Twenty Blue Devils

by Aaron Elkins

  Colonel Bertaud had arrived promptly on the stroke of eleven, and with him was the large, bearded gendarme who had surprised them at the graveyard. The two men came down the linoleum-floored hallway, Bertaud's small feet pattering twice for every gallumphing step of his giant assistant's. The colonel was in his dapper uniform, the gendarme in his blue shirt and shorts.

  "Good morning, Nick,” Bertaud said, in the doorway of the cubicle. He nodded civilly to John and Gideon. “Good day, gentlemen. Thank you for—"

  At that moment the rear door of the hut, only a few feet away, burst open and banged against the wall. In the doorway stood Rudy Druett, as pale as death, swaying back and forth, his thin hair disheveled and straggling.

  "I, er, don't feel very well,” he said vaguely.

  Several pairs of well-meaning hands were thrust out toward him, but Rudy, snapping out of his semitrance, was suddenly wild. “I'm all right, I'm all right!” he shouted, pushing them away. “Don't touch me. I don't need any help, I'm fine, I'm fine. He's dead, I killed him. I can't believe it, Nick, I can't make myself—"

  "Rudy,” Nick said forcefully. “Stop raving. Sit down.” He slid a wooden chair to him. Shakily, Rudy sat. The hysteria subsided, leaving him limp. His face was a sickly, glistening gray. Only the blue-black bags under his eyes had any color. Even his eyes were gray, almost colorless, something John had never noticed before.

  "Now collect your thoughts,” Nick told him. “Tell us what happened. Slowly. Who's dead?"

  "Dead?” Rudy said after a second. He was staring straight ahead, as if watching something the others couldn't see.

  "Come on, pull yourself together,” Nick said harshly. “Look at me."

  Rudy raised his eyes obediently. The feverish glare dimmed a little.

  "That's better,” Nick said. “Now. Who's dead?"

  "Tari."

  "Tari!"

  Nick's inadvertent shout made Rudy flinch as if he'd been struck. His hand went to his mouth. “Oh, my God,” he said, “my God..."

  "May I?” Bertaud interceded smoothly, edging an unresisting Nick out of the way. He pulled up another chair and set it across from Rudy's. “My name is Colonel Bertaud. And you are...?"

  The tranquil, beautifully modulated voice had its effect. “Rudy Druett. I—"

  "Very good, Mr. Druett. A glass of water? No? All right, then. Someone is dead, yes?"

  Rudy nodded. “Tari, one of the, the workers. I—I shot him. I had to, you see..."

  "And where did this happen?"

  "In the cabin."

  "In the cabin. And where is the cabin?"

  Nick cut in impatiently. “Right there.” He pointed through the glass panel of the door at a small stone shack about a hundred yards up a path that led up the hill. ‘"Tari's been using it for an office."

  "I killed him,” Rudy said. “I shot him, in the...in the...” He had calmed down under the influence of Bertaud's simple, methodical questioning, but his face was still the color of dust. “Here,” he said at last, touching the side of his head.

  Bertaud glanced at the gendarme and motioned with his chin toward the cabin. “Dumont,” he said.

  Dumont left, his big, bare thighs bunching as he took the path at a heavy trot.

  "Now then,” Bertaud said. “Please explain."

  Rudy ran a hand through his scant, rumpled hair. “I wish everybody would sit down,” he said, abruptly peevish. “You're all looming over me."

  Bertaud waved a hand at the others. Nick and Gideon took chairs off to the sides. John sat on a nearby desk.

  "Explain,” said Bertaud again, with a little more flint in his voice, “Why did you go to the cabin?"

  "I asked him to,” said Nick.

  "Nick, be quiet,” Bertaud said without taking his eyes from Rudy. “Go ahead."

  After a couple of false starts Rudy began to talk, disjointedly at first but then more steadily. The dead, fiat pallor gave way to bright pink patches in his cheeks and at the sides of his throat. He had gone to the cabin, he explained, to have it out with Tari over the discrepancies in the records and to see if, against all odds, Tari could satisfactorily explain them. Tari had been nervous from the moment Rudy had walked in, as if he had sensed that something was up, and his very nervousness, even before they'd begun to talk, had convinced Rudy that there wasn't going to be any satisfactory explanation.

  There wasn't. For the first few minutes Tari had fumblingly tried to talk his way out of trouble, but the discrepancies had been there for them both to see. Tari's manner had grown more desperate by the second, and he had finally reared up in his chair, seized Rudy by the front of his shirt, and begun to slam him against the stone wall in the cabin, shouting “You ain't going to tell nobody!” again and again.

  "And you did what?” Bertaud asked when Rudy seemed to run down.

  "What any sensible person would have done, of course,” Rudy said in a brief stab at sounding more like his old self. “I sacrificed honor to prudence and swore to high heaven that I wouldn't tell a soul.” But he couldn't keep it up. His eyes closed, he slumped in the chair.

  "He looked frightened, not angry, to tell you the truth,” he said, “but he was so excited, so huge, and he was hurting me...my feet were actually off the floor...you can't imagine...my head was banging...” His hand wandered absently to the back of his head and when he took it away there was a smear of drying blood on the palm. He stared at it, open-mouthed. Gideon thought he was going to faint.

  Bertaud took the hand and pressed it down, out of sight. “Continue, please."

  Tari had kept on thumping his head against the wall, Rudy told them, and at some point he must have blacked out because the next thing he knew he was lying crumpled against the base of the wall and Tari, in a frenzy, was rummaging in the top drawer of a cabinet near the door. As Rudy watched in horror, the Tahitian came up with what he was looking for, a long-barreled, old-fashioned revolver...

  "That old Ruger Single-Six,” Nick murmured to himself. “Tari's had it forever."

  "I knew he was going to kill me,” Rudy said with a burst of energy that sat him upright. He looked up fiercely, taking all of them in. “You have to believe that. If it had happened to you, you'd know too. Otherwise I'd never have had the nerve, not in a million years..."

  He had jumped up and stumbled half-consciously across the room, he said, and grabbed frantically at the gun with both hands. The instant he touched it, it went off—

  "Must have had the hammer cocked,” John said.

  "Yes, the hammer, that's right!” Rudy exclaimed, as if this were some vital point. “It makes a little click—I heard it. I think that's what woke me up..."

  "And the bullet struck him?” Bertaud asked.

  "Yes...well, the funny thing is, I thought I was shot at first. It's amazing—I was sure I felt it hit me, I thought I was dying, and Tari was just standing there without moving...but in a second he just—he just fell over—backward, like a big tree falling..."

  A shiver rolled visibly down his body. The energy went out of him once more. He closed his eyes again and didn't open them as he continued. “There's a fireplace with a raised hearth. He hit the back of his head on it. I...heard it crack. He didn't move. When I went to look at him I could see—"

  Dumont came back, huffing from his run. “Dead as a herring,” he said to Bertaud in French. “Gunshot wound in the right temple, blood all over the place, what a mess. I called headquarters. LePeau and his people are on the way."

  "Good. See if Dr. Viennot is available too. He'll want to have a look. Then get this one"—this one was Rudy—"off to the hospital to have his head looked after, and then have Brusseau take his statement."

  "I don't need a hospital,” Rudy said in English. “I'm perfectly fine, all I need is a Band-Aid. I was just a little woozy there for a—"

  The policeman ignored him. “Should I seal the cabin?” he asked Bertaud.

  "No, I'll take care of it. I want to go and see for myself."

&nb
sp; Dumont left, hauling a querulous, weakly protesting Rudy with him.

  Bertaud opened the back door, then hesitated. “Mr. Lau, Dr. Oliver—if you would care to see the scene...?"

  They both answered at once.

  "Sure,” John said.

  "Good God, no!” said Gideon.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 25

  * * * *

  "Sorry, I just don't buy it,” Gideon said with a shake of his head. “I just feel there has to be more to it than that."

  "Interconnected monkey business?” John said, munching peanuts. John too had heard Abe discourse on the subject.

  "That's right. There's too much going on, John. Brian's murder figures in here somewhere."

  John scooped up another handful of nuts from a bowl on the bar and popped some into his mouth. “What happened to that other law you're always spouting off about—the one about how you're not supposed to make anything more complicated than it has to be?"

  "Occam's razor, the law of parsimony,” Gideon said “Economy of assumptions. Choose the simplest explanation that's consistent with the data."

  "Right, makes sense, so why go out of your way to assume there's some mysterious connection to Brian when you don't have to?"

  Gideon sipped from his glass of Chablis. “Then what's your explanation?"

  "Of what? When Brian got killed Tari figured that was his chance to get away with a little skimming, but he got greedy—or stupid—he got caught with his hand in the till, he panicked—and he wound up dead. What's to explain?"

  "Brian's getting murdered, for starters."

  John sighed. “As far as we know, that's an unrelated issue, Doc. Let's not make things any harder than they are. You know what my boss says about you?"

  "Yes, I know,” Gideon said sourly.

  John waggled his fingers to call for another Hinano. “Economy of assumptions, I like that. Uh-oh, watch out, here she goes again."

  The bartender, one of a pair of Junoesque Tahitians in floral tiaras, bright pareus, and bare feet, used a hammer to whack a mounted pair of cymbals at the center of the circular bar.

  "BOOM-BOOM!” she bellowed as the reverberations died away.

  "That's three times in three minutes,” Gideon said, his head ringing. “Maybe we ought to move away from the bar. What do you say to the terrace?"

  "Amen,” said John, picking up his glass.

  After the wild scene in Nick's office they had not managed to get together again until almost five in the afternoon. They had gone to the Shangri-La's bar to talk things out undisturbed, only to find the place jammed. Thursday, it seemed, was half-price-happy-hour day, and the bar was packed with locals, mostly couples consisting of merry, matronly, spreading Tahitian women and their lean, aging French husbands, lined, taciturn men who smoked their cigarettes down to quarter-inch stubs and concentrated on getting quietly sloshed.

  The specialty drink of the day, at only 100 French Pacific francs, was Boom-Booms, every order of which was accompanied by a ceremonial clash of cymbals and the full-throated cry of “Boom-Boom!” Out of curiosity Gideon had asked one of the bartenders what went into one and listened appalled as he was told: light rum, dark rum, brandy, vodka, curacao, mango juice, papaya juice, passion fruit juice. And a sprinkling of grated chocolate on top.

  "Wow, not bad for a buck,” John had murmured, but although he had wavered perceptibly for a few moments he had sensibly stuck with beer.

  The atmosphere on the terrace was more pleasant by far. An afternoon rain squall, still visible to the west, had swept through a few minutes before, bringing out the perfume of a hundred different kinds of flowers and leaving the slate paving stones shimmering with reflections from the sky.

  "All right,” Gideon said as they sat themselves at an umbrellaed table, “how do we know that Tari didn't get greedy before Brian died? How do we know it wasn't Tari who killed him to get him out of the way? Or maybe Tari was already skimming, and Brian caught on to him, and Tari murdered him to keep him from telling."

  "No good,” John said. “If Brian found out something like that, how could Tari afford to wait until he went off on his vacation? He would have had to kill him right away, before he had a chance to tell anybody else. The way he tried to do with Rudy."

  "That's true,” Gideon said. “How is Rudy, by the way?'

  "A little shell-shocked, but not too bad. They're keeping him in the hospital overnight to play it safe. I dropped in on him for a while. All he wants to do now is get out of here and go back to Whidbey Island where it's nice and quiet."

  "You can't blame him for that."

  "No.” He moved his bottle of Hinano from place to place on the table, leaving interlocking rings of moisture. “Listen, there's something else I want to say about Tari. This is a guy I got to know pretty well over the years, and I always thought he was okay. Yeah, I can see him, you know, yielding to temptation and maybe skimming a little off the top, I can see him panicking when he got caught, I can see him flying off the handle, I can even see him losing it altogether and trying to blow Rudy away—but cold-blooded, premeditated murder? Uh-uh, I just don't see him sneaking up on Brian and slitting his throat."

  After a few seconds he added: “Let alone being in on all those other goofy ‘accidents.’ It just wasn't his style, the poor bastard."

  "You're probably right” Gideon sipped his wine and watched the gray, slanting threads of the retreating squall roil a patch of ocean, heading for Moorea. “Besides, we know he wasn't in on those accidents. Not the one with the jeep, anyway."

  John frowned. “How do we ‘know'?"

  "Because he wouldn't have been dumb enough to be right there in the jeep with Brian when it went over the side. He almost got killed himself."

  "That's a good point, Doc. I forgot all about that."

  "Afternoon, gents.” It was Dean Parks, convivial host. “Thought I'd let you know the Leaky Tiki's about to embark on the evening sunset cruise. All aboard that's going aboard. Real peaceful-like, why don't you give it a try?"

  John and Gideon looked at each other. “Why not?"

  * * * *

  Peaceful the Leaky Tiki wasn't. Essentially an awninged platform mounted on two large outrigger shells, it included a bar that continued to dispense Boom-Booms (happily, without the cymbals), and although the Frenchmen merely sank into a deeper gloom, their wives got louder and more talkative, and a contingent of soused Chileans chimed in with a jolly medley of South American songs of death, betrayal, and revenge.

  Still, Gideon and John found a relatively quiet place at the rear, sitting at the edge of the platform with their legs dangling, their feet not quite touching the water. From there, with their backs to the others, they sat looking out on a scene so gorgeous that it drowned out the hubbub behind them. They were putt-putting slowly through the lagoon in water that varied, depending on its depth, from bright, pure yellow to green, to aquamarine, to vivid, almost purple indigo. When they looked down they could see schools of small striped fish, yellow and purple and red, wheeling in a body through the clear water. And always in the distance, the strange, moonscape-silhouette of Moorea, with the sun abruptly disappearing behind the tallest peaks so that an incredibly colored sunset suddenly flared as if someone had just flung open the door to a colossal blast furnace.

  It was only when the spectacular display began to dim a few minutes later that John spoke.

  "I've been thinking about Brian."

  "Mm.” Gideon was still off somewhere behind the mountains of Moorea.

  "I made some phone calls about him this afternoon."

  "Phone calls,” repeated Gideon, watching the last of the colors fade quickly to rose and then to mauve.

  "Yeah, come on, wake up, will you? I was trying to do your work for you."

  "My work?” Gideon echoed, but he had drifted back to the real world now. He picked up his wine glass to take a sip but found it empty.

  "I was trying to see if I could find out a
bout his face and that weird tibia of his."

  "Fibula."

  "Fibula,” John allowed good-humoredly. “So I looked up his doctor to see what he had to say."

  "Good idea, I should have done it myself. What did he say?"

  "Nothing. There wasn't any doctor. Brian didn't have one, he never went for checkups or anything like that."

  "He broke his arm, he must have gone somewhere."

  "To the emergency room at the hospital. And that's where he went back to have it looked after.” His meaningful look implied that this was somehow significant.

  Gideon frowned back at him. “Well, that's interesting, but I don't—"

  "So then I tried his dentist—you know, maybe he'd know something about the damage to his face?"

  "And?"

  "Guess."

  It took a moment for Gideon to see where he was heading. “No dentist?"

  "No dentist."

  "You're telling me that in five years he never once went to a dentist, never once had his teeth checked?"

  "Not exactly. He went to this old Frenchman, about ninety, a real old-fashioned dentist who lives way down in Vairao on Tahiti Iti, who treats the natives around there. Officially, he's been retired for thirty years so he's not supposed to, but the authorities look the other way. And that's who Brian used."

  "Even so, some of that maxillary damage must have shown up on his dental X rays—"

  "What dental X rays? I told you, this guy's old-fashioned. And he only saw Brian three times. He says he never noticed a thing, Brian had real nice teeth, good healthy enamel."

  "No doctor, no dentist,” Gideon said thoughtfully. He had his legs drawn up now, his arms around his knees. “Why didn't you mention it before?"

  "I didn't think it was worth talking about—I mean, it didn't get me anywhere, did it?” His face was hard to see in the oncoming night, but he seemed to be studying the wake of the boat, now a curving double trail, phosphorescent in the dimness. “But I tell you, Doc, the more I think about it, the funnier it gets. It's almost as if..."

  Almost as if Brian had been purposefully and persistently trying to render himself nonexistent as far as any kind of paper trail was concerned. There were no doctor's records, no dentist's records. There were no employment or income forms because Brian's shares in Paradise were in Therese's name. There was no marriage certificate because he and Therese had never married. There was no passport or travel documentation because he had never left French Polynesia after taking that “honeymoon” trip to Hawaii with Therese five years earlier, in all this time Raiatea had been as far as he'd ever gotten from the island of Tahiti.