“What did you do to your consort?” I asked.
“I was forced to kill my consort, for the love of Nefertiti. When my consort returned to me in this life, I could not resist her. The past becomes the future, all over again.”
“So who killed Lauren, for God’s sake?” I screamed. “Was it Ramses or Xavier?” What was I saying? They were both the same guy.
Then Ramses - or Xavier, depending on which personality was currently in charge - reached under the round table and pulled out a gun. It was the second time in the last few days that I was staring down the wrong end of a 9mm.
Gina screamed. Believe me. I was tempted to, as well.
“What’s a pharaoh doing with a gun?” I asked.
“Ramses, no,” Gina cried. Apparently she had no trouble telling which was which. But who was she? Was she plain old Gina or was she acting the role of Nefertiti?
“My Queen,” Xavier said calmly, “he can hurt us. He must be destroyed.”
“How are you going to explain this one, Ramses? A bullet in my head won’t look like an accident.”
“Can they prove murder if there’s no body?” he asked me. Then he turned to Gina. “We’ll dispose of his body in the water, my Queen. The sharks will leave nothing to be found.”
“Shoot me and then dump me in the ocean? How unoriginal,” I remarked.
By the way, where the hell was Alana? Surely she had heard this lunacy. Why wasn’t she breaking down the chamber door to arrest these crazies?
Xavier directed me out of the chamber. Why hadn’t he just shot me then and there? Perhaps he didn’t want the trouble of dragging me down the winding staircase. Maybe he didn’t want the evidence of my blood splattered all over his pyramid.
Xavier pushed me out the front door and then followed, his gun pressing against the small of my back.
“Xavier, put the gun down!” I heard Alana yell from somewhere in the bushes.
Xavier fired three quick shots in the direction of Alana’s voice. Was she hit? Were the other officers hit? I didn’t know, but I couldn’t take the chance they would remain unscathed from another burst of gunfire I was sure was about to come any second.
I dug my heel into the ground and pushed back against Xavier with all my might, pinning him against the wall of the house. The gun went off again. This time only inches from my ear. There was a sharp, exploding feeling in my ear, and I was sure my eardrum had burst.
I slammed my head backwards into Xavier’s face. I felt the back of my skull strike his nose and heard with my good ear the cartilage in Xavier’s nose crunch. Xavier screamed and brought his hands up to his bloody face, dropping the gun on the ground.
I kicked it away. I had no desire to shoot Xavier or even hold him prisoner. I wanted to punish him with my bare hands. Punish him for killing Lauren and framing my best friend. Punish him for taking a shot at Alana and, of course, for threatening to kill me. I struck him in the stomach with every ounce of strength I possessed. Xavier doubled over, and I kicked him in the face, inflicting even more considerable damage to his shattered nose. Xavier fell to the ground, and I got ready to kick him again.
Then I saw Gina beside us. She had picked up the gun and was pointing it directly at me.
“Put the gun down, Gina,” Alana said, running up to us. She was followed by two police officers. One of them was limping quite badly, blood oozing down the front of his leg. Apparently one of Xavier’s bullets found its mark.
“Put the gun down,” Alana repeated. “You don’t want to do this, Gina.”
Gina kept the gun pointed at me, but now her hands were shaking. I began to pray that her trembling fingers didn’t pull that trigger. If I got out of this one alive, I certainly owed God big time. Again.
“You don’t understand,” Gina said to me. “Xavier doesn’t realize what he’s done.”
“Then get him help Gina. But you can’t help him if you’re behind bars for killing me,” I said.
“Put the gun down. I’m not going to warn you again,” Alana demanded.
Why didn’t Alana just shoot her? I thought. But I knew it wasn’t that easy. What do you think is going through a cop’s mind during something like this? I certainly didn’t know, and I hope I’m never in the position to find out.
Gina continued to ignore Alana. She looked at me, her eyes pleading.
“He’s my king. My life,” she said.
“He still can be,” I said.
I took a slow step towards her. Gina placed the gun in my outstretched hand and burst into tears. She started towards Xavier, but an officer cut her off before she could reach him.
“Thank God you’re all right,” Alana said. “I feel like I’m saying that an awful lot lately.”
“Thanks for coming to my rescue. But what the hell took you so long?” I asked.
“We couldn’t hear a thing. Something in the walls of the pyramid was blocking the transmission. I was going to give you five more minutes before we were coming in.”
“So you didn’t even hear me go to the bathroom?”
“Go to the bathroom? No, can’t say I heard that. What the hell happened in there, Poe?”
I filled her in on the Xavier/Hatchepsut/Ramses split personality thing. It was difficult to get everything straight.
“Do you really think Xavier doesn’t realize he killed Lauren?” Alana asked “I don’t know,”
I said. “I don’t really care.”
CHAPTER 35
House of the Sun
I didn’t see Alana much over the next few days. She was busy wrapping up the case against Xavier. Gina had been extremely cooperative with the police. The guilt she had been living with the last week must have been incredible to bear. I imagine it must have been something of a relief for the truth to finally be out in the open.
Gina had witnessed Xavier begging Lauren at the art show not to leave him for a second time. So George had seen something that night. He just substituted Bernard’s name for Xavier. When Gina confronted Xavier about his love for Lauren, Xavier realized the only way to escape Lauren was if she didn’t exist. He was convinced this was his Egyptian past repeating itself. And the only way to solve the problem was the way he — Ramses - had handled it before: murder.
Alana told me they had assigned a psychiatrist to evaluate Xavier. So, what do you think? Did Xavier really have multiple personalities, and the one named Ramses killed Lauren - or the reincarnation of the consort, if you want to completely follow that storyline? Or was it just a bogus excuse to explain an act that was unexplainable? Jealousy and murder, it’s as old as the pyramids themselves.
I wasn’t sure what I believed. I guess I needed more distance to figure things out. All I knew was that Foxx was out of jail. And, how did we celebrate his new found freedom? Pretty simply, actually. We ordered two large pizzas, drank a lot of Budweisers, and watched our two favorite movies back to back: Animal House and Caddyshack. Then at three a.m. Foxx had an idea. We would watch the sunrise. But we had to leave immediately. Why so early? I didn’t know.
Wearing their yellow jump suits and white motorcycle helmets, they looked more like alien invaders from outer space than tourists. Actually a better description of them would be brave tourists or foolhardy, depending on your sense of fun and adventure. All of them had gotten up at three a.m. to be driven to the top of Mount Haleakala to watch the sun rise above the clouds. Afterwards, they would jump onto bicycles and cruise to the bottom of the largest dormant volcano in the world, a.k.a. Mount Haleakala, or, as the Hawaiians called it, the House of the Sun.
Foxx had warned me about the cold temperatures at the summit of Haleakala. At twelve thousand feet above sea level and with a constant chilly wind blowing in your face, the temperature seldom reaches above thirty degrees in the darkness before sunrise. I was dressed only in a sweatshirt and shorts. What an idiot.
“If you repeat what I’m about to say to you, I’ll kill you,” Foxx said.
Considering that Foxx had spent the
last several days in prison for murder, one would suspect his choice of words was rather unfortunate. But I didn’t care.
“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” Foxx continued. “If it hadn’t been for you, man, I would have spent the rest of my days behind bars.”
Then Foxx put his hand on my shoulder, the one without the bullet wound. “I love you man,” he said. “And if you say it back to me I’ll toss you headfirst into this volcano crater.”
We stood there in silence for the next several minutes and watched the sun rise above the clouds. It started out as a single red beam of light poking through a hole in one of the clouds. Then it turned into the most dazzling light show I had ever laid eyes on. I felt like I was somehow getting a glimpse of the gates of Heaven.
“I love you too, Foxx,” I said.
He did not toss me into the crater.
And there we stood, both crying like babies. I don’t know if it was the sunrise or the fact that both Foxx and I had cheated fate, maybe it was both, but today felt like the best day of my life.
CHAPTER 36
Road to Hana
Alana asked me what I wanted to do on my last full day in Maui. Aside from the obvious, I said I wouldn’t mind taking some more photographs.
It’s hard to believe that something as random as a black and white photography course several months ago would play such an important role in solving Maui’s crime of the century. Okay, I don’t know if it actually qualified as that, but none of the local television stations and newspapers could stop talking about the death of Lauren Rogers, the false imprisonment of her boyfriend Foxx, and the subsequent arrest of the world-renowned artist Xavier.
You might be wondering what I thought of my first murder investigation officially coming to an end. Was it fun? Was it thrilling? Was it an adventure? The answer may be a major disappointment to you. It was none of the above.
It was pure hell. It’s one thing to read a well-crafted murder mystery. It’s quite another to take part in a real one. You may be saying to yourself, “Of course, Poe, that’s rather common sense, don’t you think?” But the truth is it’s completely impossible for you to fully understand the wide range of emotions involved in a homicide investigation. Homicide investigation? Now I’m starting to sound like a real-life police officer, or at least a wanna-be. But it’s true. The emotions are unrelenting, even suffocating, like a two-thousand-pound boulder sitting on your chest every second of the day.
Someone you know has died. Granted, I didn’t know Lauren very well. But she was a real person, full of hopes and dreams and memories. Now she was gone, never to return. Hate. Jealousy. Revenge. It’s hard to believe a person could feel such emotion that they would think their only recourse was to commit murder.
I can completely understand taking someone’s life if your life or the life of a loved one is in danger. But other than that, I just can’t see it, and I’m damned glad that I can’t. Of course, Xavier hadn’t killed Lauren because of those negative feelings. He had killed her for love. For the love of Gina, because he couldn’t stand hurting her anymore, and for the love of Lauren, because he couldn’t stand to not love her. I know that probably doesn’t make much sense. But it’s how I see things, at least for now.
Enough of that, though. So, where did we decide to take those pretty pictures that would end up in my photo album? If I was lucky, a few would end up on the wall of my house. Every day since I’d been in Maui I saw at least one person wearing an “I Survived the Road to Hana” T-shirt. Alana explained to me that the road to Hana was one of those popular tourists excursions that, unfortunately, most people found to be quite un-fun. Is un-fun a word?
The road has more twists and turns than the Nile River, which would make it rather fun to navigate were it not for the fact that thanks to its popularity it’s usually bumper to bumper the whole way there. My little guide book suggested that we leave early, which we did. It made no difference.
There were several waterfalls along the way. Naturally, I insisted that we stop at every one of them for the photographic possibilities they presented. Alana had gotten over her shyness and agreed to pose in front of all of them.
About half-way to Hana I insisted on taking over the driving responsibilities. It was no reflection on Alana’s skills behind the wheel. Rather, I tend to get carsick when not driving myself, and the constant hairpin turns were doing horrible things to my stomach.
Were it not for the constant traffic slowing people down, I’m sure that the Hana Highway would suffer at least ten fatalities a day. There were several somewhat scary moments along the way where the road narrowed to the point that only one car could pass at a time. This wouldn’t be so bad - after all patience is a virtue - but the hairpin turns made it next to impossible, if not completely impossible, to see if any car was coming in your opposite direction.
The chicken that I am, I found this rather nerve-racking, probably another reason my stomach was upset. Alana seemed quite pleased with the road conditions, much like one would find the death-defying drops on a roller coaster fun. Do I like roller coasters, you might ask? I’m sure the answer to that question is rather obvious, but in case it isn’t, absolutely not. I abhor them.
The more I think about it, Alana may have been delighted mainly because I was having such a hard time. I realize I must be sounding like a complete twit, or at least a sissy, especially after the real dangers I had faced in the last few days. Getting into a fist fight at K-Mart. Getting shot in the shoulder and then unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and, finally being held hostage outside a pyramid with a lunatic who thinks he’s the reincarnation of a long-dead pharaoh.
The highlight of the journey, at least for me, was the black sand beach we saw along the way. Strangest thing I had ever seen. But beautiful, too. Almost like going to a beach on another world. I shot plenty more frames of film on that beach, even setting the camera timer a few times to get shots of both Alana and I together.
Finally, after at least five hours of driving, we arrived at the little town of Hana. I, along with the rest of the tourists who had made it this far, was famished. But the only thing in sight offering any nourishment was a tiny ice cream stand. It would have to do. Unfortunately everyone else found this stand, too, and the line was quite long.
Naturally quite a few people were not at all happy about the idea of waiting in this line for an overpriced ice cream cone. I heard more than one person complain bitterly that Hana was a complete and utter letdown. My guess, and I believe this to be an accurate one, is that tourists expect to see the Emerald City of Oz after such a long and tiring journey. Instead they’re greeted by a quaint little town in the middle of nowhere. Then the hard reality hits that you still have another five hours in the car just to get back to your hotel. Thus, the booming market of “I Survived the Road to Hana” T-shirts.
I was sitting there, chocolate ice cream dripping down the back of my hand, when my cell phone rang. How I got reception this far out was beyond my knowledge. It was Wayne, the less pleasant of the two video producers.
“Hi, Poe. Nakia and I were wondering if you ever found the real killer.”
“As a matter if fact we did. It was Xavier.”
“I knew it!” he yelled. Then I heard him say, “You owe me twenty bucks.” I presumed this was to Nakia.
“It’s always the ones you least suspect,” he continued. “I pegged him as a real loon the moment he told us he was the reincarnation of Ramses II.”
Did one really need to hear that to figure that Xavier had a few loose screws? Wasn’t the hieroglyphic tattoo on the forehead and the fact that he lived in a pyramid reason enough?
“So, why did he do it?” Wayne asked.
“I’m sorry Wayne, but I’m about to catch a plane. I’ll have to call you when I land in Virginia.”
“Okay, man, but make sure you call. I’m dying to know the details. If we can’t sell this documentary now, something’s seriously wrong.”
I hung up the phone. Wayne’s initial impression of Xavier had been right, as was my initial impression of Wayne. He was an asshole.
Wayne’s call introduced a subject both of us had managed to avoid all day: Lauren Roger’s murder investigation.
“By the way,” Alana said, “we figured out how Xavier managed to keep his fingerprints off the knife.”
I have to admit, that was the one thing that was driving me crazy. I assume Lauren had mentioned the Five Beers thing to Xavier at one point. Sure, Foxx doesn’t remember telling Lauren about that unfortunate nick-name. But the truth is, I think Foxx secretly likes that name. I’ve heard him mention it a few times when he was drunk.
But the knife was another story. The police had gotten such a good set of prints off the bloody knife in the dumpster. How Xavier had used that knife and not smeared Foxx’s prints was beyond me.
“So how did he do it?” I asked.
“He used two knives. We found a duplicate knife in his home after we searched it. Makes perfect sense. He takes two dinner knives from the art show. One of them, of course, was the one Foxx had been using. Xavier kills Lauren with his knife, then slips it into his pocket. Then by the tip of the blade, he takes the knife Foxx had used earlier and smears Lauren’s blood on it. Then he drops it in a nearby dumpster, knowing it will lead us to the boyfriend who we all saw arguing with the victim less than thirty minutes prior.”
Once again, a mind-blowing mystery was solved with the simplest of explanations. Makes you wonder if all of the mysteries in the universe are that easy once you talk through them.
“I still can’t stop thinking about George,” Alana said. “Was it murder, suicide, an accident? I don’t know why I can’t let it go.”
“Maybe it’s the detective in you, always needing to discover the truth.”
“Doesn’t everyone want to know the truth?” she asked.
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