Dead Girl Beach

by Mike Sullivan

  They dragged the body to the edge of the grave. A wind howled through the trees. Bright, little eyes poked from the darkness and watched them. Close by, a cluster of thorny bushes shivered in the wind near a wall of high, swaying grass.

  On its side now, Becker’s dead body was ready to go. One little nudge would send it over. Greta slammed the heel of her hard, rubbery sandal into Beckers’s back. High up on the spine, the sound of the spine splitting in two reached Suma’s ears, and the body toppled over. It made a loud, sickening thud as it hit bottom.

  Shovel after shovel of dirt went flying down into the grave until closed over, patted flat, and covered with twigs, shrubs, and a huge pile of dead leaves. When they finally finished, working in tandem as partners to complete the burial, Greta turned and patted Suma on the back.

  “How you feelin’?”

  “Okay.”

  Greta’s eyes swung onto the grave, then back on Suma. “Good,” she said, “because we just sent this asshole straight to hell. Now, I’m ready for a beer.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I think it has something to do with that man,” Lawan said to Seabury. In the room, their eyes engaged. Seabury sat focused in the chair, listening. “He came in snooping around the bar…he and that dreadful woman. I hid in the bar. My friends told them I no longer worked there and didn’t know where I’d gone, but I’m not sure they believed them. Especially the woman. She was more suspicious and kept looking around in the bar and then downstairs.”

  “Do you know them?” asked Seabury.

  He glanced across at Montri, who seemed disinterested, and then back at Lawan, who raised a single eyebrow.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea who they are.”

  Her body language indicated to Seabury that she wasn’t telling the truth. He looked at Montri again to gauge his reaction, but the cop sat aloof, listening but appearing to want no part in the conversation. Things in Asia are never what they seem, and Seabury began to wonder about the cop and Lawan who sat with the black, glossy hair, the splash of red lipstick, and the worried look on her face.

  “Suma said she’d call back.” Lawan abruptly switched topics. “She never called—that’s really not like her. She’s the late one…always running late for everything, but if she’s running late, she’ll call. I know her.”

  “This couple, do they live around here?” Seabury asked.

  “Yes. They live in that big house, with all the windows, facing the sea. The one on Red Parrot Bay. I’ve checked.”

  Seabury wondered why she would check on people she didn’t know, unless she knew more about them than she was telling him. Another white lie, Lawan? Hmmm.

  “Will you help me, Sam?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. Okay. Wait a minute, you two.” Montri snapped out of his stupor as if a door slammed behind him. “I don’t want you two getting into any trouble.” He looked at Lawan. “Just because the Langers were looking for you doesn’t mean they’re involved in anything…illegal. They’ve live here for years. So, I don’t want you two poking around their place and starting trouble. Suma will probably show up, anyway. I can’t start a search for her for forty-eight hours.”

  At the door, Lawan turned back to Montri. She bowed her head respectfully and folded her hands in front of her face. It was the familiar Thai Wei sign—a sign of respect and friendship extended to others; not just to local dignitaries and people in positions of authority like Montri, but to everyone here in the Kingdom.

  Montri acknowledged the greeting by bowing his head and straightening. Seabury stood watching them out in the hall.

  Montri looked at them. “You might think twice about getting involved with Greta Langer. She’s a fiery one,” he said with a raised voice. “In the past, we’ve had our share of trouble with her. When girls turned up dead inside that lagoon north of Kontee, I brought Greta and her husband in for questioning, but I wasn’t figuring on Greta coming into some Texas oil money from a recent inheritance. Now, she’s bought her way into the upper echelon of Thai society, and she’s well connected politically. When I brought her in for questioning, she cried foul, went to the Chief of Police, and threatened to sue the department—and me personally—if the police ever bothered her, again. I laughed because, being foreigners, she’d never win anything in a Thai court, anyway.” He looked at both of them. “I got called in on the carpet. My boss wasn’t pleased with the call he received from Greta. To survive and get promoted, it’s best to keep a low profile. As they say in the United Kingdom, Mum’s the word. So, I try to keep that in mind and avoid having anything to do with the Langers.”

  Seabury walked Lawan back outside to her car. He heard the door of the ancient Toyota creak as he got inside and slammed the door shut.

  “Let’s start with the cabin. Maybe, she’s there.” Seabury turned to Lawan, who had the key in the ignition.

  The engine whined as it turned over and sprang to life, and Lawan drove out of the parking lot and onto the main road. She headed south for two miles into the foothills that separated Sunrise Beach from Sunset Beach, took a side street in a rundown section of shops and tin shacks beyond the hills, and parked at the curb in front of Suma’s cabin.

  A stone walk frosted by a gray, murky light led the way inside. The cabin was on the far left, down at the end of a wooden deck facing the street. The silvery rim of a full moon rose above the foothills, far back to the east behind them.

  “I have a key.” Lawan shoved a key inside the lock.

  A set of rusted hinges squeaked back at them as the door swung open. A horrible smell sprang out at them. It rolled back out of the living room—so foul and putrid that it rocked Lawan and sent Seabury back on his heels. Lawan choked and coughed, turned her back, and coughed some more. Seabury gave her a handkerchief. She rushed it up to her nose as Seabury stepped around her and switched on a light inside the door.

  Seabury recoiled by the sight of what he saw inside the room. Blood splattered everywhere—on a plaid sofa pushed up to a curtained window near the door, on the floor, across the room, inside the kitchen, and pools of blood leading to a back bedroom.

  “Stay here,” Seabury said to Lawan. She nodded, her eyes snapped open and her body frozen inside the door. Seabury entered a hall that led to the back bedroom.

  “Suma,” he called out. “Hello, anyone there?” He checked the bedroom nearest him.

  No one. The sticky gel of blood adhered to his soles as he backed out of the room. At the end of the hall, he twisted the doorknob to the other bedroom. He waited a moment—cautious of someone hidden there in the darkness—then cracked the door open and found the wall switch. Light flooded the room beyond him and hung at the edge of the door. The smell here was worse than the smell outside in the living room, and there was more blood. Blood everywhere—splattered across knotty, pine walls and the rosewood floor. On a wooden chair overturned in front of him. Blood on the rumpled, twisted sheets of a queen-sized bed pushed up to a far wall in the middle of the room and below a rainy morning seascape.

  Seabury gasped for air and held his breath, nauseated by the stench reeking from the room. He held on, his lungs heaving, aching in pain. He switched on a desk lamp to his left further in and looked around. Across the room, his eyes riveted on a lump of soiled sheet, and further up a rumpled bedspread—half of it on the bed, half on the floor.

  In the dim, white light, he saw it—the headless corpse of a dead body spread-eagle on the bed. From the distance came the sound of voices. They were talking in another room beyond the wall. Seabury inched back outside the room and closed the door. He wiped the tail of his shirt across the doorknob and moved back out to the living room, where Lawan waited nervously in the shadows.

  “Don’t touch anything…have you?”

  Lawan shook her head.

  “We need to get out of here, now.” He felt his voice start to race, but he quickly calmed it. Twisting the doorknob to the front door with his shirttail, he op
ened it, and they stepped outside.

  “I want to get rid of our shoes.

  She cocked her body to the side. One eye squinted up at him.

  “What’s going on? All that blood…”

  “We can’t stay here. We need to go.”

  “Is it…Arun?”

  He didn’t answer. He paused a moment and said, “We need to get rid of our shoes.”

  “Our what?” Lawan looked puzzled.

  Lights were on in the cabin window next door. A shadow passed over the curtain. He heard the sound of a television going on as loud as Thais often play them.

  “We need to buy new ones…down in the market.

  He stepped back off the wooden deck in front of the cabin next door, turned back, and they hurried down the stone path out toward the street. At the end of the path, he stopped under a canopy of trees, switching his eyes back and forth up the street, making sure no one saw them.

  “I want to go there right away.” He checked his watch. “It’s 8:20, now.” He looked at her. “We need to hurry.”

  Chapter Twenty

  They bought pairs of rubber sandals at a night market at the edge of Had Rin. At a bridge overlooking a klong—creek—that drained into the ocean west of town, they tossed their shoes —weighed down with rocks —into the water and watched them go under. Then, they drove in silence north up the coast for another twenty minutes before reaching Red Parrot Bay.

  The round, dome-like shape of the luxury villa sat on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. Seabury noticed there were windows all around on the side facing the ocean as they drove up the hill. Greta Langer’s villa stuck out on the edge of a cliff like the dark, haunted mansions he’d seen in horror movies. Probably modern with all the amenities, Seabury could only imagine what was inside. A spacious dining room that opened onto a balcony, four or five bedrooms with built-in wardrobes and cabinets, a fitted kitchen with modern oven, double-door fridge, appliances, and utility room, a maid’s room, a gazebo out back, and log cabins for the security guards. The opulent display of wealth and modern living was nothing Seabury could afford, or ever be able to afford, and he thought about all that Texas oil money she inherited as the car’s headlights swept across trees bordering the road.

  A paved road led to the security shack at the top of the hill. They drove in a cloud of smoke, and a loud roar from the faulty muffler under the car shot back into the night. The moon rose higher above the mountains as they reached the top of the hill and stopped in front of a guard shack painted red. Seabury rolled down the side window and looked out.

  The security guard—a tall, unfriendly Corsican with eyes skittering like flying insects under the brim of his cap—leaned down and stared inside the car. The blue uniform fit snugly over his wide, massive chest. He gave Seabury the kind of look a man gives another when he sizes him up and wonders if it’s safe to go any further.

  “I’m looking for the Langers,” Seabury said.

  “Not here,” the guard said.

  “Where are they?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Seabury’s brow furrowed.

  “You’re on watch and don’t know where they’ve gone?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Seabury said. The guy responded with a thick, blubbery grin and shook his head. In the light coming in through the open window, Seabury noticed the hard, malicious light that had entered his eyes. In the darkness behind them, Seabury sensed something angry and unsettled lying there, like a tripwire ready to go off.

  “I told you what I know.” The guy’s voice reached a hard, abrasive edge.

  Seabury took a deep breath. “Okay, Captain.”

  He let out a sigh and tried to stay calm. Seabury couldn’t figure out why the guy wanted to get into it with him—unless it was to regain a sense of lost pride. Seabury told him he didn’t believe him, and it must have made him angry. Oh, boy. Not another one, Seabury thought.

  He had been in barroom brawls before, from Port Moresby to Rotterdam, Cape Town to Istanbul. He’d fought in alleys smelling of piss and week-old garbage. He remembered the scowling, red-faced bartenders with paunches and sleeves rolled up above their elbows having the final word. Not in here. Take it outside if you wanna fight. So, they took it outside. The fight lasted until the other guy’s jaw or nose was broken, and he slumped over on the ground, wanting to quit.

  Seabury looked at the guy leaning in through the window. Maybe, he was looking to add to his reputation. Beat up on a bigger guy, tell all his friends, and end up intimidating the next guy in the same way. Seabury wasn’t sure what he wanted. It went beyond refusing to give him information about the Langers. The security guard wasn’t polite or professional. He didn’t act like any security guard Seabury had ever seen.

  “I don’t want trouble,” Seabury told him. The guard sensed the tone as a sign of weakness. A thin, scornful smile played across the guard’s mouth as his eyes moved up and down Seabury.

  “Chicken, huh?”

  Seabury said nothing.

  “Hey…pluck, pluck, pluck.” The Corsican squawked again and sniffed the air. “I smell the odor of chicken shit.”

  Seabury shouldered the door, and it flew open with a loud bang. The guard’s chest took the impact of the swinging door, and he reeled back and dropped to his knees, holding his chest like he’d just had a heart attack. For a big man, Seabury was quick and agile. He flew out the door and clubbed the guy in the face with his beefy fist. Then, he grabbed the guy’s arm and wrenched it behind his back.

  “Sam!” Lawan shouted inside the car and watched as Seabury took the guy to the ground.

  “I won’t ask, again,” Seabury said.

  On his knees, in surprise and shock, the guy looked up at Seabury. “Okay…Okay. They went to Sunrise Beach. That’s all I know…honest.”

  Seabury let go of his arm, and the guard stood up. Seabury watched to see if he would retaliate. The guy looked like he was thinking about it, but at the last moment changed his mind. Seabury got back inside the car. Lawan swung around and drove back down the hill, toward the highway, and raced off toward Sunrise Beach. In the guard shack behind them, the Corsican was on the phone, talking to Greta Langer.

  “Yeah, he showed up here. The big guy. Looking for you.”

  “And?”

  “A woman was with him.”

  “And?”

  A harsh, guttural sound came over the line. “I told them you were at Sunrise Beach.”

  “Okay for now, but I think he’ll figure it out. He’s not as dumb as he looks.”

  “Do you need anything?” the Corsican asked.

  “No, stay put. I’ll take care of things on this end.” Greta hung up.

  The Corsican slumped down into a chair. He felt his jaw. It was starting to swell.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Had Rin, on the southern tip of Koh Phangan Island, was two miles south of them. The island was a large strip of land that jutted out into the warm waters of the Gulf of Thailand. This time of year, during high season and the coming Christmas holiday, the town bustled with thousands of tourists. Too many people milling about, drunk and dancing on the beach, far into the night. How was she ever going to find Suma there? How?

  Her hands gripped the wheel, and her knuckles turned white. She drove furiously into the night. Seabury sat on the passenger’s side, lost in thought and staring out the front window.

  Lawan felt the apprehension climb high into her chest and settle there with the lump in her throat. She called the Riser Room earlier and spoke to one of her friends, Duan Sakda. Duan told her that Suma hadn’t shown up for work. The friend sighed and moaned over the phone at the news that Lawan had quit her job, and the call ended with both women close to tears.

  The Riser Room—at the main entrance to Sunrise Beach—brimmed with a loud, boisterous crowd of Full Moon partiers. Here every month under a full moon, European Alpha Males partied non-stop on the beach with scantily clad you
ng women. Buzzed on crystal meth and warm beer, they had techno, trance, and goa music to keep them company. Wild sounds screamed out of fifteen sound systems strung out over the beach, and the noise drifted back toward the ocean.

  On really slow nights, Lawan would watch the crowd through the front window near the end of a large, wrap-around bar. The group—numbering close to 20,000—would dance on the beach for a long time before they got thirsty. Then, they would run in and buy more beer in smaller groups of five or six people, depending on how thirsty they were and how many cases of beer they wanted to haul outside. After they got tired of dancing at about 10:30, they came in and stayed permanently, watching the nude floorshow that started at 11:00. After that, business boomed.

  Out on the beach, the music blared. At times, it was so loud that it shook the walls and rattled the front windows, and the dancers kept dancing on and on and on, in a marathon that never seemed to end. They stomped feet in the sand, they spun around; they turned and twisted back and forth, in and out, side-to-side. Their pale, sweaty bodies contorted into impossible angles as the hot, sizzling, mood-altering tempo soared to a feverish pitch around them.

  Lawan remembered the nights she stared out through the front window. Lawan heard Suma complain about a job with no future. “This place is a snake pit. I need to get out of here…fast!” Suma had shouted.

  Always patient, always ready to take life as it came, Lawan washed cocktail glasses, dried them, and put them away. She waited on customers straggling in off the beach. She went back to the dressing room, helped the regular girls fit into their long, sequined gowns, and stood around while they decided on what frilly, feathery, G-string costume to wear during the nude floorshow. At 10:30, most of the dancing had stopped out on the beach, and the crowd poured in through the front doors to get seats and watch the girls perform dance acts up on stage, in and out of their clothes.