by Jerold Last
I tried to look honest enough and simple minded enough to buy into this arrangement. I certainly didn’t trust Vonhorst to embrace the concept of ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’. Undercover DEA agents and spies never did. “Sounds good to me. We’ve got a deal.”
Raul looked completely sincere and terribly earnest as he told me what he knew. “There’s been a lot of chatter on cell phones and e-mail lately about some unusual and very clandestine activity here in the Galapagos Islands. My bosses planted me in Quito several months ago with a long-term cover identity for just this sort of thing. Everything I told you when we were in Quito about being the new manager of a tourist agency and taking all the tours to evaluate the products was the truth, just not all of it. Based on a pretty thorough investigation, I can assure you that whatever’s happening here on the M/S Santa Cruz and in the Galapagos Islands this past week or two has nothing to do with any of the local drug smugglers. I’d speculate that it doesn’t have anything to do with drugs at all. And that’s all I know. It’s your turn now.”
It was my turn to look earnest and sincere. Since he’d told me what I wanted to know the most, and I believed him that his investigation had come up empty, I was inclined to throw him a bone or two about things he could find out anyway. “Your secret identity as a DEA agent isn’t a particularly well kept secret locally. Detective Obregon shared that little tidbit with me when he recruited me to help him out investigating the murder on board this ship.”
Raul started adjusting his facemask to begin diving. “That’s part of what you promised me. How about a couple of leads to some of the big drug dealers down south of here?”
I decided to give him something, but not much. “We met a major player in Santiago, Chile who went by the street name of Bernardo O’Higgins. He worked out of the downtown area near the museum. We never met any of the players from Argentina. All of the major drug dealers we met in Montevideo are in jail or dead now.”
He pounced on that one. “Do you know O’Higgins’ real name?”
“Sorry about that, but you know everything I do now,” I said insincerely, as we returned to being just tourists. I noticed that right after our little discussion Raul had apparently learned to swim very well and quite powerfully while losing his fear of sea creatures.
Raul and I swam slowly towards the rocks, staying on the surface so it was an easy swim. After five minutes or so with Suzanne, Kathe had calmed down and was ready to swim over to the rocks. We all looked down to see fish, and whatever else might await us there. We rearranged ourselves so Kathe and Raul were now swim buddies and would cruise together over the rocks. Suzanne and I could now surface dive a bit and get a close-up view of the thousands of small and medium-sized fish darting in and out of the rocks some 6-8 feet below us. This became a fascinating chance to fish watch while the time passed rapidly.
Suzanne swam off a few meters from me so she could investigate the splashing and other activity going on in and under the water a short distance beyond what we could see clearly. She was back in a minute, grabbing my arm, tugging me in the direction she had explored, excitedly exclaiming, “You’ve got to see this! It’s great!”
We swam about 25 meters closer to the rocky outcropping. An entire new world of birds swimming in formal attire opened up in front of us. “Look at all the penguins just like this morning,” cried Suzanne. “Aren’t they wonderful?”
“Do you know anything about them?” I asked Suzanne, who had listened much more carefully than I had to the biologist’s lectures.
“Yes, I do, because there’s only one species of tropical penguin still surviving, and we just met it for the second time today. Those are Galapagos Penguins. They’re related to their Antarctic cousins, but are native to the Galapagos Islands. This is the only place in the world you can find tropical penguins. Like the other species here they’re not afraid of us so we can swim as close as we want without disturbing them.”
We spent a long time watching the penguins play and playing with them in the water. They were obviously pleased to have us join them swimming around. The small birds in their tuxedos seemed to enjoy touching us, and being touched by us. It was almost as if we were being auditioned to become members of their flock. We were very careful not to try to eat any of their fish, which might have contributed to the overall mellow mood in the penguin flock.
It seemed to be only a few minutes later when the Zodiac came by to tell us we should finish up and return to the beach to join Juana and the main group. We slowly swam over the rocky bottom towards the beach. James Island still had one more treat in store for us. As we swam over the sand bottom just inside the rocks we startled a large ray, which we followed out into deeper water. The ray introduced us to a small group of frolicking sea lions, who invited us to join them and wouldn’t take “No” for an answer! The large sea lions swam all around the two of us, deliberately brushing against us. They nipped at each other (but not us). The game reminded me of our dogs Juliet and Romeo, who were always trying to get each other, and us, into the game of “chase me”. Sea lion tag seemed like the underwater version of exactly the same game our dogs loved to play whenever there was a stick or a tennis ball and another dog or a human to play with. We stayed and played with them for about ten minutes before we responded to the shouts from shore and ended the wondrous game.
All too soon we became land creatures again, and joined the group on shore. We left our gear, which magically reappeared on the ship when we returned, on the beach and hiked off across the interior of the island to see our share of Darwin finches. I still couldn’t tell one species of finch from another, but our birdwatchers assured me with a little more practice I’d begin to see the differences.
At the biologist’s briefing that afternoon after our return from James Island, Sophia, who was assisting Bruce with Robert’s daycare, passed me a note. We were to meet in Eduardo’s cabin at 10 P.M. and discuss our progress thus far. After dinner, taking all the appropriate precautions that nobody was watching us or followed us, we passed Robert over to Sophia’s care and picked up Bruce. Together, we wandered over to Eduardo’s cabin.
I looked directly at Bruce, thinking about my old friend Eduardo Gomez from Paraguay and his bottomless bag of tricks. “It’s time to reintroduce you to an old friend of ours while Sophia watches Robert. You’ve already met Eduardo in Montevideo. I think maybe you’ll be impressed with all of the things he can accomplish out here.”
Bruce smiled an enigmatic smile. “I recognized him when we assembled with the other groups Tuesday morning and saw him at breakfast and lunch a couple of times. It seemed obvious we weren’t recognizing each other on purpose, at least in public. Were you expecting him to be here when you made our reservations?”
“Good question, Bruce. No, I was completely surprised to see him on board. We’ve met him just the one time you already know about in his cabin after we came aboard.”
I brought Bruce up to date about what was going on, including my exchange of information with Raul Vonhorst earlier today, as we walked almost half the length of the ship.
Eduardo greeted Bruce warmly with the characteristic South American hug called an abrazo, “Hi, Bruce. Welcome back into the loop. I’ve got big plans for you over the next few days. Be patient for now. I’ll have a lot more information to share the next time we meet.”
Chapter11.Wednesday-Darwin Island
Darwin: I think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most.
Detective Obregon came over to where we were sitting down to eat breakfast. “May I join you?” he asked.
In response to my nod he sat down. I poured him a cup of coffee from the carafe at our table and motioned that he should help himself to anything he wanted from our communal refill plate of
croissants, muffins, bacon, and eggs. “Good morning, Roger. I assume this is your son, Robert, who I’ve heard quite a bit about, especially when I was questioning Suzanne and Bruce. I wanted to share some information with you, in hopes that you might want to do the same with me. The victim’s name was Rita Caldwell, a Norte Americano from New York City. The cause of death was gunshot wounds, two from close range from right behind her directly into her heart. She’d been in the water for less than 2-3 hours, so was killed early Wednesday morning. We don’t know anything about her yet except she booked her tour from New York and was traveling alone.”
His whole attitude was different today from yesterday when he’d first questioned me. He was treating me more like a colleague than a suspect. “What makes you think I’d know any more than that?”
Obregon smiled humorlessly. “We noticed a very improbable coincidence here as we went through the passenger list. Given what this cruise costs, I’d say the odds of having a cop, or an ex-cop, as a passenger on the M/S Santa Cruz is somewhere between zero and none. We seem to have more than one on this particular trip. There’s you, there’s a Paraguayan police officer from Asuncion, and there’s a US Drug Enforcement agent on the roster. There are also a couple of US Naval officers here, ostensibly on their honeymoon. For all we know, there may be more.
“Your passport says you’ve been all over the Mercosur region several times, so I checked you out last night with a friend and colleague in Uruguay who knows you very well. Martin says hello and also tells me you’re one of the good guys, so here I am. He also mentioned you get results, even if your methods may not always be entirely legal, which doesn’t bother me. I can’t offer you anything monetary for your help, but Martin said that shouldn’t be a problem. What I can offer you is one heck of a mystery, which I can’t solve by myself, and something to do for the rest of the cruise and afterwards. I’d be most grateful for any assistance you can give me.”
I looked over at Suzanne and Bruce. They both nodded yes. “OK, we’re in. Do you have any suspects we should start with?”
Obregon smiled again. “No, of course not. To use a well-worn cliché from U.S. TV crime shows, ‘we haven’t got a clue’, much less a suspect. I was hoping you could find one or two for us. And to make it easier for you, if you could either find us a suspect or rule them all out, mostly I’d like you to focus on your group, the Frigate Birds. They’re the ones who’ll be out of my reach all around the world next week and too far away for us to investigate. You have the rest of the tour as your time limit to do it in. Do you have any other questions for me?”
I sipped some coffee and thought quickly. “Actually, I have a couple. First, can we discuss this with a friend?”
He poured himself another cup of coffee and ate a strip of the bacon, which was cooked perfectly and was very good. “Thank you for asking me. Is your friend named Eduardo?”
“Yeah”.
He smiled genuinely at me. “Yes, you can discuss this with him. Martin also recommended Señor Gomez as being a potential asset in our investigation, but indicated he had some reservations about Eduardo. He was pretty close mouthed about what these reservations were all about, but he assured me Eduardo is a good policeman who can be trusted to help me in this case. I assume his reservations are a reflection of the usual South American distrust of the citizens of neighboring countries.”
Detective Obregon asked whether he could talk with me privately. Suzanne and Bruce excused themselves to prepare for the morning’s excursion, suggesting I meet them at the Zodiac loading deck when I was ready.
Obregon looked at me silently until we were alone and the others were out of earshot. “I’ve been instructed to share some additional information with you. Last night, my bosses ordered me to tell you a few more things we’ve found out about this murder case so far. They weren’t willing to share with me why you get special treatment from them. You’ve obviously got some very powerful friends in high places here in Ecuador so I’ll follow my instructions.
“This is where you come in to our investigation, Roger. You’ve got a perfect cover identity established as a tourist. That means you can talk freely with all the passengers, especially the ones in the Frigate Birds group. You know police procedures, but you aren’t a cop. I can offer you my country’s gratitude, but little else, if you choose to help us.”
I nodded in agreement to the detective.
He looked me directly in the eye to emphasize his sincerity. “First, we enlisted help from the Santa Cruz’s Captain. We checked all of the cabins assigned to passengers who, for any reason, we didn’t connect with for interrogation when their tour groups came back on board after visiting Bartholomew Island. Some were just passengers who didn’t want to get up that early or visit that particular island. One of the cabins was especially interesting, though. It was assigned to the Weavers, an older couple in your group the Frigate Birds. They skipped the tour because both of them were dead. They’d been murdered. Their bodies were removed from the ship much more discretely than the first victim, Rita Caldwell. We had no planes and no fuss. Everything was done quietly late at night so as not to panic the passengers.”
I interrupted the detective to add a bit more information to what he already knew. “We had an episode on North Seymour Island you should know about. The Weavers fell behind our group on the longish hike. When they caught up to us Emily Weaver accused someone in our group of trying to kill her by pushing a rock off a cliff above where she and her husband were standing looking at some birds. Victor Weaver pooh-poohed his wife’s story, suggesting it was just an accident. If it was more than an accident it could directly implicate someone from the Frigate Bird group in the murders.”
“Thank you for the information,” replied the detective. “In the context of the Weavers’ murder, it makes the most sense if the falling rock was a clumsy attempt to kill Emily and make it look like an accident. It gives us yet another reason to suspect someone in the Frigate Birds group is responsible for at least three murders on this cruise.”
Obregon picked up a knife to fidget with and stretched out the drama a bit. He returned the butter knife to the table and continued. “Let me share some more of what we know with you. The M.O. for the Weavers’ murder was the same as the body you found. A couple of bullets were fired almost directly into both of the victim’s hearts from behind them at close range. Preliminary ballistics says it’s the same gun for all three killings. Our luck was better this time. We found a shell casing underneath one of the bodies where it had apparently rolled after ejection. Because we found the shell, we can tell you we’re looking for a 9mm pistol, probably a Glock semi-automatic. The dead couple is Australian, which is a bit of a problem for my country. It’s bad for the Galapagos Islands when tourists are killed, worse yet when they’re murdered like this. We need to find answers about this murder and we have to solve it quickly. Are you following me thus far?”
I nodded again. “Yes, I am,” I replied.
The police detective got up, reached for the carafe, and refilled his empty coffee cup. “Second, we found an empty cabin with a passport matching the woman you found floating in the ocean. As you already know we’ve officially identified the first victim as Rita Caldwell, an American citizen from New York City. There were all sorts of interesting papers in her cabin, which we’re still analyzing. She was a free-lance journalist, apparently writing a series of stories about the Galapagos Islands for a magazine. One of the stories seemed to be about drug smuggling through the islands. Her second story was about illegal fishing offshore from the islands. A third article was about tortoise poaching in the park. The fourth article, which she had just started to write the outlines of, was about the murder of a park ranger that happened last week here in the islands.
“Obviously all three murders on board the Santa Cruz are linked, probably all committed by the same individual. That’s the killer we want, and we probably have to identify who it is before the Santa Cruz anchors back near Baltra. To b
e honest with you, I won’t be able to do that with the only tools I have available to me on board this ship, the most basic of forensics and polite interrogations of international tourists. My superiors have assured me that you and your friends have solved murders before that seemed impossible for normal police work to solve. They hope you can do it again and help us bring this murderer to justice. They encouraged me to share all we know with you and to offer you whatever help I could in return for your assistance with our investigation. I was specifically told that your methods might not be totally legal as police procedures. In that case I was not to object to, nor interfere with, your efforts.”
I had an idea. Even if it was obvious, things were happening very fast and the police could have missed it. “Did Ms. Caldwell’s passport have a visa or stamps for entry into Australia? Or did either of the Weavers have visas or stamps for the USA in their passports? It’s possible they met somewhere else; were there visas or stamps with overlapping dates anywhere else? If they hadn’t ever met before this trip it raises the fascinating question of what they might have seen or heard on the first night aboard the ship that got them killed.”
