Twenty-Seven Bones

Chapter Eleven
1

The Core kitchen had the look and feel of a temporary Red Cross shelter. Somebody made coffee and sandwiches. Cops in yellow slickers and civilians with rain gear thrown over their bedclothes milled about drinking the coffee, eating the sandwiches, conversing in subdued tones. Panic, anger, and despair were tempered by exhaustion. Somebody made more coffee. When Roger the Dodger raised one of the tarps a few feet to let in fresh air, the rain-diffused glare of the red-and-blue lights from the cop cars on the lane and the crackle of the police band radios added to the scene-of-the-disaster ambience.

At one of the trestle tables, Holly sat warming her hands around a coffee mug. Dawson sat beside her, an arm around Holly’s shoulders. Marley sat across from them, sipping coffee through a straw. Normally he wasn’t allowed to drink coffee, but he was pretty sure nobody was going to give him any crap tonight.

At the other table sat Julian, Layla, and the two detectives. They reviewed all the meager evidence again, the flashlight and umbrella in front of the bathroom, Pender’s gun by the side of the trail, the fresh mud splashed across the front of the VW bus to window height, and the earwitness testimony of Miss Blessingdon, and agreed that it all added up to a double kidnapping and a tire-spinning getaway sometime between ten and ten-thirty. The details of who had done what to whom in what order were still a mystery. Detective Felix ventured the opinion that Pender was already dead, that they would have killed him immediately. Chief Coffee told him to stick it where the monkey hid the nuts.

Around two in the morning the rain finally began to show signs of slackening. The drumming on the tin roof grew less frenzied. Roger the Dodger raised all the tarps, all the way. Most of the cops had already left, assigned to scour the roads, and most of the Corefolk had gone back to their huts and cabins.

Save for the principal mourners, Roger was the last to leave. He hugged Holly from behind, walked around the table, patted Marley on the head, waved good night to Dawson, tossed the Chief a salute, and stepped out into the drizzle.

Marley twisted around on the bench, watched the Dodger trudge head down toward his cabin. He saw him raise his head, step into the middle of the lane, take off his rimless glasses, shelter his eyes from the drizzle with his hand, squint into the darkness at a pair of oncoming headlights, then turn and race back toward the kitchen, stiff-kneed like a stork, his long hillbilly beard streaming out behind him over his shoulder.

Marley was off the bench, splashing barefoot through the mud toward the approaching vehicle, before Holly had even raised her head.

“It’s the Rover,” Roger told Marley, as he and the boy passed each other. “It’s the Rover,” he shouted to the others, windmilling his arms.

The flaw in his plan had made itself apparent to Lewis almost immediately. If he played hero and brought the little girl back, they’d want to know where the others were, they’d want him to lead them back to the cave. But even if he’d blown Bennie and Pender to kingdom come, the Epps might still be alive down there. It might take days for them to die-weeks, if they found water.

His mind worked feverishly at the problem as he and the girl hiked back down to the Rover. It wasn’t until he felt something warmer than rainwater trickling down the back of his neck, and realized that he’d somehow reopened the wound Bennie had given him Wednesday night that it came to him. A head injury-yes indeedy doody, a head injury would be just the thing.

He knew he’d have to sell it, though. He dropped to his knees halfway down the trail. The girl helped him to his feet, concern in her eyes. Stooped almost double, one hand leaning heavily on her little shoulder, her thin arm around his waist, her piping voice cheering him on-c’mon, mistah, it ain’ much farther, mistah, please doan die, mistah-they stumbled through the rain until they reached the Rover.

The performance continued. Lewis drove slowly, squinting, half-draped over the steering wheel. He pretended not to know which way to go when they reached the Circle Road. She pointed to the right.

When they passed the airport turnoff he pulled over, pretended to lose consciousness. She patted his hands urgently, chafed his wrists. Please, mistah, please. He recovered, drove on, around the east end, south past the mangrove swamps, west past the turnoff for Estate Apgard, until they reached the turnoff marked Estate Tamarind.

Here, turn here, she told him. He told her to buckle up, and when the Core gate came in sight, he slumped back in his seat, took his foot off the accelerator, closed his eyes and braced himself.

The Land Rover kept coming, but at idle speed, moving like a dying animal, wobbling slowly from side to side across the lane, until just outside the gate it veered off the road entirely and crashed into the back of the patrol car Pender had abandoned in the ditch hours earlier. Or perhaps crashed is too strong a word-it bumped the cruiser from behind, then nudged against it insistently, like a dog trying to sniff another dog’s crotch.

Marley reached the car first, saw Apgard slumped over the wheel. Beside him, Dawn fumbled with her seat belt. The front and side passenger doors were blocked by the wooden fence beside the drainage ditch. He tried to open the driver’s door with his foot, fell backward. Roger the Dodger scooped Marley up and set him on his feet. Chief Coffee yanked the door open, pushed Apgard back from the steering wheel, switched off the ignition. Dawn scrambled over Apgard’s lap and into the Chief’s arms. She didn’t start bawling until he handed her to Holly, who was already bawling. So was Dawson. Women, thought Marley-then he started bawling, too.