The Surreal Killer (Roger and Suzanne South American Mystery Series Book 2)

by Jerold Last

  "There's a bar right around the corner. We can walk over, have a couple of drinks, and be back here in ten minutes," Vincent said, taking the lead. He continued onwards saying, "I saw the photos, but the real thing is much worse. That scene was surreal!"

  I told Eduardo where we were going and we'd be back in ten minutes.

  "That should work out just about right," he answered.

  The bar was a little hole-in-the-wall neighborhood joint that was probably popular with the dockworkers during the day and strictly for the locals at night. We had our pisco sours and were back in ten minutes. On the short walk back from the bar I asked Vincent, "How did you know that bar was there?"

  "I've been in this part of town before," was his reply.

  "Hmm," I thought.

  Eduardo made some arrangements with the detectives on the scene and we went back to the hotel in a very silent taxi. Vincent said good night and went up to his room. Before we said our last goodnights, I told Eduardo that I had something to give him. We went up to our room, where Suzanne had been catching up on e-mail while she waited for us to get back. She handed me the list of names she had transcribed based on our impressions of the scientists we had talked to thus far.

  "Here's a short list of names for you to check out in depth, Eduardo. It's the best Suzanne and I can do so far based on our impressions of the people we spoke to at the meeting. I hope we can get more names to add to the list after we spend some time with the folks en route to, and in, Iquique and Arica."

  He looked at the two lists, raised his eyebrows questioningly, and asked, "Can I presume to ask how you decided which names to put on this list?"

  "Yeah. We followed Vincent's advice and looked for anyone we could spot who didn't seem to be a guppy in the fish tank. I don't think they're all sharks on that list, just not necessarily guppies. Maybe more like a perch or a bass or two?"

  Suzanne added a bit to this, "Do you remember my first theory that the group we should focus on is the Northern Chileans, for historical reasons and because the killings have occurred everywhere else but there? On the basis of the don't poop where you eat and sleep principle, Northern Chile looks more and more like where the Surreal Killer lives. I've got a few more reasons now to believe this. If you trust my intuition we can completely rule out the two Bolivians here. We spent a whole day with both of the Bolivians and I only got 'nice guy' vibes from them. More than half of the Peruvians are women, and the men don't speak English very well. If we're right about the CIA connection, that pretty much rules them out. I think the odds are that we'll find our killer in Iquique, Antofagasta, or Arica."

  "I trust your intuition," Eduardo told Suzanne. "This list will at least get us started with our priorities for who we look at first, and that's a step in the right direction."

  Half an hour later Suzanne and I were ready for bed. I pulled her close and kissed her. Looking up at my face she asked rhetorically, "Wouldn't it be nice if our new son or daughter didn't have to be born into a world where things like these murders happen?"

  We hugged and crawled into bed where we held hands for a while without saying anything.

  Eventually, I felt an obligation to try to lighten the mood a bit.

  "Suzanne, do any of the biochemists at this meeting use statistics in their work?"

  "Of course they do. Most scientists who work with living things know a little bit about statistics and use them as a tool when they interpret their experiments. I use statistical analysis a lot when I'm trying to correlate DNA and protein sequences."

  "Then you should know the answer to my next question. What do you call a statistician's girlfriend at a meeting like this one?"

  "I haven't the slightest idea. Maria, maybe?"

  "No, his girlfriend is his statistically significant other."

  Chapter 9. Lima, The Present

  Tonight was different. This would be his first killing in the middle of a big city. Doing her in the middle of a crowded city was high risk, high reward. Success was all about finding the right spot where they could be alone and unseen while surrounded by millions of people. Careful preparation was the key to everything. That was why he'd come here a day early to explore Lima and find the right place. He found it easily, out past the airport in an industrial area in the old harbor. The lesson about preparation had been thoroughly learned back during the good old days when he was being trained to kill and torture with the blessings and encouragement of the government.

  It seemed to have been a long time since his last killing, much too long. He needed this one. The anticipation was never as much fun as the doing, but it was part of the total experience and he savored the planning while he looked forward to the doing.

  Where should he look? The urban setting seemingly ruled out hitchhikers, and bus stops on crowded streets were too risky. Where should he look? Where could he pick up a woman without witnesses who could describe him later to the police? Where was a dark place where he could find women by themselves looking to be picked up?

  He thought for a while before the obvious answer came to mind. He drove downtown to find exactly the right place in an area he had noticed earlier. He looked for a small dark bar where there would be women present and available. The Surreal Killer found the perfect bar within walking distance of his selected kill zone.

  She was in the bar, pretty drunk and making no effort to hide that she was available for a price. The woman was about 5'4", dark hair, coffee-colored skin, mid-40s. Not particularly attractive, well used, looked like a whore, very likely was a whore. She sat by herself in a dark booth across from the end of the bar. She wore eyeglasses, which she took off and played with to entertain her self while she sat there. He approached her discretely and within a minute or two had easily convinced her with a handful of Peruvian Sols that they should use his car, conveniently parked out back, as an anonymous trysting spot. He looked around very carefully. Nobody seemed to have noticed the brief exchange. Less than a minute after she got into the car with him he had injected her with the paralytic drug and they were driving to the exact place he'd found.

  Less than ten minutes later he opened the trunk of the car. Out came the usual disposable paper coveralls and disposable latex rubber gloves, which he donned. Out came the large machete and a protective plastic face shield, which he also put on. He returned to his terrified victim and dragged her about 50 feet from the car. She lay helpless on the ground while he hacked away. He proceeded to systematically whack away at arms, body, and legs with the machete until several minutes after she had completely bled out. The mutilation of the corpse continued for what seemed to be a long time after she was clearly dead. Finally, the machete overkill came to an end. Now it was time for the best part. He picked up a stick, dipped it into a convenient pool of blood, and carefully wrote "no mas".

  A few minutes later cleanup was completed and the evidence was being burned. Five minutes after the flames had burned down to ashes he was driving back to the meeting hotel.

  Chapter 10. Cuzco

  One nice thing about the meeting in Lima was an inexpensive tourism option offered for the two days after the meeting. A charter flight would take us to Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Incan Empire, where we would spend our first day adjusting to the altitude and visiting whichever of the local museums we chose. Cuzco is at an elevation of about 11,500 feet; Machu Picchu is even higher in altitude. Lima is at sea level. It's quite a shock to the system to go that high without gradual adjustment, one of the curses of jet travel. Most Americans never experience altitudes this high without pressurized cabins in airplanes. For perspective, Denver is less that half of this height at 5,200 feet and Lake Tahoe is at about 6,225 feet.

  The second day would be spent on a prepaid tour dedicated to visiting Machu Picchu, the sacred city of the Incas, and flying from there directly to Iquique in Northern Chile's Atacama Desert. We would bypass having to go more than 2,000 miles out of the way via Santiago if we flew commercially on LAN Chile, the only available
airline on these routes. Normally it would take the better part of two days to fly from Lima to Iquique, due to the uniquely South American problem of only being able to fly between countries via their international airports in the capital cities, with connecting flights few and far between. The few connecting flights seemed to be optimally inconveniently scheduled to wherever you might actually want to go. Almost always the country-to-country schedules in South America seem to have been designed to force travelers to spend an extra day en route in each capital city.

  We had signed up for this option when Suzanne registered for the meeting because we were fascinated by the opportunity to learn more about the Incas. It turned out that without purchasing tickets in advance it was impossible to go to Machu Picchu. Now we would have a bonus: pretty much everybody at the meeting from Northern Chile, both Spanish and English speakers, had also signed up for this option, which turned out to be the cheapest and fastest way for them to get home from the meeting if they wanted to fly to Iquique, Antofagasta, or Arica. We would have a great chance to get to know the entire fifteen or twenty of our fellow meeting attendees from Northern Chile under informal conditions where we could ask all sorts of questions about their lifestyle and backgrounds without arousing any suspicion.

  The next morning, bright and early (well, not so bright; it was before dawn), we caught a conference shuttle bus to the airport, hopped on a charter flight, and flew to Cuzco. We would arrive there in plenty of time to visit The Incan Museum before lunch. Sitting next to us on the flight was Manuel Velez from Arica, whom neither of us had spent any time with thus far. He was originally from Antofagasta, and had spent most of his adult career at the University in Arica. Manuel was our age (low to mid-30s), bilingual with just a slight Spanish accent, tall, dark hair, handsome (Suzanne's opinion), with dark eyes and a well-trimmed mustache. His casual red polo shirt showed his well-toned biceps and pectoral muscles to maximal advantage. He had a ready smile, which appeared frequently as he told us a little bit about Arica.

  Manuel explained, "Fortunately, I don't have to be back in Arica teaching classes until next Monday, so I can enjoy a few days of Rest and Recreation leave here in Peru, fly back tomorrow, and have plenty of time to prepare to teach four classes on Monday. My research program is practically non-existent except during the summer, so that's not a problem now. During the summer I'll have to supervise several undergraduate student researchers, but most of what we do is ecological fieldwork so that part is fun. The only thing I'm missing not being back in Arica today and tomorrow is an opportunity to go quail hunting with a couple of my buddies. I'll miss that, but there are plenty of opportunities to hunt if you plan your schedule carefully."

  "Where did you learn your English, Manuel?" Suzanne asked. "You seem very comfortable speaking it."

  "I went to Chilean schools in Antofagasta where we were taught in American English while I was growing up. My parents wanted me to be fully bilingual because they thought it would be a whole lot easier for me to get a well paying job in Chile that way. It's been very convenient for me, so I'm grateful for their foresight."

  Following Vincent Romero's idea I found myself creating a mental spreadsheet in which I planned to check off either a box labeled “guppy” or one labeled “shark” for everyone I talked to on the trip to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. This was purely subjective, but probably reasonably accurate since it was based on my gut reaction to their demeanor and body language. Manuel got a check in the box labeled “shark”, based on my grading system. I filed this for future reference both because he was the youngest scientist we had met from this group until now and because he was the first faculty member we had met thus far from Arica.

  We arrived at the Cuzco airport on time, shuttled by bus to the hotel, dropped off our suitcases, and shuttled on the same bus over to the Incan Museum en mass. On the flight up to Cuzco, high in the Peruvian Andes, I had read that the huge Incan empire had stretched along the entire length of the Andes, from what is now Colombia on the north end to what is now Chile and Argentina on the south end, a distance of about 4,500 miles. This short-lived Incan Empire brought advanced technology that rivaled the Roman technology of 1000 years earlier to an area of indigenous tribes living as hunter-gatherers. Incan technology included irrigation, grain storage, modern warfare (relatively speaking), and a form of government and religion that willingly offered access to the positive aspects of their culture in return for tax revenues and manpower from conquered tribes who were willing to join the Empire. The Incan Empire came to an abrupt end with the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors, who won this war not because of their modern technology for warfare, for example guns and horses, but because the Incas were in the middle of a Civil War that the Spaniards exploited for their own benefit.

  The Cuzco Incan Museum displays archeological findings from before the time of the Incan Empire through the Spanish Conquest. Exhibits feature Incan mummies, which is what most tourists come to see. The cold, dry climate of the Andean highlands (the altiplano) favors desiccation of corpses, so mummification occurs naturally.

  "Roger," asked Suzanne looking at the mummies, "Do you think our Surreal Killer may be doing his version of all of the killing that occurred during the Incan wars with the Spanish Conquistadores and with the local indigenous tribes? As I look at all of these mummies I certainly think about violent death. I wonder whether the surreal killings might be some sort of ritual like removing the beating heart from a living human sacrifice that replicates ancient Incan sacrifices to their gods."

  "I don't know, Suzanne. By the time we see the bodies they've been too badly burned and mutilated to know whether the hearts were left intact. Right now I haven't any idea of the why behind all of the killings. Your explanation is as good as any for starters."

  Ceramics, textiles, painted wooden vessels for drinking and eating, and jewelry are also featured in the Incan Museum's collection. Incan jewelry was mainly gold, with some silver. Elegant handmade necklaces worn by priests and royalty are also displayed. There were a lot of people in both of these privileged classes in the Incan Empire, making for a lot of expensive pieces on display. The museum itself is housed in a Spanish Admiral’s mansion built in the early 17th century on top of an old Inca Palace that had been there for at least 200 years before the Spanish arrived in Peru.

  We had lunch with Vincent Romero after the visit to the Inca Museum. Since neither of us had mentioned our travel plans from Lima, until he saw us on the charter flight he hadn't realized we were going to be on the same flights and tours as he was. I guess both of us were into full blown "need to know" mode while we were getting acquainted in Lima. Vincent reminded me about his initial classification of me as a “shark” and went on to philosophize that he didn’t know what the precise identifier that made people sharks was, but that he knew one when he saw one.

  “I've thought some more about this," he told us, "And I had an inspiration."

  "What inspired you?" asked Suzanne.

  "Roger, have you ever killed anyone?” he asked.

  “Now that’s an interesting question,” I thought to myself. "What answer do I think he wants to hear?" Then I answered Vincent. “Yes, I have."

  “I thought so,” Vincent replied. “That may be the true essence of what makes someone a shark when I look at their eyes. Can you tell me about it?”

  I thought a bit about how to answer that one and decided that Vincent seemed to have been honest with us about his past, which included some pretty rough stuff with the CIA. He was giving us a lot of help on this case that he didn’t need to do. He was becoming a friend. I owed him a little bit of the same honesty. On the other hand he was still a suspect. I certainly didn't owe him complete honesty.

  “I told you that before becoming a patent lawyer I was a police detective in Los Angeles. I’ve never told Suzanne this, but there was one day that everything went wrong, which is what made me quit and change careers. It started out like any other day, but we had a hot lead to follow
up. The lead took us out to a small town in the San Fernando Valley, about 50 miles from the downtown Los Angeles offices where we worked. The Valley’s a long way from the usual support systems, but Los Angeles is a huge sprawling city and that can happen in detective work. It was a beautiful, sunny day without a cloud in the sky and no smog visible anywhere. We figured this was just going to be a routine morning where we spent a half of a day driving and half an hour investigating.

  “My partner Harry and I were investigating a homicide and had finally identified a suspect, a guy who had been a former boyfriend of the wife of the murder victim. We drove out to the wife’s house to ask her some questions about our new suspect. The neighborhood was typical of the San Fernando Valley some distance north from downtown LA where we worked. The houses were small 1950s style bungalows on tiny lots, built cheaply for affordable housing for the expanding population of Southern California. Lots were mostly concrete, small or non-existent lawns, more weeds than grass, with no obvious attempts to keep up on maintenance. It looked like a neighborhood where someone was probably cooking crack on every block, and most of the neighbors were users. The recent widow's house was badly in need of paint, kind of an off-gray color made up of equal parts of the original white paint and dirt. The screen door hung lopsided on a single hinge, and two of the front windows were cracked and broken. The steps up to the porch needed repairs, and the porch itself tilted from left to right. If this house were for sale, an optimistic real estate agent might call it a 'fixer-upper'.