He needs Grayson for his business, Han thought. And he was wrong about him.
Sa’ili’s sister spoke, her English clear and precise. “He drives the car.”
“I said he could use it,” Sa’ili said, his patience snapping.
“He drives late at night,” his sister said. “No good comes of this.”
Han had lots of experience with the universal human quirk of generalizing from a single instance. “When,” he said carefully, “Did he drive at night?”
Mistake. The woman sat back almost imperceptibly, her mouth tightening. Never ask about time. He looked at Sa’ili. “Do you know?” Sa’ili shook his head.
“My brother takes medication,” his sister said. “He sleeps like the stones.”
“Please,” Han said to the woman. “It is very important to know when the Birdman drives at night. One time? Many times?”
She shrugged. “One time. Many times.”
Christ. Try again. “Last weekend?” He scrabbled around on the Old Man’s desk for the calendar Sasa never used and flipped it open to this month, pointed to the squares for last Friday and Saturday.
Her face tightened again. “Maybe.”
Christ, don’t try this in court. Suddenly, Han thought of something else. “Excuse me,” he said abruptly. He ran down the stairs, motioning to Ioane as he went through the front office. The kid followed him outside. “I want you to drive the Land Rover. Keys are in it.” He didn’t know whether the keys were in it or not, but that didn’t matter.
“Where, sir?”
“Just get in and start the motor.”
Ioane went over to the Land Rover and opened the door. Then he stood, staring. Then he closed the door and walked around to the right side of the car, and slid behind the wheel. Sa’ili had come through the front door of the station and stood beside Han on the verandah.
“What is it?”
“A car,” Han said, staring at the empty left front seat of the Land Rover, “Driven by a ghost.”
Han trotted up the front steps of the hospital. Somewhere off to his left, he could hear an organ playing church music. The front end of the surgery ward housed the chapel: probably from there. He strode through the breezeways, looking out for the guard, and almost ran into the pathologist, McGee, coming out of the lab.
“Hey,” McGee said, “Just the man I wanted to talk to.”
“Oh, yeah?” Han didn’t stop. McGee fell in beside him.
“Yeah. Think I may have an idea how your girl died. The one you found in the dump.”
“Oh, yeah?” Han had left Sa’ili and his sister in Sasa’s office with the calendar and paper and pens to write down everything they could remember about the comings and goings of the Birdman while he’d been staying with them. More importantly, he had left Ioane with the Land Rover and the DPS equivalent of a fine-toothed comb.
“Yeah. I mean, a packet of results came over the Fax from Honolulu last night. None of the obvious street drugs. And no alcohol, at least not enough to still be measurable with the tissue in that condition. Then I got to thinking about something I saw in Eritrea.”
“Eritrea?”
“Yeah, you know, break-away state from Ethiopia. Pissed off the Ethiopians because it took all their coastline with it.” He grinned at Han. “I’m an African, man; I just look white. Did some work there as a medical student. One of the things that got me started in pathology, in forensics.” The tall South African slowed. “Hey, look: you in a big hurry? Let’s get some coffee.”
It was still barely seven-thirty. Han knew enough of hospital routine on a Sunday morning to know that even if Grayson was slated for discharge, nothing would happen until after breakfast. The Birdman could keep for a few more minutes until McGee unwound his knickers. Han let himself be led off to the dining hall. McGee leaned over the service counter with possessive familiarity and ordered coffee for himself and tea for Han. They settled at one of the long tables ranged under the screened back windows.
“Yeah,” McGee went on, as if he had never stopped talking. “It’s actually not an uncommon technique, I expect, when you haven’t got electricity and want people to feel bad without actually having to get very close to them yourself.”
“What are you talking about?”
McGee looked up as if Han had broken into a reverie. “Burying people alive.”
“Huh?” Whatever had happened to Wendy Sondheim and Thorvald Peder-sen, Han didn’t think either of them had been buried alive.
“No, not these guys,” McGee said, as if reading Han’s mind. “I know the Japanese used to do it. The intention isn’t really to kill the prisoner, just to let ‘em know you’re seriously annoyed.” The pathologist downed his coffee, swung up off the bench and loped back across the dining hall for more. When he settled again, his mind finally seemed to be working in a straight line. “You dig a hole. Better yet, I guess, you get the prisoner to dig his own damned hole. Deep enough that he’s standing up straight, or at least kneeling with his torso upright, but so his head’s sticking up out of the ground. Then you fill in the hole with dirt and leave him there. Japanese technique, way back when, was to do this in the road so that people pissed on you or rode their horses over your head as they went by. Ethiopians just did it wherever they had a mind to, football field, whatever. Point was not really to smother the person; you wanted ‘em to suffer at least for a couple of days “
Han was as attuned to mordant male humor as anyone, but there was part of him that thought McGee was enjoying this technical recitation a little more than was quite good for him. Was that just the pleasure of tweaking Han or something more innate?
“I’ve had prisoners tell me, people we found and were able to dig out before they were gone, that you learn to take a deep breath as the dirt’s being put in around your chest, so you’ve got room to breathe. It’s pure instinct. But you can’t hold your breath forever, of course, and where the soil’s too sandy to hold together, it just keeps slipping in around you until you’re cemented in so tight, you can’t draw breath. So you suffocate.”
McGee looked at Han expectantly, like a big retriever who’s just dropped a prize bird at your feet. But, like a lot of things dogs drop at your feet, Han wasn’t sure what it was or whether he wanted to pick it up. Part of the problem, of course, was that if he’d heard McGee right, he was going to have to start thinking of the pathologist as our side. And he was a long way from there just yet.
“I still don’t get the connection.”
“The ones we didn’t get to soon enough,” McGee said patiently, “Obviously weren’t in very good shape. For lots of reasons. Dehydration, infections, other wounds. But from the testimony of their compatriots, you knew they’d died of the burying process, of the suffocation, not being able to move their chests. But you didn’t see anything on post.”
For a moment, Han accepted the statement. Then he took a mental step back. “You were doing posts on these guys?”
“Oh, yeah,” McGee said. “You bet. Big time war crimes stuff. We were after all the evidence we could get.”
Han was still having some problems visualizing this. At any number of levels. But, hell, he was still trying to get legitimate forensics in Samoa, so why shouldn’t other third-world disaster-areas have the same dreams he did. After all, refrigeration isn’t everything.
“There was a university hospital in Asmara. Wasn’t much, but at least there was covered space to work, some instruments and a little bit of lab. We worked out of there. But the point is “ McGee arched one eyebrow at him, like a professor at a pupil who was being excessively dim about something he was being handed on a plate. “The point is, these guys died of purposefully inflicted suffocation. They were murdered. And with essentially no signs of violence.”
“I’d call being buried up to your neck somewhat violent.”
/> McGee gestured impatiently. “That’s not the point. And, in fact, whatever else they did have in mind, they didn’t really intend to suffocate their victims. It’s the pathology of the thing I’m trying to get across to you. If you restrict a person’s ability to take a breath by binding their chest, you can suffocate them just as well as if you put a plastic bag over their head or stuff something over their mouth and nose. It’s how people die accidentally in stadium riots and that kind of shit. Just from having people piled on them or around them. And if you can do that, restrict the chest, in such a way that you don’t leave obvious bruises on the thorax as well, you can kill a person very dead and leave essentially no marks of having done so. There’s even a name for the process: Burking, after Burke and Hare.”
Han shook his head. McGee went on. “Two enterprising Irish emigrants in Edinburgh in the 1820’s who supplied bodies for dissection for the medical school. They got tired of waiting for new burials to dig up, so they took to getting the occasional low-end citizen a little extra drunk then sitting on his chest when he lay down to sleep it off. Fresh meat and essentially no damage to the product in the process.”
Han drank his tea and thought about that. He thought about the old ladies seeing the palagi sitting by the roadside on his orange lavalava that wasn’t a lavalava but a space blanket. Spread over a rock by the roadside. The roadside rock that Ioane had discovered could not exist. So had the old ladies in fact witnessed the murder, the Burking, of Thorvald Pederson? Who was, after the ladies had walked on around the point toward Nozaki‘s and over the crest of the hill out of sight, then rolled into the bay right there for the sharks to clean up? And whose temporary shroud, the space blanket, was weighted down with rocks under the water to get rid of it as well. Along with a purse that belonged to Wendy Sondheim. By a tall, bearded palagi. I think, the dying Korean fisherman had said, not Northman.
Han stood up. “Thanks,” he said. “You may want to buff up that expert testimony a bit. It may turn out to be very useful. In the meantime, I’ve got someone I need to go talk to.”
The hospital was suddenly active. Nurses carried trays and blood pressure cuffs and bedpans, pushed carts piled with supplies. Scents of yam and coffee, iodine and intestinal gases stirred in their wake. On the surgery ward, Grayson’s room was empty, the bed stripped. Out at the nursing station, his name was gone from the assignment board.
“Where’s the Birdman?” Han said to the nurse behind the desk. “And where’s the guard that’s supposed to be here?”
“They’re gone,” the nurse said, surprised, as if this was something he should know. “Dr. Ann discharged him this morning, before our shift began. There is no guard.”
“Dr. Ann? Where is she?”
“I don’t know. Try women’s side.”
Turning to leave, Han stumbled against Welly Tuiasosopo.
“Hey,” said the little surgeon, “You moving too fast for a Sunday morning. Danger to self and others.”
“Where’s Ann?” Han was already trotting back through the breezeways, Welly behind him.
“Slow down, man. Nothing that important outside of an operating room, and I know myself there’s nothing on in OR. Ann’s off picking up a patient.”
Han stopped. “What do you mean, picking up a patient?” If she was off with Sarge in the ambulance, she had the best bodyguard on the island.
“Flew to Ofu at first light, evac-ing a little kid with a head wound. Back here any minute now. Only reason I’d be around here this time on a Sunday morning.” Welly yawned, displaying an impressive set of shark-like white teeth. Han was moving again. They clattered out through the front door screens. The sun was bright; and the heat, impressive already. In the Sunday morning quiet, they could hear the sound of tires crunching up the coral gravel of the hospital drive, though they couldn’t see the vehicle yet through the trees.
“D’you know Ann discharged Grayson?”
“Who?”
“The Birdman.”
“Oh, yeah. We worked that out yesterday. Okay if he stayed afebrile on his oral meds.”
“Where is he now?”
“Who? The Birdman? How would I know?” The ambulance appeared, packed with seated passengers and riding very close to the ground. Han was aware of himself automatically noting Sarge in the left front seat. The vehicle stopped, and all five doors swung open. Sarge climbed out, followed by a bright-eyed child with a bandage around his head, and three very large Samoan women, one in a nurse’s uniform, but no Ann.
Welly said, “Actually, I probably do know where the Birdman is. Wrapped around the axle about getting to Olosega. The Baltic schooner’s gone. Maybe he went with them.”
“They left at one in the morning, according to Old Lady Nozaki,” Han said grimly. “The Birdman was discharged this morning at about five-thirty.”
Sarge said, “Birdman flew to Ofu this morning. With Dr. Ann.”
“Where’s Dr. Ann now?”
Sarge shrugged. “Didn’t come back.”
The nurse said, “She stayed on Ofu. No room. Pilot said the airplane is too heavy. Can’t bring everybody and her.”
A hundredweight of sugar, Han thought, with or without a small case of tuna. Not exactly a four-hundred-pound flightless bird. He was going to strangle Allen Stewart. Though, in fairness, Han knew Ann was the one who decided she could let the kid go with the nurse alone and that, if half the ladies of the village wanted an outing, they could have it.
Cursing, Han ran to his jeep. Reaching for the ignition, he thought, backup. Ioane was at the station, but the trip to Fagatogo and back would occupy a minimum of forty-five minutes. More than that if you took the time to secure the Land Rover so that someone didn’t do something like vacuum it out as a gesture of good will to a high chief. The usual couple of officers would be at the airport. At least you could hope: Sunday mornings in Samoa always being an issue. There was a one-man district sub-station on T’au, but nothing at all on Ofu or Olosega.
What the hell. Figure out what you’re dealing with first. Han had little sense of Grayson as a person, and most people will kill when circumstances push the right buttons. Sa’ili or Sakiko might miss a fine line between odd and psychotic in a foreign culture, but they weren’t fools. Nor was Hank Osgood at the College, who had hired Grayson in the first place. Han guessed that the moment when the Birdman had learned that he could kill, easily and without consequence, and that the killing did something important for him, had come too recently even for bright guys like Sa’ili and Hank Osgood or women with a strong instinct for survival, like Sakiko and Ann, to pick up clearly on what was wrong about him.
How odd, he thought, to link Sakiko and Ann in that way, but it was true. Puzzling over this and slowing to make the turn to onto the shore road, he almost ran over McGee. Han swerved around the pathologist and stopped.
McGee bent to the jeep’s passenger window. “Meant to ask you what you know about snorkeling on Ofu-Olosega.” He held up mask and fins as if in evidence. “Got to talking to this pint-sized Kiwi bush pilot at the hotel bar the other night….”
Han almost shouted Like there weren’t fifteen other people you could ask better than me. “Get in,” he said. “I’ll take you out there and you can talk to him. If I don’t kill him first.”
CHAPTER 29
Sunday mornings in Samoa are very quiet, at least after the pigs are killed, and the north-eastern corner of Ofu is at its emptiest. But, dawdling along the trail behind the Birdman, Ann was thinking that their solitude was astounding. She looked across the bay to Olosega village. Smoke from the ground ovens rose, comforting ribbons of communal life, through the palm trees and up into the sky. The trail turned and began to descend toward the land bridge.
Grayson stopped and pointed up to the left. “My shack’s up there.” A frame of four-by-fours roofed with corrugated tin stood half-hid
den in the scrub forest.
“I’m gonna leave this shit. Whatever you don’t want to carry “
She pulled out her water bottle and handed her pack to the biologist. There wasn’t much else in the pack but there’s no point in having any more layers against your skin than absolutely necessary. She squinted up at the saw-toothed range above them. “You say it’s about an hour and a half to get up there. Holy moly. Do we need ropes?”
“Not there. That’s the park. That and the northern edge of Olosega.” He pointed off to the northeast, to the peak of the long slope of Olosega. “Up there. That’s where I mean.” His arm swept the length of Olosega to where the slope dipped almost to the ocean. “Trail takes off from the plantations just beyond the tip there. Angles up the easy slope to the ridge. Piece of cake.”
He grinned, and his face had the same wolfish tension she had seen this morning in the hospital. Oh well, she thought. You’re never alone in Samoa. Walking the length of Olosega village, even on a Sunday morning, would attract a squadron of small boys to go with them.
“Okay.” She sat down on a boulder. He looked at her for a moment, then turned on his heel and stumped up the trail to his shack. She could see him rummaging around under the tin roof.
She gazed out over the little strait between the islands. The tide was definitely coming in. The little waves here inside the reefs fluttered over the sandy stretches, weaving among the broken coral blocks. She was halfasleep again when she heard Grayson coming back. He dumped his pack but now had a water bottle hung on one hip and a bush-knife in a coarse leather sheath on the other.
“Thought you might take off without me,” he said. Her nose caught something. Booze, knowing him, but she couldn’t have sworn to it. Something, anyway, that her subconscious didn’t like. She stood up, brushing her seat, trying to get herself to say, you know, I think I’m just going to go back to Ofu village. Suddenly, she knew she didn’t want to be alone with him when she said that. Better, they get over to Olosega and a village full ofSamoan matrons vying for the honor of providing the Public Health doctor with breakfast.
A Bird in the Hand Page 24