The Moai Murders

6

"WHAT DO YOU THINK?" Moira said, pointing to what I suppose would be a little hummingbird when the red welts calmed down, on her upper arm right at her shoulder.

"Very cute," I said.

"I think this may be the bravest thing I've ever done," she said.

"Probably," I said.

"I kind of lost my nerve on the belly button idea," she said. "For one thing, I felt a little squeamish, and also I wasn't sure how Clive would feel about a hummingbird around my navel."

"Good idea," I said. "This looks nice, and it's discreet."

"Exactly. You, too, could have one," she said. "This is on my shoulder and is therefore called a… just a minute, I'll remember, he pare. If it were on my thigh, it would he kona. Just so you know. Remind me I have to put antibacterial cream on it from time to time. Guess where I got it? You'll never guess. Daniel Striker's wife, Eroria did it. You know, the cameraman. His wife is a real artist, and she does tattoos both here and in Australia where they live part of the year." She stopped for a moment and looked at me. "You're looking a bit green about the gills, Lara. Are you getting another migraine? Is there a problem?"

So I told her. "Jasper is dead!?" she gasped. "Murdered?"

"I'm afraid so," I replied.

"And Dave? Are they saying the same thing about Dave?"

"Not yet, but I think they might once the pathologist gets here."

"When is that supposed to be?"

"Tomorrow," I said. "He's flying out from Santiago tomorrow."

"I didn't believe you, you know, about Dave. I am a jerk. That must have been something, finding Jasper like that," she said.

It was. Finding a dead guy leaning against an ahu may have made for much better television, but it also made Pablo Fuentes' life a living hell. Jasper, when we'd found him, was stone cold dead and had been for several hours. No matter how much Fuentes wanted to rule this another accident, two corpses with their heads bashed in made at least one too many. But we'd got the horse business out of the way, or so I thought at the time. There were no hoof prints to be seen. No horse poop in the immediate vicinity, either.

Still, Fuentes wanted to make it an accident, even if it was pretty obvious that you couldn't just accidentally hit your head like that, all by yourself, unless you threw yourself off the third floor of a building, maybe, which he hadn't done, partly because I had yet to see a three-story building on Rapa Nui, and because even if there was one, it wasn't anywhere near Ahu Akivi.

The good news was that finding Jasper had cleared up my mental discomfort with tattoos, and that came as something of a relief, although given the circumstances it was hard to see why. Jasper's chest, as Dave Maddox's had been, was red and puffy from the effects of a very recently acquired tattoo. I'd just focused on Dave's face when I'd found him, I suppose, and blotted the rest of it out. No wonder the thought of tattoos made me nauseous.

The bad news was that Fuentes seemed to hold me personally responsible for the rather abrupt change in his job responsibilities which heretofore, as far as I could tell, consisted of riding around the island with three of his compadres in one of the distinctive cream and green Carabineros de Chile vehicles. I say this because the whole time I was on Rapa Nui—and it was days longer than I intended to be there—I never saw one of these vehicles with fewer than three or four men in it. I also heard very little evidence of crime, and, as Fuentes himself had told me, people didn't go around murdering others much on Rapa Nui. Perhaps being Chilean, assigned for a few months to an island at the end of the world, with people they could not entirely understand even if they spoke Spanish as a common language, the carabineros sought safety in numbers.

Called upon to act, Fuentes did two things. First he confiscated all the footage Kent Clarke Films had taken since their arrival several days earlier. His second act was to do what I'd told him to in the first place, that is to say, make all of us stay on the island whether we wanted to or not. He rather peremptorily summoned me to come with him to see the congress delegates, now all assembled in the meeting room.

"You will come with me," he said in a tone that brooked no disobedience.

"Where are we going?" was the best I could manage in reply, even though I wanted to tell him to stuff it, given he had been so patronizing when I'd told him Dave Maddox had been murdered.

"I am not comfortable speaking English to a crowd," Fuentes replied. "You will translate."

I felt I had no choice but to do so, thus earning myself the distinction of being the one person at the conference that they could all agree on. In other words, every single one of them hated me.

"You will stay here until the investigation into the murder of Jasper Robinson is completed," I said, at Fuentes' bidding. A groan surged from the audience in my general direction.

"While Corporal Fuentes has not yet taken the step of confiscating your passports, he wants you to know that your names have been given to the authorities at the airport, and also to customs and immigration officials in Santiago. There are no flights to Tahiti today, given that last night's flight has finally taken off. In other words," I said, ad-libbing for a moment, "he's telling us there is nowhere to go."

Another groan, louder than the first. "I'm a U.S. citizen," Edwina Rasmussen said. "I demand to meet with a consular official."

"That would be in Santiago, Madame," I said, after listening to his reply. "You may do so when you get there." Actually, I toned down what he said a little. I didn't want Edwina to hit me with her umbrella.

"When will we be allowed to leave?" Susie Scace asked.

"When I say so," I translated. "By which I mean Corporal Fuentes."

"Do we have to stay in the hotel?" Brian asked.

"No," Fuentes replied. Everybody thought that was a bonus, but maybe they hadn't really thought it through.

"I believe I may be of assistance," Cassandra de Santiago said. "I am in touch with the spirit world."

"No, thank you," I said. That was not even close to what Fuentes said, but I'd have been embarrassed to translate what he did say out loud.

"So where is the San Pedro rongorongo tablet?" I asked Fuentes when everybody had filed angrily out of the room, most of them glaring at me as they did so.

"What are you talking about?" Fuentes asked me after a second or two. I told him that Jasper Robinson had unveiled a tablet covered in rongorongo script that he had found in the Atacama Desert.

"What is rongorongo?" he asked irritably, when I'd finished my reasonably lengthy description. This amazed me at first, but then I reminded myself that he was Chilean, not Rapa Nui. It seemed a dumb idea, particularly right now, during the investigation into two suspicious deaths, to have a police presence that knew nothing about the culture in which they found themselves. I was sure my opinion would not be appreciated by Fuentes, however, so I told him about rongorongo, and how, given he'd taken all the Kent Clarke footage, he could see for himself what the tablet looked like. He stomped out of the room.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what Fuentes would do when he'd looked at Daniel's tapes. Once the policeman got around to acknowledging that murder was a distinct possibility, Gordon Fairweather was going to be number one suspect the moment the Rano Raraku footage appeared before his eyes.

I wanted to run to Hanga Roa to try to find Gordon or Victoria and warn them, but when it came right down to it, what difference would it make? Gordon could run, and he could probably hide for a day or two, but this was one small island to try and evade authorities on, and frankly there was nowhere else he could go. After a couple of hours of persuading myself to think this way, I gave up and went into town. I had no trouble finding out where Victoria Pakarati lived. Half the town was called Pakarati as near as I could tell, and a very tall white archaeologist with braids wasn't that hard to locate either.

Victoria answered the door. She had been crying. "Have they taken Gordon already?" I said.

She looked perplexed. "Has who taken Gordon where?" she asked.

I had rather just put my foot in it. "You've been crying. Is there anything I can do?" I said, changing tactics.

"It's Gabriela," she said. "She's in a coma. We don't know what happened. I'm looking after the little ones so that her mother can be with her," she said.

"How bad is it?" I said.

"Bad," she said, and then she started crying again. Two little boys who were watching from a doorway began to wail when they saw her.

"Where's Gordon?" I said.

"Up on Poike," she said, pulling herself together. "I've sent a message for him to come home."

Bad idea, I thought, but within seconds I heard footsteps behind me, and Gordon strode into the room. Little Edith ran in and grabbed him, "Papa, Papa, Gabriela," she kept saying over and over.

He was a man who took charge easily, and within minutes I was playing games with the little ones, while Gordon took his wife aside and calmed her down. Victoria went outside and came back with bananas and papayas she'd picked from her own garden, and soon we all had large glasses of freshly made juice in our hands. The little ones stopped crying. It looked like a perfectly normal day at home.

"I need to talk to you, Gordon," I said.

"Gordon, I've promised my sister I'd go to the hospital as soon as you got here," Victoria said. "You can go later. Will you stay with the children?"

"Of course," he said. "Maybe Lara would help me convince the boys to have a nap."

"Gordon," I said. "We need to talk."

"She's tried to kill herself," Victoria said. She was trying very hard not to cry.

"Gordon!" I said.

"Can't it wait?" he said.

"No, it cannot," I said, rather more loudly and firmly than would usually be necessary. "It's about Jasper Robinson. Have you heard the news?"

"What news? That he faked the San Pedro tablet? Now that would be news I'd like to hear."

"He's dead," I said. "We found him up at Ahu Akivi. It is possible he was murdered."

"Murdered!" both Gordon and Victoria exclaimed. "Have you heard this?" he said, turning to his wife.

"I've been looking after the children all day," she said. "Ever since Gabriela was found."

"I didn't like Robinson, as you know, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone," Gordon said.

"The police have confiscated all the film that was taken during the Moai Congress," I said. They both looked at me with a "so what?" expression on their faces. "I think they continued filming when you arrived at the rim of Rano Raraku."

Silence greeted that statement. "Oh, my God, Gordon," Victoria gasped, looking from one to the other of us as my words sank in at last. "That's what you meant when you got here, asking whether they'd taken Gordon already, isn't it? You were trying to warn us," she said. "Gordon, they have you threatening Robinson on tape!"

It was at this moment that the Carabineros de Chile pulled into the drive.

And so it was that I found myself negotiating mushy gears in a battered old truck with a fugitive in back.

I'm sure my life list, had I thought to consult it in the few seconds I took to make my decision, would have had an entry rather near the top that said I will never harbor a fugitive in a foreign country, especially one that is an island in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure what had propelled me out the back door and into the truck. Perhaps it was the expression of anguish on Victoria's face, or the baffled expression on Edith's.

I had barreled along a poor road that ran parallel to the airport runway, before cutting inland on a road that was even worse, taking muffled directions from the back. "Where are we going?" I asked, trying not to move my lips as I did so, just in case someone was looking, which they probably weren't. Given the circumstances, however, I wasn't taking any chances, other than the big one I seemed to have taken on, in a moment of insanity.

"Cave," the muffled reply came back.

"What? Where?"

Gordon evidently took the blanket off his nose for a second. "The family cave," he said. "Victoria's family has a cave."

"Okay," I said. "Am I on the right track?" It was a good expression, because a track was pretty much what the road had become. I'd long since switched to four-wheel drive. Every now and then, on my say so, Gordon would peek out the side window, get his bearings, and give me instructions. He was a big man, and I knew it was extremely uncomfortable for him curled up in the back. More than once a groan had escaped his lips as I'd taken a bump just a little too fast. Speed, however, did seem to be of the essence.

I finally reached the end of the trail and could see no way to go further. There was a wall of rock in front of me, and beyond that, maybe a hundred feet away, the sea. At Gordon's instruction, I got out, climbed the rock and looked around. There was no one to be seen in any direction, a bit surprising on an island that is twenty-five miles when measured at its very longest point, but people seemed to pretty much stick to the area around Hanga Roa.

When I said to, Gordon unfolded himself from the back seat, and stood up.

"Nice job," he said to me. "Thank you."

"I know I'm stating the obvious here," I said, as we crouched over and maneuvered into the cave. "But there's nowhere for you to go, and you can't spend the rest of your life in a cave. Furthermore, won't the carabineros know that Victoria's family has a cave?"

"They're Chilean," he said. "The police are Chilean, the doctors are Chilean, even the teachers are often Chilean. No wonder the islanders worry about losing their identity here. The carabineros don't even patrol the island at night. The only crime here is excessive drinking. You know who keeps this island under control? A bunch of strapping Rapa youth who have no compunction about using night sticks when called upon and a bunch of grannies who haul their wayward sons-in-law out of the bar by the ear when need be. Do you really think the carabineros are going to find the family cave?"

"Someone could tell them," I said. I declined to mention that there were two crimes now on Rapa Nui, excessive drinking and murder.

"They won't find me, believe me," he said. I looked around. The mouth of the cave was easily seen, even from some distance. There were stone platforms covered in dried grasses, mattresses of a sort, inside, and outside was a place to cook. Still, I figured even Pablo Fuentes could find this place.

"My point is that, even if they can't find you, you can't stay in a cave for the rest of your life!"

"No," he said. "But I can stay in a cave until Victoria has a lawyer lined up and until she can get in touch with the U.S. Embassy in Santiago and maybe even persuade them to send somebody out here. Chile was a military dictatorship until very recently. I'm not turning myself in until I have everything in place."

"Okay," I said. He had a point. Maybe having a lawyer present canceled out the obvious disadvantage of having made a run for it. "What do you want me to do now?"

"Will you take the truck up to Poike for me? Tell Christian or Rory what's up, and ask them to bring me some supplies, some food and water, and maybe some flashlight batteries. Victoria will have told the carabineros that I'm up on Poike but will be returning shortly. With any luck they won't go up there, but will wait for me in town. There's no road. You'll be using four-wheel-drive again. I'm hoping Rory or Christian can come up with some reason the car is there and I'm not. I'm really just buying time, I know."

"Okay," I said again. I rummaged around in my bag and handed him the emergency bag of trail mix I never travel without and the small bottle of water I had been carrying with me. Neither would last him for long. "Rory will be along soon," I said.

"I'm counting on it," he said. "Tell him just to come into the cave and speak loudly. He won't see me, but I will hear him and recognize his voice."

"I can pretty well see everything here," I said, dubiously. The cave was high enough to stand up in and went back fairly far. But there were no other entrances that I could see.

"Long and honorable tradition," Fairweather said, enigmatically. "Rory will understand."

I started to clamber out of the cave. "Lara," he said. "I don't know why you are helping a stranger, but thank you."

"That's okay," I said.

"You haven't asked me if I killed Jasper Robinson," he said.

"No," I replied. "It never occurred to me." He gave me a halfhearted smile and a wave, and I was on my way again.

"Rory will be here soon," I repeated. But it didn't quite turn out that way.

I had a tough time finding the place where Rory and Christian were working, but I finally did. They were a little surprised to see who got out of the truck and positively flabbergasted when I told them about Jasper.

"Murdered!" Rory said. "The guy was positively begging for it, but still!"

"Where are your students?" I said. I wanted as few witnesses to my presence there as possible.

"They've taken the van back to town," Rory said. "We're pretty much finished here for the day."

Then I told them about Gordon, the carabineros at his home, and our flight out the back door to the cave. "Gordon needs some time," I said. "When he doesn't show up at home, the carabineros will be here."

Christian had the hood up within seconds, rummaged around, and then tossed something into the grass. "Too bad the truck has broken down," he said, leaving the hood up. "Gordon went into town to get a part."

Rory smiled slightly. "Parts usually have to come in on the next plane," he said. "I guess it will be a while before Gordon is able to get his vehicle repaired."

"Right," I said. "But how did he get to town?" Nothing like having your story straight before the carabineros arrive.

"I took him," Christian said.

"What about the students? Would they have seen Gordon leave?"

"No," Rory said. "It was getting too hot, so we sent them home early. It was just the three of us up here."

"We should be okay," I said. "I am kind of hoping for a lift to town myself."

"No problem," Christian said, wheeling a motorbike out from behind a rock. "Hop on."

"You rode that thing on these trails?" I said. The idea struck terror into my heart. I was more afraid of going back to Hanga Roa on the back of this thing than I was of Pablo Fuentes.

"Make sure the carabineros don't see Lara with you," Rory said. "It's the least we can do for her."

"Gordon thinks the carabineros won't find him in the cave, but I'm not convinced," I said.

"They won't," Christian said.

"Not a chance," Rory said.

"You all seem so sure," I said.

"Do you know about the kio?”Christian said. I shook my head. "That's the rapanui name for the people who hid out in caves called kionga during the clan wars and also when the slave ships showed up on the horizon. Whole extended families had places to hide until someone came and told them it was safe to come out. Believe me, they will not find Gordon until he wants to be found."

"I think you better get going," Rory said. "There's a fair amount of dust over there. I'd take the long way back if I were you."

Christian had the motorcycle revved up and I was behind him holding on for dear life in seconds, and we headed off in the opposite direction in our own cloud of dust.

"You'll be okay?" was the last thing Christian said to Rory as we pulled away.

"Liar is my middle name," Rory said grimly. "Get out of here."

We were halfway back to Hanga Roa when I realized there was something we'd forgotten. I pressed my mouth to Christian's ear. "Who came up to Poike to tell Gordon to go home?" I said.

Christian slowed down slightly. "I'll take care of it," he said.

But it was too late, and a series of disasters began to un fold. The young man Victoria had sent to get Gordon was Gabriela's brother, Santiago. When questioned by the carabineros, Santiago was very forthcoming, assuming, quite naturally, that this had something to do with whatever had befallen his sister. He told them he'd ridden his motorbike up to Poike to get his uncle and that Gordon had put the bike in the back of the truck and driven him home. Santiago, perhaps thinking he was providing his Uncle Gordon with an alibi, was very specific about the time all this had happened and said that both Rory and Christian could also attest to these facts.

Rory, who'd undoubtedly lied through his teeth as he'd promised, was caught out in the lie, as was Christian. Both were brought in for questioning and then placed under house arrest. By evening, there was also an armed guard front and back at Victoria's home, she too having been caught in the same lie.

The only person whose role in all of this the carabineros did not seem to know about was a certain shopkeeper from Toronto. Fuentes, who was not stupid, was bound to wonder who had taken Gordon's truck—now that everyone knew it had at one point been in Hanga Roa—back to the dig site in Poike. I was almost certain neither Rory nor Christian would reveal my part in it, but I was a little concerned they might both claim to have been the person who drove it back, thereby giving Fuentes cause to wonder if someone else was involved. But no one came calling that first day, so I decided I was safe for the time being.

It took me an hour or two to realize that meant it was up to me to get food and water to Gordon. It was a burden that weighed heavily on me. Just looking around would tell you there was no foraging for berries on this island. If you couldn't eat grass or rocks you'd pretty much be out of luck. As for fresh water, the only source of it I'd seen were the lakes in the craters, and I had trouble imagining climbing down to one of those in the dark. I wasn't too worried about the food. Gordon was not fat by any means, but he was a big man, and he wasn't going to starve overnight. Water was more of a problem. I'd given him my liter bottle, but I'd already had some of it. I couldn't exactly remember how much. That meant I'd have to get up there soon.

No problem, I thought. I'll rent a vehicle, buy some food and water, and be on my way when no one is looking. I knew I wouldn't stand a chance of finding the cave in the dark, and it made more sense for me to be out during daylight hours anyway.

What I hadn't counted on was the San Pedro rongorongo tablet, or more specifically, its absence. The tablet was not immediately listed as stolen, just missing, given that its owner was permanently unable to tell anyone where he'd put it. The dancers who'd wheeled it on to the stage had not wheeled it off. That was left to Jasper, who had then had his fifteen minutes of glee after the dancers left the stage, when he asked Fairweather and Rory up to see it, and then stood by while everyone else oohed and aahed over it. What happened after that was a little vague. The glass case it had been housed in and the trolley it had rested upon both belonged to the hotel, and hotel staff had found both, empty, in the meeting room after everyone else had gone. They assumed that someone had taken care of the tablet. Undoubtedly someone had. The question was, who would that someone have been?

The carabineros, once advised of the evening's proceedings, had taken a good look through Jasper's room and declared definitively it wasn't there. The hotel manager said no arrangements had been made with the hotel for its safekeeping, and the night it had been unveiled was the first he ever heard of it.

Inquiries at the Sebastian Englert Museum in Hanga Roa as to whether or not the tablet had been deposited with them met a similar response, with the additional comment that they had never heard of the San Pedro tablet at all.

Kent Clarke and the rest of the team at Kent Clarke Films all said that both Jasper and the tablet were still in the meeting room when they packed up their gear and left, Daniel to his home in Hanga Roa, Kent and Brittany to their room, and Mike to his end of the bar. Several members of the delegation remembered seeing him there, and none of them had seen the rongorongo tablet in his possession.

Kent told the police, or so she said, that she had asked Gordon Fairweather and Rory Carlyle to have a closer look at the tablet. She said she was not prepared to take Jasper's word that it was authentic and was hoping for a second opinion. She said that both men had agreed to take a look at it the next day. She said she was reasonably sure the tablet was still in the room when they left. There was a slight element of doubt in her statement, however, just enough to make both Gordon's and Rory's situation even worse than it already was.

The next morning, the carabineros swept into the hotel, asked all of us to standby, and quite methodically searched our rooms while we watched. It took all day, and we were not allowed to leave the hotel.

By this time I was getting really worried and completely paranoid. I was convinced I was being watched every moment and worried that they'd managed to slip a bug into our hotel room while they searched, even though they'd made us watch while they went through our stuff. I hadn't said a word to anyone, not even Moira, who had not taken the news of Rory's incarceration well, and was now off in a little world of her own, usually by the pool.

I tried a couple of test runs into Hanga Roa by taxi, and on both occasions, within a few minutes, the carabineros had pulled in behind me, and when I got out, they cruised up and down the street watching me. Twenty-four hours a day, there was a police vehicle at the hotel entrance. So much for renting a car and making a dash for it. By now the better part of two days had gone by.

The only bright spot in all of this was that I figured out a way to keep tabs on Gabriela's condition. It occurred to me, in a rare moment of lucidity in those couple of days, that, given Gabriela had worked there, she might have a friend. That friend, it turned out, worked at reception. I mentioned that I hadn't seen Gabriela in the bar or dining room for a couple of days. Was she on a break? I asked.

"She's very sick," said the young woman, whose name, according to her badge, was Celia.

"That's too bad," I said. "I hope she'll get better soon. I'm rooting for her for Tapati queen."

Celia burst into tears. "They think she's tried to kill herself," she said. "She's in a coma!"

I feigned surprise and expressed genuine dismay. "What happened?" I exclaimed.

"Nobody knows. They think she may have taken it herself, but they can't find any poison around. Pills, perhaps, but nobody knows how she would have got them. They've sent some blood to Santiago for tests, and we're just waiting. I'm afraid she may die before they figure it out," the girl wailed.

"I knew she was unhappy about something," I said, rather tentatively.

"She was," Celia said. "She wouldn't tell me what it was. But to do something like this!" She stopped and looked at me for a minute. "When she came to the hotel to pick up her belongings, she told me two nice ladies from the hotel had tried to help her, but that no one could. Was that you and Ms. Meller?"

"We did try, without success," I said. "But I had no idea it was this bad."

"Nobody did," Celia said, but she gave me a little smile.

I hoped I had found an ally if I needed one. I even contemplated asking her to take a message for me to Victoria Pakarati; indeed I wrote a note and sealed it in a hotel envelope, but later when I went to reception to ask her, she was deep in conversation with Pablo Fuentes. They stopped talking the minute I walked in. Given I couldn't be sure of the tenor of that conversation, I just asked the first question that came into my head, something about the weather, and left with the letter still in my bag.

I finally poured out my heart to Moira. I asked her to go for a stroll on the hotel grounds with me and told her everything, then held my breath waiting for the reaction. "I'm glad you told me," she said. "I knew there was something bothering you. I was afraid you were annoyed with me about not believing you, and, I guess, about other things. Yes, I will help. We are intelligent women, to say nothing of devious when called for, and we will figure this out. If I can sum up what I think you've told me, Victoria can't go to her husband, nor can Rory and Christian, given they are both under house arrest. You can't go to Victoria because then they will be watching you. If any of her close relatives try to get to him, they'll be seen. So it's up to us. First we need food and water. Then we need a diversion."

"If we buy a lot of food and water, the guy who is following us around will begin to wonder," I said.

"Who said anything about buying?" she said.

It was another day before we could get everything organized. I was worried sick about Gordon by then. Every meal, we'd emptied the bread basket into our bags, and at breakfast we took lots of extra cheese and fruit, keeping it in the minibar in our room. The water was easy. We just ordered extra for our table every meal, and we did, in fact, go shopping, but only once. It was not the food that was slowing us down. It was devising a way for me to get it to him. We knew what we needed to do. We just had to find the right place to make it happen. We did the tourist routine, looking at the menus at every restaurant, buying T-shirts, walking up and down the streets of Hanga Roa stopping to look at everything.

Finally we were ready. We went into town, followed closely by one of Fuentes' men. We went into a car rental agency and came out with a white Suzuki four-wheel-drive, drove along the main street, parking in front of a restaurant carefully chosen, which we entered. I, as the one viewed with most suspicion, sat in the window with my menu and pretended to talk to Moira whose chair, had she been in it, was hidden from view. I smiled, I laughed, I didn't have a care in the world. In a few minutes she was back in her place, eating the cheese enchiladas I'd ordered for her. After lunch, we did a test drive to Anakena Beach, leaving the carabineros who'd been following us to sit in a hot van while we swam and sunbathed for the rest of the afternoon. We knew we were ready to roll.

But then Seth Connelly did something really, really stupid.