Chapter Sixty-Eight Holly
Chapter Sixty-eight
HOLLY
I can’t take my eyes off the open pit. Tucked among the coffee-colored soil are bones. Lots and lots of bones.
The excavator fires up, and the claw bucket, with its ghoulish human remains, twists around and dumps its load to the side of the loamy pit beneath.
The ribcage rolls onto a pile of discarded soil.
Even from this distance I can see it’s not the only bone fragment.
Tossed aside, half buried in the pile of dug-out earth, I make out a femur, part of a skull, and the broken pieces of at least one hand.
All are bleached gray from years underground.
They vary in size. I see small ribcages. Tiny skulls. Long femurs and large mandibles.
I twist back out of sight, resting against the wall.
‘There are children’s bones in that grave,’ I say, my stomach tightening at the thought.
Fitzwilliam’s square-jawed face is deathly pale. ‘Are you OK?’ he asks.
I nod. My heart is pounding. It’s not the first time I’ve seen human remains. But so many young skeletons … And there’s something about the casual way they’ve been tossed aside that makes my skin crawl.
By the pit, the whirring sound of the excavator suddenly cuts out. My blood turns to ice. Fitzwilliam and I stand stock-still, pressed against the side of the building. It’s a terrible hiding place. We’re in plain view of anyone walking in this direction.
There are shouts in Spanish. Then, just as I’m certain we’re about to be discovered, the voices recede. We wait several agonizing seconds before Fitzwilliam risks another glance around the corner.
‘They’re leaving,’ he says. ‘Taking a break maybe. We should go before they come back.’
‘I’m taking a look.’ Ignoring Fitzwilliam’s pained expression, I walk softly toward the pit. With a sigh of despair, he follows me.
Old bones stick out of the soil like pirate treasure. Skulls roll in the dirt. There must be hundreds of bodies in this pit, if not more.
‘Why would there be a mass grave on this island?’ I ask, thinking out loud.
‘Drugs?’ he suggests. ‘Maybe this is some drug-smuggling hide-out. Or a narco prison.’
‘The bones are old,’ I say. ‘It takes around ten years for soft tissue to degrade to full skeletonization stage.’ I think for a moment. ‘Though the process would be faster on a tropical island,’ I concede. ‘Heat. Heavy rainfall. Insects.’
‘The caves were old too,’ concedes Fitzwilliam. ‘And the manacles we found in Silky’s luggage. How long ago did Leopold inherit the island?’
‘Twenty years ago,’ I say.
As I peer over the edge I realize something.
‘It’s so shallow,’ I tell Fitzwilliam. ‘That can’t be more than two feet, right?’
‘No markers. No gravestones,’ he agrees sadly. ‘Just left to rot.’ He shakes his head at the lack of humanity.
‘The clue Simone left. Six feet under,’ I point out. ‘She wasn’t referring to a shallow grave.’
Fitzwilliam hesitates. ‘She might not have meant it literally. Six feet under is a general expression.’
‘I know but …’ I’m staring at the soil. ‘This is a working site. You couldn’t conceal anything here without risking it being destroyed or discovered.
And Simone couldn’t have known we’d have seen the inside of Silky’s room, with the pictures of the open grave.
I think we might have put two and two together and made five. ’
Fitzwilliam considers this. ‘If Simone wasn’t referring to here, then where?’
‘I don’t know.’ Defeat rolls through me. ‘But I feel like I should know. Somewhere underground, I guess.’ My mind mentally maps the island. Then it hits me. ‘The panic room where Adrianna was held. That’s underground, right?’
‘Right,’ he’s nodding fast. ‘It was built to be kind of a bunker.’
‘Sepulcrum,’ I say, ‘is Latin for burial place, or tomb. And the panic room would be practical, right? Easy for Simone to get to unseen, but not the kind of place that people go rooting around in either. Let’s get back and take a look.’
There’s a flush of excitement on Fitzwilliam’s face, which is kind of cute. I push the thought away.
As we reverse our steps I notice something. Further back in the jungle, and partially obscured by leafy trees, is another building, unlike the others.
‘Look,’ I say. ‘The bell tower we saw from the ocean.’
The stone edifice is stocky, and colonial in proportions, like a small fortress.
Low down and thick-walled, with square turrets on either side of a large arched doorway.
A heavy black bell hangs at the top of the turret, and a round-edged cross-shape has been cut in relief out of the thick stone frontage.
‘It looks like an old church,’ I say. ‘The first Kensingtons must have built it.’
A strange feeling washes over me, looking at the bell tower.
‘Trinity,’ I murmur. ‘Holy Trinity. Looks like we found the old schoolhouse.’