From the Devil's Farm

by Leta Serafim

  A handsome child, the victim had skin the color of honey and thick black hair. The soles of his feet were heavily callused, indicating he’d gone barefoot for much of his life. The palms of his hands were also blistered in places, work-worn like those of a day laborer.

  Patronas was surprised to see the fire had done him no real harm, only singeing the back of his shirt and causing some blistering on the skin of his extremities, most probably after death. It was the wound in his neck that had killed him.

  There were a few beads scattered around the edge of the pit in an orderly way. Patronas touched one with a gloved finger before bagging it. Faience, he guessed, of no intrinsic value. There were also coins and a tiny metal bell. A line of thick red powder had been dribbled around the platform. He stepped closer and lifted the child’s blood-caked shirt with his pen. His ribs protruded and his belly was abnormally distended.

  Hunger or the beginnings of decay? Perhaps the forensic people would know.

  He was a small boy and very thin. His hair was dirty and had been dressed with some kind of oil, a cloying and sweet scent Patronas could not identify. In addition to his t-shirt, he was wearing cotton shorts, but no underwear. Judging by his coloring and the poor quality of his clothing, Patronas thought the Greek-American woman, Lydia Pappas, was right. The child’s most likely a Pakistani or Indian immigrant, a throwaway no one would miss.

  Patronas filled his notebook with observations, drawing a picture of the place where the body lay and measuring the depth of the stone pit beneath. He continued to urge the others to search carefully, to gather and bag what they found.

  “Anything, a hair, an eyelash. Use your tweezers.”

  He snipped a few strands of the victim’s hair and tucked them into a plastic envelope, intending to send them to the lab in Athens for analysis. Perhaps the technicians there could give him an idea of the child’s ethnic origins. Remembering his coursework in forensics, he duly swabbed beneath the child’s fingernails, across the palms of his hands, and the wound in his neck. He carefully packed the swabs and sealed the evidence bags, labeling them as he went. He was more careless when fingerprinting the child. An eight-year-old? The child wouldn’t be in any database. Even DNA would probably be insufficient when it came to establishing his origins. The human race being what it was, no one was pure anything, or so the coroner had said.

  “Mongrels,” the coroner had told him. “And if the child is indeed from the Indian subcontinent, so are close to two billion other people.” No, he and his men would have to find another way to establish the boy’s ethnicity. Hopefully, they’d get lucky and someone would come forward and identify him.

  Next he gathered up the coins, beads, and the bell and slipped them into separate envelopes, noting the location and writing a one line description. He didn’t expect to find much more. Aside from a thin trickle of blood, it seemed tidy for a crime scene, orderly. Whoever had done this had been careful. There was little of the purpling where blood usually pools after a heart ceases to pump, which surprised him. And the victim’s skin, though deeply tanned, was radiant in death, almost translucent. On his right foot he wore a little woven anklet with a red zigzag pattern.

  For some reason, the anklet made Patronas want to cry for the boy whose name he didn’t know, whose parents he might never find. For the time being, he and his colleagues would have to fill in, be the chief mourners, and sing the Greek hymns for the dead, the mirologia, for him.

  “Do you think someone interrupted them?” he asked Tembelos, pointing to the ashes of the fire.

  Tembelos looked puzzled. “Here?”

  It was a valid point. Aside from scavengers, the crows and the flies, Thanatos had been bereft of life, sterile and gritty. It was like standing on the surface of the moon.

  “Take another close-up of his face,” Patronas ordered Tembelos. “We’ll print copies and distribute them. Someone has to know who he is.”

  He studied the remains of the fire. By all accounts, the site had been deserted at the time of the murder. Only poor Lydia Pappas had been in the vicinity, out on an early morning stroll. So if no one was here, why didn’t the killer keep the fire going? Incinerate the body and destroy the evidence? Another puzzle.

  Whoever had done this was clever. He’d lured the boy up here and killed him without leaving a trace of himself behind. It was quite an accomplishment.

  The red powder had caught the eye of the priest. He was crouched down, rubbing it between his gloved fingers.

  “Odd,” he said, looking up at Patronas. “I believe it is red ocher. Primitive man used it in religious rituals.”

  Patronas duly logged this in his notebook.

  If it was indeed red ocher, they’d need to determine if the substance was easy to come by, and if not, where the killer might have obtained it. One thing was sure: this was no random attack. The crime had been elaborately staged, almost ceremonial in execution. But why? “There has to be a reason the murderer chose this site,” Patronas insisted. “As a crime scene, it’s virtually immaculate, way too clean. Could be the child was killed someplace else, brought here, and the ritual staged.”

  The priest waved him off. “Unlikely. It would have been too risky. He would have had to pass by the museum. Chances are someone would have seen him.”

  Patronas got a large plastic tarp out of his briefcase, unfolded it, and spread it out on the platform. Then he and Tembelos lifted up the pole with the body, removed it from the pit, and laid it gently down on the tarp. They broke open the lock and removed the length of chain, taking care to touch them as little as possible. Then they bagged the hands, head, and feet of the child and placed him inside a body bag, zipping it closed. Designed for adults, the bag was far too big and made a crinkling noise as it settled around the body.

  The sight grieved Patronas even more. Even in death, the child had no place.

  He sealed up the pole, encased it in plastic, and handed it to Tembelos. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the killer left some prints behind.”

  Returning to the platform, he pulled on a fresh set of latex gloves. He slid down into the pit where the fire had been and began gathering up the ash, bagging it fistfuls at a time. Buried deep between the stones were chunks of broken glass, iridescent with a strange residue.

  Patronas summoned Tembelos back, and together they pried the stones farther apart. Cautiously, he probed the area between them. His fingertips caught on something. Pulling a brush from the forensic kit in his pocket, he dusted the ash away, assuming it was another shard of glass.

  His breath caught in his throat when he saw the cavities in the bone, the gaping eye sockets.

  It was a fragment of a skull.

  Tembelos had been looking over his shoulder. “Panagia mou!” he gasped when he saw what Patronas had unearthed. Mother of God.

  Seeking to touch it as little as possible, Patronas pried the bone loose with a metal tool and gently bagged it, then returned to the fire pit and dug deeper still. Beneath the skull he discovered more bones—the remnants of a ribcage and a tiny pelvis—half-hidden between the rocks. The bones were very dark, fossil-like almost. He kept working, first with one tool, then another, before finally switching back to the brush. The dead child called out to him, begging for justice.

  The sun was setting by the time he unearthed the rest of the skeleton, the femur and spine, the latter so fragile and delicate it might have belonged to a bird. It was softer than the rest.

  “Could be an animal,” Tembelos called out, watching him. “A spring lamb somebody butchered up here.”

  “Maybe,” Patronas said. But somehow he didn’t think so.

  He studied the ribs carefully. Stub-like and uneven, they were like fragments of petrified wood.

  “So small,” he said.

  Together, they packed up the bones in silence. Deeply uneasy, Patronas stared out at the gathering darkness.

  Between them, they’d unearthed something unholy that day.

  Although he ha
dn’t said anything, he was sure the bones belonged to a child. A young one, less than a year old. The boy hadn’t been the first to die here.

  They carried the boy’s body back to the van and laid him out in the back. It had taken them long to get down from the platform, edging along with the body bag, flashlights in hand. Tembelos and Patronas had been in the lead with the corpse, Evangelos Demos and Petros Nikolaidis bringing up the rear with the metal pole and chain and all the forensic gear. Last down had been Papa Michalis with the evidence bags. Night was fast approaching and Patronas was desperate to leave.

  The museum was closed by the time they reached Aghios Andreas, the excavation hidden in shadows. The driver was waiting for them beside the white van, the only vehicle left in the parking lot. He opened the back doors and stepped aside as they laid the body bag down.

  Shaking his head, he shut the doors behind them. “Kakomoiro,” he whispered. Poor kid.

  Patronas immediately called Stathis on his cellphone and asked him to arrange for the police cruiser to meet them at Platys Gialos, a village on the eastern coast, and once there, to take the remains to Piraeus. Petros Nikolaidis had said a new marina had been constructed there and it would be deserted at this hour.

  Stathis liked the idea, saying it would be better than transporting the corpse on a commercial ferry.

  The men boarded the van and fastened their seatbelts. The driver started the engine and they got underway. No one spoke during the ride, their melancholy cargo depressing all of them.

  It took less than thirty minutes to reach Platys Gialos. Occupying a far corner of the harbor, the marina was well suited for their purposes. The cement quay extended well out into the bay, far from the tourist traffic.

  There was a chapel about midway up the hill, but little else of note. A row of yellow mercury lamps illuminated the area, making it as bright as day, but as Nikolaidis had predicted, Patronas saw no people. A high wall ran perpendicular to the quay, protecting the boats from the sea, and the police cruiser was anchored at the end.

  Getting out of the van, Patronas flashed his flashlight twice at the cruiser, the pre-arranged signal he and Stathis had agreed upon to announce their arrival. The captain sent two crew members out to assist. Together, they hoisted the body bag up, carried it gently onboard, and placed it in the hold of the boat. They were equally diligent with the evidence, storing it in a special container the captain had prepared. They went about their work quietly, whispering, as if afraid to disturb the child.

  Patronas documented the transfer and had the captain sign for it. Establishing custody and chain of evidence was a necessary procedure, should the case ever come to trial.

  The cruiser left a few minutes later, its massive wake a white scar in the water. Once there, the boy’s body would be taken off the boat and driven to the lab in Athens in another van. Stathis would meet the cruiser, he’d told Patronas, and accompany the child personally to the morgue. He’d see to it.

  His boss had been calling continually throughout the afternoon to monitor their progress. “What was the motive for the crime?” he’d asked Patronas at one point. “Was the child sexually molested?”

  “Not that I could see. No, this was something else, sir. Scene was elaborately staged, almost like theater.”

  There had been a lengthy silence after Patronas reported he’d found a partial skeleton in the ashes of the fire.

  “A serial killer?” his boss said in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard.

  “I don’t know, maybe. We’ll have to let the forensic people sort it out. Personally, I think they won’t know what to make of it. We’ll probably have to consult a forensic archeologist at the university about the bones’ origins.”

  “Old, you think?” Stathis sounded hopeful.

  “I don’t know. They could have been tainted by the soil. It’s volcanic—maybe some chemical reaction occurred. But they were brown, sir, the color of tobacco. Also, they were deeply embedded, so it was hard to say how long they’ve been there. The archeologists have a formula—so many centimeters equals so many centuries. Like I said, they’ll be able to give us a better idea. Could be the bones were original to the site—two, maybe even three thousand years old. All I know is there was a lot of them, and they were little.”

  “An animal?”

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  “Human, then.” Stathis swore softly. “What else?”

  “A bunch of old beads and coins were laid out in a circle around the victim, almost like an offering. Whoever it was would have had to bring them with him, indicating premeditation. Also, there was this red powder everywhere. Whoever did the killing nicked the child’s jugular, but there was very little blood on the body or under it, which was strange—only a trace in the wound and down the front of his shirt. So where did it go? Given the catastrophic nature of the injury, he would have bled out within minutes.”

  Patronas paused for a moment, searching for the right words. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, so I asked Tembelos to take a look and tell me what he thought. ‘Only a couple of spoonfuls,’ he said. ‘Not enough.’ He couldn’t believe it either. He was pretty shaken up.”

  Truth was, Thanatos had frightened all of them.

  Chapter Four

  As an old man, be sensible.

  —The Delphic Oracle

  Not wanting to overwhelm Lydia Pappas, Patronas sent Evangelos Demos and the priest back to Kamares in the van, instructing them to check into the cheapest hotel they could find. He and Tembelos would meet them after they finished talking to her.

  “Two double rooms. We’ll bunk in pairs,” Patronas said. “Tembelos and me in one. You two in the other.”

  “How long we staying, boss?” Evangelos Demos asked.

  “Until we catch him.”

  Lydia Pappas was in an apartment at Leandros Studios, about half a kilometer from the marina, and after the van left, Petros Nikolaidis, Tembelos, and Patronas started toward it on foot. Patronas had ordered Tembelos to bring his video camera, planning to record every word she said for posterity. He always found it useful to review the footage of interviews in case he’d missed anything the first time around.

  Nikolaidis said that after taking Pappas’ statement, he’d examined her thoroughly and found no blood on her clothes, face or hands. “In addition, I bagged up her outfit and shoes and sent them to Athens to be tested along with the rest of the evidence—a precautionary measure. I don’t think she’s involved.”

  “It’s a wonder you didn’t spray her with luminol,” Patronas said, impressed.

  Nikolaidis had been the best student at the police academy, far surpassing his own lackluster performance. Born and raised on Serifos, a nearby island, he’d been a cop on Sifnos for over twenty years.

  “Not much to do,” Nikolaidis admitted. “Locals’ idea of a crime is breaking the fast during Lent. Once in a while, a tourist will get drunk and drive off a cliff, but that’s about it.”

  They continued to talk about Sifnos, with Nikolaidis sharing what he knew of the island. “Roughly two thousand five hundred Greeks live here year-round, and most are decent, hard-working people. They’re pretty old school. Panighiria, church festivals, is a major form of entertainment.”

  “Any troublemakers?” Tembelos asked.

  “A handful, especially now with the migrants. Their presence has stirred things up.”

  “You actually think one of them could have done this?”

  Nikolaidis nodded. “It’s possible. There have already been a couple of incidents involving the migrants. Two or three of those men are known to be pretty violent.”

  He pointed to a large white hotel in the distance, saying, “Simitis stayed there when he was prime minister. You’d see him in his swimsuit on the beach, talking to people. No bodyguards in sight. He didn’t need them then. Now, I’m not so sure.”

  “Besides Simitis, who else comes to the island?” Patronas asked, mentally taking notes.

>   “We don’t get the tourist traffic of Mykonos or Santorini. It’s mostly Greeks who vacation here.”

  Although the beach at Platys Gialos was said to be the longest in the Cycladic Archipelago, Patronas found the village that surrounded it surprisingly modest. With the exception of two large hotels, the one Nikolaidis had pointed out and another called Alexandros, almost all the businesses were small and family-owned. Benakis’ rooming house/patisserie was typical, as was the little souvlaki place down the street. Although it was the height of the tourist season, no one was eating in either establishment, nor was there anyone in a bar called Mostra, farther down. It was one of the cleanest places Patronas had ever seen. The buildings had all been freshly whitewashed, and the only trash in the street was bougainvillea blossoms borne by the wind.

  Beyond the village proper, Patronas caught a glimpse of another, poorer community, a dense warren of collapsing shacks and dank byways. Every surface was covered with graffiti. It edged a dry riverbed far back from the beach. People were living there. Patronas could see hovels constructed of plastic sheeting half-hidden in the rushes and smell traces of a poorly dug latrine. Migrants maybe, or perhaps a gypsy encampment? Hopefully his people were not this poor, at least not yet.

  Nikolaidis gestured to the shantytown. “It used to be a campground. Migrants seized it about six months ago, just took it over. There’s been a lot of discussion on Sifnos about what to do about it. The locals aren’t happy. They want them gone.”

  Patronas studied the hovels, thinking he’d visit them the next day, interview the residents and find out if any knew the boy. The situation with the migrants was becoming increasing volatile all over Greece. A Pakistani had recently raped and beaten a local girl half to death on Paros, a neighboring island, setting off a violent backlash, a rightwing firestorm that was still burning.

  He didn’t believe the child’s death on Sifnos was related to the incident on Paros, but he’d have to check it out anyway. Interview the local rabble-rousers. For all their church-going, it could happen here, a migrant child done to death by a local. Payback for Paros.