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

inviting Makena to chase him or throw a mango for him. The scene was oddly domestic, and Kali felt an unfamiliar surge of something close to contentment.

She reached for her ringing phone, losing the moment. It was Stitches, who wasted no time on pleasantries.

“We have a positive ID on the couple. The adult female body is Helen Stafford. Her sister, Marcia, found an old sweater in Helen’s belongings, mixed in with the things she had stored at her house in Reno, all of which she turned over to the local authorities after you spoke with her. The Reno forensics team found several hairs on the sweater and were able to get an exact DNA match with the sample taken from the hair on the female skeleton.”

Kali sucked in her breath.

“Reggie McCartney’s family was traced to California,” continued Stitches, “and familial DNA samples combined with medical records and general physical characteristics are enough of a match to confirm identity.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. Both adults have smashed skulls, as mentioned before. Based on that, I think it’s safe to assume that Matthew Green’s neck wasn’t an old injury, but also the cause of death since his own skull is fully intact. The killer, or killers, may have acted on opportunity, rather than a modus operandi that was consistent from one killing to the next.”

“What about the baby?”

“Ah . . . now that’s something interesting. The baby appears to have been stillborn, and not quite to term. I estimate around thirty-two weeks. And, as we noticed when the body was uncovered, it had a deformed skull.”

In her mind, Kali pictured the infant nestled close to the woman’s body. She wondered if the mother had had any inkling that her own life was about to end, and whether the loss of her child had left her depressed and distracted, allowing the killer to take advantage of her. Her mind leapt to the body in the refrigerator, and to Matthew Greene. She asked herself how these people had been connected, and what had made each of them a target of their killer.

“Right. I don’t suppose there’s any news on the pineapple man?”

“Nothing definitive yet,” said Stitches. “A male somewhere between eighteen and twenty is the best estimate so far. Other than the missing head, of course, there is no obvious cause of death. He could have been shot, had his throat slit, been poisoned, died of asphyxiation, or had any number of unpleasant endings. Or, like the others, he may have died of a broken neck or a blow to the head. Without the rest of him, I’m afraid we may never know.”

“Any luck on ethnicity?”

“The Honolulu team is working on that now.”

After she hung up, Kali considered what had been learned. Out of five bodies, four had been identified. That wasn’t too bad, considering. But the fate of the pineapple man, and the story of who he had been, continued to nag her. She pushed back her chair, ready to head over to the station, when the phone rang again. This time it was Walter. He sounded breathless.

“Found him,” he said.

“Waters? Where is he?”

“Right here on Maui.”

“How’d you track him down? Tax records?”

Walter snorted. “Hardly. Turns out he’s got a brand-new venture since the Eden’s River scheme caught up with him, though he’s using the same name. He may be a surgeon, but he’s clearly an idiot. He’s living up-country on an old farmstead. So far, he’s kept it pretty low-key. There’s nothing officially going on as far as a registered retreat or church of any kind, and to all appearances he’s dropped any reference to whatever shenanigans he was up to on Lna‘i, but there’s a complaint on file from a local woman that her daughter was lured up there under the pretense of a yoga and wellness weekend with seminars and camping.”

The daughter, explained Walter, had emptied out her bank account and given away all of her belongings, then moved into the new Eden’s River. “A later interview with the daughter, who was in her early twenties at the time, quoted her as saying that Abraham was a ‘divinely inspired healer’ who helped her get her life on track.”

“Is that it?”

“There was a call-in from another woman, who says she was seduced by Abraham and abandoned her husband and two kids to go and bask in his holy light. Her words, not mine. She eventually came to her senses and went home, but so far she hasn’t had anything really bad to say about the commune or about Abraham—just that it turned out to not be her thing. She declined to make an official statement.”

Walter texted her the current address for Abraham Waters, and Kali noted that the latest version of Eden’s River was north of Hana and west of Pali Village, about a half hour away. She gathered her things, prepared to head out. She couldn’t wait to meet him.

* * *

Kali drove slowly through a set of open gates. They were built of wood, and the paint had long ago worn away. A close look revealed remnants of a dark blue tint still embedded along the edges of the posts supporting the gates, suggesting they’d enjoyed a former, far more colorful life.

The dirt track was rutted and muddy. She followed it for about a hundred yards as it wound deeper into the mauka side of the road away from the sea and towards the distant slopes of Haleakal volcano, its slowly eroding exterior blanketed by verdant vegetation.

The Jeep bounced along. There had been no attempt to control the dense foliage encroaching from either side of the road, and a wild profusion of branches and shrubs, many of them in flower, created a sort of tunnel-like portal that gave way suddenly to a wide, sloping field. She slowed to a halt in front of a collection of low buildings that were scattered across the field, mentally calculating the dimensions. The visible complex seemed to cover about three acres of