iv.
The red and blue lights from the police car beat against the windows and the side of the house, the reflection pulsating into the sky. Tim wondered whether the young policeman behind the wheel had left on the lights for show, some excitement in a sleepy tourist town on a peaceful Christmas Day. The few neighbors would no doubt speculate about the presence of the cruiser in the driveway, but he did not know the protocol for the flashing lights. Perhaps he could just ask him to shut them off, but he wasn’t even sure that calling the police was the right move in such a situation. Holly had insisted that he do something about the bone in the hole on the beach. She had freaked out when she saw it from Jip’s bedroom window, waking him from a nap in the easy chair to come upstairs and see.
Just a pup, the county trooper appeared barely older than their son. He stepped from the car stiffly and put on his hat as though this was some traffic citation. Tim and Holly had been awaiting his arrival, and they nearly leapt from the house to greet him.
“You the folks with the bones?” He had the singsong rhythm of a native.
“The Keenans,” Tim said. “It’s just one bone.”
“What happened to you?” He lifted his chin. “That’s quite a gash there on your neck. Cut yourself shaving?”
Tim laughed and gently touched the raw skin on his throat. “As a matter of fact, I did, but this happened later. I was out the other day on the rocks and must have slipped and hit my head. Some kind of animal must have gotten at me while I was unconscious.”
The policeman leaned in and inspected Tim’s neck. He held up three fingers and made a slashing motion. “Looks like they were made by fingernails. Human. And mad.”
“The crime scene is around back,” Tim said.
“Let’s have a look-see.” He stepped aside so that Tim and Holly could lead the way on the path between the dunes. The ravens perched on the snow fence took off, cawing madly over the disturbance.
As she looked back to the policeman, Holly noticed his name tag pinned to the breast of his jacket. “Is that your name? Officer Pollock? Bet you get joshed about that all the time, around here. What with all the fish.”
“No, ma’am. First time.”
At the crest of the hill, they could see the hole in the sand above the high-tide mark, and they hurried down to take a closer look. Five feet long and four feet deep at its lowest point, it was empty save for a shallow pool of water resting at the very bottom. A slab of rock on the northern side cast a shadow into the crater. On the seaward side, most of the sand had been piled, and signs of disturbance ringed its perimeter. Although there were no footprints, indentations in several spots showed that whatever had been digging had shifted positions to get a better angle and go deeper. The wind had blown some of the piled sand toward the ocean, exposing a single bone, weatherworn as driftwood. Midway along its length, the bone twisted slightly and ended in a notch designed to fit the head of another bone. Tim had seen this type of bone before on an X-ray. In high school, he had broken his right arm playing football, a compound fracture of the radius. They all bent down and looked at the surface as bleached as a cloud.
“It’s an arm,” Tim said. “A human arm.”
“Could be,” Pollock said. He pulled it from the pile and the sand spilled into the space where the bone had been. “Smallish, but human most likely. A child, perhaps a small adult.”
“Where did it come from?” Holly asked. “How did it get here?”
“Can’t say. Could’ve washed up ashore. You would never believe what the ocean coughs up. Found a foot once, still inside a boot. Could’ve been here a long time. Looks old. And got dug up by whatever was here last night.”
Holly shuddered and wrapped her coat more tightly around her shoulders. “What was here last night?”
With a grunt, the policeman stood and tapped the arm bone against his thigh like a riding crop. “Probably smelt it or could tell there was a buried bone. There’s been a big white dog running loose around these parts. Dogs can smell bones a mile away. Even ancient ones. Seen any other holes? Any other bones lying around?”
Tim frowned at him. “Shouldn’t you be treating this more like a crime scene? Isn’t that kind of evidence of foul play?”
They could read the reflection in his sunglasses as Pollock held up the bone to the sunlight and inspected it closely. “This arm has been detached from a living thing for a long, long time.”
“How long?” Holly asked. “Can you tell how old a bone is?”