From here, the view was spectacular. The ocean stretched endlessly into the distance until it blurred into a thin, blue line where it kissed the horizon. Ships of all sizes passed slowly across the water, and dark shadows indicative of large schools of fish provided contrast to the glittering surface waves.
This was the beauty of the lighthouse in the daytime, but only a select number of locals knew that its true magnificence was revealed when a storm front moved in or when the sun set and night fell over the ocean.
As a child, Olivia had often nicked the key from the absentminded keeper and had climbed the stairs to the watch. She would bring a book and an old towel to sit on and read as a million stars were born in the inky blackness overhead. When the sea had turned as dark as the sky, the water seemed to be pushing stars in Olivia’s direction and she felt cherished by the offering.
On other days, she’d crouch on the balcony, her blue eyes wide as heavy thunderclouds bore down upon the Point. She had traveled across the world, but never had she seen a sight more electrifying than forks of lightning bursting across the sky, endeavoring, or so it seemed, to pierce the very heart of the ocean.
Now, at a quarter past eight in the morning, the beach was deserted. The lighthouse didn’t open until ten and Olivia’s closest neighbors lived two miles up the beach and rarely ventured outside.
“What do you think we’ll find today, Captain?” she asked Haviland and lowered the Bounty Hunter Discovery 3300 metal detector to the ground.
The poodle shook his black ears and shot forward, unwilling to wait as his mistress fiddled with her noisy machine. There were gulls and sandpipers to chase and crabs that needed to be sent scuttling back into their sandy burrows.
Olivia adjusted the metal detector’s volume and began to walk, sweeping the disc in a slow and constant arc as she moved forward. After years of hunting for assorted treasures deposited onto the shore by generous waves, Olivia knew how to differentiate between the high bleeps signaling useless items like nails or bottle caps and the higher-pitched sounds indicating the presence of jewelry or coins.
She paused after half a mile and removed a bottle of water and a folding trench shovel from her backpack. After taking several swallows of water, she dug through the moist sand and uncovered two tokens for a children’s arcade located several towns away.
“Nothing exciting,” she told Haviland as he trotted over to examine her find. Still, she pocketed the tokens. Later, she would clean them with the same precision she’d apply to a priceless coin.
Olivia kept all her finds in jumbo pickle jars. Each one was labeled with the season and the year. During the winter months, she liked to sit on the floor of her cavernous living room and spill the contents onto her Aubusson rug. In front of a crackling fire in the wide stone hearth, Olivia would run her fingers over shotgun shells, rings, coins, and belt buckles, wondering about the lives of the owners as the salty smell of the sea drifted over the carpet.
Since childhood, Olivia had received gifts from the ocean. These days she had to search for them, but the long, quiet walks gave Olivia’s restless soul a measure of peace, and the steady whisper of the waves kept her company. The sea had taken her father from her, but that was the only time it had claimed anything belonging to her. Last summer, the currents had even delivered several clues that allowed her to assist the local police in solving a murder case.
As Olivia thought back on the violent death of her friend and fellow writer, she rounded a bend at the tip of the Point and hesitated. Normally, she’d turn back after this distance, driven by hunger and a desire for a second cup of coffee, but something urged her onward. The waves near her feet abruptly retreated, as though the tide had yanked them backward in order to let her pass. Up ahead, Olivia saw the glint of sunlight on metal.
“Haviland!” Olivia called and the poodle raced toward the twinkle, barking happily. “That dog loves a mystery,” she muttered to herself with a smile.
Her expression changed as Haviland’s bark became agitated. The poodle darted toward what appeared to be a child’s plastic bucket and then rapidly jumped away again. The large green bucket was planted in the sand as though someone was preparing to build the first of several castle turrets but had suddenly been called away.
“What is it, Captain?” Olivia watched her dog carefully. He was clearly repelled by the scent emanating from beneath the bucket, and as Olivia drew closer, the breeze shifted and she was nearly flattened by the stench.
“Holy Hell!” she covered her mouth and nose with her hand and winced. “What’s
in
there?”
Setting the metal detector on the ground, she approached the bucket warily.
“Did some kid trap a horseshoe crab?” She looked at Haviland, but he answered with an urgent bark. It was not a horseshoe crab.
Olivia searched for a stick. There were none by the water’s edge, so she climbed up the dunes and came back with a dried reed stalk. She paused to tie a bandana around the bottom half of her face, her breathing becoming shallower out of trepidation. The smell spoke of death and rot and things not meant to be exposed to the harsh light of the morning sun.
As she eased the reed under the lip of the bucket, it snapped in two. Olivia cursed, wanting to jump away from the odor and the scent of her own fear. Haviland was barking frantically now, driving Olivia to react quickly and decisively. She put a hand on each side of the bucket and whipped it off, releasing a fresh burst of putrid air.
Gagging, she stumbled backward, losing her footing and falling onto the sand with a soft thud. Haviland whined and rushed to her, his snout exploring her partially hidden face.
“I’m not hurt, Captain,” she said, turning away from the horrible thing on the beach. She lowered her mouth to the sand and breathed deeply. Once she had a lungful of air, she had to look back, to try to comprehend the atrocity she’d uncovered.
For surely that’s what it was. No other word could adequately describe the loose, waxy flesh, the torn pieces of skin, the drooping eyes, or the presence of half a dozen crabs, creeping over what was once a nose, a mouth, a cheek.
Fighting back the nausea rising in her throat, Olivia fixed her gaze at the ocean. It was there, pulsing and swelling, a symbol of constancy and saneness. The gurgle of the waves eventually gave her the strength to take a step closer.
The sight was just as gruesome as it had been at first glance. It was not a Halloween prop or a practical joke. It was a human head. Male, from what Olivia could tell, and it was rapidly decomposing in the heat and with assistance from the crabs.
“We need to get help,” Olivia told Haviland in a hoarse croak, her eyes flicking toward the incoming tide.
After a moment’s pause, she put the bucket back where she’d found it. There, in the middle of the pristine beach, it was almost possible to believe she’d imagined the horror it disguised. Yet the odor was not,
could
not, be concealed.
Death saturated the air, tainting the salt-laden wind. The decay was incongruent with the cloudless blue sky and sparkling sea and yet it was almost possible to imagine tendrils of stench, gray and puckered as octopus tentacles, creeping out from beneath the bucket.
Knowing time was against her, Olivia left her metal detector and backpack on the baking sand and began to run.
Chief Rawlings stared down at the distorted head with pity.
Olivia was certain that the sight and the smell of the thing repulsed him, but she knew that he was able to look beyond the horror and recall that what had been revealed after the removal of the green bucket was a human being. Was he thinking of the people who cared about this person, this misshapen memory of a man? A mother, a sister, a wife, or even a child. She wondered if Rawlings prayed that the victim was not anyone’s father. She could picture the chief walking slowly up a front path and stepping gingerly over a skateboard or a jump rope to knock on the door, his fist heavy on the wood. How much must it hurt him each time he was forced to crush a family under the weight of his news.
From her vantage point in the lee of a dune, Olivia noticed Rawlings stood back a ways from the team assisting the medical examiner, watching as they painstakingly removed the sand from the head, exposing a neck and finally, a set of shoulders.
“We got a whole body in here, Chief!” one of his officers shouted in excitement, as though Rawlings hadn’t reached the same conclusion. But the chief nodded in encouragement. He ruled the Oyster Bay Police Department with a mixture of gentleness and an unyielding demand for excellence. The men and women working under him stood up a fraction straighter and vowed to work a little harder whenever they were in his presence. In his late forties, Rawlings had a pleasant face and a bit of a paunch, which he tried to disguise under Hawaiian shirts when he wasn’t on the job.
Rawlings put his hand on his hips as his officers continued to scoop sand away from the body and then he turned and walked toward the dunes where Olivia and her black poodle sat waiting and watching.
“I’m sorry you had to be the one to find him,” Rawlings said.
Olivia put a hand on Haviland’s back. “Better me than some tourist,” she answered, her eyes searching the chief’s face. “Are there any clues as to why he was buried here?”
“We haven’t found anything around the body yet,” Rawlings admitted. “Why don’t you go on home? You’ve seen enough.”
He smiled warmly at her, but Olivia knew she was being given an order. “I’ll be at Grumpy’s critiquing Harris’s chapter in case you need me.” She stood, her body throwing a long, lean shadow over the hot sand.
Rawlings nodded. “I hope I have the opportunity to read his chapter before our meeting. Enjoy your late breakfast.” He paused and then added, “One of these days, I’d like to share a meal with you, Miss Limoges.” He looked at Haviland and dipped his chin. “And you too, Haviland. But for now, I’ll wish you both good morning.”
As the chief walked back to his men, Olivia saw him pull a handkerchief from his pocket and dab the perspiration from his forehead. She liked that Sawyer Rawlings was the type of man who would carry a handkerchief. He was old fashioned and believed strongly in traditions, but he was also a man of contradictions. He created beautiful paintings and read poetry, yet wore those dreadful Hawaiian shirts and ate junk food, letting his middle-aged body turn soft about the waist and hips. Olivia studied him for another minute, wondering exactly what it was about the man she found so intriguing.
“He is not as he appears. There are many layers to Chief Rawlings,” she explained defensively to Haviland, but the poodle didn’t share her interest in the lawman. Haviland growled and jerked his snout toward the road. He was hungry and had grown tired of breathing in the rank smell adrift on the air.
Olivia gave him a sympathetic pat on the head. “It is awful, Captain. We can go.”
The closest police cruiser was parked with its windows open and a sun protector stretched across the windshield. A young officer leaned against the driver’s side door and read a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. He looked up as Olivia approached.
“Chief said you should stop by the station to give your official statement.” He tapped on the clipboard and then cast a sideways glance at Olivia. “You sure you’ve never seen that guy before? He’s not someone from your workplace or maybe a neighbor?”
“I don’t recognize him,” she answered. “I’ve only met my closest neighbors, the Eflands, twice. They’re an older couple and don’t spend much time outside and certainly not when it’s this hot. From what I could see, the victim’s at least twenty years younger than Mr. Efland.”
A predatory glint appeared in the officer’s eyes. “Why are you calling him a victim?”
Olivia frowned. Was this cop some recent hire looking to impress the chief? He was as fresh of face and as awkward of body as a preadolescent boy, but his speech was clipped and laced with arrogance. “I chose that term because unless that man buried himself up to the neck and then somehow found a way to cover his head with a bucket, someone
else
performed those actions for him.”
Reddening, the eager policeman tried to regain his composure. He studied the sheet on the clipboard again. “You stated that you were out on a walk with your dog and a metal detector,” he said as though she had been doing something indecent. “Find anything of interest near the crime scene?”
Olivia narrowed her eyes. She was quickly losing patience. “I didn’t waste time combing the surrounding area for jewelry or rare coins once I’d lifted up that bucket. However, your department is more than welcome to borrow my Bounty Hunter if you think it would be of use to the investigation.”
Like a child being offered a sweet, the young cop brightened. “Really? That would be great!” He immediately suppressed his exuberance. “We’ll return it to you as soon as we’re done here.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Olivia assured him tersely. “I’ll collect it when I come to the station to sign my statement.” Without waiting to be dismissed, she opened the passenger door of her Range Rover to let Haviland hop inside. As she walked around the rear of her vehicle, the medical examiner’s female assistant came scampering over the dunes.
“You won’t believe this, Bobby!” She pulled on the officer’s sleeve in a familiar gesture. The two uniformed twenty-somethings looked alike and were probably cousins to some degree. Most of the older Oyster Bay families were related in one way or another. The ME’s assistant used her free hand to brush a lock of dark hair from her heart-shaped face while giving Bobby’s shirt another excited tug. “The vic was buried holding a little plastic sand shovel. A green one, just like the bucket that covered his head. He’s got nothing else on him and I mean
nothing
!”