The Web (9 page)

“Abraham never went through with it.”

“In his view that was because Abraham didn’t merit true
fulfillment. He, of course, was quite another story.”

Telling the story had turned him pale.

“I can still see his face. Smiling,
tranquil.”

“Any similarities to this murder?”

“Several.”

“And some of the factors you’ve just mentioned are
present here, too. Dependence upon the white man, then
abandonment.”

“But still,” he said, bending forward, “it doesn’t make
sense. Because other factors are absent.”

“No pre-Christian culture.”

“And absolutely no history of cults on Aruk!”

He rapped his knuckle against the file. “I continue to
insist that this hideousness was the work of a single, sick
person.”

“Someone who’d read up on cannibalism and was trying to
simulate a cult murder?”

“Perhaps. And most important, someone who’s moved on.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it hasn’t happened again.”

He was ashen. I lacked the heart for debate.

“For a while, son, I couldn’t stop thinking that he’d
simply gone off to do it somewhere else. But Dennis has been
checking international reports for similar crimes in the
region and none have come up. Now, what say we put aside
this ghastly stuff and move on?”

Chapter

12

For the next hour and a half, we were dispassionate
scientists, discussing cases, suggesting different ways to
organize the data.

Moreland looked at his watch. “Feeding time for Emma and
her friends. Thank you for a stimulating afternoon. It’s
not often I get to engage in collegial discussions.”

I thought of his daughter the
physician, trained in public health. “My pleasure, Bill.”

He strode to the door.
“It’ll be dark soon, don’t work too hard,” he said.
“I didn’t bring you over here to
enslave you.”

Alone, I sat back and looked out the window at the
fountain spitting jewels.

My mind’s eye kept focusing on the photos of AnneMarie
Valdos’s murder scene.

White body on dark rock; the details Moreland and
Laurent had withheld.

Probably what Creedman had been after when Ben caught
him snooping: ace reporter comes to islands to find himself,
finds a gore-fest instead, and phones his agent (“What a
concept, Mel!”).

Then he came up against Moreland and was cut off from the
information. And resented it.

Moreland had concealed the whole truth from his beloved
islanders but offered them to me after a forty-eight-hour
acquaintance.

Wanting input from me .   .   . about
human
motivation.

More worried about recurrence than he’d admitted?

Couching it in
collegiality—
a couple of
guys with doctorates having a clubby chat about
two-legged
supper.

A brilliantly colored bird flew past the window. The
sky was still a peacock blue I’d seen only on crayons.

I got up and headed for Robin’s studio. What would I
tell her?

By the time I reached the door, I’d decided on limited
honesty: letting her know I’d discussed the murder with
Moreland and that he believed it an isolated crime, but
leaving out the details.

She wasn’t there. Bits of shell were laid out neatly
atop the flat file along with a billet of koa and two small
chisels.

No dust. Wishful thinking.

I went looking for her, finally spotted her down by the
fruit groves, a white butterfly flitting among the citrus
trees, Spike a wiggly, dark shadow at her feet.

I jogged to her side, she put her arm in mine, and we
walked together.

“So how did work go?” she said.

“Very scholarly. What’d you do?”

“Played around in the studio, but it was a little
frustrating not being able to work, so Mr. Handsome and I
decided to stroll. The estate’s wonderful, Alex. Huge. We
made it all the way to the edge of the banyan jungle. Bill must
have sunk a fortune into landscaping; there are some
beautiful plantings along the way—herbs, wildflowers, a
greenhouse, orchids growing on tree trunks. Even the walls
are pretty. He’s got different kinds of vines trailing down
them. The only thing that spoils it is the barbed wire.”

She stopped to pick up an orange that had dropped,
peeled it surgically as we continued.

“How much of the jungle can you see over the walls?”

“Treetops. And those aerial roots. There’s a coolness
that seems to make its way over. Not a breeze. Even milder.
A subtle current. I’d take you there but Spikey didn’t like it,
kept pulling away.”

“Our little mine detector.”

“Or some kind of animal on the other side. I couldn’t
hear anything, but you know him.”

I bent and rubbed behind the dog’s bat ears. His flat
face looked up at me, comically grave.

“With those radar detectors, it’s no wonder,” I said.
“Finally style and substance merge.”

She laughed. “Umm, smell those orange blossoms? This
is great, Alex.”

I kept my mouth shut.

We decided to dive the following morning and got up for
an early breakfast. Jo Picker was already on the terrace
dressed in a black T-shirt and loose pants, her hair tied
back carelessly, sooty shadows under her eyes. She kept both
hands on her coffee cup and stared down into it. The food on
her plate was untouched.

When Robin touched her shoulder, she smiled weakly.
Spike’s licking her hand sparked another smile.

As we sat down, she said, “Ly never liked
dogs .   .   . too much maintenance.”

Her lips tightened, then trembled. She stood abruptly
and marched into the house.

We left Spike in the run with KiKo and drove down to
South Beach. As I turned off Front Street to park, I looked
up the coastal road. The Navy blockade was at the top, a
crude wall of gray concrete, at least twenty feet tall. It
appeared to be crammed into the hillside. Warning signs
applied generously. An extension of chain link and barbed
wire snaked up the hill and continued into the brush.

The beach at that point was just a narrow spit and the
wall cut across it and continued into the ocean, creating a
damming effect. But the water was shallow and still, lapping
weakly at the algae-stained base of the sea-barrier. Large
chunks of coral were stacked nearby, desiccated and sunbaked:
part of the reef had been shattered to accommodate
the barrier.

I parked atop the widest section of beach. The sand was
as smooth and white as a freshly made bed, the lagoon that
same silvery green.

We collected our gear, and as I carried it to the
shoreline, I noticed flat, smooth rocks above the tide pools.

The altar where AnneMarie Valdos had been sacrificed.

To what?

We stepped onto the sand.
The temperature was holding as mild and steady as Moreland had
promised. When I tested the lagoon with my foot, there was
no chill, and when I eased in for a swim a soft warmth
enveloped me.

“Perfect,” I called out to Robin.

We put on our fins and masks and snorkels, flipper-walked
the shallows till the water reached our thighs, then
knifed in and floated belly down on the surface of the pool.
The reef took a long time to deepen, finally reaching eight
feet as we neared the brown-red ring of coral that held back
the ocean.

The coral colonies grew in wide, flat beds. Despite the
lack of current, the reef’s living rock seemed to dance,
patches of tiny animals sharing space with bio-condos of sea
urchins, chitons, feather duster worms, and gooseneck
barnacles. Small, brilliant fish grazed, untroubled by our
presence: electric-blue damsels, lemon-yellow tangs,
confident gray-black French angels, shocking-pink basslets
with the stern little faces of tax auditors. Orange-and-white
clownfish nested in the soft, stinging embrace of fluorescent
sea anemones.

The bottom sand was fine, almost downy, spotted with
shells and rocks and shreds of coral. The sunlight made its
way down easily, dappling the ocean floor. We shattered the
light with our shadows, causing some of the shells to move in
reflexive panic.

Drifting in opposite directions, we explored separately
for a while, then I heard Robin burble through her breathing
tube and turned to see her pointing excitedly at the far end
of the reef.

Something torpedo shaped was shooting between us,
speeding across the lagoon. A small sea turtle, maybe a foot
long, head down, legs compressed, skimming the top of the
coral as it headed for bluer pastures.

I watched it disappear, then looked back at Robin, making
the OK sign. She waved and I paddled to her, extending a
hand. We bumped masks in a mock kiss, then swam
together, thrilled and weightless, suspended
like twins in a warm salty
womb.

When we got back on the beach we were no longer alone.

Skip Amalfi and Anders Haygood had spread a
horse blanket thirty feet from our clothes. Skip was
lying on his back, eyes closed, belly surging
and collapsing as he sucked on a cigarette and blew
smoke. Haygood crouched nearby, hairy thighs thick as logs,
tongue tip sticking out the corner of his mouth. Concentrating as he pulled the limbs
off something huge and ugly.

The biggest crab I’d ever seen. Easily thirty inches
from claw to claw, with a knobby, blue, spotted carapace and
pincers the size of bear traps. My year for monster
arthropods.

Haygood looked up at us and snapped a leg free, watched
the juice drip out of it, then held it up and waved it.

“Ma’am. Sir.” Again, the gray eyes washed over Robin
and I became aware of how she looked in her two-piece, hair
dripping over smooth, bare shoulders, hips swelling above
the low-cut bottom, the sharp, sweet contrast between bronze
skin and white nylon.

She turned her back on them just as Skip sat up. Both
men watched her trudge to our blanket. Walking in the sand
made her sway more than she intended to.

“Big crab,” I said.

“Stoner,” said Haygood. “Great eating—can I give you
a couple of legs, sir?”

“No, thanks.”

“You’re sure?”

“Forget it,” said Skip. “Old man Moreland don’t eat
animals.”

“That’s right,” said Haygood. “Too bad. Stoners are
great eating. This one liked coconuts—that’s why it’s blue.
When they eat other things, they can be orange. I’ve seen
them even bigger, but he’s healthy.”

“Mean though,” said Skip. “Bite your finger clear off.
Best thing is throw ’em in the pot live—how was your
swim?”

“Great.”

“See any octopus?”

“No, just a turtle.”

“Little one?”

I nodded.

“Last summer’s hatch. They come in, lay at the breaker
line, bury the eggs. The natives dig ’em up—makes a helluva
omelet. The suckers that make it swim the hell out of here,
but most of them get eaten, too. Sometimes a real stupid one
comes back. Musta been what you saw.”

“Checking out the old ’hood,” said Haygood, laughing.
His teeth were widely spaced and white. The sun turned his
body hair into dense copper wire.

“Octopus are smart,” said Skip. “Those big eyes, you
swear they’re checking you out.” A glance Robin’s way.

“Best omelet for my money is tern,” said Haygood. “Lays
pink eggs. First time people see it they freak out, think it’s
blood. But pink’s the true color. Pink omelet.” He licked his
lips. “Salty—like duck.”

“You can have it, man,” said Skip. “Too fuckin’ gamy.”

Haygood smiled. “Well, I go for the pink.”

Skip snickered.

“Shark’s good eating, too,” said Haygood, “but you have
to soak the meat in acid or it tastes like piss—how long
are you here for, doc?”

“Couple of months.”

“Like it?”

“It’s beautiful.”

They looked at each other. Haygood snapped off another
crab leg.

Skip said, “Rich people would dig this place, right?”

“I guess anyone who likes swimming and relaxing would.”

“What about
you
? What kind of stuff do
you
dig?”

“All kinds of things.”

He dragged on his cigarette and flipped the butt onto
the spotless sand. “Me and my buddy Hay here wanna build a
resort. But different. Grass huts, like a Club Med. Pay one
price up front, get your food, drinks, the works. No TV or
phones or video movies, just swimming and digging the beach,
maybe we’ll bring some girls over to put on a dance show or
something.”

His eyes got hard. “So what do you think?”

“Sounds good.”

“It does, huh?”

“Sure.”

He spat on the sand. “I figure rich assholes from the
mainland’d go for it in a big way, right? ’Cause otherwise,
we’d hafta go for the Japanese tour groups like all the other
islands do.” He put both hands in front of his face, hooked
his upper teeth over his lower lip and flexed his thumbs.

“Take
pikcha,
crick crick.” He laughed.

Haygood smiled and examined the crab’s legless body.

“Full of roe,” he said. “A girl.”

“We wanna get
Americans,
” said Skip. “This is
America even though no one in America knows shit about this
place.”

“Good luck.” I started to walk away.

“Wanna invest?” he called after me.

I was about to laugh, then I saw his face and stopped.

“I’m not really much of an investor.”

“Then maybe you should
start,
man. Get in early.
Guys who invested in Hawaii after the war are wiping their asses
with hundred-dollar bills.”

He held out a palm, as if panhandling.

“Hey, the man came here to mellow out,” said Haygood.
“Give him a break.”

Skip flipped him a middle finger and his weak chin
struggled for a jut. “Shut the fuck up, man. I’m talking
business, here.”

Haygood didn’t speak, but his wrists flexed and the crab’s torso
shattered wetly.

Skip tried to stare him down, but the older man ignored
him.

“Think about it, man,” said Skip, passing some of the
anger over to me. “Talk to your lady; she looks
pretty smart.”

Another glance Robin’s way. She’d draped her shoulders
with a towel and was sitting with her knees drawn up to her
chest, looking out at the sea.

A voice to my back said, “Gentlemen,” and Skip’s dull
eyes narrowed. Haygood wiped his hands with a T-shirt but
his face didn’t move.

I turned. Dennis Laurent stood on the sand in full
mirrored sunglasses flashing white light. He looked vast.
None of us had heard him approach.

He touched an eyebrow. “Doctor. Got a nice stoner,
there, Hay. Must be what, six, seven pounds of meat?”

“Eight at least,” said Skip.

“Pull it off a coco?”

“Didn’t have to,” said Haygood. “Lazy one, sleeping
over there.” He pointed to the tide pools.

“Nothing like an easy target,” said Laurent. “I see you
finally got in the water, doc. Nice?”

“Perfect.”

“Always is. Have a nice day, gentlemen.” He and I
walked to Robin. His shoed feet were steady on the sand.
Spotting the butt Skip had discarded, he picked it up and
pocketed it.

“Those two give you any trouble?”