Twenty-Seven Bones

4

Struck out on the Epps: the alibi held up. Uniforms had begun canvassing the island with Frieda Schaller’s picture, which would be in the next day’s paper, but Julian admitted privately to Pender that for the locals, trying to pick one tourist out of the descending horde from a holiday cruise ship was like trying to identify a single longhorn a year after the stampede.

They more or less struck out on Fraulein Schaller’s credit card, too. The German police had already pulled her records: there was only one charge on St. Luke: a twenty-five-dollar dinner at Captain Wick’s. “A popular tourist spot-there’s a live sea turtle chained to a cement wading pool in the courtyard,” said Julian.

The restaurant was located about halfway between Frederikshavn and the Core, on the Circle Road. Pender volunteered to stop off on his way home, interview the staff, show Schaller’s picture around.

The first thing he noticed when he pulled into Captain Wick’s nearly deserted parking lot was that it was on the side of the building, not out front. There was no valet service and the lot itself couldn’t be seen from inside the restaurant, which made it an ideal place to pick somebody up without being seen.

Pender could picture the contact between the killer and the vic: Can I give you a lift back to your ship, Fraulein? It can be dangerous around here at night. And the taxis are so unreliable.

His mind continued to spin off the scenario as he walked around to the entrance. Had the vic also been trolling? For companionship? Sex? Romance?

Swinging half doors led to an open-air courtyard. The outdoor tables were all unoccupied. The giant sea turtle had one of those just-shoot-me looks. So did the maitre d’, when Pender made the obligatory joke about not ordering the turtle soup, and his forced laugh was a terrible thing to hear. But he didn’t recognize Frieda Schaller, and neither did anyone else on staff. At least no one who was working Sunday; the turtle wasn’t talking.

Like Apgard, Pender made himself a sandwich for dinner; like Apgard, he ate it al fresco, on the patio. The rain tree at sunset was exquisite, but after a few minutes Pender found himself jonesing for a football game. He wondered how the ’Skins were doing, and if Spurrier was still playing musical quarterbacks. First week of October, the leaves would be just starting to turn, back home. He felt as if he’d been away for months.

Which he might be yet, for all the progress they were making on the investigation. For a while there, he’d really thought he was on to something. That look in Apgard’s eyes when he saw the Epps at the funeral-Pender couldn’t stop thinking about it. But they all had airtight alibis. Or did they? Apgard had an alibi for his wife’s murder, but not for Bendt’s. The Epps had an alibi for Bendt, but not for Mrs. Apgard.

And such good alibis they were. That in itself was somewhat suspicious. In his thirty years as an investigator, one thing Pender had learned was how rare a good alibi was, especially at night. Hell, he himself didn’t have an alibi for either night.

At the meeting this afternoon they had all spoken of the killer as a he, singular, but the more Pender thought about it, the better he liked the idea of a conspiracy. Overlapping alibis. The Epps and Apgard. They scratched his itch, he scratched theirs.

Of course at this point it was only a hypothesis, but definitely worth checking out, especially in the absence of any other, more likely, hypotheses. Tomorrow then, Pender promised himself, he would interview the Epps and their mysterious Indonesian companion. Apgard, too. Check his alibi for Bendt, theirs for Mrs. Apgard.

And if they didn’t have alibis, or if he got the chill during the conversation (always trust the chill, was one of Pender’s mottos), maybe he’d put some pressure on. The opposite of an affective interview-he’d see if he could make them squirm, react, do or say something incriminating. Old cop trick: invent some imaginary evidence, a fingerprint, a shoe print, see how they reacted. Conspiracies were often easier to crack than single perp crimes, because you could turn the conspirators against each other.

Darkness fell. The mosquitos arrived with a vengeance. Pender went back inside, cracked the seal on a bottle of Jim Beam. The knee-high refrigerator hadn’t succeeded in making ice yet, so Pender didn’t bother with a glass.

The first slug tasted so good Pender sucked in a great whoosh of air afterward just to taste the fumes. The second went down easier still, and the third had him feeling convivial. He pulled his wide-brimmed Panama down low on his brow, buttoned his shirt collar, rolled his shirtsleeves down, pulled out his shirttails to cover his kidney holster, then smeared insect repellent on every inch of skin that was still uncovered except his eyes. He left the A-frame by the front door, and strolled down the starlight-shadowed lane.

Marley Gold was in the open-sided kitchen, sitting on a stool washing the supper dishes with his feet, by the yellow light of a single bug-bulb hanging in a wire basket from the tin roof.

“Good evenin’, Mr. Pender.”

He had two mosquito coils burning; Pender took off his hat and waved the smoke away. “Evening, Marley. I see they put you to work.”

“Everybody gots chores, sir.” The boy might have been a trifle offended.

“Ain’t that the truth,” said Pender quickly.

“Are you really an FBI agent?”

“I was. For twenty-seven years.”

“I got a book from the school library, Your FBI in Peace and War. Did you ever meet Mr. J. Edgar Hoover?”

It had been a long, long time since Pender had heard The Director referred to in such awed tones-must have been an old book. “Just once. He came by the Academy to look over the recruits. I was as bald then as I am now. He told me always wear a hat, son.”

Marley dipped a dinner plate into the suds sink, holding it between his big and second toes, swiped it clean with a dishrag held in his other foot, dunked it into the rinse sink, then slid it onto the stack. He pivoted around on his coccyx to face Pender. “Did you ever have a shootout?”

“Constantly. Rare was the day I got to finish breakfast without a gunfight breaking out.”

“Don’ mek naar wit’ me now.” Whenever Marley used a St. Luke word, the whole sentence came out in dialect. “You still got your gun?”

“My SIG Sauer is in the FBI Museum.” Pender might have answered differently if he hadn’t had a few drinks in him-he almost never boasted, sober. But it was only the plain truth, he thought; he was vaguely aware of wanting the boy’s approval. “Chief Coffee loaned me a nice little semiautomatic, though.”

“Can I see it?”

Pender reached behind his back, unsnapped the two-stage holster Hamilton had loaned him, removed the gun, shook out the clip and racked the slide to make sure the chamber was empty. Marley dried his feet on a dish towel, took the gun between his feet, pressed the textured grip between his soles, then pivoted in the other direction and slipped the long, flexible middle toe of his right foot around the trigger. He dropped it; Pender picked it up and placed it between his feet again.

“That little clicker there-that’s the safety,” said Pender. “You want it so the red dot is showing-yeah, that’s right. Don’t worry if you can’t pull the trigger, it’s got kind of a heavy-”

Marley managed to pull the trigger on his second try. Obviously the boy’s toes were strong as well as flexible.

“Good job,” said Pender, reaching around him and taking the gun back. “If it was loaded, though, the recoil would have knocked you ass over teakettle off that stool-you’d have to remember to brace your back against something.”

“I want to shoot it for real.”

Boys will be boys, thought Pender, reholstering. When he was ten, he was always bugging his father to let him fire the Luger the old Marine sergeant brought back from the war. “Not in the dark.”

“Tomorrow? After school?”

“Maybe. We’ll have to see how things go.”

“If you promise, I’ll tell you a secret,” said Marley.

“Let’s hear it.”

“Promise first.”

“How can I promise if I haven’t heard the secret?”

“I’ll give you a hint-it’s about Dawson.”

The mystery woman. The lady of the lagoon. Who’d been in and out of his thoughts, in various stages of dress and undress, from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. “Okay, you’re on,” said Pender. “But it better be good.”