Venom: A Thriller in Paradise (The Thriller in Paradise Series Book 3)

by Swigart, Rob

  “Yeah…?” Jack urged.

  “And sometimes we find something harmful, a new toxin, a formerly harmless critter turned venomous, a poison. The changes are accidents, and the results unpredictable. That’s what I like about it.”

  A siren started up and Jack pulled over. The sound died slowly behind them and Jack rolled down his window. They heard a door slam, and a heavyset sheriff’s deputy appeared at Jack’s window. His sunglasses reflected Jack’s distorted face back at Chazz and Patria.

  “Jack Wellburn?” the deputy asked.

  “That’s right.”

  He nodded. “Good. One of your passengers named Koenig?”

  “Two of them, actually.”

  “Good.” He leaned a little into the window to get a better look at Chazz. “Dr. Koenig? I’m Locey. Deputy Sheriff. We got a telex from a Lieutenant Takamura, Kauai County PD. He’s asked us to put you on a state plane back to Kauai ASAP. Would you mind coming with me?”

  Patria put her hand on his arm. “No! We have to get Orli.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. There’s a panic on.”

  “Don’t worry. Cobb wouldn’t do this if it weren’t important. You and Orli catch the next Aloha flight over. Sy, you know what to do about the specimens and so on. I’ll see you at the lab tomorrow.” He climbed out.

  Patria said, “We’ll come over after my interview. Probably the five-thirty flight.”

  “Okay,” Chazz said. He turned to the deputy. “Any idea what this is all about?”

  “No, sir. Lieutenant Takamura just said it was urgent.”

  Chazz smiled in at Patria and shrugged. She frowned, then relented “We’ll see you tonight. You still owe us lunch.”

  Chazz nodded. “All right.” He turned to Locey. “Let’s go.”

  THREE

  DEATH SHIP

  Cobb Takamura was angry. His lips had thinned into a dark horizontal line. His brows had knitted together into another thicker horizontal line. This produced fear in everyone who knew the ordinarily smooth skin of his forehead. Sergeant Handel especially did not like to see it.

  “You what?” Lieutenant Takamura asked softly.

  Sergeant Handel did not look at his superior. He looked at the tips of his shoes, which were scuffed. “It seemed like a good idea.”

  “At the time?” Takamura allowed no inflection of sarcasm to enter his voice. Even irony was muted.

  Handel put up a hand, warding off the corrosive effects of the lieutenant’s anger. “It’s regulation,” he protested. “We’re required to notify…”

  Cobb turned away to look out his office window. The blinds were up. Waialeale was again shrouded in clouds. Yesterday had been such a perfect day. Until the call from Kimiko. Now his wife was in the hospital for “observation,” and he had a large problem just made larger by his assistant’s zeal for regulation. “Sergeant Handel,” he said without turning back. “You know how I feel about Commander Shafton…”

  Handel was considering sitting down. There was a green metal-and-plastic chair against the wall he enjoyed sitting in. He could lean the chair back against the wall and prop his feet against the metal filing cabinet. But he did not sit down. Instead he said, “Yes, I…”

  Cobb continued without pause. “I do not feel good about Commander Shafton. He has very small feet. This may seem like a trivial matter to you, but I feel strongly about men with small feet. It is my experience that they are not to be trusted. Commander Shafton is not to be trusted…”

  “I know, Lieutenant, but I…” Handel found it judicious not to point out that Lieutenant Takamura wore a size eight and a half shoe.

  “The commander was going on leave today. This very day, Sergeant. He would have left our island in a matter of hours, and he would have been relieved by Lieutenant Commander Whipple. Lieutenant Commander Whipple is a man of some sense, a reasonable man, even. Had your message taken just a few more hours to reach them, we would have been working with Lieutenant Commander Whipple, who does not have small feet. Do I make myself clear?”

  “You’re upset.”

  Cobb turned and glared at Sergeant Handel. “You are correct, Sergeant, I am upset. Perhaps I should not be upset. I should take everything in stride. I should live in the present, is that it? When you are hungry, eat, when you are tired, sleep, as the Zen masters say. Cut wood, cook food. What is done is done. The happy man is the calm man.’ All right. Now I am happy.”

  Handel relaxed slightly “That was a quote, right? Charlie Chan?” If so, everything would be all right again. Handel sat down.

  Cobb chose not to confirm his quotation. “Never do it again. Commander Shafton will be all over us about this ship. The Coast Guard has certain inalienable responsibilities for derelict ships unclaimed for salvage and so on. His tiny feet will patter on this very linoleum with excitement. He will push his chin over my shoulder as I try to work. He will claim the Kauai PD has no jurisdiction since the deaths might have occurred on the high seas. He will now postpone his leave, perhaps cancel it. He will strut. He will make asinine comments, issue stupid orders. There will be a terrible muddle. Now with Lieutenant Commander Whipple, everything would be fine. Whoever takes responsibility is okay in his book as long as it is not himself. Whipple, whose feet are large, enjoys surf fishing. He and I have passed many pleasant hours up at Hanalei casting our hooks into the sea, not caring what, if anything, might bite. Lieutenant Commander Whipple would let me get on with my job and would not interfere. For that I would give him a phone call from time to time and let him know how things were going so he could write his report back to headquarters or base or wherever he writes his reports to, and he would get a pat on the back for judicious and speedy action without doing much of anything. Which is the way I would have preferred it.”

  The telephone rang. Takamura gave Handel a sour look, reached for it, changed his mind and let it ring again, then gestured to Handel to pick it up.

  “Lieutenant Takamura’s office, Sergeant Handel speaking… Oh, yes, sir. Certainly, sir. He’s right here.” Handel held out the receiver. Takamura’s frown returned. “Commander Shafton,” Handel said both loudly and unnecessarily. “He’d like to speak to you, Lieutenant.”

  Takamura took the phone. “Commander,” he spoke with patently false cheer. “What a pleasant surprise… Yes, so you got the message. Why, of course, I had Sergeant Handel phone you immediately… Yes, yes, it is true the ship was discovered last night, but there was no need to disturb you last evening. Everyone aboard was dead, so aside from taking the bodies to the hospital and so on there really was nothing to do. The ship itself is anchored in Kalalono Bay.”

  Apparently Commander Shafton said something unpleasant, because Cobb’s brow turned interstellar dark and interstellar cold. He said nothing for almost a minute, holding the receiver an inch or so from his ear. Then, very politely, he said, “Of course, Commander, I understand perfectly. Happy to cooperate. I’ll see you at three-thirty. Thank you. Good-bye.” He replaced the receiver so slowly it made no sound whatsoever.

  Handel was surprised at the speed with which a broad smile replaced the grim look. “Moron,” Takamura said. “Perhaps there will not be as many ways we can cooperate with the Coast Guard as Commander Shafton may think. Perhaps he’ll still go on his leave. I heard he was going to Paris for a month. That would be fitting. It seems this whole case could fall under the jurisdiction of the Rescue Center in Oahu, and not the Nawiliwili Harbor Station, although there is no one to be rescued since they are all dead, and there is no known menace to traffic in American waters. It is possible that this particular problem will go away by itself. On the other hand, Commander Shafton has taken it upon himself to take charge. He’s put Ocean Mother under tow into Nawiliwili Harbor. They’ll tramp all over the ship and destroy evidence.”

  “If there is a crime?” Handel asked drily.

  “Certainly,” Cobb agreed. “If there is a crime.” He rubbed his hands together, as if to rub away some roughness, some irritation. �
��Now, what about Chazz?”

  “He’ll be here within the hour.” Handel found himself looking out the window at the hot, empty streets.

  “Excellent.” Cobb sat down and leaned back in his chair. The afternoon sun was streaming into his office, touching everything with tropical cheer. Even the faded ink lettering on the brittle, curled masking tape attached to his IN and OUT baskets held a honey-golden glow. Both baskets were empty. “Look at that,” Cobb said. “Nothing IN, and nothing OUT. Very unusual. Almost a perfect day. Except it will be hot, and there are seven bodies in the morgue, and my wife’s in the hospital.”

  Handel recognized the signs in his boss. The anger had been worry. “She’ll be fine, Lieutenant,” he said softly.

  “Certainly,” Cobb answered. “But she was very brave, and very foolish, to have boarded that ship and examined it so carefully. Now she suffers from an emotional reaction, and if there was poison or infection aboard that vessel…”

  “What would you have done, Lieutenant?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Under the circumstances. What would you have done? I need to know. It’s part of my education to learn from you.”

  “Yes. I would have done the same, of course,”

  Handel started to say something. Perhaps he was going to say, “There you go,” or “You see,” or something along those lines. But he said nothing. Takamura’s relationship with his wife was a puzzle to Scott Handel. Mrs. Takamura made her husband a bento lunch almost every day. The lieutenant would sit at his desk and open up the small wooden box. He would examine the artfully arranged and very lovely morsels of sushi and rice cake with care. Then he would remove the chopsticks and eat with relish, sighing loudly from time to time. Mrs. Takamura seemed dutiful and subservient and fragile. On the other hand, Mrs. Takamura seemed to tell Lieutenant Takamura what to do almost every day. And Lieutenant Takamura seemed to take her advice seriously, and follow her orders.

  It was very confusing. Scott Handel had somewhat stereotypical ideas about the proper relationship between a Japanese man and his wife. It was a relationship very different from that of an American man and his wife. He knew, of course, that neither Cobb Takamura nor Kimiko Takamura was born in Japan. They were as American as pizza. That is, they were Americans of Japanese Ancestry, or AJAs. Handel even knew that Cobb Takamura was a Sansei, since his grandfather had immigrated to Hawaii in the late nineteenth century, while Kimiko was a generation closer to Japan.

  Scott Handel recognized Cobb was worried about his wife. “She’ll be fine,” he repeated.

  Cobb smiled at him. “Of course. But something killed all those people. It didn’t look like murder. There were no signs of foul play, as they say on television, but you never know. Something killed them.” His voice trailed off into a thoughtful, distant look, out the window again at the declining sun and the dazzling emerald green flanks of Waialeale. Silence fell on the office. Yet small sounds grew loud: the squeak of a chair, a sharp inhalation of breath, a soft mutter from Scott Handel’s stomach. If there had been an old wind-up clock in the room, they might have listened to the ticking, but there was no wind-up clock.

  Handel had his feet propped against the filing cabinet, his head back against the wall, and Cobb was leaning back in his chair looking out the window when the door banged open and Chazz Koenig rumbled in. He was large and gray and bristling. The abruptness brought Handel’s chair down hard.

  “This had better be good,” Chazz said. He dropped into the only other chair in the room with a heavy sigh. The chair creaked under his bulk.

  Cobb turned mildly. “Oh, I think perhaps it is,” he said. “You look moderately fit. Fatherhood agrees with you?” This had the intonation of a ritual question, often repeated.

  Chazz scratched at his beard. “Orli is pretty cute. Sometimes she even sleeps through the night. Patria is grouchy about sixty-five percent of the time. She’s cranky about her research, wants to investigate Polynesian family structure and can’t because she has to nurse, an activity I suspect she secretly enjoys, though she would never let on. Why did you bring me back here?”

  “Kimiko stopped off at Kalalono Bay last evening. She says she likes to take a swim. In fact, I believe she sits under a tree. A large ship floated into the bay. There were seven dead persons aboard, and no live ones.”

  Chazz nodded, sucking on his lower lip. “I see. I presume they were not attacked by pirates boarding to steal a thousand pounds of Colombian cocaine, leaving them riddled with bullet holes. You would not have called me back here for something so simple. All dead, you say?”

  Cobb nodded “Mrs. Takamura is at the hospital for observation. They are concerned about some infectious disease.”

  “Or a poison of some kind?”

  “A possibility, yes. No signs of it, though.”

  “What is this ship?”

  “Ocean Mother, registered out of Vancouver. Belongs to an environmental group employed to protest dolphin slaughter, whaling, that sort of thing. According to the log she had been most recently in French Polynesia.”

  “French Polynesia? What for, besides a vacation in the exotic South Seas.”

  Cobb reached over without moving his body and lifted a mainland newspaper from his desk “Page four,” he said.

  Chazz riffled through the pages and read for a few moments. He lifted an eyebrow. “Atomic testing?”

  “Island of Moruroa, in the Tuomotus. Various groups and governments— like New Zealand— still protest from time to time. Apparently the Ocean Mother was involved in such a protest last month.”

  “You suspect something? Wasn’t there an attack on a Greenpeace boat a few years ago by French secret agents?”

  Cobb nodded solemnly. “Not that there is any evidence of anything like that here. Merely seven bodies on a fairly large ocean-going vessel drifting off our coast.”

  “Autopsy?”

  “Of course. Dr. Shih in charge. No word as yet. Seven is a sizable job for her. Fortunately, they are not local citizens. Not even, perhaps, tourists or visitors. We don’t know that for sure as yet, but we are checking the hotels, boat charter agencies, tourism people, state health, and so on. Perhaps the Ocean Mother berthed somewhere in the islands and took these people aboard. We have to make sure they didn’t catch something here. But so far there is no sign they have ever landed in Hawaii.”

  “You want me to keep an eye on things? There might be some biological component. Or a radioactive one.”

  “We have worked together before. You can give me an angle on things that others, more professionally involved, cannot. You work with radioactive materials, also.”

  “And you’re worried about Kimiko.” It was a statement, not a question. Chazz rose to his feet, a movement surprisingly graceful for one of his bulk. “I was diving near the Kilauea eruption. It’s a vision from hell down there. Swift streaks of red heat, quickly hidden. Chaos, torment, noise, steam. A small biological or radiological problem will be positively peaceful in comparison. And I’m sure Kimiko will be fine. There would have been signs by now if she were contaminated with something.”

  Cobb nodded and rose. He took down from the top of his battered filing cabinet a hideous blue-and-yellow porkpie hat, which he seated precisely horizontally on his head. He lifted his dark glasses, which hung from a cord around his neck, and placed them over his eyes. “Sergeant,” he said softly. “Perhaps you would drive us to the hospital?”

  Kimiko was sitting in bed reading Hegel. When Chazz, Cobb, and Handel entered, she lowered the book. “At last,” she said.

  Cobb removed his dark glasses so he could question her with his eyebrows.

  “I always read Hegel when I’m bored. Then any interruption will be a blessing. It works almost like magic, you see. I get bored. I wait as long as I can stand it, then I read Hegel. Someone always interrupts very soon.”

  Cobb turned to Chazz. “Kimiko was a philosophy major at the University of Hawaii.”

  “Who’s Hege
l?” Scott Handel asked. No one answered.

  “You no doubt want me to relate my death-defying experiences of last evening,” she said to Chazz. “But I don’t think I will until Patria is here.”

  “She won’t be here until the five-thirty flight,” Cobb told her.

  “In that case, I will wait.” She picked up Hegel again and pretended to read, a small furrow of philosophical concentration appearing between her brows.

  The silence lasted a minute or so. Then she put the book down. “Okay,” she said. “I will tell you everything.” She paused a moment. “You know, they gave me a sedative. It made me very drowsy.”

  “They were worried about your reaction,” Cobb said, taking her hand. “You were very brave, you did just the right thing. But it is not your line of work. I would have been very upset, if it had been me.”

  Kimiko smiled at him indulgently. “Certainly you would.” The sentence was so empty of inflection that it clanged with irony. She knew better. But she went through in detail what happened from the moment she looked up and saw the ship to the time she called her husband at his office. “The children are staying with cousins in Kekaha, so I had a little free time.”

  “You are an amazing observer,” Chazz said. “The shoe. I wouldn’t have noticed that.”

  “I don’t know why it came off, though. I would like to know that. It was strange, perhaps the strangest thing about it. That shoe scared me, more than anything else. They were all dead. That’s all right, I understand that. Something killed them. I thought, poison gas of some kind, caught up with all of them in turn as it rolled over the ship. But the shoe bothered me.”

  “You said the log showed they had been to Polynesia,” Chazz said, “Who found the log?”

  Scott Handel cleared his throat. “All the paramedics wore masks and gloves. They loaned me some, so I took a look around. The lieutenant thought the police ought to be represented, even though this did not look like a police matter.”

  “You brought the log back to headquarters?” Chazz asked.