Category Five, page 15
Carlos shrugged his shoulders. “What good would that do? Other than raising our blood pressure. Look, I didn’t come here to talk about this, I—”
Javier threw his hands up. “Oh, right, you’ve been wanting to talk about you. Your favorite subject, huh, Papi Gringo?” The minute it came out of his mouth he wished he could yank it back in, settle it down into the dark cloud festering in his belly. Carlos didn’t have a selfish bone in his body and Javier knew it.
“See? Right there!” Carlos pointed at him. “You didn’t used to be such a dick!”
Their voices were raised, but underneath them Javier noticed a rhythmic thumping sound that was getting louder and louder. Carlos seemed to notice it, too, and stopped, just when something ran between them in a cloud of sand. Javier jumped. “What the hell is that?”
Then he saw a poofy little dog skidding to a stop just beyond them.
The dog had something in its mouth, but Javier was too busy lamenting the layer of sand on top of the lunch feast to investigate what. “Aw, dog! ¡Fuera! Get out of here! Shoo!”
But the dog noticed Carlos, dropped whatever he had been carrying, and leapt into his lap, jumping and licking his face.
Javier was surprised. Carlos had never liked dogs before. “Must be the pork juice on your face.”
“Stop it, Gwendolyn!” Carlos rubbed her furry ears and cooed in her squished face. “Who’s my good girl?”
Javier stared at the tough Papi Gringo, kissing the perfumed white shih tzu with the plaid Gucci bow in her hair. “Um, you two know each other?”
Carlos was giggling. For real. “Yeah, she’s the owner’s dog.”
Just then they both heard calling coming toward them from behind the trees.
“Gwen! C’mere girl! Gwen?” Then Sam appeared on the beach and did a comical double take when he saw Javier and Carlos and their sand-covered picnic. At the sight of Sam, Gwendolyn took off toward him, then began circling his legs and barking in a high-pitched, nails-on-a-chalkboard voice.
Javier chuckled, a bit meanly if he was completely honest. “That your dog?”
Sam gave him a level look. The judgment was not lost on him. “No. She’s my stepmother’s.” But he smiled at the ridiculous creature bouncing around anyway. “And she’s a monster.”
Javier watched Sam nod at Carlos, and Carlos nod back.
“You two know each other, too?”
“Yeah. Sam’s dad sponsored this concert. He’s sponsored a couple of them.”
Gwen froze, sniffed the air, then ran back, seeming to remember whatever she had been carrying, and Sam yelled, “Drop it!” She obeyed, but then ran around Javier, barking. Oh. Fun. He just loved irritating little designer dogs.
“Um, guys? I think we have a problem.” Javier had heard that voice from Carlos before. It was never good.
Sam and Javier walked over to where Carlos was crouched in the sand, a long, bleached white bone lying in front of him.
“That’s a femur. A human femur.” Sam’s voice was tight and incredulous.
Hell, they all were incredulous. “How do you know that, man?” Javier was hoping he was wrong.
Sam’s gaze skittered around a bit, as if he were embarrassed. “I’m in pre–veterinary med at Cornell.”
Javier rolled his eyes. “Of course you are.”
“Can we focus?” Carlos’s voice was short, impatient. “There’s a piece of a dead human here.” Carlos picked it up and examined it. Then he looked over at the dog. “Where did she get this?” Noticing that he had her bone, Gwen grabbed an end in her mouth and pulled, growling and snorting, as if she were an actual dog or something. When Carlos wouldn’t drop it, she gave up and took off in the direction she’d originally come from, barking as she ran.
Javier jumped up. “We should follow her! She might be going to get another one.”
But Sam was already running after her, yelling “Gwen! Come back here!”
Carlos and Javier broke into a run, all three of them dodging between trees, jumping over vines, following the sound of Gwen’s barking. They reached the long trail of large marble paving stones that the dog seemed to be following.
They came to a stop where the path ended, right in front of the landscaper’s storage building, a large but simple concrete box with a padlocked door.
Javier couldn’t help but think of kissing Lupe right there. Heat rose behind his face.
“What the hell is this building?” Sam asked.
“Landscaper storage,” Javier answered. “The resort owners wanted the equipment stored away from the guests. Guess the sight of a weed wacker ruins rich people’s vacations.” He glared at Sam. “So, they tore down a partial structure that was started here and never finished, dug in a larger foundation, and built this monstrosity.”
The barking started again, the sound coming from behind the squat building. The three guys ran around the building and found a huge pile of dirt and rocks against the trees. The barking had stopped, and the dog was nowhere in sight.
Sam was about to say something when Gwen came running from around the back of the pile with what looked like a finger bone in her mouth, her tail wagging like a hairy white flag. Javier watched her take off back toward the resort. He was about to ask why Sam wasn’t going after her when he realized he was alone.
He walked around the back of the pile and found Carlos and Sam staring openmouthed. As he came closer, Javier saw among the slabs of rich, brown bulldozed earth hundreds of bleached white bones.
“Jesucristo,” Carlos said under his breath as he made the sign of the cross.
Javier crouched down and looked at what the dirt revealed. “Wow. There are so many.” He took a stick and lifted a shredded, half-eaten piece of rough fabric—burlap, or cotton.
“Think that’s a shroud?” Sam asked.
“That’s what I would guess.”
“What happened here?” Sam wondered rhetorically, his voice quiet and reverent as if they were in a church. Perhaps they were.
But none of them had answers, and given the apparent age of the findings, Javier doubted they’d find any on their own.
Carlos’s phone jangled with the first notes of last year’s breakout hit, and he answered it as he walked around the pile and out of sight.
Javier realized that he and Sam were alone, kind of, and the silence became awkward. He stood up and brushed off his jeans, though he doubted any dirt had gotten on them. Still, his skin felt like it was crawling, and he was fighting off the urge to run all the way to the terminal, take the next ferry off this island, and never return.
But that wasn’t an option. Was running ever really an option for him?
“So…” Sam said.
“So?” Javier asked, harsher than he had intended. What could he possibly have to talk about with this rich gringo? He’d probably never cleaned a toilet in his life. Javier didn’t have any respect for someone who’d never had to clean a toilet. Besides, he was hanging around with Lupe. Javier didn’t like that but knew he couldn’t say anything. Lupe would dump his ass faster than a Vermont summer. Luckily Carlos’s voice broke the awkward silence.
“Um, guys? I think I found something,” he called from the front of the storage building.
Javier and Sam practically jumped in their enthusiasm to escape and arrived together to find Carlos crouched down next to one of the paving stones.
“I thought the shape of these was odd.” Carlos dug two fingers underneath the edge of the third stone from the building and lifted it up. “Shit. I thought so.” Then he flipped it over, the large marble slab hitting the packed dirt with a deep thump, and as he brushed off the layer of dirt, Javier realized what they were seeing. Then he looked at the line of similar stones that led all the way to the resort grounds.
He swallowed. “They’re tombstones?”
“They can’t all be … Can they?” Sam’s voice was tight, and he ran over to a stone a few yards away, put his fingers under the edge, and peeked beneath. “God. I think they are.”
Javier crouched down and did the same to the first one, closest to the building’s gated doorway. “‘Antonia Vargas,’” he read. ‘Born February 17, 1920, died September 13, 1928.’ Damn, she was only eight years old.”
“This one was forty-three, Ofelia Gutiérrez. She died on the same day, September 13, 1928,” Sam responded.
“This one, too. Same death date.” Javier brushed the rest of the dirt off the carvings. His phone rang and all three of them jumped. Cue nervous laughter, hands over hearts. He looked at the screen. Lupe. “Hello?”
“Javier, Marisol and I just talked to this retired military guy, and he said the navy left because of the ghosts.” She always did get right to the point.
“Yeah, I’m afraid we made quite a discovery here.”
“What? You did? Wait, who’s ‘we’? Where’s ‘here’?”
“Me, Carlos, and Sam. And we’re behind the main resort building.”
He could hear her breathing and an up and down jostling of the phone. “Marisol and I just got to the resort. We had to walk the last mile and a half. Too many damn people trying to get in.”
“Well, we’ll meet you out back. We … have to talk.” That was an understatement. “Then find your uncle.”
“We’re here.”
Her words echoed. They were close. He clicked End. “Lupe! ¡Ven acá! Over here!”
Chapter Twenty-four
Marisol
MARISOL WAS FOLLOWING Lupe into the trees and bushes that fed into the formerly “protected” part of the nature preserve. She was fascinated with the marble pathway. Who puts marble paving stones leading into a forest? She stepped from one to the next like a game of hopscotch until she crashed right into Lupe. She laughed and grabbed her friend by the shoulders to catch her balance but realized everyone was silent. And just standing there.
The three guys were spread along the end of the path, each standing over a pulled-up stone. Lupe was staring down at the closest one, the one nearest the boy she assumed was Sam. That was when Marisol took a good look at the stone.
“Dios mio.” She automatically made the sign of the cross. Then she looked back the way they had come, back to the resort. “But … there are dozens of them.”
Javier pointed to a concrete bunker behind him. “Several dozen. We found more behind the building.”
“Lots more.” Carlos’s voice was grave. Even the boy who was never serious was freaked.
She stepped closer to the stone, crouched down, and brushed it clean.
“Ofelia Gutiérrez.” She read it out loud, then gasped, leaping up and putting her hands to her mouth. “Abuelita!”
Lupe ran over to her. “Marisol! That was your grandmother?”
Marisol shook her head. “No, no. Abuelita is that old woman in Yabucoa in the senior center I mentioned. She…” She took a deep breath, remembering as she was talking. “She told me that her abuela was on Vieques, that she was angry. Abuelita is a nickname, her real name is Ofelia Gutiérrez. She said they left her alone here.…” She looked back down at the stone. “But Abuelita is, like, eighty-something, so her grandmother is long dead.…”
Then she registered the date. “September thirteen, 1928?”
Sam nodded. “That’s what the death date is on all of these.”
Marisol’s throat tightened. “That was the date of the last category five hurricane in Puerto Rico. San Felipe II. It killed over three hundred people.”
Everyone froze where they were, eyes wide, staring at each other, then at the stones.
Javier’s voice was low and quiet. “The resort dug up this area to build this storage building. But there was another partially built structure here before.”
Lupe broke in. “Marisol, didn’t Jones say that the navy started to build a munitions storage on what would be protected land?”
Marisol just nodded. “That was right before they declared it a nature preserve and left not long after.” She swallowed. “Jones said because of the ghosts.”
Lupe’s head snapped up to look at Marisol. “You don’t think … they dug up the graveyard of the Vieques residents who were killed in the hurricane, do you?”
Marisol nodded again, numb. “That would explain why the ghosts were seen back then.”
Sam added, as if in a trance, “And when the resort corporation built this storage structure, they dug up even more.” He dropped the tombstone he’d been holding and began to retch.
“Well, I guess we know why your friend’s abuela is pissed,” Carlos said as he looked around.
“They left her here, she said. So, she died thirteen years before the navy threw her family off the island and relocated them to St. Croix.”
Javier walked over to them. “They dug up Abuelita—” He gestured around him. “And the rest of them?”
Pieces were clicking together in Marisol’s brain. “So, when they took her family away, they left her grave here on the island.” She pointed to the stone on the ground in front of her. “And now they’ve desecrated her grave. Again.”
“Seems like it.” Lupe put her fingertips to her skull as if to soothe it from the dark news.
Still kneeling on the ground, Sam spat, wiped his mouth, and then said, “And it’s my father’s fault.” His voice was shaky.
“Actually, it’s the navy’s,” Marisol said in an angry tone. “They were taking over the land and were the first to dig this area up, so they’re the ones who woke them.”
“Woke them?” Sam’s voice was thin and reedy.
“Yes. Woke them.”
Lupe turned to Javier. “This military guy, Jones, tried to tell his superiors, but they didn’t believe him. Then I bet the entire platoon, or whatever, was haunted and they pulled off the island altogether.”
Javier’s eyes widened. “Wait, they knew what they’d done. That’s why they made it a nature preserve. They tried to cover it up.”
Lupe shrugged. “Maybe they succeeded. Jones said it was quiet until a few months ago. The ghosts were at rest, I guess.”
“Until my father and his greedy friends disturbed them again.”
Marisol nodded at Sam, then said, “But I think Lupe’s right. I’m just not convinced they’re the ones killing people and taking their hearts. Jones said nothing like that happened when they were around before.”
Carlos pointed to the stones they’d unearthed. “And there are women and children among them. Not exactly ghoul material.”
“That means the killer’s still out there,” Javier responded.
Lupe nodded. “And the ghosts.”
Then they all stayed there staring at the stones, not saying anything. The noise from the nearby event grounds seemed suddenly mocking and forced. A microphone squealed to life and a voice said, “Test, test, test.”
Carlos jolted. “Shit! I’m supposed to be onstage!” He spun around and indicated the macabre mess around them. “But what are we going to do?”
Javier put his hands on his friend’s shoulders. “Go, Carlos. We’ll find Lupe’s uncle and call in the cavalry. You need to go on as if all is fine, so we don’t have a panic. Go!”
Carlos nodded at Javier and the rest of them and took off running back toward the grounds.
Sam was still kneeling and staring at the ground. “We have to stop him.”
“Who? Carlos?”
Sam shook his head. “No, my father. This isn’t right. This ugly resort, this whole thing. It’s just not right.”
“Yeah, no shit.” Javier scowled.
Javier really didn’t like this Sam guy, but Marisol could tell he was as horrified as the rest of them. And here they were, with no plan and hordes of people arriving on the island.
Never a dull moment with this group.
Why couldn’t she get normal friends?
Chapter Twenty-five
Lupe
JAVIER’S SARCASTIC COMMENT to Sam was not lost on Lupe. She put her hands on her hips and shot Javier a look. “Really? Now you’re going to be snippy and petty?”
Javier scowled at her. At Sam. At the trees. Boy was always scowling these days. “Let’s find your uncle.” He shoved his hands deep into his jeans pockets and started stalking back toward the resort. Marisol and Lupe shared a look. Sam seemed distracted. He reached out for Lupe’s arm.
“I gotta go. We’re going to need more than some tombstones to prove this.”
“True, but we’re going to find it together. Let’s go talk to my uncle.” She started to walk away but he grabbed her arm again. Why did boys insist on doing that? It so pissed her off.
“What? Sam, what?”
“I need to go.”
This stopped her. “Excuse me?”
“I have to check on something. I just thought of some documents my father has on his computer that might help. I know where he keeps his passwords.” His eyes were wide and heavy, like there were weights on each lid, each shoulder.
What the hell? “Documents? What kind of documents?”
Silence, then, “I can’t tell you, it’s better if I just show you. If I show everyone.”
She stared at him for a minute. Was Sam a coward? She had patience for a lot of things, but not cowardice. “I think it’s best if we stay together.”
“Look, Lupe.” His eyes were more focused, like he’d just decided on something. “I think this is why I’m here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think this is what I have to offer to the story, what I bring to the party. I understand this world, my father’s world.” When he said the word “father” he had a look on his face like he’d smelled something bad.
“But what documents?”
He just kissed her forehead. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”
She didn’t have to do anything, and she didn’t trust easily, but weirdly she trusted this rich boy she’d only known for a few days. She nodded. “Okay.”
“Thank you,” he whispered, and then he was gone, cutting through the brush, running to the front of the building toward the parking lot.
