Jonathan Kellerman - The Web (Alex Delaware 10)

Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 10 - The Web
To my daughter, Such pizzazz such intellect, flashing eyes and a smile that lights up the galaxy.
Wonderful things come in tiny packages.
The Web
The shark on the dock was no monster.
Four feet long, probably a low-lying reef scavenger. But its dead white eyes had retained their menace, and its jaws were jammed with needles that made it a prize for the two men with the bloody hands.
They were bare-chested Anglos baked brown, muscular yet flabby. One held the corpse by the gill slits while the other used the knife. Slime coated the gray wooden planks. Robin had been looking out over the bow as The Madeleine pulled in to harbor. She saw the butchery and turned away.
I kept my hand on Spike's leash.
He's a French bulldog, twenty-eight pounds of bat-eared, black-brindled muscle and a flat face that makes him a drowning risk. Trained as a pup to avoid water, he now despises it, and Robin and I had dreaded the six-hour cruise from Saipan. But he'd gotten his sea legs before we had, exploring the old yacht's teak deck, then falling asleep under the friendly Pacific sun.
He helped Robin out and I scooped up Spike. Once on solid ground, the dog cocked his head, shook himself off, snorted, and began barking at the Jeep.
A man got out. Something dark and hairy sat on his shoulder.
Spike became livid, straining the leash. The hairy thing bared its teeth and pawed the air. Small monkey. The man seemed unperturbed. After shaking Brady's hand, he came over and reached for Robin's, then mine.
"Ben Romero. Welcome to Aruk." Thirty to thirty-five, five six, one forty, he had a smooth bronze face and short, straight black hair side-parted precisely. Aviator glasses sat atop a delicate nose.
His eyes were burnt almonds. He wore pressed blue cotton pants and a spotless white shirt that had somehow evaded the monkey's footprints.
The monkey was jabbering and pointing.
"Calm down, KiKo, it's just a dog." Romero smiled.
"I think."
We're not sure, either," said Robin.
Romero took the monkey off his shoulder and held it to his cheek, stroking its face.
"You like dogs, KiKo, right? What's his name?"
"Spike."
"His name is Spike, KiKo. Dr. Moreland told me he's heat sensitive so we've got a portable air conditioner for your suite.
But I doubt you'll need it. January's one of our prettiest months.
We get some rain bursts, but it stays about eighty."
"It's lovely," said Robin.
"Always is. On the leeward side. Let me get your stuff."
Brady and his men brought our luggage to the Jeep. Romero and I loaded. When we finished, the monkey was standing on the ground petting Spike's head and chattering happily. Spike accepted the attention with a look of injured dignity.
"Good boy," said Robin, kneeling beside him.
Laughter made us all turn. The shark butchers were looking our way. They winked and waved. The shorter one had his hands on his hip, the knife in his belt. Rosy-pink hands. He wiped them on his cutoffs and winked. The taller man laughed again.
Spike's bat ears stiffened and the monkey hissed. Romero put ! it back on his shoulder, frowning.
"Better get going. You must be I bushed." f We climbed into the Jeep, and Romero made a wide arc and | headed back to the beach road. A wooden sign said Front I Street. As we drove up the hill, I looked back. The ocean was all-encompassing and the island seemed very small. The Madeleine's crew stood on the dock, and the men with the bloody hands were heading toward town, wheeling their bounty in a rusty barrow. All that was left of the shark was a stain.
2. "Let me give you a proper welcome," said Romero.
"Abuma na abap that's old pidgin for "enjoy our home."
He started up the same central road. Winding and unmarked, it was barely one vehicle wide and bordered by low walls of piled rock. The grade was steeper than it had appeared from the harbor and he played with the Jeep's gears in order to maintain traction.
Each time the vehicle lurched, KiKo nattered and tightened his spidery grip on Romero's shirt. Spike's head was out the window, tilted up at the cloudless sky.
As we climbed, I looked back and caught a frontal view of the business district. Most of the buildings were closed, including the gas station. Romero sped past the small, white houses.
Up close, the buildings looked shabbier, the stucco cracked, sometimes peeled to the paper, the tin roofs dented and pocked and mossy. Laundry hung on sagging lines. Naked and half-naked children played in the dirt. A few of the properties were fenced with chicken wire, most were open. Some looked unoccupied.
A couple of skinny dogs scrounged lazily in the dirt, ignoring Spike's bark.
This was U.S. territory but it could have been anywhere in the developing world. Some of the meanness was softened by vegetation broad-leafed philodendrons, bromeliads, flowering coral trees, palms. Many of the structures were surrounded by greenery whitewashed eggs in emerald nests.
"So how was your trip?" said Romero.
"Tiring but good," said Robin. Her fingers were laced in mine and her brown eyes were wide. The air through the Jeep's open windows ruffled her curls, and her linen shirt billowed.
"Dr. Bill wanted to greet you personally, but he just got called out. Some kids diving out on North Beach, stung by jellyfish."
"Hope it's not serious."
TSIah. But it does smart."
"Is he the only doctor on the island?" I said.
We run a clinic at the church. I'm an RN. Emergencies used to get flown over to Guam or Saipan till... anyway, the clinic does the trick for most of our problems. I'm on call for whenever I'm needed."
"Have you lived here long?"
Whole life except for Coast Guard and nursing school in Hawaii. Met my wife there. She's a Chinese girl. We have four kids."
As we continued to climb, the shabby houses gave way to empty fields of red clay, and the harbor became tiny. But the volcanic peaks remained as distant, as if avoiding us.
To the right was a small grove of ash-colored trees with deeply corrugated trunks and sinuous, knobby branches that seemed to claw at the sky. Aerial roots dripped like melting wax from several boughs, digging their way back into the earth.
"Banyans?" I said.
"Yup. Strangler trees. They send those shoots up around anything unlucky enough to grow near them and squeeze the life out of it. Little hooks under the shoots like Velcro, they just dig in. We don't want them but they grow like crazy in the jungle. Those are about ten years old. Some bird must have dropped seeds."
"Where's the jungle?"
He laughed.
"Well, it's not really that. I mean, there're no wild animals or anything else for that matter except the stranglers."
He pointed toward the mountaintops.
"Just east of the island's center. Dr. Bill's place butts right up against it. On the other side is Stanton the Navy base." He shifted into low, got the Jeep over an especially steep rise, then coasted through big open wooden gates.
The road on the other side was freshly blacktopped. Fourstory coco palms were set every ten feet. The piled rock was replaced by a hand-hewn, Japanese-style pine fence and rows of flame-orange clivia. Velvet lawns rolled away on all sides and I could make out the tops of the banyan forest, a remote gray fringe.
Then movement. A small herd of black-tailed deer grazing to the left. I pointed them out to Robin and she smiled and kissed my knuckles. A few seabirds hovered above us; otherwise the sky was inert.
A hundred more palms and we pulled into a huge, gravel courtyard shaded by red cedar, Aleppo pine, mango, and avocado.
In the center, an algae-streaked limestone fountain spouted into a carved basin teeming with hyacinths. Behind it stood a massive two-story house, light-brown stucco with pine trim and balconies and a pagoda roof of shiny green tiles. Some of the edge tiles wore gargoyle faces.