Island of Bones (31 page)

“Emma del Bosque,” she said. She took a few steps into the cemetery, looked down at the markers, then up at Horton.

“Please don’t do this,” she said. “Just leave them alone, please.”

Horton and the other men were staring at Emma. The two younger officers looked as if they were seeing a ghost.

“Look, ma’am,” Horton began. Louis held up a hand. Emma’s eyes were on him.

“Please leave our daughters be.”

“Is your daughter buried here, ma’am?” Horton asked.

Emma looked down at the nearest marker. “Yes.”

“How did your daughter die, ma’am?” Horton asked.

“She was taken,” she said, not looking up.

“By who?” Horton asked. Then he stopped, shaking his head. “Never mind, don’t answer that. Officer, read this woman her rights.”

As the officer started reading, Louis heard a sound in the brush. Two more women came out. They were in their forties, and wearing the same shapeless dresses as Emma. The taller of the two had her stringy blond hair twisted into a braid that hung over her shoulder. The other woman was heavier, with wild
dark hair framing a full face.

Cindy Shattuck and Paula Berkowitz.

They waited until the officer was done with reading the Miranda rights before speaking.

“Why did you have to come here?” Paula asked.

“We were looking for you,” Louis said. “All of you.”

“Why?” she asked.

Louis stared at the three women. They were acting like Angela had, treating him and the police not as rescuers but as intruders. He looked down at their hands. All were wearing the coral rings.

“Okay, let’s get this over with,” Horton said. He motioned to the other officers.
When the lead officer pulled out his handcuffs, Emma held her hands out in front of her, nodding to the others to do the same.

“This is our home,”
Emma said to Louis.

“You have to go,”
he said.

“Where are our husbands?” she asked.

“At the restaurant,” Horton said. “And that’s where we’re taking you.”

Emma looked back at Cindy and Paula
then started slowly toward the path. The other women followed her.

When they were
gone, Horton scanned the cemetery, shaking his head. He shot Louis a look of disgust, then turned on his heel and was gone back up the path.

Louis looked up at the sky. The sun was up over the trees now and the last of the fog had burned off. The Bible Ana del Bosque had given him was heavy in his arms and he hoisted it up, looking at its worn cover.

He opened the cover to the first page. On the frontispiece was an elaborate family tree, illustrated with biblical scenes. In flowing script, someone had written across the top
La Familia del Bosque
. The tree was filled in, but the ink was so faded and the handwriting so tiny Louis couldn’t make it out without his reading glasses.

Closing the Bible, he tucked it under his arm. His eyes traveled over the coral markers. Something over near the mangroves caught his eye and he went to it.

It was another marker, half buried in the mud and roots. It was crusted with mold, its edges rounded by time, the coral tinted tea-brown from the mangroves.

Why was this one grave so far from the others? But then he understood. It was probably one of the oldest graves and over time, the tides had washed the soil away from beneath it.

He looked back at the other markers. Had there been others like it, other graves that had washed away over time? How long had this been going on out here?

Louis reached down and started to pull the little marker out of the mud, then stopped. He knew he shouldn’t move it; it was part of a crime scene now. But if left, it might tumble into the water.

Setting the Bible in the leaves, he picked up the marker and moved it a few feet toward the others, kneeling to secure it in the dirt. Wiping his hands on his jeans, he rose. He picked up the Bible and started back toward the restaurant.

Louis could feel the sun on his face, and it stirred him awake. He rolled over on his back and kicked off the sheets, hoping a small breeze would wash over him. But the humid air was still.

The phone rang. He ignored it, lying perfectly still until it stopped. He wondered what time it was, but then decided he didn’t care.
He stared at the ceiling, his brain unable to kick into a new day.

The phone started ringing again.

Shit.

He pulled himself up slowly, planting both feet on the floor. When he put his face in his hands he could feel bumps and ragged skin against his palms. He tried to stand. His back muscles were knotted and his thighs burned.

How long had he slept? What time was it?

The phone finally stopped. He limped to the kitchen and started searching the cabinets for coffee. Issy curled against his legs.

He shook some Tender Vittles into her bowl, then went back to looking for coffee. He found a bag in the fridge and shook it. It was empty.

He stood there, leaning on the refrigerator door and staring into the shelves. Orange juice. That would work. He opened the carton and took a long swig. It burned like acid on his split lip.

“Jesus Christ!”

He wiped his mouth, wincing. Man, he needed to go see what he looked like.
As he walked back through the living room, his eyes caught the book shelf and the small skull sitting there.

He went
over and picked up the skull, turning it over in his hands. Was it possible this skull had washed away from the del Bosque cemetery?

He glanced around his living room. The Bible that Ana del Bosque had asked him to give to Frank was on the sofa. He set the skull in the chair and picked up the Bible. Taking it to the table, he put on his reading glasses and sat down, opening the Bible to the family tree on the frontispiece.

The tree went back to the 1800s, twisting with branches of double Spanish surnames. Louis recognized the name Marcelo Leon del Bosque as the man Bessie Levy had told him was the original emigrant from Spain. Next to him was his wife, Bianca Quinones Marquez y del Bosque. But the other old names meant nothing to him so he decided to start with the present and work backward.

He found Roberto’s name at the bottom and traced it up until he found his great-grandmother, Ana del Bosque
.

Under Ana’s name were her children: the oldest son, Edmundo, and Francisco and his twin brother, Emilio. Ana had another child, a daughter named T
aresa. She had been born in 1931 and died in 1932.

Taresa was the only girl baby on the tree who had a name.

The other entries said only BABY GIRL with the dates of their deaths. There were five such entries on the del Bosque tree.

Five entries, five graves. So who had been buried in the old grave that had been washed away? Ana’s daughter, Taresa?

Louis closed the Bible. He knew he could never prove it. No one would be able to tell when the sixth grave had been disturbed, any more than they could pinpoint the exact age of the skull he had found on the beach.

He looked back at the baby skull on the chair.

“What do I call you now?” he asked.

The phone started ringing again. Louis rose and
grabbed it. “Kincaid,” he said.

“You should’ve been here an hour ago,” Horton said.

“Yeah, I know, Al.”

“We’re waiting on you. Come to the interrogation rooms.” Horton hung up.

When he got to the station, Louis saw two TV vans and Heather Fox standing on the grass doing a remote. He drove around back and parked among the cruisers to avoid her. Inside, he made his way down the hall, and was buzzed into the holding area. An officer waved him to a window.

Behind the glass, seated in a chair, he saw Ana del Bosque. Her gray hair had come loose from her bun, falling down the sides of her thin face. She wore paper shoes
and a shapeless orange smock.

Horton was standing over her. He looked frustrated, with the slow boil of anger reddening his neck.

Louis looked at the officer. “She got a lawyer?”

“Refused one.”

Louis looked back. Horton walked a circle around Ana, hands on his hips. “So, you’re telling me all those babies died naturally?”

Ana sat stiffly, her knotted hands in her lap. “I told you no such thing. You make assumptions.”

“Then what happened to them?” Horton asked.

Ana did not reply.

“Well, let me tell you something,” Horton said. “Emma Fielding told us the babies were killed as part of some ritual you people perform.”

“It’s Emma del Bosque, and you are lying.”

Horton leaned into her. “You’re all going down for this. Every last one of you. It won’t matter who actually murdered those babies —- you’re all guilty. And we’ll prove it when we dig them all up.”

“You’re digging up the graves?” she asked.

“Yeah, all of them.”

Ana’s eyes closed briefly.

“And then we’ll start on the other graveyard,” Horton said. “I wonder how many murdered people we’ll find there.”

“You’ll find
—-” Ana stopped.

Horton waited. Louis knew Horton had poked a hole in Ana’s facade and now he was just waiting to see if it opened further.

Ana looked up at him slowly. “If I tell you the truth, will you leave my family in peace?”

“The live ones or the dead ones?” Horton asked.

“Both.”

Horton shook his head. “I can’t promise that.”

Ana took a breath, her small chest rising and falling under the orange material.

“I killed Mateo.”

“Who’s he?”

“My husband. I killed him in January of 1932. He is buried in the other cemetery, along with the rest of my family.”

Horton walked in front of her. “How’d you kill him?”

“I shot him.”

“What about the babies?”

Ana was speaking so softly, Louis had to lean closer to the intercom to hear her.

“I killed them, too,” she said. “All of them.”

“How?”

“I smothered them,” she said. “No one else was involved.”

Horton was speechless.

Ana looked at him. “Is that enough?”

“Why?” Horton asked. “Why just the girls?”

She looked away. "
De illo loqui nequam
—-”

“Don’t start that shit, lady.”

But Ana was finished talking. Louis knew it. She closed her eyes, crossed herself, and folded her hands.

Horton let out a breath. “Stand up, Mrs. del Bosque.” When Ana stood, she barely reached Horton’s shoulder. “You know by telling me this, you’ve confessed to the murder of six people?”

Ana gave him a small nod.

“And you’ll be going to prison? You know that, right?”

Her eyes moved to Horton’s face. “Not for long,” she said softly. “Not for very long at all.”

A few minutes later, Horton came out of the room. He stopped when he saw Louis.

“My office,” he said. He went briskly down the hall and Louis followed.

When they walked in, Louis was surprised to see Landeta sitting by the window, his elbow propped on the sill. There was a small television on the credenza behind Horton’s desk, filled with Heather Fox’s face. The sound was
muted, and under her chin in red letters were the words AWAY SO FAR CULT?

“Did you hear that crock of bullshit?” Horton asked Louis. Then he looked at Landeta. “The old bag confessed to killing every one of them and her husband.”

Landeta looked at him slowly. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Oh, yeah,” Horton said. “I got a whole family full of murdering sonofabitches and the only one I can put in jail is
an old woman who will probably die before the ink’s dry on her confession.”

Louis and Landeta were quiet.

“And if that’s not enough,” Horton went on, “I got a gun-toting daddy who wants to know why he can’t see his newborn daughter, and the rest of them are talking to me in Spanish.”

Louis looked away. He didn’t need this. Not today.

Horton took a breath. “Add in the three very strange women who keep asking me when can they go home, some guy who only looks like Frank Woods lying in the morgue, a graveyard full of baby bones that will take forensics a year to excavate, and two dead Mexicans, one of them shot by you, Kincaid, and we got a real mess here.”

“Spanish,” Louis said.

“What?”

“They’re Spanish, not Mexican.”

“You think I give a shit what they are?” Horton asked.

Louis was silent.

“And you know what’s even worse?” Horton continued. “The old lady’s confession will probably stand up. Not one of those other loonies is telling us a damn thing we can use. And no ME is going to be able to tell how those babies died. Not after all these years.”

“You got Frank Woods,” Louis said. “Maybe he’ll tell you the truth.”

Horton shook his head. “Oh, yeah, the original suspect. He’s been away from that island for thirty-five years, Kincaid. How much do you think he really knows? Or can prove?”

“He knows more than you think,” Louis said.

“We questioned the man for three hours, Kincaid. He ain’t talking and I have nothing I can hold him on.”

Louis thought about Frank and Emilio, wondering not for the first time if Emilio’s death really had been an accident. A
month ago, he would have said Frank didn’t have it in him to murder someone. That had been his instinct from the start, the reason he had pursued this case. He had always felt that Frank didn’t kill those women. But had he killed Emilio? Had he been so desperate, so driven to survive, that he had murdered his brother to take his place? Louis wasn’t so sure of what was inside any man anymore.

He looked over at Landeta. He was cleaning his glasses with a tissue.

“But we do have one thing,” Horton said, his voice tinged with sarcasm. He waved a piece of paper. “The bullet that killed Shelly Umber came from that Tomas guy’s rifle. Nice piece of work, gentlemen...killing the only real suspect we had.”

The office fell silent. Horton raked his brush cut with his thick fingers, and sunk into his chair.

“Al,” Louis said, “where’s the boy?”

“With DCF. He’ll go into foster care for a while.”

Louis looked at the television. Heather Fox was interviewing some guy with glasses. The name underneath him said he was a child psychologist and cult deprogrammer. Louis knew they were probably talking about Roberto.

“You know what this whole mess amounts to?” Horton asked. He looked up at Louis, then over at Landeta, waiting for an answer. “I think your whole fucking Rambo act is going to end up being for nothing.”

Landeta stood up suddenly. “Tell that to Louisa in a couple of years.” He walked out.

Horton watched him leave. “Who the hell is Louisa?” he asked Louis.

Louis didn’t answer. He just stared at the television. They had switched to a shot of the island now. Louis could see the yellow crime scene tape stretched between the trees, and the cops standing on the dock, watching for gawkers.

Horton sank down in his chair. He glanced at the television then looked at Louis.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” he asked.

“Yeah,”
Louis said. “You asked me to work this because I could play it different than a cop could. I could get it done in a way your guys couldn’t. And that’s exactly what we did, Al.”

Louis left, closing the door behind him before Horton could say anything. He hurried out of the station and through the crowd of reporters. He saw Landeta standing at the
corner, waiting to cross the street.

Landeta heard him coming and turned. “Horton’s right. They probably will never face charges, you know.”

“Fuck it,” Louis said.

The WALK sign started blinking and Louis took a step. Landeta followed. They walked on in silence for a moment
.

“Louisa?” Louis
said.

“I couldn’t name her Melford,” Landeta said. “And if you laugh, I will shoot you, right here on the street.”

They turned down Hendry Street. “You going to walk me all the way home?” Landeta asked.

“Shit no,” Louis said.

They stopped, facing each other. Louis knew what Landeta was thinking, what he was feeling. Whenever a case was over, no matter how it turned out, there was always that letdown that came after the adrenaline had stopped pumping. That feeling of being spent yet still itchy to get back to the high. He knew how much Landeta was going to miss it.

“Hey,” Landeta said. “How about coming back to my place for a sandwich or something?
We can stop and pick up some Heinekens.”

Louis met Landeta’s gaze and could see it in the man’s eyes that he wanted to talk. Hell, needed to talk.