Twenty-Seven Bones

4

I’ve been in tighter spots than this, Pender told himself. Whether he believed it was another matter. But there did seem to be plenty of food and water in the backpacks the Epps had left behind, a bottle of Darvocets for his headache, and more than enough batteries to keep the flashlight going until long after he’d run out of air.

Air-that was going to be the problem. Or more precisely, oxygen. As far as Pender could tell, he was in a sealed chamber. He thought of those nine Pennsylvania miners who’d been trapped that past summer-how had they survived? Yes, of course: there’d been an air shaft.

Never mind the miners. Bad example. There was only one of him and the chamber was ten paces wide, fifteen paces long, with a ten-or twelve-foot ceiling. How long would it take to use up that much oxygen?

Frankly, my dear, I have no fucking idea, he told himself. He knew you were supposed to get down on the floor and conserve energy-or was that only in fires? Heat rises, but is CO₂ heavier or lighter than oxygen? Or would they be evenly distributed? Again, no fucking idea. But he was pretty sure about the conserving energy part.

And what a lucky coincidence that conserving energy just happens to be one of the things at which I am both naturally gifted and well practiced, Pender, slightly buzzed from the Darvocets, reminded himself, taking off his slicker and laying out layer after layer of the clothes he’d found in the backpack to make himself a reasonably comfy mattress. Then he remembered you weren’t supposed to let yourself fall asleep after a concussion. He recalled seeing a rolled-up typewritten manuscript in the pack with the women’s clothes-he took it out, rolled onto his side.

They met at S University, the manuscript began. He was her professor, and although he was over a quarter of a century older than was she, it was love at first sight.…

Dawson had eavesdropped. Shamelessly and without apology, she had flattened herself against the side of Holly’s cabin and listened through the screen overhead for word of Pender’s fate. She had winced, jammed her fist into her mouth to keep from crying out when she heard how Pender had been pistol-whipped into unconsciousness, and almost missed the next part.

But when Dawn had mentioned hiding behind an elephant’s ear tree, that caught Dawson’s attention. Necklaces strung from the reddish brown seeds and the curiously shaped seedpods that gave the tree its name were among her best-selling handicrafts.

There were several elephant’s ear trees on the island, but Dawson only knew one that was near a cave. The reason she knew that was when she’d climbed the tree at dusk last summer, during the dry season when the pods were the easiest to get at, she’d seen cloud after cloud of the enormous island bats, hundreds, maybe even thousands of them, emerging from a hole in the ground only a couple hundred yards uphill, at the summit of the rain forest ridge.

It was all Dawson could do not to rush into the cabin. But all those years as a fugitive had bred caution in her. I’ll tell Holly to tell them, she told herself. I’ll write an anonymous note. I’ll make an anonymous phone call.

But Holly couldn’t lead them to the cave, any more than a note or phone call could. And besides, she’d already made that deal with the G/G/W, offering the only thing of value she had to offer-her freedom-for the safe return of Dawn and Pender. If she was going to turn herself in anyway, what did it matter whether Chief Coffee recognized her or not?

She caught up with Coffee, voluntarily confronting a police officer for the first time in thirty-two years. She told him what she knew about the tree and the cave.

He leaned forward, well into the intimate conversation zone. “You’re Dawson, aren’t you?”

She held his eyes, held her breath-had Pender told him? “Yessir.”

One beat, two beats; she thought her lungs would burst. Finally: “You’re even prettier than Pender said you were.”

Dawson thought then that her heart would burst-from relief, not the compliment. Okay, maybe a little from the compliment-because it was Pender’s, indirectly. He can’t be dead, she thought. It just wouldn’t be fair.

But then, life hadn’t exactly been fair to Robert Fassnacht, had it? Or his widow, or his three fatherless children. Was this going to be her payback? After all these years of penitence? If so, life was a petty son of a bitch and so was the G/G/W. Dawson decided to go back to being a Mysterian. Much less trouble.

Lying on his side, his head propped up on one elbow, with the toilet paper stuck to the back of his scalp starting to unwind, Pender managed to get halfway through the manuscript before his eyes began to close of their own accord. I can’t fall asleep, he told himself, pillowing his head on his arm. I won’t-I’ll just rest. Have to rest. My eyes. Just for a second.