Margaret Truman's Deadly Medicine

by Margaret Truman

  “Eugene?” she said. “What is it?”

  “More bad news, I’m afraid. Your father’s acreage in the Sepik region.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s been vandalized.”

  “Vandalized? How do you vandalize four acres of crops?”

  “I really don’t know all the particulars. All I know is that during the night someone set the field on fire and bulldozed what was left.”

  Jayla had been about to take a sip of her beer. Instead, she brought the glass down on the table with such force that its contents spilled over the rim. Waksit was surprised the glass hadn’t shattered.

  “That’s more than vandalism, Eugene,” she said. “Bulldozed? Set fire to four acres? Who did it? It’s all gone, the medicinal plants, the special hybrid herbs dad had cultivated, everything?”

  “Evidently.”

  Jayla fell silent and leaned back in her chair, her glass cupped in both hands, her eyes focused on it. Finally she said, “I want to go there and see for myself.”

  “I don’t know why you’d need to go,” he said. “There’s nothing left to look at.”

  “I still want to see it firsthand,” she said. “I’ll book a flight for the day after tomorrow. Will you come with me?”

  “I don’t think I can, Jayla. There’s too much to wrap up at the clinic and lab. I assume you’ll want possession of your dad’s lab equipment, and that the house will be sold. If I can help with this, contact realtors, anything, just name it.”

  “I want Tabitha cared for, money left to her.”

  “I’m sure that your dad took care of her in his will.”

  “If he didn’t I’ll see to it,” she said. “Eugene, would you mind if I begged off having dinner? It’s been a long, tiring trip and I’m exhausted. I’m afraid I might fall asleep here at the table.”

  “Of course not. Want to take what’s left of the seafood to your room?”

  “No, I don’t think so. You stay and enjoy the rest of it.”

  “All right. Get yourself a good night’s sleep. I’ll be back at nine thirty to drop you off at the constabulary for your appointment with the detective.”

  Jayla’s fatigue had drained every ounce of energy from her. When she reached the room she locked the door, used the bathroom, stripped down to her underwear, and crawled into bed. The next thing she knew it was seven in the morning and rain pounded heavily against the windowpanes, perfect weather for what she was feeling.

  The meeting with the Australian detective, Angus Norbis, a pleasant fellow with an old-fashioned walrus mustache, provided Jayla with little useful information about the murder, just a series of assurances that he and others were working on the case and would keep her informed of their progress. As she anticipated, he told her that she would have to identify her father’s body. “Are you up to it?” he asked.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be up to it,” she replied. “Now is as good a time as any.”

  The detective escorted her to the police morgue where an attendant pulled back the sheet covering her father’s remains, revealing only his face. Jayla gasped; the detective put his arm about her.

  “It’s him,” she managed, “my father, Dr. Preston King.” Although seeing his lifeless form was startling, she was surprised at the serene expression on his face. She’d expected a look of horror considering the brutal way he’d died, and that final glimpse of him was comforting in its own way.

  The sheet was quickly replaced and the attendant wheeled away the body.

  “Sorry you had to go through this,” the detective said as they returned to his office.

  “When will his body be released?” Jayla asked.

  “In a day or two,” he said. “There’s no question of the cause of death, or the means. As soon as we’re satisfied that there’s nothing more to be learned from him about his assailant, he’ll be released for burial. We took hair samples from the lab where he was found and are running DNA on them, but I don’t expect anything useful will come from it. Have you made plans?”

  Jayla shook her head. “I’m meeting with his attorney this afternoon. I’ll speak with him about it.”

  “I don’t suppose that you’ll want to see any of the crime scene photos,” Norbis said.

  “Photos?” Jayla said. “I hadn’t even thought that there might be photos.”

  “All part of the case file,” said the detective.

  “I would like to see them,” she said.

  Norbis cocked his head as though asking for assurance.

  “Please,” Jayla said. “I’ve been through the worst of it identifying my father’s body.”

  Norbis pulled a file folder close to him and opened it. He removed the first 8x10 color photo and handed it to Jayla. Her father, wearing his usual white lab coat, was facedown on the alabaster white stone floor of his lab. An irregular pool of his blood had seeped from his body in many directions, creating a macabre form of pop art. The pale floor provided a perfect background for the vivid red pool that had seeped from him and into the stones’ pores.

  Jayla extended her hand to Norbis, who passed the next photo to her, and the next. He hesitated before delivering another. Jayla raised her eyebrows. He passed it and three others to her. They’d been taken after the body had been turned faceup. Because he’d been stabbed in the chest there hadn’t been a bloody entry wound on the back of his lab coat. Now, where the knife had been jammed into his chest, the wet crimson circle surrounding the wound covered much of his coat. But Jayla’s attention was focused on his face. He looked at peace as though the brutal way he’d died hadn’t registered with him.

  She closed her eyes and envisioned her father smiling, laughing, telling a corny joke.

  “That’s all of them,” Norbis said.

  “I’d like a set,” Jayla said, now in the present, her eyes wide open.

  “You would?”

  “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll have the lab print copies for you. Shouldn’t take more than a few hours.”

  “I won’t be able to wait that long,” she said.

  “Then I’ll have them delivered to your hotel.”

  “That would be fine. I very much appreciate it. Thank you for all your courtesies, Detective Norbis.”

  The afternoon appointment with her father’s attorney, Elgin Taylor, also a displaced Australian, was more fruitful, and less traumatic. She felt supremely comfortable being in his presence, and basked in the warm words her father had injected into his will about her and what she meant to him. He’d left everything to her with the exception of $15,000 to Tabitha, and $5,000 to Eugene “for his service.” Jayla wished there had been more for Tabitha, and silently pledged that she would add to the amount. Leaving money to Eugene bothered her, although she knew that it was an irrational response. He’d evidently served her father well and was entitled to whatever he wished to leave him. Still …

  “I’ll deal with the insurance company,” the attorney said, “and see that all monies are properly distributed.”

  “I didn’t know that he’d wanted to be cremated,” she said.

  “Hardly a surprise, Jayla. Your father was a pragmatic man, as well as lacking pretension. As you can see in the will he wanted his ashes placed in your custody, to be dispersed as you see fit.”

  “He’d want his ashes spread here, on PNG, perhaps in the gulf, or in the Sepik River.”

  “If you want I’ll arrange for his ashes to be stored here until you have a chance to fulfill his wishes. How long will you be staying?”

  “Not long. I have to be back at work. I’m in the midst of an important project and can’t stay away long.”

  “Well,” the attorney said, “there’s certainly no rush. The ashes will be here whenever you return, or when you tell me where to scatter them.” He smiled. “Your father wasn’t a rich man,” he said, “but he was rich in satisfaction with the way he’d lived his life, giving back to soci
ety through his work in the clinic.”

  “Did he talk with you about his efforts in the lab?” she asked.

  “Not very much, although I was aware that he was determined to develop a new class of pain relievers using plants the natives have relied on for centuries.” The corpulent attorney sat back, his hands clasped on his chest. “I remember a few times when we attended local football matches together. He felt that he was close to achieving that goal. He had tried out some concoctions on patients at the clinic who were in pain, and he said they seemed to work. Shame he didn’t live long enough to reap the rewards of whatever success he had. I would think that if his work ended up being patented and sold commercially he might have become a wealthy man.”

  “Eugene, dad’s assistant, told me that all my father’s notes and packets of medicinal plants he was working with are gone from the lab.”

  The attorney came forward and a serious expression replaced his smile. “That seems odd,” he said. “The police assume that whoever killed your father was a street thug after drugs or money. Such a person wouldn’t have any interest in those items.”

  “I know,” Jayla said. “There’s something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Dad’s four-acre plot that he cultivated in the Sepik region has been ‘vandalized.’ At least that’s the way Eugene characterized it. He said the acres were burned and bulldozed.”

  “Do the police know that? It might be tied in with your father’s murder.”

  “I met with the lead detective this morning and told him about it. He said that he’d look into it, although he basically dismissed the notion that the two events were related. I don’t agree. I’ve booked a flight to Wewak tomorrow.”

  The attorney’s expression was now one of concern. “Sure you should?” he asked.

  “I have to,” Jayla said. “I can’t help but think that what’s happened to dad’s plot of land is somehow linked to his murder.”

  “If it is,” he said, “that’s all the more reason for you to reconsider traveling there.”

  “I don’t feel that I have any choice.”

  He came around his desk and placed large hands on her arms. “You take care of yourself, Jayla,” he said. “You were the most important thing in your father’s life.”

  “I will, and thank you for everything.”

  “When you get back from Wewak I’ll have papers for you to sign. Or I can send them to you if that’s more convenient. Don’t worry about any of the legal issues. I’ll take care of everything, including selling the house and—you do want it sold, I assume.”

  “Yes, of course. I’m so pleased that Tabitha will be provided for.”

  “I hear that she’s been worried about you,” he said, as he handed her some of his business cards with all his contact information on them.

  “She’s worried about me since I was a baby,” Jayla said through a smile. “She’s staying with her daughter. I’ll make a point of seeing her before I go back to the States.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  Jayla had declined dinner with Waksit that evening. Room service delivered soup and a salad to her room and she read the second half of a paperback novel that she’d started at home and had tossed into her carry-on bag before leaving D.C. The book had been a blessed distraction from her father’s death and the trip she would take to the Sepik River. She was sorry to see the story end and wished she’d brought a second book with her. Maybe it was just as well. She was physically and mentally exhausted and needed a deep sleep, if that were possible.

  The following morning, her body rested—but mentally fatigued—she took a taxi to the airport where she joined nineteen other passengers on an Airlines PNG DeHavilland Twin Otter turbojet aircraft for the two-hour flight to the town of Wewak, in the Sepik region. It had been years since she’d set foot there and the anticipation was both exciting and anxiety-provoking.

  She was going to see firsthand the destruction of her father’s four acres. Would it provide an answer to why he’d been brutally slain? She hoped so. She’d second-guessed her decision to travel to the Sepik more than once since making her reservation. But it had to be done. The emotional upheaval that his murder had created in her, and the mystery of why someone had ravaged the patch of land on which he grew and cultivated his plants, had now been replaced by a more cognitive determination to understand who was responsible.

  The plane encountered turbulence from the moment it lifted off from the Port Moresby airport, and Jayla, who’d never been afraid of flying, gripped the armrests of her seat for almost the entire flight. Looking out the plane’s window she could see the mysterious Sepik River curling through the dense jungle like a writhing snake, its myriad indigenous tribes the keepers of PNG’s deepest, darkest secrets. Although she had been born and raised in the more urban atmosphere of Port Moresby, Jayla felt a link to the remote region, home to her mother’s ancestors.

  A windy rainstorm caused the pilot to abandon his first attempt at a landing and to go around again, slamming the plane down on the runway on his second try. Jayla stood on shaky legs as she joined other deplaning passengers. The rain had suddenly stopped, and a hot sun replaced it, the humidity causing perspiration to instantly soak through her blouse and run freely down her face as she walked to the small building that served as a terminal.

  She hadn’t made plans beyond booking the flight, and knew that she would have to hire a driver to take her to the village of Pagwi, where her father’s land was located. But she first checked on return flights to Port Moresby. The last flight of the day departed at six that evening. She reserved a seat, left the terminal, and approached a young man standing next to a battered maroon sedan with white hand-lettered “Taxi” on its doors. After some haggling they reached an agreement on the fare to Pagwi, and Jayla settled in the rear seat for the bumpy ride over a deeply rutted road, during which the driver sang unfamiliar songs in a loud voice, blissfully unaware of people crossing in his way who had to hurry to safety. When they pulled into the center of the village the driver asked if she wanted him to wait to take her back to Wewak. “No taxis here,” he said in his Melanesian Pidgin language, or Tok Pisin as it was known throughout Papua New Guinea. “No ride back.”

  “How much will it cost for you to wait for, say, two hours?”

  He gave her a price, to which she agreed.

  “Your English is pretty good,” she said. “How much for you to come with me to translate?”

  She accepted the sum he requested.

  She was glad that she’d reconsidered staying overnight in Wewak. She was used to heat and humidity in Washington’s summers, but the air in Pagwi felt as though the small town was engulfed in a steam room. Mosquitoes, called natnats by the natives, buzzed about her head and bit her ankles, causing her to silently curse her decision to wear a dress. Slacks and socks would have been a more prudent choice.

  The man who’d watched over her father’s property was Walter Tagobe. Using the taxi driver’s services, she asked villagers where Tagobe could be found, aware that she was being scrutinized by everyone she passed, especially by some of the tribesmen who were nearly naked except for their loincloths. A few directed comments to her which she was sure were suggestive, and her discomfort level increased as she sought someone who could direct her to Tagobe’s home. She stopped a woman whose breasts were barely covered by some sort of fur and repeated Tagobe’s name. The woman pointed to a hut on stilts above a stream on the fringe of the village, just beyond an outdoor market in which women wove skirts and baskets known as bilum bags, and men hawked vividly colored ceremonial masks and even a few head hunter’s skulls. One woman pounded the pulp of the sago palms to make sak-sak, a popular dish. Others sold crude necklaces and bracelets made of pig tusks and shells, or headdresses fashioned from bird-of-paradise feathers. Young men, their groins and buttocks barely concealed, pressed close; one played a bamboo mouth harp, hoping that Jayla would reward him with money. Some of the young men�
��s backs testified to their initiation into the crocodile legend. The sight caused Jayla to wince as she imagined the pain they must have suffered.

  She reached the house and looked up the rickety set of steps made of irregular-shaped pieces of wood tied together by heavy lengths of rope. As she was about to ascend to the open door ten steps above, a woman appeared in the doorway.

  “I’m looking for Walter Tagobe,” Jayla said.

  “Not here,” the woman said.

  “Does he live here?”

  “Not here.”

  “Where did he go?” Jayla asked, aware that a circle of villagers had formed around her. Consumed with curiosity, their garishly painted faces and near-nakedness increased her discomfort.

  “Far away. You go now,” the woman said, disappearing inside the home.

  Jayla had never seen the acreage that her father had purchased and cultivated, but knew from his description of it that it was close to Pagwi. She turned to the people who surrounded her and asked a young man whose mouth was blood-red, “Do you know where Dr. King grew his crops?”

  The man answered with a grin exposing blackened teeth, the result of chewing betel nuts from the areca palm, a popular narcotic enjoyed by tribesmen.

  “Dr. King?” Jayla repeated. “Big, tall man, medical doctor?”

  The native nodded, his grin becoming wider.

  “Do you know where Walter Tagobe is?” the taxi driver asked.

  “He go away,” was the answer.

  “Where?”

  The man shrugged. “Walter, he’s long-long.”

  “Long-long?”

  He used his index finger to make circles at the side of his head.

  “Oh, he’s—he’s loco,” Jayla said. “Can you take me to where the big doctor grew crops? Plants? Plants for medicine?” She pointed to plants growing at her feet.

  His face lit up with recognition of what she was saying. He nodded enthusiastically and beckoned her and the taxi driver to follow him.

  They walked into the jungle, following a narrow overgrown path that ran alongside a stream on which women fished from dugouts. Other villagers had fallen in behind them. They passed wild sugarcane, breadfruit trees, and myriad palms. At one point her guide stopped and pointed at a crocodile, its huge head and glistening white teeth barely above water. “Puk-puk,” he said, the local term for croc.