Maybe ten minutes later, he was walking into more open country, no canopy forest, just abandoned breadfruit and coconut trees, broken and overgrown with young banyans and tangled masses of vines. From here, he could see the airport, expanses of metal roofing like space stations on an alien planet. To the left, more low metal roofs would be the Territorial prison. He hadn’t thought about the proximity of the prison and the dump. But no one had escaped from the prison in the whole time he’d been here, much less in the last few weeks.
He stopped suddenly and looked back at the forest, remembering the Old Man’s telegram and the DEA. Sex isn’t everything. People do kill each other for other reasons. And Samoan talking chiefs aren’t clever bastards for nothing. He moved slowly back the way he had come, looking for just the right mix of sun, shade, and camouflage. There wouldn’t be a trail. Just a place that looked right.
He found it. As pretty a marijuana plantation as you could want. Carefully tended, as suggested by the different sizes of the little plots; a good steady income for someone. Or, being Samoa, some village. He crouched in the undergrowth long enough to provide meals for at least several generations of mosquitoes but never saw a guard or a gardener. He smiled to himself, his face tight. So, okay, maybe now I have the why. To which his soul added a psalm: Oh, sweet Jesus: let the Attorney General, let Fischer, be a part of it. Scanning carefully, he found a break in the trees on the far side. Roughly a mile to the north of where he was now, the east-west leg of the Nu’ufou road cut through the thinning forest to the airport road. Was there another access there? He tried to work farther on around the plantation, but the impenetrable web of greenery defeated him at last. There had to be an easier way to do this. He scrambled back to the main trail.
The Old Man always maintained that commercial marijuana growing was impossible in Samoa because of the need to involve a whole family to pull it off. But what about Fischer, a particularly high-level local buddy, and a few cronies? Sweet as it would be to nail them, it still didn’t seem likely. Land tenure is traditional Samoa at its hairiest and most intense. The land was an isolated corner but in a district in continual agitation among three claimant families. Those three families, certainly the male members of the family, could probably account for every bloody square inch.
What about the women? Han thought about what little he knew about the traditional position of women in Samoa. Women were the center of the ordered village world. But the farther into the forest or up onto the mountainsides you got, the more masculine, dark and dangerous, the Samoan world became. Pity the poor girl who stumbled into that marijuana plantation. McGee said there weren’t signs of rape. Maybe the pathologist needed to look again.
The trail stopped abruptly at the eight foot chain-link fence around the airport. All that, Han thought, and convenient transport too. He moved to the left through the straggling grass, harvesting most of a season’s burr-seeds on his bare legs and sandaled feet. Sure enough, beyond a corner, someone had cut a gap in the fence. He slid through, adding another scratch to the collection on one arm.
Inside the fence, he stood for a couple of minutes trying to get the burr-seeds off of his legs and scanning this quadrant of the airport reservation. The grass was mown to a smooth lawn, and the sun pressed on his head and shoulders like dead weight. Like carrying a body.
So, if a traditional Samoan would never make that traverse in the dark and, in broad daylight, you were now very visibly walking across the back lots of the airport toward one of the smaller hangars, what does that tell you? That you have a motive and no murder and a murder and no means.
He grunted in disgust and walked into the hangar of one of the inter-island transporters. This was a fleet of three lovingly cared-for De Havilland Otters and a pair of Kiwi bush pilots whose view of themselves as the right hand of God probably wasn’t entirely unjustified. He recognized the bottom two-thirds of one of the pilots under the belly of the closest Otter.
“Hey, Allen.”
The figure folded in the middle, and Allen’s pale triangular face with its halo of whispy blond hair appeared, peering under the aircraft. He was half a head shorter than Han and could have played bit parts as a Victorian street urchin.
“Hey, yourself. Out terrorizin’ the natives?” Allen came around the front end of the plane. “Or bein’ terrorized, more like. Jesu. You look like the fuckin’ Bird-man.”
“Got somewhere I can wash up?”
“Yeah, sure: over there. You just lookin’ for first aid or is this business?”
Han cranked open the spigot in the filthy industrial sink and soaped his arms and face. The soap burned his myriad scrapes and bites, but that was a small price to pay for staying out of the hospital. Grudgingly, he chalked that up as something else he’d learned from Ann. He kicked out of one sandal, swung the leg over the edge of the sink and soaped that too.
“Birdman?” The denial of knowledge, like lots of things about being a cop, was automatic. He always liked to hear what people would give away for free.
“You know. Teaches at the community college. Commutes to Ofu; has some kind of little place there. He’s always covered with scrapes.” Han remembered the dressing on the man’s hand. “Get’s ‘em climbin’ around, lookin’ for birds.” He grinned. “Real birds. Not my kind.”
Han’s mind was back on his own business. “You use the main run-way here, right?”
“Both, depending on the wind.”
“I’m interested in the east-west runway, takes you out over that open land and forest between here and Faleniu.”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“There’s an old trail there. The line’s a little south of the line of the runway, but if you took off toward the west, as the pilot, you’d be looking right down on it. You know what I’m talking about?”
“Sure.”
“Ever see anybody using that trail?”
The pilot shrugged. “Less than I did ten years ago, before they put the fence up. But, yeah, sure. Used to direct people to it. Palagis, backpackers, people who aren’t afraid to walk and want to get to the stores at Nu’uuli. No money for taxies and scared to try the jitneys.”
Han began scrubbing the other leg. “Any time recently?” Allen shook his head. Han went on. “From the air, can you see any other trails through that area? I’m looking for something south or south-west from the Nu’ufou road toward that old main trail. Not necessarily to it. Just in that direction.”
Allen was rummaging through a battered wooden cupboard now, his back to Han. “It’s there, all right. Goes into that clearing the Nu’ufou mob is trying to lease to the Government as a new dump “ After a little mental jerk, Han translated mob out of Kiwi into Yank: group, bunch, flock. Nothing sinister in Allen’s knowing about the dump. The pilot had the eyes of a magpie and the instincts of a village gossip. “…From the air, looks like beads on a string, row of little taro plantations. Not very good land in there. “’S why the dump’s there.” Allen held out a scrap of dingy fabric that had probably once been a towel. “Why the interest?”
Han wiped his hands, avoiding any contact of the fabric with his wounds. He looked over at the pilot. “Found a body in that dump yesterday morning. Still trying to figure out who it is.”
The pilot grunted. “Ugh. Bet that stank a treat.” He shook his head. “Old? Young.”
“Young,” Han said. “Female.”
The pilot grunted again. “Just back from L.A., probably. AIDS ‘n God knows what else, family in the village can’t admit they exist. The ultimate Samoan statement of despair: top yourself at the dump.”
Han stood, still mechanically wiping his hands. “Palagi,” he said. “Blonde. Basically up-market but gone native, at least for her final appearance, in a T-shirt and lavalava. Three months pregnant. Ring any bells?”
Allen stared at him. For a moment, the steady blue ga
ze was un-nerving, alien. The heat under the metal roof was unbelievable. “Nah,” he said finally. “Not in those clothes anyway.” He grinned suddenly. “Last blonde female passengers I had was Thursday. Margaret Meade feminist trekkers. Here to Ta’u and back, round trip via Ofu-Olosega, just to say they’d been there. Couple of ‘em might have been worth a chat but not when I’m working.”
CC A
A group?
Allen shrugged. “Think so. Can’t say I was paying a lot of attention. Think they all went on to Apia next morning. Via our competitors.”
“You’re in and out of Apia a lot.”
“Six days a week.”
“Ever see anything about an ecology do-gooder group: fa’aola o le vao.’
“’Save the forest.’ Sure.” The pilot pulled open a refrigerator door, grease-smeared like everything else in the hangar, handed Han a cold soda and got one for himself. “Couple ofthem groups in Apia now. National park mob on the windward side of Upolu. Couple of family shows as well; you know: let’s cash in on the eco-tourism mania.”
Han tossed the empty can into the trash. So, do you ask the next question and tip him off because you like the little sod? “What about…creative agricultural enterprise in the forest, like the Big Island of Hawai’i? That’d be money enough to float a little side show in T-shirts.”
“Stupid to advertise.”
Han smiled slowly. “You’d be surprised the stupid things people do. Saves us cops a lot of energy sometimes. Ever actually see the shirts for sale, like, at the airport?”
Allen shrugged. “Maybe there, maybe in town. Don’t honestly remember.” He finished his soda and tossed the can away. “So what’s the deal? This that girl in the dump? I’d think a T-shirt was about as useful a clue as a wad of toilet paper.”
“Actually, a wad of toilet paper is a very useful clue.” Han grinned at the pilot. “At least if it’s been used.” And, of course, he thought, if you have a lab that works. “When’s your next hop to Apia?”
“Oh eight hundred tomorrow.”
“Filled up yet?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Allen looked Han up and down, calculating. “For you, all I’d have to do is bump one barrel of beef and an hundred-weight of flour.” He grinned. “It’s the weight, mate, not the space.”
“Wouldn’t want to short-change a important wedding.”
Allen snorted. “You’re cheap, compared to some of my moas.”
Han sorted through his limited Samoan vocabulary. “Chickens?”
“Four hundred pound flightless birds. Your basic Samoan island princess. You goin’ to Apia?”
“Maybe. I’ll let you know. Thanks for the soda. And the soap.”
The obvious next step was staking out the marijuana plantation, both for itself and in connection with a murder investigation. But this was Samoa, and Han had learned to be cautious. This is when you want a chief of police with the social and political clout of the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duke of Wellington rolled into one, not a homicide dick with the insight of a bowling ball. He hiked over to the DPS substation beyond the main terminal. The terminal was supposed to reflect Samoan building traditions but mostly looked like someone playing Erector Set with steel I-beams, tin roofing, and Jersey walls. As if admitting the failure of the modern building, a beautiful traditional, thatched-roof, house had been built in front of it. Off to one side, the police substation was a Quonset hut.
The air-conditioning in the substation was like walking into a snow bank and, for the first forty-five seconds, felt good. Han got one of the duty officers to drive him around to pick up his jeep. And, by the way, translate as they stopped at each of the dozen or so scattered houses that made up the village of Nu’ufou. Some of this was repeating what Ioane had done yesterday. But it would be interesting to pick through the differences in the stories. Though all you could say for sure about the differences would be that you had identified what people felt they must say to a chief versus what they would bother to say to a boy.
At the first homestead, they were directed to the house of one of the principle village chiefs. This turned out to be the Bobcat chief. He invited himself along as they went from homestead to homestead, asking about traffic along the Nu’ufou road over the last week and any access to the dump other than the spur road. Han was savvy enough about information-gathering in Samoa to know that the likelihood that he would get any information at all was somewhat improved by having the chief with him and the likelihood that any of it would be useful, essentially zip.
But it was simpler than that. Everyone denied having seen any unknown persons or vehicles over the period of concern, and Han didn’t believe any of them. Even the not-overly bright officer with him was getting aggravated by the end. Pulling up beside Han’s jeep in the dump clearing, he said, “This is a very foolish village. They tell ghost stories and expect adults to believe them.”
“Ghost stories?”
“They say, if they see cars, they are driven by ghosts.”
“You think the village is involved?”
The officer was silent for a moment. “No. They do not ‘hide the dead bird.’ They do not lie to protect their own. They seem only foolish. I do not know why.”
“What about another entrance to the dump?”
The office shook his head. “They say no, but I believe they are lying.”
“Yeah. I think so too.” Like his officer, Han would have said that every single person that they had talked to, even the Bobcat chief, had been lying. Not because they were trying to get away with something. But because they were scared. Sounded like drugs to him.
Alone again, Han stood for a while, slapping mosquitoes and thinking about the unexplored half of the dump perimeter. But the afternoon light was fading. He would miss things. He didn’t want to slog through that shit any more tonight, and it was stupid to do it alone. He drove out to the road, but when he got there, he turned right, toward the airport.
He drove slowly, stopping from time to time where he couldn’t be seen from one homestead to the next, examining the edges of the woods on his right and then, as the forest thinned toward the airport and the jail, the occasional tiny glades of burr grass. On his third pass, he found what he was looking for, an opening that suggested an abandoned trail. Long shafts of afternoon light shadowed faint declivities, paired ruts, broken vegetation. A vehicle had driven off the road some time fairly recently. He followed the trail until he couldn’t convince himself anymore that what he was seeing was real.
He walked slowly back to the jeep, one hand absentmindedly stirring the cloud of mosquitoes that had gathered around his head. He now had three possible ways for the dead girl’s body to have gotten to the dump, one possible motive for killing her, and not a damn thing else. Not even an ID. And nothing to connect any of it with the Baltic schooner in general or the death of Thorvald Peder-sen in particular. Could Allen Stewart be right, and the girl was just some dead-beat suicide? No way. How would she know the place was there? Did she walk from the airport? If not, who drove the car away? Ghosts. Driving back toward the airport, he thought about Allen and his four hundred pound flightless birds and spent a cheerful few kilometers trying to picture Allen bedding one of his Samoan princesses.
Then he thought about the dead girl in the dump. How much had she actually weighed in life? How strong would someone have to be to carry her? Did she walk with her killer at least part of the way? Had he raped and killed her in one of those glades, then carried the body to the dump? Damned uncomfortable place to have your butt in the air, among the burr grass and rocks and mosquitoes. Had the marijuana plantation crew gang-raped her and killed her? But why bother with the dump? Just roll the body into a slough, and it wouldn’t be found for years. If ever. Did moving the body to the dump make the murder more or less likely to be associated with the marijuana plantation?
He turned onto the shore road. The mountains were gray in the early evening light, only the very tops gone lavender in the sun setting, unseen, on the ocean horizon beyond the western curve of the island. By the time he was approaching the hospital cove, the sky was smoky pearl and night had come.
The night sky flared bright purple. “What the hell?” he said out loud.
He cranked up the jeep’s radio. Static evolved into the dispatch officer’s voice. Han lifted the mike. “Flare just went up off of Fatu-ma-fiti. You hear anything?” Static, probably a negative. “Call Harbor. If they need help, all we’ve got is Shore. I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
He rounded the point into Faga’alu cove. A small crowd of Samoans stood on the beach, but he couldn’t see what they were looking at. Approaching the hospital drive, he thought about McGee. He needed an estimate of the dead girl’s weight and a re-consideration of the likelihood of rape. But the last thing he wanted to do right now was talk to McGee. Particularly about genital intercourse. The jeep roared through the village toward Fagatogo.
CHAPTER 20
As Ann’s head came up out of the water into the silver evening light, her first thought was how clever she’d been getting off McGee’s boat. The second was how the hell was she going to getting through the village during the evening prayers curfew wearing nothing but a bathing suit and a pair of sodden shorts. Half the village patrol was lined up at the far end of the beach, pointing at the fading flare and talking excitedly. They didn’t seem to have seen her. She ducked behind one of the other moored boats.
The lights inside the store weren’t on yet; coming on, they would be the signal that the curfew was over. Ann drifted slowly toward this end of the beach where a scrubby grove of pandanus and mimosa screened her from the village, the single street-light and all but the farthest stretches of the coast road. And also from the young men on the beach, their white shirts gleaming in the twilight.
A Bird in the Hand Page 14