Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  Patria frowned. “That’s the funny thing. He’s awfully hard to describe. I mean, I told you about the businessman, jogging to the library? Well, there was this other guy, this morning, down by the Pay ‘N Save. Except he was wearing green work pants and a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. You see what I mean, it’s almost always clothes, or things like hair and mustaches that I notice. The journalist had a tattoo, a really vicious-looking octopus, wrapped around his forearm. But the guy this morning, at the Pay ‘N Save, didn’t have a tattoo, he had a scar, beside his eye. For a minute I would have sworn they were the same man, but of course they weren’t.”

  They reached the end of the trail and stood looking at the falls. The mist rose from the darkening abyss into the sunlight, where it seemed to glow from within, as if filled with electric lights.

  Patria was thoughtful for a while. Then she said, “There was the guy at the airport too.”

  “The one in the aloha shirt?”

  “Yeah. Chazz didn’t take it too seriously, did he?”

  “Cobb was getting the tickets. You nudged Chazz and pointed the guy out. But he didn’t have a tattoo.”

  “I know, I know,” Patria frowned. “It’s spooky though. Maybe it’s just a general jumpiness because of the murder and all, but these were all strangers. I mean, we’ve been around here for a couple of years now. There are tourists, and you can recognize them. And there are natives, and you can tell who they are too. But these are people who don’t look like tourists and aren’t natives. So they’re strangers, and that’s strange.”

  “But they aren’t all the same person.”

  “No. I’m seeing spooks everywhere, that’s all.”

  The stroller bumped over a stone on the trail and Orli’s arms jerked out as she gave a small cry. “There, there, it’s just a little stone.”

  “She’s laughing, Patria.” Kimiko was peering down into Orli’s face as she pushed the stroller along.

  “Oh.” They approached the loop trail again and stopped beside the small wooden sign. “Want to go down? It’s only half a mile or so. I’ll take the stroller.”

  Kimiko nodded and they started down the loop to the falls. The air grew chilly in the shadow of the ravine, and the mist rose around them, spangling their clothes with drops. The earth beneath the ferns along the trail was damp. The deeper they went, the darker and colder it grew. Kimiko wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.

  “Bad idea?” Patria asked. She was concentrating on Orli and hadn’t felt the chill as much.

  “No. It’s all right. We could walk a little faster.”

  “Okay.” The stroller bounced and jiggled over the gravel path, making a ratchet-like sound Orli seemed to like. She held up her face to the mist and licked her lips.

  Patria stopped suddenly at a change in the sound the wheels made. She pulled the stroller back and looked at the ground.

  “A comb,” she said.

  Kimiko looked at it. “I wonder whose it is?”

  “I don’t know.” Patria leaned down and started to pick it up, but Kimiko put her hand on Patria’s elbow and stopped her.

  “No,” she said. “Very bad luck. We say in Japanese Kushi wo hiroeba ku wo hiroh. It means something like, To pick up a comb is to pick up affliction. Kushi is comb, but ku means affliction and shi means death, you see.”

  “All right.” Patria laughed, but she left the comb where it was.

  At the bottom along the river’s edge, the darkness gathered around them, and they found themselves hurrying. The dark water swirled at the bank, almost black in the shadow. The ferns were tall and dripping with moisture. Smells of damp earth and rot rose around them, too much life, too much moisture and heavy red earth. Something of the grave, something of dank cellars and locked rooms, of prisoners lost and forgotten.

  Patria shivered now. Her fancy running away with her. She reminded herself that she was a scientist, not an idle daydreamer or a romantic poet. The psychological signs of self-delusion and paranoia were obvious, even to her. She was creating fears for herself. Yet she found herself looking around her carefully.

  So she was the one to find it.

  She stopped so suddenly that Orli gave one of her sharp cries, and Kimiko bumped into her. “What is it?” the Japanese woman asked.

  “Look there. What is that?” It was under the ferns, at the very edge of the water.

  “I don’t know. It looks like a child’s toy, a doll?” Kimiko leaned over the closest ferns. “Oh, my God.” Her voice was very soft, almost inaudible.

  Patria felt colder than before, and tried to joke. “I guess that means it isn’t a toy?”

  Kimiko stepped back and let Patria see.

  “I guess we’d better report this,” she said at last. She pushed Orli’s stroller up the path a few feet and climbed through the ferns to the water’s edge.

  The hand was resting on the bank, its fingers curled toward the palm. The nails were still lacquered a deep maroon, and although two of them were torn, the rest were very long. The fingers were tanned a rich cocoa brown, but the palm was pale and white.

  The woman’s elbow was crooked over the low bank along the river; the upper arm disappeared into the water, which carried a deep stain of mud and silt. From time to time, the back of the woman’s head broke the surface and her blond hair swirled in the eddies.

  Kimiko was right behind Patria. “Should we…?”

  “I don’t think we can help her. She’s dead.”

  “One of us will have to go back up.”

  “And the other stay here?” Patria asked. “I don’t think I like that idea.”

  “I’ll stay. You take Orli and go to the car. Get to a phone and call Captain Taxeira or Sergeant Handel. This could be an accidental death.”

  “Yes. It could be. I don’t think either of us believe that, though.”

  “No. I suppose not.” Kimiko sat down on a stone beside the trail. “Go on. I don’t really want to stay here too long.”

  “Let’s think about this for a moment, Kimiko. If we knew how long she had been here we would know whether to worry about a murderer or not.”

  Patria picked up the dead woman’s hand. The body rolled with it rigidly. “She’s stiff, Kimiko. She’s certainly been dead a while, hours at least. We have to worry about the murderer hanging around to see what happens. She’s not going anywhere. Come with me.”

  “I wait. Cobb Takamura would not want me to leave the scene of a death. You can be back in twenty minutes. I can wait. Go.”

  Patria didn’t like it. There were too many strangers, too many bodies piling up. She hurried up the trail, pushing the stroller and breathing hard. There was something ominous in the parking lot’s emptiness, as it was lit only by the pearly twilight gloom of the subtropics. The sun was gone. It would be completely dark down by the river. The body would be swollen with water, sluggish in the turbid current.

  Except for Kimiko’s car, there was no sign of humanity. As Patria fumbled with the lock, the key kept slipping, and she glanced over her shoulder. Orli fussed in the stroller.

  Was that someone in the trees at the far edge of the parking lot? A dark shape formed in the lesser darkness under the trees. A man, waiting, watching. She finally fitted the key and almost laughed with relief. This is stupid, she said. Stupid. There’s no one there. Of course not. Just the breeze. No murderer lurking in the woods, waiting to grab her as she climbs in the car. Waiting for her to leave before going after Kimiko.

  She drove down the hill toward the nearest house, leaving a spray of gravel and dust in the air. Damn him, damn him, damn him.

  This made her mad.

  She wasn’t certain whether she was mad at the murderer or at their husbands. Chazz and Cobb Takamura were away, visiting Tahiti, a safe and pleasant paradise, while she and Kimiko had to deal with murder in the dark.

  Damned, the two of them.

  THIRTEEN

  RAÏATÉA

  No one was there to meet them at
the airport. Cobb asked at the Tahitian Airlines counter for messages and discovered a small language problem. The woman did speak English, but he could not understand it. He shrugged helplessly at Chazz, who studiously examined a poster for sale at one of the booths along one wall. Finally, he clicked his tongue and went over to the woman. “I haven’t used French since graduate school,” Chazz muttered.

  “Charlie Chan says, ‘Fortunately, assassination of French language not a serious crime.’ Give it a try.”

  Chazz did manage to glean a message from LeBlanc telling them to wait, something had happened, someone would be there soon. “At least I think that’s what she said,” he told Cobb.

  They wandered outside and looked at the hillside. It was late, and the sun was behind it. To the north, they could see the sister island of Tahaa, and low on the horizon to its left the island of Bora Bora. The sense of isolation was somewhat lessened by this nearby land, but Chazz thought there was an awful lot of ocean between himself and the world.

  “I think I’ll let Patria know we’re here.” He went inside to call, but there was no answer. When he returned to the counter, Cobb was talking to the stranger in the baggy orange shirt. Chazz saw the almost invisible outline of the man’s pistol.

  “M. Alain Duvalois.” Cobb introduced him to Chazz. “He’s here to take us to the hospital.”

  “Why are we going to the hospital?”

  M. Duvalois led the way to his car in silence. Cobb shrugged and followed. Duvalois did not seem to be a cop. More like a rent-a-cop, sloppy and inept. But Chazz knew that looks could deceive.

  The road wound along the shore past houses. The town of Uturoa, one main street six or seven blocks long lined with two-story concrete buildings, was visible up ahead. Duvalois turned left and parked in front of the hospital. It looked like an older Holiday Inn: two L-shaped stories of concrete, with balconies.

  “New hospital. French generosity. Follow me.” He led them inside in silence.

  A grave-looking man, tall and extraordinarily thin, frowned at them. “Mr. Takamura,” he said. It might have been a question, but he obviously did not expect an answer. There was something sour in his mouth, a faint distaste. “I am Dr. Rathé. Medical examiner, pediatrician, general practitioner.” His English was as good as Duvalois’s. He did not offer to seat them on the tubular metal sofa with the green plastic seat. Nor did he sit himself at the metal table that served as a reception desk. He stood before a door. Behind him was a colorful calendar depicting the Côte d’Azur: boats, a beach, whitewashed buildings in the background.

  “A Mr. Queneau was to meet us,” Cobb said softly.

  “M. Queneau is dead,” the doctor said. He continued to frown and volunteered nothing further.

  “I see,” Cobb said drily. He took off his hat and examined its interior, something Chazz knew he did when he wanted time to think. There was nothing inside the hat, however, except the reverse pattern of the outside, blue sky and white clouds. It was an atrocious porkpie hat that drew substantial ridicule from Cobb’s fellow officers, which in a perverse way was the reason he wore it. “Hmph,” he said, putting his hat on again. He smiled brightly at Dr. Rathé and Monsieur Duvalois.

  “What the doctor is trying to say,” Duvalois said after the silence had begun to sag, “is what exactly is your interest in M. Queneau?”

  “Is that what the doctor was trying to say? I had no idea. The doctor could have come right out and asked. I have no particular interest in M. Queneau. I only heard about him this afternoon from LeBlanc in Papeete. LeBlanc said he was a judge who lived here, that he was going to put us up at his house and help us find out what happened with a ship that stopped here a few weeks ago called the Ocean Mother. Now the doctor tells us that M. Queneau is dead, which certainly puts a damper on our plans.”

  Cobb Takamura had delivered this rather lengthy speech in such a mild, sincere voice that any sarcasm present failed to register.

  “A damper?” Duvalois asked. A small crease appeared between his brows.

  “We have nowhere to stay. Perhaps you could suggest a hotel?” Chazz intervened before Cobb notched up the sarcasm to a more offensive level.

  “Ah. I see, yes. There is a hotel in town, Le Motu. Not too impossible. Not luxury, of course. But clean.”

  “Sammy Akeakamai will be pleased to hear it’s not luxury. Might I ask what happened to M. Queneau?”

  Dr. Rathé shook his head. “Certainly. Yes. He was killed.”

  “Oh? An accident?” Lieutenant Takamura had suddenly relaxed into his serene policeman mode, polite, patient, impassive. Chazz felt the shift in mood, the release of tension.

  “No. Murder.”

  “Yes?”

  “Not pleasant.”

  “It seldom is.”

  The two Frenchmen exchanged a rapid-fire dialog Chazz could not follow. Duvalois nodded and turned back to them.

  “It was the birds,” he said.

  “Was it?”

  “Someone saw the birds. Along the ridge between Mitimitiaute and Tepahu. To the south. Many birds. There is an old marae, a ruined temple, up there, rather large. Someone went up there, an old man named Tepe. He likes to tramp around the hills. Collects herbs and flowers. A simple man. He came back frightened. Very frightened.”

  “What frightened him, Monsieur Duvalois?”

  “The birds. They were eating.” Duvalois turned again to the doctor and asked a series of questions, which received brief, reluctant replies.

  “M. Queneau was, uhm, he was hanging from a tree. Supposed to be an ancient Tahitian custom for, uhm, sacrifices. You see, a stick, a peg, is driven through the head, here.” He put his fingers in his ears. “Then a rope attached to each end of the stick, you see. He was found that way, hanging. He had been… mutilated.”

  “Mutilated?”

  “An eye. Severe lacerations of the trunk. The doctor thinks he was killed by a blow, possibly two blows, to the head. There is yet to be an autopsy. You would like to see your host?”

  “I think we can take your word for it that he is dead. Unless you want us to look. Out of a sense of professional cooperation.”

  “All right.” Duvalois nodded at the doctor, who led the way through a side door. A few feet later they took another door and a flight of stairs down. A sign on a metal door said: Morgue.

  “Some things survive the language barrier,” Chazz muttered.

  The naked body lay on a table. The right eye was a sunken black hole. Most of the skin was scraped away from the chest. The man had been in his late fifties perhaps. Now he was a carcass. Less than a dead body. Skin hung in shreds on his cheeks. White stretches of rib were visible. The right side of the skull was caved in, revealing grayish matter mingled with pink and red.

  “He does not look familiar. Do you have any leads, any idea who would have done such a thing?” Lieutenant Takamura had removed his hat again, perhaps out of deference to the dead. Chazz wandered around the room, looking with the same kind of curiosity he would have displayed at a wax museum.

  “Oh, we have the murderer.” Duvalois was smug about it, enjoying the American’s discomfort.

  “Ah. Then there is no mystery. A local matter no doubt. Superstition, revenge, jealousy.” Takamura gestured at the butchery on the table.

  “The murderer is a woman. Unknown to the victim, as far as we know. A woman named Teavai Corneille. A strong woman, to be sure. She crept into M. Queneau’s yard as he was taking his siesta. Hit him with a stone and dragged him away. He could still walk, perhaps, at least the trail suggests that. To the temple. A distance of some kilometers. Not an easy trip for a healthy man. Difficult for an injured man. Then she tortured him and killed him. A very strange case.” Duvalois’s eyes, pouched in fleshy pads, had a sharp cast to them that glittered through narrowed lids. His mustache was stained with food, and his teeth were uneven. But there was something canny and alert about him that gave the impression that his appearance was intended to deceive. He turned those eyes o
n Chazz at this moment.

  “Very strange,” Chazz agreed.

  “You are a biologist, I understand,” Duvalois said.

  “That’s right.”

  “You have worked with the police in Hawaii, non? As a consultant?”

  Chazz nodded.

  “Poisons, venom, toxic chemicals? Biological weapons?”

  “To some extent. I was an early advocate of careful controls of biological technology. I get interested when I hear about people avoiding the controls.”

  “Ah. Yes, I see.” Duvalois had a slight wheeze, a faint background noise audible between words.

  Chazz smiled. “There is evidence of a venom or toxin here?”

  Duvalois nodded. “Come with us, please.”

  He gestured to Rathé to lead the way. They followed him back upstairs and down a corridor. The walls were painted white. The floor was polished, institutional. The doors on either side did not quite fit their frames. The building reeked of the rapid aging of the tropics, the swift return to chaotic nature from the ruled lines imposed by man. At the end of the hall, an inconspicuous door set with a small grill stood slightly ajar. A Tahitian nurse stood in the doorway, looking into the room. Dr. Rathé touched her arm and she stepped aside. Her expression was stolid, unsmiling.

  The doctor opened the door on a small chamber. On the far side, under a high window covered with wire mesh, sat a large woman in a hospital gown. She gave no sign she saw them enter. Dr. Rathe said her name. She did not move.

  Her lips were slack, her eyes empty. She breathed slowly. The air in the room was close and still, thick with an odor like rust.

  “Teavai,” the doctor repeated, “Eaha te buru?” She did not move. The atmosphere seemed to thicken as dusk fell, turning the high window a dim gray. Rathé touched her shoulder. Her head turned slightly, but her eyes did not focus on him, her lips did not move. A low sound, like a moan, escaped her. Then she fell silent.

  “She was sitting beside the road at Utufara. Like this,” Duvalois said. “Covered with blood. She was brought here.”