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

by Swigart, Rob

  FIFTEEN

  ZOMBIE

  It was no better in the morning. Sun splashed through the large square windows into his eyes. He groaned as he put his feet on the bare floor. The bruise on his calf was black and yellow. His head hurt.

  Takamura was humming in the next room. Chazz found this irritating. He put his hands over his ears and stared at his toes. The nails were getting yellow. Age, he thought. I’m almost forty, I have a child. Yellow toenails. Too old to be jealous of my wife.

  He cleared his throat and let the events of last evening filter through his mind. Freddie Barrone. Four French soldiers. Duvalois. The woman at the hospital. The judge, slaughtered.

  “Takamura,” he shouted. He banged his fist against the wall.

  “Good morning, Dr. Koenig.” Cobb Takamura was in a cheerful mood. Chazz pulled his pants on and opened the door to his room.

  “What time is it?” he asked the policeman standing in the doorway. Behind him the sun was luminous, almost surreal. At the opposite end of the short hall was the reception desk. It was deserted.

  “Six-thirty,” Cobb said cheerfully. “Time to get up. The sun is up and so should we be. ‘Early bird…’”

  “No, please, no Charlie Chan.”

  Cobb shrugged. “We could get some coffee, take a little stroll around town. We don’t have much time down here, but we are making progress.”

  “Are we?”

  “Oh, yes. There was an eighth member of the crew. That eighth member is missing. He was a man of medium stature who wore glasses, and his name was Calabrese. He was Italian.”

  “Was he?”

  “Well,” Cobb smiled. “So my informant thought.”

  “Someone at the disco?” Chazz was back in his room, fishing under the bed for his shoes. Cobb, already dressed, lounged in his door, turning the rim of his hat in his hands.

  “Indeed. A young Chinese man. Who, although his first name was Charlie, had unfortunately never heard of Detective Chan of the Honolulu police. A bit too young for the movies and not a reader, I’m afraid. Still an observant young man who has interesting things to say about how the local population feels about atomic testing in Moruroa, which is, he will grant you, six hundred and fifty miles from here, but sometimes the trade winds swing around that way, and they think radiation may blow this way. Did you know it is illegal to own a Geiger counter in Tahiti? No? Well, it is. Interesting. Ocean Mother had several. And no, his last name was not Chan. It was Song.”

  “No.” Chazz found his second shoe and put it on. “Ouch,” he said, wiggling his foot. The bruise ached. He stood up and danced a few steps experimentally. “Okay,” he said, smiling at Takamura. “Let’s go get them.”

  The street was empty, the stores closed. There was no coffee to be found anywhere, so they strolled once again along the harbor. Gulls circled overhead. They could hear the distant surf thumping against the reef. The air was warm. They approached the hospital. No one was visible on the balconies. There was a small market nearby, a square made up of small stalls, food, and trinkets. The stalls were closed, but as they walked past two or three people arrived to open up.

  Uturoa was waking up.

  “When did the music stop last night?” Chazz asked idly.

  Cobb looked at the sky and pursed his lips. “Around an hour ago, I believe.”

  “No! Bunch of party animals here.”

  “Like your four friends. We have not seen the last of them, I think,” Cobb said as they turned back. Half the fishing boats were gone from the harbor, leaving empty slots against the pier. A freighter was just coming in through the pass in the reef. It sounded its horn, a mournful echo on the silent buildings. Behind the town the television tower looked over the harbor, an odd sight in this antique setting.

  Shops were opening up. The sun was higher. A line of clouds sat over the horizon like the last line of defense. Inside the clouds, the island of Huahine humped up, a darker gray. Overhead the sky was clear and blue.

  “What makes you say we haven’t seen the last of them?” Chazz asked. He started doing some wrist stretches as they walked, trying to unkink his body. The bed had been narrow and hard and the hours of sleep too short. The music had gone on too long.

  “Because they were taking your measure. Because they wanted to get at me, but you know I am a peaceable man and don’t like violence.”

  “I’m not wild about it myself.”

  “Ah, but you’re an artist, aren’t you? Advanced belts in aikido and iaido.”

  “It’s only because I need to move. I need a channel for anger. Shinawa says I have to learn what my intent is. He says that violence is easy, basic. Anyone can learn to maim or kill. What’s difficult is not maiming or killing.”

  “They survived you. But I think they are basic people. I think they will be back.”

  “We have two choices then,” Chazz said. They stopped in front of Hotel Le Motu. Across the street, the Chinese grocery was opening up. “We can avoid conflict by finishing our business here and leaving. Or we can let them know we are not so easy to dispose of.”

  “Ah.”

  “I favor the first option.”

  “Ah.”

  “So where do we stand. You met Charlie. Song, was it? And we know there was an eighth crewman. Who was he? Do we know that? Because if we do, we can go back home and find out what our wives were up to last night.”

  Cobb nodded. “Sure. Medium height, medium weight, medium brown hair, glasses. Calabrese, an antinuke activist in Bologna a decade or so back when there were protests against a nuclear power plant. The protests died down, and he moved on. What happened to him, I don’t know. I think he fell overboard.”

  “No. You don’t think that. Come on, I need coffee.”

  The restaurant had coffee. It also had croissants, which were surprisingly good, even better than the ones in Papeete. Town life was picking up.

  “All right,” Chazz said. “You have some ideas. They are about this woman here and about what happened to the crew. There is a connection.”

  Cobb looked at his friend in astonishment. “Whatever makes you think that?”

  “You think that because I think that. Someone did something to that woman, something that involves a poison of some kind. She was driven psychotic. She may have been set up to do something to Queneau after the Ocean Mother had left. Freddie said Queneau had a run-in with the eighth crewman. We know he was a man. We know he went with the Ocean Mother when she left Polynesia. We know he was not aboard when she arrived and a lifeboat was missing.”

  “Oh, I can’t keep any secrets from you, can I?” Takamura finished his coffee. “Come on, we have an appointment.”

  They walked back to the hospital. The freighter was at the pier, the Temehani II. She was not a boat the tourists would be taking. The decks were already crowded with passengers lying on blankets and straw mats. A crane was lifting a tiny Renault to the deck. Forklift trucks were running back and forth to the warehouse by the pier, bringing pallets of food crates and huge tubs of crushed coral to wait their turn on the crane. The smell of fish was strong.

  Duvalois was waiting for them outside the hospital. “Well?” Cobb asked.

  “Calabrese, you said. I’m afraid there was no record. We get many Italian tourists in Tahiti, but none of that name came through. We have something else… A hint, as it were, another name: Jean Prévert, a salesman in pharmaceuticals. Came to Tahiti from Central America about three months ago. Spent six weeks in Papeete, hanging out on the waterfront, among the yachties. He wore an ascot, one of those scarves? Very… sophisticated. A common enough character in the South Seas, one supposes. One day he disappears, you know, poof, not there. But soon he is here. Came on a yacht, we assume. Asking questions. Living at Le Motu, like you. Room four.”

  “My room,” Chazz said.

  “So. Well, then, Jean Prévert, he has a French passport, he is from Lyon. He has a case, for his samples, he says. Drugs. Legitimate drugs. He has papers for these
drugs, as he must of course. But he does not visit any doctors. Soon he is wandering around the island, people see him here, there. He goes down south, he goes over to Oporo, where the yachties go. He takes a guided hike up to Temehani, see the flowers pop open at dawn. His guide for that was Freddie Barrone’s wife. She’s a big woman, bigger than Freddie, but she’s tough. She can climb. She tells us that this Jean Prévert, he asks questions. What about ancient religion? He hears about Oro, old god of war, and he gets excited. He meets a lot of people, this French seller of legitimate drugs, people get used to him. Then one day he goes down south, hitchhikes a ride down south past Faaroa, and no one sees him again. Poof, M. Prévert is gone.”

  Dr. Rathé appeared at the front door of the hospital and gestured. They went inside.

  “And so Prévert is gone?” Cobb asked as they went down the corridor to the woman’s room.

  “Ah, yes. Interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, next day Calabrese appeared. Activist. A man with glasses. But perhaps he looks a little like Prévert. No one thought much of it at the time. Raïatéa does get visitors; it isn’t as if no strangers come here. But it does seem coincidental now that Calabrese gets on board the Ocean Mother. Prévert was good at getting himself invited onto boats. Now Calabrese gets invited. Hmm hmm. Interesting. I find it so.”

  The door was open. The woman was still sitting below the window. Her face was blank.

  “Good morning, Teavai. Ia orana. Bonjour.” Duvalois peered into her blank face. “You see there is no response. What could cause such a reaction? This is a woman who brutally murdered a man— hauled him into the mountains, tortured him, killed him, gouged out his eye, hanged him from a tree with a stake through his skull. Psycbose. You say psychosis? What could be the cause?”

  He was looking at Chazz, who said, “You need an anthropologist, someone who specializes in preliterate religion. I know someone…” He frowned. Patria still did not answer. “And the use of plants. Why not talk to Freddie Barrone? He’s a botanist. Maybe he has some ideas on what kinds of local plants could affect people like this. Someone may have poisoned her.”

  “Yes. Posthypnotic suggestion, perhaps.” Duvalois was doubtful.

  Dr. Rathé was looking out the window, although there was little to see out there but sky. The top of a coconut palm tossed its fronds into view from time to time. A small wind rising, soon to die.

  “She was infertile,” he said in English. He might have been speaking to himself.

  “What’s that?” Lieutenant Takamura was interested.

  “She could not have children. She was a patient here, some years ago. Her medical records. She was barren. Her mind may have been affected, if you understand me. She was… upset by the news.”

  Takamura nodded. “A barren woman, filled with rage at men, perhaps. She was suggestible. Someone could tell her, go and kill Queneau. And she would do it?”

  “It is possible,” Dr. Rathé agreed.

  “So who?” Chazz asked.

  “We are looking for a man,” Duvalois said. “We know that. He left with the Ocean Mother. We know that. He did not appear in Kauai. We know that. He left this woman, hien, wandering the hills, instructed to kill? We know that, too. She killed, perhaps for him. What we do not know is who is this man, this Calabrese, this Jean Prévert? What we do know is that he’s very good at what he does.”

  “What’s that?” Chazz asked.

  “Murder,” Duvalois said.

  They went back to the hotel.

  “I want to try Patria again.” Chazz went to the reception desk.

  There was a message for Cobb: Call Captain Taxeira, Kauai County Police.

  “Where the hell are you?” Taxeira asked over the thready connection, almost drowned by the winds of space. His voice wavered and faded in and out.

  “At the hotel,” Takamura shouted. “You called us here.”

  “I called some guy named ‘Cue-no,’ that number you left. No answer. I finally got a hold of some guy in Papeete name of ‘Lee Blank,’ says you are staying at this place, but you weren’t.”

  “We are now,” Cobb said, looking at Chazz with his eyebrows raised.

  “There’s been another one,” Taxeira said.

  Patria and Kimiko found her, he told them. In the Wailua River below the falls. Strangled, like the other one.

  “Where the hell are they?” Chazz asked irritably, reaching for the phone.

  “Dr. Koenig would like to know where Mrs. Koenig and Mrs. Takamura are now?”

  “Protective custody,” Taxeira said. “We put them up at the county condo in Kapaa. Mrs. Koenig was afraid they might have been followed, that the killer was still around. A feeling, she said.”

  Cobb told Chazz, “They’re safe, at the condo in Kapaa. There’s been another murder.”

  Chazz nodded. “Get the number,” he said. “I want to call.”

  When Takamura had finished, Chazz dialed the condo in Kapaa. Yes, Patria was fine, Orli was fine, Kimiko was out shopping, they would stay there for a few days, when was he coming home?

  Soon. Soon. It looked as if the eighth member of the crew was a man who might be French or maybe Italian, who knew how to change his identity, who understood chemistry, botany, whatever. Who had probably poisoned a woman named Teavai and sent her out to kill. They needed Patria’s expertise.

  “It was something you said, the other day. About zombies.”

  “What about it? I was just thinking out loud.”

  “I think he made one here. She just sits there. She looks an awful lot like that girl, Tracy Ann. Same empty face.”

  “Well, it resembles reports from Haiti. Zombies are supposed to have that look. They’ve been frightened. Usually they’re pronounced dead, buried alive. Later the bokor digs them up. Rescue like that focuses the mind most wonderfully: on the savior, the bokor. The zombie will do anything, owing his life as he does.” She sounded tired.

  “We may have something here, then.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Jean Prévert came from Central America,” Chazz said. “The other side of Central America is Haiti.”

  PART THREE

  THE EARTH THAT IS NOT FILLED WITH WATER

  SIXTEEN

  THE DARK SIDE OF PARADISE

  Freddie Barrone braked a battered yellow Renault in front of the Chinese market. “It’s unbelievable,” he said as Chazz settled into the miniscule seat. “The tax is like a hunnert percent on cars here. Plus amazing freight.”

  The car sputtered and spit black smoke. They passed the airport. A plane was on final approach. Freddie said it was the commuter from Huahine. “Go on to Bora Bora next, today’s Sunday, right?”

  It was getting hotter. No rain in sight, and this was the rainy season. He chattered as they drove. The mayor lives there, he told Chazz, pointing up at a house on the hillside. And down there a retired French banker with a tired old title before his name kept his yacht. The Vicomte de Fleur-en-Vosge or something. There was a fatal car accident on this curve year before last.

  The road wound along the coast. They passed the Moorings, where blue and white sloops rocked gently at anchor. Chazz remembered them from the approach to the airport, off to the right.

  The next bay was Freddie’s. They walked along the wooden piers, looking down into the water. Seaweed thronged there. A one storey wooden building on the shore was where they extracted the vitamins. Big tanks with paddles turned a green-brown sludge.

  The oysters had their own preserve. They produced black pearls of inferior quality and small size. They were working on it. This was only the second year; it would get better. Freddie had big plans. Next year, or the year after, the pearls would be better. They were experimenting with different seeding techniques, different additives to the oyster beds. Oysters like music, he said. He played some Tahitian chants on the car stereo. Chazz thought if he were an oyster, they would not interest him particularly. But they had been here longer than h
e had. Perhaps they were used to it.

  Chazz took notes. He promised to keep in touch. He would pass along Freddie’s ideas, his questions, his interests. Vitamins were interesting. The sea was bountiful. We had a lot to learn.

  They had lunch at a cafe on the harbor in Uturoa. It was not good. Clouds began to gather over Tahaa to the north. They rose and swelled and withered away, only to reappear over Mt. Temehani on this island. They rose and swelled and did not wither away.

  It began to rain.

  Freddie said it had been a wonderful morning, an exciting experience to talk to a scientist from the states, and one with such wide interests, one so well connected. Chazz rubbed his calf and smiled painfully. Now Freddie had an appointment and had to be excused. And so he left.

  Chazz watched the rain fall. Then it stopped, and he watched the dust dry out. Finally, he shook himself and took a walk. Cobb was interviewing people who had been in contact with the crew of the Ocean Mother. It wasn’t going to be productive, but it had to be done. Chazz wasn’t interested.

  There was a serial sex killer loose on Kauai. Patria and his child were there. He should be with them. He and Cobb had found everything there was to find here. None of it was good. This was not a normal man, this Prévert·Calabrese. He killed people by dosing them with some kind of poison.

  Chazz walked along the shore. Soon he was out of town. He found a small street going off to the right, toward the interior, toward the mountain shrouded again in rain clouds. A light mist fell through the trees.

  Prévert dosed his victims, and some the dose did not kill. To those he gave orders, and they carried them out. The orders were dark and messy.

  It was mingled with dark religion, with death and control and mutilation. With fear. Fear of death, of loss of control, of suffocation and premature burial.