Phillips frowned, moving to the table, where he pulled the covering back from the corpse’s face. Taking a deep breath, fighting the nausea that rose in his gut, Tim Kitteridge made himself look, too.
The old man’s eyes were still open, and the rictus of fear that had twisted his features as he died remained frozen in place. But what startled Kitteridge was the man’s age. His hair — only a few straggling wisps — was snow white, and the heavily creased skin of his face was draped loosely around his skull. Most of his teeth were gone, and his body, what Kitteridge could see of it, was little more than skin and bones.
Phillips, a deep frown creasing his brow, pulled the cover farther back, exposing the wound in the man’s chest. A gaping slash, several inches long, laid the man’s rib cage open. Once again Kitteridge fought to control his churning stomach.
Phillips uttered a low whistle. “Whatever got him, it tore his whole sternum out.”
“You mean whoever got him, don’t you?” Kitteridge asked, looking at the doctor. To him, the cut had looked exactly like a knife wound. “Any idea who he is?”
Phillips, still examining the wound, shook his head. “No one I’ve ever seen before.” He glanced up at Orrin Hatfield. “What do you think? Is it a homicide?”
The coroner shrugged. “Probably. But offhand, I’d say the odds are pretty good we’ll never even find out who this is, let alone why somebody might have killed him. If he was poaching on someone else’s trap line, no one will ever talk about it.”
“Any identification on him?” Kitteridge asked.
“Nothing at all.” Hatfield’s eyes met Kitteridge’s. “Did Judd or Marty find anything out there?”
“If they did, they haven’t told me yet. But, Christ, how old was this guy? Ninety?”
Warren Phillips’s lips curved into a thin smile. “Hard to tell with these old swamp rats. And this is sure one of them.”
Kitteridge sighed silently. He was already well aware that the marshlands harbored a closed community of people who shared nothing of their secrets with the townspeople of Villejeune, and in fact were rarely seen in the village at all.
But the swamp sometimes seemed full of them — sallow-faced men in rotting boats, running trap lines and setting nets, scratching a living out of the wilderness. Many of them, he knew, barely existed at all. No birth certificates, no school records, nothing. Most of the women, Phillips had told him, still gave birth at home.
When Kitteridge had objected that they were running insane risks, Phillips had agreed. “But they still do it,” he’d insisted. “It’s primitive, but it’s the way they do things. If the babies die, no one ever knows about it. No one ever even knows they were born. Same with the old people. They die, and their families bury them. Sometimes they even kill each other, and nobody ever hears a word about it. Rumors, but nothing else.”
Now, in the tiny morgue, Kitteridge remembered those words, and gazed at Phillips. “You’re telling me what we have here is the body of a man who probably never existed at all?”
Phillips shrugged but said nothing.
“It’s not the first time something like this has happened, Tim,” Hatfield replied. “I know it sounds crazy, but every now and then a body turns up in the swamp, and no one can identify it. Hell, there’re probably a lot more bodies out there than we even know about. If Amelie Coulton hadn’t heard a scream, this one would still be out there, too. Except by now the animals would have finished him off, and none of us would ever have known what happened.”
Or cared, Kitteridge thought a few minutes later as he left the clinic. But as he drove back to the police headquarters next to the post office, he wondered if it was so strange after all.
Southern California wasn’t really so different. Even there, Mexicans and other illegal aliens were lost among the masses of other citizens, living outside the system, disappearing into society just as completely as the swamp rats of Villejeune faded into the marshes.
And if people had been living in the swamp for generations, neither knowing nor caring what went on in the outside world, why would they change?
Why wouldn’t they just go on living, keeping to themselves, living their lives the way they always had?
Suddenly he remembered a conversation he’d had with Judd Duval, no more than a week after he’d arrived in Villejeune. He’d asked the deputy if he’d grown up in the town, and Duval had laughed. “Not me,” he’d said. “I’m a swamp rat. Not a real one, ’cause I like a few things the swamp don’t have. Like electricity, and liquor I didn’t make myself. But I’m part of the swamp. Always was, and always will be.” He’d grinned. “And don’t ever ask me what goes on out there, ‘cause I won’t tell you. Not me, or any of my kinfolk, either.”
“Sounds mysterious,” Kitteridge had remarked.
Judd Duval’s eyes had narrowed slightly. “It ain’t no mystery,” he’d said. “Folks like us just like to be let alone, that’s all. We got our own ways, and they ain’t none of nobody else’s business.”
An attitude, Kitteridge reflected, that was apparently shared by Warren Phillips and Orrin Hatfield. As far as they were concerned, the case was closed. An unidentified man had been killed by an unidentified assailant, and that was that.
Except that Kitteridge wasn’t satisfied.
No matter who the man in the morgue was, he had died within Tim Kitteridge’s jurisdiction, and his death would be investigated.
It was time for him to go into the swamp, find some of the people who lived there, and ask them some questions.
6
Phil Stubbs gazed up at the new sign that hung over the entrance to his tour headquarters. It had only been there a week, but despite his complaints at how much it had cost, the expenditure had already proved itself worthwhile. The lettering, done in the ornate style of circus posters, was in red edged with gold, and stood out brightly against a white background.
SEE SWAMP MONSTERS UP SO CLOSE YOU CAN ALMOST TOUCH THEM IF THEY DON’T KILL YOU FIRST!
When Michael had first suggested the sign, Stubbs laughed at the idea. “Seems to me like you’re tryin’ to turn this place into a tourist trap.”
“But isn’t that what it is?” Michael had asked, blurting the words out before he realized quite how they sounded. He’d reddened, but floundered on. “I mean, what about all the people who are afraid to go out in the swamp but still want to see the animals? How are they going to know what we have?”
Stubbs had thought about it, finally deciding the boy might be right. Since Michael’s signs had turned the animal cages into real displays, business had already picked up. But he’d balked again when Michael had shown him a sketch of the sign he had in mind. “Now come on,” he’d protested. “We don’t let anyone touch anything but the nutrias, and old Martha wouldn’t bite a thing.”
“But the sign only says you can ‘almost’ touch them,” Michael pointed out.
So Stubbs had given in. The day after the sign went up, business had immediately improved. People were coming in with their kids, and spending a couple of hours wandering around the cages, watching the animals. A lot of them, after getting a preview of what was in the swamp, signed up for the tour as well. Business was booming, and for the last couple of days Stubbs had even been considering adding an admission fee for the people who just wanted to see the animals.
All in all, he decided as he unlocked the office and started getting ready for the first batch of tourists who were already on their way down from Orlando, hiring Michael hadn’t been a bad move at all. The boy worked harder than anyone he’d ever seen, and always seemed to be coming up with new ideas.