Island of Bones(6)

Strickland went up to the couple and showed his badge. He watched their faces go from surprise to horror, then to interest. They started nodding, and moved away, gently kicking at the sand and whispering to each other.

Moved by his success, Strickland hurried on to another couple, then another, quickly building his team of curious volunteers.

Louis turned away and walked the beach, angling down toward the water, using a stick to search the debris. It occurred to him how strange it was that he had assumed the holes in the skull were the result of a pickax. That was the cop in him. A father had seen it differently.

He walked along, head down, stick poking the kelp. He was thinking of Roberta now and wondering why she had been so quick to take his dispassion for disrespect.

Like he had told her, he had seen bones before. He had seen the skeleton of a lynching victim lying in a shallow grave back in Mississippi. He had seen the bones of a murdered teenage girl laid out on an autopsy table.

It’s what’s left of a baby...

He had never seen a bone so small though. Maybe that’s why he had no answer for Roberta’s comment.

He looked down the beach. “Strickland! You find anything yet?” he called out.

“Nope,” the deputy yelled back.

“Keep looking.”

“I don’t think there’s —-”

“Keep looking.” Louis squinted out at the water. “Just keep looking, man.”





CHAPTER 4




The royal palms were still there. Seeing the towering trees lining McGregor Boulevard made him feel better somehow, as though the hurricane hadn’t really touched anything or anyone.

But Louis knew that wasn’t true. He could see that clearly now as he drove slowly down the boulevard toward downtown Fort Myers.

He had borrowed Strickland’s scooter and he kept it at a careful crawl, going up on swales and lawns to avoid the flooded streets and fallen tree limbs. It was oddly quiet, none of the usual traffic buzz, just the distant whine of chain saws or the chug-chug of generators.

Cars still sat abandoned in the street, and many trees were stripped or snapped, leaving homes baking in the hot sun, their windows blanked by big Xs of masking tape. The Buddha Bar and Grill, Giovanni’s Deli, the Market Cafe, they all still had their plywood up. Two days after Alina and Fort Myers still had a forlorn aura, like one of those whitewashed, fading rust-belt downtowns.

It was so hot it hurt to take a breath and the sky was a cruel bright blue. Power was still out in most neighborhoods, so people were outside, looking up at their battered roofs, dragging palm fronds to the curbs. Everyone was moving slowly. Except the kids. They were laughing, the big ones paddling canoes down McGregor, the little ones splashing in the water in defiance of mothers and health department warnings about snakes, rats, and microbes.

At the police station, Louis left the Vespa in a bike rack up near the door. He took a moment to run a hand over his sweating neck, looking at the empty parking lot. Normally, it was filled with green-and-whites, but every cop in the county was out on cleanup duty today. Even Strickland had been called in, but not before coming over to Louis’s cottage to tell him that Chief Horton wanted to see him.

They had news on the baby skull.

Louis was about to go in when the glass door opened and Al Horton came out, followed by a tall bald man in a suit.

“Kincaid!” Horton said, pulling up short. “Shit, I forgot you were coming in.”

“I got here as soon as I could. The roads —-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Horton ran a hand over his unshaven jaw. He looked harried and tired. “Listen, it’ll have to wait. Mel and I gotta get going.”

Louis looked to the man in the yellow-tinted sunglasses and black suit, the name Mel itching his brain. He had heard through the grapevine that Horton had hired a new chief of detectives, some guy from Miami. He had also heard that bringing in an outsider had caused grumbling in the department.

“What about the skull?” Louis asked Horton.

“Later. I got a body washed up in some mangroves out in the sound,” Horton said, easing by.

“A body? Can I ride along?” Louis asked.

Horton stopped, running a hand roughly over his brush cut as if that might keep the brain neurons from shorting out. “Yeah, come on. We’ll talk on the way,” he said. “Meet you there, Mel.”

The detective glanced at Louis through his yellow lenses and turned away. He headed toward his car, a patrolman hustling after him. Louis noticed the detective catch the uniform by the shoulder and order him to drive.

Louis followed Horton to a white Crown-Victoria. “That your new guy?” he asked, nodding toward the other car.