The Moai Murders

12

THE SHADOWY FIGURE I'd come to know as Anakena was very slowly beginning to take shape in my mind. Like the hooded individual in my nightmares, I didn't know if it was man or woman. I did know that this was a person of keen, if malignantly misdirected, intelligence, someone of almost infinite patience. This war of retribution had been devised down to the last detail, and it had been planned for a very long time, each piece of the strategy carefully put into place over a period of at least three years and in such a way as not to raise any alarm.

It had to come down to the Internet group. There were others at the congress, certainly. Several Chilean experts had flown in to present papers, a fellow from CONAF, the Chilean national park service, had come to present a paper on efforts to reforest the island, for example, but he had come and gone, in one day and out the next. Other Chilean archaeologists had done the same. The people who had stayed for the whole event and who hadn't been able to leave were the Moaimaniacs, Kent Clarke Films, Moira, and me. I knew who all the members of the group were, with the exception of Anakena. Technically that should have meant that none of the people whose aliases I knew were Anakena, but I didn't think I could count on that. It would have been easy enough for any one of them to have a second alias.

Andrew and I had talked for a long time after he told me about Flora Pedersen. He told me that he regularly checked Jasper Robinson's Web site out of sheer curiosity about his former schoolmate's exploits, even if that schoolmate had rejected him in such a harsh fashion so many years before. He'd signed up for the Moaimaniacs the moment the notice appeared on the Web site, about three years before. The anonymity it afforded was very appealing to Andrew, and he'd been pleased, he said, when he realized that both Dave and Seth were members.

I could see the hand of Anakena everywhere now. Was it Anakena who had suggested the idea of the group in the first place? Kent had said that there was no good idea that Jasper wasn't prepared to steal. Had the killer suggested the Internet group, then later suggested the congress? Was that person close to Jasper, trusted by him, whispering ideas in his ear like some scheming Iago? Did Anakena know Jasper so well as to be able to predict what he would do? His overweening vanity? His blindness to anything that didn't further his theories, enhance his reputation?

Physically, Anakena had to be strong enough to drag unconscious bodies to their resting places—Dave to the tomb, Jasper to Ahu Akivi, or at least to some kind of vehicle that would carry him there. Did that mean it had to be a man? Could I have dragged the rather rotund Dave Maddox from his room, say, to Tepano's tomb? I thought it would be difficult, but possible if sufficiently motivated.

Anakena had to be bold, as well, to carry out these murders on the grounds of a hotel. I also knew, thanks to Eroria, that Anakena was very probably left-handed.

As for the vehicle, assuming that Jasper hadn't gone to Ahu Akivi in the middle of the night of his own volition, almost all of us at some point had rented a car of some sort. Enrique, I know, had done so and squired Yvonne around the island. Lewis and his wife Judith had, too. Jasper had died before the keys had been taken away from all of us.

Who was left from that fateful time in 1975? I went back to the Internet cafe and checked on Professor Pedersen. I couldn't find him listed on the college faculty, but I did find a scholarship in his name—a memorial scholarship. Professor Pedersen, who had been at least fifty, I'd say, in 1975, was now deceased. He'd been dead for five years.

Flora's mother, however, could be very much alive. She had been considerably younger, early thirties, I'd say, at that time. She would have remarried, perhaps, and changed her name, and she would now be in her sixties. I asked Andrew if he thought he would recognize her thirty years later, and he said he thought he would, and he didn't think she was there. Even so, it was a possibility. Yvonne was way too young, as was Kent. Brenda Butters was the right age, and Susie Scace was close. Edwina Rasmussen certainly had a bitterness of outlook that might be attributed to personal tragedy, but she was too short to be Flora's mother unless the camera had done something strange to perspective. Brenda and Susie, however, were about the right height. Susie was also blonde, but when I really looked at the photograph, I couldn't see any resemblance. On the fringes of the group there was Judith, doctor and wife of the muffin. She was about the right age, seemed very strong to me, the right height, and while not a member of the Internet group, she was related by marriage. If Anakena was not a second alias, then she was a definite possibility. Were any of them left-handed? I tried to picture them eating, but I couldn't recall.

I picked up my email, the usual spam, the daily question from Clive and one from Rob. Something has been bothering me about those photos of the ground where that fellow Dave was found, the message said. / had them enlarged and a couple of us have had a look. I think I told you that horseshoes are unique, made to fit an individual horse. You can see quite distinct shapes and also maybe markings. All of the prints that I can see well enough to comment on are made by exactly the same horseshoe. There's a little notch on the right side of it. If you look at your photos, you'll see. I don't think you're looking for a horse. I think you're looking for a horseshoe. Be careful.

What on earth did that mean? That somebody, a left-handed somebody at that, had a horseshoe and was making marks on the ground around Dave to make it look as if a horse had trampled him? Wasn't that a little bizarre? It had been very effective, though, now that I thought about it. Fuentes had maintained for days that Dave had had an unfortunate encounter with a horse. The appearance of an accident would also have the benefit of not overly alarming the next victims. After Jasper's death, the implications must have been clear to the others, but by then it didn't matter. We were all here for the duration. Horseshoes and tattoos: Anakena possessed a creative mind as well.

How important was the San Pedro rongorongo tablet to the plan? It tied the person, whoever it was, to that summer of 1975, most certainly. The staff of the museum in town, who should know these things, said they had never heard of the San Pedro tablet. Therefore, one of the people associated with its original find most likely had had it in their possession all this time until it was planted for Jasper to find. It was too much to expect that it had turned up in the window of an antique shop like mine, somewhere where Anakena just happened to be wandering by.

Seth and Andrew considered it to be a sign, a shot across the bow, as it were. Was it a necessary one? It was, insofar as it was instrumental in luring all of them to Rapa Nui. It was to release it on an unsuspecting world that the Moai Congress had been set up. If Anakena was trying to convince Jasper to hold the conference, then the tablet would be an incentive. Who was in Chile when the tablet was discovered? Kent Clarke Films, Albert Morris, and Edwina Rasmussen. That was unless the tablet was a mere frill.

Who was doing this? Who was this frighteningly intelligent, endlessly patient and creative person carrying out this plan? I emailed the college and asked if they might have an email address for the former Mrs. Pedersen. I didn't expect a quick response, but at this point, anything was worth a try.

Who else had been devastated by the death of little Flora? Felipe Tepano, it seemed to me, most certainly qualified. Had he predicted the death on the mound of dirt in order to divert suspicion from himself? Surely that wouldn't work. Was it rather not more likely to point to him as a potential killer? Was it a coincidence, then? Did he really foresee a death? And if he wasn't involved in the deaths, did Anakena view the prediction as a serendipitous event that added an element of almost supernatural intensity to what was to follow? If so, then Anakena was adaptable and responsive to a changing situation.

I drove to the Tepano's guest house. Felipe wasn't at home, but Maria was. "Thank you for the photograph," I said. "I now know about Flora Pedersen."

"That didn't take long," she said. "You won't tell my husband, will you?"

"No, and I've brought it back. I made a copy."

"How did you find out?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that," I said. "I just did."

"There aren't many people anymore that could tell you," she said. I hoped I hadn't betrayed Andrew's confidence.

"She was the loveliest little girl, our Tavake," she said. "So pale and pretty, and very sweet. We all adored her. All of the people working at the dig site helped to look for her, all of us. We searched into the night. I remember the Pedersen's sat on the beach all night and well into the next day. Everyone's first thought was that she had drowned, of course. I guess after a while they thought the tide might bring her body in. But Felipe had one of his visions, you know. He said she was in a cave. We all searched the caves, but we missed her. She had climbed into a very small lava tube and perhaps had fallen. She may have been unconscious, because we called and called her name."

"Did you ever hear from the Pedersens after that?" I said.

"Sometimes," she said. "At first there was a letter maybe once a year, but then they stopped. One of the archaeologists working here later told us that the Pedersens had divorced and that she had moved away. She never recovered, though. She was—I'm not sure how to put this—she was very nervous all the time. She was not strong, you know, in the way she dealt with things that happened. I remember a dish was stolen from our house, and there was much crying. It was a dish and nothing special. She seemed to feel everything much more deeply than the rest of us. She was also much younger than her husband. They seemed to be in love. I think she was not strong enough, in her head, I mean, to deal with what happened to little Tavake."

"Do you know where she is now?"

"In heaven, I hope," Maria said. "She died maybe ten years later. I don't know why. She would still have been young. I think what happened killed her. It just took some time to do it."

Another theory down. "What was her name?" I asked.

"Margaret," Maria said.

"How did you feel towards those young men? It was a terrible mistake to make."

"I was very angry at first," she said. "But accidents happen, mistakes are made. We Rapa Nui tend to be more accepting of these kinds of things than perhaps you would be. Perhaps it is our tragic history. I have tried very hard to forgive."

"Has Felipe forgiven them?"

"That, I cannot say," she said. "I think so. He did love little Tavake. We lost a little girl a year or so before the Pedersens arrived here. She got very sick and died before we could get her to Santiago for medical help. I think Felipe saw something of his daughter in Tavake. Gordon, yes, I think he has forgiven. The others, I don't know. I know he never liked Jasper. None of us did."

I went back to the hotel yet again, and took a good look at the photograph, which Brian had very kindly printed off for me. There were nine people in that photograph, six of whom were dead. That left Andrew, who was obviously terrified he would be next, and Gordon, whose daughter was already a victim, and Felipe Tepano. He might be in his early seventies, but he was one tough seventy-something-year-old. I'd seen him haul stuff around the grounds of the hotel that would give me pause. I didn't think a body or two would even slow him down. Still, I didn't think he was the killer, anymore than the other two were. So that was the whole group. I didn't know where to go from there.

And then I had one of those forehead-slapping moments when you wonder how you could possibly be so obtuse. Of course there had been someone else there, the someone who had taken the photograph! It was possible, of course, that the camera had a timer, but I didn't think so. I needed another person, and the photographer was that person.

I phoned the Tepano guesthouse. The phone rang and rang. Not only was there no answer, but there was no answering machine or voicemail.

I had been looking for people over the age of fifty or sixty. I needed to expand the age range. I had assumed that Flora was an only child. Maybe she was their only child. Maybe either or both of them had been married before. There could be a sibling. Flora was four. The sibling, if from a previous marriage, would have to be older obviously, perhaps much older, if Professor Pedersen's child. Flora would have been about thirty-four if she'd lived. So who got pulled into the circle if I said forty-something or older?

Rory Carlyle? If there was a connection there, I didn't know what it was. He didn't like Jasper, but despite what Fuentes thought, his connection to Seth and Dave seemed to be pretty remote. He was in his forties, though, and therefore stayed on the list. Brian, however, was way too young.

Yvonne and Enrique might qualify, but it would be close. This person, whoever it was, had to be old enough to take a decent photograph. Kent Clarke would be back in the running again, too. My list of suspects was growing longer. This was not the way I wanted it to go.

When I thought about it, I decided that Gabriela was the key. She really was the odd victim out. She lived on Rapa Nui; she did not need to be lured here. She worked at the hotel, but she didn't stay, and she wasn't attending the congress. She had come to get her belongings, and she'd been upset, but I now knew why.

It was her cards, which Andrew/Cassandra had had the bad taste to tell her about. Celestino, the hotel manager, had said there was some commotion, which is why he'd found her in the hedge. What had happened to her after she got her things? Did she leave the hotel, only to be brought back? Not likely. Perhaps it was the scene of the crime, not the photograph, that would tell me what I now needed to know.

The sun was hot, even with the ocean breeze, and several of the Moaimaniacs were out by the pool. Moira was outside talking to Gordon, who had obviously driven her back to the hotel from her visit to Rory. They waved as I walked by. I walked along from Tepano's Tomb, past one row of rooms, and into the garden where Gabriela had been found.

I looked at the row of rooms by the sea. Jasper had stayed there. Dave had stayed elsewhere, in another building, but he'd been found on Tepano's Tomb, which was well within my view. Standing where I was in the garden, I could see Jasper's room, Dave's final resting place, and the place by the hedge where Gabriela had been found. I very slowly looked around.

It was so obvious: the garden shed, also known as the site office of Kent Clarke Films. I ran up to it, flung open the door, only to find it empty, except for a bare table, and a horseshoe on a nail over the door.

I was back outside and on my way to call Pablo Fuentes when what I suppose was either the culmination of Anakena's plan, or a last ditch effort to wreak havoc and death before we all left the island, began to unfold. In my mind it was this frightening tableau, a scene that seemed to move in slow motion. To one side of the picture, Moira and Gordon were saying goodbye, with Moira turning back toward our room and Gordon heading the opposite way toward the main building, passing Cassandra as he did so. Edith was playing with a cat on the far side of the drive from Moira. The Kent Clarke van was slowly moving up the drive. As it approached Edith's position, it stopped, the door opened, and Edith walked toward it.

"Gordon," I yelled as loud as I could. "Edith! Get Edith! Edith, run away!"

It was too late. The little girl was in the van, and it was starting to move. Moira, who had heard me and turned to see what had happened, grabbed the passenger door, wrenched it open, and climbed in as the van sped away. It swerved at the gate, but kept going.

Gordon, realizing at last what had happened, ran to his truck and started after them. My car was at least fifty yards away. "Andrew," I yelled, and he too started to run. We got into the Suzuki, but we were very far behind.

"Where?" I said.

"Anakena," he said, grimly. "Go!"

It was fortunate I'd been there before and could find the way. The fastest route to Anakena from the hotel hugged the airport runway before setting a diagonal course right through the middle of the island. I drove as fast as I could, and on occasion we could see Gordon's truck way ahead. When we got close to the beach there was a choice of roads. "Which way?" I said.

"I don't remember," he said. "It's not the same as it was. Just get me to the beach. I need to get my bearings on the beach."

I picked the road that led to the parking area. I couldn't see either Gordon's truck or the Kent Clarke van. "We've come the wrong way," I said, but Andrew was already out of the car and heading for the water.

Anakena Beach is a horseshoe-shaped ring of white coral sand, a strange oasis in an essentially rocky coast. The ground starts to rise gradually as you leave the sea. There are two hills, large mounds really, nearby, and I could see a cave near the top of one of them. But Andrew didn't go that way. He stood, his back to the water for a moment, looking left and right, before he started running across the sand. I followed. The surface was soft and very hard to run through, my feet sinking into the burning sand. I wasn't dressed for this and neither was Andrew.

He began shedding his garb as he ran, clothes flying everywhere, first the wig, then the long skirt, the jacket and then the blouse, until he was down to running shoes and his boxer shorts.

All these clothes presented an obstacle course to me, and I kept getting further and further behind. We ran past the ahu with its moai and away from the beach. I was gasping with the effort of making my way through the sand. I followed him as best I could, and when I rounded a mound nearly ran into the van and truck. I kept going past that, trying to see where Andrew had gone. After a minute or two, I realized I was completely alone. I couldn't believe it. Not five minutes away was a beach filled with dozens of bathers and now nothing. There was no road here, just some trails leading off somewhere, I had no idea where.

I figured that Andrew had been about two hundred yards ahead of me at most when I'd lost him. But I could see over that distance and he simply wasn't there That had to mean the cave was somewhere close.

The terrain was rocky now, with grassy patches as well. I couldn't see a cave, at least not like the one I'd taken Gordon to, where the mouth was quite obvious in the rock. That said to me it was subterranean. I had to find the entrance. I was running, stumbling, trying not to break my ankle, when I saw something gleam in the sunlight. It was a pile of silver bracelets. Andrew was showing me the way. At first it looked as if he'd simply left them on a rock, but on closer examination I could see a small opening down about four feet in what looked to be simply a pile of stones interspersed with tufts of yellow grass.

I stood for a minute thinking about this. I had no idea what lay on the other side, but I was reasonably sure that pushing through that opening was not going to do much for anybody. I could go back to the beach and try and get help, but we were still going to go in there one at a time, and if Edith and Moira were being held hostage, as they most certainly were, that wouldn't help either.

I'd had experience with only one cave, although I had been told the island, being volcanic rock, was riddled with them. The one cave I did know, however, had two ways in, one of them on the cliff face over the water. This part of the coast did not have the high cliffs of Poike or Orongo, rather it was a series of rocky outcrops. I ran to the shore and picked my way along it, keeping the pile of rocks inland as my reference point. At last I found a cave, just a few feet up from the shoreline and in relatively the right spot. I decided it was worth a try.

The problem was that if the cave was exactly the same as Gordon's, then when I stepped into the cave, I would block the light and be immediately seen. Or, it could be a cave that went nowhere near where I wanted to go. I tried to listen carefully to see if I heard anything that would tell me someone was in there, but the wind was the only sound that was audible. I counted to ten and crawled up and into the opening. At first it looked to be a simple cave with no other chambers, but when I went to the back, I found another tunnel, a lava tube. It looked almost man-made, although it couldn't have been. I got down on my hands and knees and started in.

The cave was rock, but it might just as well have been broken glass. It cut through the knees of my pants within a minute or two. My hands were scraped and bleeding. I still had the light behind me, though, and knew I was keeping a reasonably straight course in the right direction and could, if necessary, find my way out. Then the shaft turned upward. I pulled myself along for a few yards in almost complete darkness.

I decided I couldn't go any farther, and stopped. The air was bad now that the shaft had changed direction. It was hot, and the shaft seemed to me to be getting narrower. I didn't know what to do.

It was then I heard the sound of voices. Not only that, but I thought I saw a pinprick of light above me. I hauled myself up the shaft and into a more open area, but not high enough to stand up in, lit from below. I peered as carefully as I could over the edge. I had been right about the other entranceway. I could see it and Gordon, Andrew, and Moira standing to one side of it, just far enough away, in fact, that they'd never make it if they made a run for it. The light that was focused on them, a powerful flashlight, cast huge shadows on the wall behind them. I couldn't see Edith, but I could see her shadow. She was behind them.

"Look," Gordon was saying. "It's me that you want. Not my daughter, not Moira. They have nothing to do with this. Please let them go. I will stay."

"I also will stay," Andrew said. "My name is Andrew Jones. I am another that you want."

"Andrew Jones! What a pleasant surprise," a voice that seemed to be right beneath me said. "I thought I wasn't going to be able to find you. This is very noble of you, I'm sure, but you are all going to die."

"You are very sick," Andrew said.

The voice beneath me laughed. "I've been told that many times, by people much more qualified than you. Runs in the family," the voice said. "My mother spent the last four years of her life staring at the wall and picking imaginary lint off her sweater. Can't imagine what drove her over the edge, can you? Could it have been the death of her daughter? I adored both of them, you know. I spent what should have been the best years of my life looking after my mother. She had to be spoon-fed, and she had to wear diapers. What do you think of that?"

"I'm sorry," Gordon said.

"I'll bet you are," the voice said. "You don't even remember me, do you? You were off in your own little world, oblivious to anyone but yourselves, and your petty wants."

"I remember you very well now," Andrew said. "You were an obnoxious kid who resented your little sister, and all the attention she got." Perhaps Andrew thought he would provoke the killer into doing something stupid, but this killer was made of ice.

"You have no idea how I felt," the voice said. "I think this scintillating conversation needs to come to an end. Which of you would like to go first?"

"I will," Andrew said. His voice cracked.

"Nervous, are we?" the voice said. "Think how frightened Flora must have been, all alone in the dark. Your lipstick is smudged, by the way."

I couldn't see exactly where the killer was, although, given the angle of the light and the direction the others were looking, I was reasonably sure it was straight down, perhaps under the lip of the ledge on which I was now lying. Deadly tattoos were no longer the weapon of choice, I would assume, given the crowd in the cave. That probably meant that the killer didn't have a knife, either. Three adults could probably overtake one person with a knife. Anakena had to have a gun, so really the element of surprise was the only hope left. There was a large rock on the ledge, and I did the only thing I could think to do. I tried to push it off. It wouldn't budge. As quietly as I could, I turned and, bracing my back against the side of the bubble, I put my feet against the rock and pushed again.

I'm not exactly sure what happened then, except that I was falling. The ledge had given way. A shot rang out, and I hit the floor of the cave face down. I tried to take a breath, but I couldn't. There seemed to be blood around me, and I was trying very hard not to pass out. I looked up to see Andrew holding his arm. Blood poured through his fingers, but he was still on his feet. Moira was hunched over what I took to be Edith. Gordon was just standing there, stunned.

I wondered why I wasn't dead. I had to have fallen ten feet onto sheer rock. To my surprise, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I tried to sit up, but could only just raise my head.

"Is everybody more or less all right?" I gasped.

"I think so," Gordon said. Andrew nodded.

"Are you?" Moira said, unfolding herself from around Edith, who ran to her father and grabbed his hand.

"I guess so," I replied. "Where's… ?" It was then I noticed that I was spread-eagled on top of the decidedly unconscious Mike Sheppard.

"Good of you to drop by," Andrew said.