Sun, Sand, Murder

by John Keyse-Walker

  I tried to focus, tried to understand, tried to put it all together. Thoughts drifted and raced but I was unable to make sense of any of it.

  Cat sat down beside me and wiped my brow. Her scent cascaded over me, the raw sexuality redolent even in this most unsexual of moments. She picked up the shagreen bag and deliberately placed the baggies of emeralds, one after another, inside. Then she bent and kissed me on the forehead.

  “We had some good times together, didn’t we, lover?” Cat murmured. Then, not expecting or wanting an answer, she rose to her feet.

  “Good luck, Teddy,” she said, tossing the words over her shoulder as she stepped down the path toward Spanish Camp and the beach beyond, the shagreen bag and its cargo of emeralds dangling from her right hand.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I felt warm life leaking steadily from my chest. I tried to move, thrashed weakly, and abraded my knees and elbows on the sharp edges of the few emeralds that remained scattered beneath me. The darkness of the tropics descended utterly and completely. With no clouds above, a coolness came over the land and chilled me to the core. The voice inside me said, This is what it’s like to die. Twilight sleep without dreams came.

  My waking was a surprise. I had consigned myself to oblivion, not as a mindful decision, but rather by acceptance that it was happening and I had no say in the matter. The thump of cattle hooves on the limestone where I lay had interrupted my passage to eternity. A half dozen of the creatures ranged around the pool, drinking. An alabaster half moon showed directly overhead, turning cows, water, and sand into shades of silver and steel. I moved my head. The cows, who had convinced themselves that I was just an inanimate part of the landscape, bolted into the sea grapes, leaving me alone in the moonlight.

  A slow understanding that I had a choice to make worked its way to me through the haze of shock and injury. I could stay where I was and be found in a day or a week, dead and picked apart by crabs like John Ippolito. Or I could muster whatever strength remained in me and try to get out of this place and back to the world.

  Rolling to my knees caused a surge of vertigo. I lowered my head and willed the blood to flow there. Nearly blacking out, I stayed still until my vision cleared, facing down at the limestone. There my dried blood appeared gray in the moonlight. In the blood was a smattering of emeralds, sparking ice green even in the monochromatic light. I ignored them. They were no good to me now.

  I shuffled on my knees to the edge of the pool and bent to drink from the cool water. It helped, a little. I tried to stand, without success. All energy had departed my body; my best effort produced only a crawl.

  So I crawled along the path toward Spanish Camp, crawled for long hours as the moon dropped in the western sky. By the time I reached the place where John Ippolito had died, the lowering moon cast leaden shadows against the excavations there, a ghostly hillock of barren sand beside each one.

  I told myself I would rest awhile but the truth was that I could not go on. I slept, or passed out, I know not which. Dreams of the mutilated Ippolito and of Icilda’s lifeless eyes marred any rest I got. Or perhaps they were not dreams but the visitation of ghosts, duppies in that place of death. That night I traveled the dune and the salt pan with them, my fitful dozing an approach and retreat from the boundary between life and the grave. But my spirit, soul, or being—call it what you may—refused the duppies’ invitation.

  The first light of day brought me back from my sojourn with the dead. I clawed to the crest of the dune in time to see the sun rise from the fathomless waters of the Anegada Trench.

  With the sun came a powerful heat, as the trade winds had not yet begun. With the heat came a powerful thirst. It had been twelve hours since I had drunk from the pool. Loss of blood had depleted my fluids and the broiling dawn seemed determined to finish the job. I was confronted with a choice between bad and worse: either return to the pool or continue the mile or more up the beach to Flash of Beauty. Going on presented a better chance of being found but no prospect of water. Going back might mean I would be well hydrated when I died. At the rate I was able to travel, Flash of Beauty would take all day, exposed to the sun and still bleeding.

  This sounds as if options were weighed and a rational decision was made. In truth, after a moment’s hesitation, I plunged down the dune face, not really cognizant of making a choice. Going forward was simply the only thing my reeling mind could comprehend and the only thing it could direct my broken body to do.

  The foot-tall succulents at the base of the dune provided shade enough for a crawling man. I lingered there, breathing heavily, sweat and blood mingling on my chest. I passed out again and only roused at midmorning.

  The sand was firmest at the tide line, so that is where I crawled. The first half an hour of movement required half an hour of rest, immobile and baking on the exposed shore. The next half hour required an hour’s halt to recover. The next, two hours. I swam through a sea of sand, limbs too weak to raise my body above the parching grains. The sun moved overhead, burning my back and neck, adding another stratum of torment.

  By midafternoon, I had reached the eastern end of Table Bay. The seep of blood from my chest wound had stopped, if only because all liquid seemed to have congealed and been drawn from my body. I was a husk, dry as the sand I crawled on. Visions danced before me in the dazzling light, conch shells on human legs, feral cows speaking with the same Rasta patois as Anthony Wedderburn, tarpon and bonefish swimming facilely through the dunes. In a moment of clarity, I understood that I would not reach Flash of Beauty for hours, perhaps not for another day, at the pace I traveled.

  My mouth was a cave filled with dust. In my fevered brain, the sea was an infinite chalice of quenching aquamarine nectar, mere steps away. One small drink cannot hurt, I told myself. A small drink might save me. I turned my body toward the waves and pushed with arms and legs. And did not move. Again I made the effort and again there was no movement.

  My cheek pressed into the hot sand, my eyes level an inch above its surface. Far to seaward, breakers, come from Africa, roared white against Horseshoe Reef. A shadow crossed the near ground and then merged with its source, a herring gull, when the bird alighted a few feet from my head. Its hungry obsidian eye betrayed no fear, though I was a hundred times the bird’s size. I tried to shoo the thing. My body did not answer. I could not twitch a finger.

  The black eye stared at mine, searching. Another shadow heralded another gull. Then more and more gathered. The first bird inclined its head, took a step toward me, waited, and then hopped forward quickly. His compatriots crowded to follow. I felt the brush of feathers against my arm.

  I used the last of my strength to close my eyes.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The chittering call of a bananaquit drifted through my hazy consciousness. It began far away and moved closer and closer, enticing but not insistent, until I opened my eyes. Buoyant motes of dust moved across the dark-light pattern of sun filtered by a venetian blind. It was a friendly sun, warm and cheery, containing no threat of desiccation and death. There was no pain, no thirst, no fear in this place, only the clement glow of safety and repose.

  The radiant brume of my awakening cleared enough for me to remember the state of affairs when I had closed my eyes. How I had gone from that situation to this was a mystery my unfocused mind sought to solve. I had moved from peril to safety, from pain to comfort, with no effort other than surrendering to fate. There could be only one explanation. I decided I was dead.

  No sooner had I reached this conclusion than a vaguely familiar voice disabused me of it.

  “Constable Creque, I see you are back with us. You’ve had a bit of a tough go but you are safe and in good hands now.”

  The voice was solicitous and reassuring. Maybe that was why it took a moment to place it. The last time I had heard it, the voice and its owner were all business. But the Abaco accent was unmistakable.

  Nurse Rowell was standing next to the soft bed where I lay. She placed a gentle
hand on my shoulder when I tried to get up.

  “You have been shot,” she said, her voice oil smoothing troubled waters. “You are in the Intensive Care Unit of Peebles Hospital in Road Town. You must be still. You have a tube down your throat to help you breathe. You have been unconscious for three days since you were brought in from Anegada.”

  Three days! Nurse Rowell saw the panic in my eyes. Three days was more than enough time for Cat to get away with the emeralds. I tried to gesture for something to write on. My left arm was restrained to the point of immobility; my right was entangled in tubes and monitor cords.

  “Easy, Constable, no need to become agitated. I’ll give you something to write on but you must promise to be still.” Nurse Rowell’s calm eyes locked on mine. I nodded. She produced a small notepad and pen from the pocket of her pristine white uniform.

  “STOP WELLS,” I wrote. The handwriting wobbled and dipped through the lines on the notepad.

  Nurse Rowell watched me scratch out the words and said, “She has been stopped, Constable, with a fortune in emeralds in her possession. It is all over the newspapers, how you solved the Anegada murder and were shot after recovering the money that had been embezzled by Nigel Brooks. I daresay you are the first national hero we have had the pleasure of treating here at Peebles. Now be still and relax. Your Deputy Commissioner Lane has asked to be contacted as soon as you regained consciousness. I will go call him now. I’m sure he will explain it all in detail to you.” Nurse Rowell padded noiselessly from the room.

  A short time later a brisk young doctor wearing a saffron pagri entered the room with Nurse Rowell. “I am Dr. Patel, your attending physician. Nurse Rowell says you have been pretty chipper, so we are going to remove the tube in your throat and see how you do breathing on your own. When we begin to remove the tube, just open your throat and try not to cough.”

  Thirty seconds later, the irritation of the tube was gone, replaced by a roaring sore throat that seemed to extend from the back of my tongue to the pit of my stomach. Nurse Rowell fed me soothing ice chips, one at a time. I savored each one, remembering my thirsting crawl along the beach to Table Bay three days before.

  Nurse Rowell had gone for more ice when the ramrod-straight figure of Deputy Commissioner Howard T. Lane appeared in the doorway. He hesitated for a moment before entering.

  “Special Constable Creque, you had us all worried. How are you feeling?” He was a policeman through and through; even the DC’s bluff inquiry after my health had a note of interrogation in it.

  My effort to answer was a rasping, incoherent gurgle. Nurse Rowell returned at that moment and fixed a laser glare on the DC, which was returned in kind. It crossed my mind that they might come to blows.

  “Constable Creque has just had his breathing tube removed and speaking will be painful and difficult for him until the irritation from the tube has healed,” she said.

  “I see,” the DC said, sheepish for the first time in memory. “Perhaps I should come back later.”

  I shook my head wildly, drawing both the DC’s and Nurse Rowell’s attention.

  “The constable wrote a note. It said, ‘STOP WELLS.’ I told him you had already detained Ms. Wells and would explain further when you arrived. I don’t think the constable will rest peacefully until he has an explanation of what occurred. Perhaps you could provide the explanation without making him speak. It would aid his recovery.” Nurse Rowell arched an eyebrow by way of inquiry.

  The eyebrow froze the DC for a moment. Then he gruffly cleared his throat, said, “Very well,” and seated himself in a metal folding chair Nurse Rowell pulled down from a wall hook behind the door.

  “Not too much excitement, Deputy Commissioner. He may be your special constable but right now he is my patient and I will permit nothing that upsets him,” she said. The DC nodded his agreement and Nurse Rowell retired from the room.

  “To begin, Special Constable, let me address your concern about apprehending Mary Catherine Wells,” the deputy commissioner said. “We have Ms. Wells in custody, held in Her Majesty’s Prison while the senior crown counsel prepares charges against her. Her arrest is the end result of several very busy days set in motion by you, and I think it would be best to go back to the beginning so you have a complete picture.

  “Four days ago, the administrator for Anegada arrived at work to find your two children waiting for her on the doorstep of the administration building.” Catching my expression, the DC halted.

  “Don’t worry, Constable, they are safe with their grandmother and grandfather.”

  He continued. “Your children were concerned that neither you nor your wife had been home during the previous night. Ms. Pickering contacted your parents to arrange for the care of your children. She also recalled that you had informed her on the previous afternoon that you were going to the area of Spanish Camp as a part of your investigation of the murder that had taken place there. She did not, however, contact RVIPF headquarters concerning your disappearance. As she later explained it, she did not do so because she feared your activities might further endanger your job with the RVIPF, which she was convinced was already hanging by the thinnest of threads. Instead, she put out a call for the organization of a search for you on the CB radio. By noon, every household in Anegada had responded, with nearly all able-bodied residents scouring the island from one end to the other trying to locate you and your wife.

  “Ms. Pickering herself started for Flash of Beauty. On her way, she passed the airport and caught sight of a VI Birds helicopter parked in the aircraft taxi area.

  “Because she had not heard the helicopter arrive that day, and because VI Birds never leaves its aircraft on Anegada overnight, she investigated and found the cockpit unlocked and the engine compartment open. As she described it to me, when she looked inside the open engine hatch, it appeared ‘some crazy man took an ax or a hammer an’ bust everything he could bust inside.’ I assume that individual was you?” The DC lowered his head toward me, looking for confirmation. I nodded agreement.

  “I thought so. A rather unorthodox police tactic, the purposeful destruction of property, but effective in this instance.”

  DC Lane went on. “At that point, Ms. Pickering decided it was time to involve the RVIPF and contacted my office. At nearly the same time, the owner of VI Birds contacted Virgin Islands Search and Rescue to report that the company’s helicopter was overdue and missing. Apparently the pilot, Mary Catherine Wells, had reported mechanical problems while at Lettsome airport on Beef Island the day before. She had advised VI Birds that she would see to the needed repairs at Lettsome overnight and return to St. Thomas in the morning. When the helicopter had not returned by noon and Ms. Wells had not reported in, the owner contacted the tower at Lettsome and was told the aircraft had left the evening before, filing a flight plan to Anegada and then to San Juan. VISAR began an air/sea search and, of course, contacted the US Coast Guard and the RVIPF.

  “By the time we put this all together, it was midafternoon. We dispatched the St. Ursula with Inspector Stoutt and ten officers to aid in the search for what we then thought were three missing persons on Anegada. The St. Ursula arrived shortly after the Bomba Charger left the Anegada government dock for its scheduled return trip to Road Town. Ms. Pickering was present to meet Inspector Stoutt and his men, and received a radio call on their arrival that two of the Anegada searchers, a Mr. Wendell George and Ms. Marie Benoit, had found you on the beach at Table Bay, unconscious and in dire need of medical attention.

  “Inspector Stoutt and four officers immediately left with Ms. Pickering for Table Bay. The remaining officers met with some of the Anegada volunteers at the dock to coordinate their search efforts. During the course of this, the volunteers were informed for the first time that the search also involved locating Ms. Wells. One of the volunteers, Ms. Belle Lloyd, mentioned that she thought she saw Ms. Wells board the Bomba Charger that day shortly before it departed for Road Town. She described Ms. Wells as ‘looking disheveled, lik
e she had spent the night sleeping on the beach.’

  “The officers radioed headquarters but by the time a patrol car reached the Road Town ferry dock, Ms. Wells had debarked and disappeared. Unsure of what exactly was taking place, and with a significant part of the manpower of the police force involved in the search on Anegada, I enlisted the help of Agent Rosenblum and his JITFS agents to locate Ms. Wells.

  “Agent Rosenblum caught up with her at Lettsome airport, just as she was walking onto the tarmac to board a LIAT flight to Sint Maarten. She was calm and cooperative but insistent that she board the flight. Agent Rosenblum was able to stall her long enough for his men to pull her baggage. A loaded Smith & Wesson .38 was found in her checked bag. She had no BVI permit to possess or carry the weapon and was arrested. When her purse was searched following her arrest, a forged Netherlands passport, in the name of Edit de Weever and bearing Ms. Wells’s photo, was found, together with an e-ticket confirmation number. The e-ticket was for a Copa Airlines flight that day from Sint Maarten to Buenos Aries, Argentina, by way of Panama City, Panama, with Edit de Weever listed as the passenger.

  “Ms. Wells also had a carry-on bag that had passed through the metal detector at the boarding gate without incident. Inside it were found approximately five pounds of high-quality Colombian emeralds, with a retail value since estimated to be in excess of fifty million dollars.”

  My face must have expressed what my voice could not. The DC said, “That’s right, Special Constable, fifty million dollars. I suspect my eyes bugged out just like yours when I first heard that number.

  “Ms. Wells was brought to headquarters for questioning. The Smith & Wesson was examined and determined to have been recently fired. By then, you were being brought to Peebles Hospital on the St. Ursula with a bullet wound in your chest. As a result, I personally conducted the questioning of Ms. Wells. When I revealed to her that you had been found critically wounded but alive, she seemed relieved. The news about you removed any hesitancy she had about responding to my questions.