Island of Bones (22 page)

Hicks allude? Hick salude? Salute? What the hell had he said?

For a long time the only sound in the room was Ray Charles singing a soft accompaniment to the hum of the air conditioner. Finally, Landeta broke the quiet.

“This is great,” he murmured, almost to himself.

Louis looked up. “What is?”

“This man-into-wolf stuff.”

“Frank had a thing about werewolves,” Louis said. “He had a bunch of books about it.”

“Lycanthropy’s not really about werewolves.”

“What is it then?”

Landeta pursed his lips. “According to this, it’s a mental disorder where a person believes he has turned into a wolf.”

Louis just stared at him.

Landeta poked a finger at the book spread open beneath the magnifier lamp. “This shrink, Robert Eisler, had a theory that violence, war, especially murder, could be traced back to man’s primal urges as a member of his animal pack. Woods underlined a bunch of shit in here and wrote a couple of things in the margins.”

“Like what?”

“
There’s this passage about how modern man is descended from a mutated wolf species that raped and sometimes even cannibalized females.” Landeta looked up. “Woods underlined it twice and wrote next to it ‘see Asturian rite.’”

Louis came
over to the desk. “Asturian? There was a book in Frank’s room with that word in the title.”

“You got it with you?”

“Yeah, but I left it down in the car.”

“Bring it in tomorrow. Here’s another passage he
underlined,” Landeta said. He started reading out loud. “‘The aggressive pack would, whenever occasion offered, kidnap and carry away the females of the weaker tribes.’”

“Jesus,” Louis said. “Abduction by wolves?”

“Or a man who thought he was,” Landeta said. He went back to his reading.

Louis went back to sit on the sofa, shaking his head
slowly. Shit, cannibalization? Is that why they never found the women’s bodies?

“Listen to this,” Landeta said. “Jung had a patient with this disorder. The guy dreamed he was part of a herd that he had to leave. So in the dream he puts on a wolf-head disguise and goes off into the woods, becoming an outlaw from his herd. He dreams he is alone on a desert island.”

“Like Cayo Costa, the place where Frank hid out,” Louis said.

Landeta kept reading. “Then the guy feels the need to go back to the life he broke away from. When he does, he is surrounded by women from his original herd but he doesn’t recognize them.”

“Frank underlined all that?” Louis asked.

Landeta nodded.

“You should have seen him,” Louis said. “Out on that island. It was like he was right at home, like he was...”

“An animal?” Landeta asked.

Louis stood up suddenly, pacing a slow tight circle. “This is nuts,” he said.

Landeta was reading something. He looked up. “Listen to this,” he said. He began to read another passage from
Man Into Wolf.

“‘Murderous sadistic assaults are sometimes committed by well-educated, highly intelligent persons with no previous convictions or with a record showing no more, at worse, than minor sexual irregularities.’
” Landeta closed the book. “Or so says the good doctor Robert Eisler.”

“Shrinks
. It’s all bullshit,” Louis said.

“Not always,” Landeta said.
He pushed the magnifier lamp away and sat back in his chair, looking at Louis.

“All of us get desperate enough to do bad things,” he said. “For most of us, it’s just selfishness, but for a few, it’s something darker at work. Face it, we’re all just a couple of genes removed from the things that crawled out of the slime.”

The clock chimed again, ten times.

Landeta rubbed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m tired,” he said. “My eyes have had it.”

“Mel, come on —-”

“No,” Landeta said firmly. “Tomorrow. We’ll pick this up tomorrow.”

Louis hesitated then nodded. He pocketed his notebook and started to gather up the reports and books he had brought.

“Leave the books, okay?” Landeta said.

Louis put the books down and began picking up the empty bottles and the pizza carton.

“Leave that, too. I can do it.”

“Okay. We’ll get back on this tomorrow at the station.”

Landeta’s eyes were shut but he nodded. The man looked bone tired. Louis started to the door.

“Kincaid.”

Louis turned.

“Look, you’re right,” Landeta began, “about the way I’ve been acting.”

“Forget it,” Louis said.

Landeta shook his head. “I have a lot of shit to deal with right now. You were just in the line of fire. I’m sorry.”

Louis just nodded.

“See you at the station,” Landeta said.

He shut off the magnifying light and his face fell into the shadows. For a brief moment, Louis found himself thinking about Landeta’s own selfishness, how it had driven him to hang on to his badge. He wondered what it must be like for him. It was one thing to stop seeing yourself as a cop. It was another thing altogether to stop seeing anything at all.

Louis let himself out of the apartment and went down the hall into the lobby. The door banged shut behind him and he paused on the steps. A heavy shroud of humid night air wrapped itself around him, smelling of the river close by. He drew in a deep breath and looked up.

There was no moon tonight. A moment later, he heard a sound, like a low wail, coming from Landeta’s apartment. It was Ray Charles again, singing “Blackjack.”

Louis looked back up at Landeta’s window, then started down the empty street.

Louis glanced up at the clock. It was nearly two a.m. He had left Landeta’s apartment more than three hours ago, but he was still pumped up.

He looked back down at the book he had been reading, but the words seemed to blur and hover on the page. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He was tired of looking at Latin, tired of trying to decipher words he didn’t understand.

He looked at Issy, who was sitting on one of the books, staring at him. He reached out and ran his hand along her back. The cat arched under his touch and rose, stretching and moving away. Louis picked up the book she had been lying on and looked at the spine.
The Myths and Customs of the Asturian People.

He had forgotten that Frank had written something about Asturi
as in one of the wolf books. Louis leaned back in the chair and opened the book.

One of the first pages was a map of Spain, with a blue section in the north that identified Asturias. Louis opened to the first chapter and read:

Once
an ancient kingdom, now the principality of Asturias remains somewhat isolated from the rest of the world. It is one of most beautiful yet least known areas of Spain. Flanked by mountains in the south and the sea to the north, Asturias has been protected from the influences of the invaders that have flowed through Spain throughout the centuries. The result is a folk culture distinct from that of the rest of Spain, with a strong Celtic and Roman tradition stretching back over thousands of years.

Louis thumbed through the book. He stopped at a chapter Frank had dog-earred, titled “Asturian Rites of Passage.” Louis scanned the chapter, stopping when he came to a section called “The Festival of the Wolf.” He read slowly:

In classical Rome, February 15 was celebrated as Lupercalia or festival of the wolf. Teams of young men gathered in a cave on Mt. Palatinus
where they sacrificed dogs and goats. They would then smear the blood on their bodies, dress themselves in the animal skins, and competed in a race, which drew huge crowds of observers. The ritual involved the men running through the villages and attacking women in the crowd, whipping them with narrow strips of goat skin, which was supposed to appease the gods and encourage fertility. But for the majority, the ceremony was merely a venting of emotional passion. The enormous crowds, the impatient suspense, and the watching of the naked men made for an occasion of wantonness.

Louis turned the page. Frank had underlined the next paragraph:

Nowadays, along the old borders of the Roman Empire, remnants of the lupercalia still persist. In Asturias, villagers still celebrate “Beleno Ride” where the single young men descend from the mountains down to the village on horseback, following a leader who wears a wolf costume and is allowed to indulge in bold actions such as whipping village girls with a swollen animal bladder tied to a stick. Anthropologists call it a rite of passage, which marks the difference between the “mozos" (the unmarried men) and the “paisanos ” (the adult men with families).

Jesus
.
Louis closed the book.

He rose slowly and went to the kitchen. He started to the refrigerator to get a beer then changed his mind and just filled a large glass with tap water and gulped it down. He stood in the dark kitchen, trying to gather his thoughts. The air seemed as thick as his mind. Images of wolves speaking some gibberish language, bodies caged by dark mangroves, and blind detectives feeling their way around one last case.

And the damn Latin was swirling in his brain, like a fog obscuring everything.

Hicks... hicks salute... no, no, that wasn’t it. Think... try to hear him saying it. Hick solute... solutio. Solutio. Solution? Could that be what
Frank meant?

Louis went back to the table and pulled out the large Oxford Latin Dictionary and put on his glasses. It only took a minute to find
solutio
under the S’s.

He ran a finger down the long entry of definitions: 1. Loose or relaxed state; 2. The discharge of a debt or breaking up of a
structure. His finger stopped at the third definition: The unfastening of a knot, the solving of a puzzle or dilemma; the answer.

He flipped quickly back to the H
’s.
Hick solutio...

Hi
c. Here.

The answer is here?

Louis snatched up the phone and punched in Landeta’s phone number. It rang six times before Landeta answered.

“What?” His voice was groggy.

“Mel. I found it. The answer is here.”

“What? What the hell? Louis?”

“Yeah.”

“I was sleeping.”

“I’m sorry. The answer is here.”

“What? Where?”

“Here! That’s what Frank was trying to tell me.
Hic solutio est.
The answer is here, on the island.”

“You’re on an island?”

“No, I’m at home. The answer is on the island.”

“Cayo Costa? The island Frank was hiding out on?”

“No, no. The other one.”

“What other one?”

“The one he went to before he drowned himself,” Louis said. “The one with the restaurant. You questioned them. What did they say?”

Landeta was quiet.

“Mel, what did they say?”

Landeta still said nothing.

“Mel? You there?”

“Yeah.” Louis heard him pull in a deep breath. “I didn’t get out there.”

“You didn’t —- ” Louis stopped. He knew why Landeta hadn’t gone back out there. He couldn’t go alone; he needed help.

“All right, all right,” Louis said. “Forget it. Let’s get back to Frank and what he told me.”

“What do you think he meant?” Landeta asked.

“I don’t know. I called you before I thought about it. Maybe it’s where he buried the women.”

There was a long pause on Landeta’s end. Louis figured he was about to tell him to hold his thoughts until tomorrow, and he was about to apologize again for waking him, but Landeta spoke first.

“Tell me about the island.”

“Now?” Louis asked.

“Yeah. Tell me what it looks like
.”

“
It’s all mangroves. There’s this old restaurant out there and you can only get there by ferry. The tourists unload at the dock, and after lunch they make you get right back on the ferry.”

“It’s privately owned? Who owns it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s the restaurant like?”

“It’s just an old house, white weathered wood, real rustic, a coral rock fireplace, fishing nets, stuffed fish on the walls. It almost looked neglected, but I think they want it like that for the tourists.”

“Did you see Frank talk to anyone there?”

“Yeah, a man working at the bar. And there was a kid, about ten. His name was Roberto.”

“How did you learn the kid’s name?”

“Frank asked him.”

“What else, Louis?”

“Nothing.”

“There must be something else.”

Louis jumped up and began to pace. “I didn’t look at anything else,” he said. “I was keeping my eye on Frank.”

“What was Frank keeping his eye on?” Landeta asked.

Louis paused, his mind working hard to retrieve the image of Frank sitting across from him. Frank’s sunburned nose, his jaw shadowed with whiskers, his sad brown eyes moving from the tabletop to the boy, and up to...

“Mel
, there was a painting. A big old ugly painting hanging over the bar. I thought it looked out of place and Frank made some comment about it, but I don’t remember. Damn, what did he say?”

“Forget it. What did the painting look like?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Some Roman guys having an orgy or something with a bunch of fat women.”

Louis heard a clank as Landeta set the phone down. “Mel? You there? Where’d you go?”

Mel’s voice suddenly came back. “I went to get one of Frank’s books you brought over, the mythology book. I was looking through it after you left and I remember seeing something. I think Frank marked it. Hold on.”

He could hear Landeta turning pages. “Yeah, here it is. And he had it bookmarked.”

“What?”

“A painting. Roman guys and fat women, as you called it. Hold on. Let me get set up under the light.”

Louis went to the kitchen. Holding the receiver with his shoulder, he opened the refrigerator, pulled out a Heineken, and popped off the top. He was taking the first swig when Landeta came back on.

“Okay,” Landeta started. “This painting I’m looking at shows Romans carrying off fat women in front o
f a colosseum type of place.”

Another pause. Louis knew Landeta was struggling to see the photo. “And there’s some guy in a red cape overseeing all this.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Louis said.

“It’s by somebody named Poussin. It’s called
‘The Rape of the Sabine Women’."

“Rape of who?”

“Listen, damn it. Don’t say a word.” Landeta’s voice slowed and Louis knew he was using his magnifying glass again to read.

“Okay, it’s based on the Romulus and Remus myth
. The two brothers were building a city and one of them ended up killing the other one over the size of a fence or something.”

Louis took a drink, growing impatient at Landeta’s slow
flow of information. Things were starting to fall into place, the picture coming into focus, and he wanted to know the rest of it now. He began to pace.

“Okay, they were the guys who built Rome,” Landeta continued. “But they didn’t have enough women for all the men to have wives
—-”

Louis interrupted Landeta. “So they took them from somewhere else and raped them.”

“Yeah...no, wait.” Landeta paused. “Listen to this. In Roman days, rape didn’t mean what it does now. It comes from the Latin word
raptus
, which means to carry off by force.”

Louis stopped pacing. His mind was whirring.

“Louis? You there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m thinking.”

“About what?”

“That guy Jung was treating for mental illness.” Louis began pacing again. “He had dreams about leaving his wolf herd behind
but when he does, he feels isolated and tries to go back, where he is surrounded by women from his herd he no longer recognizes.”

“Yeah, Frank underlined it,” Landeta said.

“And tonight, I found something else about wolves in another one of Frank’s books, something about a fertility rite where unmarried men dress up in wolf skins and beat the village women with animal skins and —-”

“What?”

“Never mind. I’ll show it to you tomorrow. The important thing now is that island.” Louis stopped pacing. “Mel, he went back there for a reason.”

“Maybe he was from there. What’s out there besides the restaurant?”

Louis was quiet, trying to remember. “I only saw the restaurant. But there could have been houses on the other side.”

“
Like what? A private community thing, like Useppa or North Captiva?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or like out on Sanibel?”

“I told you, Mel
—-”

“C’mon, Louis. What was your sense of it?”

“Sense? What do you mean?”

“What did the place feel like?”

“Fuck, Mel. I saw trees. That was all!”

“Think. Use your other senses.”

Louis was quiet. “Okay, it was way the hell out in the sound. It felt isolated.”

“
Try again.”

“It felt...forgotten.”

Landeta was silent. “By who?” he asked finally.

Louis ran a hand over his face. “Time? I don’t know,” he said.

There was another silence. Louis could hear Landeta breathing.

“What’s the name of the island again?” Landeta asked finally.

“Away So Far.”

“We need to find out more about the place before we go to Horton. Any ideas?”

“You can only go there for lunch and they want you back on the ferry in two hours.” Louis was pacing and stopped abruptly, his eyes focusing on the baby skull sitting on his bookshelf.

“Louis? You there?”

“Yeah,” Louis said. “I just figured out where to get some answers.”