Killed in Kruger

by Denise M. Hartman

  “This all can be arranged for you. Though, I doubt the site can tell you more than it has already. Also, we’ve had some rains.” He rummaged in his drawer and came out with a tourist map of the park. He opened it to page two and circled an area. “The area has limited access. It’s not really a public place.”

  “Would your patrols have been through there the day in question? Last Tuesday or Monday?”

  “They don’t have a set schedule, and an area like this wouldn’t be top on the list. Mr. Adkins should not have been in this area. Perhaps he had taken a wrong turning or lost his way.”

  The two men discussed the area further. Tabitha thought about what she knew about her uncle. His sense of direction was infallible, even if his sense of punctuality wasn’t. Nothing lined up to what she knew. Even if she discounted his past behavior, and she accepted the premise that he would go down this road, what was he doing? Tracking a rhino for a photo op? Tracking someone? She sighed and shook her head.

  Rian wrapped things up with the assistant director of the park, and they returned to the car in the waning light of the evening.

  “I still don’t understand the attitude about not wanting to look into my uncle’s death,” Tabitha said.

  “He doesn’t mean anything, and he’s right about so many crimes going unsettled. I don’t mean to disappoint you, but it would be wise for you to be prepared that my investigation will go nowhere. It happens more than I care to admit. My superiors didn’t assign a detective. They’re just letting me ask around.”

  “What? I don’t understand.” Was she getting the brush-off after all that tension and testosterone in Mpande’s office?

  Rian looked away from her. “They just don’t see it as a priority. But I talked them into letting me take a look.”

  Tabitha started to protest, and he held up his hand, still without looking at her. “It’s the best I could do. If we turn something up, it might help me.”

  Tabitha looked away. Her sense of powerlessness increased and she knew she needed to accept what help she could get and keep pushing for more. Rian started the car and she hooked her seat belt.

  The fading light held an orange glow. They were the last car through the Skukuza tourist camp gates, as the employee in his dark green Kruger uniform pulled the wooden slats closed.

  “What about my pictures?” she said, remembering the bag.

  Rian chuckled. “Oh yes, I had to show off my credentials in order to get them without your receipt.”

  “Sorry you had trouble. How much do I owe you?”

  They settled the tab with Rian saying, “I may take some of the shots of the find-site for my investigation, if there’s anything worth having.”

  “Sure, no problem. I’d be glad to feel like I was helping. I feel a bit futile, spinning my wheels and nothing’s getting done.”

  She took the bag from him and poured the packages onto her lap. She was able to quickly glance at the first shot of each roll to find the one from the site where the park authorities had found Phillip. It was a roll of dull shots of gray-brown grasses under flat-topped trees that were beginning to green. Rian flipped on the car’s overhead light. They passed each slide between them, studying them in silence. As she handed one slide to Rian, their hands touched. Rian flushed so deeply she could see it even in the dim light. Tabitha suddenly found the car suffocating and awkward. She broke the silence.

  “Not much here, is there?” Tabitha said.

  “No, nothing strikes me, looking at these. Just a low spot on the side of the road. By this rock seems a likely place for someone to stash a body not to be seen right away. It could stay there for some time, especially since this road wasn’t well traveled.”

  Tabitha looked again and the rock in the photo took on more significance than she had recognized with inexperienced eyes. “When will you know the medical report results on my uncle?” she said, handing the slide to Rian.

  “Perhaps it’ll be on my desk tomorrow, but probably best if you call me the following morning. I’ll talk to some of the staff here and go by the site and head back into the city late in the day tomorrow. Are you coming into the city? We could have dinner.”

  It was Tabitha’s turn to blush, and she was grateful for the settling darkness. “No, I’ve got to get some things done here.” She made an effort to smile at him.

  Whatever uncomfortable interest seemed to exist on Rian’s part, Tabitha knew she needed his help right now, even if she didn’t know what to do with his growing affection. It felt odd to depend on someone who was a stranger. She didn’t like feeling dependent even with her family. How would she explain this back home? Maybe no one needed to know.

  <><><>

  After dinner that evening, Daniel insisted on marching Tabitha back to the door of her rondavel to insure her safety. Unnecessary, she thought. She didn’t linger over the meal. She needed to finish a story and get it ready to email when she found a hookup she could use.

  She locked herself into her round cabin. Tabitha looked at the bag with the pictures, but told herself she was procrastinating on her story. Do the story first, then look at the pictures as a reward for finishing. She hauled out the laptop and her fingers danced over the keys, choosing words to evoke the scenes of Africa.

  Good enough to call done. She rubbed her hands together. Now for the pictures. She dug a magnification loupe out of a side pocket on Phillip’s suitcase to look at the slides. The roll with her shots of Cape buffalo was overexposed, leaving everything burned out. She had a few usable shots of hyena, a passable one of the Skukuza camp, and a reasonable though somewhat wide shot of the leopard. Phillip’s roll had a gorgeous shot of a lioness with sunset light washing her in gold. Several other shots on his roll were terrific and usable. Tabitha couldn’t imagine how much had been lost in the missing film. The last three shots were strange.

  It looked as though he’d used a long lens but still had been too far away. Grainy and distant. Tabitha moved to the light over the sink, to brighten her viewing of the strange slides. She squinted through the loupe. Two men seemed to be wrestling around a bloody carcass. They both wore the green of park employees. Tabitha wondered what this could mean. Routine park duties? Cleaning up after a poacher? Employees poaching?

  If this was one of the last rolls Phillip took, Tabitha reasoned, perhaps he got out of the car to go take a closer look at what was going on. She froze, staring into space, imagining Phillip climbing from the truck and taking off cross country. He’d have a camera and probably the 80-200mm zoom. Likely the digital, since it was missing. She held the slide up to her eye once more. Where was this? Near where they found him? She certainly couldn’t tell one gray and green patch of veldt from another. Maybe someone else could help her identify the area. She focused her vision but couldn’t tell if she had met the men in the picture. It was simply too distant. If Phillip had come upon poachers, that might explain his death. It might make it feasible to find who had done this to him, too.

  The next roll had a beautiful series of shots at Sunset Dam. Storks, hippos, even a crocodile. She smiled. This was what Phillip had loved. She was startled by the next slide and dropped it. She scrambled around on the dusty ground, trying not to damage the slide. It had looked like people but it was dark, very dark.

  She got it up to the light again. It was very dim and shot on a diagonal, like he’d held the camera up trying to get a shot. One slide was a scared eye in a black face. The next in the same angular shooting seemed to be a young girl curled in a ball. Another was just darkness. Oh my God. This is why Phillip asked Elizabeth about trafficking. Phillip had found some victims.

  She looked through the pictures again, but there was absolutely no indication of where they were. It was just a dark room. It had to be in the park somewhere. Phillip had spent all his time here.

  Tabitha wanted to take action, but it was getting late. She paced her rondavel in short steps. She had already tried all her tricks earlier to get the computer to connect to the int
ernet, but this was no suburban hotel. She grabbed her computer and headed back to the restaurant to see if she could use a computer line. Perhaps she could send her story and get some internet time. She needed to learn more about trafficking and poaching in South Africa.

  She strode out into the darkness, making her way across the spongy clipped grass of the Skukuza compound. A gentle breeze rattled the trees above her head. Tabitha quickened her pace. She glanced up. She recalled stories of the South African snake that attacks from trees. She thought of the shadows in Daniel’s mother’s dream. By the time she got to the restaurant door she was at a full-on trot. Tabitha smoothed her clothes and tried to be nonchalant, but her fast breathing was hard to disguise. She explained what she needed to the maitre d’, and he took her to an office where she could use an internet hookup.

  She tried for several minutes to make contact with the outside world. It didn’t want to work and when she asked anyone what she was doing wrong, she got a dramatic shrug. When she finally got a connection, she thought she’d better send her story first. It seemed to take forever to flow through the line. Tabitha moved to the window in the office. Her hands pulled her hair back and let it fall. She seemed to be beating her head against a wall each way she turned. Would an editor be interested in a poaching story? Was there any way to find those sad faces in the dark from Phillip’s slide? Did these strange slides have a bearing on Phillip’s death or not?

  She moved her face closer to the window to see out. A movement close at hand made her jump back, but when she pressed her face to the glass again she didn’t see anything except wind moving the trees and shrubs. She bit her lip and turned back to the computer. The email had gone through but the connection had been broken. She tried several more times for another connection but did not meet with success. The maitre d’ looked in on her, and Tabitha knew she was exceeding her welcome. It was time to get the dark walk back to the rondavel behind her.

  She loaded up, bid the maitre d’ good night, and, squaring her shoulders, walked out into the night. It was a beautiful mild evening full of insect sounds and trees rattling in the breeze. Her steps quickened. It was absurd to be so shaken. Her heart rate ramped up. She shuffled into a slow jog. The computer banged a rhythm against her side. She swore she heard footsteps, but refused to look back.

  Chapter 35

  Mhlongo crept toward the window of the restaurant office. He could see the American woman in there, pacing around waiting for her computer to work. It entertained him to watch people when they didn’t think anyone could see. They moved with a different attitude when they thought they were alone. He smiled in the dark. People weren’t alone as much as they thought.

  He moved closer to the window for a better look. Her sudden impatient movements brought her to the window and Mhlongo ducked down. He watched the shadow coming through until she moved away.

  He eased around toward the entrance to wait for her to leave. She had that loud unmistakable American voice as she said goodbye to the restaurant staff. She started down the path, and he followed.

  It would be easy to kill her. Mhlongo was an excellent shot with a pistol and a rifle, one of the many skills that had earned him a significant place in the park. He felt the weapon in his side pocket. He could do it. The noise would bring people. A dead body in the middle of a locked camp would bring more investigation than an ignorant tourist killed out in the bush. He felt satisfied watching her run ahead to her rondavel. Yes, feel it, American. Run. Run, but no animal and no human can escape.

  Chapter 36

  Tabitha played leapfrog with a couple of other vehicles in her morning safari ride into the bush. She’d woken up early and decided to drive out of camp for a few shots before making her calls. The same two cars seemed to be lingering wherever she did. Sometimes she passed them; sometimes they passed her. It made sense, with her stopping at animal sightings, that others would stop as well. She couldn’t shake the feeling it was more than animal watching, though. A cloud passed over the morning sun, throwing shadows. She hadn’t been able to glimpse the drivers.

  She bent the camera toward her. She pretended to study the dials, pointed the zoom in the direction of one of the cars, and pressed the shutter. Who was it? She’d have to develop the film to find out. She tried to shrug off her unease and wished again she had the digital camera and not the film one. The eyes in the picture Phillip had taken flashed uneasily in her head. He didn’t do people pictures. It didn’t interest him, so what was it?

  She stopped at an outlook where she could see hippos in a river and shot pictures. One of her shadow followers drove on and disappeared. Maybe they weren’t following; it was her imagination. Being alone in the big park had begun to make her crazy, apparently.

  Finally the hour was right, and she knew it was no use delaying any longer. She had to go call her mother. She shifted the truck into gear to pull out, but killed the engine with a wild jerk. Wrong gear. Nice.

  The other car following her didn’t turn into Skukuza camp, and she let out a sigh of relief. Crazy woman alert, she told herself.

  She parked in front of the visitors’ center and popped out of the truck to the bank of phones. She looked around one more time for assurance that her imagined shadowers were gone. Then she walked to the phones and took a deep breath as she started to enter numbers.

  Her mother’s response to her voice was, “Thank God, you’re alive.”

  “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” Tabitha squeezed her eyes closed and tried to sound nonchalant and absolutely not nervous, after her odd morning.

  “Well, your uncle Phillip isn’t.”

  Touché, thought Tabitha. “Everything’s fine here, Mom. I’ve got the arrangements done for him and I’m getting my stories.”

  “So you can come home now? Today?” She could hear her mother twisting the kitchen phone cord.

  “No, it’s nearly done. Besides, my ticket is for next week. I’m not going to pay the extra money to change it.” She heard the beginning of tears in her mother’s voice.

  “But, honey, you could get hurt or worse…”

  “Mom, I’m fine.” She tried to make her voice lighthearted. “I’m having a nice time. The safari drives are wonderful. I’ve seen all kinds of animals. Did you know that black rhinos are territorial? I learned that today. The people here are terrific. I’ll have some great pictures to show you when I get home.”

  Her mother’s voice went up an octave. “Listen to me, young woman. You get yourself to the airport and come home before something dreadful happens. I just don’t feel right about you being there. It’s dangerous. I’m sure of it.”

  Before something dreadful happens? Like Phillip being killed? Tabitha was accustomed to her mother’s high-anxiety view of life, but coming on the heels of Daniel’s mother’s vision of her being in danger, it wasn’t comforting. “Mom, I’ll do my best. I still have a few loose ends to tie up here with the authorities.” She felt the days ticking away on her airline return and she didn’t have the answers she needed yet.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just the formalities of paperwork and stuff, you know.” She hoped she sounded convincing. She couldn’t tell her mother about the possible bullet hole in Uncle Phillip’s body. It’d push her over the top.

  “A mother knows when her babies are in danger, or sick. I know you ought to come home….Are you being restricted by the authorities there? Is that it? I should call our senator for interven—”

  Tabitha shivered and decided to interrupt. “Mom, I’m fine. Okay? Gotta go, Mom. My card’s running low. Love you.” She clicked her finger down in the cradle.

  Must everyone think she was in danger? She pressed the numbers for the police station in Nelspruit and asked for Constable Minnaar. A lot of scratching came down the line as she counted the minutes ticking off her calling card. Why would her cell phone not work? She should try it again.

  “Minnaar, here.”

  “It’s Tabitha. What’d you find o
ut?” She heard papers shuffling and noise of people in the background. She was glad he was at work. Hopefully no romantic suggestions would come up.

  “Okay, we’ve got a definite bullet hole from close range and, interestingly, from a small caliber hand gun rather than a rifle.”

  “Why is that remarkable?” Tabitha bit her lip and pulled at the phone cord. Poor Phillip.

  “Well, it makes him stumbling into a poacher less likely. They’d be more prone to be toting high-powered rifles for bringing down big game.”

  “So this was just a random crime?”

  “Not necessarily. We can’t rule out a poacher with a hand gun, but we can’t say it’s not random violence either.”

  Tabitha digested this. Her disappointment swallowed her resolve. Maybe everyone was right. She’d better get on a plane and leave, now.

  Minnaar seemed to sense her frustration. “Look, we’ll do what we can to see what’s occurred. Things aren’t always what they seem here. I’ll do some checking. I have to warn you, though, my superiors want me to move on. It’s not the sort of crime we are likely to solve.”

  A flare of anger fired in her soul, but lashing out at Rian wouldn’t help. “Hang on,” she said. “I found a picture last night in Phillip’s other roll and…”

  “You didn’t show me all his photos?” A bit of ire from the well-muscled Afrikaner.

  “I didn’t know it was anything but scenery.” He didn’t say anything in the pause, so she went on. “It is really odd, just some faces in distress. I don’t know how to explain it. Like he stuck the camera through a window or a hole and shot. He didn’t like to do humans and this was no beauty shot. It was weird.”

  “White faces or black faces?”

  Uh, oh. Tabitha thought but answered, “Black. And I found out he asked someone here about human trafficking.”