by Mario Bolduc
That was just too much of a coincidence. What if Albert had led everyone, including his wife, to believe he’d spent the week with Glenn while in reality he was on the other side of the world to execute a man?
In utmost secrecy.
27
On the ground floor of the Westin, a travel agency was flanked by a salon and a car rental counter. Back from the library, Roselyn asked the young woman at the agency for information on flights between Chicago and Tanzania. The woman shot Roselyn a curious look as if to say, “You don’t look the type to be going on that sort of trip. Why not Rome or Madrid?”
“It’s an anniversary present for my husband. He’s always been a hunting enthusiast.”
That was what people did in Africa, right? Hunt exotic animals?
The travel agent tapped on her keyboard, then smiled and glanced up. “British Airways has daily flights from Chicago, with a layover in London. It’s really your best choice. Or else you need to go through Cairo or Addis Ababa.”
Albert had travelled all the way here with a clear idea in mind, Roselyn thought — travel to Africa. Though she didn’t have the proof just yet.
“Is it easy to book a flight?”
“I’m at your service.”
Albert, in Africa. He’d gone once. Today, trying to return.
“I hope my husband didn’t make the mistake of buying the ticket himself. Did he?”
The agent smiled. “It’s rare for me to sell trips to Africa. For Rome or Madrid, however …”
Roselyn didn’t feel like returning to her room just yet. She stopped in one of the hotel’s coffee shops and ordered a cappuccino that she drank facing the window, seated at a small round table. The place was swarming with noisy tourists, exhausted after a day of exploration. Roselyn envied that feeling of happy weariness, their laughter, their carefreeness.
What should she do now? Where could she find the next clue? And where was he, where was Albert? Already headed for Tanzania with a Beretta in his luggage? Could he actually even do that? And why? Did he intend to kill someone, as he had Clements and Arceneaux?
And what if he’d killed other people? Valéria Michieka and her daughter perhaps. No, that wasn’t possible. They had been murdered days before while Albert was still in Chicago.
Maybe the passport was for travel to another country.
But where?
“Is this seat taken?”
Roselyn hadn’t heard the man approach her, double espresso in hand.
“Sure, sure,” she answered distractedly, taking her bag off the chair on the other side of the table.
The stranger sat down, back against the window. Roselyn returned to her contemplations. Albert hadn’t taken the plane, she was sure, because he wouldn’t have been able to take the Beretta with him. He was travelling some other way. He was on the Greyhound, Stanway had said as much. But he’d gotten a passport, so he must have been intending to leave the country.
“I’m looking for him, too.”
Surprised, Roselyn looked up. “What did you say?”
The man sitting back against the window was gazing right over her head. “I’m looking for your husband.” The stranger seemed to be scanning the room. “Albert Kerensky. You’re Roselyn, his wife?”
“Who are you?” she asked, worried.
“Max O’Brien.”
A tall, elegant, proud-looking Southern woman. Preoccupied. Her eyes touching people and objects without really seeing them. Since she’d arrived in Chicago that very morning, Max had crossed paths with her a few times in the Westin lobby without her noticing him. Before speaking with her, he’d decided to get to know her a little.
From Dar es Salaam, Max had communicated with Texas correctional services, where he’d been transferred to Stanford Hill Residence. A woman named Callaghan, dry and hurried, had told him that all questions concerning Albert Kerensky had to be referred to Peter Sawyer, his son-in-law, or Roselyn, his wife. Max understood that the old man had left the residence without warning and his family had been looking for him for days.
When Mrs. Callaghan informed him that Sawyer was a police officer — “You’re a journalist, did you say?” — Max had asked for Roselyn’s number. She’d left for Chicago, the residence director said, so you’re better off reaching out to Peter Sawyer. A few calls to Chicago’s main hotels were all it took for Max to locate Kerensky’s wife at the Westin.
While Janeth Katala flew to Johannesburg on a South African Airways flight, Max took a Lufthansa plane that landed at O’Hare eighteen hours later, after layovers in Addis Ababa and Frankfurt.
Despite being a little hazy with jet lag, Max had gone straight after Roselyn. He overheard her asking for directions to the public library. Max had taken that opportunity to go through her room and had come to the conclusion that Albert Kerensky’s wife had no idea where her husband was. The man’s belongings had been tipped out of a Chicago PD cardboard box and spread over the bed. A single thing left in the box: Inspector Phil Stanway’s business card. A notebook lay nearby, names and numbers written and later crossed off. All of it testified to a search for something, or in this case, someone.
At the coffee shop Max approached her with determination. Roselyn could have run, could have tried to contact the police about this importuning stranger. But she hadn’t. Out of curiosity, it seemed, she agreed to follow him to the room he’d rented on the eighteenth floor. It wasn’t a room, actually, nor was it a suite. It was a fully equipped apartment, tall windows offering a view on the forest of skyscrapers. A luxurious, if artificial, living room. Drab colours on the wall, sober furniture, boring art hung here and there that fitted with the rest of the apartment. A flashy chandelier hung from the ceiling. Heavy velour curtains.
Max was dying to hear Albert Kerensky’s story and discover where it intersected with his own, this long bloodletting that had begun in Africa and led him here to this unlikely place to hear the secrets of the wife of the former executioner for the State of Texas.
“What business do you have with him?” she asked Max when they sat down in the living room. “Why are you looking for him?”
He’d prepared tea, which sat cooling between them. She sounded more curious than aggressive.
Max answered that Kerensky had put into motion an infernal machine in Africa that had already caused the deaths of Valéria Michieka and her daughter, as well as Awadhi Zuberi and Thomas Musindo. A machine that destroyed everything it came into contact with.
He summarized what he’d learned so far in his investigation. Kerensky had been mandated by the State of Texas to help a young executioner in Tanzania, which Roselyn already knew. The country had reinstated capital punishment, suspended a few years earlier. But for the first time, the prison would be using lethal injection to execute an inmate, as was the case in the United States, including Texas.
“The job was done in utmost secrecy,” Roselyn added. “I’m sure the American government didn’t want to be accused of interfering in the proper dispensing of justice in Tanzania.”
“The Dar es Salaam prison authorities likely made the request in secret,” Max said. “I’m guessing the Tanzanian chief justice, who answers to the president, made the deal.”
“And Albert was chosen because of his perfect record,” Roselyn interjected.
“I have no idea how it happened and why he was chosen, but your husband came to Tanzania where he supervised the work of Lewis Katala. The man they executed was Samuel Musindo, a nurse found guilty of the murder of a young albino, Clara Lugembe, the daughter of the minister of home affairs, who today is the president of Tanzania.”
Later, the situation got more complicated, Max went on. Musindo hadn’t actually been executed, for reasons that were still nebulous. But Kerensky had to have known about it.
“I can’t see my husband messing up an execution by mistake. Someone forced his hand.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Max looked at her, surp
rised.
“In July 2003, when Albert was in Tanzania for the execution, our grandson, Adrian, was kidnapped from a summer camp in southern Texas. Two men were responsible — Angel Clements and Mitch Arceneaux. I met Arceneaux’s mother. She told me everything. Her son had been a mechanic in the Merchant Marine. In the late 1990s, he got into a fight in Dar es Salaam during a refuelling stop. Valéria Michieka helped him out of trouble.”
That man was the sailor Sophie had fallen in love with when she was still in boarding school. Valéria kept in touch with the young man and called him during Musindo’s trial when it became clear that the death sentence would be applied to him.
“Arceneaux owed her a favour,” Roselyn said. “Thanks to Michieka, he managed to avoid a Tanzanian jail, which is probably no vacation.”
“Why the kidnapping? To pressure your husband?”
“Exactly. If Samuel Musindo was executed, he’d never see Adrian again.”
“And your husband gave in to the threat?”
“I know Albert. He almost never leaves the United States. The only times were during our vacations together in Mexico. And always at the same spot. He never went to Europe or Asia. And certainly not Africa. The only exception is that whirlwind trip. I have no trouble at all imagining him lost and confused in a strange world, unable to trust or confide in anyone, especially the police. He couldn’t even call me and ask for advice, since I didn’t know about any of it.”
Her eyes were filled with tears. “If all this had taken place here in the United States, the situation would have been different. He could’ve gone to the police or the warden. But he was on the other side of the world in a country he knew nothing about, where potential threats lay around every corner. A place he was travelling to in absolute secrecy.”
“So he obeyed …”
“Adrian had been kidnapped. Albert had to give his answer quickly. I told you that already. He was torn between his duty and the life of his grandson. He couldn’t have gone on living if he caused Adrian’s death. So he gave in.”
“How did he do it?”
“Sabotage the execution? I’ve got no idea.”
But there was no doubt in her mind that Albert knew the content and dosage of the various drugs used in lethal injections perfectly. He’d executed two hundred and thirty-four people since the beginning of his career … and not one mistake.
“He was the best at what he did.”
An expert, a champion.
Over there, at the penitentiary in Ukonga, no one knew how to execute a man by lethal injection except for Lewis Katala, of course. According to his sister, he’d been informed by the American of his intentions.
“That man was his tie-down team,” Roselyn added. “Albert had to tell Katala, had to convince him to be part of the plan.”
“And what about Musindo? Do you believe he knew what was going on?”
“I don’t know. He might have had the most beautiful surprise of his life waking up after what he thought would be eternal slumber.”
According to Janeth Katala, Kerensky himself confirmed Musindo’s death, even though, not being a doctor, he shouldn’t have gotten involved in the process. Once again, it was a first for Tanzania, so they’d trusted Kerensky.
Musindo’s body had been transported to an empty morgue to be prepared for cremation. At least that was the plan. In reality he was given time to come to his senses. A set of false papers was ready for him.
The two executioners remained silent about it. Kerensky couldn’t very well go home and say he’d been forced to botch an execution. And Katala was just starting his career. For the first time, his mother and sister were secure. Admitting his role in the plot would have meant he would never hold a job in the government again.
Adrian had been freed, unharmed.
It was better to simply forget the whole story that had been without consequences for both Kerensky and Katala. And better than that for Musindo …
The two men kept their secret for years. Then, out of the blue, Kerensky had opened up.
“My husband was obsessed with every single execution of his career,” Roselyn explained. “He kept … relics of all the people he put to death, something I learned just recently. When he retired, after Norah’s death, he fell into a bloodthirsty rage.”
Making his own investigation, Kerensky first found Clements, then Arceneaux, and murdered both as punishment for kidnapping his grandson. Yet his anger remained raw. He took it in his head to finish the execution he’d started years earlier. And this time on his own terms. Kerensky wanted to retire with a perfect record.
“Which explains his letter to Lewis Katala,” Max said. “He didn’t know that Ukonga’s former executioner had died. He wanted to enroll him in his deadly mission. He asked for his co-operation — one colleague to another.”
What role had Valéria played in all this? For months she pushed for the death penalty, demanding Samuel Musindo’s head. She’d pushed so hard, some began to believe she’d kidnapped the minister’s daughter herself to force President Komba’s hand in reinstating capital punishment for the murder of albinos.
Max had learned that Valéria knew Thomas and Samuel Musindo and had been seen in their company. She had approached Samuel in the context of her efforts to send albino children for adoption to Ukerewe Island. Before learning that Musindo had another objective entirely.
Once Thomas Musindo had learned of Kerensky’s plan through Katala’s sister, he’d contacted Valéria, who’d secretly made her way to Dar es Salaam to help Thomas Musindo and Janeth Katala flee the country before beginning her own preparations with Sophie. All of this likely financed by the money Max had scammed off Jonathan Harris.
“All four of them were afraid of Albert?” Roselyn asked.
“Someone else. More threatening still.”
But Max didn’t know who that person was.
He had first thought that Inspector Kilonzo was trying to sabotage the investigation to hide his own involvement in the crime. The policeman was both ambitious and incompetent but hadn’t been involved in the murders of Valéria, Sophie, and Thomas Musindo, even though, just like the real killer, he had the profile for the job: a veteran of the war between Uganda and Tanzania, linked to members of rebel groups in exile, an expert when it came to violence to serve the “cause.” Though that cause was his own personal advancement, of course. No, not Kilonzo. Someone else was acting, hidden in the shadows, likely carrying out some bloody vendetta. A man more dangerous than Kerensky.
The real killer, who’d taken out the witch doctor Zuberi, erroneously believing he knew where Samuel Musindo had hidden.
More questions, always more questions.
“What I don’t understand is why Valéria played this double game. Why did she demand Musindo’s death while, behind the scenes, she purchased fake papers, orchestrated a fake execution and the kidnapping of a child, and found a place for the nurse to live secretly all these years? Why did she make such an effort for this man?” Max was thinking out loud.
Roselyn watched him for a moment. “I thought you knew. Samuel Musindo is Valéria Michieka’s son.”
PART THREE
The Execution
28
Max stared at Roselyn Kerensky in a state of shock. Samuel Musindo, Valéria’s son? That explained why she’d made such an effort to save him and guarantee his safety. “Where did you learn that?”
“Mitch Arceneaux’s mother. After I came across Valéria Michieka’s name in a police report, I asked Mitch’s mother about her.”
The elderly woman had told Roselyn all about her son’s misadventure in Zanzibar and the role played by the lawyer. She also mentioned a call Mitch had gotten from Africa in June 2003. The son of this African woman was going to die. She’d asked Mitch to save his life. To help her, as she’d done years earlier for him. Without explaining what that meant exactly.
“To me it was clear,” Roselyn continued. “Samuel Musindo was Valéria’s son, despite the
fact that he didn’t bear her name. Later, when I learned how hard she’d advocated for the death penalty in her country, it became obvious why she needed Arceneaux’s help.”
Trying to save her son’s life at all costs, Valéria had called on every contact she had.
Max paced the living room, unable to stop. He now understood why Sophie had come to visit him in Lamu. Kerensky had thrown a grenade into the room, and Valéria was worried for Samuel’s safety. She needed money, a lot of money, to procure a new identity for her son, a new hiding place, getting him to disappear deeper and farther than before. To run from the man who had begun his hunt. Valéria leaned on Max, without his knowledge, to further cover her tracks.
Sophie and Valéria had split the task in two: while Sophie travelled to Lamu, Valéria prepared Samuel, getting her hands on a new identity. No matter where he might hide in this world, his departure had to seem justified.
That also explained Naomi Mulunga’s attitude in Sandy Hill on Ukerewe. “Let them rest in peace,” she’d said about Valéria and Sophie. She must have known all about Samuel’s story and feared that Max might uncover the truth in the course of his investigation. Her only objective had been to protect Valéria’s son. But her attitude, far from calming Max, had only made him dig deeper. It made him feel as if he was the only one who wanted to know the truth, the only one who wanted to discover and punish the real killer.
How had Valéria and Thomas Musindo come to know each other? Samuel was older than Sophie, which meant Valéria was with him before her marriage to Richard Stroner. An unplanned pregnancy likely. She’d left the baby with his biological father, who later married another woman. Or perhaps she’d left him with this man in Dar es Salaam whose wife was barren. Whatever the case, Valéria had made a terrible sacrifice and chosen to put her son up for adoption. Later she reconnected with Samuel. Before Clara Lugembe’s murder, there had been meetings with him and his father, Thomas.