Killed in Kruger

by Denise M. Hartman

  Killed in Kruger

  Suspense in South Africa’s largest park

  by

  Denise M. Hartman

  Copyright 2012

  Published at Smashwords

  Second Edition

  www.DeniseMHartman.com

  Other stories by Denise M. Hartman

  Dying to Diet

  Snow Slayer

  Killed in Kruger is a work of fiction. All places and incidents and names are used fictitiously.

  Copyright 2012 Denise M. Hartman

  Smashwords Edition

  www.denisemhartman.com

  ISBN 978-0-9857200-0-1

  Acknowledgments

  This book could not have happened without a host of people. One particularly challenged me to go to South Africa and agreed to pay part of my expenses and his amazing photographs continue to inspire my imagination and my travels. Thanks, Keith Doc Briscoe. The cover is based on one of his photos.

  Many of the things that occur on the sidelines or opinions offered by people in the book are real events we experienced or read about as we researched the parks and traveled the south of the great continent. I have, however, taken liberties with bureaucracy for plot reasons. My apologies.

  The Monday Night Writers’ Groups that existed once upon a time and the one that continues - both persevered in the plot changes with me and I’m so thankful to have had their input and eyes to read my rough drafts. Also thanks to Lauren Sweet, editor, any mistakes are mine not hers.

  A special place in heaven is reserved for the spouses of authors of murder stories. Those spouses deserve credit for not looking at us askance or being scared of us. Thanks for always encouraging my eccentricities, Kerry!

  Dear reader, may it never be forgotten that without you, I’m just pushing buttons on a piece of plastic. Together, we share stories and I am so grateful.

  Chapter 1

  “What do you mean, ‘unaccounted for?’ What, like a check? Phillip is a human being, for heaven’s sake. Are you saying he’s missing?” Tabitha stared at Michael Waggener, the hospitality director at Kruger National Park. Tabitha bit her bottom lip. This was not how she had expected her travel writing assignments in South Africa to start.

  Uncle Phillip hadn’t been at the airport to pick her up as they’d arranged. Phillip had come to Kruger National Park several weeks earlier to begin taking stock nature photographs and to start on the shots they would need for her articles. This was the break she needed in her writing career, and Uncle Phillip knew that better than anyone. He was the only person who encouraged her freelancing. Everyone else wanted her to get a normal job again, a “real” job. She knew something important must have kept him from coming to meet her.

  He was only technically her uncle. He had been Aunt Rose’s third husband—briefly. Rose went through men like bars of soap. But the family had always liked Phillip and stayed in touch with him. He’d never remarried, and perhaps still carried a torch for Aunt Rose. Where could he be “unaccounted for” in Africa?

  Waggener was a broad white man with lots of brown hair and a cowboy-size mustache. He sat behind a taupe metal desk in a circa 1970s office with aqua drapes and black vinyl chairs. When she’d inquired about Phillip at the check-in, she’d been brought here. It was all very ominous and weird.

  Waggener had found something interesting on his desktop that seemed to have his attention. The other man in the room, Souli, a slight black man who had touched his bicep lightly as a sign of respect when he shook Tabitha’s hand, now looked at his shoes.

  “What’s going on here?” she demanded, not feeling as forceful as she made her voice sound. She straightened her orange scarf at her neck for reassurance. She could look confident even if she didn’t feel it.

  Waggener glanced at Souli, then began, “It’s difficult, you see. I’m over housekeeping, and two days ago I received a phone call from Lower Sabie Camp. Someone had left their belongings, not just a chemise or a shoe, but what appeared to be everything. It was a Phillip Adkins on the reservation form. The bed hadn’t been slept in.” He looked around as if seeking something to help him make a point.

  Waggener continued. “We are concerned for the safety of our guests at Kruger, but Mr. Adkins had paid only for two days. This was the third, and we needed the room. I had his things moved to a bin here and called Souli, as head of the rangers, to look for Mr. Adkins.”

  Souli took up the story. “I found his bakkie; you call them trucks, I think. It was off the road in the bush. This is strictly forbidden, for the guests to get off the marked roads. You must stay on the marked roads and return to the camps by six o’clock this time of year. We thought perhaps you could tell us what he was doing here, and we would know better how to look for him.”

  “Look for him?” Tabitha felt like her brain was made of peanut butter. “He was here doing nature photography.” The words felt lame in her mouth.

  “Would he have gone camping in the bush or backpacking into the remote areas? Was he looking for a particular animal? We would know an area to look for him then, if for instance he was looking for white rhinos?” Souli leaned forward in his chair, his head only slightly higher than hers.

  “No, no.” Tabitha ran a hand through her shoulder-length dark blond hair. “No. We were supposed to work on some travel stories together. He came early to take pictures and to set up interview times. I’m coming to do the interviews and articles. I’m supposed to write it up.” She chewed her bottom lip, and could hear her mother telling her to quit chewing her lip and talk. “What if he had a heart attack or something?” she said, fearful for Phillip. Being MIA didn’t seem to fit the faults that Aunt Rose laid at his door. He liked to spend his money on motorcycles and cameras rather than curtains and the fancy houses that Aunt Rose preferred. He didn’t arrive on time for family get-togethers, but he’d never disappeared and failed to show up again. Something was definitely wrong.

  “We have canvassed the area around where we found the bakkie. I’m sure if he was ill, we would have found him.” Souli nodded as if to reassure her.

  “So he has been missing forty-eight hours or so?”

  Tabitha looked at the two men of two different races and backgrounds, each in their distinct way trying to tell her something she didn’t want to hear. They both looked away—Waggener out the window; Souli at a crack in the tile floor.

  They both nodded.

  “What do you believe has happened to my uncle?” she asked.

  Waggener sat forward in his chair. “Your uncle?”

  Tabitha nodded.

  Waggener exchanged a glance with Souli. “We didn’t know he was your family. So sorry.”

  “It is not normal for a person to go missing for very long in the park,” Souli added.

  She drew a long breath. Say it. “Do you think my uncle is alive?” She looked at Waggener, who behaved as the senior authority in the room.

  His light-colored eyes shifted to Souli, who gave a faint shrug.

  “We won’t know until we find him.”

  “I asked what you think.”

  “Well, Ms. Cranz, this is a park full of wild creatures and predators. We don’t normally let people walk about unattended. If your uncle is still out there, he’s in grave danger.”

  Chapter 2

  Sunlight reflected off the blade of the knife as Mhlongo wiped it on the dead man’s shirt. A bullet had killed the man quickly. Mhlongo didn’t need someone wounded calling for help in the bush. A stupid guide might stumble on him before he was dead. No danger of that now. He nestled the body in a patch of meter-high spear grass. It was a good hiding place. The knife and the gashes he’d opened up on the body insured that the predators would smell him and make their way through the veldt to a f
ree meal. The lions and hyenas weren’t picky how their food got dead. Dead was easy. Dead was dinner.

  A horn beeped from the truck idling on the road nearby. Mhlongo stood and surveyed the spot once more, making sure the body couldn’t be seen from the road and that he’d left nothing to indicate his presence. He scooped up the small bags at his feet and used a handful of the dry spear grass to eliminate his footprints as he backed away from the body.

  Chapter 3

  Tabitha took the keys from Souli. He pointed to the bakkie, a cartoon-yellow mini-truck in the parking lot. It was a pockmarked with rust. Just her size, and maybe they were both rough around the edges too. The mini-truck had a cab over the back end. She opened the back and started to heave in Phillip’s decidedly heavy bags. Where could he be? It was running like a mantra in her mind. What had happened to Phillip? She would not let the park write Phillip off as “unaccounted for.” Something had happened.

  Her mother’s fears about a young woman alone in Africa might have substance after all. No way she would let Mom be proved right; Tabitha might look young and small, but she was twenty-six years old and absolutely not helpless.

  She had pressed Souli and Michael Waggener for search parties, but they said everything possible had already been done and that the police weren’t necessary as the park essentially had their own force. Tabitha wasn’t convinced.

  She took a deep breath, then went around and got in the front seat of the truck. It felt wrong, and she immediately realized the steering wheel was on the other side, the right side. And to her dismay, it was a stick shift. No one she knew in the US had one, so she’d never learned to drive one. Nothing like the present to start learning. She got out straightened her shoulders to salvage some pride and walked around to the other side.

  How hard could it be? Right? People did this every day. She slid the seat forward all the way, then started the truck and jiggled the stick with her left hand, studying the numbers. R for reverse or regret? She pushed the clutch in and tried the gear. A grinding sound didn’t seem right, but a final click seemed to indicate it would be okay. After about ten tries, Tabitha managed to keep the truck running long enough to back out of the parking space. Going forward was another matter. She started to sweat and managed to get twenty feet, only killing it five times, before a tap on the window made her jump.

  A very large, dark-skinned man in a park uniform grinned down at her through the window. Tabitha realized she must be making quite a spectacle of herself and couldn’t help but grin too. She cracked the window.

  “Yes?”

  “I think you need some help, ma’am.” He had a deep baritone voice.

  “I haven’t driven a stick shift before,” she confessed.

  “I thought this might be the case.” He had an easy smile. “I’m from the park. My name is Daniel Kangala.” He poked a card through the crack in the window. It looked like an official business card from Kruger National Park. She studied it a moment, biting her bottom lip. He said, “Let me help you.”

  He did have on the green uniform. Tabitha could think of no way to verify this man and besides, as much as she hated to admit it, she needed help. She hoped this wasn’t how Phillip had disappeared. If this was the end, her Mom would be proven right.

  “I’m Tabitha,” she said, climbing out of the truck and going around to the left. Daniel reached in, scooted the seat all the way back and squished himself inside.

  “So what do you do for the park? Are you a ranger?”

  “Ohh, ohh, ohh.” Daniel laughed, a wonderful baritone staccato that made Tabitha smile. “No, no. I am a hospitality clerk.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Daniel yielded to a tourist safari vehicle paused at the end of the parking lot before turning into for the main road. “I work with reservations and organize tours for groups within the park.”

  He started instructing her on using the gearshift and when exactly to let out the clutch. Tabitha had trouble concentrating. All she could think about was Phillip. Daniel waved at another person in a park uniform walking along the little connector road taking them back to the main tourist camp.

  “Does everyone’s family live on the grounds back there?” Tabitha said, indicating the office compound where they’d come out.

  This warranted only a deep chuckle. “No. That is only for employees. Only the very senior staff have a home for families. I work three weeks continuously and then I go home for a week, if I can afford it. My family is just six hours away, so I am very fortunate.”

  “You mean you stay at the park all that time?”

  “I do and so do most who work at the park.”

  Tabitha noticed Daniel’s “th” sounds were a soft “d” sound. The rhythm of his accent rode the air like a danceable tune and pushed back the questions in her head.

  They parked in front of a grand yellow and thatch building with a front of stone. She said a regretful goodbye to Daniel, but convinced him to let her buy him dinner later. He seemed very calm and steady and he made driving a stick look effortless.

  Tabitha looked around the Skukuza camp. Rows of yellow rondavels—small round buildings that were the guest rooms—marched up and down a watered green lawn. The thatch roofs would have made a charming picture if the sun had been shining.

  Pictures. She was anxious to go through Phillip’s things and see if there were clues to his whereabouts. He must have got some great shots, since he’d been here several weeks already. Maybe these would reveal his whereabouts.

  Tabitha dragged Phillip’s suitcase, along with her own heavy bag, from the bakkie into her very own tourist rondavel. It was a stuccoed cement building, very sturdy, with a built-in bathroom along one side. The rooms turned out to be almost quaint. The worn cotton sheets had the Kruger crest of the grand Kudu antelope horns emblazoned on them, as did the towels and the soap. They’d seen better days but were clean. All the insignias seemed to hark back to a more glorious day for Kruger. Tabitha imagined a time of safaris with British ladies and gentlemen in khakis purchased for just such an occasion.

  This definitely wasn’t how she’d pictured her African safari, searching for a missing uncle and staying in nice little round cabins. She heaved Phillip’s big suitcase up on one of the twin beds, and pulled open the side pocket. Bless Uncle Phillip—his calendar nested in that obvious side pocket. She flipped it open and saw that he had followed through. They had appointments over the next several days, and other days had been left free, allowing time to get into the park to observe animals. No indication on his calendar of where he might have gone two days ago. What could have happened? Aliens could not have made him disappear any more thoroughly. She had to follow through and hope that something in this schedule he had set up would lead her to him. This schedule must essentially reflect what he was doing and who he was contacting last week.

  Tabitha had been fighting her way into the local Chicago publications writing freelance, but she wanted—okay, needed—a bigger market. Specifically, she wanted the travel market. Her fiancé Jeffrey wondered why it had to be travel. Her mother wondered why she would quit a real job like public relations to do nothing. A writer? Really? Phillip had offered to help; as a freelance photographer himself, he appreciated the need to get a break. She hadn’t told anyone, not even Phillip, that she had almost used up her nest egg from the years of public relations and had cashed in a paltry IRA too. She needed this trip in more ways than one. She liked to think of Phillip as a mentor, but she admitted to herself she had counted on his help. He had to turn up safe.

  He had arranged for her to have a chance at doing some stories he was shooting for some national magazines. She had the next few weeks to turn in a self-safari piece and to do profiles of luxury lodges and the life of rangers for several different publications. Since he’d been here he had emailed Tabitha about a conservation group that they could profile too, and sell the story when they got home. She noticed an appointment on the calendar with the Schopenhauer Factor—
that was the conservationists. He had upheld his end of the bargain. She would too. She would retrace his steps, find him, help him and get the stories. She didn’t want to let him down, since he’d gone out on a limb for her with the editors.

  She slumped on the side of one of the beds, staring at the bags perched across from her. Where was he? It didn’t seem possible for someone to just go for a drive in Africa and not come back. Tabitha tried to shake off the unreality of it. Totally Twilight Zone. She walked to the sink and turned the hot tap. Doubts plagued her. She rinsed her face in the warm water. Could she meet the deadlines and satisfy the editors? Phillip must be okay. He had to come walking in soon. Could she do it if Phillip didn’t turn up? She engulfed her face with a white hand towel, shaking away her fears. She adjusted her orange scarf. She needed some inspiration right now.

  She tugged at the zipper on Phillip’s big green bag. Clothes bulged out of the opening and Tabitha felt intrusive, digging through her uncle’s clothes. She went back out to the truck for the other man-sized bags. Would these bags tell her something? A khaki canvas tote was the heaviest; she assumed that must be where the cameras were. She’d glimpsed the big lenses in cases under a tarp in the back of the truck. No, she corrected herself, they call it a bakkie. The bakkie’s bed had a cover on it and Phillip had left some things in it. She’d decided if Phillip trusted the lock on the cover she wasn’t about to drag around anything heavy she didn’t have to.

  Inside, she pulled at the pockets on the canvas bag. Lens cleaners and brushes. Filters, various shapes and sizes. Smaller lenses and three camera bodies filled the main compartment, along with a small notebook. Nothing out of place.