Twenty-Seven Bones

3

The Carib cliffs were limestone, sheared off cleanly eons ago. The sea had carved out hollows at their base. Standing on the wide rocky ledge where the bodies had been found, Pender heard the breakers booming and watched the surf boiling and foaming through the holes in the honeycombed rock at his feet, then draining away again, leaving behind bubbles of dirty, cream-colored froth and slimy tendrils of seaweed.

The recessed hole in the side of the cliff from which the two bodies had fallen was not visible either from the ledge or from the top of the cliff, so like the investigators before him, Pender had a hard time figuring out how two bodies, murdered at least six months apart, could have come to rest, one atop the other, on this ledge. And like those investigators, Pender settled for the scenario Julian had suggested: that the two bodies had been buried together in the same hole or neighboring holes somewhere along the coast, and the storm tides had exhumed them from their sandy grave, then deposited them here.

Bad break for the bad guy, good break for the good guys, thought Pender, so deep in contemplation that he was momentarily oblivious both to his dramatic surroundings and the attractive woman who had led him there.

What he was contemplating was degree of concealment, an important factor in assessing a serial killer’s state of mind. In this case, it was a negative progression. First known victim, buried deep in the forest. Second and third known victims buried shallowly enough to be washed up by the first hurricane. Fourth known victim left for the police to find.

Despite the savagery of his characteristic method of execution, the Machete Man had started out as a careful, organized killer, thought Pender. But all that was beginning to shift. Contacting the police, leaving bodies around to taunt them with, signaled that the Machete Man was moving into a new phase of his career. But whether the killer was ratcheting up or winding down was something only time would-

“Watch your step, there.” Dawson, now dressed in a tie-dyed T-shirt and hiking shorts, had grabbed his arm again, this time to tug him away from the water, as an incoming wave crashed against the rocks below and sent the foam boiling up around his feet.

“Whoops-that’s the second time you’ve saved me today,” said Pender, whose salt-stiffened clothes were already dry from the midday heat.

“Next time I’ll have to charge you,” she joked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You seem so familiar-are you sure we’ve never met?”

“I’m sure I’d remember,” said Dawson, turning away, leaning over the edge of the rock to gauge the incoming tide. “Guess I just have that kind of face. Listen, if we don’t start back soon, we’ll have to swim for it.”

As they made their way back to Smuggler’s Cove, Pender found himself thinking seriously about asking Dawson for a date. He certainly liked what he’d seen of her so far, which was of course everything except the soles of her feet, and he’d always been an adherent of the nothing ventured, nothing gained school of courtship.

With this beauty, though, he felt oddly shy. He knew himself well enough to recognize that that was not a good sign. The last thing he needed at this stage of his life was to fall in love, get his heart broken again.

Back at the manchineel grove, Dawson helped Pender wipe the corrosive sap off the seat of the Vespa. “Manchineel apples are supposed to be the original forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden. A few years ago, some college kids down on spring break pitched tents on the beach and made a campfire from manchineel wood. Only one of them survived.”

When they were done, Dawson hauled a heavy backpack filled with round bumpy objects the size of human heads (calabash, of course) out of the sea grape bushes. Pender helped her put it on, then she accompanied him as far as the cracked white pavement of the Circle Road.

“Thanks again for your help,” said Pender. “If I tell you something I shouldn’t tell you, will you promise me you’ll keep it to yourself?”

“Sure.”

“Remember how you said there were no dangerous animals on St. Luke?”

“Yes?”

“Take it from your old uncle Ed, the FBI man: there’s at least one. And in my experience it’s the most dangerous animal of all.”

“I’m not quite following you. What are trying to tell me?”

“I’m trying to tell you not to go hiking alone again in the forest, or accept rides from strangers, that kind of thing, at least until this is all over.”

“Until what’s all over?”

“Can’t tell you,” said Pender. “Wish to God I could.”