Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

gesture but, damn her keen eyesight, it wasn’t the most romantic position he could have put himself in. As she looked up at him in gratitude, she saw right to his hairline where the bright sunlight exposed the nearly invisible scar left by the plastic surgeon who had repaired the vestiges of child abuse.
    She thought of Isaiah and his mother and their noses and the sad yearbook photo of little Cyril’s battered face. Cyril was lucky that repairing his broken nose had left no scar. In fact, the adult Cyril had a nice nose, although the little asymmetric bump at its bridge perplexed her. She’d never heard of a plastic surgeon willing to give a patient a nose that wasn’t movie-star perfect. Perhaps he’d broken it again.
    She focused on the water and the image of Cyril’s fourth-grade picture returned. The busted nose, the waifish smile, and the missing tooth tugged at her heart. There was no question that the man was a survivor.
    She looked up at him again and he flashed her a smile. His teeth. They weren’t unattractive. They weren’t tobacco-stained and they didn’t protrude. It was just that one incisor angled out ever so slightly, crossing the other incisor by the barest millimeter. They were the teeth of a real person, one whose mouth had never been perfected by dental science.
    All the admiring observations she had made—how amazing it was that an abused child could have become the strong, graceful, competent, savvy Cyril that she knew—came back to her. There was no possibility that this man was the same human being she had seen in Cyril Kirby’s fourth-grade photo.

    There were no bones on the desolate islet where Joe claimed to have seen a woman’s skeleton. Not even a fingernail. Sheriff Mike shrugged at the forensics tech leaning on his shovel and waiting for instructions.
    “She was here,” Joe said, the fear of returning to jail shadowing his eyes.
    “Oh, I believe you, son. This soil’s been turned over lately. More than once, probably. And don’t you think it smells like bleach?”
    Joe nodded.
    “Well, somebody’s been here trying to cover their trail and that’s mighty interesting, because I’m thinking it’s a real old trail. Looks to me like they somehow know you found this woman. Maybe they even watched you find her. Then they came and took her away, throwing a bottle of bleach in the hole to cover up the evidence.”
    “Do you have a suspect?” the technician broke in.
    “Sort of. I wish to God I knew his name. I don’t. But here’s what I think I know. Years and years ago, somebody killed three people and buried them on Seagreen Island, right over there,” he said, gesturing toward the horizon.
    “A few days ago,” he continued, “that person killed two people to keep them from uncovering that crime. He played it smart, manipulating the scene and the victims’ record book to cover up his motive. And the forensics lab says he was smart enough to do it without leaving fingerprints on the record book, dammit.”
    He paced around the empty hole. “Now we have another person who was killed years and years ago and buried here. Did either of you know that this glorified sandbar used to be connected to Seagreen Island?”
    Joe and the technician shook their heads.
    “Well, it was. A big hurricane back in the Sixties rearranged everything in these parts.” He jingled the key ring strapped to his belt. “So we have this body here and somebody, probably the killer, was smart enough to move her when people started getting too close. Six bodies is a lot of dead people for one little island. I’m thinking one person killed them all. Let’s fill the goddamn hole and get back to land before this wind blows our heads off.”
    And the wind indeed was coming uncomfortably close to blowing their heads off.
    “Radio says the hurricane’s headed for Louisiana,” the sheriff said, leaning back in his seat and letting the technician pilot the boat. “You can sure tell there’s a storm in the Gulf. Look at them whitecaps.” Wally’s Marina was visible in the distance and, judging by the number of boats being maneuvered into slips, tropical storms generated a major peak in business. “We’ll be lucky to get back in one piece.”
    Joe, who was sitting in the rear of the boat, directly behind Sheriff Mike, leaned forward and made a slashing motion across his throat. The sheriff gestured for the tech to cut the engine. The suspect—well, he wasn’t a suspect any more, just