by Leta Serafim
“Thank God you’re here,” he said.
The American had vomited outside on the steps, he told him, and twice inside the room. Two other people were with him now, Marina Papoulis and Vassilis Korres. Patronas knew them both. He and Marina had gone to school together and Korres was the son of local farmer. The woman was clearing away the remnants of lunch, spread out on the table. The smell of the heavy food, the stewed lamb in avgolemono sauce, was overwhelming in the heat. The American was sitting on a chair. His face was ashen, his shirt flecked with vomit and blood. The others avoided looking at him.
“After he showed up,” Papa Michalis said in a low voice, “I went down to see for myself.” He stopped for a moment, unable to continue. “Chief Officer, there was a great deal of blood, a pool of it at the bottom of one of the trenches. I thought perhaps an animal … but there was too much blood for a sheep or a goat.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Also, I saw part of hand, nearly whole it was, mixed up in it.”
“Are you sure?”
The old man nodded. “I’m afraid for her. I called and called, but she didn’t answer.”
He fetched a propane lantern and handed it to him, then led him out through the tunnel in the back. He pointed to the plastic sheeting, glimmering in the deepening twilight. “Go, see for yourself,” he said. The trenches were darker than the land around them. They looked like wounds in the earth.
Patronas made his way down to the dig site. Bats were flitting across the sky, and he could see the moon rising out over the sea. A large tarp covered most of the area, a pair of folding tables pushed together beneath it. On top of the tables were three or four wooden boxes. The priest had said the trench farthest away from the monastery was where he’d seen the blood.
The trench was about as wide as a coffin and nearly three meters long. A breeze had come up and the air was surprisingly cool. Aside from the blood, there were no other signs of violence, only scattered pieces of whitened material that crunched underfoot like shells on a beach. Crouching down, Patronas moved the lantern back and forth over the trench, studying the ground below. The pool of blood was there, just as the priest had described it. Congealed now, it looked to be about three centimeters deep. The palm of a hand was evident, too, mixed in with the blood.
“She had an assistant, you know.”
Startled, Patronas spun around. He relaxed when he saw the cloaked form of the priest. The old man must have crept down here after him.
“He’s a local boy, her assistant,” the priest continued. “Petros Athanassiou. He’s been working here since school got out.” The priest looked out over the dusky hills. “He’s only sixteen years old.”
“Was he up here this afternoon?”
“I didn’t see him today. But he usually is.”
“Perhaps he left before this happened. Perhaps he’s back in Chora.”
“Perhaps,” the priest said without conviction. He waved feebly at the blood in the trench. “I didn’t believe the American at first. Such things don’t happen here. In Rwanda maybe, but not here, not on Chios. In New York, too, they happen.” Papa Michalis nodded to himself. He knew about the mayhem in America from the police shows he watched, rebroadcast from the states on Greek TV.
Grunting, the chief officer stood up. He wanted to get on with the job and be rid of this garrulous old fool. “Could we talk about this another day, Father?”
But the priest was not to be put off. “Do you think it’s hers? The hand, I mean?”
Patronas looked down. The ground was sodden with blood. He doubted that either Eleni Argentis or the boy had ever been fingerprinted, and DNA analysis was not available on Chios. “I don’t know whose it is,” he said gruffly.
He climbed into the trench. Reluctant to go farther, he stopped near to where the pool of blood lapped at the dirt walls. Watching him, the priest was surprised by this. He himself was not squeamish, having served in the army during World War II more than sixty years before. He had been forced to bury more dead than he cared to remember, German and Greek alike. In the army of the dead, there are no nations, no flags.
After a long moment, Patronas knelt down and carefully gathered up the hand and dropped it in a plastic bag; then he swabbed the blood and put it in a second bag, thinking that he’d send both pieces of evidence on to the crime laboratory in Athens. He raised the lantern and took a final look around. Aside from the blood, there was little else, no discernible trace elements. “Eleni Argentis is in charge here, isn’t she?”
The priest nodded.
“What’s she like?” He took care to use the present tense. No need to start rumors in town before he knew what had transpired here, whose blood this was.
“Generous. Hard-working.”
“Rich, too?”
“Exceedingly so. She bought everything you see, all the equipment, even a laptop computer for Petros, a Toshiba, to use for his schoolwork and to track their findings.”
Patronas began to bag the dirt and shards next to the bloody pool. “So she’s not like the rest of them, her stepmother and that son of hers?”
“Oh, no. Eleni’s simple in her pleasures. Archeology is all she cares about. She sleeps here sometimes in a little pup tent she brought from the United States. Camps out to save time. A young woman like that. She bought a generator to light the site so she could work at night.”
“Where’s the generator now?” Patronas asked, thinking the light might help him now.
“It quit about a month after she got it. We could never figure out why. Vandalism would have been my guess. It’s in the monastery if you want to take a look at it.”
“What did she tell you about the American? The one who found the blood?” He passed him the lantern and climbed out of the trench. It was too dark now. He’d have to do the rest tomorrow.
“Alcott? She knew him from Harvard. Jonathan Alcott. Supposedly he’s a great scholar, an authority on Bronze Age Greece. She was thrilled when he agreed to come to Chios. She said he’d validate her findings.”
“Father, what exactly did she think she’d found here?”
He hesitated. “A Minoan site or perhaps the remnants of some more ancient, unknown race.”
Together they walked up the hill, the lantern making a circle of light at their feet.
“She was sure she’d found it?”
“Yes,” the priest said. “And for that they killed her.”
Chapter 3
Where many roosters crow, dawn is slow in coming.
—Greek proverb
“It’s late,” the priest told Patronas. “Why don’t you sleep in one of the rooms here? You can stow the evidence in the refectory, use it as your murder room.”
“Murder room?” Patronas raised his eyebrows. He was proving to be a strange one, this Papa Michalis, full of police lore he’d apparently gleaned from American detective shows like Law and Order and CSI. He’d spoken knowledgeably of serial killers, and as they’d walked back up the hill from the dig site, named a few—Charlie Manson and that cannibal from Milwaukee, Jeffrey Dahmer, citing the specifics of their misdeeds, all the grisly details. He’d evidently made a study of these men, knew that John Gacy liked to dress up as a clown and Ted Bundy had used a fake broken arm to lure victims. He even went so far as to ask how many killers like Bundy Patronas had ‘busted,’ using the American term.
“None,” Patronas had replied.
“Really? How long have you been a policeman?”
“Over twenty years.”
“And no homicides?” The priest was obviously disappointed.
“That’s right.” He’d regretted sharing this, as the priest had gone into overdrive afterwards, sharing what he knew of American crime detection and instructing Patronas on how best to proceed. Most priests quoted the Bible, cited proverbs to explain human behavior, the Old Testament to depict God’s wrath. With Papa Michalis, it had been chapter and verse of Murder She Wrote and Colombo.
“I mean no disrespect, bu
t Colombo and the other detectives, they always use a murder room in their homicide investigations. It’s the place where they keep the evidence. It’s rudimentary in crime detection, fundamental. As a policeman, you simply have to have one.”
He led Patronas up a wooden staircase and out along a creaking balcony. Opening off the balcony were a series of cell-like rooms. The priest unlocked the door of one and turned on the light. It was a cramped space, narrow and long, with an iron cot and makeshift closet, set off from the rest of the room by a cloth curtain. A monk had probably occupied the space at one time. The window was open and Patronas could see the lights of the town in the distance.
The priest handed him a ragged towel and a bar of soap. “Bathroom’s at the other end of the balcony. A bit primitive, but at least there’s running water and a toilet.”
“What happened to the American?”
“Kyria Papoulis took him back to his hotel in her car. Vassilis went with them. His uncle’s mules are still here.”
“Mules?”
“Yes. The American rode up here the traditional way, on a mule with a wooden saddle.”
“But he was wearing shorts.”
“Indeed.” There was a ghost of a smile on the old man’s face.
Patronas shook his head. Another tourist trying for the Greek experience. They always got it wrong, the tourists. “So, in addition to all his other problems, he now has an assful of splinters.”
“Fly bites, too,” the priest said. “I saw him scratching.”
š›
Yiannis Patronas called his wife on his cellphone to tell her he would be spending the night at Profitis Ilias. “It’s serious,” he said. “I’ll probably be here a few days.”
“What do you mean ‘serious’?”
“A murder.”
“On Chios? You’re joking.”
She had him there. The last murder on Chios had taken place during the German occupation. And in Patronas’ view, it hadn’t really been a murder. More an act of patriotism, the killing of an SS man who’d been in charge of the local Gestapo. If Greek partisans hadn’t shot him, it would have been worse for everybody. His death had been a good thing. Not like this.
“Listen to me,” Patronas said. “It looks like a woman was killed up at Profitis Ilias.”
“What woman?”
“Eleni Argentis.” There was a long silence.
“So it’s true what they’ve been saying.”
“What who’s been saying?”
“Spiros and Antigone Korres. You know the ones. They live on the road to the monastery. They say she found some kind of treasure, better than the gold in the National Museum.”
“When did you hear this?”
“At the open air market, the laiki, on Wednesday.”
“Ach. Who was with you?”
“It was the laiki, Yiannis. Half of Chios was there. And that Spiros, he’s a loud one. He doesn’t whisper.”
“Ach,” he said again.
“That’s right, Yiannis.” As usual, his wife had gotten there first and was eager to point it out to him. “Your killer? It could have been anybody.”
Sighing, Yiannis Patronas closed the phone. He hated it when his wife did this. As if they were playing chess and she’d yelled ‘checkmate’ before he’d gotten his men on the board.
š›
Judging by the sound, the rooster was somewhere close by. Patronas fumbled for the light and opened the door of his room. The bird was perched on the railing of the balcony directly across from him, crowing raucously. When it saw him, it flapped its wings and moved to attack him. “Get out of here,” Patronas yelled, backing away. “Go on, beat it.”
The priest came hurrying out of a room two doors down. “Sorry,” he said. “I should have warned you. He’s a monster, this one. Mussolini with feathers. Very demanding and unlike his fellows. He doesn’t just crow at sun-up; he crows all day long.”
Waving his arms, he shooed the bird away. “I suppose I could eat him. But the truth is, it’s lonely up here and he keeps me company. Come on, it’ll be light soon. I’ll make you breakfast.”
The kitchen was a cold, dark space with battered pine cabinets and a cement floor. The counters were white marble, stained with rust in places. What looked like an immense sink was propped up against one wall. Hewn of a single block of stone, it had no pipes attached, no faucet. Water had to be drawn from the small well at the center of the room.
Patronas ran his hand across the sink. It had a Latin date carved on the front of it.
The priest noticed his interest. “Part of a sarcophagus. It’s old, this place. Eleni told me it’s been in continuous use since Roman times, maybe even earlier.”
Pushing a stack of books aside, he motioned for Patronas to take a seat at the little table in the corner. It was covered with a printed oilskin cloth and held a pitcher full of wilting sunflowers. The priest opened the door of the refrigerator and got out a bowl of eggs, then lit the propane burner on the counter and made Patronas an omelet with feta and tomatoes. He himself ate only bread.
Patronas picked up his fork. “How long have you known Eleni Argentis?” he asked.
“Two years.” The priest faltered for a moment. “When she first came here, the Bishop asked me to look out for her … and I did. Or at least I tried to. I spent a lot of time down here in those ditches, helping the two of them. She liked to show us bits of clay she collected and talk about them. As you can see, I am an old man and she took pity on me. She washed my clothes and helped me in the garden. She even made dinner for me once or twice. She was ….” He ran a gnarled hand over his face. “She and Petros, we were friends.”
“You are friends. Whether or not anyone is a victim here remains to be seen.” Blood or no blood, Patronas was unwilling to concede that a death had occurred without a body, a proper Corpus Delecti. Be it Eleni Argentis’ or someone else’s. Homicide was a serious matter, a term not to be bandied about, blood and body parts notwithstanding.
The sun was up by the time he finished breakfast and returned to the dig site, the air already warm. It was going to be a hot day. Even now the cicadas were loud in the trees. A pair of goats watched him from a distance, their fur golden in the early morning light.
Uninvited, the priest had followed him and now stood at the edge of the trench, looming over him, his black cassock billowing in the wind. “Chief Officer, with your permission, I’d like to assist you in your investigation.”
“Sorry, Father. You know that’s impossible.” Patronas was measuring the depth of the blood. He wasn’t sure what had happened, if the blood was even human, and he wanted to sort it out before his men arrived, before the day got any hotter. “This is police work and the police and the church, they’re at cross purposes. They don’t mix.”
“Hear me out. I can be of service. I’m familiar with the excavation. No one knows it better than I do. I am also familiar with crime detection. I am a fervent devotee of the mystery novel and of all manner of American detective shows. I know about trace evidence and DNA.”
Patronas waved him away. “You are a man of faith, Father. You’ve no business in a homicide investigation.”
“Faith and homicide are not incompatible. The Bible is full of homicides.”
“Be that as it may, I have no need of your services.”
Patronas entered his measurements in the spiral notebook he’d brought with him next to the date and time. He didn’t know what had transpired here, but he suspected it was a double homicide. He had never seen so much blood. Perhaps the priest was right and he should look to the forensic specialists on television to guide him. Write things down the way they did. As to what those policemen did with it after they wrote it down, he had no clue. As he’d told the priest, he’d never investigated a crime like this before. Assault and battery, sure. Violence against one’s spouse any number of times. But murder, never. As a cop, he was an amateur at best and he knew it.
“I can’t stop thinking about
her,” the priest said. “Dead out here someplace.”
“What makes you so sure she’s dead?” There had been no doubt in the old man’s voice, only sadness.
“No one’s seen her. After I called you last night, I checked with Marina and Vassilis, people who were here yesterday. Eleni always said good-bye before she left, and yesterday she didn’t. Petros either.”
“Who was up here yesterday?”
“A lot of people: Petros’ mother and her boyfriend. Manoulis, I think his name was. Eleni’s stepmother, Marina Papoulis and Vassilis Korres, Jonathan Alcott, the American you met. Another archeologist was here, too, but earlier in the day. An Englishman.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“McLean.”
“Anyone else?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You were here the whole time?”
“No, I got a haircut in the morning, did some errands in town. But Marina Papoulis was here, getting lunch ready in the kitchen. She’ll know if anyone came by while I was away.”
“Did she go down to the dig site that day?”
“No. To my knowledge, Marina has never visited the excavation.”
Not a long list. He’d start on it as soon as he finished here. “It seems she was concentrating on this end.” Patronas pointed to a break in the whitened matter, the broad indentation where the shards had been emptied out.
“Eleni kept a log. She told me you have to make a very precise drawing of the site with the elevations and afterwards number each fragment and pinpoint where it was found before you remove it.”
Patronas climbed out of the trench. He’d leave the rest to his men. He’d been in charge of the police force on the island of Chios for over twenty years, and the novelty of violent crime had long since worn off. He’d collected his share of teeth from barroom floors, driven the combatants to the hospital to be stitched up. The sight of blood no longer stirred him. It just made him tired.