Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  “Then that is an excellent suggestion,” Cobb replied. “Where are they, precisely?”

  “All over. This vessel has one hundred and six.”

  “Wonderful,” Patria said.

  “Where do you suggest we start?” Cobb asked drily.

  “I think we could assume he did not want to put his items anywhere they might get wet?”

  “Good thinking,” They waited.

  “That eliminates the panels in the bilge. Leaving bow and cargo bay.”

  “Yes?”

  “Say thirty of them. We could start in the cargo bay?”

  They examined a dozen of the panels, but rust had sealed them all: they had not been used recently. They walked through the dark ship again, listening to their footsteps.

  Finally, they stood in a cramped chamber near the bow. Shafton suggested moving a large carton stowed against the bulkhead and pointed out the plate screwed into the wall.

  There was no sign of rust.

  “Swiss Army to the rescue,” Chazz said, producing his pocketknife. Soon the panel was resting on top of the carton, and Cobb Takamura was removing a cloth bundle from its hiding place.

  “Shine the light here,” Cobb said. Inside the bundle was a common mason jar, tied with thick manila rope, sealed with red wax. The contents, visible through the webbing of rope, were a coarse grayish powder.

  “Bingo,” Patria said. “The ropes are tied in a pattern of voudun binding, the powder will be animal and possibly plant extracts. Animals may include the marine toad, and I would bet some dried blowfish.”

  “This is the killing powder?” Takamura asked, holding up the jar carefully, wrapped in its burlap cover. “There may be fingerprints. I think we should take this to your lab, Chazz, and get an analysis as soon as possible. The jar should go to our fingerprint people.”

  “In that case, I think I’ll go back to the condo and check on Orli,” Patria said. “Kimiko’s had long enough on child-care duty.”

  “All right.” Cobb turned to Shafton. “Commander, I thank you. This was a great help.”

  Commander Shafton was as surprised as anyone by this sudden appreciation and for a moment the thin line of his lips parted into a smile.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  NIGHT MUSIC

  The man called Baka stood in the darkness in the town of Kapaa and looked without expression at the building at the end of the street.

  The lights were still on in the corner condo. He had been watching for three hours, since dusk. His mind was a mist of faint thoughts related to hunger, bladder, insects. He had no past and no future.

  A car turned the corner by the Kwik Mart. The headlights swept across him and moved on. He did not blink. As it drove by, he could see the woman at the wheel. Short black hair, a lovely, intense face. She stopped in front of the apartment complex and got out. She locked the car and opened the wrought iron gate. Inside she turned and locked the gate behind her. It all happened as Baka watched in a kind of jagged step-frame animation, short bursts of movement punctuated by moments of suspended action.

  Patria hurried inside. She was spooked by the search of the ship, the hollow sounds of their footsteps echoed in her ears, the play of flashlight beams across sweating bulkheads and streaks of rust. She saw images of Kimiko’s journey through the death ship, all those bodies. She saw the powder, a sluggish gray evil in the jar wrapped in rope.

  When she opened the door, Kimiko was standing by the living room phone, her slender fingers resting on the receiver, a puzzled frown between her fine black eyebrows.

  “What is it? Is Orli all right?”

  “Orli’s fine, but the phone isn’t working.”

  “Isn’t working? You mean you can’t dial out, circuits are busy?”

  “It’s dead.” Kimiko gave Patria a quick smile. “I’m sure they’ll have it fixed soon.”

  “We should try the neighbor’s.” Patria stuck her head into the bedroom where Orli slept. The child’s dark head was peaceful, her breathing regular. Her thumb was in her mouth, and from time to time her lips worked at it.

  “I did.”

  Patria turned. Something in Kimiko¦s voice alarmed her. “I’m a little spooked,” she said. “The ship was… weird. We found some stuff, voudun paraphernalia. Someone killed all those people, Kimiko. So tell me.”

  “The neighbors aren’t in. No one is.”

  “Well, the county owns these apartments. Maybe they aren’t being used right now.”

  “They were earlier tonight. Both units beside us. The one upstairs looked like it was empty, but the other two… That Filipino couple was in 2B and an older man in 2A. You saw them.”

  “Yeah. I saw them. They were here to testify in an INS case. Something about their nephew. I don’t know about the old guy. I saw him in the morning yesterday, that’s all.”

  “He was here this afternoon. Said hello when he went inside. I didn’t see him leave, but he isn’t there.”

  They looked at one another for a moment.

  “Look…,” they both began. They laughed then, but the laugh was short.

  “This is silly,” Patria said. “We’re just spooked. It’s nothing. Dead phone, that’s all.”

  Kimiko nodded. “Right,” she said. “It’s nothing. We experience fear. We would say, Un wa yūsha wo tasaku! Fate assists the courageous.”

  Patria smiled. “In that case, I’m just going to go check the gate. I can’t remember if I locked it or not. Lock the door behind me. Don’t let anyone else in. I hope this isn’t just stupid panic, after all.” She thought for a moment. “Actually, I hope this is just stupid panic. And not something else.”

  She heard the lock click behind her as she went down the steps. A stucco wall surrounded the front courtyard broken only by the wrought iron gate. The wall was high, but a determined man could get over. Or a determined woman, for that matter. There was no barbed wire or broken glass on top. She checked the gate. It was locked.

  A street lamp twenty feet away cast a pale light over the front of her parked car. The street was deserted.

  She shrugged and went down the service alley between the building and the wall to the backyard. Frangipani and plumeria scent filled the night air. There was no moon, and it was very dark. She banged against one of the trashcans and stooped quickly to stop the clattering of the lid on the cement.

  Jean-Marie sat in the driver’s seat of Vincent Meissner’s rental. A half-eaten MacDonald’s hamburger lay in its plastic case in his lap. He was drinking beer from the bottle when he heard the clatter that quickly stopped. He turned to the other man in the car and grinned. His teeth gleamed, reflecting distant light from the street lamp.

  “They discovered the phone,” he said softly in French.

  His companion grunted. “Where’s the man?” he asked. He was slouched in his seat, head back against the rest. His eyes were closed. “The one we left for dead in Raïatéa?”

  “Didn’t die, did he? He should have come home with the woman. It doesn’t matter though. Where she is, he will follow. All we have to do is wait.”

  Patria looked up at the apartment windows from the back garden. Foliage reached nearly to the sill a couple of feet above her head. It would not be easy to reach from here, but not impossible either. Perhaps they could balance something inside the window, a little surprise. It would slow attackers, but it wouldn’t stop them.

  The second set of apartments was across a small breezeway. Apartments 2A and 2B were dark She thought of climbing the wall and trying to reach the neighboring complex on the other side, but dropped the idea. If someone was waiting out there, he would be on the other side of the high wooden wall, watching the back.

  She crept along the breezeway toward the front. The wooden grid overhead cast oblong shadows on the exposed aggregate walk. A little light reflected off the side of the building from the street and the stars were all she had to see by.

  She heard a rustling sound, as if someone were pushing through the ornamental shru
bbery in front of the second units. She pushed herself back against the wall and edged sideways, feeling foolish. It was probably just someone’s cat.

  The rustling stopped. Her ears pounded, filled with a roaring she realized was her own fear. She shook her head. Foolish. But she did not move.

  The silence went on. In the distance a car started up. A little later a dog barked. The stars glittered faintly overhead, visible through the breezeway grid. Her ears sang with tension.

  Baka, who had been Vincent, walked slowly down the sidewalk. Soon he was standing beside the wall. There were plants growing there. The wall was rough under his palms. He looked up into the tangled branches of a tree. He felt, dimly, that there was something he should be doing, something important, but he could not remember what it was. Finally, he moved to his left, around the wall. In the back it met a fence that shot out across a field, an orchard, filled with tulip-shaped trees in neat lines. He thought he knew that these were papaya trees. Yes, they were papaya trees. There were papayas at their tops, clustered in the center of the spray of leaves.

  Papayas were good to eat. He knew that. He thought he should eat something; it had been a long time since he had something to eat. He could not remember eating, ever. But he could not remember much of anything. Only the dark man’s face, with the funny tufts of cotton in his nose. But the man was not funny, and Baka almost made a sound deep in his throat. Almost.

  He went along the fence for a while, looking at the trees. Their leaves tossed gently in the night breeze, making a rustling sound, like music. Night music.

  Wistfully he looked at them as he turned back toward the condos. He knew what he had to do. The dark man had told him.

  Patria heard nothing. She moved forward, put her head cautiously around the corner of 2A. There was nothing. She slumped against the wall and took a deep breath. The perfume of the flowers was almost nauseating. After a moment, she continued her tour.

  She tried the front door of 2B. It was locked. She could see the dimly lit outlines of furniture through the window beside the door— the round generic dining table, four chairs, a pullout sofa bed. Beyond were the sliding glass doors to the lanai. The curtains were drawn. The Filipino couple had locked up and moved out.

  She went up the outside stairs and tried the door to the old man’s apartment. It was locked as well. For a moment, she thought she saw something moving inside and was about to call out when she realized it was the curtain blowing by the lanai. He had not closed the sliding doors. His lanai was on the second story and would be easy to reach.

  She took a last look inside, thinking that it might be a good idea to move over here if she could climb to the lanai and unlock the door. Perhaps there would be a way to do it from the back.

  She was in the alley between the other set of condos and the wall, beyond which she knew was an extensive papaya orchard, when she heard the scream.

  “Orli!” She ran to the front and collided with someone in the dark. “My God,” she gasped as strong hands closed around her throat. She struggled for a moment in the large man’s grip.

  Kimiko backed away in horror. The man looked at her out of empty eyes, and it was the void in those eyes that horrified her. Her scream still echoed.

  “What do you want?” she asked. Her back was pressed to the door to Orli’s room. The child was still sleeping. Her scream had apparently not awakened her. Kimiko was glad of that. This strange man might not know she was there.

  Baka did not answer. His eyes were wide, unblinking. They saw but somehow did not register what they saw. The woman he was told to get was not here. He would have to look in the other rooms. He walked past Kimiko and went into the dining area. He moved on into the master bedroom.

  Kimiko thought of getting the child and trying to leave, but something stopped her. There would be others, she thought.

  Kimiko had never met Vincent Meissner. She did not know this man without a soul. He reappeared in the dining area and moved toward her. It was as if he didn’t see her, or as if she were a piece of the furniture.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” she said softly. Vincent did not pause. He reached out with stiff arms and took her shoulders. She kneed him violently in the crotch, putting every ounce of strength in her slight frame into it.

  He gasped and backed away a step. A pained expression crossed his face and disappeared as quickly as it had come. He reached for her again.

  Chazz Koenig leaned back in his chair and stretched. His joints creaked. “Goddammit, Sy, this scares me.”

  Sy Eckerling looked up at his mentor. “Hey, it’s almost the same as the other stuff. Plant and animal remains, human bone, miscellaneous organic compounds, tropane alkaloids, traces of tetrodoto×in, and a hint that perhaps some extract of a cone snail venom wandered in there. This stuff would paralyze an elephant and kill most people.”

  “Most people. Except Tracy Ann Thrasher. I’m glad that maniac is dead.”

  Patria stared up with sick fear into the man’s face. “You!” she gasped.

  He smiled, slowly. “Yes, my little bird. I have waited for you.”

  “What do you want?” She choked under his grip on her throat. She was a small, compact woman with a tough core. She raised her knee sharply, trying for his crotch, but he had turned and she hit his thigh instead.

  He jerked his head to one side and half dragged her toward the front gate. “You’re a tough one, my little bird. I do like that. The others are not so tough.” He reached with his other hand and opened the gate. “We will begin with you.”

  He moved his grip to the nape of her neck, pressing his fingertips into the nerve nexus just under her ear. She gasped again, this time from pain. He began to sing as they walked down the street together. She wanted to scream, to cry out for her child back in the condominium, but she could not. She could only hold on to the hope that this man would make a mistake.

  Kimiko Takamura reached up for the fat man’s temples. He was holding her shoulders, staring into her eyes with his own empty ones.

  Vincent Meissner had never been a strong man. He was sedentary and overweight and had a thyroid problem that caused his eyes to bulge slightly. The effect of this on his expression was chilling.

  Kimiko placed her palms against his temples and pushed her thumbs into his eyeballs as hard as she could. The pressure stopped the blood flow in arteries behind the eyes that fed the brain. Within seconds he made a small sound deep in his throat and fell heavily to the floor, unconscious.

  She backed away in horror. Swiftly, but with as much silence as she could maintain in her near-panic state, she went into Orli’s room, lifted the sleeping child from the bed, and carried her to the sliding glass doors onto the lanai.

  Orli gurgled in her sleep, and the sucking sounds as she worked on her thumb increased in tempo, but she did not awaken. Kimiko made whispered crooning sounds as she slid the door open with one hand and stepped outside.

  Jean-Marie watched Phénix frogmarch the woman down the street and around the corner of the dirt access road through the papaya orchard. He lost them in the shadows and nodded. Then he tipped his beer bottle back and finished it with a sigh.

  “The others should have been here by now,” his companion said. He probed the bandage on his forehead with his forefinger.

  “Not necessarily. There’s no telling when the cop quits work. Chausseur and Hennet are watching the police station. The Japanese bastard went in, so he’ll come out.” He looked at the remains of his fast food, picked out the cold hamburger, and stuffed it into his mouth. “We wait for the man to come back,” he mumbled through the food. “The zombie will take care of the Nip woman. We will have them all, as Phénix said.”

  “Okay.” The Algerian drew a wry face, taking his finger away from his little blossom of pain at his temple to pull his knit cap down lower. “I don’t know how you can eat that stuff. It’s disgusting.”

  “Hien? Oh, very well.” Jean-Marie crushed the package in his fist. “But i
t is important to be well fed. This time we cannot leave him alive.”

  Chazz lifted the printout from its tray and looked at it. “I don’t know what else we can do tonight. I’ll swing by and see if Cobb is finished with the fingerprints.” He put on his jacket.

  “You wanted me to remind you,” Sy told him.

  “What?”

  “Call Patria.”

  “I don’t know if I need to. She’s safe. She and Kimiko are in Kapaa, at the county facility. No one knows about it.”

  Sy shrugged and turned off the light on his microscope. “Your funeral,” he said.

  Cobb Takamura fed the last of the sheets into the fax machine and pressed the send button. LeBlanc would receive it in seconds, but LeBlanc was not in the office at the moment, so nothing would happen with either the partial prints they had lifted from the jar or the dental records of the body in the lava until tomorrow at the earliest.

  “Handel,” he said to his partner. “Chazz and I are going to go pick up Kimiko. She’s got the car. Tonight I think we are going to stay at our own homes. Tomorrow should confirm that Prévert or Phenix is dead. Kauai is peaceful again.”

  Sergeant Handel said nothing about his own doubts. More than once Lieutenant Takamura had told him what a quiet island Kauai was, and more than once that statement had proven false.

  Kimiko stood on the lanai, her back pressed against the rough stucco wall, listening.

  The night was full of sounds. Distant surf. Cars. A barking dog. From town, occasional shouts as people went in and out of the cafe. The wind in the leaves of the papaya trees. Insects.

  It was a normal night.

  But something had happened to Patria. She should have come back. The fat man, unconscious on the living room floor, had gotten in easily even though Kimiko had locked the front door when Patria went out to check the gate. Where had she gone then?

  Kimiko stepped down into the garden carrying the child. Everything was quiet.

  She slipped into the breezeway between the two duplexes. Was there a faint trace of Patria’s perfume here? Plumeria, that’s all. She crooned softly, under her breath, to the child. Don’t wake up, she said. Sleep.