by Jerold Last
Suzanne picked up the narrative. "Just like Eduardo, we've been honest with you thus far. There aren't any hidden agendas. We've been playing sharks and guppies with everyone at the meeting, and there seems to be a whole school of sharks here in Iquique. And yes, the pun was intentional. I think I've been around Roger too long. So here we are just trying to get to know everyone better so we can try to help Eduardo. Based on what you just shared with us, I now understand something Roger told me last night about his deductions, which were incredibly close to what you just told us. Roger, do you have anything to add?"
"As I told you in Lima, Vincent, I used to be a homicide detective in Los Angeles. So I've investigated a lot of murders. Despite your half-hearted attempts to point us in the wrong direction a few times, the bottom line for me is that you also pointed us in the right direction. I assume all the misdirection you tried to do, like when you tried so hard to implicate the administrators at the university you did out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to your trainees. As of last night I was at about the same place as you are, with the same five suspects for the same reasons. I think I also left you in the race just to be complete in the logic, but at 100:1 odds against. At this point we need to figure out how to encourage our killer to make the next move and catch him at it, or we'll never be able to prove who it was for sure. Probably the best thing we can do between now and the end of lunch is to kick around some ideas of how we can do that."
A lot of bad ideas were suggested by all of us, but we kept coming back to the suggestion that one, two, or all three of us would have to be offered as bait to draw out the killer. Eduardo verbalized it for all of us.
"Let's call our killer X. From X's point of view all he has to do is absolutely nothing until we all go home and he's safe. He's not a werewolf who has to obey his compulsion to kill when there's a full moon or a vampire who has to hunt only at night. He gets to pick and choose when and where, and even how, he kills. We all believe that X is one of your CIA group of agents and trainees, except he likes killing women. He's under complete control because except for the three women killed during the training phase, all of the killings were done in other countries under conditions where he would never normally have become a suspect. So we have to make him think that one of us is a threat to him that has to be removed immediately. Our job is to select which of us we're going to put into real danger, and how we sell X on the idea that he has to forget about meticulous planning and do it right now. I nominate myself for the target. That really has to be my job since I'm the policeman here."
"Thanks, Eduardo," I replied, "But it's obvious that Suzanne has to be it if we decide to go ahead with this scheme. X definitely prefers women as his victims, and we have to make it seem easy or he'll be very, very careful. We need him to decide to do it up close and personal or we won't catch him. We don't want to encourage him to take a shot at you from 750 meters (half a mile) away. These guys are all expert hunters and there's no way we can protect you from that kind of threat.
"On the pro side of the ledger, pointing him towards Suzanne as a victim makes a lot of sense and might work. On the con side, she's three months pregnant and certainly doesn't need any more stress and the very real possibility of physical trauma. X is a trained killer and almost certainly knows all of the dirty tricks needed to win at hand-to-hand combat. So, I'm unilaterally vetoing that idea and asking whether we can come up with a compelling reason why he has to kill me, and just me, tonight or tomorrow instead?"
We went back to brainstorming ideas, most of them pretty stupid. We finally decided to try one right out of an Agatha Christie novel that seemed only slightly stupid. Vincent would call each of the five suspects (other than himself) to tell them that I had informed him that I had evidence that one of them was a murderer who was responsible for killing ten women in three countries. He was my confidante because we had become friends, and because I needed him to find a trustworthy Chilean cop I could tell my story to so that we could bring a killer to justice. He, Vincent, was to locate the right cop, perhaps using his CIA connections, and get him to come up to Iquique and hear my story some time tomorrow.
It had to be tomorrow because I was planning to go home the day after tomorrow. All six of them would be invited there to corroborate some of the details and give the story some plausibility. Vincent would also tell the other five suspects that I had deduced some of the background details correctly, like the CIA connections they all had, but didn't know any of the stuff that could get them in trouble with the Chilean police. On the other hand, he didn't want to point the police in their direction because who knew what might happen if the cops started digging into their recent history? If all of them were there and denied everything, this would all go away.
We left lunch and Vincent with this as our working plan. Eduardo and I discussed the logistics of staking me out as a Judas Goat while offering me enough protection to have a decent chance for survival. We finally came up with a plan. It was far from perfect, but it had a chance to work. The key was keeping me safely surrounded by people until a time and place of our choosing.
Eduardo, Suzanne, and I spent the rest of the afternoon taking it easy on a local beach reading, working on our suntans, and surrounding me with a buffer zone of people. We stayed together for dinner and postprandial beers (Suzanne had orange juice) while we discussed what to do if I received a phone call in the middle of the night from someone suggesting we meet alone somewhere that could be a killing field. Eduardo had a couple of electronic toys he loaned me to make me feel a little less lonely and exposed.
We went back to the hotel, and went to our separate rooms. Suzanne and I crawled into bed hoping I could get a few hours of sleep before things started to happen. She turned to me and asked, "Do you want any help from me, or would you be so chauvinistically overprotective that you wouldn't take care of yourself properly?"
"I think I have to fly solo this time, Suzanne. I would spend all my energy worrying about you and junior if you were there with me. For now, let's relax and enjoy tonight's little moment of humor."
"Suzanne, now that you're an accomplished pilot, at least in level flight, we have another airplane joke for tonight. Four people are in an airplane, the pilot, the smartest man in the world, the richest man in the world, and a punk teenager."
The airplane experiences some difficulties, and the pilot informs the three passengers, "The plane is going to crash, and there are only three parachutes on the plane."
The richest man in the world takes one saying, "My lawyers will sue everyone else on the plane if I don't survive, and jumps out of the plane."
The smartest man in the world takes a parachute saying, "The world would be a worse place without me, and jumps out of the plane."
The pilot says to the punk teenager "There's only one parachute left, I'll fight you for it."
"That won't be necessary," says the punk, "The smartest man in the world took my backpack."
Chapter 19. Phea
Chapter 19. Pheasant Hunting
He dreamed exactly the same dream for the second night in a row. The dream was so vivid it felt real. The symbolism was obvious.
He was out in an autumn field with a brace of hunting dogs and his old shotgun, an over and under twin barrel model. The dogs were well trained Gordon Setters with plenty of prey drive. Santiago and Valparaiso found birds, pointed them, and flushed them on command. All he had to do was follow the dogs on a straight line and watch them making huge graceful casts left and right as they quartered into the wind seeking pheasant scent in the air. If he shot a bird, the dogs would retrieve it.
Suddenly Valparaiso’s tail started to act like a frenzied metronome, then went rigid as she locked onto a rock solid point. Her daughter Santiago stopped about 10 meters behind her and locked onto a solid honor of her mother’s point. He had plenty of time to walk 50 meters over to Valparaiso, who hadn’t moved, and was still intently pointing at an invisible bird upwind in front of her. He took another couple o
f steps, lining up with Valparaiso’s nose and tail. The pheasant must be hunkered down in the high grass in front of the dog.
He gave Valparaiso the command and she went in and flushed the birds from the cover they were hiding in. Up flew two pheasants, a brightly colored cock and a dull gray female. BOOM, BOOM went the shotgun, and two birds fell out of the sky. The dogs stayed on point until he gave the retrieve command. The two dogs went out, each picked up a single bird in her mouth, and they brought the dead birds back to him and laid them at his feet. The feathers on the male were richly colored and shone with iridescence, with a bright white ring around his neck. The female was dull and drab, well camouflaged for protection by invisibility as she sat on her eggs waiting for them to hatch.
He picked up the bloody birds one by one. First the male went into the game pouch on the back of his hunting vest. "Good-bye Roger," he said with a smile.
Then he did the same with the female pheasant. "Good-bye, Suzanne," he saluted her. The smile got larger.
That was the exact moment when he woke up, both nights that he had this dream. This time he smiled while he was awake. The real thing was coming, soon.
Chapter 20. The Surreal Killer
The phone call I was expecting came at 3 A.M.
A muffled voice said, "I have some information about the murders. Come alone to the beach near your hotel and I'll tell you what you want to know. Don't do anything stupid. I'll be watching you."
I put on my shoes and a light jacket over the turtleneck sweater I wore. The door closed quietly behind me. I went down the stairs and ever so carefully out the back door. Eduardo’s little electronic gadgets had included a device he could use to tap my phone. I knew he had listened in to this call and would be waiting in the darkness somewhere behind the front door of the hotel to keep close track of anyone who followed me from the hotel.
He also had a second gadget that would vibrate soundlessly in his pocket when I pushed a button on the similar device in my pocket. This would be my signal that he should make a noise to distract anyone that might be lying in wait for me just outside the hotel
I could hear Eduardo's voice in my head telling me, "The guy needs to get you alone in a dark and deserted place. He's had military training and advanced spy training. He's all about strategy, tactics, and careful planning. You're going to be told to go to point A. There'll be half a dozen or more dark and deserted places between the hotel and point A. I'll bet that he tries for you either right outside the hotel or the first dark alley you pass on the way to point A. The only edges you have are that he doesn't know that you can fight back and he doesn’t know that I’ll be backing you up. Whatever you do, be very sure it's quick. You'll lose the fight if he can make it be on his terms."
After giving my eyes a couple of minutes to adapt to the darkness, I slipped out of a side service entrance door and walked as carefully and quietly as I could to the end of the sidewall of the hotel. I kneeled down and with minimal movement looked slowly around the corner. There was a dark and formless shape waiting motionless against the wall about six feet away from me facing the front entrance. He wore dark clothing and blended into the darkness along the wall. The face was completely covered by a black balaclava. He seemed to be carrying something in his right hand.
I was reasonably confident that if I could take him down to the ground before he had time to react that I would win this fight. Several years of training in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu had taught me a lot of moves once my opponent and I were down, so that was how I saw myself having the best odds of getting the advantage in this fight that I couldn't afford to lose. It came down to being pretty simple for me strategically. I had to surprise him, bring him down to the ground, disarm him, wait for Eduardo to see or hear the fight and come over to help me, and not let him get back up until he was completely harmless no matter what.
Thinking, "there’s no time like the present", I thumbed the switch in my pocket that activated Eduardo's vibrator. The muffled sound of Eduardo carefully closing a door at the front of the hotel seemed loud in the early morning stillness. I turned the corner and moved as quickly and quietly as I could to a position right behind him, a matter of just a few steps.
He sensed my presence and started to turn around incredibly quickly and silently. After years of martial arts training I’m pretty quick too. I kicked out at his knee, started my body rotating, and grabbed at his jacket as he turned towards me. The kick missed its intended target and hit his thigh, which slowed him down a bit and knocked him off balance. The rest of the move worked better and I threw him over my hip to the ground, where he landed on his stomach.
I followed him down with all my weight on his back and legs. It was too dark to see much but I could clearly make out in the little moonlight available a hypodermic syringe and needle in his right hand. I couldn’t tell who he was with the balaclava hiding his entire face except for his mouth, nose, and eyes, but I was pretty sure I already knew his identity.
The killer tried desperately to rotate towards me to counter my next move. But years of training and countless hours in the gym made me too quick and too strong for his countermove to work.
I slid my left knee up to the killer's back and hugged him up and underneath his arm while I held on to him as tightly as I could. My right leg came up and over my opponent's body so I was straddling him. My legs were now braced against the killer's hips, giving me an unbreakable hold and all the leverage. I was taller and heavier than my opponent, which gave me even more leverage.
The killer's next countermove was to continue rolling over until he was fully onto his back. I was now mounted on the masked killer, face-to-face. From a purely tactical point of view, the fight was over--I had immobilized the Surreal Killer who was now purely on defense and Eduardo was coming from the front of the hotel to help.
I didn’t want any of whatever was in the syringe, which he still grasped in his right hand, in me so I grabbed his wrist with my left hand. My right hand wrapped around his upper arm and closed around my left wrist to generate more leverage. My legs were still braced against his hips to give me additional leverage I could use to keep him immobilized on the ground. His right arm was asking his elbow to flex and extend simultaneously as I pushed in both directions simultaneously with both of my arms. This particular hold had to be excruciatingly painful for him, but he was working as hard as he could to extricate himself from his predicament. I increased the pressure on his arm until he dropped the syringe. I continued to increase the pressure until I heard a loud pop and he grunted in pain as I dislocated his elbow.
All of this maneuvering takes longer to describe than to actually do. The entire fight could not have lasted longer than 10 seconds.
He lifted his head a few inches off the ground and stared directly at me through the eye slits in his balaclava. “I’ll kill you,” he grunted through the pain, “And then I’ll kill Suzanne.”
I took advantage of the second or two he was preoccupied with the pain in his right arm and with threatening Suzanne to release his damaged arm and pick up the syringe. I quickly plunged it into his neck about where the jugular vein ought to be. I was lucky and hit the vein on the first try. Immediately I injected the entire contents into his neck.
“No you won’t,” seemed the right thing for me to say to him under the circumstances, so I did.
The paralytic drug hit him almost immediately and I felt him go limp. All of his muscles seemed to relax at once as he fell back in a heap with me still straddling his body. His head lolled back as he lost all of the muscle tone in his neck. His eyes remained alert and bright with horror at his current predicament. The courteous thing to do would have been to get up, call the police, and let the criminal justice system deal with him. I didn’t know the Chilean policy about granting bail to killers, but I did know enough about the law to know that we did not have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he had killed eight women.
Eduardo was still running over in our direction when I crushed his
pharynx with a well-placed strike with the edge of my hand. I watched him choke to death over the next two minutes. Considering the pain, suffering, and horror that he had inflicted on all of those women, I was sorry it didn’t take longer for him to die.
Eduardo arrived in time to watch the last minute or so of the Surreal Killer’s life. He kneeled over to allow him to remove the ski mask so we could finally see the serial killer’s face.
“How about it, Roger, can you tell me who's under this mask before I take it off?”
“I’ll bet you a very nice dinner that it’s Felix Figueroa,” I answered.
Eduardo removed the mask to reveal Felix Figueroa’s face.
“You’ll tell me how you deduced that one over our first glass of wine tonight at that dinner I owe you and Suzanne,” replied Eduardo.
