Bone Key (18 page)

“So let me get this straight,” Lindenmuth said, wagging a manicured finger toward Shannen’s face, the gold bracelets on his wrist jangling with the motion. “Two old farts stumble onto the site and have heart attacks, and for
that
, you have to shut down?” Lindenmuth was wearing a white button-down short-sleeved shirt that probably cost 180 SUPERNATURAL

as much as any of Shannen’s workers made in a month. He wore pressed khaki shorts and pristine moccasins. It was as close to a business suit as anyone came on Key West.

“No.” Shannen spoke very slowly in order to keep her temper under control. “Two people were found dead under mysterious circumstances
and
before they died, they discovered some bones buried under the foundation. The cops are looking into the deaths—”

“I
saw
those two, Ms. Bodell, and they were two very old people who probably just dropped dead when they saw the damn bones.”

Shannen refrained from pointing out that one of the corpses was one of her twenty-eight-year-old workers, and the other one was apparently only in her early twenties. The whole thing creeped Shannen out, even though she hadn’t really
liked
Tom all that much. His whole revenge-on-his-ex thing had been disgusting enough, but he’d tried to get Shannen in on it. As a woman in a field that was 99.9 percent male, the cavemanlike behavior of construction workers usually was like water off a duck’s back to her, but Tom was just
gross
about it.

Still, he had been a good worker when he wasn’t being an ass, and even scummy asses didn’t deserve to die like
that.
Whatever
that
was. Not that any of this mattered. “Mr. Linden-Bone Key

181

muth, the two dead bodies are almost beside the point. There’s the bones to consider.”

“Who cares about some old bones?”

“Well, the families of whoever they belong to, for one.”

Lindenmuth rolled his eyes. “
Please,
Ms. Bodell. I researched this property
intensely
before purchasing it, and any bones that might be found are so old that I doubt any could obtain the provenance of them.”

“They’re doing pretty amazing things with science these days, Mr. Lindenmuth. Plus—if they’re really that old, they might be Native American bones, which means it ain’t just gonna be the cops, it’ll be the government. They could shut us down for months—or even permanent, if it’s a burial ground or something.”

Now Lindenmuth threw up his hands and started pacing. “This is
ridiculous
! I paid
good money
for this lot, money I earned with my hands.”

Given how pristine those hands were, Shannen thought it far more likely that the only thing his hands did was sign the checks for the people who actually did the work to earn him that money. She hated rich twerps who tried to pretend that they were like regular people. Hell, even if he’d said he’d earned the money with his brains, she would’ve respected him more.

But she said nothing, for the same reason that 182 SUPERNATURAL

she didn’t kick him in the ’nads. Those hands signed
her
checks, too.

Despite the breeze coming in off the Atlantic Ocean, Lindenmuth’s hair didn’t move until he ran his hands through it. Even then, it hardly budged.

“Look, Ms. Bodell, I appreciate that this is a difficult situation, but I need to have this house finished by the summer.”

Shannen winced. “It’ll all depend on the bones, Mr. Lindenmuth. But honestly, given how many of

’em there are, the best-case scenario is that we
get
back to work
in the summer.”

“Seriously? That’s ridiculous!”

“I had one job that got delayed by five years.”

That was farther north in Florida, and the same sort of situation: A hurricane kicked up enough dirt to reveal old Seminole bones. That got caught up in a major political and legal shitstorm, because it turned out that there were all kinds of zoning and building irregularities above and beyond the question of Native remains. Pretty typical for Florida, in truth, but Shannen didn’t think that would comfort Lindenmuth all that much, so she didn’t go into specifics.

Pulling a cell phone off a belt clip, he wandered off to the sidewalk in front of the site. “Let me make a few calls. No offense, Ms. Bodell, but this requires a particular touch.”

“Knock yourself out,” she said with a sigh. Bone

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She’d been building houses in Florida for ten years now, ever since her husband Rudy passed and left her the business. She’d been running it ten times better than his lazy, unmotivated ass, too. When she inherited it, it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Now it was thriving under the tutelage of the same woman that Rudy had said “couldn’t run no construction bidness, no way, no how.” After Rudy’s death from a heart attack, which occurred while he was eating an entire bucket from KFC, Shannen dedicated her life to proving him wrong. One of the things she’d done was make connections among the politicians both locally and in Tallahassee. She knew exactly which wheels to grease and when to grease them—which was why she knew that there was nothing to be done, especially if these really were Native bones. Riding roughshod over the tribes was a sure way to get yourself mired in a PR disaster, especially now that so many of the tribes had casino money with which to pay good lawyers and publicists. Which was why Shannen knew that Lindenmuth’s “touch” would do no good. Florida politicos were more than happy to perform illegal acts, but ran like hell from the
appearance
of performing even unethical ones, and being anything but solicitous of a burial ground would torpedo their chances at reelection and, therefore, more graft. Besides, she knew damn well that the “particu-184 SUPERNATURAL

lar touch” he was referring to was his possession of a penis.

She walked over to her foreman, Chris, who was sitting on a folding chair reading a copy of the
Miami Herald
sports section and muttering,

“Goddamn Oklahoma,” which meant he was reading about the Fiesta Bowl, in which West Virginia beat Oklahoma 48–28. The other sections of the paper were next to the chair on the ground, weighed down from blowing away by a metal coffee mug.

“How much you lose when West Virginia won?”

Shannen asked, knowing that Chris only cared about college football bowl games when he bet on them.

“It ain’t that they won—I didn’t make the spread. WV won by twenty goddamn points.”

“You bet on
more
than twenty?”

Chris shrugged. “Money was better.”

“If
they beat it.”

Again, Chris shrugged, then folded the paper and stuck it under the mug with the other sections.

“Pays your money, takes your choice. What’d pretty-boy have to say?”

“He thinks he can ‘make some calls’ so this’ll go away.”

Folding his meaty arms over his barrel chest, Chris said, “On what planet? He thinks he got suction you ain’t got?”

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“Probably not, but it can’t hurt to try. Maybe he’ll surprise us, and we can get back to work.”

“Yeah. Hey listen, we’re holdin’ a little thing for Tom at Captain Tony’s later. They’re lettin’ us have the pool pit for a couple hours.”

Shannen nodded. “I’ll be there.”

“Missy’s probably dancin’ a jig.”

The last thing Shannen wanted to do was discuss Tom’s personal life. “Anyhow, I think I’ll—”

Suddenly, all the work lights went out, and the site was plunged into near darkness, the only illumination coming from one of the streetlights on South and the crescent moon.

“You forget to pay the bill again, boss?” Chris asked with a smirk.

Since the streetlight was on, it wasn’t a blackout, so that was a reasonable question. Except, of course, Shannen
had
paid the bill. So she ignored Chris’s smart-ass remark—though she continued to take huge pride in his calling her “boss.”

Lindenmuth was staring at his phone. “My cell’s dead,” he said.

Harry, one another of the workers, had his own phone out. “So’s mine.”

Another’s iPod was equally dead, as were all the other cell phones.

“Okay,” Shannen said, “this is messed up. C’mon, let’s—”

Then she saw him.

186 SUPERNATURAL

He was a big man, dressed like something out of an old painting of an Indian brave. He had on war paint and a red, white, and black mask over his face, wild black hair, and a belt made of bones. He was wearing a loincloth, and nothing else—except the mask, anyhow. He was pretty hot, actually.

“Sheesh,” Chris said. “I thought Halloween was two months ago.”

“Great,” Shannen said, “the crazies are starting in already.” In general, Shannen was supportive of Native causes. After all, they
were
pretty much wiped out, and so had reason to be cranky. But even the most noble causes attracted their share of loonies, and Shannen figured this was some fruitcake who decided to stir up trouble on the site. The fruitcake spoke in a scary loud voice. “We are the Last Calusa, and we will have our vengeance.”

Lindenmuth was staring in openmouthed shock.

“The last
who
?”

Shannen knew all the tribes that currently lived in Florida, and the Calusa wasn’t one of them. If she remembered right, they were an old tribe that used to live down here, but they were wiped out a long time ago. So this was a Grade-A fruitcake.

“Once these islands were ours. We were mighty warriors, who lived off the land and sea. Those who tried to fight us died in the trying. Those who enlisted our aid were better for our help. We were the Calusa, and none could destroy us.”

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Suddenly, Shannen realized that this fruitcake wasn’t speaking English or Spanish—the only two languages she knew—but she still understood every word he said.

She also had a Walther PPK .380 in her purse—

fully licensed, thank you very much—that she was slowly pulling out, being careful not to move too quickly and spook the fruitcake.

“But then came the outsiders and their sickness, and they brought low the Calusa. Now is the time of our vengeance. You will be the first to die.”

When the .380 was fully out, she dropped the purse and held the weapon with both hands, clicking off the safety. “Screw you, pal. Only one’s gonna get hurt is you if you don’t get your loinclothed ass off this site.”

“We are beyond pain. Beyond suffering. Beyond death. We were taken from this life, and our last act will be for you to join us in the afterworld.”

The fruitcake took one step closer to Shannen, and she squeezed the trigger, her wrists bending back a bit from the recoil.

The bullet went right
through
him. Chris and Harry rushed the guy after Shannen fired, the former wielding a wrench. Harry liked to get his hands dirty.

With a gesture from the Indian, though, Harry and Chris stopped dead in their tracks. And then they just stopped dead. Their skin got 188 SUPERNATURAL

all wrinkled and dried up and withered. Chris’s thick arms were suddenly husks of skin plastered over bone and sagging muscle. Both sets of eyes were sunken and hollow.

Lindenmuth started making incoherent noises, which was more than Shannen was capable of. What she had just seen was impossible. She squeezed the trigger again and again and again, but again the bullets ran right through him, like he wasn’t even
there.

But she
heard
him. She
saw
him. And he obviously did
something
to Chris and Harry. Even after the pistol was empty, she kept dryfiring, unable to stop, unable to believe what was happening, unable to process any of this. First Tom, and his messed-up love life. Then Chris and his betting. And Harry, he had a wife and daughter in Tampa, with a college-age son at Purdue in Indiana.

Another gesture from the
thing
that called itself the Last Calusa, and three more guys fell over. Then a few more. Then Lindenmuth.

Then he turned to Shannen.

She could see his eyes under the mask, even in the poor light. They were brown and fierce and angry. Shannen had spent ten years of her adult life married to an abusive bastard, and she remembered the look in his eyes when he was drunk and angry and would start beating on her. Bone

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That look in Rudy’s eyes had scared her to death, and it was
nothing
compared to what she saw in the eyes of the Last Calusa.

“P-please,” she whimpered, lowering the .380.

“Please don’t.”

“It is already done,” the Last Calusa said. Looking down, Shannen saw that her hands were horribly wrinkled, her skin wrinkling and contracting.

“N-no!”

“Yes.”

Her suddenly weakened legs unable to hold her weight, Shannen collapsed to the dirt, even as the Last Calusa reared its head back and let out a bone-jarring scream to the heavens.

It was the last thing she would ever hear.

FOURTEEN

When Dean turned left onto South Street from Duval, he quickly slammed on the Impala’s brakes. There were cop cars all around the construction site, more crime-scene tape, and a van from the Monroe County Medical Examiner’s Office. At least half a dozen uniformed officers were either wandering around or guarding the perimeter, a few guys were wearing jackets with the same M.E. logo as the van, and there was one guy wearing a tie—the first such Dean had seen on the island not worn by him or Sam.