Locked-Room Mystery Box Set

by Kim Ekemar

  Gary looked first confused, then agitated at Wayne's departing backside. With amazing agility, he got up and threw himself at Wayne. He put one arm around Wayne's neck and pounded his free fist against his adversary's temple.

  “You can't take what's mine! You can't take what's mine!” he shrieked passionately.

  Porfirio laughed loudly by my side.

  “Well done, Gary!” he yelled, “Teach Wayne a lesson once and for all! He should keep his hands off the spoils you've snitched!”

  I doubt that Gary heard Porfirio. His arms and legs worked as if they were bedeviled in their fruitless attempts to keep Wayne from leaving the cabin. Wayne tried to shake him off his back. Streaks of blood gushed forward where Gary's fingernails fervently clawed his face.

  Wayne filled his lungs with air and bellowed. With a jolt he caused Gary to slide sufficiently over his shoulder to allow a grip around the head of his assailant. Effortlessly, he hurled Gary against the fire-ravaged boards. Gary slipped down the wall and collapsed on the floor. His head came to rest at a peculiar angle against the charred wooden wall. There was a dirt gray imprint where his body had struck.

  While waiting for a renewed attack from Gary, Wayne remained snorting in the middle of the room with his fists closed. Besides the sounds Wayne made, everything was still in the cabin.

  Gary did not move. Porfirio went over to him and knelt, then almost immediately rose.

  “Our friend the squirrel has added a broken neck to his multi-gadget collection”, he declared and turned to face Wayne. ‘Dear Wayne, you do have my boundless admiration as far as your predictably well-balanced behavior goes. Now, how do you figure we shall cross the Atlantic come spring with a crew that you have decimated to near nonexistence?”

  Wayne didn’t answer him. Instead he chewed nervously, which made his scarlet skin rhythmically stretch over his jawbones. He seemed to understand that his conduct had not been particularly foresighted.

  Porfirio continued to make condescending remarks about Wayne's deplorable behavior until Wayne let out a warning growl. Yet he looked defensive because he realized that there was some truth in what Porfirio was saying.

  “After all the trouble you have caused it's only right that you take care of the leftovers, Wayne”, Porfirio continued carelessly. “With the help of our last guest, of course”, he said and pointed at me, “but please do try to keep him alive. We need him for our voyage.”

  Needed for their voyage? I shrunk down on my chair in an attempt to make myself invisible and allowed the words to sink in. Voyage? Would they keep me prisoner on board until the ice melted, and then take me as their slave to the other side of the ocean? What was it Porfirio had said earlier – that I might not be as delicious as Oona, but satisfactory enough for distraction? I was given to Wayne as a consolation prize as long as he kept me alive! Fright pervaded me.

  “Get up!” Porfirio shouted and riveted his disdainful eyes into mine. I bounced to my feet but my nervousness caused me to stumble. Porfirio grabbed my shoulder and pushed me towards Wayne and Gary’s corpse.

  “Wayne, lift him by the head!”

  Wayne reluctantly obeyed Porfirio and got a hold under Gary's shoulders.

  “Grab him by the legs!” he barked at me. “Let's carry him out on deck.”

  The snow was piled high in drifts outside the cabin door, and Wayne dumped Gary on the floor. With some difficulty he pried the door open and again lifted his end of the corpse. Once more I was forced out into the darkness and the tempest that continued to howl with unreduced might. We dropped Gary by the gunwale and went back to the cabin.

  Stuart remained by his table, perfectly untroubled by our toil. He was busy placing soiled playing cards against and upon others in an attempt to build a new house of cards. Porfirio waited in the middle of the room with his left hand in his right armpit. His right hand held the holder with a newly lit cigarillo that insistently bobbed in the direction of Gordon' s body.

  My nervousness and the weight of fat Gordon made the sweat break out everywhere. It poured from my hairline, on my upper lip, in my armpits, on my back, in my crotch. We half lifted, half dragged the body out and laid it next to the snow-powdered Gary. Wayne's forearms were covered with blood from Gordon’s head. When we returned to the cabin he made certain that I went first.

  Stuart had almost finished his house of cards, a masterpiece in its kind. The bottom row was the shortest, and for every new floor he had elongated the structure. There were oriels hanging out on each side, ripped parts had become doors and the remaining pieces had been hung like curtains. Porfirio sucked on his cigarette holder and tore his gaze from Stuart's patient handiwork. He looked at Wayne and me and made two smoke rings.

  “One left”, he said before blowing a third ring.

  With a knot in my stomach I followed Wayne to the small room next to the cabin.

  The woman I had once loved was lying in a pool of blood on the filthy floor. Oona's lifeless eyes stared black and empty back at me. Wayne jostled his way further into the room and managed to bump into the oil lantern. The light from the careening lantern threw grotesque shadows on the dead, and I felt my tears welling up.

  “Lift her up!” Wayne shouted. He kicked Oona's limp head over on one side and turned her over to get a better hold around her torso. I did not dare to disobey. Her legs were cold and stiff, and of all the victims I had helped to carry outside to bury she was the one who weighed the least. She was also the one who had bled most of all. Blood was everywhere on her, and it made both Wayne and me repeatedly lose our grip. I was grateful Wayne had turned her over so I didn’t have to look into her face.

  Wayne lowered Oona on top of Gordon and observed me with a smirk. I pretended not to understand his macabre joke and took great care in putting down her legs next to her murderer. As before Wayne kept behind me until we had entered the cabin.

  Porfirio was not in the cabin when we returned. Wayne started to close the door behind him but did not quite shut it. The same instant Stuart set fire to his finished house of cards and leaned back on his chair with a thin smile on his lips. Dully he watched the fire spread. The revolving door leading to the inner parts of the ships opened and Porfirio appeared with a coil of rope in his hand. It was the rope that Gary had taken from our van. The draught forced the cabin door wide open and the gale made the burning playing cards spin uncontrollably through the room. Stuart watched the fireworks as the cards went out one by one. Half burnt and sooty they scattered over the cabin's chaos.

  “Tck, tck”, Porfirio sighed resignedly, “don't play with fire, Stuart, you know the inconvenience you put us to with your latest conflagration.”

  Stuart studied the dirt under his fingernails.

  “I have a hunch our young visitor no longer is to be trusted”, Porfirio went on without directing his words to anyone in particular. “Hence I believe it best to provide him with a lifeline so he won't get lost on the ice.”

  I realized that he intended to send me off the ship to bury the dead again. Porfirio laid the ends of the rope parallel and hauled the rope until he came to its other end. The midpoint of the rope became a hoop when he made two knots around my waist drawn so hard that it was a struggle for me to breathe. The length of the rope between me and the two ends that Porfirio held in his hand was approximately fifty to sixty yards. Without a knife or some other sharp tool, I wouldn’t be able to free myself from my fetters.

  Dressed in Irving's coat and with an oil lantern held in front of him, Porfirio led the way out on deck. Wayne muttered and dragged the first body into an upright position. Porfirio goaded me to help by tugging the rope. I had no choice.

  Porfirio held the lantern over the gunwale to find the hole that I had made earlier. It was impossible to see past the immense snowflakes that reflected the light from the lantern.

  “Well, never mind!” he shouted to me across the inferno of the storm. “You’ll have to find the burial spot to the best of your ability. Toss them overboard
!”

  We seized Oona, swung her back and forth, and then slung her out into the embrace of the furiously falling flakes. There was a soft sound when she landed on the ice. Shivering, I continued to help Wayne with the two dead men. Gordon was the most awkward to handle. The snow that had melted on the still warm carcass made it cumbersome and slippery. It took us, despite Porfirio's help, a long spell before we could slip it over the ship's side.

  Wayne wiped his hands on his clothes and disappeared back to the warmth in the cabin. Porfirio coerced me down the ladder.

  I was freezing and nauseous, felt feeble from lack of food and sleep, and was exhausted from burying the bodies beneath the ice. Nevertheless, I obeyed Porfirio without a second thought. I began the climb down to the darkness and the dead. The rope around my waist restrained my movements. Porfirio continuously gave me more rope as I approached the ice. Halfway down I looked up and saw his face hideously illuminated by the oil lantern that he held outstretched over the rope ladder. He had turned up the fur collar of Irving's coat and it reached to his ears. I’m not sure, but I think he smiled.

  The storm continued with undiminished force, causing the snowflakes to dance madly over the huge drifts piled around the ship. Porfirio gave me more rope when I tugged at it and allowed me to jump from the end of the ladder. I landed headlong in the soft snow, closed my eyes and began to drift into unconsciousness. All the evil that had occurred faded as my mental and physical fatigue engulfed me. My only wish was to be obliterated by sleep, vanish into complete oblivion, to be overpowered …

  A sharp tug at the other end of the rope brutally forced me back to reality. Porfirio insisted that I should carry on with my task. The dead had to be removed. I pulled myself out of the snow and crawled about in the drifts on my hands and knees until I found the corpses. After I had determined their positions, aided by Porfirio's lantern, I crawled along the hull in the direction where I believed I had cut through the ice. Porfirio steadily let out more rope but was careful to always be in command of my movements.

  To me the search felt eternal before I finally found the hole, yet it cannot have taken more than a quarter of an hour. Finding my way, I almost fell through the thin sheet of ice that had formed during the night. By now my body had been transformed into an icicle that somewhere deep within had a heart pounding to keep me alive. The swinging lantern Porfirio held out into the night was the lighthouse by which I oriented my way back to the site of the corpses.

  It was an onerous task to drag body after body through the drifts and shove them into the hole in the ice. Gordon’s was the last, and it was a greater toll on my depleted strength than the other two together. All this time I was kept aware that the hands of Porfirio mastered me. They held the lantern that twinkled in the storm as a beacon for my activities, and they let go or pulled back the rope that restricted my range.

  Exhausted to my limits I jerked at the rope to let on that I wanted to come aboard again – my reward for having buried the assassins and their victims. I did not have to beg twice. With an eagerness that surprised me, Porfirio pulled his ends of the rope. I stumbled through the drifts and reached the rope ladder. For the third time in my life I climbed the ship's hull, but this time I had no choice.

  February 27, 1973

  Transcript from the police interrogation of Paul Crimson, taped on March 2, 1973 (cont.)

  Lorena sat in the corner where she could look through the window facing the street with a slight turn of her head. It was her favorite place when she wasn’t watching TV. I suppose she wanted to keep track of the comings and goings on the street. She could also see our neighbor’s house from that position.

  I was sitting perhaps twelve feet from her. She never bothered to look at me. Instead she occasionally glanced through the window, and suddenly there was something in the street that caught her interest.

  “Xavier has been held up by Dan’s boss”, she unexpectedly volunteered as she studied the scene outside. “This will be amusing; they are both impatient men – especially Xavier when he’s anxious about something. I know, I fought by his side in the guerrilla forces. I’ll tell you about it sometime. Now he’s pushing Mr. Rawlins out of his way. Rawlins shouts something after him. Now Rawlins comes this way.”

  I don’t know why, after months of ignoring me, she suddenly became talkative. Perhaps because I was defenseless. Or perhaps because she knew Xavier was going to deal with me violently when he came back. I dreaded how he would deal with me after having watched him strike down Mr. Pringle.

  A moment later the doorbell rang out. Lorena didn’t move. Instead she continued to place the cards in front of her. The doorbell sounded repeatedly. Lorena went up and closed the door to the hallway “in case I would get the wrong idea and scream”, as she informed me. She drew the curtains of the living room windows and the room became dark but for the soft yellow light from the candles. She sat down and continued her solitaire. The ringing was enervating. I didn’t dare to scream in fear that Lorena would use the gun on me. Eventually Rawlins stopped pushing the doorbell. A few moments later there was a faint knocking on the windowpane softened by the thick curtains. I guess he had seen the candlelight coming up the street. Lorena glanced at me warningly and continued putting down cards. The gun lay on the table next to her. The room was very hot. I was sweating profusely.

  The tapping on the window ceased. Except for the rustle of the cards we spent the next ten minutes in silence. By gently tugging the rope that tied me to the chair I tried to find some slack. As I moved I lost balance. The rickety chair turned over and left me helplessly immobile on the floor. Lorena looked up from the cards and tut-tutted at me. Then she began to talk in a dreamily fashion. I had never heard her speak so much at one time to anybody. Suddenly the words kept flowing and there was no end to them.

  “Don’t do anything you’ll regret”, she began, “Xavier will only be harder on you. You know why he was in a hurry? There is a shipment of merca coming in on board a ship. If you didn’t know, in Colombia that’s what we call pure cocaine. It has been delayed for a week because of the foul weather, and Xavier’s been very tense about the situation.”

  “And Vicente - is he dead?” I asked her.

  Lorena let out a joyless chortle. “No, unfortunately not, he’s still around. He’s gone to New York to set up the sale.” Then she stopped and looked at me in a strange way. ‘You understand why I’m telling you this, don’t you? Xavier will take care of you, you’re disposable, and you have been a nuisance ever since you arrived. He doesn’t like the way you’re nosing around his sister.” She laughed dryly. “Sweet Inocencia – if you only knew. She was helping the guerrillas with food and transport because Xavier obliged her. She was young then, but after the police killed their parents she was easily convinced that it was right to fight against the oppressive dictatorship. She was beautiful also back then, of course, and there were plenty of freedom fighters that wanted her in their beds. But she was respected because she was the sister of Xavier. No one dared to touch her until one day the soldiers raided a safe house outside Bogotá. The troops raped her, of course, they raped any woman they caught helping the guerrillas. I was there in the house when it happened, and I was raped, too.”

  She said this evenly without a trace of bitterness.

  “I was violated by two of them”, she continued. “Inocencia was raped by fourteen men. There was blood everywhere. The four men we had been hiding had been either shot or knifed. The sheets of the bed where they had pushed down Inocencia were soaked in blood. Finally, the soldiers ransacked the house for whatever they could find of value, and satisfied in every sense they left. For some reason we were allowed to live. Perhaps they didn’t find women threatening.

  “When Xavier received the news of what had happened to us he went into a blind rage. He immediately arrived to interview me about the soldiers and insisted on hearing the slightest detail about them. I told him everything I had observed. It wasn’t hard because it was still fre
sh on my mind. I was too ugly and few of them wanted me. No, like patient dogs they all waited for their turn with beautiful Inocencia. I sat there huddled in a corner and watched the brutal beasts as they laughed and threw themselves on top of her. Every detail about them was burnt into my memory where they will remain forever. So, yes, of course I could furnish Xavier with what he needed. Then he hunted down them down, killed them, and stuffed their testicles down their throats.”

  Lorena said all this flatly without any display of emotion. I was confused about why she was telling me all this. I didn’t want to be let in on confidential information from her past. The implications scared the hell out of me.

  “As soon as Inocencia had recovered, Xavier arranged for us to travel to the US”, she continued. “He gave me very strict orders to stay by her side at all times. Well, of course it wasn’t long before men began to circle around Inocencia like flies around a lump of sugar. During the first time we stayed with family of theirs in Miami. They arranged for us to go to Boston. In Boston Inocencia eventually met Dan; big, boring, bookish, the opposite of all the brutal men Colombia is so full of. I think the only reason Xavier approved of him, though, was when he learnt the fact of his impotency. I know that Inocencia didn’t mind it when they married - she had had her fill for years to come. She wanted someone strong and protective, and Dan’s sexual incapacity suited her perfectly. We moved into this house in Harbor together, because Inocencia insisted I should live with them. Not a bad life really, but a duller place is difficult to find. Just the kind of uneventful town and life that Inocencia wanted for herself.

  “The quiet life attracted her for a few years. Then her past became fainter and she began to overcome her phobia about sex. Her appetites returned, you might say. I know, because I was her sister in tragedy so she shares everything with me. Everybody seems to think I’m just the McPhersons’ maid, but I’m really the only permanent link Inocencia has to what she loved in our country. So she turned to our jolly fat neighbor, close at hand, easy to be discreet about, and me here to warn her if Dan or some curious villager comes nosing. You didn’t know?”