Duma Key(198)

Jack stood up. So did Wireman. He was checking his hands for more bugs. "I know how you feel," I said, "but I don't think we have time for you to do a full delousing."

"Point taken, but unless you've chewed on one of those maricones, you don't know how I feel."

"Tell us what to do, boss," Jack said. He was looking uneasily into the pit, from which that sallow stench was still issuing.

"Wireman, you have fired the speargun right?"

"Yes, at targets. With Miss Eastlake. Didn't I say I was the marksman of the group?"

"Then you're on guard. Jack, shine that light."

I could see by his face that he didn't want to, but there was no choice until this was done, there'd be no going back. And if it wasn't done, there'd never be any going back.

Not by the land route, at least.

He picked up the long-barreled flashlight, clicked it on, and shone the powerful beam down into the hole. "Ah, God," he whispered.

It was indeed a cistern lined with coral rock, but at some point during the last eighty years the ground had shifted, a fissure had opened probably at the very bottom and the water inside had leaked out. What we saw in the flashlight's beam was a damp, moss-lined gullet eight or ten feet deep and about five feet in diameter. Lying at the bottom, entwined in an embrace that had lasted eighty years, were two skeletons dressed in rotten rags. Beetles crawled busily around them. Whitish toads small boys hopped on the bones. A harpoon lay beside one skeleton. The tip of the second harpoon was still buried in Nan Melda's yellowing spine.

The light began to sway. Because the young man holding it was swaying.

"Don't you faint on us, Jack!" I said sharply. "That's an order!"

"I'm okay, boss." But his eyes were huge, glassy, and behind the flashlight still not quite steady in his hand his face was parchment white. "Really."

"Good. Shine it down there again. No, left. A little more... there."

It was one of the Table Whiskey kegs, now little more than a hump under a heavy shag of moss. One of those white toads was crouched on it. It looked up at me, lids nictitating malevolently.

Wireman glanced at his watch. "We have... I'm thinking maybe fifteen minutes before sundown. Could be a little more, could be less. So...?"

"So Jack puts the ladder into the hole, and down I go."

"Edgar... mi amigo... you have just one arm."

"She took my daughter. She murdered Ilse. You know this is my job."

"All right." Wireman looked at Jack. "Which leaves the watertight container question."

"Don't worry," he said, then picked up the ladder and handed me the flash. "Shine it down there, Edgar. I need both hands for what I'm doing."

It seemed to take him forever to get the ladder placed to his satisfaction, but finally the feet were on the bottom, between the bones of Nan Melda's outstretched arm (I could still see the silver bracelets, although now overgrown with moss) and one of Adie's legs. The ladder was really very short, and the top rung was two feet below ground-level. That was all right; Jack could steady me to begin with. I thought of asking him again about the container for the china figure, then didn't. He seemed completely at ease on that score, and I decided to trust him all the way. It was really too late to do otherwise.

In my head a voice, very low, almost meditative, said: Stop now and I'll let you go free.

"Never," I said.

Wireman looked at me without surprise. "You heard it, too, huh?"

viii

I lay on my stomach and backed into the hole. Jack gripped my shoulders. Wireman stood beside him with the loaded harpoon pistol in his hands and the three extra silvertips stuck in his belt. Between them, the flashlight lay on the ground, spraying a bright light into a tangle of uprooted weeds and vines.

The stench of the cistern was very strong, and I felt a tickling on my shin as something scurried up my leg. I should have tucked my pants cuffs into the tops of my boots, but it was a little late to go back and start over.

"Do you feel the ladder?" Jack asked. "Are you there yet?"

"No, I..." Then my foot touched the top rung. "There it is. Hang on."

"I've gotcha, don't worry."

Come down here and I'll kill you.

"Go on and try," I said. "I'm coming for you, you birch, so take your best shot."

I felt Jack's hands tighten spasmodically on my shoulders. "Jesus, boss, are you s-"

"I'm sure. Just hold on."

There were half a dozen rungs on the ladder. Jack was able to hold onto my shoulders until I'd gotten down three, and then I was chest-deep. He offered me the flashlight. I shook my head. "Use it to spot me."

"You don't get it. You don't need it for light, you need it for her."

For a minute I still didn't get it.

"Unscrew the lens cap. Take out the batteries. Put her inside. I'll hand you down the water."

Wireman laughed without humor. "Wireman likes it, ni o." Then he bent to me. "Now go on. Bitch or birch, drown her and let's have done with her."

ix

The fourth rung snapped. The ladder tilted, and I fell off with the flashlight still clamped between my side and my stump, first shining up at the darkening sky, then illuminating lumps of coral coated with moss. My head connected with one of these and I saw stars. A moment later I was lying on a jagged bed of bones and staring into Adriana Eastlake Paulson's eternal grin. One of those pallid toads leaped at me from between her mossy teeth and I batted at it with the barrel of the flashlight.