Venom: A Thriller in Paradise (The Thriller in Paradise Series Book 3)

by Swigart, Rob

  “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 on 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.”

  “Has she said anything?” Cobb asked, though he knew the answer.

  Duvalois merely shrugged and turned his hands out. The gesture spread his shirt, and showed the small automatic held by a De Santis inside-the-pants belt holster. Cobb Takamura, who hated guns, recognized the butt of a Heckler and Koch P7 with the slim eight-round magazine. It was a difficult gun to get used to, since the grip itself had a lever on the front that cocked the gun.

  That told Cobb that this man was a professional, a shoote
r, despite the defensive nature of such a small weapon. And he had no trouble getting through airport security, at least for the domestic flight.

  He did not know what authority Duvalois represented.

  “You have seen this before?” Duvalois was looking at Chazz Koenig.

  “Maybe, but I’m not a doctor.”

  “No, of course not. I am referring to possible poisons. Something that would send a simple woman into a homicidal psychosis.”

  “Does she have a history?”

  “The police have interviewed her family, friends, and so on, of course. She has no close relatives. Very religious in an odd way. Mormon, but she has connections with native religion too, a revival of Tahitian practice. There is some… conflict between the Mormon authorities and the traditional revival. But she has never been violent. Tahitian religion was generally benign, not violent or cruel.”

  “Generally.”

  “Quite so. Generally. There was a practice of taking a sacrificial victim’s eye, offering it to the chief, who pretended to eat it, before a battle…”

  “And?”

  “The victim had lost an eye. The police did not find it. Perhaps she ate it.” Duvalois was watching Chazz keenly. His mustache curled over his upper lip into his mouth, and stayed permanently wet. “And then the lacerations… a standing volcanic rock with a very rough surface. Victims were rubbed against the rock, to make more blood, for the birds, you see.”

  “I don’t think this is really my area. I’m a molecular biologist, not a forensic psychiatrist. Sounds like the local religion heated up a little. The victim was a judge, wasn’t he? A policeman? A French policeman?”

  “Ah, you think there might be a political motive, hien?”

  Chazz shrugged and looked away. Dr. Rathé switched on the overhead light, and the high window turned black. The light was too harsh for the room, throwing shadows into the corners.

  “Is there more we can learn here?” Takamura asked. “She doesn’t seem to be feeling helpful at the moment.”

  “No, of course.”

  They returned to the foyer. The Côte d’Azur seemed impossibly far away. “There is a resemblance,” Cobb said. “She is like Tracy Ann Thrasher. Perhaps there is a connection now between what happened to the people on the Ocean Mother and what has happened here.”

  Duvalois did not appreciate this notion. “That is not possible. Queneau was killed yesterday. Ocean Mother left weeks ago.”

  “You assume they left on the Ocean Mother,” Cobb said softly.

  “It is logical, is it not? The people aboard the ship died just outside of Kauai, so I have been told. Much time went by between here and there.”

  “Then perhaps the murderer flew back. We think there was an eighth crewmember. That person may be back here now.”

  Duvalois was shaking his head. “Not possible. We have been watching.”

  “You were in Papeete, not here,” Chazz pointed out.

  “Everyone comes through Papeete, Monsieur. She’s been like this for weeks. He set her up to kill in the future and he left. He did this perhaps to make it look like he was still here, eh?”

  Dr. Rathé had been standing quietly watching the conversation without participating. He snorted now and nodded once. “Good-bye.” He turned on his heel and vanished through the door. Duvalois shrugged and suggested they find something to eat. It was getting late.

  The Chinese restaurant in Uturoa was simple but adequate. Duvalois ate with considerable gusto, packing away two or three dishes on his own. There was about him a fierce concentration when he ate that Cobb Takamura found impressive. The proprietor, a peppery Chinese man with a fixed smile, fussed over them, rushing to the kitchen and rushing back with more rice, more water, more spareribs. He clearly knew the French cop, but it was impossible to say whether he liked him or not.

  Chazz did not like him. He had not liked the doctor, either. There was an agenda here he did not understand, and both men had been arrogant and abrupt. LeBlanc on the other hand had made some gestures toward geniality and cooperation, but hostility to the Ocean Mother and her mission underlay everything these men had been saying. The French agenda was for continued atomic testing in the South Pacific. Maintain the balance of power, they said. It was safe. There would be no danger for 500 or 1000 years. No problem, aita pe’ape’a, as they said here. Maintain the balance of terror, the environmental activists maintained. The French government would consider Ocean Mother a noxious interference by outsiders in French internal matters, an affront to national pride, and a dangerous and destabilizing public relations ploy.

  Chazz had the sense that these men were happy the crew of the Ocean Mother was dead. Chazz cracked open his fortune cookie. It suggested that he was going to meet strangers. Be wary. “I’m going to try Patria again,” he said, pushing back his chair. The room was decorated mainly in Chinese red, the color of chili peppers. A little night air sounded good.

  “The lobby of the hotel has a phone for overseas calls,” Duvalois told him. “Across the street.”

  “I might as well check in then, too.” He picked up their two small flight bags.

  After he left, Cobb unwrapped a toothpick and examined it. Toothpicks always reminded him of his old partner, Sammy Akeakamai. Sammy was writing the checks for this trip. The toothpick reminded Lieutenant Takamura that he had better come home with some results, or Sammy would be unhappy.

  “You do not represent the gendarmes, Monsieur Duvalois,” Cobb said thoughtfully. “I suppose you work for the security forces.”

  Duvalois was not surprised at this observation. He shrugged his Gallic shrug: You know how it is.

  “Which means,” Cobb went on, “that you are more interested in the fate of the Ocean Mother than you are letting on.”

  “Ah, M’sieur,” Duvalois said, snapping his fingers at the proprietor, who dashed instantly to his side. “L’addition.”

  “Oui, maintenant.” The waiter dashed away again and was back with the check before Duvalois could speak. The policeman glanced at it and grunted. He initialed it and handed it back. The man disappeared.

  “What I was going to say,” Duvalois continued, “is that we are concerned for the public safety and the tranquility of these islands. Polynesia is a remote part of the world, far from everywhere. The social fabric here is delicate, fragile. France pours a lot of money into the economy here. The people of Tahiti are happy about that. There is little crime. But other countries—New Zealand, Australia, New Caledonia— they do not like French policy. They use any excuse to cause embarrassment. You understand, it is most important for us to prevent bad publicity. Of course vessels like this cause trouble. But we are not criminals, M. Takamura. I am interested because it is part of my job. I was not sorry to see the ship leave Polynesian waters, you see, I do not disguise that. Not sorry at all. Some things happened here, on this quiet island, before the ship left, you understand.”

  Ah. And what kinds of things were those? Cobb Takamura thought this, but he said nothing. He peeled the paper from the toothpick and examined it closely. It was milled in Japan. There were two grooves carved into the blunt end. He very carefully broke the toothpick at the second groove, leaving a straight pointed section and a short piece with a groove in the middle. He placed the short piece on the table. Then he leaned the pointed end of the toothpick in the groove and put the other end down on the white paper table cover. A built-in toothpick rest. The Japanese think of everything.

  “There was trouble?” he inquired, still looking at the toothpick.

  “May I be frank?”

  Cobb thought, For a change? But he said, “Yes.”

  “The crew of the ship. There were two French citizens.” Duvalois took from his hip pocket a piece of paper. It had been folded several times and was faintly damp along the creases. He unfolded it and spread it on the table. It was a list of the crew, their nationalities and ages.

  Russell Tichenor, Canadian, 48

  Jeffrey Laurel Hudson,
American, 32

  Clarence Locke, American, 37

  Tracy Ann Thrasher, American, 22

  Jacqueline Guillaume, French, 59

  Noel Taviri, French, 29

  Hans Willem Gottwalls, Dutch, 63

  “You see? Noel Taviri, he is from Huahine, over that way, originally, but is a citizen of France. And Jacqueline Guillaume, she is from Lyon originally. Do you know who she is?”

  Cobb shook his head.

  “She is— was— a celebrity, in France. A radical. It is said she was once the mistress of Jean-Paul Sartre, a communist. She is on television, often in front of demonstrations. To some, she is a saint. To others, a troublemaker, a devil.”

  Cobb nodded. “Go on. Does this lead anywhere?”

  “How can I say? She is dead, is she not? And someone killed her.” Duvalois sat back as if this explained everything.

  “You think the radical left killed her to make it look like the French security services did it? They killed her and everyone else on the ship? Like the Rainbow Warrior? Except the French security forces did blow up the Rainbow Warrior, didn’t they?”

  “A mistake, certainly. Unauthorized. Those responsible were punished. We are careful about that sort of thing these days. But it is bad press, back in France, that this woman is dead.”

  “What does this have to do with the woman here at the hospital? Or Queneau?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Chazz entered the restaurant. He was frowning.

  “How’s Patria?’ Cobb asked.

  “Funny,” Chazz said. “She still doesn’t answer. I tried your house, too, and Kimiko’s cousin’s. Kiki and Kenji are there, but she hasn’t heard from Kimiko.”

  “Mmm. Busy, I suppose.”

  “I think she should have answered.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure they’re just out for dinner or something.”

  “Yeah. Out for dinner.”