Just a Corpse at Twilight (16 page)

"Well. . ."

"You know?"

"Yes," Grijpstra said. "It's the old thing again, his habitual ego problem. Wants to know what really goes on in life. He thought that the journey to New Guinea might help." Grijpstra chuckled. "Enlightenment under the banyan tree, sir."

"Where the shaman held court? Wasn't he initiated there?"

"Seems he flew when under the influence of an ingested plant," Grijpstra said. "Hallucinations. Being alone on the island here was supposed to have been the next stage but nothing much happened, except some highs on dope and recorded music."

"Miles Davis?"

"And Kentucky bourbon sipping whiskey, sir. But nothing to write home about."

"Classic Miles Davis or the funky electronic music?"

"In between, sir. The new quintet, with Wayne Shorter."

"Ah yes," the commissaris said. "Katrien has those records, she plays them for me sometimes. She has become quite the expert, her ear has widened, she says. She has been religiously studying jazz for years now."

"Transitions take time, sir."

"You like that funky stuff, Henk? That way-out percussion and the electric guitars and synthesizers going on and on? You're a sensitive drummer yourself."

"Acquired taste," Grijpstra said.

"And you acquired it?"

"Foley and Irving III are exceptionally good, I think, sir. As I was saying. So de Gier combined these highs thinking he'd get a super high . . ."

"That would set him free? And then nothing happened? He had to scatter firewood, kick women? That's sad . . . yes. . ."

"You still there, Henk?"

"Yessir."

"You do have to find the grave."

"I don't know how to, sir."

"Or find Lorraine."

"You still there, Henk?"

"Yes," Grijpstra said. "Yessir. I may have an idea. It'll be easy, all I need is some empty cans. . . .

"Tell me."

Grijpstra told the commissaris.

"You just thought of that? What triggered it?"

"Hairy Harry, sir. I just saw him toss his Heineken's can overboard, out of the
Macho Bandido.
Ishmael was telling me yesterday, as we were flying over the area looking for carrion birds, that Hairy Harry and the deputy, Billy Boy, weasel face I call him, go out shooting 'varmints' a lot. That's what they call wildlife. They have good equip- ment, infrared scoped rifles, and they keep killing beautiful birds."

"Oh dear," the commissaris said.

"I made some drawings, sir. Golden-eyes, mergansers— have you seen those here, with the russet tufts? And the little puffed-up fellows, buffleheads? And the loons?"

"I was there in the winter, Henk. I did see some ducks, but from a distance. I heard about the loons, eerie laughlike cry, I believe. Don't tell me you have the sheriff and the deputy sheriff shooting endangered species there?"

"Anything that flies," Grijpstra said. "Ishmael says there's an eagle missing too. He has been looking for the body. He did find two loons and fifty-two assorted ducks lined up on the rocks. Shot during breeding season."

"Ah . . . ," the commissaris said.

"Ishmael," Grijpstra said, "says the habit dates back to when poor British folks first settled the area here. Back in England they'd seen rich folks blast away at game all the time, so once they reached the promised land they all bought guns and blasted away too."

The line was quiet.

"Sir?"

"Hunt the human hunter," the commissaris said. "That's what I would like to do if I had my life to live over again. The predator's predator. Now there's a good homemade purpose, Grijpstra. Wouldn't that feel good? Protect the endangered species against the endangering species. To impress our ladies. Care to join me? Fancy coming home to Nellie and when she says, 'How many?' you say, 'Got three of 'em, Nellie.' Wouldn't she be proud?"

"You're kidding, sir."

"Don't know if I am. Let me know what happens with your cans and things.... That'll be on Jeremy's island, you said? . . . Think a few good thoughts for me there, Henk... . There should still be a lot of Jeremy's spirit around on that blessed spot."

Chapter 15

Grijpstra located the grave and the corpse. He also located Lorraine. He didn't locate grave, corpse, and Lorraine at the same time.

Good luck comes to those who keep trying. The commissaris kept saying so during Grijpstra's long career as an Amsterdam Municipal Police Murder Brigade detective. The commissaris kept saying other things. "Doing what you're doing now, Adjutant, is your present excuse for being alive." Grijpstra hadn't quite gotten that at the time but he was encouraged anyway, and pursued his activities, the endless search for the relevant detail that keeps a murder case, or any other pursuit for that matter, up, no matter how tottering. Up and about.

"Glad to see you're up and about, Adjutant," the commissaris would say when he saw Grijpstra striding through the corridors of headquarters, a case file or object in hand. Once there were two objects: Sten guns, as used by British commandos. The weapons were found held by desiccated hands in an Amsterdam basement. The theory was that the uniformed mummies were the remains of liberation soldiers who shot each other over treasure. No witnesses could be produced. A probable date was set somewhere in the spring of 1945. The bodies were discovered by masons in a next door basement who ran into a bricked-up thruway twenty years later. Grijpstra's theory said that British troops were quartered in a house formerly occupied by German troops, an SS detail, hunting the city for hidden Jews. Whenever Jews were found, treasure showed up too. The SS men hid their loot in the basement. They left it there as they fled. Two British commandos discovered the cache. There seemed to be quite a bit of value in the stacked foreign banknotes and the jars containing jewels. Both soldiers realized simultaneously that all of a treasure is twice as much as half of a treasure. They both carried murderous weapons. They both had itchy trigger fingers.

"Glad to see you up and about, Adjutant," the commissaris had said briskly. A little later, in his office, he approved of Grijpstra's theory. The soldiers' dried-out corpses were delivered to the British embassy. There was no further action. There was a grim detail, however. The treasure turned out to be worthless.

"Now," the commissaris had said at the time, "what if instead of obsolete occupation money and colored glass we had a couple of million dollars here, and what if you and Sergeant de Gier had found those millions? We reflect on facts—long-gone owners, the loot is ofcriminal origin. And what if the society you serve has become chaotic? And what if authority has become corrupt? Would those millions become your ticket to freedom?"

"Would de Gier and I shoot each other?" Grijpstra asked.

The commissaris's phone was ringing. He picked it up, waving his trusted assistant away. "Yes, Katrien, ofcourse I'll be home. What's for dinner? Kale? Mashed potatoes? No veal croquettes? But you promised."

It was nice to know, Adjutant Grijpstra would tell Sergeant de Gier, that a man of the commissaris's elevated status took an interest in lowly bunglers such as themselves and threw them outrageous ideas to chew on.

"And what's so elevated about the commissaris's status, Adjutant?" the sergeant would ask and Grijpstra wouldn't have much ofan answer because he couldn't ever quite define why he admired his chief. The man's indifference? Or was there a better word? The man's curiosity? His willingness to probe taboos?

Adjutant and sergeant pursued the subject in the police headquarters' parking lot. The old watchman, in the city's uniform, sitting straight up on a stool, was enjoying the sun while listening in.

"He don't worry much," the old watchman had said, pointing his grizzled head at the commissaris limping across to his privately owned ten-year-old dented CitroSn convertible. "State would buy him one ofthem fancy limousines like the other bigwigs drive but he don't care to spend taxpayers? money on fancy new models."

The watchman, a constable now out of the force because of multiple shot wounds in both thighs, badly healed, didn't worry much himself, but he was always around, mathematically fitting the maximum number of cars into a fairly small space, always with freeway for emergency vehicles, giving them godspeed with his crooked smile as he held up traffic outside the gates as they flashed off, sirens screaming.

"Maybe that's it," Grijpstra said as he watched the former constable cheerfully swinging his crippled body about. "Not to worry while giving it all you can?"

De Gier smiled obediently. "Ah . . ."

"Not good enough, Sergeant?"

"Oh yes," de Gier had said. "Now tell me, Adjutant, what's this
it
we're supposed to give all to?"

"It ain't there," the former constable said. "If it was I couldn't serve it, right?"

Grijpstra made de Gier row him and two gray garbage bags filled with empty beer cans, candy bar wrappers, and other shiny garbage he had collected in Jameson earlier to Jeremy Island that night. Together they arranged the objects on a beach that would be visible from Bar Island.

"Can't have seen us," de Gier said. "It's too hazy for one thing, but I checked the weather report and the fog will burn off later today and the night will be clear. For another thing, Aki is working through the evening at the diner. If you're right, Lorraine will be hiding underground." De Gier laughed. "The trap is sprung, Henk."

"Good," Grijpstra said, surveying their work. "Sun rises in the east. East is over there. The first rays will light up the bait nicely. Subject of our search will see the mess. She, accompanied by Aki or not accompanied by Aki—that doesn't matter, we're not after Aki—will rush out and clean up. We grab subject. We solve our case."

"This must be too simple," de Gier said.

"I know," Grijpstra said. "I know I shouldn't discuss strategy with suspect. . ."

"Suspect may be crazy too . . ."

". . . with possibly psychopathic suspect..."

De Gier's flashed smile was pleasing.

" . . but what else have we got?"

Grijpstra sat on a rock, embracing his knees. The gigantic luminous disk of a full moon was rising behind Squid Island, filling the sky with an eerie light that made firs and pines look like black fairy-tale cutouts. The momentarily tideless sea lapped the island gently. There was no wind and the peaceful whispering and rustling sounds behind them had to be made by animal life, equally impressed with the enchantment displayed all around. A loon, floating just off Jeremy Island, chuckled, and set off a choir of coyotes on the peninsula's point nearby. A soprano coyote yipped a few times and mezzo-sopranos set up rising howls for background. The mezzos warbled while the soprano sang. The chant rose for a while, faltered suddenly, then the sounds tapered off. A little tremulous yapping again ... a long drawn-out musical sigh ... the loon's chuckle.

Grijpstra applauded silently.

"Never heard coyotes this close." De Gier had found an egg-shaped boulder of his own to sit on. "They don't dare usually. Maybe they can sense we won't harm them. The sheriff and Billy Boy just love to shoot them."

"For the skins?"

"They fly coyote tails off their cars' antennas."

"Infrared scopes. Super rifles. Our brother sportsmen." Grijpstra growled. "I'd rather have them hunt us." He grinned. "Then turn on them."

"Defend the little bit of nature left," de Gier said. "I would like that too. The commissaris is right. The noble final venture. Exterminate the exterminators. . . . Henk?"

"Yes?"

"How can Lorraine pick up beer cans if I saw her corpse?"

"But you don't really believe that," Grijpstra said. "I'm here to prove the opposite. That's why you summoned me."

"No . . ."

"Okay," Grijpstra said. "Here's the other reason you summoned me—your emotional development was impeded, as you know . . ."

De Gier gaped. He raised his voice. "I know
what?"

Grijpstra nodded. "The emotionally impeded need plenty of attention. Say I prove you did indeed kill Lorraine. Off you go, rowing into the horizon, in the two-thousand-dollar dinghy. Like the good hermit. Never to be seen again. And I'll be waving from the shore. Me, your alter ego, an essential segment of your final scene."

De Gier grinned. "Yes, Doctor Shrinkski."

Grijpstra grinned too.

De Gier's smile was ghoulish white in the moonlight.

Grijpstra shifted about on his rock. "The emotionally impeded live and die to impress the audience. But help is on the way—there's no need for you to emulate hermit Jeremy yet."

De Gier relaxed. "Just answer the question, Henk. How can Lorraine, dead, clean up this beach here?"

"Okay," Grijpstra said. "Why do I know that Lorraine is alive? Kathy Two is a smart dog. Smart enough to save my life. Smart enough to stay sane while living with the crazy little skippers. Explain this: Kathy Two keeps visiting Bar Island to bark at Lorraine's cabin, inviting her to come out and play."

"You told me that," de Gier said. "So where is Lorraine? Hidden and locked up by Flash and Bad George? Who's been feeding her all week?"

"Ever thought of tunnels?" Grijpstra asked.

"Tunnels," de Gier said. "Fascinating. You're supposed to get sucked into them after you have a heart attack. Then you come back and tell the folks back home what death is all about. We have Lorraine crawling back out of astral tunnels now?"

"Regular tunnels," Grijpstra said. "Tunnels of greed. Didn't you see that poster in the window at Perkins* Sports Store? Old-fashioned men in waistcoats leaning on then-spades in front of a large shed with SILVER MINE written on the roof?"

"Wasn't that just another sham? Some rumor started to drive up the price of real estate?"

"The men in the waistcoats didn't know that yet. They dug lots of tunnels." Grijpstra patted his boulder. "Right here, these very islands, Jeremy, Squid, and Bar. All three of them have been tunneled for silver. I asked Beth. She showed me her family album. Her uncles got duped too. They borrowed money, bought the islands, went bankrupt, sold out."

"Flash and Bad George are feeding a chained-up Lorraine in an island tunnel?"