It’s standard procedure to notify someone when in the course of developing a property, or in this case an island, ruins are discovered. That someone is usually the local government and then they will send over some folks from the university to make sure the developer isn’t plowing through some significant archeological find.
Such was the case for the Marriott Corporation during a recent project on a small island in the Pacific. It was thought to be uninhabited so it was quite a shock to everyone when proof that someone had previously lived on the island surfaced just prior to the bulldozers arriving.
It was clear from the start that this was no ancient civilization that had taken up residence. All of the initial evidence pointed to a group of people who had become shipwrecked on the island in the late 1960s and made the best of things. In fact, it appeared that they were very resourceful and a number of items were recovered that mimicked household goods, albeit made from bamboo, vines, and gourds.
In fact, it wasn’t even newsworthy until they found the corpses.
Then it became a crime scene.
A few days later Bob, from the Denver office of the FBI, landed at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, on the island of O’ahu in Hawaii, to lead the inquiry. A lengthy boat trip later, he was walking around what remained of the huts at the center of the formerly-deserted island and starting to put together a few theories. Bob, a forensic archaeologist, specialized in cold cases and had an uncanny knack of putting together details that nobody else in his office could recognize as pertinent.
Simply put, as quirky as others might find him, and make no mistake, he was an odd one, he was the best at what he did.
He concluded there were seven survivors. Four men and three women. It appeared likely that for the first few years, they worked together as a group and were able to recreate many of the amenities that people on the mainland enjoyed.
Then something happened. Something horrible. Almost unspeakable.
At some point, the youngest male killed the other three men and one of the women. Their crushed skulls seemed to indicate death came from blunt force trauma, possibly from a rock or hammer.
“I found the four of them at the bottom of a well,” Bob informed his co-workers.
“How far down were they? How many feet?” one of his team asked.
“In Navy circles, they don’t say feet, they say fathoms,” he replied.
“Ok, how many fathoms?”
“I don’t know. About 15 feet,” said Bob.
Bob’s colleagues, upon digesting the news, worried about his seemingly obsessive interest in the case. He was working sixteen-hour days, poring over every inch of the island.
They also noticed that he seemed to be wearing the same bright red, long-sleeved shirt every day.
Eventually, back in Honolulu, he gathered them together to present his final findings. He had now added a white bucket hat to his ensemble.
After inviting everyone to “sit right back,” he began. “The young male, after killing the other members of the group, kept the remaining two women as sex slaves. I have recovered crude chains, a variety of restraints, and a large number of sex toys that were obviously employed. I can only imagine the horrors that took place in that grass hut. Some really twisted shit. It went on for at least ten years.” He stared off into the distance for a few moments.
Someone in the back raised their hand. “What’s with the hat?” they inquired. Eager faces looked up at Bob from their pads of paper, waiting for an explanation. Perhaps he would even give some insight into the red shirt. Finally, an explanation not forthcoming, his boss walked up, calmly removed the hat, and then smacked Bob over the head with it.
“Sorry Skipper,” said Bob, taking his leave, stumbling and bumping into almost everything on his way out.
“Who the fuck is Skipper?” asked his bewildered boss to nobody in particular.