The Web (11 page)

He didn’t answer.

“You still there?”

“Cracking her bones to eat the marrow?”

“That’s Moreland’s hypothesis.”

“You go to Paradise and outdo me in the grossness
department?”

“According to Moreland, cannibalism’s pretty common across
cultures. Ever come across it?”

“He an expert on that, too? Tell me, is there some huge
guy stomping around the estate with a bad haircut and bolts
in his neck? Marrow .   .   . no, thanks, dear, I’ll
pass on that breakfast steak and stick with the veggie plate.”

“Funny you should say that. Moreland’s a vegetarian. His
daughter says he saw things after the Korean War that made him
never want to be cruel again.”

“How sensitive. And no, I haven’t personally come across any
bad guy gourmets. But there are a few years left to
retirement, so now I’ve got something to live for.”

“How’s Rick?”

“He says, changing the subject. Doing the workaholic thing
as usual, night shift at the ER. .   .   .
Marrow?
Why do I keep hearing jungle drums going
oonka loonka
? Come across any missionaries in a pot?”

“Not yet, and Moreland says not to worry. There’s no
history of cannibalism here. Both he and the chief of
police see it as a sicko killer trying to look exotic. Local
opinion pins it on a Navy man who moved on.”

“Moreland’s a crime sleuth, too?”

“He’s the only doctor on the island, so he handles all
the forensics.”

“Cannibalism,” he said. “Does Robin know about this?”

“She knows there was a homicide, but I haven’t given her
the details. I don’t want to make too big of a deal about
it. Other than that, there’s been no serious crime here
for years.”

“‘Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play.’ Why
a Navy man?”

“Because the locals aren’t violent and the killer seems
to be transitory.”

“Well,” he said, “I was Joe Army, so you won’t get any
big debate from me. Okay, hang loose, don’t eat anything
you can’t identify, and stay away from jokers with bones in
their noses.”

“A creed to live by,” I said. “Thanks for calling, and
good luck on your cases.”

“Yeah .   .   . all bullshit aside, I’m really
glad you guys got to do this. I know what last year was like for
you.”

A phone rang in the distance and he grunted.

“Other line,” he said. “More sludge. Sayonara
and all that, and if you see a bearded French guy
painting ladies in flowery muumuus, buy up the canvases.”

Chapter

14

Robin napped and I took a walk, crossing the rose
garden and descending the sloping acres of lawn. Four men in
drive-and-mows were working on the turf. The rotting-sugar smell
of cut grass brought to mind childhood Sundays.

So had Victory Park, I realized. The war memorial in my
Missouri hometown had been only slightly larger. Sunday
meant my mother bundling my sister and me off to the park
when my father chose to drink at home. Bologna sandwiches
and apple juice, climbing the cannon, pretending to fire,
Mother’s sweet, forced smiles. When she died, Dad’s drinking
stopped, and so did the rest of his life.

Shaking off melancholy, I continued down to the fruit
groves, stepping among fallen oranges and tangerines and a
popcorn spray of citrus blossoms. The meadow Moreland had
created out of wildflowers was brilliant. A collection of
miniature conifers had been trimmed surgically and a boxwood
knot garden was as intricate as any maze I’d encountered in
graduate school. Then the greenhouses, every pane spotless,
and trees full of orchids, the plants tucked into the folds
and hollows of branches like hatchlings. I kept going till I
spotted patches of granite and the brown, thorny fuzz of
rusty barbed wire.

The eastern border. Plumbago and honeysuckle and
wisteria covered most of the high stone walls, softening the
wire but not hiding it.

On the other side, the banyan tops formed a greener-gray
awning, aerial roots shooting through the canopy like the
tentacles of a beast in pain. From what I could see, the tree
trunks below were stout and kinked cruelly, whipsawing in a
struggle for space.

For a second, the entire forest seemed to be moving,
tumbling down on me, and I felt myself losing balance.

After I restored equilibrium, a tight spot remained at
the base of my throat.

I looked up at the trees again.

Robin had mentioned a subtle coolness drifting over the
walls, but all I felt was an internal chill.

I hiked along the border, listening for sounds from the
other side but hearing nothing. When I stopped, the same
illusion of movement recurred and I placed both hands on the
stone and breathed in deeply.

Probably low blood sugar. I hadn’t eaten since
breakfast.

I headed back. When I got to the grove, I picked up an
orange, peeled it, and finished it in three bites, letting the
juice run down my chin the way I’d done as a child.

Back in my office, I tackled another carton of medical
files. More routine; the only psychological diagnoses
Moreland had noted were stress reactions to physical
illnesses.

I pulled down another box and found myself growing bored
till a folder at the bottom made me take notice.

On the front cover Moreland had drawn a large, red
question mark.

The patient was a fifty-one-year-old laborer named
Joseph Cristobal, with no history of mental disorder, who began to
experience visual hallucinations—“white worms” and “white
worm people”—and symptoms of agitation and paranoia.

Moreland treated him with tranquilizers and noted that
Cristobal did have “a fondness for drink but is not an
alcoholic.” The symptoms didn’t abate.

Two weeks later Cristobal died suddenly in his sleep,
the apparent victim of a heart attack. Moreland’s autopsy
revealed no brain pathology but did discover an occluded
coronary artery.

Then the doctor’s final remark in large, bold print, the
same red color as the question mark:
A. Tutalo?

I figured that for a bacterium or virus but the medical
dictionary he’d provided me didn’t list it.

A drug? No citation in the
Physicians’ Desk
Reference.

I returned to the storage room, squeezed my way past the
columns of boxes, and searched the bookshelves.

Natural history, archaeology, mathematics, mythology,
history, chemistry, physics, even a collection of antique
travelogues.

One complete case devoted to insects.

Another to plant pathology and toxicology, which I went
through carefully.

No mention of
A. Tutalo.

Finally, in a dark, musty corner, the medical books.

Nothing.

I thought of the catwoman. Moreland’s telling me about
the case moments after we’d met.

Now another case of spontaneous death.

I’d reviewed perhaps sixty files. Two out of sixty was
three percent.

An emerging pattern?

Time for another collegial chat.

When I reached the house, I saw Jo Picker near the
fountain, watching Dennis Laurent’s police car drive away.
Water dotted her hair and face. As I came up to
her she wiped her cheek and looked at the moisture on her
hand. The spray continued to hit her. Slowly she moved out
of its arc.

“That policeman came over to tell me what’s going on.”

She rubbed her eyes. Her new tan had been replaced by
mourner’s pallor. “They say Ly landed on the base and
they’re shipping him back today. .   .   . I should’ve
expected it, working in Washington. But when it happens to
you .   .   . I’ve been calling his family.”

One of her hands rolled tight.

“I didn’t really chicken out,” she said. “Though
that would have been
rational.”

She looked at me. I nodded.

“I probably
would’ve
been stupid enough
to go up even though I had bad feelings about it. But this
time   .   .   . he got mad at me, called me
a   .   .   . I just said to heck with it and walked
away.”

She moved her face nearer to mine. Close enough to kiss
but there was nothing seductive about it.

“Even so, I still probably would’ve relented. But he
wouldn’t let up .   .   . as I was walking through that
bamboo I heard the plane engine start up and almost ran back. But
instead I kept going. To the beach. Found a nice spot on
the rocks and sat down and stared at the ocean. I was
feeling pretty relaxed when I heard it.”

Our noses were nearly touching. Her breath was stale.

“I miss him,” she said, as if finding it hard to
believe. “You’re with someone for a long
time .   .   . I told his mother she could bury him
in New Jersey near his father. We never made any plans for that
kind of thing—he was forty-eight. When I get back we’ll
have some kind of service.”

I nodded again.

She noticed a stain on her shirt and frowned. “My ticket
out of Guam isn’t for another two weeks. I guess I should say
that I can’t wait to get back, but the truth is, what’s
waiting for me? I might as well stay and finish up my work.”

Wetting her finger with her tongue, she rubbed the
stain. “That sounds cold to you, doesn’t it?”

“Whatever helps you through it.”

“My
work
helps me. Coming here’s the
final leg of a three-year study—why throw it away?”

She backed away and drew herself up. “Enough blubbering.
Back to the old laptop.”

It was just before five. I strolled to the rose garden,
and watched through the boughs of a
pine tree as the men in the mowers painted broad stripes in the
lawn. I thought about sudden death.

The catwoman. White worms.

AnneMarie Valdos killed to be eaten.

Routine medical cases collected during a thirty-year
practice.

Some routine.

I was probably making too much of it. After all,
I’d
initiated the conversation about the Valdos murder.

Though it had been Moreland who’d brought over the
autopsy photos, sparing no detail.

Maybe the old man had a strong stomach and assumed I did
too.

He’d implied as much during the tour of the bug zoo.

Research on predators.

I recalled the animation with which he’d discussed the
history of cannibalism.

Not exactly your simple country doctor.

Milo had thought him spacey. Joked about Frankenstein
monsters.

Milo was a self-admitted sultan of cynicism, but he was
also a trained detective, his hunches more often right than
wrong   .   .   .

Neurotic, Delaware. Bunked down in Eden, getting paid
handsomely to do a dream job and you just can’t cope.

I returned to the house but couldn’t get the catwoman
out of my mind.

Her ordeal. Bound to a chair while her husband made
love to another woman. The final scream   .   .   .

Such cruelty.

Maybe
that
was it.

Over the years, Moreland had seen too much cruelty.

Radiation poisoning, the hopeless deterioration of the
Bikini islanders.

The catwoman. Joseph Cristobal. The cargo cult leader.

Absorbing the pain the way sensitive people often do.

Confronting his helplessness but able to forget about it
during dark hours in the bug zoo. His lab. His own private
paradise.

Now, watching Aruk deteriorate—nearing the end of his
own life—his defenses had been shaken.

He needed to make sense of the cruelty.

Needed someone to share it with.

Chapter

15

That night at dinner, there were five places set.

Jo was last to come down. She wore a white blouse and a
dark skirt; her face looked fresh and her hair was shiny and
combed out.

“Go on with the small talk.” She sat and unfolded her
napkin. “Grapefruit, one of my favorites.”

The talk hadn’t been small: Moreland giving a detailed
lecture on the history of colonization. He’d seemed to lose
his train of thought a couple of times.

Now there was silence, as Jo peered at the serrated edge
of her grapefruit spoon. She cut a section from the fruit,
and the rest of us picked up our utensils.

Moreland reached for a roll and spread it with apple
butter. He closed his eyes and chewed.

“Dad?” said Pam.

His eyes opened and he looked around the table, as if
trying to locate the sound.

“Yes, dear?”

“You were talking about the Spanish.”

“Ah, yes, machismo’s finest hour.
What gave the
conquistadores
a unique approach was the
combination of risk taking and a
strong religious commitment. When you believe you have God
on your side, anything’s possible. Hormones
and
God are unbeatable.”

He nibbled on the roll. “Then, of course, there was the
easy funding: outright theft, in the name of heaven. Señor
Columbus’s journeys were funded with the plunder of the
Inquisition.”

“Hormones, religion, and money,” said Pam very softly.
“That just about sums up the world, doesn’t it.”

Moreland stared at her for a second. A worried parental
stare that he ended abruptly by shifting his attention to his
bread. “In toto, a force to be reckoned with, the Spanish.
They came to the Pacific in the sixteenth century, set about
trying to do precisely what they’d done in—”

He stopped and looked across the terrace. Gladys had
come out of the house.

“I’m not sure we’re ready for the next course, dear.”

“There’s a phone call, Dr. Moreland.”

“A medical call?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, then, please take a message.”

“It’s Captain Ewing, sir.”

Moreland’s stooped frame jerked forward, then he
straightened. “How curious. Please excuse me.”

After he was gone, Pam said, “This is the
first we’ve heard from Ewing in months. I spoke to him
once over the phone. What a sour man.”

I repeated what Dennis had told me about Ewing’s being
exiled for the sex scandal.

“Yes, I heard that, too.”

Jo said, “He’s crating and shipping Lyman like luggage.”

Pam paled. “I’m sorry, Jo.”

Jo dabbed at her lips. “Government is like junior high.
Your status depends upon whom you’re able to persecute.”

“Maybe Dad can work something out with them.”

“I doubt it,” said Jo. “I think they shipped him
already.”

“Your connections don’t help?” said Robin.

“What connections?”

“Working at the Defense Department.”

Jo’s bosom heaved and she let out a barklike laugh.
“Thousands
of people work at the Defense Department.
It’s not exactly as if I’m the Secretary of Defense.”

“I just thought—”

“I’m
nothing,
” said Jo. “Lowly G-12 nerds
don’t count.”

She stabbed the grapefruit, turned the spoon, freeing
the last bits of pulp.

More silence, heavier, oppressive. Geckos racing along
the rail would have been welcome, but they were keeping a low
profile tonight.

Pam said, “Gladys made lamb. It looks great.”

Moreland came back out, a loping skeleton.

“An invitation. To all of us. Dinner
at the base, tomorrow night. Casual formal. I shall wear a
tie.”

That night, I awoke at two in the morning and was unable
to fall back asleep. As I got out of bed Robin turned away
from me. I slipped into some shorts and a shirt and she
rolled back.

“Y’okay, honey?”

“Think I’ll just get up for a while,” I whispered.

She managed to mumble, “Restless?”

“A little.”

If her head was clear enough, she was thinking:
Some
things never change.

I bent and kissed her ear softly. “Maybe I’ll take a
little walk.”

“.   .   .   not too late.”

I covered her shoulders, pocketed the room key, and
slipped out of the bedroom. As I passed Spike’s crate, he
snored a greeting.

“Nighty-night, handsome.”

My bare feet were silent on the landing carpet. The
stairs were sturdy, not a creak.

Down in the entry, the stone floor was cool and welcome
as summer lemonade. All the lights were off and the island
silence saturated the house. I opened the front door and
stepped outside.

The moon was ice-white and the sky pulsed with stars.
Starlight frosted the trees and the fountain, turning the
spatter to glycerine, giving life to the gargoyle roof tiles.

I walked to the gates. They were open and I looked down
the long, sloping road, matte-black till it hit the onyx of
the ocean.

Something moved along the grass at the road’s edge.

Something else skittered in response.

I turned back, fully awake now. Maybe I’d look over a
few more charts. I headed for my bungalow, then
stopped when I heard a door shut.

Footsteps from the rear of the house. The back door,
leading from the kitchen to the gravel paths.

Slow, deliberate footsteps. They ceased. Continued.

Someone came out into the open and stood looking up at
the sky.

Moreland’s unmistakable silhouette.

Not wanting to talk to
him—or anyone else—I retreated into the shadows and
watched as he descended the path, landing thirty feet in
front of me.

Something clunked in his hand. A doctor’s bag.

Same clothes he’d worn at
dinner plus a shapeless cardigan sweater. He headed for the
outbuildings, passed my bungalow, and continued past Robin’s.

Stopping at his office.

At the door, he put the bag down, fumbled in his pocket,
finally found the key but had some trouble inserting it in
the lock. Starlight filtered through trees slashed his face
diagonally, highlighting a cucumber of nose, the deep pouches
columning his downturned mouth.

The door swung open. He picked up his bag and entered.

The door closed silently.

The lights went on, then off. The room stayed dark.