Murder in Mykonos ak-1

by Jeffrey Siger

  'But we know where it'll happen,' said Tassos calmly.

  Andreas stared at him. 'Do you really think with all this heat — and he has to know we're looking for him — he'll still take her to Saint Kiriake? He'd have to be stupid, or suicidal.'

  Tassos nodded no. 'I don't think he'll bring her to Father Paul's Saint Kiriake, but for twenty years something's been driving him to kill in a church on its name day. I think he's going to try again. It's part of his ritual.'

  Andreas rubbed his eyes again, then ran his hands down his face until his thumbs were under his chin and his fingers clasped about his nose as if he were praying. He paused for a few seconds, looked at Tassos, and dropped his hands to his desk. 'I think you're right.'

  'So, what do we do, guard all the churches named for Saint Kiriake?' asked the mayor.

  Andreas said, 'We have to be careful not to scare him off. If we do, it'll be too easy for him just to kill her and drop her in the sea.'

  'Or bury her by the side of the road,' said Tassos.

  Andreas gave him a 'cool it with the Scandinavian already' look.

  Tassos switched to his professional tone. 'Our best chance of catching him with her is at one of the churches.'

  'We should check out the mines too,' said Andreas.

  Tassos paused. 'I don't think we should be taking men away from the churches.'

  Andreas looked at Tassos in surprise and gave him a 'what gives' hand gesture. 'What are you talking about? We've got at least two suspects running around inside the mines. It's our hottest lead; we have to follow it up. Besides, it won't be cops searching mines. We need men who know them.'

  Tassos paused again, then nodded. 'I guess that makes sense.'

  Andreas looked at the mayor. 'Do you know men we can get to search?'

  'At night?' asked Mihali.

  'It's always night inside a mine, and we've no time to lose,' said Andreas in a tone sharper than intended.

  'Sure, I'll have them within an hour,' the mayor said.

  Andreas looked at Tassos. 'Any idea how many men we'll need to put a twenty-four-hour watch on the churches — starting tomorrow at sunset?'

  Tassos nodded no. 'Not until I find out how many churches are named for Saint Kiriake. I'll speak to the archbishop. Thank God she's not a popular saint or we'd have to mobilize the army.'

  'We still might have to,' said Andreas.

  The mayor blanched. 'You're kidding.'

  Andreas let out a deep breath. 'Let's see how many churches we're talking about before we cross that bridge. All I can tell you for sure is Mykonos is about to go through twenty-four hours of partying without much police protection.'

  'Syros too,' said Tassos, nodding. 'I'll have forty men here by tomorrow afternoon.'

  'Thanks,' Andreas said.

  'No need to thank me. We're all hanging together on this one.' Tassos turned and stared at the mayor. 'Right, Your Honor?'

  The mayor stared blankly back at them. 'Yes.' He nodded. 'We'll all hang together on this one.' Ambassador Vanden Haag arrived home a little before eleven. Catia wasn't downstairs as usual. He found her upstairs sitting on the edge of their bed holding a picture of their daughter.

  Her eyes were red. 'Spiros said he'd spoken to the mayor and the chief of police and they promised to find her, but they haven't.'

  He sat next to her on the bed. 'Do they have any idea where she is?'

  She shook her head. 'Spiros just keeps saying he's certain she's okay. That she's probably off with some boy.' She leaned against him. 'I have to go to Mykonos. I have to find her.'

  He put his arm around her. 'I understand. When will you go?'

  'Tomorrow morning, I've booked a flight. I should be in Mykonos by the afternoon.'

  'I'll go with you.'

  She shook her head. 'No, you have that conference tomorrow with the prime minister. Spiros will meet me. Besides, you don't speak Greek well enough to be of much help.' She forced a smile and snuggled closer.

  'Okay, but I'll come the day after tomorrow — we'll surprise Annika and turn it into a family island holiday. We haven't done that in years.'

  Catia didn't say a word. She knew it was his way of dealing with the fear gnawing away at their hopes. I feel it, I see it… I have the angle, just get the ball back to me. She feinted to the left and moved to the right, then paused for an instant and thrust her body and leg through a vicious kick, followed by a leap in the air that brought her just short of hitting her head on the ceiling. She waved her good hand wildly above her head and yelled, 'Score!' Annika jumped about for a moment, then bent over and rested her hands on her knees. She was breathing deeply. That was when she first noticed the odor. The acrid, unmistakable scent of exhaust fumes.

  Fear instinctively shot through her body. 'He's gassing me!' She struggled to stay focused. 'This is just another test, another problem to solve,' she kept repeating aloud while hammering away at her thigh with the heel of her good hand. She forced herself to concentrate on what she remembered from chemistry about carbon monoxide poisoning: a sufficient exposure can reduce the amount of oxygen taken up by the brain to the point that the victim becomes unconscious, and can suffer brain damage or even death without ever noticing anything up to the point of collapse.

  In other words, if she continued with what she was doing, she was dead. She needed to find fresh air, but how, in this sealed, pitch-black tomb? In the darkness she'd lost track of where she was standing and stretched out her arms to feel for a wall. When she found one she quickly dropped to her knees and began crawling counterclockwise along its base, probing and scratching frantically with her right hand at each bottom stone. She wasn't moving as quickly as she wanted and felt a slight headache. She knew her body was giving in to the fumes and her mind started drifting. She had no idea how long she'd been breathing them in, but she was sure her little exercise at staying awake had intensified its effects. Her only chance was to find what had to be at the base of one of those walls — and quickly.

  She found nothing on the first wall and began to struggle as she moved along the second one. Again, nothing but rock. At the third wall she dropped to her elbows and scratched away at its base. She hadn't slept for what seemed days. She was exhausted and wanted to rest, wanted to sleep. The thought of giving in passed through her mind, but she pushed it away, by pressing her toes against the floor to drive her body forward. By the fourth wall the rest of her body was drifting to the floor. Now she scratched out with both hands, grateful for the pain in her injured hand helping to keep her conscious. She had little energy left when she felt what she'd been looking for. She pressed and clawed at the rock until it flipped up into the room. It was the slot in the base of the wall she'd remembered hearing when he'd shoved in the beribboned gift box of chocolates. It was her last and only hope for fresh air.

  Annika forced her face into the opening. She sensed a breeze and gulped at what she prayed was fresh air. But was it imagined, was it enough… was it in time? Those were her last thoughts as she fell off into a deep, long-resisted sleep. He pressed a switch hidden under a camouflaged plate to the right of the cell door, and a single fluorescent ceiling light slowly flickered on inside the cell. The door was two and a half feet wide and five feet high, made of steel. Three massive industrial hinges anchored it to the stone wall on its left side, and three equally massive sliding bolts along its right side held it firmly to the floor, the adjacent mine wall and the ceiling. It was the sort of door one would expect to see securing the shop of a jeweler, but this one he'd hidden beneath the textures and colors of the tunnel walls.

  He slid out the bolt from the wall and pulled at the top one. He had trouble with that one, always had. He hadn't aligned it quite right when he installed it. He thought he might need a hammer to move it but decided to slide the bottom one out first and try the top one again. That did the trick. When he pulled on the door it slid open effortlessly. Not only did it carry the weight of the stone fitted to its inside face, it blended seamlessly int
o the inside cell walls when closed.

  He looked at the girl stretched out along the far end of the wall separating the cell from the tunnel. Her face was pressed into the corner. He remembered his sister as rosy red when he crept into her bedroom that late-winter night to remove the hose from the broken pane by her bed, having just disconnected the other end from their miserable father's truck. Her death was blamed on a faulty space heater. She had been the first of his tributes, though he hadn't thought of it that way at the time.

  He still smelled the fumes in the cell, even though he'd disconnected the garden hose and restarted the ventilation system ten minutes earlier. He stood in the doorway and studied her body. Not a flinch. Still, he waited a few more minutes before moving toward her cautiously.

  When he felt her pulse he realized there was no need for concern. It was weak. No telling how much longer she might last. That meant he had to work fast. Death must come in a place of his saints of the living, not among his gods of the dead. He rolled her over onto her back and dragged her by the ankles to directly under the light. He straddled her above her waist and stared at her face for a moment before dropping to his knees and easing his naked buttocks onto her breasts. She wasn't rosy like his sister.

  Slowly, he leaned forward and stroked her cheek with his left hand, while with his right he pulled a straight razor from behind his ear, snapped it open, and tenderly began slicing away. He was quite skilled with the razor and worked more swiftly as he moved along her body. When he was through there wasn't a hair to be found anywhere.

  He made her as bare and smooth as the forty-five-hundred-year-old Cycladic marble figurines of elongated, naked females — arms folded beneath their chests — the ancients of these islands sacrificed in place of humans. They'd taken great care to make the sculptures beautiful, a timeless beauty that inspired Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore, then ritually destroyed them in ceremonies honoring their gods. He had little patience for tourists who brought copies into their homes without having any idea of their purpose. Some Mykonians who kept them probably knew, because sacrifice was still among their traditions — the blood of a live rooster must run fresh at the site of a new home to protect all who enter from harm.

  He, too, sought to gain the protection of his gods through sacrifice, but he knew that from him they required far more than mere stone or fowl.

  His practice was to bind each tribute in symbolic honor to the ancient way before going on to the next step, but this one was so close to death she couldn't possibly put up resistance. Besides, with what he had in mind there was a chance they might be seen before reaching the church. If she seemed drunk or drugged, they weren't likely to attract any more attention than the hundreds of other revelers partying on a panegyri night, but if she were bound head to foot, they'd definitely be noticed. It was far too great a risk to take. He'd undertake that part of the rite later.

  He left her lying on the floor while he went to do what else was required to complete the preparation. He didn't bother to lock the door. He didn't need to.

  17

  Ninety minutes after his meeting with Andreas and Tassos, the mayor met Andreas at a locals' taverna just off the main square in Ano Mera. Two dozen volunteers were inside. Andreas was impressed by how quickly he'd been able to get so many men to search the mines — and after midnight, no less. Then again, he'd been mayor for almost twenty years, and no one wanted to be on his bad side. Most appeared to be in their early forties, some younger, a few older. Pappas looked like the oldest. Andreas smiled to himself — apparently even the self-described, most important man on the island danced when the mayor played the tune.

  The mayor spoke first, and formally. 'My thanks to all of you for coming on such short notice in this, the middle of our busiest season, but as I told each of you, it is a matter of life and death. We must find a young woman lost in one of the mines.' A few of the men exchanged glances. Pappas didn't blink.

  The mayor came up with that cover story at Andreas' office, and even though none of them gave it much chance of flying, they hoped whatever rumors it spawned wouldn't be as catastrophic as the truth. There was a complication though — a very serious one. Volunteers were being asked to help find a ruthless, brutal killer. They had to be warned of the danger in a way that wouldn't blow the whole story wide open. The mayor assured them he'd handle it.

  'My friends, we don't know if the missing woman is alone or with someone, went willingly or against her will. But we think she's somewhere in the mines, places you know better than anyone on our island. Just be careful. Prepare for the worst and pray for the best.'

  Andreas couldn't believe what he was hearing. The mayor planned on sending these men off to look for a serial killer in the dark — literally and figuratively. Where was the warning he promised?

  'What do you mean "prepare for the worst"?' It was Pappas.

  Andreas assumed the mayor was agitated by the question, but he didn't show it.

  'I think whenever you go in search of someone who might have been taken against her will — and I emphasize might — you should be alert to the possibility that someone may be prepared to do the rescuer harm.'

  'You mean "harm" like what happened to that girl up at the church?' Pappas turned to face Andreas, as if directing the question at him.

  That had to piss off the mayor, thought Andreas, but still Mihali didn't show it — just hurried to answer before Andreas could speak. 'Let's hope not. I repeat, I don't know what happened to her, but I want all of you to be careful.'

  Andreas noticed he didn't offer his volunteers the opportunity of backing out. Perhaps that's why he wasn't agitated — he knew his audience had no choice.

  No one else had a question, and the mayor turned the meeting over to Andreas to organize the search. Andreas described the missing woman and the area to be searched, which included mine entrances by the artist's home and Panos' farm. He said he'd leave it to the men in the room who knew the mines how best to conduct the search, but he insisted they work in groups of no fewer than three and that at least one in each group carry a firearm.

  No one said a word. Although military service was mandatory for all Greek men and each probably had several guns at home, for the police chief to insist on guns meant this had to be far more serious than the mayor was letting on.

  It was Pappas who said what everyone had to be thinking. 'Is that to prepare for the worst?' His tone was sarcastic but he didn't wait for an answer or dwell on his point. Instead, he threw up his hands in a sign of disgust and turned to face the men. 'Okay, let's set this up so we're not running into each other inside — because some of you are such lousy hunters you'll be shooting at shadows.' That got them snickering. He'd lightened the mood and no one seemed to object to his taking charge — it was almost as if it had been planned that way.

  Pappas suggested they divide the area into five sections with groups of four assigned to each section. He and the remaining men — the 'old-timers' he called them — would man a command center out of his Jeep on the hillside adjacent to Panos' property. No one offered a better idea, but Andreas insisted that each search group report back at least once every hour, and any that didn't would have police dispatched to their last reported location ASAP.

  Andreas noticed the mayor move his head to catch Pappas' eye, and immediately Pappas said, 'Okay guys, let's get to work.' The men filed out with nervous, resigned looks on their faces, expressions you'd expect to see on men asked to be pallbearers at the funeral of a stranger.

  Pappas stopped as he passed Andreas. 'How dangerous do you really think it's going to be?'

  Andreas put his head down so as not to look him in the eyes. 'Don't really know.' Then he lifted his head and looked straight at him. 'But I'd tell them to be careful, real careful.'

  Pappas nodded. 'Thanks,' he said, and left.

  'What do you think?' the mayor said to Andreas.

  'They know she's not in there on holiday.' Andreas sounded annoyed.

  'They prob
ably think she was kidnapped by the same one who killed the Vandrew woman.' Mihali's voice was calm.

  Andreas was surprised. 'That doesn't bother you?'

  He nodded no. 'Not really. Everyone knows a woman was murdered and the killer's still out there. Once they get started, they'll be like farmers chasing a fox with a chicken in its mouth. They won't be thinking about all the other chickens killed by the fox, just the one in its mouth.'

  'Yeah, and what happens if they catch the fox?'

  He patted Andreas' arm and smiled. 'We should only be so lucky. If it's okay with you, I have to get back to town.'

  Andreas didn't want to let the subject drop but could tell the mayor was in 'please the electorate' mode. He'd seen it in a lot of politicians. It meant no straight answers.

  'Sure, I've got to leave for the mines anyway. I'll let you know if something turns up,' Andreas said, although he was certain the mayor would get his news straight from his volunteers, probably before he did.

  As Andreas walked toward the door the mayor yelled out in a grandly cheery voice, 'Happy hunting, Chief.'

  Andreas wondered what the hell was going through that man's mind that made him so happy in the middle of this nightmare. She hadn't moved from where he'd left her, under the light, flat on her back. He dropped a small beach bag on the floor beside her and stared at her face. He'd seen enough young women die slowly to tell she was still alive. He knelt down and gently lifted her injured hand. Cradling it in his left hand, he gently stroked it with his right. His eyes studied her body for movement, and when he looked at her face his own took on the gaze of a kindly friar. He stared with what seemed only benevolent interest for several seconds before giving her wrist a sudden, violent twist. She winced only slightly.

  He placed the injured hand over her right breast, then reached down for her right hand and drew it across her body to rest on her left breast. Then, he sat back on his haunches and reached into the bag for what he needed next, confident the pain he was about to inflict would not wake her.