Murder in Mykonos

20

Catia's plane to Mykonos landed on schedule. That seemed like the last thing to go right. At the town hall she learned that neither the mayor nor the chief of police was anywhere to be found, and when she called her brother for help, he too was unavailable.

She raged across the harbor front to the taxi stand, jumped into a cab ahead of two waiting tourists, and told the driver to take her to the hotel where her niece was staying. The driver started to object, but she cursed him in Greek and he said, 'Okay, okay.'

Fuming, she started venting aloud. 'No one in this town is where they're supposed to be. I'm here to meet with your wonderful mayor, and he's gone. I try to see your chief of police, he's gone. I fly all the way from Holland, and neither of them bothers to show up for our appointments.' She really didn't have appointments, but it gave better currency to her anger.

Tentatively, the driver said, 'I'm not a big fan of the mayor and, as for police, they give taxi drivers grief, but I wouldn't take this personally. They're busy, very busy. The whole island's filled with cops — they're looking for a missing girl.'

Catia shivered for an instant, shut her eyes, and took a deep breath. Her brother really did use his influence. She'd underestimated him. Her voice was its old courteous self. 'Have you any news of how the search is going?'

His eyes darted between the mirror and the road. 'Just that they're searching the old mines and a lot of churches.'

Catia was puzzled. 'Why are they looking there?'

The driver was concentrating on crossing a very dangerous intersection. 'I don't know about the mines but I guess the churches because that's where they found another woman's body.'

Catia thought she was going to faint. She couldn't seem to breathe. When she finally spoke, her hands were shaking and her voice was very weak. 'Please… please take me there.'

'Where?'

She spoke between drawing nervous breaths. 'Where they're looking for my daughter.'

The driver jerked his head around, his eyes seeming to swell in their sockets. 'Your daughter?' He crossed himself.

She simply nodded and didn't speak or lift her head for the rest of the ride. Even in a four-wheel-drive SUV Andreas almost slid off the road twice. Tassos yelled what the two cops in the back had to be thinking: 'Slow down before you kill us!' They were on the beat-up, mountain dirt road that ran past the church where they'd found the Vandrew woman's body.

Andreas wasn't listening. 'Son of a bitch is just too lucky. Can't believe he got away from us back there.'

'If you keep driving like this there won't be anyone left to catch him.' Tassos had his hand braced against the roof. The SUV was careening back and forth maddeningly close to the edge every time it hit one of the deep ruts cutting across the road.

About a quarter-mile past the church the road turned to the right and plateaued for about thirty yards before starting downhill. Andreas slowed down slightly and pointed across his body with his right hand. 'Over there, see, that's where the tunnel comes out, down on the other side of that hill.' It was about a half-mile away, another brown hillside flecked with green and gray.

Andreas knew he had to drive faster if there was any chance of catching them. He drove the motorbike onto the crumbling, rusting pier. There was no choice. The police would be there any minute, he was sure of it. His eyes scanned the cove and its ridges for any sign of them — or anyone else. It was, as usual, gray and deserted everywhere he looked. Gray from the color of the barite once loaded onto ships from this spot and deserted because of its ugliness. Even Boy Scouts from their camp in the cove just to the west never hiked here. Too much beauty elsewhere to bother with this place. That's why he chose to hide the boat here last night. It was a gray, medium-sized Zodiac inflatable — a common summer sight in the Aegean.

He put the girl down on the pier next to a rope tied to the Zodiac and pulled on the line until the front of the boat was close enough to slide her onto the bow locker. She slumped forward, obviously still out of it — despite forty-five minutes of bouncing along with him on the motorbike through the tunnel's maze of debris. He'd built the maze and other, more menacing surprises, to discourage the curious from his business inside — such as moats and dens baited with food for attracting feral dogs. They'd worked — at least until today.

He knew his DNA would be all over the tunnel, but that was only part of what police would find to tie it all to him. One of them, at least, would piece it together.

He pushed the motorbike to the end of the pier but hesitated before letting it fall. Maybe he should tie her to it and dump them both? Why wait any longer?

He stood perfectly still holding the bike, then abruptly opened his fingers and watched it fall into the sea. No, it wasn't yet time.

He got into the boat, undid the line, and started the engine. Annika was in front of him, lying on her belly with her head turned forward at the windiest part of the boat. He couldn't see her face but would be able to tell if she moved.

As he headed east out of the cove he kept looking back to shore, expecting any moment to see the police. They were less than a quarter-mile away when Andreas sped into a blind, descending, right-hand curve. Just beyond his line of sight the right wheels hit another deep rut, but this one ran parallel to the road — not across it — and channeled the SUV's wheels as if set on tracks. Andreas jammed on the brakes and twisted the steering wheel hard to the left — the perfect scenario for a rollover. But it didn't roll over because the rut wouldn't let go, and no matter how hard Andreas braked or steered, the SUV kept sliding head-on into — or over — the hillside, depending on where the rut took them.

The killer wasn't the only lucky bastard that afternoon. At least that's what Tassos was calling him when the SUV finally stopped. They'd hit the hillside, but only hard enough to be bruised.

Andreas jumped out and looked at the damage. 'It's not that bad. We can push it back onto the road.'

'Only if I drive,' said Tassos.

Andreas was angry only with himself, but his tone didn't show it. 'This is serious, we have to get there now.'

'I know, that's why I'm driving,' Tassos repeated.

Andreas didn't object, just gestured for the others to help push. It took five minutes before they sufficiently untangled and dug out the mess around the front wheels to get the SUV back on the road. It took another five minutes of careful driving by Tassos — and cursing by Andreas to go faster — before they reached an utterly impassable road. The cove they wanted was at the end of it. Tassos turned off the engine. 'The rest of the way's on foot.'

'If he came this way, we'd have seen him,' said one of the cops.

'Unless he was able to make it back to the main road and swing east before we got here,' said Tassos.

'He'd have to be on a motorcycle to do that,' said the same cop.

Andreas gave him a sarcastic look and started running toward the cove. 'Stop all this bullshit and let's get down there.'

They'd parked just west of a cluster of deserted, one-story, gray concrete-slab buildings. About 150 feet to the west, on an adjacent hillside, was a mine-shaft entrance covered over with weather-battered boards and warning signs marked DANGER. Everywhere and everything was gray. The place looked abandoned to ghosts.

Tassos was moving more like a scurrying duck than a runner. 'That was the mining company's offices.' He pointed to the buildings. 'Looks sort of like someone nuked the place, doesn't it?'

The road was utterly unusable, so Andreas and the two younger cops led the way traversing the hillside, more sliding than running. They came to a narrow plateau covered with thousands of spent shotgun shells and pieces of broken black and blaze-orange ceramic. They kept running but Andreas yelled back to Tassos, 'What the hell is this?'

Tassos was panting. 'It's where locals do skeet and trap shooting' — he caught a breath — 'practicing for bird and rabbit hunting.' Again he paused. 'It's the only place deserted enough not to worry about hitting tourists sunbathing in the bushes.'

Just beyond the shooting range they met back up with the road and followed it for a few hundred feet between two hillsides. It looked like it was about to end at a cliff falling off into the sea. Instead, at the very edge of the cliff the road made an unexpected hairpin turn back onto the hill to the right and ran a steep two hundred yards straight down to the cove. Andreas stopped at the turn. You could see it all from there: the mine entrance, the beach, the pier, the sea.

'Looks like we're late again,' said Andreas.

'Maybe he's not here yet. Maybe he's still in the mine,' said one cop.

Andreas pointed to motorcycle tracks running from the mine to the pier. 'Maybe, but I doubt it.'

Tassos finally caught up to them. 'Looks to be something yellow in the water at the end of the pier.'

Andreas looked. 'I'll take the men down for a look around. Why don't you stay here and watch our backs for anyone who might come along.'

Tassos smiled. 'Thanks. I wasn't looking forward to hiking down there and back.'

Andreas winked and started down. The sunlight was blinding. Annika's eyes weren't used to it. She could sense the sea. Everything was moving faster now, not just jolts and vibration like before. She could feel the breeze growing stronger. Her face was right into the wind, but hard as she tried, she couldn't smell it, couldn't breathe through her nose. She tried to taste it. It was whipping its way between her lips, forcing her to breathe more deeply. It wasn't hard for Andreas to guess that whoever came out of the mine had been riding the motorbike now lying off the end of the pier; but where did he — hopefully they — go? The logical explanation was a boat, but that meant the killer had one waiting for him. Did that mean an accomplice? Maybe they'd walked to another car or bike nearby?

He told his men to search along the shore for footprints coming out of the water. Sure enough, they found a pair of man-sized sandal tracks on the end of the beach farthest from the road. Andreas told one man to stay by the mine entrance — just in case — while he and the other cop followed the tracks. They led along the shore, out of the cove and around to another small beach.

There they found matching arriving and departing tire tracks, signs of a boat dragged into — but not out of — the water and the same man's sandals in the middle of it all. They took some quick pictures just in case the wind got there before forensics.

They made their way back to the cove just in time to see the two cops who trailed the bike emerge from the tunnel. They'd found nothing but tire tracks. Good, thought Andreas. She's still alive.

'You must have seen something besides tracks,' he said.

'Sure, a lot of rocks and things you'd expect in a mine,' said one cop.

'And tools by some of the places they're digging,' said the other.

'What do you mean digging?' said Andreas sounding annoyed. 'That tunnel's been closed for twenty-five years.'

The first cop looked eager to impress the chief with his thoughts on the second cop's observation. 'It's more like an archeological dig.'

The second cop didn't seem about to cede credit to the first for his own find. 'Except these digs are all over the place, some in the walls, some in the ground, some old, some new. It looks like professionals, not weekend amateurs looking for potshards.'

Andreas thought of the broken urn by the cell. Looked like their killer was into robbing antiquities as well as lives. It was a high-paying racket that had Greece and a lot of other plundered nations suing Western museums for the return of their treasures. Billions of euros were involved; and that was only the publicly known plunder. There was no telling how much was in private hands. But that was someone else's problem. His job was finding Annika Vanden Haag. They started up the road toward Tassos.

This time it was Andreas panting when Tassos started talking. 'You found something over there?' He pointed to the far end of the beach.

Andreas nodded and told him what they'd found on the beach.

'Any idea how old the tracks are?' asked Tassos.

Andreas nodded no. 'Since we don't have tides in this part of the Mediterranean they could be old.'

'But we do have wind,' said Tassos.

Andreas nodded. 'Yes.' He pointed to the motorbike tracks on the beach below. 'They're older than those.' His breathing was regular again. 'Looks to me like our killer brought a boat out here early today or late yesterday, probably tied it up to the pier, walked through the water to cover his tracks, got to his vehicle, and drove away.'

'That means he planned on using a boat all along.' Tassos sounded surprised.

'Sure seems that way.' Andreas kicked a stone. 'I guess we're following in his footsteps more than chasing him.' He sounded frustrated. 'We need to check out the boats and beaches and coves and-'

Tassos stopped him. 'We don't have enough men to do that. We can't pull them off the churches. You know they're still our best bet.'

Andreas nodded. 'I know. I'll ask the port police to help out. The shoreline is their jurisdiction anyway — and they've got a helicopter.'

'Where do we tell them to start looking?' asked Tassos.

'I'd say our killer could be an hour away from here by now,' Andreas said.

'That means they could be anywhere on Mykonos,' said Tassos.

'Which is exactly where I'm going to tell them to start looking — any place they can think of where someone in a boat might try to hide from police.'

Tassos rolled his eyes. 'Sounds simple enough.'

'Yeah, like everything else in this case.'

Andreas' cell phone rang. It was Kouros. 'Chief, you told me to call you on your mobile if I couldn't reach you on-'

Andreas interrupted him. 'It's okay. What's up?'

'I have news on the jeweler.'

'Did you find him?'

'No, but he's not where he's supposed to be.'

Great, thought Andreas, just what we need, another missing hot suspect.

Kouros continued. 'One of his salesmen has outstanding DUI warrants, so I pushed him to tell me where his boss was.'

Good work, thought Andreas.

'He gave me a number in Athens for the jeweler's girlfriend. When I called and asked for him she started screaming before I even identified myself. Said he wasn't there and if I wanted to know where he was I should call his wife — because that's where he told her he'd be staying this trip to Athens. So, I called his wife.'

'Let me guess,' said Andreas. 'She had no idea where he was.'

'Yes, she thought he was still on Mykonos, but when I said he wasn't and identified myself, she suggested I call the girlfriend.'

'She what?'

'Didn't even seem angry, just told me to call her. I told her I already had.'

Andreas couldn't help but laugh at the image.

'That's just what she did, sir.'

'What?'

'Laugh. She said, "Good, now the bastard's cheating on both of us."'

Andreas laughed again. 'Okay, but does he have any other family you can check with?'

'No, sir. The salesman told me he has no other family. They've all passed away.'

Andreas hung up and shook his head as he told the story to Tassos.

'I wonder where he is?'

Andreas shrugged and turned to the other cops. 'Okay, let's get back to the car.'

They concentrated on breathing rather than talking as they walked up the hill to the SUV. When they got there Andreas used the radio to call the chief of the port police. Tassos leaned against the driver's side fender and looked off to the west. The sun had fallen below some of the nearby hilltops, sending their shadows out into the valleys.

Andreas finished his call, walked over, and leaned on the fender next to Tassos. 'He'll have the chopper in the air in thirty minutes, and his boats will be looking for Vanden Haag — with a shaved or covered head — in the company of a man fitting the description of any of our suspects. Probably in an inflatable boat but not necessarily — he could have pulled a switch on us.'

Tassos seemed in a trance. 'Sunset is my favorite time of day,' he said, and let out a sigh. 'But I'm afraid it's coming on a mite too quickly for me today.' He turned his head toward Andreas. 'You know, in a couple of hours it's going to be too dark to hunt by helicopter, and if they try chasing him down in the dark by boat, it's way too easy to toss her overboard.'

Andreas nodded his agreement and reached for his cigarettes. 'The boys found something else inside the mines.'

Tassos didn't say anything; he was back to staring at the sunset.

'Relic digs. I think our killer's involved in the stolen-antiquities market.'

Tassos seemed unfazed. 'Not surprised. These hills are full of them — many stolen centuries ago from Delos and hidden, misplaced, or simply reused as building materials here. Not sure how valuable any of them are.' He paused but didn't move his eyes.

Andreas joined him staring west. 'I wish I knew what's behind all these… these human sacrifices. I'm sure his serial-killer traits are off the charts, but why the ritual-sacrifice angle? And how do those paintings on the ceiling of saints and underworld gods tie in to all this? Do you think there's a connection to the relics?'

Tassos' tone remained the same. 'Don't know, but in today's world some movie or TV program on human sacrifice in some ancient civilization could have set him off.' He paused. 'Maybe that Mary Renault book did it — the one about your lady with the cord, Ariadne, getting mixed up in human sacrifice on Naxos.' He gestured toward that neighboring island. 'Or even a news story on those crazies still doing it in parts of India and Africa.' He paused again. 'He's probably twisted so many things up inside his head even he doesn't know what's driving him anymore. I don't see much of a chance of us ever knowing what pushed him over the edge, but I do think we'll identify him. It's only a question now of when.'

Andreas offered him a cigarette, and Tassos took one. 'Do you remember the story of Saint Kiriake?' Andreas asked.

'She was a young woman martyred by pagans who tried torturing her into denying her faith.'

Andreas lit Tassos' cigarette and then his own. He drew in a puff and slowly let it out without saying a word; when he did, he sounded like a preacher. 'Yes, but what first attracted the pagans' attention was her extraordinary beauty. No matter what tortures or guiles they tried, she wouldn't give in. God protected her and healed her wounds — even destroyed a pagan temple and a few of her tormentors in the process.'

Tassos took a puff on his cigarette before speaking. 'Sounds like a plan. Let's just hope Kiriake can get some of that action working for Vanden Haag tonight.'

'Amen to that.'