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

a volunteer to give her a ride back to the hotel. After showering and changing her clothes, she went into the dining area to get a grilled fish sandwich to take back to her room. She sat at a small table next to the room’s window where her computer was set up. Her notes were spread out on the floor at her feet, and she leaned forward occasionally to lift a page and study it as she ate her sandwich.

She sorted the notes, then resorted them into different stacks, trying to find a pattern or order to what had so far been discovered. She had just given up, and was stretched out across the bed staring at the ceiling when the phone buzzed and Walter’s name popped onto the screen.

“Kali? I spoke at length with Bobby. He remembers the Matthew Greene case pretty clearly. Said he was pretty sure the guy was slapping his wife around, and he took a special interest because he’d heard the wife was dying and the idea of her being mistreated on top of that really got under his skin. After a neighbor called the police, Greene was brought in for questioning, but the wife was unwilling to make a complaint of any kind. Bobby says he used to park his police unit in front of Greene’s house at night, partly to reassure the wife that he knew what was going on, and partly to shake Greene up.”

Kali frowned. Abuse was one thing, but abuse of a dying woman struck her as particularly appalling. “And?”

“Then the daughter died. It was ruled an accident after she was found at the bottom of her front steps by a neighbor. She had grown pretty weak and wasn’t supposed to be out of bed, but the neighbor who found her said he saw her outside every few days, sitting in her garden in the sun.”

“How long afterwards was it before Greene disappeared?”

“Two weeks. There was an investigation into his whereabouts, but nothing ever came of it.”

“Were the wife’s parents suspects?”

“Both were questioned, but apparently they were off-island when Greene went missing.”

She reached for a pen and pulled a page from her notes. She jotted down a few of the details that Walter had gathered, frowning.

“How could the time of his disappearance be narrowed down specifically?”

“Well, that’s where things get a little cloudy. The parents went over to Kaua‘i to have a private memorial ceremony for their daughter at an undisclosed location up in the cliffs on some path that she loved to hike. Bobby thinks they took her ashes there to scatter, but they never told him that for certain. That was on a Friday morning. Greene wasn’t with them. He went in to work that day, though the field was mostly closed. He was clearing up his end of things, but then he didn’t show up on Monday, and no one saw him anywhere around over the weekend—but no one was looking for him either. Production had completely stopped, and the plantation was in the final stages of shutting down, so no one was really keeping any kind of schedule. The parents got back to Lna‘i from Kaua‘i the next day, on Tuesday. Bragden had their ferry tickets for the crossings back and forth, and crew members on the ferry at the time positively identified them as having been on board going over and going back.”

“That’s all very convenient. Who keeps their ferry ticket once they get home? I can’t remember ever doing that.”

“Yeah, Bobby said as much. He felt like Bragden may have had something to do with Greene suddenly vanishing, but I don’t get the feeling he was very motivated to pursue it after an alibi had been established.”

“Okay, so what about the church?”

“Ah, the Eden’s River people.”

“Catchy.”

“Bobby said they were basically a bunch of pains in the ass, banging on people’s doors to try to share their view that native Hawaiians are all godless savages who need to be saved from practicing native witchcraft. Seems they just wanted to help everyone get into heaven.”

“Wow. That’s quite a mission statement.”

“Mission is exactly the right word. It was founded by a family, led by a patriarch by the name of Abraham Waters, who was apparently a true zealot. I just texted you his photo. Turns out his ‘church’ was actually both a cult and a commune based in Christian beliefs. But they used the anchor as one of several symbols in their ministry, along with a cross and that little fish you see on the backs of people’s cars that signals to everyone they’re better than you are. The group name was tied to Biblical imagery connected to water: water into wine, walking on water, all that kind of thing.”

“Was he a con man or just delusional?”

Walter took the question seriously. “Delusional, I think. I did a background check on him, and some interesting things came up.”

“Such as?”

“First, his name was originally Greg Waterson. He was a high-profile sports doctor—a surgeon—in the Chicago area, who’d gotten a lot of publicity for his so-called miracle touch in the operating room, successfully treating people for injuries that other doctors had given up on. Then Dr. Waterson became the focus of a big lawsuit following a botched knee operation that left a rising high school soccer star permanently sidelined. The Watersons had a second home in Napa Valley in the wife’s name, and they sold that house and used the considerable proceeds to fund their move to Hawai‘i in 1993. They also got huge donations from other like-minded people who still believed in him, and who were encouraging him to develop his vision of a healing retreat center out here in the islands.”

Walter filled in more details, explaining that the Watersons had one child: a daughter whose name was Abigail. During the lawsuit, Waterson made several statements that alluded to a deep conviction that his skills as a surgeon had been divinely bestowed upon him, and that the