by Aaron Elkins
“You’re—you’re Magnus Torkelsson?” he asked, choosing the less improbable impossibility.
The old man threw a glance at Fukida and laughed, both of them looking pleased with themselves. “Magnus? No, I’m not Magnus.” He sat down at the table. “Me, I’m Torkel.”
Gideon was flabbergasted. “You can’t be Torkel. I examined your remains myself,” he said stupidly. “I identified you from your right foot. It’s in a . . . it’s in a box at the Kona police station.”
“Oh, so that’s where it is.” Smiling, he pulled his right cuff up above his white sock and rapped with his knuckles on the almost-flesh-colored plastic shell that substituted for his right lower leg.
HE had seen the lights when the Grumman was fifty feet above the surface of the lagoon, he told them, but he hadn’t known what they were—a pair of whale-oil lanterns hung on posts at the front ends of two dugout canoes that had been night-fishing for rockfish and rays along the reef. Four men altogether, they had come from Tiku, the nearest inhabited island, and they had been flabbergasted when the plane fell without warning out of the sky and plowed itself into the water within a few hundred feet of them.
The last thing he remembered from that night was the wrenching screech of the wing shearing off as it hit the water. The next thing was waking up in a pandanus-roofed hut two, or possibly four, days later—he had never figured out their language well enough to know for sure. But what he did know for sure was that they had paddled to the downed plane before it sank. They had found the pilot dead and Torkel unconscious, with his foot caught inextricably in the twisted metal under the console. Using the tools they had brought for gutting and quartering the rays, they had taken his leg off at the knee, staunched the blood with a tourniquet made from his shirt, and taken him to Tiku.
There, with the stump bound up in pandanus leaves that had been soaked in an evil-smelling poultice, he slowly recovered, although one eye was damaged beyond repair. He remained on Tiku for five weeks, leaving with the first people to call there during his stay—a Japanese scientific team studying the effects of ocean currents on intertidal marine life. They had taken him to Tarawa, from where he’d gone first to Australia, then to Fiji, and then, a year after the plane crash, to the island of Moorea, part of French Polynesia. And there he’d stayed, living a lonely and isolated life, carving furniture and drums from the local milo and kamani woods, until he met and married a beautiful French widow, his “trophy wife” (she was seventy-one).
After that he’d given up the furniture shop, bought a boat (she was rich as well as beautiful), and set himself up in the fishing charter business, which he still worked at two or three days a week whenever he felt like it.
“And that’s about it,” he said. “The story of my life. Never for one minute did I regret leaving Hawaii and the ranch behind. The best decision I ever made.”
“Is that a heck of a story, or what?” Fukida said with a delighted, almost proprietary air. “I’ve been on some pretty strange cases, but that has to be a first.”
“It’s a first for me, too,” Gideon said slowly, still struggling to absorb what he’d just heard. “It’s the first time I ever identified a living man from his skeletal remains.” He couldn’t help laughing. “It’s probably a first for the science of forensic anthropology.”
Torkel guffawed. He was really enjoying himself. “I never would have come back either, but then I read about what happened to my sister, and I knew it just had to have something to do with what happened back then, and the will and all, and I figured I owed it to her to come back and finally straighten things out”—he sobered—“and do what I could to help the police find out who killed her.”
“And Mr. Torkelsson has been very helpful,” Fukida said. “What he said jibed right down the line with what Felix told me.”
“Were you surprised that it was Axel, Mr. Torkelsson?” Julie asked.
Torkel leaned back in his chair, lifted his cap, smoothed down his lank gray hair, and screwed the cap back on. Cap’n Jack’s Charters, it said in faded gold braid. “Not really. The boy always seemed like a little apple-polisher to me. ‘Yes, Uncle Torkel, no, uncle Torkel.’ But I never knew until today that anybody tried to kill me, though. That was some surprise.”
They hadn’t thought to order food until well into Torkel’s account, and now the waitress and a busboy showed up to remove their salads and set out the main courses. Since no one had wanted to interrupt his narrative by studying the menu, they’d all followed the waitress’s recommendation: blackened tuna in a soy-mustard dressing.
Once the luscious-smelling plates were set in front of them, however, they seemed to realize how hungry they were, so for a few minutes they simply shoveled the food in, limiting their conversation, such as it was, to little more than appreciative grunts.
“Ted,” Gideon asked when they’d slowed down a little, “what’s going to happen to the nephews and nieces?”
“Well, Axel’s gonna go away for a while,” Fukida said, chewing.
“Of course. But what about the others? Inge, and Felix, and Hedwig?”
Fukida nodded. “You mean am I going to do anything about all the fudging from ten years ago.” He laid down his fork. “I haven’t made up my mind. There are a lot of extenuating circumstances. And a lot of problems with reopening.”
Gideon looked at him, his head cocked. “Am I reading you wrong, or does that mean you’re inclined to let it go?”
“No, you’re not reading me wrong,” Fukida said and went back to his blackened tuna.
“Wait, hold it,” John said. “How can you just let it go? That’s Mr. T’s property they’re living on, and he’s sitting right here. He was declared dead by accident.”
“Not quite by accident, Johnny. He was declared dead because he went out of his way to mislead the police and everybody else to make it look as if he was dead—his own doing. I don’t really know how the courts would feel about giving him back his property now.”
“Mm. I see what you mean about extenuating circumstances,” Julie said.
“Oh, hell, it’s a moot point, anyway,” said Torkel, who had cleaned his plate as if he hadn’t eaten in two days. “I’m happy where I am, I’ve mellowed, and I have everything I want. No worries. Why would I want to be a rancher again? That was somebody else, not me.”
“But what about the seamen’s home?” Gideon asked. “You wanted them to have the money from the ranch.”
“Now that’s another funny thing. The Swedish Seamen’s Home went kaput in 1997. There aren’t enough old Swedish sailors around anymore to make it worthwhile; not indigent ones, anyhow.” He shrugged. “So, what do I care who has the property? I like those kids all right, they’re welcome to it. In my eyes, they didn’t do anything wrong.”
“See?” Fukida said. “Not much point in my resuscitating the case, even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Who would benefit? No, let me get Axel put away, and I’m done with it. Seems to me I had a life before the Torkelssons, and it’d be nice to get back to it.”
John mopped up the last of the soy-mustard sauce with a roll and sat back. “So what happens now, Mr. T? What’s next for you?”
“Me?” Torkel said. “First, I’d sure like to see that box with my foot in it. I haven’t seen that foot for a long time. Then I need to arrange for Dagmar’s burial when the sergeant here releases her. And then . . .”
He took a deep breath, filled with contentment. “Then I’m going to go back to my beautiful Tahiti, back to my gorgeous trophy wife, going to catch some marlin and mahi-mahi when I feel like it, live in sandals and shorts, and watch the sun go down over Mount Tohiea from my patio every single night of the week, with a cold gin and tonic in my hand.”
John, Gideon, and Julie looked at each other. “Makes sense to me,” John said.
Acknowledgments
As usual, Professor Oliver needed a bit of help before he finally sorted things out. On his behalf, I would like to thank the following people:<
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• For continuing education on planes and flying: my friends, former airline pilot Bill Benedict; Captain (ret.) Ivory Brummett, United Airlines; and Captain Norm Hapke, American West Airlines.
• For freely sharing their expertise and experience in the forensic sciences: Professor Emeritus Ted Rathbun, University of South Carolina; Professor Emeritus Stan Rhine, University of New Mexico; Professor Steve Byers, University of New Mexico; Professor Alison Galloway, University of California-Santa Cruz; Paul Holes, Supervising Criminalist, Contra Costa County, California Sheriff’s Office; and pathologist Alexey Nicolaevich Zolotarev of Russia.
• For an introduction to Hawaiian cattle ranching and a great day on horseback riding the Kohala range: Jeanette Rutherford, Barn Manager, Ponoholo Ranch, Hawaii.
• For their guidance on the law and on law enforcement: Lieutenant (ret.) Alicia Lampert, San Diego Police Department; and Andy Slater, Assistant State Attorney, West Palm Beach, Florida.
• For a hands-on education on handguns: Bob Lampert, former photojournalist, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
• For reconnaissance on the Big Island of Hawaii: Major General (ret.) Dave de la Vergne.
Other Titles by Aaron Elkins
Gideon Oliver Novels
WHERE THERE’S A WILL*
GOOD BLOOD*
SKELETON DANCE
TWENTY BLUE DEVILS
DEAD MEN’S HEARTS
MAKE NO BONES
ICY CLUTCHES
CURSES!
OLD BONES*
MURDER IN THE QUEEN’S ARMES*
THE DARK PLACE*
FELLOWSHIP OF FEAR*
Chris Norgren Novels
OLD SCORES
A GLANCING LIGHT
DECEPTIVE CLARITY
Lee Ofsted Novels (with Charlotte Elkins)
NASTY BREAKS
ROTTEN LIES
A WICKED SLICE
Thrillers
TURNCOAT
LOOT
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