The Destroyers

by Christopher Bollen

  “We rent many rooms upstairs.”

  “Salamander tattoos on her ankles. Orange lizards.”

  “Oh, that girl. No, she left. She moved to a room above the oil merchant on the other side of Skala. Maybe two or three days ago.”

  I make my way across town. The oil merchant guides me to a jeweler who directs me on to a souvenir shop. Carrie must have changed accommodations nightly, too frightened to overstay but underestimating the watchfulness of a tiny Greek village. I remember that Martis described her as paranoid—as if she were in some danger. But it is what she has in her possession connecting Charlie to the bomb that drives my interest in tracking her down. I assume she’ll agree to speak to me. She did ask for my whereabouts.

  The clerk at the souvenir shop points me up a flight of stairs. “She take room this morning.” I knock on a door painted cerulean blue and press my ear against it. I try the handle.

  “She isn’t in,” I tell the shopkeeper back downstairs. “I’m her brother from America. I’m supposed to be staying with her.”

  Previously hard of hearing, he’s now alert to the economics of a second guest. “You are staying too? She did not mention. It will be double, even if it is one bed.”

  “That’s fine. Could I use a spare key?”

  “Seventy euros,” he shouts, demanding to be paid in advance in case the Dorr siblings are tempted to skip out on their bill.

  I pull a crisp, pink note from my pocket. “Can you make change for five hundred?” Flamingo paper. And yet this money might well have cost innumerable lives.

  He fumbles through his lockbox and hands me a key attached to a yellow tassel. I climb the stairs and knock again, quietly this time. When there’s still no answer, I slip the key in the lock. As I open the door, stale air escapes with its reek of air freshener and synthetic bedding. No lights or windows make sense of the darkness. I reach my hand along the stucco wall in search of the switch. Just as I flick it on, a sparkling object shoots toward me. I duck, and right above my head is a loud explosion. Glass splinters rain on my shoulders and feet.

  I rise to find Carrie Dorr with her hand around a plastic handle that was once attached to a coffeepot. Her face is flushed through a layer of thick, white concealer. She’s silent just long enough to study my identity. “No, not you!” she shrieks. “Stay away from me!”

  She hurtles backward, but the room is so tiny, she immediately falls onto the bed. Her hair-stubbled, salamander legs kick as she drops the pot handle and lunges for the bedside lamp.

  “Stop,” I whisper. “I’m not here to hurt you.” I shut the door to prevent the clerk downstairs from overhearing.

  Carrie is simultaneously wielding the brass lamp and desperately trying to unplug its cord from the wall. I race over and pull the lamp from her grip.

  “Please, don’t!” she screams, raising her arms, her wrists crossed above her face.

  I drop the lamp on the bed and lift my hands.

  “Carrie, I just want to talk. Didn’t you want to talk to me? You asked Martis where I lived.”

  “Not to talk!” she wails. “To look for evidence! That’s all! I didn’t take anything!”

  So Carrie is the one who stole the nine thousand in cash from my nightstand. She must have been waiting until the cabins were unoccupied. Louise said she saw a girl from the camp wandering in the nearby fields. My door was locked, but Louise leaves hers open, and I stopped latching the bolt between our rooms. I can’t accuse Carrie of stealing it right now, because it would only protract her fit of screaming.

  “Listen. We could help each other. I could be your friend.”

  “You’re his friend,” she moans. Tears fill her eyes, runny with black mascara like motor oil for a crying machine. Her picnic tablecloth-patterned shirt is twisted above her freckled ribs.

  “You mean, Charlie’s friend?” I ask.

  “Uh-huh. Did he send you to finish the job?”

  On a wooden drying rack that blocks the path to the bathroom hangs a patchwork of clothes, which Carrie must have washed in the sink. It’s the T-shirt with NEW YORK written in a traffic jam of fonts that catches my attention. The room is otherwise empty, aside from a half-eaten box of biscuits on a table and a duffel bag at the foot of the bed. But at the bottom of a small, open closet I notice a cheap hotel safe. I have no doubt it holds my money.

  “I am Charlie’s friend, but he didn’t send me. He’s missing.”

  “Missing?” She lowers her arms and wipes her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s disappeared. He’s been unreachable for a week.”

  Her sympathy is short-lived. “Good. He’s a fucking asshole.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “No,” she wheezes.

  “Then what evidence were you looking for in my room?”

  “I said I didn’t take—” The souvenir clerk is knocking and shouting in Greek from the hallway. Carrie stumbles to the door.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Pachis. I just broke something. Sorry to bother you.”

  “You pay for damage!” he demands. “Two is too many for room!” His footsteps disintegrate down the steps.

  “Thanks a lot,” she says sarcastically, eyeing me with snotty hatred. At least she had the courtesy not to turn me in. She can’t be more than twenty underneath the mortuary makeup. The pimples on her chin and the childlike slouch of her shoulders radiate a girl who has not altogether lifted herself out of the snug New Jersey suburbs. She looks like an ideal candidate for Vic’s brainwashing end-of-the-world camp, but she’s hardly an impressive witness for Martis’s case against the Konstantinous. I can see why he weighed his suspicions against Charlie and chose to let the investigation drift. Carrie Dorr versus any one of Rasym’s lawyers would have been like tossing a mouse in a python cage—very cute right up to the moment it’s swallowed whole.

  Still, she’s doing her best to look tough, with her hands on her hips and her mouth wrenched in a snarl. The tears are dripping onto her teeth.

  “So, what do you want? Or do you enjoy breaking into women’s rooms and scaring the shit out of them?” I don’t mention that she broke into mine. “Because I’m already scared enough. This island is the worst place I’ve ever been. And you’ve done a great job of convincing me it’s time to go home.”

  “I spoke with Martis. He told me you thought Charlie was behind the death of your friends, Dalia and Mikael.”

  “Because he threatened our lives,” she squeals. “You were there. I saw you. Maybe he was worried I was on to him.”

  “On to him about what?”

  “I mean, it’s not a coincidence. I was supposed to be on that bike with Mikael. He was my . . .” Her lips begin to twitch. “That night the three of us were on the beach together, me, Dalia, and Mikael. We built a fire away from the camp. Dalia and I swapped shirts.” She nods to the New York shirt on the drying rack. “That’s my shirt from home, but Dalia borrowed it. She was obsessed with New York and hated wearing the stupid tourist crap that Vic was always pushing on everyone. Anyway, we traded back that night after she got off the ferry from Athens. She had on the orange shirt I was wearing at the dock! Your friend must have thought it was me on the bike. He probably ran them off the road and clubbed them to death while they were lying in the grass. And it would have been me if I hadn’t fallen asleep. Why not kill both sisters? What is he, part of the Cypriot mafia?”

  I have no idea what Carrie is rambling on about. Both sisters? How much can I attribute her belief that she’s worth murdering to the narcissism of a twenty-year-old? Maybe if she and Mikael had trespassed and discovered the truth, there might be some merit to her story. But they had simply walked away.

  “Did you find out about Charlie’s boat company?” I ask her.

  She stares at me puzzled. “No. What about it?”

  “Carrie, why would Charlie want to kill you? I don’t understand.”

  She picks up her duffel and tosses it on the bed. Unzipping the bag, she burrows through he
r scant belongings and hands me a crumpled postcard that was tucked in her passport.

  On the front, a curved beach hugs smooth, turquoise waters. Only a white church in the distance and PATMOS emblazoned in maraschino red distinguishes it from any other airbrushed paradise.

  “Read the back, idiot.” Her eyes are wetter than they were before.

  I flip the postcard over.

  “My sister wrote that. She sent it to me before she died. Her name was Elise. She was here with her friend on vacation last month when the explosion went off. I got it a day after her funeral. Not that we had anything to bury.”

  I recall the two American tourists who were killed at Nikos while waiting to board a ferry. Every day there have been fresh flowers at the bombsite, which Carrie must be leaving for her sister.

  I read the short note written in bubbly cursive.

  “Did you get to the part about the extremely sketchy Cypriot dude with the expensive yacht?” she asks.

  I did. I also got to the part about her friend f***ing him. Sonny was off in Paris, giving Charlie a window to pick up a pretty visitor, the safest prospect for an unmessy conquest; vacationers arrive with termination dates stamped on their foreheads. No wonder the bomb converted Charlie into a faithful man. The last girl he cheated with died in the blast, sitting right where he was supposed to be. I’m glad Sonny isn’t here to read the postcard.

  “She was my only sister,” Carrie cries. “Those are her last words. The American embassy, the Greek government, that joke of a special task force of the Hellenic police, they all told us the bomb was a random act of terrorism set by some left-wing radicals. That’s it, no deeper explanation, no justice, like we’re just supposed to accept that and move on.” She sits down on the corner of the bed, her hands braced on her knees. She blows out two sharp breaths. “Never mind the fact that no one claimed responsibility. Don’t you find that weird? Who goes to the trouble of setting off a bomb and murdering people and doesn’t take responsibility for it?”

  Most murderers, I think. Most kill with the expectation that they won’t be caught, let alone take bragging rights. It hits me as news so often does: What kind of new world is this, where the perpetrator is expected to claim their crime?

  “My sister died as an empty symbol!” she shouts. “I’m sorry, but that makes no sense. I can’t accept that. So I decided to come to Patmos and see for myself what was going on. I spent all my savings to get here. My parents didn’t want me to come, but I had to. Elise deserves that. I wanted to be where she died. Even if it was just a stupid pilgrimage.”

  I stare down at her, trying for tenderness. “Just because Charlie is mentioned in the postcard doesn’t mean he had anything to do with the bomb.”

  “He’s all I had to go on,” she says sniveling. “I asked around. He always went to that taverna, every morning at eleven. Why wasn’t he there that day? Turns out he has a girlfriend who might not have been too happy to discover he was cheating on her.”

  “You really think he’d blow up a café full of people to keep your sister’s friend from talking?”

  “Don’t make fun of me,” she howls. “That’s why I went to your cabin. I wanted to find proof. I knew you worked for him.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “But bad things happen. Sometimes there’s no explanation.”

  “Yeah, dickhead, I live on Earth too,” she yells. “I’m aware of how life works. So it’s just another coincidence that Elise is killed and then someone tries to do away with me after I’d been asking around the island about Charlie Konstantinou?” She shakes her head. “I told Martis about my sister. I told him that Dalia was wearing the shirt I had on. I showed him the postcard. It all leads back to your friend. I thought Martis believed me, but in the end he’s just as bad as all the other police. All he gave me was a Kleenex and a hug.” She glances piteously around the rented room the size of a penalty box. The only movement is the flutter of sheets from the air-conditioning unit in the wall. “I haven’t been sleeping. I know I should just go home. I don’t feel safe here. But what about Elise?”

  She climbs to her feet and walks to the clothes rack. She folds the New York shirt and bunches it in her bag. “I tried,” she mumbles to herself. “You’re right. Bad things happen. People blow up. No answers. Maybe the refugees did kill Mikael and Dalia. What the fuck do I know?” She grabs an extra-large T-shirt off the rack, the novelty emblem on the front translating Greek alcoholic drinks into English. “This was Mikael’s,” she says. “He told me bad shit was going down. He promised he’d tell me what it was. He never got to. He was going to leave the camp. He was sick of it. I was hoping he’d come back to the States with me.” She lifts the shirt to her nose.

  “Why were you even part of Vic’s group?”

  She drops the shirt in her bag. “They’re not bad people. Well, maybe they are, but they’re nice enough when you get past all that garbage about Revelation and the kingdom awaiting them when this world dies. I think only half of them seriously believe that crap. The others just have nowhere else to go.” She stares over at me as if I’m judging her. “They know the island. I figured they’d be able to shed some light. It wasn’t like I was getting anywhere on my own. Plus, sleeping in their camp was free. I don’t exactly have any money.”

  I give her a knowing look, but she ignores it.

  “All I had to do was clap along at their prayer meetings and smoke a bunch of joints. Oh, and tell Vic I was lost and alone. Which I am. She gets into you, like, inside of you. Honestly, it felt good for a while, like the past and future could disappear, and you could just exist in this perfect, dirty now. If I didn’t have my family waiting for me, I might have stayed. Underneath all of that worship of destruction, it did get near to love. Like a vibration that filled some hole.” She carefully tucks the postcard in her passport. “And Vic hates Charlie. She considers him the Nero of greed. You’d think she would at least have humored me that he was behind the bomb.”

  “Did you tell Vic the real reason you’re here?”

  “Yeah,” she hisses. “I finally did. That night with Mikael. I told her that Charlie threatened us at his port. She was so pissed, like I had betrayed the camp by not being a true believer. She said I was out of my mind. This woman who prays for the Apocalypse was telling me I was out of my mind.” She jabs her finger against her chest. “She and Mikael screamed at each other. Vic’s whole trip had gotten too much for him. That’s when we left and met up with Dalia down the beach. I mean, I liked Vic, but, Christ, I wasn’t going to devote my life to her. And Mikael was tired of being her drug mule.”

  The words catch in my ear, two little wasps with lethal stingers. I spin around, to where Carrie is trying to maneuver the clothes rack so that she can slip into the bathroom.

  “Wait. What did you say? Drug mule?”

  Now I’m the naïve one. Carrie purses her lips and rolls her eyes. “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter. It’s important.”

  “That’s how Vic makes the money to keep the camp going. Look, I know it’s awful, but I wasn’t involved. She only lets the ones she really trusts go.”

  “Go where? What do you mean?”

  “Heroin,” she exclaims. “She has some supplier on Patmos. Maybe they bring it in at night on boats. I don’t know. I tried not to know. All the party islands have drugs crawling all over them and plenty who will pay a fortune for it during the summer. If the camp didn’t do it, someone else would. But don’t you get the point of the tourist shirts? Vic would send her favorites out on the ferries dressed like typical backpackers, young, fresh-faced Americans and Europeans, because the police aren’t going to think twice about naïve vacationers waving guidebooks with those embarrassing T-shirts on. Only their backpacks are crammed with packets. They even wrap them around their stomachs with cloth bandages. They deliver them to other islands and come right back on the ferry. Mikael told me they’re always coming and going. T
hey even reach the Ionian Islands on the other side of Greece through Athens. That’s what Dalia was doing when she returned that night. Vic and her henchman, Noah, have it all worked out. She has a big, locked container in her tent filled with the stuff.”

  There’s only one supplier on Patmos who matches that M.O. The police wouldn’t think to search a bunch of green, young island-hoppers, any more than the coast guard would stop a yacht owned by a billionaire family. Charlie is Vic’s secret collaborator. And the best way to hide an accomplice is to disguise her as an enemy.

  “And Mikael was getting out?”

  “Yeah,” she whispers dejectedly. “That’s what he told Vic that night. I wish he’d stayed at the camp. He was safer there.” Her eyes are too red and worn from crying. She pinches a centimeter of space between her fingers. “I was this close to loving him. I thought maybe Elise had brought us together. Now I know how dumb that sounds because the opposite happened. Maybe, because he got mixed up with me, someone killed him. I don’t want be the reason he died.”

  “Did you tell Inspector Martis about the drugs?”

  She clenches her teeth. “No. Why would I? It doesn’t have anything to do with my sister. Elise never touched drugs. I get it, they’re bad. They’re narcotics traffickers. You can spare me the guilt trip. They took me in. They were kind to me. Some of them are my friends. I might not have agreed with their mission, but I’m not going to rat them out and ruin the only community some of the weaker ones have found. I honestly think Vic sees what she’s doing as the Lord’s work, keep the evil flowing through the world, inject it right into the blood system of greedy, white Westerners, feed the addiction and watch the despair win. Yeah, it’s super fucked-up. I’m not nominating her for a peace prize. But she does feed and shelter a bunch of kids whose families have given up on them.” Carrie stamps her foot, as if to kick-start a broken conscience. “There is something good about that camp. You wouldn’t understand from the outside. But it helped me. I stopped fighting. I’m not personally handcuffed to every misery that befalls the planet. Maybe misery is how the world runs.”