From the Devil's Farm

by Leta Serafim

  Patronas didn’t expect their expedition to reveal much. All that was left on Thanatos were those muted screams Tembelos had spoken of. But Stathis had insisted on it, saying it was always a good idea to revisit a crime scene with a witness. Something might jump out them. Patronas had reluctantly agreed.

  After greeting him cordially, Pappas got in the car and fastened her seatbelt. They drove in silence to Aghios Andreas.

  Her expression was troubled. “I’m not looking forward to this.”

  “Neither am I.”

  That seemed to surprise her. “But you’re a policeman. I thought you would have gotten used to these things.”

  “You never get used to it. Especially not in a case like this one, where the victim’s a child.”

  Patronas parked the car in the empty lot below the museum and they got out. “Just do as you did on the day in question,” he instructed her. “If you stopped on the way to Thanatos, I want you to stop now. Retrace your steps. Everything exactly the same.”

  The parking lot was full of shadows, the silhouettes of the distant hills strangely menacing in the dark. Having brought a propane lantern, Patronas lit it before starting off to Thanatos. It was like a spotlight on the darkened floor of the valley, the hissing gas loud in the quiet. He and Lydia Pappas walked side by side through the tall grass. The arc of light enclosed them.

  A single barn swallow, awakened by the sound of their footsteps, was the only sign of life, soaring back and forth, high above them. Another swallow joined it a moment later, and the two flew off in perfect harmony, rising and falling in unison, the white tips of their wings like arrows against the night sky. For some reason, the birds reminded Patronas of his parents. They’d been the same, his mother and father, one completing the other. Their love carried them forward, transporting them until like the little birds, they, too, seemed airborne.

  Pappas had moved on ahead and was striding quickly through the weeds. “This is where I first saw the ruins,” she said, pointing to Thanatos. The rock was a stark black shadow against the horizon, far more sinister-looking than Patronas remembered.

  Raising the lantern, he studied it carefully. “You can’t see the temple from here.”

  “Sure you can. Look closely. It’s there.”

  A moment later he saw it—the angularity that didn’t belong, the succession of square blocks jutting out at the summit.

  “You asked me what I remembered,” Pappas said. “It was weird, but once or twice, I had the sense someone was watching me, that I wasn’t alone that morning. At the time, I thought it was just my imagination, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Do you think whoever it was followed you here?”

  “No. I’m pretty sure they were already up here, spying on me from above. At least that is the sense I had.”

  Patronas studied her, dumbfounded. “But you kept going?”

  She laughed. “I’m a Greek woman, Chief Officer, a force to be reckoned with. Nothing stops me. Fear least of all.”

  “I guess not,” he said.

  They climbed up the stairs to the temple and paused at the top to catch their breaths. To the east, the sun was rising and the sky was growing light.

  Banded in pink, a thin scrim of clouds lay along the horizon. The color deepened as they stood there, the pink slowly giving way to gold. The sun broke through the clouds a moment later, bathing them in fiery red light.

  “There’s your dawn,” Patronas said.

  She laughed again, pleased that he’d remembered. “I always loved the legend of Orpheus, how the ancients said his music brought the dawn, that he awakened the sun with his songs. You can almost hear him now, can’t you, hear his lyre?”

  Patronas didn’t hear anything, but he dutifully cocked his head and pretended to listen. No point in antagonizing a witness.

  Lydia Pappas hesitated when they reached the platform. “The boy was there. Hanging right there in the middle … in the middle of that hole.”

  Moving timidly, she inched a little closer to the edge of the pit. “I was standing back here …. I leaned forward and checked his pulse, just in case, you know, even though I was sure he was dead. Then I got my phone out and tried to call the police, but I couldn’t get a signal. I was a wreck by then, screaming and crying. I just wanted to get away.”

  “What drew you inside here?”

  “The birds. There were so many, far too many for that hour of the morning.”

  “Did you hear anything while you were up here, a rock shifting underfoot, anything that would indicate there was someone nearby?”

  “No, nothing. Only the creaking of the chain that held the boy. And of course, the cawing of the birds. Like I said, there were hundreds, and they were making a huge commotion.”

  Although Patronas and his team had thoroughly investigated the immediate murder scene, dusting the temple and the platform for trace, they had neglected the area beyond it, the wild hawthorn bushes that surrounded the platform. A serious omission, if what she said about being watched was true.

  “Let’s go take a look,” he told her.

  A few minutes later, they discovered an area where the brush had been tamped down. It was about five meters back from the temple and well hidden. A ledge of rock shielded it almost completely from view.

  Pulling on latex gloves, he knelt down and parted the leaves, seeking evidence he could swab for DNA. It was a lucky find. Without her help, he would have missed the area—so faint was the evidence, the disturbed brush, the intruder had left behind. Judging from the barely matted leaves, whoever it was had only been there a short time.

  Patronas also discovered a leather cord caught on some thistles and bagged it, as well as a charm lying on the ground beneath. A cheap souvenir, it depicted Pegasus ascending on one side and a classic profile of a man’s face on the other. The latter was probably copied from an ancient coin.

  “Do you think he was watching me the whole time?” Pappas asked.

  “Maybe.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “I hate this.”

  They wandered around a few more minutes, reentering the temple and lingering by the pit. To his surprise, Patronas found himself discussing the details of the case with her, even going so far as to demonstrate how he’d jumped down and pried the stones apart at the bottom. How horrified he’d been to discover what looked like the bones of a baby, that little femur.

  “I don’t know if those bones are related to the case. This is an old place. They could possibly predate it by two, maybe three thousand years. A priest I work with said certain sects used to sacrifice babies before the coming of Christ.”

  “Why would anyone want to kill a baby?” she asked. “They’re so small and defenseless, innocent. My God, what I wouldn’t have given ….”

  Her story came out in bits and pieces. She had no children, no family to speak of. “I had one miscarriage after another; then my marriage collapsed and I lost all hope of ever having children of my own.”

  Impressed by her candor, Patronas shared his own troubled history—his misspent years with Dimitra. The sons and daughters he’d longed for but never had. “My life went completely to hell after the divorce. I’ve got no home anymore. I sleep on a cot in my office and live on gyros and pizza.”

  Pappas touched his arm. “I’m no better. I microwave something and eat it standing up. I never thought I’d end up this way. I always thought there’d be a big table in my future with me at one end and my husband at the other, and all our children spread out in between, laughing and sneaking food to the dog.” She threw up her hands in a gesture of resignation. “You know what they say? ‘You want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.’ ”

  Patronas nodded. “Funny how things work out.”

  “Funny isn’t the word I’d use.”

  Convinced there was nothing left to see, they turned and started back down from the temple. No longer needing the lantern, Patronas turned it off. The sun had risen and morning was now upon them,
cicadas beginning to stir in the undergrowth.

  He was about halfway down the stairs when he caught sight of something shiny far below, a reflection of some sort. He made a mental note of the location, and when they got to the bottom, he told Pappas to stay where she was and he walked in that direction, searching for the source.

  Embedded in a clump of juniper bushes was a knife, lying on its side. The metal blade had acted as a mirror and that was what he’d seen. It was about nine centimeters long and made of carbonized steel, a type very common in Greece. There were probably a thousand knives like it on Sifnos alone. Fishermen used them to gut fish.

  The end of the blade was encrusted with blood.

  After Patronas took a picture of the knife’s location with his cellphone, he pulled on a fresh pair of gloves and carefully placed it in an evidence bag. He then walked back to where Lydia Pappas was waiting and showed it to her.

  Crying out, she buried a fist in her mouth and staggered back, and a moment later, vomited down the front of her tunic. Patronas rushed to help her, holding her hair back and dabbing at the thin fabric with his handkerchief.

  It took her a long time to recover. Stepping away from him, she took a long, hiccupping breath and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  She nodded to the bagged knife. “You think that’s the one he used?”

  “Yes. He probably threw it off the rock after he finished.” Stathis will be pleased with the find, Patronas thought. He likes to be right.

  Patronas took Lydia Pappas by the arm and helped her walk back to the parking lot. Hoping to distract her, he described his colleagues in the Chios Police Department, Evangelos Demos in particular, even going so far as to describe how he’d massacred a flock of goats during a stakeout.

  “Worst night of my career. He just kept blasting away, and the goats kept falling over. Chamos, it was.” Utter chaos.

  “And yet he still works for you.”

  “Yes. What can you do? His son, Nikos, is handicapped. I got him into a special school on Chios. Truth is, I dearly love that boy. He’s a sweet kid, calls me ‘Sir Yiannis.’ ”

  She laughed, the long curtain of her hair moving, glossy in the sunlight.

  Hoping to make her laugh again, Patronas continued to talk, only aware of her nearness.

  His mother had always said the devil had blue eyes and red hair. Yet this woman had both, a woman with a laugh like music, glorious.

  “Way I’m talking, you must think I’ve eaten glistrida,” he said. Glistrida was a plant Greek villagers said loosened the tongue and made people babble like idiots.

  “When you’re not busy shooting up livestock, what else do you do?”

  “I have a telescope and I look at the stars.”

  The smile she gave him seemed to warm the air. “Really?”

  “Every night.”

  “Would you wish on one for me?” she asked.

  “Sure. What should I wish for?”

  She looked away from him, embarrassed. “An end to my loneliness. Someone to watch over me.”

  After Patronas dropped her off at Leandros, he touched the seat where she’d been sitting, kept his hand on it for a long time.

  A horse was beckoning, and it wasn’t Calliope.

  Chapter Eleven

  Treat everyone with kindness.

  —The Delphic Oracle

  The migrant camp in Platys Gialos was far worse than Patronas had anticipated—a vast slum. Sand fleas were omnipresent, and the air reeked of excrement and rotting garbage. Sullen groups of people were watching him, backing away when he approached. He could sense their distrust and abiding rage. It was a palpable presence, as much a part of the landscape as the miserable hovels they inhabited.

  Underfoot, the ground was knee-deep in plastic water bottles. Whatever euphoria he’d felt in Lydia Pappas’ presence earlier that day had long since dissipated.

  Enterprising, the migrants had constructed shelters out of a variety of materials. Nylon sheeting was the most common, but everything from sheet rock to tree branches had been used. A few had even carved out caves in the riverbank, burrowing into the soil like animals. Those without shelter were lying out in the open on flattened pieces of cardboard. One little boy was asleep in a wooden box, his shoes next to him; another was rolled up like a snail in a sheet of brown wrapping paper. A lucky handful were living in brightly colored tents—a great luxury given the surrounding squalor—but even these were overcrowded, ten or more people crammed into spaces meant for half that number.

  Evangelos Demos was walking beside him. “How can people live like this?” he asked.

  “They’re refugees, Evangelos, not vagrants,” Patronas said. “They don’t have a choice.”

  “You smell that?” Evangelos made a show of sniffing the air. “That’s raw sewage. And where there’s raw sewage, there’s cholera and typhus. It’s not safe for us here, Yiannis. We should leave.”

  “I must commend you, Evangelos,” Patronas said, feigning astonishment. “I knew you were a glutton and a fool, but you’ve added a whole new dimension to your character this morning. Carrying on about your health when you should be worrying about theirs.” He indicated the migrants asleep on the ground. “What kind of person are you? Where’s your compassion?”

  “You can say what you want,” Evangelos said, sulky now. “We should leave.”

  “Not an option.”

  Still grumbling, Evangelos followed him farther into the camp. The two of them started with the people living in the hovels closest to the village of Platys Gialos. Patronas did all the talking, worried Evangelos would alienate the migrants and mess up the interview.

  Hell, the man would mess up tying his shoes.

  “No need for this, Yiannis,” Evangelos complained when Patronas motioned for him to be quiet. “I went to the police academy. I know how it’s done.”

  Initially, Papa Michalis had also wanted to come with them. Pointing a gnarled finger at the sky, he’d quoted Deuteronomy in an effort to persuade Patronas. “ ‘Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor and to thy needy in thy land.’ If those words apply to anyone now, it is to the migrants.”

  But Patronas had ruled it out. Working with Evangelos Demos would be punishment enough. He couldn’t deal with the priest, too, who’d probably quote the New Testament to the Muslims and get them all killed.

  Unlike Evangelos, Patronas for the most part enjoyed the company of the priest. Above all else, he valued the old man’s wisdom, his compassion and profound understanding of the darkest aspects of the human soul. Evangelos was the real thorn in his side.

  Even though he couldn’t help it—intelligence wasn’t something a person chose to have, it was preordained, or in Evangelos’ case, not—Patronas always found working with him exhausting. Such stupidity was draining, made him feel like he had a kind of mental mononucleosis, like his brains had turned to mush.

  Establishing who lived where in the camp proved to be a daunting task, as was figuring out what language to speak once they found someone willing to talk to them. Both sides just spoke louder in their efforts to be understood.

  Patronas had checked; there were no official statistics as to the number of residents in the camp. He guessed it was close to four hundred. Everywhere he looked there were people. Exhausted by the journey, most were asleep on the ground. A few were cooking over open fires, smoke spiraling upward between the trees. One man was bathing from a spigot, completely naked, the water turning the ground beneath him to mud.

  Judging from the smell, the ditch that ran alongside the camp was serving as a communal latrine.

  Raw sewage, in other words, just as Evangelos said.

  There’d been demonstrations on the Greek islands of Lesvos and Kos, refugees protesting their living conditions. “We are human,” one of the signs had read. “SOS,” said another.

  “SOS,” Patronas repeated to himself. It was an understatement.

  According to news accounts
, the migrants were entering Greece from Turkey, traveling to nearby islands—Lesvos, Kos, Samos—and from there on to Athens and Northern Europe. Sifnos was well out of the way, and Patronas wondered what had drawn them here, an island with little industry to speak of.

  He and Evangelos had brought a stack of flyers, and they hammered them up throughout the camp. Sheets of white paper, they featured a black and white photo of the dead child and his age with the words ‘missing’ and ‘reward,’ along with Patronas’ cellphone number. The reward had been his idea. He would gladly pay it himself, if it produced results. So far it hadn’t.

  Most of people in the camp couldn’t read English, and judging by their reactions, the flyer scared them. Probably they had seen similar ones in the countries they were from. Desperados wanted by Interpol, terrorists and human traffickers, criminals of every description.

  Patronas was pretty sure he’d seen a flicker of recognition in the faces of one or two of the migrants, but when he pressed them, they quickly retreated, holding up their hands in a gesture of surrender and backing away.

  The vast majority were men, dark-skinned with features reminiscent of sculptures from ancient Babylon and Assyria, although there were fifty to sixty Syrian families mixed in as well.

  A woman in a headscarf was hanging laundry on a rope strung up between two trees when he approached her with the photo. “You know him?” he asked in English.

  She didn’t understand and backed away, shielding her face with her arm.

  “Speak to the men,” Evangelos whispered to Patronas. “The women are afraid of you.”

  Over the course of five hours, they interviewed nearly every male in the encampment. Patronas even questioned the ones in the tents, getting down on his hands and knees, pulling the flaps back and crawling inside. A blast of hot air always welcomed him, the nylon cloth trapping the noonday heat. Inside, the inhabitants appeared dazed, the children nearly comatose, fast asleep in their mothers’ arms.