Island of Bones(19)

“Where the hell are my specs?”

Bessie switched on a gooseneck lamp and the room came to life. The walls were festooned with fishing paraphernalia, blue-bubbled glass buoys, old life preserver rings, a tattered black-and-red hurricane warning flag. Old netting hung from the rafters like spider webs, skeins of boat line were looped between the beams. Every surface was covered with shells and pieces of coral. Pink conchs as sensuous as a woman’s lips, sea fans that looked like delicate bonsai, and countless chunks of branch coral, all as intricate in their designs as snowflakes.

A four-foot stuffed alligator was sprawled atop the sofa, and six sets of shark jaws were lined up on a spice shelf above the small stove, arranged from the smallest to the largest, a gruesome bone maw with two-inch teeth.

Louis spotted an odd iron contraption on a shelf and went to it. It was rusty and crusted with tiny shells. Bessie saw him looking at it.

“Go ahead. You can pick it up,” she said.

Louis hoisted up the two U-shaped loops on an iron rod. It was heavy.

“That’s from the Henrietta Marie,” Bessie said over her shoulder. “She went down in a storm off Key West in 1701. But the cargo had already been safely delivered to Jamaica.”

Louis hesitated then held one of the loops near his wrist.

“Slaves?” he asked.

Bessie nodded toward the irons. “That one’s probably from a child.”

Louis carefully set the manacles back on the shelf.

“Was this was all you found? No other bones?” Bessie asked.

“No, nothing else.”

Bessie went to a crowded desk, pulled something out of a drawer, and came back. Louis was surprised to see her snap on a pair of latex gloves.

“You didn’t handle it, did you?” she asked.

“Not any more than I had to,” Louis said.

She gave a grunt and bent the gooseneck lamp closer. She carefully lifted the skull out and set it on the table.

“What made you think it’s newborn?” she asked.

“The fontanelles.”

“Was the skull in pieces when you found it?”

“No, it was whole. Why?”

“Come over here,” Bessie said. When Louis came closer, she pointed to what looked like four cracks in the skull. “These things are sutures, where the skull has come together. It takes at least three months for the skull to fuse, more like six.” She looked up at him. “No way this came from a newborn baby. A newborn’s skull would have been in pieces. Like a broken egg.”

“So it couldn’t have survived being tossed around in a hurricane,” Louis said.

“Nope. My guess is it was kicked up from the gulf bottom. Could have been lying down there, snug in the sand before the storm currents woke it up.”

Bessie picked up the skull and peered into the tiny sockets. “How old they tell you it was?”

“Fifty years.”

“Who told you that?”

“State archeology lab.”

“Bureaucrats,” Bessie mumbled. “They didn’t bother to carbon-date it, did they?”

Louis shook his head. “Police didn’t want to pay for it.”

“I’d guess it’s a lot older ’cuz of the color. But you’re never gonna know for sure unless you carbon it.”

Bessie was using a magnifying glass now to examine the skull. It was quiet except for the groan of the pilings and the lapping of water.

“Pierre said you were an expert on Indians and local history,” Louis said.

“Pierre? Pierre Toussaint?” She glanced up at him. “That old frog still croaking? Tell him he still owes me twenty bucks from when I beat him at pool.”

She set down the skull and went to a shelf. She stood on her tiptoes, running a finger along the books.

“My husband and me ran a ship salvage operation for thirty years before he died,” she said. “I can’t dive anymore ’cuz of my blood pressure. But my memory’s still good. Folks pay me good money for what I can remember.”

Cursing softly, she hauled a stool over, got up on it, and pulled a huge dusty book off the top. Louis was about to run over and help her down when she jumped lightly to the floor.

“I don’t think this skull is from an Indian burial ground,” she said, lugging the book back to the table. “The Calusas weren’t above sacrificing their firstborn to the gods, but they were careful about where they put their dead. And we’ve found most of their burial mounds.”

Louis’s eyes went to the skull and back to Bessie.

“I’m guessing your skull here came from a shipwreck,” she said. “And it being a child, I’m thinking it came from Emanuel Point.”

“That’s a ship?” Louis asked.