Bare Bones

  Trembling, I placed the next-to-last match head on the striker strip. Before I struck it, I sensed that this part of the room was more pewter than black.

  I turned back. A small rectangle was visible high above the table.

  I peered more intently.

  The rectangle was a window covered with grillwork, grime, and dust.

  Shoving the matchbook into my pocket, I climbed onto the table, stretched up on my toes, and looked out.

  The window was half underground, surrounded by a vine-clogged well. Through the top portion I could see trees, a shed, moonlight oozing through a crack between eggplant clouds.

  I heard more geese, realized their squawking was muffled by earth and concrete, not altitude or distance.

  My pulse began to race again. My breath came even quicker.

  I was trapped in an underground room, a basement or cellar of some sort. The only way out was probably a stairway beyond the locked door.

  I closed my eyes, breathed deeply.

  Move! Take action!

  As I hopped from the table, a dozen filaments swayed in the moonlight, each glistening like spider silk. The sweet liver smell was stronger.

  I stepped closer.

  Each filament held a fleshy mass about the size of my fist. Each mass was suspended over a small shielded burner.

  Bear galls! They must have been dried already because the burners weren’t on.

  Outrage and anger sent the last of my claustrophobia packing.

  Act now! Do it fast! The break in the clouds won’t last.

  I struck match number five and moved to the far end of the table.

  File cabinets. Parking signs. Flower stands with long spiky points. A baby casket. A miniature steel vault. Rolls of fake grass. A tent.

  Unrolling a layer of canvas, I grabbed a tent stake, stuck it in my pocket, and crossed the room.

  Find candles! Get light next to the door. Use the tent stake to try to break the lock or pry the handle.

  Barely breathing, I struck the last match and scanned the cartons.

  Embalming fluids. Hardening compound.

  I got to the shelves, squatted, peered into an open box.

  Eye caps, trocar buttons, scalpels, drain tubes, hypodermic needles, syringes. Nothing that would break a door.

  The room began to dim.

  Could I move one of the burners? Could I light it?

  I stood.

  The upper shelves housed a theme park of urns in bronze and marble. An eagle with outstretched wings. Tutankhamen’s death mask. A gnarled oak. A Greek god. A double crypt.

  Sweet Jesus! Did the urns contain cremains? Were the uncollected dead staring down on my plight? Could a bronze eagle break a wooden door? Could I lift it?

  The clouds closed. Darkness claimed the basement once again.

  I felt my way back to the table, climbed up, and peered out. Could I attract anyone’s attention? Did I want to? Would the dark-haired stranger return and finish me off?

  My leg and face pulsated with pain. Tears burned the back of my lids. Clamping my teeth, I held them in check.

  The landscape was a study in black.

  Minutes passed. Hours. Millennia.

  I fought feelings of helplessness. Surely someone would come. But who? What time was it?

  I looked at my watch. The darkness was so thick I couldn’t see my hand.

  Who knew I was here? Despair clawed my brain. No one!

  Suddenly, a light appeared, flickered as it moved through the trees.

  I watched the light bob toward the small patch of denseness I knew to be the shed. It disappeared, reappeared, bobbed in my direction. As it neared, I started to yell out, then stopped myself. I began to make out the form of a man. He drew close, veered out of my field of vision.

  A door banged overhead.

  I dropped from the table, scuttled across the room, and shrank behind the far end of the shelving. The case wobbled as I pressed against it. Reaching into my pocket, I withdrew the tent stake, wrapped my fingers around it, and dropped it to my side, point down.

  Moments later I heard movement outside the basement door. A key turned. The door opened.

  Barely breathing, I peered between the urns.

  The man paused in the doorway, lantern held above his right shoulder. He was short and muscular, with thick black hair and Asian eyes. His sleeves were rolled, revealing a tattoo above his right wrist. SEMPER FI.

  Hershey Zamzow had spoken of Asian middlemen in bear gall trafficking.

  Sonny Pounder had spoken of a Korean dealer, someone with an inside line.

  Ricky Don Dorton had worked his mortuary scheme with a Marine Corps buddy.

  Terry Woolsey was suspicious about her lover’s death, and about his replacement as coroner.

  In a heartbeat my mind forged another composite.

  My attacker was the man who had hastily embalmed Murray Snow’s body. The man who had visited Wally Cagle. The man who smuggled drugs and bear galls with Ricky Don Dorton.

  My attacker was the Lancaster County coroner, James Park! James Park was Korean.

  Park stepped through the doorway and swept his lantern about. I heard a sharp intake of breath, saw his body stiffen.

  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, smell his sweat.

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

  The shelving wobbled, ticked the wall.

  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 illumination caused my good eye to squint. My head jerked to the side.

  “So, Dr. Brennan. Finally 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 small 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 wall.

  “Nothing to say, Dr. Brennan?”

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

  “All right, then. The gift.”

  Park took a step back, allowing shadow to swallow 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 wall with all 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 skull crack against cement.

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

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

  When the noise finally ceased, there was eerie quiet.

  Catacomb darkness.

  Utter stillness.

  One h
eartbeat. 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 rolled 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 totally alone. Totally 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 million directions.

  How does a snake locate its prey? Vision? Smell? 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 fallen 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 rolled to my right and felt a wooden leg.

  Stand! Raise your head out of striking range!

  As I tried to pull 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 BEFORE RYAN AND I HAULED OUR SAND CHAIRS across 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 seagulls.

  “Hooch really likes it here,” Ryan said.

  “His name is Boyd.”

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

  During the past week Slidell, Ryan, and Woolsey had filled 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 still 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 Slidell and Rinaldi, I was bitten only twice. Thanks to Woolsey, I was at the ER before the venom spread.

  Though I was violently ill 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 Sullivan’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 still swollen 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 allowed 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 galls 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 small of my back.

  “Lower?”

  “Um.”

  His fingertips slipped under the elastic of my bikini bottom.

  “That’ll 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 gall operation?”

  “Cobb was looking into turtle poaching in Tyrrell County and made the bear discovery by accident when he was shadowing Harvey Pearce.”

  Anger welled 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 gallbladders, and dumped the rest.”

  “Maybe Pearce’s particular circle in hell will be full of bears, and Harvey without so much as a peashooter.”

  I thought of something else.

  “That note in Brian Aiker’s wallet really 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 Sneedville, 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 periodically at the Foote farm. Pearce probably brought the bird to the farm on one of those trips. Sadly for all, 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 stillbirth.”

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

  We both rolled 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 killed Aiker,” Ryan said. “Drugged him, took two cars to the boat ramp, and rolled Aiker’s car into the water. Wouldn’t surprise me if Tyree drove one of the cars.”

  “And Tyree killed Cobb.”

  “According to the innocent accused, he ain’t no killer. He only does ‘bidness.’ Fills a human need. All 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 bullets 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 overfull and he was afraid the smell 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 kill Dorton?”

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

  “OK, Ryan. I’ll bite.”

  “His number was up.”

  The orbital roll 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 Slidell 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 killed Murray Snow. Woolsey found a tin of Ma Huang in the chapel basement.”