Twenty-Seven Bones

7

Phil groaned. The three were crouched in the brush at the top of the clearing, trying to get their bearings.

Emily: “Sshh. What?”

“I just remembered, I left my manuscript next to the typewriter.”

“I know. I found it-it’s in my pack.”

“Whew, thanks. I swear, sometimes I think I’m getting senile.”

“What about Bennie, leaving that fingerprint behind? Whatever would you boys do without me?”

“I wouldn’t even want to-”

Bennie shushed both of them, pointed to a light bobbing up the hill toward them. They ducked deeper into the undergrowth. The light angled away from them. They saw a little girl in a shiny red slicker and red rain boots, holding an umbrella in one hand and a powerful flashlight in the other, disappearing down a path leading into the woods below them to their right.

“That must be the path Lewis meant,” said Emily. They left the cover of the undergrowth, trotted around the periphery of the clearing and followed the girl up the path, which forked at a tin-roofed building with a bare lightbulb burning over the door.

Phil pointed Bennie toward the left fork, leading downhill, told him to go on ahead, see if the Land Rover was there yet. “We’ll be along in a sec.”

Moving silently as always, even under the crushing weight of his knapsack, Bennie disappeared down the path. Phil turned to Emily. “I-”

“Don’t even ask.”

“I’m not asking, I’m telling you. I want her-I want to take her with us.”

“It’s insane.”

“Why? We’re already blown. Peached. Screwed. If they catch us, how many times can they hang us? And if they don’t, if we’re going to have a chance to get away, I’m going to need the strength. I need that girl, Zeppo-I’ll turn into an old man, waiting in that cave.”

“It’s too risky. If she screams, we’re done for.”

“Then we’ll have to make sure she doesn’t scream, won’t we? Not that anybody’s going to hear her over this storm.”

When she was little, Dawn used to be afraid to go to the Crapaud at night. It wasn’t on account of silly Roger the Dodger’s shit eel joke that he told all the newbies: she knew there was no such of a thing. But around the time Mommy got sick, Dawn started having nightmares with one thing in common: they all happened in the Crapaud. Sometimes it was bigger and more echoey, with a high distant ceiling like the airport, sometimes it was more like a cave. Some dreams there’d be a monster hiding in one of the stalls-something she never saw for the whole nightmare, but she knew it was there.

After Mommy died, Dawn used to dream she was still alive, calling to Dawn from one of the stalls. But when Dawn opened the door, the stall would be empty, and she’d hear her mother calling for help from deep down in the dark stinky pit, only the dream-Dawn would be too scared to look over the edge.

But it had been a long time since she’d had one of those nightmares. And besides, six and a half is much too old to have your auntie or your big brother or Dawson go with you every time you have to poop. Which for some reason they had done all weekend, like she was a baby or something. Of course, everybody was acting weird all weekend, men walking around with guns and keeping torches burning all night. Auntie Holly said it was like a drill, like the fire drills they had at school, but Dawn found it very unsettling anyway, and was glad to find that things had gone back to normal when she got home from school that afternoon.

She shoved open the Crapaud door, put the umbrella down on the sloping concrete floor, open and upside down, and spun it around a few times like the world’s biggest dreidel before making her way to the last toilet stall, known as the kiddie hole. This one had a booster step nailed to the wooden platform and an extrawide seat with a narrow hole to keep little tushies from slipping through.

Dawn hung her red slicker from the hook, hiked up her nightgown, and settled down to read a Curious George book from the magazine rack by flashlight. But the Crapaud was too cold for reading-she finished her business as quickly as possible, wiped, washed, grabbed her umbrella, and stepped out into the rain again.

Lewis filled his corncob, fired up a bowl of rain forest chronic. He switched the radio on softly, picked up a St. Thomas calypso station. The windows steamed up; he turned on the engine to run the defroster.

So far, so good. No cops waiting at the end of the lane, no headlights in the rearview mirror. He was glad to know he’d been wrong about Pender-obviously the man hadn’t suspected a thing. And his A-frame was dark and the cruiser nowhere to be seen-at least Lewis wouldn’t have to sneak the Epps out under Pender’s nose.

Assuming they showed up. But they would-they’d have to. Lewis ran through scenario after scenario in his mind. Sending the Epps and Bennie down into the cave first, then rolling the grenades in after them. Going down into the cave with them, leaving on a pretext. However he managed it, though, he’d make sure to keep Bennie in front of him at all times. Bennie was the real danger-quick as a mongoose, silent as a snake. Maybe I should just shoot him right away.

The fan roared, the windows began to clear. As he unbuttoned his trench coat, out of the corner of his eye Lewis caught a flash of movement to his left, by the corner of the A-frame, just off the side of the path leading down from the Crapaud. He turned his head; nothing there. He yawned exaggeratedly, tugged his Dolphins cap low over his eyes, slouched down in his seat as if he were taking a nap, then let his head loll onto his left shoulder. He peered through slitted eyelids, saw Pender hunkering down by the corner of the A-frame.

Damn. If Pender had followed him, it meant he’d known all along. It also meant Lewis had played right into his hands. Panicked again, his movements screened by the door of the Rover, Lewis drew his revolver from one of the capacious outside pockets of the trench coat-the other pocket held the grenades.

Pender knew he was made. The yawn was the tell. Phony as a three-dollar bill. If he didn’t already have his master’s degree in criminology, Pender could have written his thesis on the subject. Apgard’s yawn was the kind a guilty suspect gives you when you leave him alone in the interrogation room-a suspect who’s been there before, or seen the movies. He knows what’s behind that long dusky mirror set into the wall, knows he’s being watched, but he doesn’t want you to know he knows. Instead he takes the opportunity to act the way he imagines he would if he were innocent. He gives you a big old hammy yawn to show you how relaxed and casual he is, or, if he’s really good, he picks a booger and eats it.

Apgard wasn’t that good.

Pender reached behind his back and unsnapped the holster, drew his weapon, racked a round into the chamber, took it off safety. “Apgard!”

Apgard lowered the driver’s side window, stuck his head out into the rain, peered out from under the bill of his cap. “Who’s there?”

“Police. Bring your hands up where I can see them.”

Apgard did as he was instructed. “That you, Pender?”

“Both hands out the window.”

Again, Apgard obeyed. His hands were empty. Squinting against the rain, Pender stood up, holding the gun in a two-handed firing position, and stepped sideways, out from the cover of the A-frame and into the muddy path. An instant later his world exploded into white-a blow to the occipital portion of the skull, around back where the optic nerve runs, will do that every time.

From the moment he saw Bennie making his way down the path, Lewis knew that against all odds, everything was going to come out just fine. He left the motor running, raced toward Bennie. “Help me get him in the car.”

Bennie slipped his sap back into the waistband of his jeans and grabbed one of Pender’s legs. Lewis grabbed the other and they dragged him to the Land Rover. Sonofabitch must have weighed close to three hundred pounds-they had the devil’s own time loading him into the back cargo well, behind the rear seat. Though Pender was still out cold, Lewis covered him with the revolver. Bennie splashed back up the muddy path to get his knapsack and check on the Epps. He returned in seconds.

“Where are they?” whispered Lewis.

Bennie jerked a thumb toward the path. “On the way.”

Lewis climbed over the seats, slid behind the wheel, released the parking brake. The back doors opened. He heard a grunt of surprise. “Who’s this?” called Phil, as he dumped something heavy on top of Pender.

“FBI guy. He tailed me-Bennie bopped him. Everybody here?”

“Present and accounted for.” Emily opened the front door, tossed her pack onto the floor, climbed into the passenger seat. Phil and Bennie tossed in their loads, scrambled into the backseat. Phil took his own.38 out of his pack, and half turned in his seat to cover the still unconscious Pender as Lewis put the Rover into four-wheel drive and peeled out, spattering mud all over the front of Holly Gold’s psychedelic Volkswagen bus.

It had been years since Lewis had last driven to the cave. Traveling counterclockwise along the Circle Road, east from Estate Tamarind, north past the mangrove swamps, then west again, he missed the turnoff. He knew he’d gone too far when he passed Smuggler’s Cove. He stopped, executed a three-point U-turn across the two-lane road. It wasn’t until Lewis was turned in his seat, looking over his shoulder as he threw the Rover into reverse, that he realized there was yet another body lying atop Pender’s-a small one in a red slicker.

“Who the fuck is that?”

“She saw us. We had to bring her.”

“She saw us…we had to bring her.” Liar liar pants on fire. The last thing Dawn remembered was being lifted off her feet as she left the Crapaud, a big hairy hand covering her nose and mouth. Fighting, kicking, swinging in midair…blackness.

She opened her eyes, found herself in the back of a moving vehicle, lying across a man in a yellow slicker. It was Mr. Pender, who’d just moved into the Core. His breathing was all loud and strangled. She rolled off him, saw a man with a beard like Abraham Lincoln pointing a gun at her over the back of the rear seat. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

She knew he was lying about that, too.