From the Devil's Farm

by Leta Serafim

  He kept pausing as if the policemen weren’t clever enough to follow what he was saying and he had to wait for them to catch up. Patronas found him tedious, a little repellent.

  Other men flexed their muscles, this one his erudition. Leaning over his notebook, Patronas drew another devil, this time wearing a mortarboard.

  Svenson droned on and on. He seemed a little confused and used idiomatic expressions Patronas was unfamiliar with—‘my mains,’ was one, ‘YOLO’ another, which Svenson explained was shorthand for ‘you only live once.’ He liked talking about himself and seemed a little confused, one minute the youthful party animal, the next, a serious scientist. What you’d get if you crossed Mick Jagger with Albert Einstein.

  “My latest research has been on one specific group,” Svenson said. “I call them ‘the people of the rock,’ similar to the ‘people of the sea,’ the intruders who wreaked havoc throughout the area at the end of the Bronze Age. Mine was a far more enigmatic group, very small. No one knows where they came from or where they went. There were a number of individual subsets within the larger whole, rather like the Protestants during the Reformation, when everything began to splinter and come apart. The Anabaptists, if you will, of ancient times. If I can learn more about them, the specifics of their belief system, it will be a monumental discovery.”

  Small group? Monumental discovery? The two statements didn’t add up.

  Coming up for air, Svenson continued. “Little is known about these people. The few sites that have been discovered echo the religious practices of the Phoenicians, so the sect must have either originated with them or been the result of close contact.”

  “Any of these sites on Sifnos?” Patronas said. Why am I bothering with this? he asked himself, but something kept drawing him back to it, nagging at him. Could be it was what the priest had said about ritual murder, the idea that there might be a continuum between the past and the present and a child had died as a result.

  “None that I’m aware of,” Svenson said. “What’s this all about?”

  “That trench of yours …. The museum director told you it was illegal, but you dug it anyway. Why?”

  “One of the students in the program, Charles Bowdoin, is debating whether or not to major in archeology and I wanted to give him a taste of what was involved. I thought we might get lucky and find some shards and send them out for carbon dating, establish how long the area had been in use. Some sacred places along the Mediterranean were occupied off and on for four thousand years, through the rise and fall of countless civilizations. A few even date as far back as the Paleolithic Age. You never know what you’ll find.”

  “How did you know the ruins were there?” Patronas asked.

  “I didn’t. We just happened upon them. It was serendipitous.”

  Serendipitous? Jesus.

  Svenson gave him a penetrating glance. “You didn’t come here tonight to talk about that trench, Chief Officer. What’s going on?”

  Patronas laid the photo of the dead child down in front of him. “He was killed up there.”

  The color drained from Svenson’s face. “Surely you don’t think I had anything to do with it.”

  “Truthfully, I don’t know what to think. Right now, I’m speaking to anyone who was in the vicinity.”

  “I wasn’t the only one up there. Lydia Pappas was there, too.” The professor’s voice had gone shrill.

  Not very chivalrous either, Professor Svenson. “I’ve already spoken to her,” Patronas offered. “She’s from Boston, too, isn’t she? Is she a colleague at the university?”

  “Heavens, no! Lydia’s an assistant professor at a community college.”

  It was all there in that one sentence: Lydia Pappas’ inferior rank and place of employment. Unfamiliar with the term ‘assistant,’ Patronas wrote down ‘half.’ Stood to reason, Svenson was a full professor. Hence, Pappas must be a half.

  “When exactly did you dig that trench?” Patronas asked.

  “Three days ago. We were only there a couple of hours. It was an inferno—well over a hundred degrees. Why? When did it happen?”

  “Early yesterday morning, perhaps the night before.”

  “I was nowhere in the vicinity,” Svenson said, visibly relieved. “I was in Platys Gialos. I spent the whole day there, never left.”

  “Anyone see you?”

  “Oh, yes. Many people. I’m well-known in Platys Gialos. I ate at a taverna called Steki. I chatted with the wife of the owner, Flora. She’ll remember me.”

  Patronas and Tembelos exchanged glances. Svenson was taking great care to provide himself with an alibi.

  Seeking to establish a timeline, Patronas asked him how he spent his time on Sifnos, what he did on an average day. Did he and the students always travel together or were they allowed to wander off on their own?

  He wanted to get a sense of the group’s comings and goings, thinking their whereabouts at the time of the killing might prove significant. One could have been responsible. The site was too isolated, otherwise. No one else would have known it was there.

  “The program gives the students a great deal of latitude,” Svenson admitted, echoing Lydia Pappas’ words. “I teach a class in the morning and one after lunch. Then, for the most part, they are free to do what they please until curfew. Once or twice, I’ve scheduled group activities—the trip to Aghios Andreas you’re going on about was one—and then there was an evening in Castro. I try to have at least one meal with them, and sometimes we meet up at the beach and take the boat out.” Svenson paused. “I’m not really their supervisor. I’m more of a friend.”

  More American foolishness in Patronas’ mind. Kids needed supervision, not buddies. Otherwise, they went to hell. He’d once ridden his bicycle into his mother’s freshly laundered sheets, pulling them off the clothesline and running over them with his tires. It had been an accident, but his mother didn’t care. No, she’d picked up a fly swatter and let him have it, breaking it in half on his seven-year-old backside. That was how youth should be dealt with. Smack, smack.

  As far as Svenson knew, none of the students in the program had ever journeyed to Thanatos on their own or spent the night there. “The idea is simply preposterous. Why would they?”

  His demeanor changed after he saw the photo; he was far more cautious. “Do I need a lawyer?” he asked at one point. He also balked when Patronas wanted to fingerprint him.

  “I’m fingerprinting everyone who was up there,” Patronas explained, seeking to placate him. “I’m sorry, but it is necessary to eliminate you as a suspect.”

  That seemed to mollify him and he held out his hand. “I don’t know what the university will say when they find out about this. Normally, teaching is a pretty staid profession. It isn’t a blood sport.” He laughed nervously.

  Patronas stopped what he was doing and stared at him. A child was dead and here this man was making jokes. His dislike for the American grew, hardened into loathing.

  The professor continued in this vein for a few minutes, mouthing inanities about himself and his academic career. “I’m renowned in my area.”

  It all seemed a little desperate. A reflex, Patronas concluded, as Svenson went on and on—that pathetic show of ego a nervous tic. When cornered, the man came out swinging the books he’d authored and the conferences he’d chaired.

  “Lydia is an assistant professor, not a half professor,” Svenson declared when Patronas read his notes back to him, the professor’s voice arch and superior. “There is no such thing as a ‘half professor.’ Nor is there a quarter or a third. We have all our limbs, Chief Officer. In case you haven’t noticed, none of us is an amputee.”

  Chapter Seven

  Make your own nature, not the advice of others, your guide in life.

  —The Delphic Oracle

  Svenson’s wards, the three American students, were sprawled on their beds in the next apartment. A young man named Charles Bowdoin did most of the talking, laughing, and making a show as he welcom
ed Patronas into the room, apparently amused by the prospect of a police interview.

  More than two meters tall with artfully tousled hair, Bowdoin towered over Patronas. Enjoying the advantage this gave him, he stepped closer, forcing the Greek policeman to peer up at him.

  Patronas studied him. Bowdoin wasn’t as handsome as he obviously thought he was—his features, especially his jaw, were too coarse and fleshy—but it was clear from his attitude that he thought he was something special. Patronas wondered what the American’s background was, where his sense of entitlement came from. Money would have been his guess. Lots and lots of freshly minted money.

  There were two other boys in the apartment with Bowdoin: Benjamin Gilbert, short and fair-haired with glasses, and Michael Nielsen, whippet-thin and muscular, whose cheeks and forehead bore a trace of acne. Both held back, giving them a cursory nod when Bowdoin introduced them; then they continued to fiddle with their iPads, content to let their friend speak for them.

  Bowdoin quickly verified that all three had gone to Aghios Andreas and walked beyond it to a second set of ruins. Under Svenson’s direction, they had dug a shallow trench, but the heat had overwhelmed them and they’d retreated, never to return. “End of story,” he said with a shrug.

  Patronas continued to probe. He kept the reason vague, saying only that it had to do with the trench, letting them think it was a matter of bureaucracy—Svenson’s failure to secure the necessary permit.

  Unshaven, the three students were dressed in flip flops, t-shirts, and jeans. Their manner bordered on insolent.

  “Sure, dude,” Bowdoin said when Patronas told him he needed to ask them a few questions. “Ask and we shall tell.”

  Since then, they’d made no effort to hide their boredom. Slouched down, they’d been furtively checking their electronic devices for the last ten minutes.

  Patronas handed Charles Bowdoin the photo of the victim. “Recognize him?”

  “Shit!” Bowdoin dropped the photo as if it burned his fingers.

  “Someone murdered him near the place where you dug the trench.” Patronas was watching the students carefully, but he saw nothing, no so-called ‘tell.’ Only shock and bewilderment.

  Again, he asked what they remembered about their trip to Thanatos, if anything had seemed out of place, strange.

  As always, Bowdoin spoke first. “It wasn’t Raiders of the Lost Ark, if that’s what you mean—just a bunch of rocks, same as everywhere else we’ve been. I wanted to be an archeologist before this summer, but not anymore. Man, am I over it.”

  “What about you?” Patronas asked Michael Nielsen.

  “Svenson gave us trowels and we dug for a while. At first it was kind of fun, but then it got hot and we ran out of water and I wanted to leave.”

  Benjamin Gilbert nodded. “Svenson’s big on reenacting things, ‘making history come alive,’ he calls it. He told us to pretend we were Indiana Jones. As if. The whole thing was stupid, just another of his little games. The only good part of being here is diving off his boat. There’s a woman from Boston, Lydia Pappas. She comes with us sometimes.”

  There was a hint of yearning in his voice in the way he said Lydia Pappas’ name.

  Bowdoin had heard it, too, and he nudged Nielsen. “You should see Benjie when she’s around,” he said. “He’s got it bad, been mooning around after her all summer.”

  Embarrassed, Gilbert grinned sheepishly. “Can’t blame a fellow for trying.”

  “Anything come of it?” Patronas asked.

  “Not yet.” Gilbert laughed.

  “We all wanted to hook up with her, didn’t we, Charlie?” Gilbert added, looking to Bowdoin for support. “I wasn’t the only one.”

  Patronas was unfamiliar with the term. “Hook up?”

  Bowdoin smirked. “You know … score, sleep with, fuck.”

  An old-fashioned Greek, Patronas recoiled at the vulgarity.

  The students continued to make lewd jokes, each seeking to outdo the other two, chiding one another about their sexual conquests, the ‘dogs’ they’d bedded. A discussion that had horrified Patronas at first, until he realized ‘dogs’ was an American euphemism for ugly girls, not the real thing. Listening to them, you’d think that’s all they did. If they were indeed students, they were majoring in sex.

  Nikos Katzanzakis had written someplace that life was trouble; only death was not. To be a man, to be alive was to undo your belt and go looking for trouble.

  Patronas fingered his belt buckle, wishing he had more of what Katzanzakis had been talking about, more of what these young men mistakenly believed they had. Felt a twinge of envy. Oh, to be bold and flashy and unafraid. But he was none of those things. No, when it came to women, he was pathetic. A sad little pigeon-toed man who was running out of time.

  As a precaution, Patronas seized the students’ passports, telling them he only needed to make copies and would return them the following day. Svenson’s he intended to hold onto indefinitely.

  “Got it,” Bowdoin sang out and closed the door behind him.

  A moment later, Patronas heard music coming from the room. He and Tembelos looked at each other. “Youth,” Patronas said.

  “Assholes,” Tembelos said.

  Svenson was waiting for them in the hallway, then followed them back down the stairs, rambling nervously about the three students. Nielsen was a runner—a champion, apparently, while the other two were something called ‘legacies,’ sons of noted alumni at ‘prestigious Ivy League universities.’

  Patronas didn’t know what the Ivy League was and he didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, character defined a person and those kids came up short.

  Oblivious, Svenson continued to proclaim the group’s innocence. “None of us would be involved in anything as sordid as this.”

  Listening, Patronas was inclined to believe him. Svenson was too much of a classroom Napoleon to pull this off—a man who fought in academic journals, not with his hands. And the kids were hopeless. They made Evangelos Demos look like a genius.

  Chapter Eight

  Restrain your tongue.

  —The Delphic Oracle

  Unlike Platys Gialos, Kamares was swarming with tourists—Scandinavians mostly, a smattering of French and Germans. A ferryboat had just arrived, and ahead the road was crowded with people. Taxis were lined up along the quay, waiting with their trunks open for customers, and a general sense of anticipation hung in the air.

  Patronas pushed his way through the mob and entered a car rental agency. Nikolaidis had requested that he rent a car, saying they couldn’t keep using the white van, that they needed to return it to the Coast Guard. Also it was too conspicuous on an island as small as Sifnos. People would know they were cops.

  Seeking to save money, Patronas had argued against it. “Jesus, have you seen the four of us? Even in a patrol car with ‘police’ painted on the side and the siren going, nobody’s going to mistake us for cops. Certainly not Evangelos Demos, who is shaped like a bowling pin and has brains of the same material. Nor Giorgos Tembelos, who can sleep standing up and frequently does. And especially not Papa Michalis, who’s almost eighty years old and looks like Father Time.”

  His geriatric swat team. The three stooges in uniform.

  But Nikolaidis insisted, saying that if they were going to interview migrants they couldn’t go in the van. The migrants would think they were from immigration and run for the hills. He had also counseled against visiting the camp at night, saying it would be better if they waited until morning. “It’s a dangerous place.”

  Flashing his identification card, Patronas requested a mid-sized SUV from the clerk at the car rental agency. Stathis would scream, but it had to be done. Both Tembelos and Evangelos Demos were big men, the latter alone weighing in at one hundred forty kilos, well over three hundred pounds. Petros Nikolaidis might have his own car, but it didn’t matter. He and his men would suffocate in one of those little rental Fiats. The tires would splay, and when the rubber hit the road
, it was apt to stay there.

  The clerk said he had a red Toyota Rav, a big car for Greece, and handed Patronas the keys. “Fill it up before you bring it back. Otherwise, we’ll have to charge you.”

  Standing next to him, a Greek woman was arguing about her bill. The disputed amount was small, less than eighteen euros, but she was almost in tears. Patronas listened sympathetically. His country was in trouble, no doubt about it. Even the Albanians, who’d poured into Greece by the thousands years ago, were fleeing. So many, there’d been a traffic jam at the border.

  And now a new wave of immigrants was coming in to take the Albanians’ place, a tsunami of newcomers. Muslim men for the most part. Strangers in every sense.

  When he was growing up, it hadn’t been like that. He remembered the Swedish woman who’d passed through his village when he was a child. Such a rarity, everyone had come out to take a look, pointing and whispering, ‘xeni, xeni’—stranger, stranger—the old crones cleaning their glasses in order to see her better. And the placid Japanese woman who had married a local seaman and come to Chios to stay. The natives discussed her openly, as if she were a giraffe who had turned up in their midst, laughing and mocking her Greek. Not maliciously, more in fun, entertained by her Japanese accent. And now, xenoi were camping out in the squares of Athens.

  Although it was after ten, the shops in Kamares were still open, and up the street, a bar called Captain George’s was throbbing, people standing outside on the sand, drinks in hand. Waiters were hard at work filling pitchers from wooden wine barrels. It was a real tourist watering hole—there were over twenty barrels.