Killed in Kruger

by Denise M. Hartman

  “Uh, huh, me love you too.”

  “Why don’t you hop a plane and come over here? You could help me. You’ve got a good eye for photos.”

  “Don’t, Tab, no. We’ve covered this. Besides the cost, I’ve got to do my job here.”

  “I think I could get Aunt Rose to spring for it from the insurance policy, so you could help me.” Tabitha held out hope despite Jeffrey’s words. She was lonely and it would be good to see him.

  “I can’t leave.”

  “You won’t leave.” She pouted for no one to see.

  “I’m trying to take your job seriously, even though you think you’ve got to go halfway around the world to prove something. Can you please take mine as seriously?” He lowered his voice.

  “I do take your job seriously, and I’m not trying to prove anything.” This piqued her. “I’m trying to go to the next level in my work. You get paid time off at yours—I think they call it va-ca-tion.”

  “Tab.” He sighed loudly. “I can tell you about all my presentations and projects but that’s not the point. What is it that you want from me? What is it you want? I need you to respect what I’m doing here too. I’m hanging up now.” He did hang up.

  Tabitha turned and leaned her back against the phone. She gulped air and refused to cry. What was it she wanted? She saw Daniel cross the camp compound to the office. He only saw his family a few days a month, for a job that wasn’t even what he’d trained for. What a spoiled brat American she was. She rubbed her wrist across her eyes. This was silly. Stop it.

  She still had fears about making a permanent decision like marriage, but no one she could imagine suited her better than Jeff. They’d certainly been having it out lately. She looked at the beeping receiver, then klunked it back into the cradle. Rian Minnaar flashed into her mind uninvited. He and Jeffrey were so different. Jeff was cool and collected. She got the feeling Rian had an impulsive side. Rian was a complication she didn’t need. She needed his help and her vanity enjoyed his flattery, but she should run.

  Twenty minutes later, she pulled the bakkie up to the front of the camp and Daniel trotted across the dried lawn from the office. She scooted from the right to the left side so Daniel could take up the driver’s seat. The pocket of her khaki slacks caught on the gearshift and she heard the telltale sound of fabric ripping before she could free it.

  “No!” she said aloud for no one to hear but herself. She was down to two clean pairs of pants. She looked down and saw that the pocket had pulled away from the seam a little, but a safety pin should salvage them.

  Daniel drove to a nearby dammed area that looked like a pond to Tabitha. Birds burst from the underbrush and hung onto leafless trees awaiting their October spring foliage.

  Tabitha pulled an 80-200mm zoom out to attach to the camera and shot contentedly for a few minutes. She heard a deep chuckle from Daniel. She looked up and he pointed.

  A family of hippos cavorted on the far bank, with two young animals performing mock attacks. They plunged into the water before Tabitha could get the lens fixed on them. Missed a good one again. She shook her head and set the camera in her lap.

  “So if my uncle has really been shot, who could it be? What are the possibilities, do you think?”

  “Yes, I too have been thinking on this thing.”

  Tabitha was growing accustomed to Daniel’s long pauses. Silence did not make him uncomfortable. She picked up the camera and fired off a few more frames on the roll. A crocodile rose ominously from the water and dragged itself onto the gravel nearby for a sunbath.

  “I think that this could be many things. None of which bring me pleasure. If the criminals have come to the park, I would guess there to be many more such incidents. You see?”

  Tabitha nodded. Yikes.

  “It is possible. Or perhaps your uncle came upon some poachers. Poaching within the park carries a very heavy penalty under the law. The more pressure the authorities bring to bear upon them, the more desperate and violent the poachers become. There have been stories of game wardens meting out their own cruel form of justice instead of taking the poachers to the police.”

  “You mean, that it’s almost better for them to have it out with the game wardens?”

  “Sometimes the system is corrupt in my country. If a corrupt warden finds them, they are in trouble. If a corrupt police constable has them, they could be in danger. You know, we don’t like this aspect of our land, and we are working hard to change it, but these things do happen.”

  “So a poacher would shoot to kill.”

  “Yes, it is possible.”

  “What about the illegal immigrants? Could they be violent?”

  “They are often poor and suffering from malaria. I doubt they would pose much risk. A news report stated that car thieves have used the park as a conduit, taking the vehicles into Mozambique.”

  “But you would think they would have taken the bakkie, rather than leave it where my uncle was killed.”

  Daniel rubbed his chin. “Unless the person was alone and couldn’t drive the two vehicles.”

  They were quiet for a moment. Tabitha heard the snorting and honking of the hippos across the way. She stared.

  “Does the crime ever overwhelm you? I mean this is your job here, and you’re describing all these rough things.” Shouldn’t There shouldn’tHow could be so many types of bad guys exist to choose from? It wasn’t right,, Tabitha thought.

  “Oh, oh, oh. When you know nothing else, you simply live with what God has given you. It is not so bad. I am telling all the bad things in one long story, but I have not encountered these things much.”

  “Are those all the options?”

  He hesitated and Tabitha listened to the quiet sounds of the wildlife. Small birds splashed in a little pool near where the truck was parked. Daniel would talk in his own time.

  “Before the elections,” he spoke slowly, “rumors spread of meetings of the broderbond in the park, but I don’t think…”

  “Hold on, what is the brother what?”

  “I don’t know if it is fair to say this, but they were some of the elite Afrikaners that ruled many things from the shadows during the oppression. I am thinking they are not so powerful now. I don’t see what sort of danger a white man in a truck could pose to them.” He started the engine and pulled onto the asphalt road.

  “Like the Ku Klux Klan in the United States?”

  “I suppose. The broderbond has been very political, though.”

  “Don’t forget the missing film. If the missing film is more than an idle robbery, then it could have some bearing on whoever felt like they had to kill him. I wish there was a way to find it, or the person who has the thermal film bags now.”

  “This is highly unlikely.”

  Tabitha shrugged. No one seemed to want an answer the way she did.

  They traveled in silence for some time, each lost in separate trains of thought. Tabitha, for some reason, didn’t see her uncle encountering a secret meeting of the broderbond and being left to die in the savannah. The idea of poachers or criminals in the act of something illegal seemed more likely; however, her experience of South Africa simply told her their culture remained a mystery to her, no matter how much she had studied and read. She wanted to know what had happened to Phillip, though. She had to find out something to give each of them some peace.

  “What about human trafficking?”

  Daniel raised his eyebrows high. “I heard a rumor that the park has been used as a transfer point. I’m thinking there is no evidence, or we would have had a memo from the offices to watch for something. Why?”

  “My uncle asked Elizabeth from the Schopenhauer Factor about it. He…” she swallowed and corrected her word, “…was very single-minded about nature photography. It’s not like him.”

  “These people would be dangerous and desperate. They prey upon the helpless, but would need to protect their horrible work from notice.”

  A row of cars on the side of the road ahead bec
koned them to an animal sighting. Daniel pointed as he pulled into the line of cars.

  Tabitha adjusted the binoculars, scanning a tree just off the road. A heavy branch harbored a leopard with a pooching belly. A strand of intestines dangled from the remains of a half-eaten impala perched precariously in a crook of the tree. She shuddered. The park was not an easy place, dead or alive, she thought.

  Chapter 32

  “You’ve given me cause to doubt your faithfulness,” Pieter said, squinting at the stars shining above the camp.

  Johanne watched him, then reached for another piece of wood for the fire. “What do you mean, baas?”

  “I get the feeling you and Mhlongo think you could do better. Perhaps you feel you aren’t being paid handsomely enough.” His voice was quiet. Johanne would prefer him screaming. This was unsettling. How could he possibly know anything? The man was like a witch doctor, divining things from thin air.

  Johanne stirred the fire with the log in his hand. “Man, I don’t know what you mean. Maybe Mhlongo feels that way but…” He felt a foot on his back and the pressure as Pieter pushed him into the fire. He caught himself on the log, but his left hand pressed down into the coals to keep from falling. The pain shot up his arm. White hot pain. He screamed and rolled to the dirt beside the fire. Pieter towered over him, looking down. Johanne moaned, holding his hand.

  “You need to pay attention to what you’re doing. That’s what I pay you for.” Pieter turned and marched off to his tent.

  Chapter 33

  Johanne tiptoed up behind Mhlongo. The dry bush cracked, giving him away. Mhlongo spun and squinted at him, hand on the knife at his hip.

  “Just testing your instincts,” Johanne said, slapping Mhlongo on the back. “I got what you wanted, but it cost me this.” He waved his bandaged left hand in Mhlongo’s face. “He pushed me into the fire.”

  “He caught you?”

  “No. Do you think I’m an imbecile? He suspected we were up to something. Did you tell?”

  Mhlongo made a sound of disgust. Shaking his head, he said, “If you got Pieter on your case, maybe I should kill you to get in his good graces.”

  “Maybe I ought to burn the names of the precious contacts rather than give them to you.” Johanne rolled the fingers of his good hand into a fist.

  Mhlongo took a seat on a log near a dead fire. “Give me the numbers.”

  “What do I get?”

  “Half.”

  “Of everything? Agreed.” Glad to be rid of the evidence that Pieter might search for, Johanne handed him the piece of paper. He wiped his dusty hands on his green uniform pants. “How will we pay for transport, though, on our own?”

  Mhlongo waved a hand, shooing away the problem. “I’ve got other things to think on right now. That woman is interfering.”

  “The American?”

  Mhlongo nodded. “She’s asking about people moving.”

  “She can’t know anything, though. Who’d she ask?”

  “The Schopenhauer woman.”

  “Other than being idiots, they can’t have any information.”

  “No, you’re right. It’s the American. She is the one who could put the pieces together from the different people. She makes me uneasy in my spirit. Are you sure you got all the film?”

  “Sure, yeah. It was all in the bags. What’d you do with them?”

  Mhlongo shrugged morosely.

  Johanne ventured a suggestion. “I wouldn’t do anything if I were you. To the American. Pieter will kill you, you know that?”

  “Not if I kill him first,” Mhlongo said.

  Chapter 34

  It was late afternoon when Tabitha dropped Daniel at the Skukuza employee housing and turned the bakkie into the main camp. Mister rippling-with-muscles Rian Minnaar should be waiting. Tabitha warned herself not to pay attention to those muscles.

  Tabitha spotted him as she crossed the grounds between the parking and the Winkel, as the shop was called in Afrikaans. Rian’s blond hair stood out as he talked to the security guards in front of the general goods and food store.

  “Hello,” he said, reaching down to retrieve a plastic bag from the tiled porch. Tabitha’s eyes widened when she saw the photo packets inside the sack.

  She wanted to snatch the bag and run to look at the shots in privacy. Would any of her shots work, and more important, what was on Uncle Phillip’s rolls? She couldn’t explain her reluctance to share Phillip’s last work with Rian. It just suddenly seemed too intimate, and she didn’t want to share the moment. Instead of running off with the photos, she greeted Rian.

  “I’m going to go ‘round to the offices and have a chat with the acting director first thing. Want to come?” Rian asked.

  “So you found out that it was—Uncle Phillip was…?” Tabitha took a step back from the police officer.

  “I agreed with that M fellow at the funeral parlor that it looked to be a hole made by a bullet.”

  “So you think that’s what killed him?” Tabitha asked.

  “It’s likely. I wanted the forensics people to take a look.”

  “That poor man is never going to get to rest in peace.”

  “Well, it’ll be soon enough. Not much left of him, was there?”

  Tabitha nearly gagged, thinking of the impala remains she’d seen in the tree, but managed to keep control. She muttered, “I didn’t look at him.”

  Remembering Rian’s driving, Tabitha offered to drive them around to the office entrance, but Minnaar didn’t want to leave his official vehicle in the lot. Tabitha gripped the dash as he screeched into a spot behind the offices. They made their way into Mpande’s office, which was now a familiar trail for Tabitha. She knew Rian was being generous to let her accompany him, and she would be good and not interfere. Hopefully.

  After everyone settled into the office chairs with greetings and offers of tea, Minnaar took up the story. Tabitha was grateful to be included, but felt a tension in the room as well as in herself.

  “That body you sent out to the undertakers seems to have a bullet hole in it, so I’ll need to do some more looking into it, or someone will. The NIA perhaps.”

  The acting park director looked alarmed. Tabitha asked, sotto voice, “What’s NIA?”

  Both men looked at her, and she felt her intrusion at a tense moment. Mpande licked his lips. “The National Intelligence Agency is a group somewhat like your FBI, but not quite so well equipped.” To Minnaar he said, “I’d rather keep them out of it, if at all possible, Constable. Maybe we can come to an agreement. The park does not want the negative publicity of an NIA investigation. It’s bad for the tourist business, you know. As our director is out of the country now, it would be good to smooth this over quietly. We’ve already had three deaths in two weeks. That’s enough bad publicity for now.”

  “Three?” Rian asked.

  “Yes, we believe there may be a man-eater problem.”

  Tabitha shuddered and looked out the window at the dry brush, the color of wet sand.

  Mpande continued, for her benefit no doubt. “You see, sometimes an animal discovers something new and easier to catch, and it’s almost impossible to arrest their behavior. With the elephants, they discover how wonderful planted corn is from the farmers’ fields, and one can no longer contain them. With the lions, once they discover how easily hunted a man is,” he splayed his hands and shrugged, “There is little we can do to change that. The animal must be destroyed.”

  Images flashed through Tabitha’s mind that she’d rather not imagine. Animals and bodies. She rubbed a hand across her eyes. “But a bullet should change all that. I’d think you’d want everyone to know it isn’t the animals being dangerous.”

  “In the case of your uncle, perhaps. The other cases, however, are clearly death by predation.”

  “But why keep this one quiet?” Tabitha asked.

  “There is much crime here in this country. Thus far, it has not been a large problem in the parks. The occasional theft but not…” he pa
used to choose his words. “Not criminal elements.”

  “I think you call it public relations in your country.” Rian grimaced. The two men stared at each other for a moment. Mpande looked away first. Rian continued. “Let’s see what I can find out before we make any snap judgments. Shall we?”

  Mpande pursed his lips for a moment. “May I rely upon your discretion? You will see me prior to any drastic action, won’t you?”

  Rian nodded.

  Tabitha felt the static of tension snapping the air between the men like a flare.

  Mpande exhaled. “Are you absolutely positive this man was shot?”

  “I’m as certain as I can be until forensics looks. I’m sure he was shot. Whether or not that’s what killed him is another side of the coin altogether.”

  “Even if it is, with crime so high, do you seriously think you could find who did it? That seems a bit far-fetched to me. It seems to me many crimes go unsettled every day. It won’t make a difference,” Mpande said.

  Rian shrugged. “Probably, but I’ll look into it all the same, just to make certain.”

  Tabitha looked back and forth between the men, jaws set, eyes squinting. It was a tension she didn’t understand that went beyond the present circumstances, like a throwback to the days of oppression, but Rian seemed to host a kinder attitude than some of the other Afrikaners she’d encountered. She would never understand all the nuances. She took a deep breath, aware of her intrusion, but not about to hold back. “I want to know what happened to my uncle. It makes a difference to me. I’m well aware we may not be able to catch the person or persons that did this to him. We’ve got to try. It may mean nothing to you, but I need to make sense of what happened.”

  The two men looked at her. Finally, Mpande gave a slight nod and said, “Now that we all understand one another, what can I do?”

  “I need to interview any staff members who were involved with the recovery of the body and who interacted with Mr. Adkins at the camps, and those who cleaned out his room as well. And I’d like to look at the site where he was found.”