by Jerold Last
I tried to remember the exact words Eduardo had used as he explained things to us in his cabin. “The most likely crimes to commit here in the Galapagos Islands involve drug smuggling, which we just ruled out, illegal fishing, poaching of birds, tortoises, and other valuable animals from the islands, or terrorists using the area to spy on the Panama Canal or some other strategic asset of the USA or Ecuador. Right, Suzanne?”
Suzanne smiled back at me, as if to say “good job” to a student. “You’re looking for any books or paperwork on any of these topics, Bruce. And to make the job difficult, books about the flora and fauna on the islands are exactly what any tourist would have brought with them to the Galapagos normally so you’re looking for whatever is more than, or different than, the ordinary, Bruce.”
Bruce smiled ruefully. “Thanks for making this so much easier,” he replied sarcastically. “I’ll do my best.”
Suzanne and I went up on deck to join our tour of Genovesa Island while Bruce relaxed during the chaos as the ship emptied of tourists so he could start searching their cabins.
Courtesy of Eduardo, Bruce had a list of cabin numbers for each of his planned stops on his personal journey of discovery. His first stop, Rita Caldwell’s former cabin, didn’t look anything like the image from American TV crime shows or the typical urban crime scene in the USA, at least from the outside. There wasn’t any yellow crime scene tape or seals over locks barring entry to what may have been a place where a murder had occurred. Apparently the short visit to the Santa Cruz by the coroner’s forensics team was the totality of the Ecuadorian CSI unit’s effort to examine a possible murder scene.
It took less than 20 seconds for Bruce to enter the locked cabin, shut the door, and lock it from the inside. He carefully looked around before touching anything. It was practically identical to his own cabin on the ship except for all of Robert’s gear in his room. The bed had been stripped with the sheets and blankets gone, possibly included in the body bag. The room had not been cleaned, so perhaps the forensics investigation had been postponed until the ship returned to Baltra Harbor. Bruce thought about Suzanne’s suggestions. He pulled out his iPhone, quickly snapping photos of the various books and magazines scattered around the room on various tables, inside drawers, and on top of surfaces of furniture.
A careful look at the floor and under the bed did not reveal any hidden pistols or dried pools of blood. He checked some of the obvious potential hiding places---behind the mirror on the wall, in the medicine cabinet and the toilet tank in the bathroom, on the bottom of the desk and dresser drawers. He riffled through the few papers remaining in the desk drawers and on the top of the desk. Nothing that wasn’t standard issue for all of the Santa Cruz cabins. It looked like the killer or the police had removed everything that belonged to the murder victim except for the books and magazines about Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands scattered around the cabin. He took a few more photos with his smart phone to record the layout and moved on to the next cabin on his list.
Behind door #2 was the Schultz’s cabin. This one was very different. People were living here and accumulating clutter. The bed was neatly made. From the contrast with the rest of the room, the neat bed was most likely due to the room steward rather than the occupants. Everything else had been tossed or placed completely at random wherever there was an empty space. Books and magazines about the Galapagos Islands were scattered all over the room. “The Big Book of Galapagos Tortoises” had pride of place on top of a night table by the bed. Several paperback novels in German, mysteries, were also stacked on the night table. Bruce documented all of this with his camera phone before he started looking in night table drawers.
Bingo! Stock certificates, receipts, and brochures describing a corporation the Schultz’s had made a large financial investment in over the past year. Bruce thought to himself, “Why in the world would they have brought stuff like this with them on a cruise through the Galapagos Islands? There might as well be a sign over this drawer in flashing lights spelling out Clue.” He pulled out his iPhone again and snapped photos of all the documents in this drawer. The records had to have something to do with why the Schultz’s were here in the Galapagos.
More photos were taken of the layout and interior of the cabin. A methodical search of the rest of the cabin didn’t turn up anything else of obvious interest, but was still worth a few more photos. Bruce checked his watch. Realizing he’d spent more time in this cabin than he’d planned on, he meticulously put everything back as it had been in the drawer, closed things up, and got out of the cabin after carefully checking the corridor was empty.
Bruce moved on to cabin #3 on his list, currently occupied by Linda and Michael Smart. He was inside in a few seconds. The differences between this cabin and the Schultz’s were immediately apparent. Perhaps due to the influence of both of the Smarts having spent many years in the navy, the room was neat and tidy, with everything in its place. There were several hard-bound books about Galapagos Tortoises neatly arranged on the desk, and all showed signs of heavy use as if they’d been read several times. Out came the cell phone to record the image. Bruce quickly looked in drawers and the conventional hiding places in the bathroom, finding nothing out of the ordinary. A quick look under the bed and under the mattress yielded nothing of interest. By then it was time to go.
Raul Vonhorst’s cabin had a lot of tourist brochures from the travel agency in Quito scattered around, several of which had details about the Galapagos Islands tour. Some of the Galapagos tour details had been highlighted with a yellow Magic Marker, and there were handwritten notes in some sort of incomprehensible shorthand in the margins alongside at least half of the highlighted entries. Bruce took close-up photos of all of the marked pages. Raul wasn’t a tidy housekeeper, so dirty laundry was scrunched into a corner of a shelf in the closet. An open bottle of Scotch whiskey stood on the dresser, with a couple of dirty glasses beside it. The open ice bucket contained a puddle of water. More photos were taken.
Finally, Bruce slipped into the Kaufman sisters’ cabin. All kinds of hand-washed ladies underwear hung on the shower curtain rod, drying. Lots of clothing, clean and dirty, was scattered around the room. The ubiquitous Galapagos Island tourist brochures lay on the desk and dresser top, accompanied by a re-corked, half-full, bottle of a Chilean red wine. One big expensive looking picture book featuring the Galapagos Tortoise stood upright on the desk. Bruce took the standard photos of the room and the Galapagos book and brochures. There wasn’t anything noteworthy in any of the drawers or the toilet tank. Nothing was hidden under the bed or under the mattress, but something different lurked on the carpet at the foot of the dresser. He looked closely at several small red stains in the carpet. The stains could have been blood, or they could have been red wine. Bruce wished he had a can of luminol, which would have resolved the issue immediately, but he didn’t. So he took several photos of the stains, with and without the flash attachment activated. Time to go, so he left the cabin and returned to his own cabin well ahead of the returning passengers from the tour.
Chapter13.Wednesday afternoon-Genovesa Island
Darwin: I have stated, that in the thirteen species of ground-finches [in the Galapagos Islands], a nearly perfect gradation may be traced, from a beak extraordinarily thick, to one so fine, that it may be compared to that of a warbler. I very much suspect, that certain members of the series are confined to different islands; therefore, if the collection had been made on any one island, it would not have presented so perfect a gradation. It is clear, that if several islands have each their peculiar species of the same genera, when these are placed together, they will have a wide range of character. But there is not space in this work, to enter on this curious subject.
Our afternoon excursion was to Prince Philip’s Steps on Genovesa, or Tower, Island, famous for its bird watching opportunities. We had a couple of very excited Schultz’s in our Zodiac as we motored over to the dry landing on the rocks. The “Steps” in the Prince Philip’s Steps de
scribe a plateau on the island that is densely packed with nesting birds of several species. We spread out single file, separated by about twenty feet, to climb the narrow trail. Juana was in the lead, followed in order by the Smarts, the Schultz’s, the Sanchez couple, the Kaufman sisters, Suzanne, and me, with Raul Vonhorst bringing up the rear. About a third of the way up to the top, there was a loud fuss near the front of the group, which alerted us to a small landslide of rocks and stones tumbling down the trail. We had plenty of time to step off the trail to the side and let the miniature avalanche pass safely by before resuming our climb.
After the long climb to get there, we walked into the middle of an acrimonious argument. It sounded like Dieter Schultz was accusing Michael Smart of having purposely caused the avalanche to injure or kill him and his wife Inge. Michael and Linda were equally forcefully arguing that it was an accident, that Michael had stepped on a loose rock and gravity and loose stones below the rock had done the rest. Juana finally stepped in, declared it was an accident, and praised all of us for maintaining our distance between each other on the trail, pointing out the safety value of following the guide’s instructions.
Suzanne whispered to me, “Since I seem to be quoting classic literature on this trip, how about Lewis Carroll writing it gets ‘curiouser and curiouser!’ as Alice in Wonderland put it? That’s two potentially lethal accidents and three murders in a couple of days. Do you think there really is something more than random killings happening on this cruise?”
I assumed the question was rhetorical. “I’d be very careful about turning my back on anyone in this group, except perhaps Juana,” I whispered back. “It’s think its about time we rejoined the party.”
Looking around the plateau, we found ourselves in a huge bird motel. Many of the thirteen different varieties of finch lived here, peacefully coexisting in species-specific niches. Some were ground dwellers, while others seemed to prefer the penthouse suites in the branches of trees. Some lived in between, giving a sense of layers of birds differing by minor attributes.
Suzanne looked around her, an expression of awe and amazement on her face. “Do you realize we’re literally walking in Charles Darwin’s footsteps as we stand here now? We’re seeing what he saw, pretty much exactly the way he saw it. You and I see enormous numbers of birds and mildly organized chaos. He saw enough to want to ask questions about what the societal rules were around here. And he was smart enough, organized enough, and well enough trained to ask the right questions, which are the questions he could answer by observation, experiment, and theorizing. Others saw, or still see, the divine plan of God in the social and biological organization here, while Darwin saw random chance and natural selection defining which species thrived and which ones died. This is really, really extraordinary!”
We looked over at the Schultz’s, frantically running from place to place scribbling notes, taking photos, and looking all around them to decide where to run to next. For them the thrill was in recording the species they saw and when and where they’d first seen the birds. Suzanne’s succinct summary said it all, “They look like young Indian braves trying to prove their manhood by counting coup on the enemy. If you can get close enough to your enemy to touch him and survive the encounter, then you gain points towards being a warrior in your tribe. They really aren’t thinking about how the birds live on a daily basis, they’re counting coup by birdwatcher rules.
“Roger, look at how crowded it is, like a Los Angeles freeway at rush hour. But there isn’t any road rage here. Every family of birds has their place and nobody is fighting to be first in line. The bigger, stronger birds will get more food and eventually win the reproductive struggles due to their individual advantages in speed and strength, not by forming gangs and killing each other. It sounds so simple to us who learned all this in high school biology, but it was an amazing intuitive leap for those early 19th century biologists.”
Linda and Michael Smart caught up to us. Michael mimed a hunter with a shotgun aiming at some finches in a tree to our left. “Can you imagine having a well trained bird dog and unlimited hunting privileges here?” he asked.
Suzanne winced. “Do you really want to hunt these finches just for the fun of killing them, Michael?”
“No, not really. We just happen to like hunting and particularly like eating pheasants and quail.”
Suzanne smiled at Linda and Michael. “We have a couple of dogs at home you’d enjoy meeting, then. A German Shorthair Pointer named Juliet and her new puppy named Romeo. Believe it or not, Bruce trained and showed Juliet and will be training Romeo for us.”
Linda looked curious. “Do you actually hunt your dogs? Somehow I have a very different image of your family than out in the field shooting dinner.”
I couldn’t resist temptation here. “Yes, we’re hunters. So is Bruce. And if you’re well enough trained and have the right instincts, like Juliet and Romeo do, you almost always find your prey sooner or later.”
Linda gave me a long look then apparently decided I was harmless and my comment could be taken at face value. “We’ll be in Los Angeles in a few days. We’re flying back to Guayaquil Friday afternoon, then on to Quito where we have connections for a red-eye flight into LAX on Saturday. I don’t know how long we’ll be in Los Angeles. We have to hitch a ride on a military transport flight some time Saturday to get to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, near Sacramento. If all goes well we connect there with a C5A transport flying to Diego Garcia early on Sunday morning. Maybe we could meet your dogs between flights in Southern California.”
“That won’t work for us, I’m afraid,” replied Suzanne. “We’re not going directly back to Los Angeles. We want to spend a few more days here in Ecuador or one of the neighboring countries before we head home. Maybe we can plan on introducing you to Juliet and Romeo on your next trip to California.”
Just then the Kaufman sisters wandered over to join us with Gretchen in the lead. “What are you guys looking at over here? We’re beginning to feel totally birded out.”
Michael pointed over to a cluster of trees filled with at least three distinct species of finches in front of us. With a completely deadpan expression he replied, “We’ve been discussing coming back here with Roger and Suzanne’s trained bird dogs and going hunting together.”
Both of the sisters gave him an “are you for real?” look before deciding he was yanking their chain and wandering on to chat with the Schultz’s and our guide Juana, who were looking closely at a cluster of Darwin finches.
A few minutes later it was time to hike off the plateau on the trail around the island. The Smarts headed off in front of the main group. Barbara and Gretchen connected with Raul Vonhorst to make a small group following them. Suzanne and I joined the Shultz’s and Juana to eavesdrop on their animated discussion about finches. I have to admit the finches still all looked very much alike to me. The Sanchez’s brought up the rear of our little group.
Chapter14.The plot thickens, but there’s a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel
Darwin: I have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work; and I still think there is an eminently important difference.
In the Zodiac on the way back from Genovesa Island, Raul asked whether he could buy Suzanne and me a brandy when we got back on board the Santa Cruz. Suzanne answered on our behalf. “Of course. We’d be happy to join you for a short drink. But the keyword here is short. We have to be back at our cabin within a few minutes after we get to the ship to look after Robert.”
A short time later the three of us were sitting over brandies at a small table in the ship’s bar. Raul looked at me and started our conversation by dropping a small bombshell. “It wasn’t a coincidence when we met at the museum in Quito; that was planned in advance. I know you murdered one of my DEA colleagues a few months ago, Roger. Since you’re not in jail, I have to assume you’re a heavy hitter and untouchable by agents at my pay grade. I don’t like killers
, and I especially don’t like you, but it’s possible we have some common interests here. Would you care to tell me what you’re really doing in the Galapagos Islands?”
I sipped my brandy and let him wait a moment for my answer. “For the record, Raul, your DEA colleague James Corley was a drug dealer and a murderer, who I shot in self-defense while he and his partner were trying to kill me. No charges were ever brought against me by the local authorities. The DEA was too busy covering up the criminal behavior of their agents in West Texas over a period of several years to try to do anything else about it. If you feel self-righteous about crime and criminals, you might want to look into the details about Corley and his partner and how and why they died. And think about arresting the higher-ups in the DEA who covered up their murdering and drug dealing for far too long.