Island of Bones(11)

He flipped on the AC and the ancient wall unit gave a cough and began to spit out a thin stream of air that did little to dissipate the heat.

“So, what do you want me to investigate?” Louis asked, sitting in a chair across from her. Something about this woman told him to take it slow and easy.

“I read —-” She paused. Then she reached in her tote bag and pulled out a newspaper. With a shaky hand she unfolded it and held out the section to Louis.

Louis took the paper. It was yesterday’s Fort Myers News-Press, the front page still filled with storm cleanup news. Louis looked up at the woman expectantly.

“The story on the bottom,” she said, nodding.

Louis looked back at the newspaper. There was a story about the body they had pulled out of the mangroves on Monkey Island. She was still unidentified but there was a close-up photograph of the ring with a caption saying police were hoping someone would recognize it.

“I think I might know something about her,” Diane

Woods said softly.

Louis waited, but when she said nothing, he leaned forward. “Do you know who she is?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Do you know who killed her?”

Diane Woods looked at her shoes. Louis held the newspaper out to her. “I think you should go to the police,” he said.

She looked up quickly. “No.”

“If you know something, you need to go to the police.”

She was silent.

“Why did you come to see me?” Louis asked.

She didn’t answer. She was just sitting there, head bowed, tote bag clutched to her chest.

Louis ran a hand over his sweaty face. “I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me,” he said. He started to rise.

“No, please.” She looked up at him. “I found this same article in my father’s desk drawer yesterday. He had clipped it out.”

“So what?”

Diane Woods’s brown eyes were scanning his face, like she was looking for something there. He had seen it before in people looking to hire him —- hope that he could put something right, something that had gone horribly wrong in their lives.

He sat back down. “Why are you here, Miss Woods?”

She hesitated then reached into her tote bag again. She handed him a folded paper.

He opened it. It was a Xerox of another newspaper article. The headline said NO CLUES IN MISSING GIRL CASE. There was a small photograph of a teenager with the name Emma Fielding under it. The girl was thin-faced, with limp blond hair and a curiously flat gaze —- and looked nothing like the young woman he had seen in the mangroves.

Then he noticed the date on the article -- June 18, 1953.

He looked up at Diane Woods.

“Why are you showing me this?” he asked.

“I found it in my father’s desk...with the new article. I think he killed her.”

Louis’s eyes went from the copy to the current News-Press. “Which one?” he asked.

“Both,” she said.

Louis took a breath, sitting back in the chair. The articles were thirty-four years apart. “Do you know this girl?” he asked, holding out the 1953 article.

“No.”

“Then what’s the connection?”

“I don’t know. All I know is I found both these articles paper-clipped together and hidden in my father’s desk.”

“Maybe he knew her. Maybe he’s got some fascination with missing people or homicides.”

Diane shook her head slowly. “He doesn’t.”

Louis stood up, turning his back to her. He glanced again at the old clipping then turned back to her. He was going to tell her he didn’t want the case, and that anything she knew, no matter how insignificant, needed to be told to the cops. But she spoke first.

“He has a rifle,” Diane said. “The newspaper said the woman in the water was shot with a rifle. He has one.”

“Anything else?”

“He’s acting strangely. We always go out to dinner on Saturday. He’s missed dinners. And he seems...depressed.”

Louis glanced back at the newspaper then shook his head. “That’s it? There’s nothing else?”

“No,” Diane whispered. “Nothing else.”

Louis let out a sigh.

“Please,” she said quickly. “Just check into it. Just watch him and follow him. Let me know if he does anything strange. Can’t you do that?”

Louis shook his head. “I have to go to the cops if I have a suspect.”

Her eyes teared. “No, no. If you do that, he won’t have a chance. The newspapers, TV...they will say he did it even if he didn’t. His life will be ruined. He couldn’t take that, he just couldn’t take that.”

“That’s not the way —-”