Deadly Harvest

by Michael Stanley

  “Yes, it is him,” said Samantha.

  Kubu looked down at the face of Dr. Jake Pilane and nodded.

  SIXTY

  SAMANTHA RUSHED KUBU TO Princess Marina Hospital, but once she was convinced that he wasn’t seriously injured, she left for home, exhausted. Edison Banda waited and drove Kubu home after the hospital had finished with him. They didn’t talk much. Edison was also tired after the long night, and Kubu was in a haze of shock and painkillers, his mind on the events leading up to the witch doctor’s death.

  It was after three when Edison dropped Kubu off and headed home to his bed. Kubu knew Joy would be waiting for him; he’d phoned her from the hospital to let her know that he’d been hurt, but was okay. Nevertheless, when he came in, he could see the worry on her face. I look a mess, he thought, as he tossed his bloodied and ruined sweater over a chair. His forearm was half covered by the dressing over the stitches, and his hand tightly bound with bandages.

  “Oh, Kubu!” Joy cried, running to him.

  “I’m fine, my darling.” He hugged her with his left arm, pulling her close.

  “What did he do to you?”

  He could tell she was close to tears. “The arm is just a flesh wound. And you know I have plenty of that! They put in a few stitches and bandaged it up. As for my hand, I broke one of the bones hitting the witch doctor. But it’s not serious, either. A ‘greenstick’ fracture, the doctor called it. It will bind up by itself. They gave me antibiotics and painkillers. I’ll be fine.”

  He decided not to mention the antiretroviral they’d given him, concerned about the blood from the dead policeman on the scalpel. They wouldn’t know about the man’s HIV status until later in the morning.

  Kubu steered her to the couch, and they sat close together, Joy on the left so that he could have his good arm over her shoulder. For a few minutes, it was enough for them to sit together and be still. Then Joy asked, “What happened to him? The witch doctor?”

  Kubu hesitated. “I killed him. I didn’t mean to. He was rushing at me with a scalpel in his hand. I was scared and just lashed out and hit him as hard as I could.” His hand twinged as if recalling the blow.

  “I’m glad,” Joy said. “I’m glad he’s dead. He was an awful, evil man.”

  Kubu shook his head. “We needed him alive. We need to know who his clients were, who his victims were. We needed to show ­people that he was just a psychopath, to be reviled not feared. He’s escaped what should have been in store for him.”

  But there’s more to it than that, Kubu thought. I killed a man. A bad man, a man who deserved to die, but another human being nonetheless. He dragged me to his level.

  Joy shuddered. “I don’t care. He might’ve got away. I’m glad you killed him.”

  Kubu pulled her closer, wishing they could go to bed, make love, put it all out of their lives, but he knew the moment wasn’t right. And that this was something he would carry alone.

  “Do you want some tea?” Joy asked.

  Kubu would have preferred a stiff brandy, but with all the drugs, that might not be a good idea. “Tea sounds good.”

  Joy went to the kitchen, and Kubu stretched out, allowing the tension to seep out of his muscles, to be replaced by physical tiredness. They would have tea, he would reassure Joy, and they would go to bed. There was much to do in the morning. And the painkillers would wear off at some point.

  He heard a scrabbling in the ceiling and glanced up. The mongoose, he thought.

  Then Joy came back with the tea, snuggling close to him again, and he knew that everything would turn out all right.

  SIXTY-ONE

  DESPITE JOY’S PROTESTS, KUBU decided to go to work after lunch. He had slept soundly until after ten in the morning, when the painkillers started to wear off. His hand throbbed, and he had a headache, but his determination to tie up the loose ends in the witch doctor case was as strong as ever. He phoned Samantha around noon to ask her to pick him up, so they could go through the witch doctor’s house.

  “And get the keys we found in his trousers last night from Zanele,” he said before he hung up. “I hope they’re his house keys. I’m not in the mood to break down a door.”

  “RAMPA SEEMS MUCH BETTER this morning,” Samantha said as they left Kubu’s house. “The rash seems to be fading. Maybe it was just an allergy after all. And he’s being very cooperative now that the witch doctor is dead. We’re getting all the details of where and when he buried the extra bodies. We’ll be able to exhume those children and give them proper funerals.”

  “We’ll still charge him with whatever we can manage,” Kubu growled. “If he hadn’t closed his eyes to what was going on—­out of fear and greed—­the witch doctor would’ve stopped being invisible long ago.”

  Samantha hesitated, then blurted out, “Kubu, I have to admit I was really scared last night, and I didn’t know why. The witch doctor was dead, but it all felt so wrong. So dangerous somehow.” She hesitated. “And I’ve been sleeping badly. I’m beginning to wonder whether this witch doctor thing is getting to me. I kept hearing something moving in the ceiling.”

  Kubu looked at her sharply. “You, too? It’s rats. Or mongooses. Joy persuaded one of our neighbors to climb up into our ceiling yesterday. I don’t do that sort of thing.” Samantha could well believe that, and the thought of Kubu putting a foot through the ceiling forced her to suppress a smile. “There weren’t any droppings, so it wasn’t rats. But he saw a mongoose climbing through the rafters.”

  “I’m sure that’s what it is,” Samantha agreed at once. “Anyway, I didn’t hear anything last night.”

  Kubu just nodded, and they drove in silence for a few moments. When they stopped at a traffic light, Kubu turned to her. “Samantha,” he said, “I want to tell you what a good job you’ve done. If you hadn’t been so tenacious about following up the muti killings, Pilane might still be out there with his mask and leopard skin and scalpel.”

  “Thanks, Kubu. I thought . . . I thought I’d drive to Mochudi tomorrow in the afternoon and find Dikeledi Betse. I’ll tell her what happened to Lesego. We won’t really ever know the details, will we? But at least she won’t have to wonder about it anymore. Not knowing is the worst.”

  “Like you with Segametsi Mogomotsi?” Kubu asked quietly. Samantha nodded.

  KUBU ENJOYED BEING DRIVEN, because it gave him an opportunity to make some calls. Joy had forbidden him to do any work that morning. Now he was eager to move forward. The first call was to the doctor at Princess Marina Hospital. He listened to the doctor and breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

  Samantha glanced toward him. “Is something wrong, Kubu?” she asked after he hung up.

  Kubu shook his head. “No, everything’s fine.” The policeman who had been slashed to death by the witch doctor the previous night had turned out to be HIV negative.

  Then he called Zanele Dlamini, the forensics expert. She had taken a team to the house that the police had stormed the previous night to look for evidence of the muti murders.

  “It was a gold mine, Kubu,” she exclaimed in a weary voice. “We’ve worked all night and have strong evidence. The back room was spotless, but it still amazes me that smart ­people don’t know how hard it is to get rid of all traces of blood. The witch doctor must’ve used the table in the middle for his killing. We found blood in some of the seams of the cover, as well as in some of the cracks in the concrete floor.”

  “Could you identify any of it?” Kubu asked impatiently.

  “Yes,” Zanele replied. “Thank God we still have that new DNA machine that South Africa loaned to us. We positively identified that some of the blood was from the albino.”

  “Excellent! Anything else.”

  “In the cabinet, we found a variety of medical things, such as stuff for suturing, anesthetics, such as chloroform, a number of scalpels—­”

  “That’s
where he got the one that he slashed me with,” Kubu interrupted.

  “And there were various plastic containers and gourds.”

  “Anything useful from any of it?”

  “Yes! And guess whose fingerprints we found on a scalpel from the cabinet. You’re going to love this! Joshua Gobey’s. It is a clear match.” Zanele could not contain her excitement. “I just received the results. It’ll stand up to any scrutiny.”

  Kubu thought for a moment. “This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to call the director and ask him to speak to the commissioner. This is bad news for the police force, and he needs to know. We’re going to ask his okay to get a search warrant for Gobey’s house. As soon as it’s signed, I want you to go through the house and particularly his clothes to see if we can tie him personally to Owido. The print on the scalpel only ties him to the place.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I’m going to interview him later this afternoon to see what his story is. Don’t let news of that print get out. I want to surprise him with it.”

  A few moments later, Kubu ended the call and phoned Director Mabaku to put his plan in place. When he hung up, he turned to Samantha. “I think we’ve got the bastard!”

  A FEW MINUTES LATER, they arrived at the doctor’s house on Pela Crescent. Who would have imagined this quiet little street could have seen so much over the past few weeks? Kubu thought.

  A constable checked their IDs before letting them go inside the gate. Kubu dug in his pocket with his left hand and pulled out the bunch of keys that had been found the previous night in the witch doctor’s civilian clothes. The first one he tried fit the lock, and they opened the door. They decided to do a quick tour of the house to orient themselves. It was a typical suburban home with three bedrooms, one en suite and one that was used as an office.

  “Okay,” Kubu said when they’d finished their tour. “Let’s start! We’ll go through everything, leaving the office for last. That’s where we’re likely to find something, if there’s something to find.”

  For the next two hours, Kubu and Samantha examined every room, every drawer, every cupboard, but found nothing of interest.

  “I’ve never seen a house so neat and well organized,” Samantha commented. “Particularly a bachelor’s. Even his underwear is folded.” She paused. “I assume he was a bachelor. There’s no evidence of a woman here.”

  “Yes, he was unmarried,” Kubu responded. “And did you see the walk-­in closet in his bedroom? Everything was hung by color. Blues with blues; greens with greens. I hope Joy never gets to see it. My life would end in misery if I had to live like that. I’m perfectly happy that all my clothes are somewhere under one roof.”

  He looked around. “Have you noticed that there aren’t any pictures on the walls or photographs of friends or family?”

  Samantha nodded. “It’s weird. Almost as though he doesn’t want anything giving away who he is. And there is nothing for music, and no TV.” She shook her head in amazement.

  The two of them walked to the office—­the only room remaining to be searched. The wall behind the desk sported two gray metal filing cabinets; the wall to the left of the desk had a single window covered with a thick curtain; and the wall opposite the window was one big bookcase. Kubu turned and looked back at the door. The wall in which it was set was painted a dark maroon.

  “What’s with the wall?” he asked rhetorically.

  Samantha turned and gazed. “Even more weird!” she exclaimed. “Every other wall is white, yet this one is red.”

  “The one he looked at when he sat at his desk!” Kubu commented, shaking his head. “Will you please go through the filing cabinets while I check out his desk? I’ve no idea what we are looking for. If something seems out of place, let me know.”

  He found a key that opened the locked desk, then handed the bunch to Samantha. “I’m sure the cabinet keys must be here, too,” he said.

  Within a minute, she’d opened the cabinets and pulled out the top drawer of the first one. While she checked the dozens of files, Kubu carefully examined each desk drawer. Here too everything was in order, everything in place. Kubu whistled. “What a strange mind to have—­paying such attention to every detail.”

  “It’s the same in the files,” Samantha responded. “Everything in order—­files by alphabet; contents by date. And an index of contents at the front of each file. Amazing.”

  When Kubu reached the end of the last desk drawer, he leaned back in the very comfortable chair and took a deep breath. “Nothing so far! And you?”

  “Nothing also,” Samantha replied. “Most of it is medical stuff. Files of his patients, and so on. I’ve taken out all of his bank statements and some other financial records. We can look at those later.”

  Kubu stood up. “Okay, one last place, then we can leave. The bookcase.”

  In addition to the numerous medical texts and meticulously labeled journal boxes, there was a set of Reader’s Digest Classics, an Encyclopaedia Britannica, a number of what looked like university texts on biology, botany, and chemistry, and several biographies and autobiographies, mainly of nineteenth-­ and twentieth-­century military leaders. But what caught the attention of both Kubu and Samantha was a single photograph cut from a newspaper displayed in an old silver frame. It was of an older man and a teenage boy in front of a building. They were obviously related. The man was in a suit, and the boy wore a shirt and shorts that looked like a school uniform. He looked as though he was crying. The man was holding the boy’s hand, but the boy was turned away from him and seemed to be trying to pull away.

  “Pilane and his father, I would say,” Samantha said.

  Kubu nodded and picked up the frame and scrutinized it. The building didn’t look familiar. He looked at the back of the frame to see if there was an inscription. Nothing. He tried to remove the cardboard backing but found it impossible to do one-­handed. He handed it to Samantha, who carefully opened the clasps. There was a child’s writing on the back of the cutting. She read it out loud.

  “December the eighth, 1986.”

  “What a strange photo,” Kubu said. “The only picture we’ve found in the house, too.”

  “That date sounds familiar. Maybe we can find out the story behind it,” Samantha responded. “It could give us an idea of who he really was. I’ll check the newspapers for that day. They may even be online.”

  Kubu nodded and thought briefly about how lucky he was to have caring parents. “Okay, let’s go through all the books. You’ll have to do it, I’m afraid.” He held up his bandaged hand, wincing as he did so, and sat down at the desk.

  It was hard work, particularly for the lower shelves. Samantha took each book off the shelf, riffled through the pages to check whether anything had been slipped inside, and returned it to its same position.

  She was halfway through the second shelf when she noticed a safe behind the books. Kubu stood up for a closer look. “I wondered about that,” he remarked. “There is one unusual key in the bunch. I thought it might be for a safe.”

  Samantha took down enough books to give him access and he inserted the key. Sure enough, it turned, and he was able to open to door. There was only one item—­what looked like a photo album. He slid it out, took it to the desk, and opened it. On the front page, in neat letters written with a fountain pen, were a name, Jacob Mampe, and the same date: December the eighth, 1986.

  Kubu turned the page. On the left was a moth, pressed below the cellophane. Its wings were separated from its body. On the right page was a butterfly, similarly dismembered. Neither Kubu nor Samantha said a word. Kubu turned the page. Two more moths. The next page was the same. Kubu frowned, wondering what the album was all about.

  He turned the next page. This time it was a dried frog, with all four legs separated from the body. And on the right, there was a sparrow with its body crushed flat. Again the wings
were off. Kubu looked carefully at both the frog and the sparrow. The separations had been done very cleanly, with a knife or something similar.

  “This is very scary,” Samantha whispered. “He started killing things very young. I wonder why he took off the legs and wings and so on.”

  Kubu shook his head, but said nothing.

  The next page had the furs of a mouse and a rat, again with the limbs separate.

  “How did he dry them out?”

  “Probably left them in the sun,” Kubu replied. “It’s so dry here that it wouldn’t take very long.”

  On the next page there was a photograph of the boy with a pet dog. Scribbled at the bottom was the name Tau.

  “Doesn’t look like a lion,” Kubu murmured.

  On the right there was a photo of the dog alone, tongue hanging out.

  Kubu turned the page. Samantha gasped. There was a photo of a dog’s head—­clearly Tau’s. Underneath was the name Tau again, this time scratched out.

  “Well, that may explain one of our cases,” Samantha said. “But why did he do it?”

  “Maybe he was toying with Marumo.” Kubu didn’t sound convinced.

  “I wonder if he also set up Witness Maleng to murder Marumo then,” Samantha continued. “By abducting his daughter and suggesting that Marumo had done it.”

  “But there’s no evidence that the two ever met.”

  “Maybe he did it through the power of suggestion?”

  Kubu glanced at Samantha surprised. “Do you mean through a spell?”

  Samantha hesitated, then shook her head. “You’re right. It couldn’t have been that. Let’s go on.”

  Over the page, there was another photograph of what appeared to be Pilane’s father. This time alone. On the right page was a large photograph of a tombstone—­quite elaborate.

  “They must have had money,” Kubu said. “A headstone like that is very expensive.”

  He peered more closely. “Hold on. This can’t be of Pilane’s father. The name is Sampson Mampe. Not Pilane. The date of death is December the eighth, 1990.”