Island of Bones (27 page)

Louis pushed open the screen door of the cabin. Just one room and a dark form on a narrow bed. He lifted the lantern and light flooded the room.

Blood. A dark pool of it in a tangle of white sheets. Then he saw Angel
a, lying on the small bed curled on her side, her face to the wall. She was wearing a thin white gown, but it was pulled up, exposing her from the waist down. Her buttocks and thighs were streaked with blood.

Louis couldn’t see her face, just her hair, a tangled damp mess. Her bloody fingers clutched the sheet, bunching it
to her chest.

Animals...he should have just shot the fuckers where they stood.

A low moan.

S
he was still alive. Barely, but alive and trembling. He touched her shoulder and she cringed, drawing away.

“Angel
a?”

She drew
in a quick breath at the sound of his voice.

“Angel
a Lopez?”

She turned her head toward him slowly. Her eyes lit up with fear and she tried to sit up, but she couldn’t find the strength in her arms.

He set down the lantern and moved to help her, but she pulled back. “No, no, don’t touch me. Leave me alone,” she whimpered.

Louis put up his hand. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She was trying to cover herself with the bloody sheet. She was so pale, her dark hair plastered to her face with sweat. And she was looking at him with terror, as if he had come to kill her, not save her.

“I heard something,” she said. “Rafael? Is he all right?”

Something was wrong here. She was lying in a pool of blood, but he couldn’t see a mark on her. And why was she asking about Rafael?

“Rafael.
..is my husband all right?”

Husband?
His eyes went to her left hand. She was wearing a coral ring.

He heard a weird sound. It sounded muffled, weak, almost like a cat. His eyes moved to the bunched-up sheet between Angel
a and the wall. He reached down. She grabbed his wrist.

“No,” she said, “please, please.”

He eased her wrist from his hand and pulled back the sheet.

A small red body squirmed in the bloody folds. Tiny, white-knuckled hands trembled in the air.

Jesus.
It was a baby.

Louis looked at Angel
a. She reached weakly for her baby and gathered it to her chest. The pool of blood under her was spreading.

“Angel
a,” Louis said, “we’ve got to get out of here.”

She shook her head, pulling the child closer.

He had to get her out of here now. He bent and tried to pick them both up, but she twisted from him, whimpering.

“Look,” Louis said, glancing at the door, “these people are crazy. They’re going to kill you.”

She was trying to get away from him, inching toward the wall. He knew she was afraid of him, that she couldn’t make any distinction between him and the others.

“Angel
a,” Louis said softly. “Angel.”

Her eyes came up to his.

“Angel. Rosa sent me. She wants you to come home.”

“Rosa?” she whispered. “Rosa?”

He sensed a lessening in her tension. Maybe she was just on the verge of passing out. He didn’t care. He picked her up, bringing her body tightly against his chest. He pulled her away from the bed, the sheets dragging behind. She wrapped her arms around her baby and let him carry her to the screen door. He kicked it open.

Landeta was standing by the porch, gun drawn. “Louis? Jesus, is that her?”

“Yeah. She’s still alive.” Louis hoisted Angela up to get a better grip. The baby let out a cry.

“What the fuck?” Landeta said. “What the hell is
—-”

“She had a baby,” Louis said. “I’ve got them both.”

“A baby! Jesus H Christ.”

Louis was frantically scanning the dark, but he still didn’t see any of the del Bosque men
—- or Frank. They needed to get back to the boat. Fast. His sleeves were already soaked with blood. When he looked back at Landeta he saw the police radio in his hand.

“Nothing, still nothing,” Landeta said.

Louis shifted Angela in his arms. “All right, we’re going back to the boat. Stay close behind me and keep your gun out. If I say shoot, shoot.”

At the fork in the path, Louis felt Landeta grab his arm.

“They’ll be looking for us if we go back this way,” he said.

Louis looked down at Angel
a’s face. She was having trouble keeping her eyes open.

“Angel, can you hear me?” Louis
asked.

Her eyes fluttered open and she clutched the baby tighter.

“Is there another way to the path that goes around the island?” Louis asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Talk to me, Angel. Is there another path?”

She drew her hand from under the sheet and pointed left. He saw no path
, just trees and brush.

“I can’t take you through there,” he said.

Her hand waved toward the thicket.

“Go through the trees?” he asked.

She nodded weakly.

Louis shifted her weight, his arms starting to
burn. “Mel, hold on to my belt and keep one hand above you so you feel the branches.”

“Louis, we need to know what we’re up against. Ask her.”

“No! Let’s get back to the boat first.”

Louis ducked under a branch, and stepped into the thicket. He kept his head down, using his shoulders to push the brush. The branches tore at his face. He was drenched in sweat and blood and could barely hang on to Angel
a. But he moved on, Landeta’s hand tugging at his belt.

Louis’s foot hit flat ground. Another path.

“I hear water,” Landeta said.

Louis braced himself against a tree, using his knee to boost Angel
a up into his arms. His lungs were burning. He could smell her blood on his sleeves, thick and heavy.

“We came up with the water on our left. We go back with it on the right,” Landeta said.

“I agree.”

They had to go more slowly now. Angel
a and the baby were so heavy Louis had to stop every twenty feet or so to hoist them back up into his arms.

“I see the white cloth,” Louis said.

They made their way to the cloth they had left on the tree. Louis peered down into the mangroves, out to the water.

“Mel, I can’t see the boat. They must have found it.”

He carefully laid Angela on the ground. The baby was fussing in her arms.

“Watch them,” Louis said.

Landeta nodded, knelt, and put one hand on Angela.

Louis skidded down the incline, catching himself on a mangrove limb. When he reached the mud, he stopped and ripped the flashlight from his back pocket.

The beam picked up something white. The boat was there. But there was no water.

He directed the flashlight out toward the bay. The beam caught the water, a good thirty feet out from shore.

The fucking tide! It had gone out. Why hadn’t they figured that into this whole stinking mess?

He felt his entire body tighten. He threw the flashlight down to the mud.

This whole thing was stupid. Stupid! They shouldn’t have come here in the first place.

“Louis, what’s wrong?” Landeta called.

Louis closed his eyes, drawing in heavy breaths.
Calm down. Calm the fuck down.

“Louis?”

He picked up the flashlight and pulled himself back up the incline.

“The tide went out and the boat is in the mud,” Louis said. He saw Landeta was holding the baby, a torn piece of the bloodied sheet wrapped around it.

“I had to cut and tie off the cord,” Landeta said quietly. “It was still attached.”

Louis looked down at Angel
a.

“She’s dead,” Landeta said.

Louis knelt and felt at her neck for a pulse. Nothing. His hand lingered on her neck. He hung his head.

“We’re stuck here until high tide,” Louis
said.

“When is that?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Louis said.

Landeta didn’t respond. In the quiet, Louis could hear a squeaking sound and looked at the baby in Landeta’s arms. A tiny foot was sticking out of the sheet.

“There’s the ferry at the restaurant dock,” Landeta said. “Or maybe that skiff is there.”

Louis shook his head. “No, that’s where they’ll expect us to go.” His eyes searched the darkness. “We have to go back to the compound. Maybe there’s a phone there. They won’t be expecting us to go there.”

He looked down at Angela.

“You have to hide her,” Landeta said.

Louis ran a hand over his sweaty face.

“Now,” Landeta said.

Louis knelt and gathered her body into his arms. He stood and stepped over into the mangroves. He gently laid Angela down among the arching roots. He paused then smoothed her white nightgown down over her bare legs. He placed the remaining portion of the sheet over her face.

He turned back to Landeta. “Let’s go,” he said quietly.

Louis knew they couldn’t stay on the path, so he led Landeta straight up into the brush, keeping the water at their backs. If they kept going uphill, they had a good chance of reaching the compound. They had to move slowly, and the heat was unbearable. Landeta was doing his best to keep the baby covered with the sheet to protect it from the mosquitoes, but Louis could hear the baby’s small cries.

A yellow light glowed in the darkness ahead. It was the house. They moved toward it and soon the shapes of the other cabins in the compound came into view.

Louis saw the beam of flashlights and waved Landeta down into the brush. Two men emerged into the compound, one carrying a rifle. They stopped and began to talk. One of them was clearly angry, but the other was just listening. Louis couldn’t see their faces or hear what they were saying.

“What’s going on?” Landeta whispered.

“I don’t know. Two men...Wait.” Louis watched as one of the men shined the flashlight in the face of the other man. It was Frank. They argued again and finally Frank swatted the flashlight away and went up into the house. The other man shouldered his rifle and followed.

Louis pulled out the Glock. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where you going?”

Louis could hear the anxiety in Landeta’s voice. “Up to the house. Something’s going on in there and I want to find out what.”

Louis crawled to the house, sliding up against the wood. The window was open, and he could hear voices. He took a quick look inside. Five men, and the old woman.

He slipped down against the house and listened.

Ana del Bosque ran her hand over the smooth wood of the chair. The chair had belonged to her mother, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother before that. She had never known her great-grandmother; she had died many years before Ana was born. But Ana knew her name —- Bianca Quinones Marquez y del Bosque. The name was written in the family Bible alongside her great-grandfather, Marcelo Leon del Bosque. All the names of the del Bosque women were written there: Great-grandmother Bianca, her grandmother, Esperanza, and her mother, Lourdes.

Ana’s thin fingers explored the indentations of
the old chair’s carving, all its small nicks and holes. She could barely remember her mother’s face anymore, just her long black hair. She had died of fever when Ana was only nine. After that, her father had drifted into madness until he walked into the water one night and drowned. Ana was eleven when it happened. After that, there were just the four of them on the island —- Ana, her grandmother, her older brother, Alfonso, and her younger brother, Mateo.

Abuela
Esperanza...Ana could remember her grandmother clearly. She could remember coming in from playing and sitting on the wood floor, looking up at her grandmother as she sat in the chair. Ana loved the big chair, with its shiny wood and swirling carvings. And she loved her
abuela
, loved hearing her tell her stories about a magical place called Asturias. A place of high mountains and cool forests, where silver fish jumped in the water and the wolves sang in the night.

We come from a family that is very old, Analita, a family that descended from the great Roman soldiers, a family of the purest blood.

And then her grandmother would talk to her in the old language. Not the Asturian Spanish that her mother and father had spoken, but the old Latin tongue of the Romans. Ana would try hard to learn the odd sounds and words. When she had finished with her lesson,
Abuela
Esperanza would let her sit in the chair. It was big like a throne, and it made her feel like a princess.

Ana eased her seventy-seven-year-old body into the chair. She was still small, but the chair fit her now.

Abuela
Esperanza had been gone for a long time now. And her brothers —- they were both gone now, too, buried in the family graveyard with the others.

She looked around the room at her family. Her eldest son, Edmundo. Her grandsons Pedro and Carlos. And standing off to the
side, her nephew, Orlando. She had devoted her life to keeping the del Bosque family alive, keeping the Isla de los Huesos the way her ancestors had wanted it to be. But it struck her now, an idea that pierced her heart.

She had failed. The outside world was closing in, and she couldn’t stop it.

"
Tempora mutantur, et nos in illis mutamur
,” she whispered.

Frank was standing at her side and looked down at her. “Mama? You said something?”

She shook her head and reached for his hand. She felt eyes and looked across the room to see Orlando staring at her. She looked across the room to her grandsons Pedro and Carlos. Like Orlando, they stood stone-faced and-rigid. All of them were staring at Francisco, as if he were a stranger, an invader.

Which is exactly what he is to them, Ana thought. They had grown up hearing only the sketchiest stories about the uncle who had left. She had never told any of them why.

The only thing they knew was that Emilio was dead, and that a man with his face was now taking his place.

Ana’s gaze went to her oldest son, Edmundo. He was sitting at the table, his eyes red from crying. He had been close to Francisco and Emilio when they were boys, playing the role of father, teaching them the ways of the island, about the tides and the winds, about the ospreys that nested in the highest dead trees and the manatees that cradled their calves in the shallows. It had broken his heart when Francisco left. And now Emilio was dead by his twin brother’s hand.

Would they listen to her? Would they stand behind one of their own or treat him like the stranger he was?

A bang of the screen door made Ana look up. Tomas came in, his long dark hair matted to his forehead with sweat.

“There’s no sign of them,” he said. He slumped in a chair, propping his rifle next to it.

“Where’s Rafael? I thought he was with you,” Carlos
said.

“I don’t know,” Tomas said. “I think he went back to get Angel.”

Ana drew in a deep breath. “What about the strangers?”

Tomas looked around at the other men. “I lost them. But they can’t get far.”

Ana looked at her grand-nephew, Tomas. His eyes glittered with anger in the soft light. Tomas...as unpredictable as the hurricane winds that had torn across the island three weeks ago.

“Do we know who they are?” Ana asked.

“They came here to get Francisco,” Tomas said, sitting up. “The newspapers said he killed Shelly. Why else would they be here?”

Ana looked up at Francisco. “Is that true? Are they policemen?”

All eyes turned to Frank.

“The black man is a private investigator,” Frank said. “I don’t know the other one. He may be a policeman.”

“He’s no cop,” Tomas said quickly. “He can’t be. He’s blind.”

“Then they pose no threat,” Ana said.

Tomas stood quickly. “No threat? If you —-”

“
Tomas,” Orlando interrupted. “Watch your tongue.”

Tomas glared at his father then sat back down. Orlando turned to Ana.

“You’re wrong,
Abuela
Ana,” he said. “They will bring others.”

“They don’t know anything,” Frank said.

Tomas spun to face Frank. “They know about you! They know you are here, old man.”

“Tomas!” Ana snapped.

Tomas raked a hand through his hair and looked away. Frank stepped toward the center of the room. “This is no good. I’ll give myself up. We’ll leave quietly.”

“What good will that do now?” Tomas
said. “They know you came here. They won’t leave until they know why!”

“I can keep them from
—- ” Frank began.

“How?” Tomas shouted. “Do you really think they’ll believe you now and leave the rest of us alone? They saw Angel! They saw what was happening!”

“They saw a pregnant woman, that is all,” Frank said.

“How do you know? How do you know for sure?”

Ana looked around the room. She could see it in their faces, see that they were listening to Tomas.

Tomas saw it, too, and he stood up. “We need to kill them.”

“No,” Frank said.

“We need to kill them and bury them here so they don’t float to the mainland like Shelly did.”

“No,” Frank said.

“You have no say in this, old man,” Tomas said.

“We can’t kill them,” Frank said.

Tomas laughed. “Did you hear him?” he asked, his eyes scanning the faces. “He killed his brother but he won’t kill strangers?”

“It was an accident,” Ana said.

“Accident?” Tomas said. “He killed Emilio then threw him in the water so they would find him!”

The room was quiet for moment. Then Carlos stepped forward, resting the butt of his rifle on the floor. “Tomas is right. They cannot be allowed to leave.”

Ana looked at him then her eyes moved to the man standing next to him.

“And you, Pedro?” she asked.

Pedro’s chest rose with a deep breath. “The police might know they are here,” he said slowly. “If they don’t return, we could bring ourselves even more trouble.”

Tomas shook his head. “I’m telling you, they are alone. If they had any authority or backup, they wouldn’t be sneaking around and hiding in the bushes.”

Ana’s gaze moved to Tomas’s father. “Orlando?”

Orlando lifted his head, his hard dark eyes sliding to Tomas. He held them there for a moment, his lips drawn tight.

“This is my son’s fault,” he
said, looking at the rest of them. “I apologize for what he has done to this family.” He took a deep breath. “But Tomas is my son, and I will do what is necessary to protect him and the rest of us.”

Ana felt Frank’s hand slip from her own. She looked back at Edmundo. He was still sitting at the table, his back to them. He had not moved or said a word.

“Edmundo?” Ana asked.

Edmundo turned. He looked older than his sixty-two years, and his creased face was sunken with despair. His eyes were red as he looked first at Ana, then up at Frank.

“Francisco has been gone for many years,” he said. “But that doesn’t make him less of a brother or a son to us. He has done nothing wrong.”

He looked at Tomas. “You are the one who must go, Tomas. You should go to these men and take responsibility for what you did. Then maybe they will leave the rest of us alone.”

“You’re crazy!” Tomas said, hefting his rifle to both hands. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Ana started to rise, but a noise drew all their eyes to the door. Rafael came in, gasping for breath. He was dirty, his shirt soaked with sweat, his right shoulder bloody.

“She’s gone,” he panted. “Angel’s gone!”

“What about the baby?” Tomas asked.

“The baby’s gone, too. They’ve taken them.”

Tomas looked back at Edmundo. “That’s it. They won’t leave us alone now. Angel will tell them everything.”

“He’s right,” Carlos said.

Pedro nodded. “We need to find them now before they get back to the dock.”

Ana’s eyes went to Orlando, but it was clear that he would side with his son. Edmundo was just sitting there, shaking his head.

Ana push
ed herself out of the chair with her thin arms. “God forgive me,” she whispered.

“No, Mama,” Frank said.

She looked back at the men. “All right. Go, and be quick with it.”

The five younger men hurried out. Edmundo didn’t move from the table. Ana sank back down in the chair and Frank knelt in front of her, taking her hands.

“This is wrong,” he said.

“There’s no other way,” she said.

Frank looked toward Edmundo. His brother looked back at him with welling eyes. “You’ve been gone too long, Francisco,” he said. “If you want to stay now, you must do what is necessary, not what is right.”

Frank rose slowly. He looked around the room and then
walked to an old wooden cabinet near the fireplace. He opened the doors, stared at the rifles, then took one down. From a drawer, he pulled out a handful of bullets. He cracked open the rifle and loaded it. He snapped it shut and with a final look at Edmundo, he left the room.