by Parnell Hall
On the screen, he dumped out the Diet Coke.
I froze the frame.
Looked closely.
Frowned.
I looked over at Alice, who was still busy working on her iPad.
“Alice?”
“Yeah?”
“Any way to enlarge this?”
44
CALLING IN A FAVOR.
I WENT TO LOOK FOR Clemson.
I didn’t get far. A uniformed officer stopped me right outside my tent. He gave me what seemed the universal Zimbabwean smile of amazingly white teeth, waggled his finger in my face, and said, “No, no.”
“I have to talk to Clemson.”
He smiled and nodded, pointed back toward my tent.
Oh, boy. As if things weren’t hard enough.
I pointed to myself. “I—”
Walked my fingers away. “—go—”
Pointed to my mouth. “—talk—”
Pointed toward the staff tents. “—Clemson.”
He looked at me. “I Zimbabwean. Not stupid.” At least he didn’t roll his eyes. “Why?”
“I have to tell him something.”
“About crime?”
“Yes.”
“You talk police?”
“I’m going to talk to the police. Right now I need to talk to him.”
“Why?”
“He asked me to.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. His look said it all. I’d been confined to my tent. We had no phones.
“Before the police got here. He asked for my help.”
That sounded ridiculous even as I said it. Miraculously, it worked. He stood aside, let me pass.
I found Clemson sitting alone at the big table.
“How you doing?” I said.
He raised a bleary eye. “I thought you were confined to your tent.”
“I’m a smooth talker.”
“You talk to the police?”
“They’ll probably get to me by tomorrow.”
“So you came by to cheer me up?”
“I doubt it. Your business is pretty much finished. Last I heard, people were discussing whether they can sue you for punitive damages on top of cost.”
“Good thing you’re not here to cheer me up.”
“On the other hand, if the police solve this today, we’ve still got three days left.”
“What are the chances of that?”
“You’re probably better off buying a lottery ticket.”
“You’re here to gloat?”
“No, I’m here to help.”
“How?”
“I may have something.”
“What is it?”
“It’s just a theory.”
“What?”
“I should really tell the police.”
“Then why are you here?’
“The police aren’t going to listen.”
“I can’t blame them if you talk like this. I’m ready to strangle you.”
“That’s the problem. You think this is bad? My theory’s worse. But I think I’m right, and I think I can prove it. You got any pull with the police?”
“A little. I’ve helped them with poachers on the river.”
“Good. You can collect on the favor. Tonight, before dinner, let’s have drinks around the campfire. Invite the police to join us.”
“They can’t drink on duty.”
“That’s up to them. They can have soda if they like. But just after dark get the campfire going, give ’em drinks, sit ’em in a circle, let me do my thing.”
“What’s your thing? What are you going to do?”
“Vote someone off the island.”
45
TRIBAL COUNCIL
“WELCOME TO THE TRIBAL COUNCIL.”
I looked around at the circle of angry faces. No one was happy about having spent the afternoon answering a bunch of dumb questions over and over for a bunch of dumb policemen. At least that was their opinion. The relative intelligence of the policemen involved was not to be underestimated. Still, the result of their cumulative interrogation was nil, and I could understand my fellow travelers’ displeasure.
No one was happy about delaying dinner either, in spite of the pre-dinner hot showers offered as a subterfuge. Few took them, even if they hadn’t in days. No one much cared if they looked like a coal miner or smelled like a skunk. But I needed it dark for the campfire. I had so little to go on, I wanted to use every theatrical ploy in the book.
“I’m sorry to inconvenience you. I know you’d all like to go to dinner, but first we have this murder to clear up. So, I’m going to tell you who committed the crime, the cops can arrest the perpetrator, we’ll be out on the river first thing tomorrow.”
Everyone gawked at me as if I’d taken leave of my senses.
If only they knew how right they were.
“We start with Daniel. Daniel was murdered, but we didn’t know that at first because the killer went out of his way to make it look like an accident. I apologize for saying ‘his.’ By that, I don’t mean to imply the killer was a man. It’s just a pain in the ass to say his or her all the time. If I refer to the killer as he, I mean he or she; if that’s sexist I’m sorry, but we’d all like to get to dinner.
“Anyway, whoever killed Daniel made it look like an accident by dragging the body out to the meadow to make it look like a sausage fruit fell on his head. That would tend to indicate the killer was a man, because lugging the body that far might be difficult for a woman. Not impossible, but not likely.
“The murder of Alice Ardsdale is just the opposite. Alice was poisoned, poison is a woman’s weapon. Could a man use poison? Of course he could. It’s just less likely.
“So, we have a tossup. One crime is most likely a man, the other is most likely a woman. Which possibility is stronger? To put it another way, who is more likely to have done both?
“Then we have the murder of Pam. This one is diabolical. The killer used a knife. Clemson’s knife. Does that make him a suspect? Of course. Did he do it? Of course not. It shuts down his business. And you’re all talking about taking him to court and hanging his head on your trophy wall.
“To be fair, Clemson might have commited the crime, even though it meant his financial ruin, if he’d committed the first two crimes and Pam had uncovered something that could send him to jail. If you corner an animal he will attack, and no one knows it better. So we can’t quite write him off, but we really should.”
I raised one finger. “But not the theory. The theory is sound. Pam was killed because she was a threat to the killer. Or because the killer thought she was a threat to him. Pam, like Alice, was a mystery buff, and was asking questions about the crime. And the killer was very sensitive. You might even say paranoid. The killer exhibits the sort of schizophrenic personality that would make him think everything was fine one minute and think it was all falling apart the next, that he was about to be discovered, that people were after him.
“That theory works fine for Pam and Alice.
“Daniel is another story. It’s hard to imagine Daniel as a threat to anyone. You’d have to be really round the bend. Hallucinating. Suffering not just attacks of paranoia but delusions. No, Daniel as a threat doesn’t fly. It had to be something else.
“It was. Daniel had a sideline. Daniel dealt in drugs. And not just marijuana. He dealt in heroin, meth, cocaine. Hard narcotics. The type that could make a person hallucinate. The type that could make a person paranoid. The type that could make an unbalanced person kill.”
I paused for dramatic effect. I needn’t have. I certainly had everyone’s attention. “We are here to vote someone off the island,” I proclaimed. I turned in a full circle, looked everyone in the face.
“Jason,” I said.
He looked up startled, then lowered his head.
“You’re wearing a hat. You always wear a hat, even after dark. Your sunglasses are off, but your hat’s down over your eyes. Are you afraid to look me in the face?”
>
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
But he still looked down.
“He knows exactly what I’m talking about. Jason always wears aviator shades, always wears a wide-brimmed hat. After dark he takes off the shades because he doesn’t want to call attention to himself, but he hides behind the hat.
“He always wears a safari outfit, long pants, long sleeves. Never short pants, never a short-sleeved shirt. Nothing wrong with that. I do too. Particularly after dark, because of mosquitos. But in the daytime, when it’s really hot, I roll the sleeves up. Jason never does.
“Except when he has to wash his hands. Which is usually done in private, back in the tent. Occasionally, out in the bush, Daniel or Phillip or one of the staff will pour water over your hands after you mark your territory or before sundowners. But, aside from that, has anyone ever seen Jason roll up his sleeves?”
I looked around the circle. I was greeted with baffled stares. No one knew what I was talking about. But no one was leaping up to contradict me.
Including Jason.
I turned back to him. “Roll up your sleeves.”
He didn’t answer me. Made no attempt to do so.
“Come on, Jason, roll ’em up.”
“No.”
“This is not a game, this is a murder investigation. Roll up your sleeves.”
“You can’t tell me what to do.”
“No, but the police can. They can do pretty much whatever they want. They may not even have to advise you of your rights. I don’t know the laws here. If that’s the way you want to play it, feel free. One way or another you’re rolling up your sleeves.”
That, of course, was a bluff. I had no idea if the police could make him roll up his sleeves, or if they’d give a damn if he rolled them up or not. Clemson had called in his favor and got ’em to let me make my pitch, with the argument that I had no official standing so it wouldn’t reflect on them if I made a fool of myself, and if I came up with anything it would be a feather in their cap, or whatever Zimbabwean colloquial equivalent they had for such happenstance.
Even so, whether they’d be inclined to go along with this was a somewhat iffy proposition. I just hoped the threat would get a rise out of Jason.
I was not to know.
Unfortunately, the ambassador from the U.S. Embassy chimed in. “Why do you want him to roll up his sleeves?”
Talk about bad timing. I kind of wanted the visual reveal before laying out a rather disjointed and unconvincing explanation. However, you have to work with what you’ve got.
“Because he has track marks on his arm. That’s why he keeps his sleeves rolled down. Because he’s a junkie. That’s how he got involved with Daniel. He was buying drugs from him. But he didn’t bring enough cash to buy all the drugs he wanted. And Daniel wasn’t taking checks or advancing credit. When the money stopped, the drugs stopped. But junkies don’t stop. Jason killed Daniel to steal his stash.
“Maybe he didn’t mean to kill him. He hit him over the head. When he realized what he’d done, he panicked, tried to make it look like an accident. He carried Daniel to the meadow, put him under the sausage-fruit tree. It was easy to do. He was high on drugs with the strength of a superman.
“Ever since, he’s been getting high and hiding behind his aviator sunglasses and his safari hat. And striking out at anyone he suspected, in his drug-fueled paranoia, of getting close to uncovering the truth.
“That is why I am asking him to roll up his sleeves, and it will be a lot better if he does it voluntarily than if he insists the police make him do it.”
Jason raised his head. I saw his eyes. They were frightened. A cornered animal. He opened his mouth. Closed it again.
“Come on, Jason, roll up your sleeves.”
He was about to break. If the ambassador would just shut up. And the police didn’t butt in.
They didn’t.
Keith did.
He leapt to his feet. “Leave him alone!”
I looked at him. “Why?”
“It’s intolerable! Don’t you know who this is?”
Jason put up his hand. “Keith!”
“No! It doesn’t matter now. This moron is going to get you arrested for having track marks on your arm. Of course he’s got track marks on his arm, you idiot! It’s no secret he does drugs. Here, look!”
Keith turned on Jason as if he were going to take hold of his arm and forcibly roll up his sleeve.
Instead, he snatched off his safari hat.
Blond hair cascaded down the sides of Jason’s face.
There came a startled gasp from the other side of the campfire.
It was Victoria. She was staring at Jason in astonishment. “I knew he looked familiar!”
Keith pointed at her. “That’s right,” he said. “This is Jason Kleghorn, lead guitarist for Vertical Razor, the latest punk-rock sensation. He’s here transitioning out of rehab so he can rejoin the band in time to promote their new album. It debuted at number 4, but should go higher when they preview their new single on Jimmy Fallon, and I’m not going to let him miss it just because you want to make a big deal out of some old needle marks.”
The one I judged to be the most senior of the many Zimbabwean police officers stepped into the circle. “Is that true, Mr. Cleghorn?”
Jason looked sheepish. Shrugged. “Yeah.”
The policeman turned back to me. I’m not sure if he expected an explanation, an apology, or for me to break down and confess to the crime.
I nearly did. I was dumbfounded at having the rug pulled out from under me. I was utterly dry. For once, I wished the ambassador from the U.S. Embassy would speak up.
He did.
The ambassador took a pen and paper out of his briefcase, smiled somewhat sheepishly, and thrust them at Jason. “Excuse me, Mr. Kleghorn. I have a sixteen-year-old daughter. . . .”
46
LICKING WOUNDS
“IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT,” ALICE said, a supportive statement easily parsed into it is your fault, but try not to blame yourself since so many other people are already doing that.
No one had spoken to me at dinner. Not only had I made a complete ass of myself, but I had failed to deliver on my promise to get them on the river in the morning. Instead we were scheduled for an absolutely useless second round of interrogations, this time focusing on who knew Jason was famous and when did they know it.
I had been widely shunned. The only one happy about my big mistake was Victoria, who clearly took the identity of Jason as a vindication of her being smitten, as if his being famous made him automatically a wonderful person, which, I could have told her from experience, was often just the opposite. Still, a young girl’s infatuation with a rock star was probably not a unique event in the annals of romance, and yes, I would count Victoria as a young girl in that context; in fact, I would count practically any woman on the south side of senile.
“You made an excellent investigative find,” Alice said. “Unfortunately, you jumped to an inaccurate conclusion.”
I wondered if I was the only one who would have heard the word “jumped” as a pejorative. “Uh-huh.”
“I want to say something.”
“What’s that.”
“You’re often wrong.”
“Thanks. I needed that.”
“I’m serious. What you do is largely guesswork. You’re wrong more often than you’re right.”
“You’re really building me up.”
“So you expect it.”
“I forget. Didn’t you open with it’s not your fault?”
“So you’re not surprised when it happens. You expect to be wrong.”
“Alice—”
“But that doesn’t mean you are.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, look what happened. You laid out a perfectly good case. Then it turns out the guy’s famous and can account for the tracks on his arm. Does that make him innocent? Does that make your
whole theory crash to the ground?”
“I don’t follow the logic. Do you think he’s guilty?”
“That sweet-looking boy? Of course not.”
I groaned. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re too quick to doubt yourself. No, don’t argue, you know what I mean. You go from I-solved-it to I’m-totally-lost in a heartbeat. There’s never any in between.”
“In between?”
“Your theory about the boy was wrong. So you abandon it. A perfectly good theory and you just throw it away.”
“Perfectly good?”
“Absolutely. Didn’t I say it was damn fine work? You really need to have your hearing tested. You never hear a thing I say.”
“I hear everything you say.”
“Oh? What did I say?”
I had no idea. My mind was mush. Alice could have told me Clemson was out stalking ant lions and I could have heard it, processed it, and had no idea she said it.
“I’m way too stressed to play games, Alice. What’s your point?”
“I told you.”
“Tell me again.”
“Your idea Jason was buying drugs from Daniel was excellent. Unfortunately, it was probably wrong. It’s entirely likely that Jason wasn’t buying drugs from Daniel.”
“So?”
“Who was?”
47
TRIBAL COUNCIL, TAKE 2
THERE WERE AUDIBLE GROANS WHEN I stood up.
Everyone had been late for breakfast, not because anyone was dead, but because no one was eager to get up. The staff had to go from tent to tent waking them again and again. When everyone was finally herded into a circle, the first thing they wanted was coffee and toast.
The last thing they wanted was me.
“I know, I know, I’ll make it brief. I made a fool of myself last night and you all resent me, and I understand. I had a theory and it turned out it wasn’t right. But, as my wife points out, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was wrong. Jason has an excuse for having tracks on his arm, he’s a rock star. I don’t think any of the rest of us are. We have no excuse for having tracks. So let’s roll up our sleeves and see who does.”
Unexpectedly, nebbishy Simon asserted himself. “Yeah, well, what if we don’t feel like it? Why should we do anything you say?”
