Bare Bones (35 page)

Park moved to a point directly opposite the shelving and hefted a burlap bag in his left hand. The bag moved and changed shape like a living thing.

Adrenaline shot through every fiber in my body.

Park’s circle of light darted through the basement’s macabre assemblage, its jerky motion a barometer of its holder’s anger. I could hear Park’s breath, smel his sweat.

My grip tightened on the tent stake. Unconsciously, I tensed and pressed closer against the shelving.

The shelving wobbled, ticked the wal .

Park’s light leapt in my direction. He took a step toward me. Another. The glow lit my feet, my legs. Moving slowly, I slipped the hand with the tent stake behind my back.

I heard another gasp, then Park stopped and raised the lantern. Though not bright, the sudden il umination caused my good eye to squint. My head jerked to the side.

“So, Dr. Brennan. Final y we meet.”

The voice was flat and silky, high like a child’s. Park wasn’t bothering to disguise it now, but I knew instantly. The Grim Reaper!

My grip tightened on the stake. Every muscle in me tensed.

Park smiled a smile that was pure ice.

“My associates and I are so appreciative of your battle on behalf of wildlife, we’ve decided to give you a smal token of our gratitude.” Park raised the bag. Inside, something writhed, causing shadows to ripple and morph in the burlap.

I stood frozen, back pressed to the wal .

“Nothing to say, Dr. Brennan?”

How to play it? Reason? Cajole? Lash out? I chose to remain mute.

“Al right, then. The gift.”

Park took a step back, al owing shadow to swal ow me once again. I watched him set the lantern on the ground and begin unknotting the tied ends of the bag.

Barely thinking, I slid the tent stake behind the shelving and levered with both hands. The top-heavy case swayed forward, settled back.

Engrossed in his task, Park didn’t notice.

I dropped the stake.

Park’s head came up.

I grabbed a metal upright with both hands and rocked the shelving away from the wal with al my strength.

Park straightened.

The shelving pitched forward. Urns flew through the air.

Park threw both hands up, twisted his upper body. The Karnak special caught him in the right temple. He dropped. I heard his skul crack against cement.

The lantern glass shattered and its light went out, leaving only the smel of kerosene.

For what seemed a lifetime, objects crashed and rol ed on the floor.

When the noise final y ceased, there was eerie quiet.

Catacomb darkness.

Utter stil ness.

One heartbeat. Two. Three.

Was Park unconscious? Dead? Lying in wait? Should I flee? Grope for the tent stake?

Burlap rustled, sounding like thunder in the silence.

I held my breath.

Was Park releasing his malicious present?

A whisper, like the soft brushing of scales on cement.

More silence.

Had I imagined the sound?

The tiny scraping started again, stopped, started.

Something was moving!

What to do?

Then a terrifying, stupefying rattling deadened my every response.

Snakes!

I pictured slithering bodies coiling to strike. Darting tongues. Lidless, gleaming eyes.

Glacial cold cramped my chest, then rol ed outward through my heart, my veins, my stomach, my fingertips.

What kind of snakes? Moccasins? Copperheads? Did those snakes rattle? Diamondbacks? Something exotic from South America? Knowing Park’s history, I was certain the snakes were venomous.

How many were out there, slithering toward me in the dark?

I felt total y alone. Total y abandoned.

Please, please let someone come!

But no one was coming. No one knew where I was. How could I have been so stupid?

Struggling to function, my mind flew in a mil ion directions.

How does a snake locate its prey? Vision? Smel ? Heat? Motion? Does it go on the attack or try to avoid contact?

Do I freeze? Bolt? Go for the tent stake?

More rattling.

Panic overcame reason. Good eye wide in the darkness, I shot toward the door.

My foot caught on the fal en shelving and I pitched headlong into the rubble. My hand hit flesh and bone, unconsciously jerked left.

Hair. Something warm and wet, puddled on the cement.

Park!

The rattling reached a crescendo.

Fighting back tears, I rol ed to my right and felt a wooden leg.

Stand! Raise your head out of striking range!

As I tried to pul myself up I noticed lights rake the window.

Then white-hot fire shot up my ankle.

I screamed from pain and terror.

As I draped myself over a table, the burning moved up my leg, my groin. What little vision I had blurred.

My thoughts floated to a different place, a different time. I saw Katy, Harry, Pete, Ryan.

I heard pounding, scraping, felt my body lifted.

Then nothing.

IT WAS A WEEK BEFORERYAN ANDIHAULED OUR SAND CHAIRSacross Anne’s boardwalk and parked them on the beach. I wore the long-anticipated bikini and an elegant white sock. A large-brimmed straw hat and Sophia Loren shades hid the black eye and scabbing on my face. A cane kept the weight off my left foot.

Ryan was dressed in surfer shorts and enough blocker to protect Moby Dick. On our first beach day he’d turned Pepto pink. On our second he was moving toward tobacco-leaf gold.

While Ryan and I read and chatted, Boyd alternated between snapping at the surf and chasing seagul s.

“Hooch real y likes it here,” Ryan said.

“His name is Boyd.”

“Too bad Birdie wouldn’t change his mind.”

During the past week Slidel , Ryan, and Woolsey had fil ed me in on the missing pieces. Ryan and I had zigzagged between discussing and avoiding the culminating events in Lancaster. Ryan could sense I was stil subject to flashbacks of terror.

The snakes turned out to be timber rattlers captured in the Smoky Mountains. Park liked to work with natural ingredients. Thanks to Slidel and Rinaldi, I was bitten only twice. Thanks to Woolsey, I was at the ER before the venom spread.

Though I was violently il for twenty-four hours, I improved quickly thereafter, and Ryan’s daily visits hastened my recovery. Four days after my encounter in the funeral chapel basement, I was back home. Three days after that, Ryan and I split for Sul ivan’s Island, Boyd doing his saliva act in the backseat.

The sky was blue. The sand was white. Pink strips were glowing around the edges of my swimsuit. Though my left foot and ankle were stil swol en and uncomfortable, I felt terrific.

My sudden epiphany about James Park had been correct. Park and Dorton had been drug-smuggling buddies since Vietnam. When Dorton returned Stateside he invested his profits in hunt camps and strip clubs. When Park got home he went into the family funeral business. Mama and Daddy Park, both born in Seoul, owned a parlor in Augusta, Georgia. After a few years, with a little help from the folks, James bought an operation of his own in Lancaster.

Park and Dorton stayed in touch, and Park booked into one of Dorton’s wilderness camps. Ricky Don, having established himself in the import-export business, pointed out the prosperity to be had from franchises in drugs and wildlife, and Park al owed as how he could tap Asian markets for both the imports and the exports.

Jason Jack Wyatt supplied bears from the mountains. Harvey Pearce hunted on the coast and brought the bear parts to Dorton on his drug runs to Charlotte. Park prepared the gal s and hawked them in Asia, often exchanging them for drugs to supplement Ricky Don’s Latin American suppliers.

“Sunscreen?” Ryan waggled the tube.

“Thanks.”

Ryan applied lotion to my shoulders.

“Lower?”

“Please.”

His hands worked their way to the smal of my back.

“Lower?”

“Um.”

His fingertips slipped under the elastic of my bikini bottom.

“That’l be fine.”

“Sure?”

“The sun’s never shined that far down, Ryan.”

As Ryan dropped into his chair, another question occurred to me.

“How do you suppose Cobb uncovered the bear gal operation?”

“Cobb was looking into turtle poaching in Tyrrel County and made the bear discovery by accident when he was shadowing Harvey Pearce.” Anger wel ed in me as I thought of Harvey Pearce.

“The son of a bitch baited bears with Honey Buns, then blew their brains out, cut off the paws, cut out the gal bladders, and dumped the rest.”

“Maybe Pearce’s particular circle in hel wil be ful of bears, and Harvey without so much as a peashooter.” I thought of something else.

“That note in Brian Aiker’s wal et real y threw me.”

“Cobb’s note to Aiker.”

“Yeah. I assumed Cobb meant Columbia, South Carolina. I forgot Harvey Pearce lived in Columbia, North Carolina.” I shook my head at my own stupidity.

“I also thought Cobb was referring to Palmer Cousins as the person who was dirty.”

“He meant plural not singular, the Dynamic Duo from Sneedvil e, Tennessee.” After some grammatical stumbling, Ryan and I had agreed on the masculine pronoun for Charlotte Cobb.

“The Melungeon cousins.”

I watched a pelican swoop over the water, tuck its wings, and plunge toward a wave. Seconds later it came up empty.

“Do you suppose the Spix’s macaw and the goldenseal were just opportunistic sidelines?” I asked.

“Dorton may have asked Cousin J.J. to gather the goldenseal. He probably planned to persuade his regulars that the stuff was effective at masking drugs during urine tests.”

“And Harvey Pearce probably got the macaw the same way he scored the bird Pounder mentioned.”

“Probably,” Ryan agreed. “Tyree sold coke on the street for Dorton. Tyree, Dorton, Pearce, and Park met periodical y at the Foote farm. Pearce probably brought the bird to the farm on one of those trips. Sadly for al , it didn’t survive its ordeal.”

“But someone saved the feathers, thinking they might be good for a few bucks.”

Exactly as Rachel Mendelson had suggested.

“That would be my guess,” Ryan said.

Boyd spotted a kid on a bike, ran with him a few yards, then veered off after a sandpiper.

“Tamela had nothing to do with the drugs, just went to the farm with Tyree.” I pictured the Banks sisters in my kitchen. “You should have seen her face, Ryan. I believe her account of the stil birth.”

“Couldn’t prosecute anyway. No way to prove cause of death.”

We both rol ed that thought around. Then I had another.

“So Cobb alerted Brian Aiker, and the two began poking around. Dorton or Park found out.”

“Dorton probably gave the order, but according to Tyree, Park kil ed Aiker,” Ryan said. “Drugged him, took two cars to the boat ramp, and rol ed Aiker’s car into the water. Wouldn’t surprise me if Tyree drove one of the cars.”

“And Tyree kil ed Cobb.”

“According to the innocent accused, he ain’t no kil er. He only does ‘bidness.’ Fil s a human need. Al Tyree admits to is hauling Cobb’s head and hands to the Foote farm in a sack provided by Park, who wanted to make the body more difficult to identify.”

“Two bul ets in the head strike you as Park’s style?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” Ryan agreed. “Tyree claims to know nothing about bear parts, either. Claims that was entirely Jason Jack’s and Harvey’s enterprise. Claims he had to dig up and move some of the bears because the privy was becoming overful and he was afraid the smel could draw attention to Cobb’s remains.”

“Only the moron dug up part of the very thing he was trying to hide.” Another question skipped into my mind. “Did Park kil Dorton?”

“Very doubtful. No motive, and the tox screen showed Dorton was skyed to the eyebal s on coke and alcohol. We may never know if the cause of death was homicide or acute numerical ascension.”

“OK, Ryan. I’l bite.”

“His number was up.”

The orbital rol caused moderate pain.

“But we do know Park made a trip to Charlotte two days after Sonny Pounder’s arrest.” About the time I was analyzing Tamela’s baby’s bones.

“Why?” I asked.

“That’s unclear. But Slidel discovered Park made a credit card charge at a gas station on Woodlawn and I-77.”

“Think Park and Dorton were planning to take Pounder out if he talked?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. What is clear is that Park kil ed Murray Snow. Woolsey found a tin of Ma Huang in the chapel basement.”

“I’m confident you’re going to tel me what that is.”

“Ma Huang is an Asian herbal poison, known on the streets as ‘herbal ecstasy.’”

“Let me guess. Ma Huang contains ephedrine.”

“Step to the head of the class.”

“Park knew Snow had a bad heart.”

“Probably gave him tea laced with Ma Huang. It’s often administered that way. Wham-o. Cardiac arrest.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Same reason he poisoned Cagle. He was becoming nervous over too much interest in the headless skeleton.”

“Howdid he poison Cagle?”

“Not knowing Cagle’s medical susceptibility, our hero had to step up to something more powerful. Something that would do in even a healthy man. Ever hear of tetrodotoxin?”

“It’s a neurotoxin, cal ed TTX for short, found in fugu.”

Ryan looked at me like I’d spoken Romanian.

“Fugu is Japanese puffer fish,” I explained. “Gram for gram, TTX is about ten thousand times more lethal than cyanide. Diners die from it every year in Asia. The terrifying thing about TTX is that it paralyzes the body but leaves the brain ful y aware of what’s happening.”

“But Cagle survived.”

“Is he talking yet?”

“No.”

“So we don’t know how Park administered the stuff.”

Ryan shook his head.

“How do you know Park used TTX?” I asked.

“Tetrodotoxin looks like heroin. In addition to the Ma Huang, Park’s pharmacopoeia included a packet of white crystal ine powder. Woolsey had it tested.” A seagul circled, landed, bobbed at us like one of those breakfast table water toys.