Death Du Jour_ A Novel Part 25

"Son of a buck, I'm sorry. I just don't like body parts showing up on my island. You know my temper."

I did. But it wasn't Sam's outburst that held me back. I smelled the pine and felt the warm breeze on my cheek. I knew what was out there and didn't want to find it.

"C'mon."

I took a deep breath, as enthused as a woman on her way to a meeting requested by an oncologist.

"Wait."

I went into the field station and rooted in the kitchen until I found a plastic tub. I sealed the jaw inside, hid the container in a cabinet in the back room, then left a note for Katy.

We took a trail behind the field station and followed Jane toward the center of the island. She led us to an area where the trees were the size of offsh.o.r.e rigs, the foliage a solid canopy overhead. The ground was a plush of humus and pine needles, the air heavy with the scent of decaying vegetation and animal matter. A swish in the branches told me monkeys were present.

"Someone's here," said Jane, turning on her receiver.

Sam searched the trees with his binoculars, trying to make out tattoo codes.

"It's A group," he said.

"Hunh!"

A juvenile crouched on a branch above me, shoulders down, tail in the air, eyes fixed on my face. The sharp, throaty bark was his way of saying "back off!"

When I met his gaze the monkey sat back, ducked his head, then raised it diagonally across his body. He repeated the bob several times, then spun and did a cannonball into the next tree.

Jane adjusted dials then closed her eyes to listen, face tense with concentration. After a while she shook her head and continued up the path.

Sam scanned the treetops as Jane stopped again and rotated clockwise, totally focused on the sounds in her headset. Finally, "I've got a very faint signal."

She veered in the direction in which the cannonballer had disappeared, paused, pivoted again.

"I think he's over near Alcatraz." She pointed toward ten o'clock.

While most of the trapping pens on the island are designated by letter, a few of the older ones have names like O.K. Corral or Alcatraz.

We moved toward Alcatraz, but just south of the corral Jane left the path and cut into the woods. The vegetation was thicker here, the ground spongy underfoot. Sam turned to me.

"Watch yourself near the pond. Alice had a mess of babies last season, and I suspect she's not feeling sociable."

Alice is a fourteen-foot alligator who has lived on Murtry for as long as anyone can remember. No one recalls who named her. The staff respects her right to be there and leaves her to her pond.

I gave Sam a thumbs-up sign. While they do not frighten me, gators have never been creatures whose company I sought.

We weren't twenty feet off the trail when I noticed it, faint at first, just a variation on the dark, organic forest smell. Initially I wasn't sure, but as we picked our way closer the odor grew stronger, and a cold band tightened on my chest.

Jane cut north, away from the pond, and Sam followed, binoculars trained on the overhead branches. I held back. The smell was coming from straight ahead.

I circled a fallen sweet gum and stopped. I could see a belt of brush and scrub palm bordering the pond. The forest grew silent as Jane and Sam pulled away, the rustling of their feet fading with each step.

The odor of decaying flesh is like no other. I'd smelled it on the jaw, and now the sweet, fetid scent tainted the afternoon air, telling me my quarry was near. Barely breathing, I pivoted as Jane had done, eyes closed, every fiber fixed on sensory input. Same motion, different focus. While Jane was tracking with her ears, I hunted with my nose.

The smell was coming from the direction of the pond. I moved toward it, my nose following the odor and my eyes on reptile alert. Overhead a monkey barked, then a stream of urine trickled to the ground. Branches stirred and leaves fluttered earthward. The stench grew stronger with each step.

I drew within ten feet, stopped, and trained my binoculars on the thicket of scrub palm and yaupon holly that separated me from the pond. An iridescent cloud formed and re-formed just outside its border.

I crept forward, carefully testing with each footfall. At the edge of the bushes the smell of putrefaction was overpowering. I listened. Silence. I scanned the underbrush. Nothing. My heart raced and sweat poured down my face.

Move your a.s.s, Brennan. It's too far from the pond for alligators.

I pulled a bandanna from my pocket, covered my mouth and nose, and squatted to see what the flies found so attractive.

They rose as one, whining and darting around me. I waved them away, but they returned immediately. Sweeping back flies with one hand, I wrapped the bandanna around the other and lifted the yaupon branches. Insects bounced off my face and arms, buzzing and swarming in agitation.

The flies had been drawn to a shallow grave, hidden from view by the thick leaves. Staring from it was a human face, the features shifting and changing in the shadowy light. I leaned close, then drew back in horror.

What I saw was no longer a face, but a skull stripped bare by scavengers. What appeared as eyes and nose and lips were, in fact, mounds of tiny crabs, parts of a seething ma.s.s that covered the skull and fed on its flesh.

As I looked around I realized there had been other opportunists. A mangled segment of rib cage lay to my right. Arm bones, still connected by tendrils of dried ligament, peeked from the undergrowth five feet away.

I released the bush and sat back on my heels, immobilized by a cold, sick feeling. On the edge of my vision I saw Sam approaching. He was speaking, but his words didn't penetrate. Somewhere, a million miles away, a motor grew louder then stopped.

I wanted to be somewhere else. To be someone else. Someone who had not spent years smelling death and seeing its final degradation. Someone who did not work day after day rea.s.sembling the human carnage left by macho pimps, enraged partners, wired c.o.keheads, and psychopaths. I had come to the island to escape the brutality of my life's work. But even here, death had found me. I felt overwhelmed. Another day. Another death. Death du jour. My G.o.d, how many such days would there be? who had not spent years smelling death and seeing its final degradation. Someone who did not work day after day rea.s.sembling the human carnage left by macho pimps, enraged partners, wired c.o.keheads, and psychopaths. I had come to the island to escape the brutality of my life's work. But even here, death had found me. I felt overwhelmed. Another day. Another death. Death du jour. My G.o.d, how many such days would there be?

I felt Sam's hand on my shoulder and looked up. His other hand was cupped across his nose and mouth.

"What is it?"

I inclined my head toward the bush and Sam bent it backward with his boot.

"Holy s.h.i.t."

I agreed.

"How long has it been here?"

I shrugged.

"Days? Weeks? Years?"

"The burial has been a bonanza for your island fauna, but most of the body looks undisturbed. I can't tell what condition it's in."

"Monkeys didn't dig this up. They won't have anything to do with meat. Must be the d.a.m.n buzzards."

"Buzzards?"

"Turkey vultures. They love to chow down on monkey carca.s.ses."

"I'd also question the racc.o.o.ns."

"Yeah? c.o.o.ns love the yaupon, but I didn't think they'd eat carrion."

I looked again at the grave.

"The body is on its side, with the right shoulder just below the surface. No doubt the smell attracted scavengers. The vultures and racc.o.o.ns probably dug and ate, then pulled out the arm and the jaw when decomposition weakened the joints." I indicated the ribs. "They chewed off a section of the thorax and dragged that out, too. The rest of the body was probably too deep, or just too hard to get at, so they left it."

Using a stick, I dragged the arm closer. Though the elbow was still connected, the ends of the long bones were missing, their spongy interiors exposed along rough, gnarled edges.

"See how the ends are chewed off? That's animals. And this?" I indicated a small round hole. "That's a tooth puncture. Something small, probably a racc.o.o.n."

"Son of a buck."

"And of course the crabs and bugs did their share."

He rose, did a half turn, and kicked the dirt with the heel of his boot.

"Jesus H. Christ. Now what?"

"Now you call your local coroner, and he, or she, calls his, or her, local anthropologist." I rose and brushed dirt from my jeans. "And everybody talks to the sheriff."

"This is a G.o.ddam nightmare. I can't have people crawling all over this island."

"They don't have to crawl all over the island, Sam. They just have to come out, recover the body, maybe run a cadaver dog around to see if anyone else is buried here."

"How the-? s.h.i.t. This is impossible." A bead of sweat trickled down his temple. His jaw muscles bunched and unbunched.

For a moment neither of us spoke. The flies whined and circled.

Sam finally broke the silence. "You've got to do it."

"Do what?"

"Whatever has to be done. Dig this stuff up." He swept an arm in the direction of the grave.

"No way. Not my jurisdiction."

"I don't give a flying rat's a.s.s whose jurisdiction it is. I'm not going to have a bunch of yo-yos running around out here, sabotaging my island, f.u.c.king up my work schedule, and very possibly infecting my monkeys. It's out of the question. It's not going to happen. I'm the b.l.o.o.d.y mayor, and this is my island. I'll sit on the G.o.ddam dock with a G.o.ddam shotgun before I let that happen."

The vein was back in his forehead, and the tendons in his neck stood out like guy wires. His finger jabbed the air to emphasize each point.

"That was an Academy Award performance, Sam, but I'm still not doing it. Dan Jaffer is at USC in Columbia. He does the anthropology cases in South Carolina, so that's probably who your coroner will call. Dan is board-certified and he's very good."

"Dan f.u.c.king Jaffer could have f.u.c.king TB!"

There seemed no point, so I didn't answer.

"You do this all the time! You could dig the guy out and turn everything over to this Jaffer character."

Still no point.

"Why the h.e.l.l not, Tempe?" He glared at me.

"You know I'm in Beaufort on another case. I've promised these guys I'll work with them, and I have to be back in Charlotte on Wednesday."

I didn't give him the real answer, which was that I wanted nothing to do with this. I wasn't mentally ready to equate my island sanctuary with ugly death. Since first seeing the jaw, broken images had been floating through my brain, shards of cases past. Strangled women, butchered babies, young men with slashed throats and dull, unseeing eyes. If slaughter had come to the island, I wanted no part of it.

"We'll talk about this at camp," said Sam. "Don't mention bodies to anyone."

Ignoring his dictatorial manner, I tied my bandanna to the holly bush, and we headed back.

When we drew close to the trail I could see a battered pickup near the point at which we'd cut into the woods. The truck was loaded with bags of monkey chow and had a three-hundred-gallon water tank chained to the rear. Joey was inspecting the tank.

Sam called to him.

"Hold up a minute."

Joey wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and folded his arms. He wore jeans and a sweatshirt with the sleeves and neck cut out. His greasy blond hair hung like linguini around his face.

Joey watched us approach, his eyes hidden by sungla.s.ses, his mouth a tight line across his face. His body looked taut and tense.

"I don't want anyone going near the pond," Sam said to Joey.

"Alice get another monkey?"

"No." Sam didn't elaborate. "Where's that chow going?"

"Feeder seven."

"Leave it and come right back."

"What about water?"

"Fill the tanks and get back to camp. If you see Jane, send her in."

Joey's shades moved to my face and rested there for what seemed a long time. Then he got into the pickup and pulled away, the tank clanking behind.

Sam and I walked in silence. I dreaded the scene about to take place, and resolved not to let him bully me. I recalled his words, saw his face as he uncovered the grave. Then something else. Just before Sam joined me, I thought I'd heard a motor. Had it been the pickup? I wondered how long Joey had been parked on the trail. And why right there?

"When did Joey start working for you?" I asked.

"Joey?" He thought a moment. "Almost two years ago."

"He's reliable?"

"Let's just say Joey's compa.s.sion exceeds his common sense. He's one of these bleeding-heart types, always talking about animal rights and worrying about disturbing the monkeys. He doesn't know jacks.h.i.t about animals, but he's a good worker."

When we got to camp I found a note from Katy. She'd finished her observation and gone to the dock to read. While Sam got out the phone, I walked down to the water. My daughter sat in one of the boats, shoes off, legs stretched in front of her, her sleeves and pants legs rolled as high as they would go. I waved and she returned the gesture, then pointed at the boat. I wagged my head and held up both hands, indicating it wasn't time to leave. She smiled and resumed reading.

When I entered the field station Sam was at the kitchen table, talking on a cell phone. I slid onto the bench opposite him.