Duma Key(202)

"Relief," I said. "Go on. Finish. Hurry."

When it was done, I took the capped flashlight from him. It wasn't as heavy as when it had been filled with D-cells, but I didn't care about that. What I cared about was making sure that the lid was screwed down tight. It seemed to be. I told Jack to have Wireman check it again when he got back up.

"Will do," he said.

"And try not to break any more rungs. I'm going to need them all."

"You get past the broken one, Edgar, and we'll haul you the rest of the way."

"Okay, and I won't tell anyone you tore out the seat of your pants."

At that he actually laughed. I watched the dark shape of him go up the ladder, taking a big stride to get past the broken rung. I had a moment of doubt accompanied by a terrible vision of tiny china hands unscrewing the flashlight cap from the inside yes, even though I was sure the fresh water had immobilized her but Jack didn't cry out or come tumbling back down, and the bad moment passed. There was a circle of brighter darkness above my head, and eventually he reached it.

When he was up and out, Wireman called down: "Now you, muchacho. "

"In a minute," I said. "Are your girlfriends gone?"

"Ran away. Shore leave over, I guess."

"And Emery?"

"That you need to see for yourself, I think. Come on up."

I repeated, "In a minute."

I leaned my head back against the moss-slimy coral, closed my eyes, and reached out. I kept reaching until I touched something smooth and round. Then my first two fingers slipped into an indentation that was almost certainly an eyesocket. And since I was sure it had been Adriana's skull Jack had crushed -

All's ending as well as can be at this end of the island, I told Nan Melda. And this isn't much of a grave, but you may not be in it much longer, my dear.

"May I keep your bracelets? There might be more to do."

Yes. I was afraid I had another thing coming.

"Edgar?" Wireman sounded worried. "Who you talking to?"

"The one who really stopped her," I said.

And because the one who really stopped her did not tell me she would have her bracelets back, I kept them on and began the slow and painful work of getting to my feet. Dislodged bone-fragments and bits of moss-encrusted ceramic showered down around my feet. My left knee my good one felt swollen and tight against the torn cloth of my pants. My head was throbbing and my chest was on fire. The ladder looked at least a mile high, but I could see the dark shapes of Jack and Wireman hanging over the rim of the cistern, waiting to grab me when if I managed to haul myself into grabbing-range.

I thought: There's a three-quarter moon tonight, and I can't see it until I get out of this hole in the ground.

So I got started.

xiii

The moon had risen fat and yellow above the eastern horizon, casting its glow on the lush jungle growth that overbore the south end of the Key and gilding the east side of John Eastlake's ruined mansion, where he had once lived with his housekeeper and his six girls happily enough, I suppose, before Libbit's tumble from the pony-trap changed things.

It also gilded the ancient, coral-encrusted skeleton that lay on the mattress of trampled vines Jack and Wireman had uprooted to free the cistern cap. Looking at Emery Paulson's remains, a snatch of Shakespeare from my high school days recurred, and I spoke it aloud: "Full fathom five thy father lies... those are pearls that were his eyes."

Jack shivered violently, as if stroked by a keen wet wind. He actually clutched himself. This time he got it.

Wireman bent and picked up one thin, trailing arm. It snapped in three without a sound. Emery Paulson had been in the caldo a long, long time. There was a harpoon sticking through the shelly harp of his ribs. Wireman retrieved it now, having to work the tip free of the ground in order to take it back.

"How'd you keep the Twins from Hell off you with the spear-pistol unloaded?" I asked.

Wireman jabbed the harpoon in his hand like a dagger.

Jack nodded. "Yeah. I grabbed one out of his belt and did the same. I don't know how long it would have worked over the long haul, though they were like mad dogs."

Wireman replaced the silver-tipped harpoon he'd used on Emery in his belt. "Speaking of the long haul, we might consider another storage container for your new doll. What do you think, Edgar?"

He was right. Somehow I couldn't imagine Perse spending the next eighty years in the barrel of a Garrity flashlight. I was already wondering how thin the shield between the battery case and the lens housing might be. And the rock that had fallen out of the cistern wall and cracked the Table Whiskey keg: had that been an accident... or a final victory of mind over matter after years of patient work? Perse's version of digging through the wall of her cell with a sharpened spoonhandle?

Still, the flashlight had served its purpose. God bless Jack Cantori's practical mind. No that was too chintzy. God bless Jack.

"There's a custom silversmith in Sarasota," Wireman said. " Mexicano muy talentoso. Miss Eastlake has had a few pieces of his stuff. I bet I could commission him to make a watertight tube big enough to hold the flashlight. That'd give us what insurance companies and football coaches call double coverage. It'd be pricey, but so what? Barring probate snags, I'm going to be an extremely wealthy man. Caught a break there, muchacho."