he saw that Pender had taken off his shoes, he grinned—charmingly.

  “What ya tryin’ ta do, mon,” he said in dialect, after he and Coffee had exchanged good mornings, and Coffee had introduced Pender. “Put the maid out of work?”

  “My momma raised me not to track mud on carpets that cost more than I earn,” replied Pender.

  “Johnny, would you run those down to the kitchen, see if you can get the mud off them?” Apgard instructed the butler.

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Pender.

  “No trouble,” said Apgard. “And can I offer either of you gentlemen a drink?”

  “Little early in the day for me.”

  “Tea or coffee, then. Johnny, would you ask Sally—”

  “No, thank you,” said Julian. “Sit down, would you, Lewis?”

  “Sure. That’ll be all, Johnny.”

  Apgard sat in a bentwood chair across from the two cops. Julian nodded to Pender.

  “Mr. Apgard, can you account for your whereabouts since last night,” Pender began.

  “What’s this all—”

  Pender cut him off. “Mr. Apgard, I don’t mean to be rude, but we need to do this my way. Can you account for your whereabouts since last night?”

  “Yes,” said Apgard, tight-lipped now—apparently he didn’t like being interrupted.

  “Please do.”

  “Starting when?”

  “Say, supper.”

  “I didn’t eat supper.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “What does Hokey have to—”

  “My way, Mr. Apgard.”

  “It was cook’s day off. I brought a supper tray up to the bedroom for Hokey.”

  “Wasn’t she feeling well?”

  “Why don’t you ask—”

  “Mr. Apgard.”

  “She’s…we’re trying to conceive. We made love—she stayed in bed. On her back. Now do you understand? Cheese-an’-bread, mon, will ya please fuckin’ tell me what’s going on?”

  Pender ignored the outburst. “You brought your wife supper in bed. Did you stay with her while she ate it?”

  “No, I went downstairs, read the paper, had a few drinks. Probably a few too many—I fell asleep. When I woke up, I went out back to clear my mind, missed the last step, fell backward, hit my head.” Apgard raised his turquoise cap to show them the rectangular bandage, stained brown in the middle, either from blood or Betadine. “Bled like a stuck pig.”

  “Go on,” said Pender.

  Apgard replaced the cap. “I might have lost consciousnes
s for a second or two. When I came to, like I say, I was bleeding pretty bad. I took off my jacket, used it to stanch the blood, went inside, called upstairs to Hokey. She came down, drove me to the hospital. The resident stitched me up and insisted on keeping me overnight for observation.

  “This morning I felt fine—little sore in the coconut, that’s all. I called Hokey to come pick me up, but there was no answer. I figured she was probably out at Blue Valley practicing for the tournament, so I took a cab. Got home around an hour and a half ago, had a session with Dr. Vogler, and next thing I know, Johnny tells me the police are at the door. Now what the fuck is going on?”

  “Almost there,” said Pender soothingly. “Let me get this all straight first. You fell down, hit your head. Your wife drove you to the hospital. Did anyone see her with you?”

  “Everybody. She stayed at my side through the stitches and everything. I practically fainted—she was a rock. She left around, I don’t know, midnight? She’d have stayed with me, but there were no private beds left.”

  “Did you leave the hospital at any time during the night?”

  “I didn’t even leave the bed—they made me piss in a pot.”

  “And there was someone with you all night?”

  “Three roommates, one of whom never slept a wink. And the nurses’ station is right outside the door. And now that I’m beginning to see the light, Agent Pender, whatever you’re trying to pin on me, if it happened last night, you talkin’ to the wrong buoy. So if you don’t mind…”

  Pender glanced at Julian, gave him a back-to-the-drawing-board shrug. Alibis didn’t come much tighter than that.

  Apgard looked from one man to the other. “Chief, I’m starting to get worried here. Would you please tell me what’s going on?”

  “Lewis, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. It’s about Hokey.”

  “What happened? Has she been in an accident? Where is she? Is she all right?”

  Julian told him his wife’s body had been found in the mill tower. Apgard buried his face in his hands and began to sob. Coffee crossed the room, stood behind Apgard’s chair, placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. He remembered Lewis from the days when he was known as the Baby Guv. Lewis’s wet nurse, Queen Charlotte, had been a Coffee on her mother’s side—Julian had once lifted the two-year-old Baby Guv onto his shoulders so he could see the Three Kings Day parade pass by. That would have been January of ’71, the year before Julian joined the FBI.

  It took Apgard a few minutes to get hold of himself again. When he did look up, his eyes were bloodshot and his voice hollow. “Chief?”

  “Yes, Lewis?”

  “Whoever’s responsible for this?”

  “Yes?”

  “I want to be there for the hanging.”

  “I think we can arrange that, me son,” said Julian. “I think we can definitely arrange that.”

  3

  Talk about your heart leaping to your throat: Emily couldn’t have swallowed a poppy seed when she and Bennie returned from shopping Thursday afternoon to find a police car parked under the bay rum in the driveway.

  Nothing to do but face it out. Emily whispered to Bennie to go around the back way and get his machete, then mounted the front steps, whispering a short Niassian prayer, which translated as Watch over my house, watch over my pigs, as she turned left at the landing. The front door was open—she saw Phil standing just inside the vestibule, talking to a fat black man in a cheap suit.

  “Here she is now,” said Phil. “Detective Hamilton, this is my wife, Dr. Emily Epp. Em, this is Detective Hamilton. He wanted to know if we heard or saw anything unusual last night.”

  “Not a thing. Did something happen at the Great House? There have been police cars coming and going all afternoon.”

  “Meeyain’ at liberty to say, Missus Doctah.”

  Just then Emily caught sight of Bennie tiptoeing across the living room, in the direction of his bedroom. She waved him over. “Here’s our houseman, Bennie. Bennie, did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary last night?”

  Only Emily could have caught the twinkle in his eye when he said, “No, Ina Emily.”

  “Thank you, Bennie. Is there anything else, Detective Hamilton? I don’t mean to be rude, but I still have so many things to do to get ready for tomorrow. We’re going to San Juan for the annual meeting of the Association of Anthropologists and Archaeologists of the Americas this weekend. If we have your permission to leave the island, that is,” she added.

  “How long do you plan to be gone?”

  “We’ll be back Sunday evening at the latest.”

  “Meeyain’ see no problem, Missus Doctah.”

  “Meeyain’ know me ass from me elbow, Missus Doctah,” chortled Emily a few minutes later. “Did he look stoned to you?”

  “They all look stoned to me,” replied Phil. “But we seem to be in the clear for the time being.”

  “What were you doing when he showed up.”

  “Typing. I was so flustered I left the manuscript out on the table. All I could think of, the whole time I was talking to him, was please don’t let him ask to look around.”

  “I told you it wasn’t wise to put things down on paper.”

  “Punctiliously speaking, Zep, you asked me if it was wise. I said it was important. I still think it is.”

  “Just let’s not push our luck. That’s all I’m saying here: let’s not push our luck.”

  “I agree,” said Phil—this was how most of their arguments ended.

  Phil’s bedroom was spartanly furnished. Single bed, rolltop desk, folding chair, card table for typing. He picked up the typescript to see how far he’d gotten, reread the last page, crumpled it in disgust, then quickly retrieved it from the wastebasket and tore it into strips. Once again, he’d reached the heart of the matter and found it indescribable. It was fun to write about the sex, challenging to trace the development of the ritual through the years—wrong turns, punctured lungs, the ehehas that escaped them, Bennie’s brilliant suggestion that they dispatch the subjects by severing their right hands—but the correct words with which to convey the feel of the ritual remained elusive.

  Phil retrieved the crumpled paper from the wastebasket, reread it before tearing it into strips, then tore the strips into confetti. Have to buy a shredder, he reminded himself as he inserted another piece of paper into the trusty old Remington, and started typing again.

  In many ways, subject H represented the apotheosis of the experience. Everything had proceeded optimally, including the fatal stroke. B was by then a master of the machete and they had all mastered the timing involved. The subject’s suffering was minimal, her spirit strong and vibrant for an islander, thanks no doubt to her youth, and the transfer went smoothly. But the crux of the matter, the transfer of the eheha, remains experiential, ineluctably inexpressible, and

  Rip, crumple, retrieve, confetti-ize.

  4

  By Thursday afternoon the resources of the St. Luke PD were stretched to the breaking point. All available personnel were out beating the cane stubble, sifting the dirt from the tower floor, dusting and vacuuming the Apgard vehicles for trace evidence, fingerprinting every door and sill and piece of furniture in the Great House and taking swabs of the bloodstains on the patio for identification (they proved to be Lewis’s, as promised), going through Hokey’s personal effects, interviewing her family and friends, or scouring the island for potential witnesses.

  When Pender and Julian returned to police headquarters after confirming Apgard’s alibi at Missionary Hospital, they were informed by the desk sergeant that a Miss Gold of Estate Tamarind had filed a missing persons report on a Mr. Andrew Arena, also of Estate Tamarind. It turned out Julian knew him, which somehow did not surprise Pender.

  “He’s the bartender at the King Christian. He’s not a flake, either—he’s held down the same job for at least, oh, five years or so. And lived in the same place—little village at the edge of the forest. Hippies, down-islanders—no
t quite plush digs, but a step up from Sugar Town. Interestingly enough, Lewis Apgard is the landlord. And come to think of it, if I’m not mistaken, our missing Robert Brack lived up there for a few months as well.”

  “Sounds like it’s worth checking out,” said Pender, for whom the prospect of sitting in the basement of police headquarters going through the department’s files of habitual criminals and previous homicides was not at all attractive. “Why don’t you let me take this one?”

  “That might not be a bad idea. The Core has a habit of depopulating rapidly whenever someone in uniform shows up.”

  “Then I’m your man,” said Pender, glancing down at his hula shirt—black, with neon green dragons.

  “If you’re sure you don’t mind.”

  “Are you shitting me? This old fire horse has done heard the bell, Chief Coffee.”

  “You’re on, then,” said Coffee, rummaging through his desk drawers until he found a tarnished badge, which he slid across the desk to Pender.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Liability. Raise your right hand. Do you swear to uphold the laws of this island and obey the commands of Chief Julian Coffee as if they issued from the mouth of the Almighty himself?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Congratulations, you’re now an auxiliary member of the St. Luke Police Department. No pay, no benefits, just the honor of the thing.”

  Pender polished the front of the badge on the thigh of his plaid slacks as if it were an apple, and glanced at it before slipping it into his shirt pocket. “Hey, my first day on the force, and I already made detective.”

  “That’s my old badge. Try not to disgrace it. You want a gun?”

  “Naah. I could use a set of wheels, though.”

  “Let me see what’s available,” said Julian. He picked up the phone, buzzed someone. “What’s in the lot…? That’s it…? What about…? All right.” He replaced the receiver, grinned knowingly at Pender.

  “What?”