The Bone Field by Debra Bokur (top e book reader txt) 📕

“You think it’s been here that long?”

“Hard to say,” she answered, shrugging. “Though it doesn’t seem likely someone would bury a new one.”

She stood up, passing her medical bag to Kali with one hand and stretching out the other toward Walter, which he grabbed and pulled. Emerging from the depths of the trench with impressive composure, she tugged the plastic hood away from her face and hair, now plastered wet against her head. She peeled off her jumpsuit with relief, and stood beside them, taking off her glasses to clean them. Walter passed her the bottle of water he’d been holding for her. She replaced her glasses and took the bottle, drinking from it gratefully.

There were a number of people milling about the area surrounding the trench, each involved in either further securing the scene or attending to some detail: Tomas Alva, Lna‘i’s only full-time cop, officially part of the Maui County Police Department; a police photographer busily loading equipment into the back of his car; the crime scene team from the main station in Wailuku on Maui; Burial Council officials who were required to attend the scene of any uncovered grave that might have a cultural tie; and a terrified-looking young couple who were clearly tourists, huddled by a rocky outcropping at the edge of the field. They were dressed in matching brightly patterned Hawaiian shirts, and on the ground beside them were two metal detectors, their long, narrow handles clearly visible.

Looking over at the couple, Kali sighed. “I guess I should go and talk to them one more time before the woman passes out or starts wailing again,” she said.

The offer sounded half-hearted, even to her own ears. Stitches glanced at her. Walter regarded her with a raised eyebrow.

Kali glared at them. “Seriously? Surely both of you can see she’s one wrong word away from another bout of hysteria,” she said in a defensive tone. “And yes—before anyone points it out, I’m fully aware I’m not at my best with overexcited twenty-somethings.”

Both Stitches and Walter turned toward the young couple, considering.

“Probably put a big dent in her day, right?” said Walter, his smile lopsided. “They’re just kids on vacation. Not every day you go looking for buried treasure and turn up something like this.”

Kali exhaled. “Okay, okay. Point made.”

Walter’s grin widened. “One of these days, you’ll realize I’m always right.”

Kali snorted. “Playing the uncle card?”

He reached out and patted her lightly on the shoulder. “I can safely say that not only are you my only niece, you’re absolutely, without doubt, my favorite one.”

He turned to Stitches, who had begun to wad her used jumpsuit into a ball.

“You all through here?”

She nodded. “For now. I’ll know more, of course, once we’ve moved everything back to the morgue and I can do a proper examination.” She surveyed the long-abandoned appliance in the hole. “Meanwhile, good luck with the search. Hopefully you can find something that will be useful in ascertaining an identification.”

“Well, we’ve searched as much as we can with the fridge still there,” said Walter. “Maybe there’s something still hidden beneath it. We’ll see, I guess.” He wiped a few drops of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “I’m going to head back to Maui after we get the body and fridge loaded up on the launch.”

Stitches had already walked off, making her way toward a waiting car that would take her to the harbor for the roughly nine-mile boat crossing back to Maui across the ‘Au‘au Channel. Walter strode toward the backhoe, gesturing to the driver. The engine turned over. Parked beside it, a truck fitted with a flatbed also roared to life. The drivers of both vehicles made their way slowly toward the open hole, guided by Walter.

Kali peered once more into the depths of the trench. Lying inside the no-longer-gleaming harvest-gold refrigerator, dressed in a pair of rotting overalls, was a skeleton, its bony hands folded neatly across the chest. It was lying on its side, both legs bent at the knees, feet pressed together. She had the impression it had been placed there with great care—even reverence, perhaps. She looked more closely. Her initial feeling suggested to her that whoever had performed this strange burial had possibly cared about the dead person in some way.

She supposed it looked like a small man, but it was difficult to tell. Resting on the corpse’s narrow shoulders, in lieu of a skull, was a large, ornately carved wooden pineapple, a macabre adornment that gave no sense at all of who the long-dead figure might have been—or how he’d come to be resting here, in a dormant field of fruit, bereft, headless, and utterly alone.

CHAPTER 2

It was well after noon by the time Kali had compiled her notes with details about the burial setting and finished her final interview with Brad and Jan, the tourist couple. As she’d predicted, the woman had broken down into a fit of wild crying midway through her account of the morning’s events.

Brad had been more pragmatic, even a little excited.

“We thought maybe we could find some old coins, you know? Something to take home as a souvenir that didn’t come from a gift shop.”

Kali refrained from pointing out that removing a historic artifact from the islands wasn’t likely to be looked upon kindly by the authorities. She watched his face, fascinated by the difference between his reaction to the discovery of a body, and that of his girlfriend.

“When the metal detector starting going off, we dug around the spot and kept hitting metal. Jan thought it might be a treasure chest, but I figured it was probably some old piece of harvesting equipment that got covered up.” He patted the girl on her leg, as if consoling her for the loss of an imaginary fortune.

Kali frowned. “And when you realized it was an old refrigerator, why did you keep digging?”

He grinned. “Well, why would someone bury a refrigerator? I mean, maybe something important had