Twenty-Seven Bones

2

With a first murder, as with a first marriage, there are bound to be surprises. The biggest surprise for Lewis Apgard, waking up the morning after the murder, was how much it had changed him. Simply lying in wait, watching the Corefolk coming and going, and knowing in a very deep and real sense that he held the power of life and death over them, was in itself a transforming experience; the murder itself only enhanced the transformation.

The second biggest surprise for Lewis was how gifted he was at it. Things hadn’t looked any too promising at first: no singletons. A parade of potential victims marching to and from the outhouse, but always by twos and threes. Cheese-an’-bread, thought Lewis, can’t any of these people take a crap by themselves? It was almost as if they’d been forewarned.

But if his experience as a practicing voyeur had taught Lewis anything, it was the value of patience. Waiting sucked, but sometimes, indeed most of the time, you had to wait for the good stuff. You had to be very still, you had to put yourself into sort of a trance where time passed in jerks-it was now, then it was later, then it was later still, but with no real sense of transition-until the gotcha! moment arrived.

The previous night, it had arrived around two in the morning. Lewis had been about ready to give up when he saw Holly Gold coming up the path carrying a flashlight. She was wearing a bathrobe, and best of all, she was alone. Lewis’s legs were stiff from sitting on the damp ivy-she was past him before he could get to his feet. But she’d be coming back, he told himself, and he’d be ready.

As he was squatting there in the bushes, hefting the sap experimentally, his excitement mounting as he waited for Holly to return (it felt a lot like voyeurism, Lewis couldn’t help but notice, only better, because he was both observer and participant), he heard someone else coming up the path. He ducked deeper into the bushes and watched, frustrated and incredulous, as Fran Bendt glided past him in a sort of deep-kneed Groucho crouch, and with a practiced motion dragged a log out of the underbrush and up to the side of the building, then stood upon it to peer over the window ledge.

Of all the luck, thought Lewis. Then, an instant later: of all the luck! It was as if the only man who could link Lewis to a premature knowledge of the Machete Man was presenting himself for Lewis’s convenience. Turning his back-here, take me.

Lewis drew the machete from his belt, crept up behind Bendt, who had his right hand on the ledge and his left down the front of his pants, and swung the sap hard against the back of his skull.

Bendt fell backward off the log in a jackknifed position, landing hard on his tailbone, then toppling sideways, his right arm conveniently outstretched. Lewis closed his eyes as he swung the machete. When he opened them again he saw Bendt’s hand lying in the ivy, palm up, fingers curled. He couldn’t bring himself to pick it up, as the Epps had requested.

Instead, thanks to some sixth sense he hadn’t known he possessed-that’s what he meant about being gifted-Lewis had turned tail and raced diagonally across the clearing and into the rain forest. Moments later he heard a whistle shrilling loud enough to wake the dead; if he’d hung around much longer, he’d have been busted for sure.

And it was that same sixth sense that told Lewis to find a manchineel, to rub crushed leaves on the soles of his shoes (the runaway slaves had known about manchineel, how it made it impossible for hounds to track you) as well as wipe down the machete, the sap, and the helmet before returning them to the overseer’s house, then bury his clothes beneath the well-trodden dirt of a vacant sheep pen.

So perhaps the Epps were right, thought Lewis, upon awakening Saturday morning and reviewing the events of the previous night-perhaps it truly was the hand of destiny that the three of them had come together at that point in their lives.