Mr. Kill

by Martin Limon

  The cold sucked every ounce of breath out of my lungs. I was underwater. I couldn’t breathe. Above, in the murky green, the boat rolled slowly by and all around me black silhouettes glided by. Seals, I thought. Or sharks.

  And then one of them bit me.

  18

  Actually, it wasn’t a bite. Rather, it was a strong hand that pulled me to the surface.

  Sputtering, coughing, gazing around me in the cold sea, I was disoriented and it took a while for anything to come into focus. A half-dozen black figures floated nearby. Then I realized who they were. The haenyo. Somehow they’d anticipated Parkwood’s path and set up an ambush in this narrow strait. There were many clans of haenyo throughout these islands, not all on Cheju, and it seemed they communicated well. Someone shouted. Colonel Laurel. He was in the water too, swimming madly, and then I realized what he was angry about. The boat was floating away. In the melee, the boat had almost been capsized. Parkwood had fallen off, the M-16 rifle with him, but he’d managed to climb back aboard. I raised myself as high as I could in the choppy waves but could only see the back of someone hunched over the outboard motor. In a few seconds, the engine sputtered and then roared and finally started to pull away until it disappeared into the mist.

  The haenyo motioned for me to start swimming for shore. I did. But I stopped every few yards to survey who was left in our little school of swimmers. Laurel shouted, “Your partner, he’s not here!”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s still in the boat. I think he hit his head on the bulkhead. Hard.”

  “Christ,” I said. “How about the M-16?”

  “The bottom of the ocean,” Laurel said.

  “We have to get to a phone,” I said.

  “That we do,” Colonel Laurel agreed.

  I turned and started swimming toward land. I was swimming against the current. It was difficult. One of the haenyo came up beside me and motioned for me to aim farther to the left. In twenty minutes, Colonel Laurel and I and half a dozen women of the sea were climbing up a sea-soaked ladder to the dry, splintery planks of a fisherman’s landing.

  The boat was found late that evening, about 2 a.m., on an island called Shinji-do, some thirty miles north of the straits where the haenyo had rescued Colonel Laurel and me. According to the local KNPs, no trace of Parkwood had been discovered. Ernie, however, had been found. Alive. He’d been transferred to a medical clinic and from there a ROK Navy chopper had flown him to Hialeah Compound in Pusan.

  I learned all this through a phone conversation with Inspector Kill. He was coordinating the all-points bulletin the Korean National Police had put out for Sergeant Ronald T. Parkwood. From the landing point of the little craft on Shinji-do, it was a short walk to a main highway; from there, it was thought Parkwood had waved down a local cab and caught a ride to the Shinji Bus Station. A ticket seller there remembered trying to communicate with a hairy-fisted foreigner who wanted to buy a ticket to Pusan. Of course, she couldn’t sell him a direct ticket to Pusan. He had to buy a ticket north to Kuangju first, and from there he’d be able to catch the eastbound express that left every twenty minutes for Pusan. The foreigner hadn’t understood all this but hadn’t made a fuss, because the bus to Kuangju had been about to leave and apparently he’d been in a hurry. His change, the ticket seller said, was thirty won—about five cents—and he didn’t bother to wait for it, just grabbed his ticket and left. The young woman was afraid that the police were there about the thirty won but relieved when she discovered they weren’t.

  “Anyway,” she told the KNPs, “foreigners are always trouble.”

  The KNPs were still trying to locate the bus driver and the stewardess on the Shinji-to-Kuangju express, but so far they hadn’t found them. Kill doubted they’d have much to say, but it was a base he had to cover. Police in Kuangju were at the bus station now, interviewing ticket sellers and others who might’ve spotted Parkwood. There are no US military bases in that part of Korea, so chances were that an American would be remembered.

  “How about the bus station in Pusan?” I asked.

  “We have some good men there,” Inspector Kill assured me. “Also at the train station.”

  “Good. I should be in Pusan before sunrise.”

  Colonel Laurel, with the help of the haenyo, had already hired a car.

  When I walked into his ward in the Hialeah Compound Dispensary, Ernie was sitting up in his hospital bed.

  “Did you see the jaws on that nurse?” he asked.

  “Jaws?”

  “Hips. I’m tired of skinny Korean girls.”

  I poured myself some water from a jug sitting on Ernie’s nightstand. “Not all Korean girls are skinny.”

  “Show me a fat one.”

  I decided to change the subject. “You ready to get back to work?”

  “Yeah.” Ernie threw back the covers and kicked his legs off the edge of the bed. “Where are my shoes?”

  “Over there. In the closet.”

  Ernie padded barefoot across the room, stripped off his hospital gown, and started putting on his clothes.

  “I don’t remember nothing,” Ernie said, “from when you jumped at Parkwood until I woke up with the KNPs shining a flashlight in my eyes. I was still in that boat, on a beach somewhere.”

  “Shinji Island.”

  “Wherever. They helped me into the backseat of their patrol car and later, from the roof of their police station, I was airlifted back here.”

  “You didn’t hear Parkwood say anything?”

  “No. He was gone when I came to.”

  I sipped on the water. Ernie finished tying his shoelaces.

  “He could’ve killed you,” I said.

  “Yeah. Good for me he didn’t.”

  “But why not?”

  “Why not? You think maybe he should have?”

  “He’s killed two people that we know of so far. Mrs. Hyon and Specialist Vance.”

  “Maybe I’m not his type.” Ernie slipped on his jacket, checking to make sure that his CID badge was still in the inner coat pocket.

  “Maybe he’s through with killing.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Ernie said.

  As we walked out of the clinic, nobody tried to stop us. The front door opened automatically to a late morning of swirling ocean mist.

  “Maybe we should check out some weapons,” Ernie said, “from the MP arms room.”

  “Maybe we should,” I said.

  Riley was in his room at Hialeah Billeting, drunk again.

  “Where you guys been?” he growled.

  “Goofing off,” I said.

  He nodded his head knowingly. “I thought so. The Provost Marshal is pissed that you took this guy, Parkwood, into custody and then you let him go.”

  “Actually, we never had him in custody.”

  “That’s even worse. If you’re alleging that he’s the Blue Train rapist, they want him interrogated to see if it’s true or not.”

  “It’s true,” I replied. “Eighth Army is just looking for a way to weasel out of this.”

  “They’re not trying to weasel out of nothing. They want him in custody and they want him interrogated and they want it to happen now.”

  Riley’s eyes rolled and his head lolled on his neck. He reached across the footlocker and grabbed a bottle of Old Overwart and poured himself a shot glass full of amber fluid. Sticking out his thin lips, he sipped carefully.

  “What happened to the Country Western All Stars?” I asked.

  “You just missed them. They left for Seoul about an hour ago, including Casey.”

  “Casey?”

  “Yeah. Marnie’s daughter.”

  “She’s here in Korea?”

  “Yeah. Marnie didn’t want to tell you, but she told me.” Riley thrust his thumb toward the center of his narrow chest. “They’re not supposed to bring relatives on USO tours. No. They’re not supposed to. But Marnie paid for an airplane ticket for her mom and Casey. They stayed in that hotel in Seoul,
keeping out of the way, hiding from the USO honchos and Eighth Army and everybody, and then when she found Freddy Ray, she had Casey sent down here.”

  “Her mom was here in Korea too?”

  “Yeah. The whole time.”

  “But now she’s stayed behind in Seoul?”

  “Yeah. She has emphysema and can’t get around too well.”

  Ernie had purchased two beers out of the vending machine down the hall, one for him and one for me, and he was listening as he popped them open.

  “That damn Marnie,” Ernie said. “Always full of surprises.”

  “That’s her,” Riley replied.

  “She confided in you, did she?” Ernie asked.

  “Damn right. She knows a good man when she sees one.” Riley took another swig of his bourbon.

  “So Casey was sent down here,” I said, “and she and Marnie and Freddy Ray had a family reunion. Is that what happened?”

  “Exactly. A family reunion that turned into a brawl.”

  “So they didn’t get along,” Ernie said.

  “No,” Riley replied. “Thanks to you.”

  “They argued about me?”

  “What else?”

  “So the Country Western All Stars are in the van now, heading back to Seoul. How long ago did they leave?”

  “About an hour. But they’re not all in the van.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Freddy Ray had to return to his unit. And Casey gets carsick easy. So Marnie and her are taking the train back.”

  “The train? You mean the Blue Train?”

  “What else? The one that left Pusan Station ten minutes ago.”

  “Marnie and Casey are alone?” I asked. “The others are in the van? Driving?”

  Riley looked peeved. “What did I just say?”

  Ernie and I looked at each other. Without discussing it, we put down our beers.

  As we walked down the hallway, Riley shouted after us, “Hey! Where’re you guys going?”

  Inspector Kill met us at the Pusan Train Station.

  The young KNP detective there, Mr. Ho, read from his notebook and gave us a complete rundown of what he’d observed. A tall blonde woman with a small child had boarded the Blue Train about ten minutes before its departure. There were five other foreigners, none of whom matched the description of Parkwood. However, Mr. Ho admitted, Parkwood’s description matched a lot of Caucasian males and could have been easily altered, by something as simple as wearing eyeglasses, for instance.

  I checked with the Pusan Rail Train Office, and the G.I. who worked behind the counter handed me the manifest. Parkwood wasn’t on it, but he could’ve been using a stolen ID. I described him to the clerk. The guy shrugged. He didn’t look at his customers much. He hated them, he told me, after doing this job for almost a year, and didn’t bother looking at them.

  “They’re always whining about their seating or about how long they have to wait for their ticket or something else that nobody can do anything about. Besides, I’m a short-timer,” he said. “Too short to care.”

  Under normal circumstances, Ernie might’ve slapped the guy. As it was, we didn’t have time. Inspector Kill had already arranged for a helicopter to fly us north. On the drive to the airfield, he said, “Parkwood could board that train at the East Taegu station or even up in Taejon.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “He’s had enough time to get up there from Kuangju. But he wouldn’t know that Marnie is on the train.”

  Ernie pulled a photograph out of his pocket and showed it to us. It was of a blondish woman in her early to mid-thirties, wearing a tight skirt, a tight vest, and a pillbox hat with a half-veil. Next to her stood a young boy in shorts and bow tie and jacket and, on the other side, tugging on the hem of her skirt, a little girl in a flowery dress with curly brown hair sticking out from beneath a straw bonnet with a long ribbon.

  “Where’d you get this?” I asked Ernie.

  “At the bottom of Parkwood’s wall locker, up at the Mount Halla commo site. I guess he dropped it there when he was packing.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  Ernie shrugged. “At the time, it didn’t seem so important. Besides, I had other things on my mind.”

  “This must be his mom,” I said, showing the photo to Inspector Kill. “And him and his sister, the one who was abused on the train when they were children.”

  I repeated the story Parkwood had told us to Inspector Kill. His face looked grim.

  “Marnie Orville,” he said, pointing at Parkwood’s mother, “does she look like this woman?”

  “A little,” I said. “Both tall, both blonde.”

  “And both traveling with children,” Ernie added.

  * * *

  Once we were in the air, the chopper pilot flew low, following the track of the Blue Line. Mr. Kill was tense. He didn’t like flying and avoided it whenever possible. Eventually we caught up with the train, moving past Kyongju, the ancient capital city of the Silla Dynasty.

  Inspector Kill ordered the pilot to take us to the East Taegu station, the next stop on the Blue Train’s itinerary, with all due haste. He had a plan. I listened. Ernie and I would board the train in Taegu. Alone. The Korean National Police, meanwhile, would not try to board the train in Taegu because they had not yet mustered their forces and Inspector Kill was worried that a haphazard operation might scare Parkwood away. He was a resourceful criminal, according to Kill, and at the first hint of police gathering, he would flee. How long it would take us to find him then was anybody’s guess; but while we searched for him, he could cause a lot of damage.

  “We have to assume,” Kill told us, “that Parkwood will try for Marnie Orville, and if he does, we have to catch him today, while he’s still panicked and on the run. There can be no mistakes.”

  So the plan was for me and Ernie to board the Blue Train in Taegu, keep a low profile while the train was rolling, and then, as we approached the next stop, Taejon, to search every compartment for Parkwood. Meanwhile, Inspector Kill would be waiting for us at Taejon, with an emergency team ready to surround the train and respond to any unforeseen contingencies.

  “Are you armed?” he asked.

  I showed him my .45.

  Inspector Kill nodded approvingly.

  Of the four stops along the route of the Blue Train—Pusan, East Taegu, Taejon, and finally Seoul—East Taegu is the most bustling, second only to the Seoul Station itself. It’s a large station, monumental in its concrete dimensions. As the Blue Train huffed and chugged its way into the station, four or five dozen people stood on the loading platform, holding tickets, waiting to board. None of them was Parkwood.

  Ernie and I waited under a dark awning. Steam blew out of the sides of the Blue Train and it finally came to a halt.

  “Did you see Marnie?” Ernie asked.

  “Not yet. The windows are all fogged.”

  “She has to be in there.”

  A few dozen people filed off of the Blue Train. As soon as they had pushed their way onto the platform, the new passengers holding tickets started to board. Ernie and I waited until the last minute—when the Blue Train started to roll forward—to sprint to the train and hop on. We took a seat in the last car, one arranged for us by Inspector Kill. At first we did nothing, just stared ahead at the sea of black-haired Koreans in front of us.

  The uniformed conductor came by and punched holes in our tickets. The stewardess smiled as she walked by but didn’t make eye contact. A vendor came by with a tray strapped around narrow shoulders, selling dried cuttlefish and ginseng gum and tins of imported guava juice.

  Ernie fidgeted in his seat. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe deeply.

  * * *

  I felt bad about the rape of Mrs. Oh Myong-ja, the first victim, and worse yet about the rape and murder of Mrs.

  Hyon Mi-sook, especially considering that her children were forced to huddle in the bathtub while she was systematically humiliated and then sliced to death. B
ut those were crimes that I had no personal hand in, crimes that would have been impossible for me to prevent. The murder that bothered me most was the murder of Specialist Vance, the young technician who worked at the Mount Halla Communications Center.

  “We shouldn’t have left him there alone,” I told Ernie.

  “Bull,” Ernie replied. “At the time, we had no way of knowing Parkwood was the killer.”

  “Sure we did.”

  “How?”

  I explained it to him. First the stalker of the Country Western All Stars. We hadn’t taken the musicians’ complaints particularly seriously, assuming they were random acts. But what had disappeared was a microphone, a pair of the bass player’s underwear, and finally a lone cowboy boot. All three of those things were among the piled-up junk in the G.I. living quarters on Mount Halla.

  “That could’ve been coincidence,” Ernie replied. “And anyway, how were you going to pick them out?”

  “And the checklists,” I continued. “When you work at a remote signal site, your life centers around checklists: maintenance checklists, communications checklists, electronics checklists. That’s all you do, hour after hour. Day after day.”

  “Parkwood had checklists on the brain, you’re saying,” Ernie said.

  “And he was about to be barred from reenlistment for lousy performance on an IG inspection,” I said. “He knew things had been going wrong for too long there at the Mount Halla commo site. He’d never correct it all.”

  The third reason I should have known was by Vance’s demeanor. He was frightened, covering up the unscheduled absences of his partner even though he himself claimed never to go to the ville.

  And finally, Parkwood had tried to run us off the road.

  “Maybe he’s just a bad driver,” Ernie replied. “There’s plenty of them around.”

  To Ernie, whatever happened, happened. No sense stewing about it. No sense blaming ourselves.

  A half hour north of Taegu, rice paddies started to give way to woodland. The Blue Train was rising into the Sobaik Mountains. Once we reached the summit, we’d be on our way down into the broad valley that held the city of Taejon. It was then, during our descent, that Inspector Kill had instructed us to begin our search. That way, by the time the train pulled into the Taejon Station, Parkwood—if he was aboard—would be in a panic. He’d flee from the train, right into the arms of the waiting Korean National Police.