Island of Bones(16)

Louis came into the bedroom, his eyes going up to the plastic drop cloth covering his bed, the ladder, and finally up to the ceiling with its fresh coat of plaster.

Pierre shrugged. “You said to fix the leak. I did.”

Louis lowered the gun. Pierre was wearing only his underwear —- old shorts that hung low under his belly. He was streaked with sweat and white plaster.

“Jesus, Pierre, why didn’t you turn on the AC?” Louis asked, moving to the wall unit.

“It is dead.”

Louis stopped and looked back at Pierre, who shrugged again.

“I don’t suppose you can fix it,” Louis said.

Pierre shook his head. “Too old. It was its time.”

“How am I supposed to sleep?”

Pierre shrugged again.

“What about a new one?” Louis asked. Sweat was already starting to drip down his back.

Pierre shook his head slowly, but then he smiled. “I bring you a fan,” he said, bending to pick up the trowel he had dropped.

“Come on, man, it’s like a hundred degrees tonight,” Louis said.

“It’s a good fan,” Pierre shot over his shoulder.

Louis heard the screen door slapping shut behind him.

“Shit,” he muttered, staring at the air conditioner.

He stood looking at the mess for a moment, holstered his Glock and placed it in its usual spot in the nightstand drawer.

He peeled off his sweaty shirt, throwing it at the pile of dirty clothes in the corner. Pulling on a clean T-shirt, he went out to the living room and switched on a lamp.

He glanced at the living room AC unit, but he knew it was on its last legs, too. He went to the jalousie windows and cranked them wide open. Nearly eight at night and the temperature was still in the eighties, typical mean August weather. But at least there was a breeze blowing in from the gulf tonight. He could feel it, warm and moist on his sweaty skin. He could hear it, whipping through the palms and rattling the auger shell chimes out on the porch.

The porch...he had left the Federal Express box out there.

He went out, retrieved the box, and came back in, setting it on the kitchen table. His rumbling stomach made him realize he hadn’t eaten so he pulled out a jar of Jif, some jelly, and a loaf of bread and sat down at the table.

As he slapped together two sandwiches, his thoughts went back to the Jane Doe autopsy report. Abused...and twelve weeks pregnant.

And that coral ring. She wore it on her left hand but it didn’t look like any wedding ring he had ever seen. And if she was married, why hadn’t the husband come forward? Men who abused women were usually hyper-possessive. Maybe she had been trying to leave him and he snapped and shot her.

Louis stood up and got a Heineken, coming back to finish his second sandwich.

He thought about what Landeta had said, that they had to consider a possible lover. Maybe the abusive husband shot her in a jealous rage and the pregnancy was just a coincidence.

Coincidence...like Diane Woods showing up at his door and telling him her father had a rifle and a collection of articles about missing women?

Louis took another swig of beer. He was trying to see Frank Woods as Jane Doe’s secret lover. He was trying to see Frank Woods as the kind of man who could shoot a woman.

Louis rose and went to the bedroom. He rummaged through some papers on the dresser until he found the copies of the articles Diane Woods had given him. Taking them back to the table, he read the one from 1953 about the missing Fort Myers girl, Emma Fielding. No mention of her being pregnant. But then again, there was no mention of her even being dead.

Louis set the article aside. Now he was trying to picture Frank Woods in 1953. He would have been what, about twenty- five? He was trying to picture him with a wife and a baby daughter —- and a girlfriend on the side.

But to do it twice? It was one thing for Frank Woods to get involved with Emma Fielding when he was a young man. But did he make the same mistake thirty-four years later? Did a fifty-something widower librarian have an affair with a young woman, get her pregnant, and then shoot her just so he could keep his life nice and neat?

Louis took another long swig of beer.

To all appearances, Frank Woods was ordinary. But sometimes ordinary people did extraordinary things. Like have affairs. And then they often did something stupid when things went wrong. Like getting a young woman pregnant.

He rose and went to stand at the open screen door. It was pitch-black out in the yard but he could hear the soft hiss of the waves breaking on the beach.

Roberta asking him -- You ever had a baby?

Almost...

When he turned back, his eyes fell on the Federal Express box sitting on the table. He went to it and opened the cardboard flaps. He carefully lifted the skull out of the Styrofoam peanuts and held it up to the light, turning it over, looking at the holes on the top.