“The Marshall Islands.”
“Isn’t that clear across the Pacific?”
“I was stationed there after Korea. The Navy sent me
all over the region.”
I closed the chart.
“Any thoughts?” he said.
“All those symptoms could be due to radiation poisoning.
Is Rongelap near Bikini atoll?”
“So you know about Bikini.”
“Just in general terms,” I said. “The government
conducted nuclear tests there after World War Two, the winds
shifted and polluted some neighboring islands.”
“Twenty-three blasts,” he said. “Between nineteen forty-six
and nineteen fifty-eight. One hundred billion
dollars’
worth of tests. The first few were A-bombs—dropped on
old fleets captured from the Japanese. Then they got confident and
started detonating things underwater. The big one was Bravo in
fifty-four. The world’s first hydrogen bomb, but your average
American has never heard of it. Isn’t that amazing?”
I nodded, not amazed at all.
“It broke the dawn with a seventy-five-thousand-foot
mushroom cloud, son. The dust blanketed several of the
atolls—Kongerik and Utirik and Rongelap. The children
thought it was great fun, a new kind of rain. They played with
the dust, tasted it.”
He got up, walked to the window and braced himself on
the sill.
“Shifting winds,” he said. “I believed that, too—I
was a loyal officer. It wasn’t till years later that the truth
came out. The winds had been blowing east steadily for days
before the test. Steadily and predictably. There
was
no
surprise. The Air Force warned its own personnel so they
could evacuate, but not the islanders. Human guinea pigs.”
His hands were balled.
“It didn’t take long for the problems to emerge.
Leukemias, lymphomas, thyroid disorders, autoimmune
diseases. And, of course, birth defects: retardation,
anencephaly, limbless babies—we called them “jellyfish.’ ”
He sat down and gave a terrible laugh. “We
compensated
the
poor devils. Twenty-five thousand
dollars a victim. Some government accountant’s appraisal of
the value of a life. One hundred and forty-eight checks
totaling one million two hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars.
One hundred-thousandth the cost of the blasts.”
He sat back down and placed his hands on bony knees.
His high forehead was as white and moist as a freshly boiled
egg.
“I took part in the compensation program. Someone
upstairs thought it a good use of my training. We did it at
night, going from island to island in small motorboats.
Pulling up to the shore, calling the people out with
bullhorns, then handing them their checks and sailing off.”
He shook his head. “Twenty-five thousand dollars per
life. An actuarial triumph.” Removing his glasses, he
rubbed his eyes. “After I figured out what the blast had
done, I put in for extended stay and tried to do what I could
for the people. Which wasn’t much. . . . Samuel was a
nice man. A very fine carpenter.”
“How’d the people react to being paid?” I said.
“The more perceptive among them were angry, frightened.
But many were grateful. The United States extending a
helping hand.”
He put his glasses back on.
“Well, let’s crack another box. Hopefully something a
bit more routine.”
“At least you tried to help them,” I said.
“Sticking around helped me more than them, son.
Till then I thought medicine boiled down to diagnosis,
dosage, and incision. Encountering my own impotence taught
me it was much more. And less. You worked in pediatric
oncology; you understand.”
“By the time I got involved, cancer was no longer a
death sentence. I saw enough cures to keep me from feeling
like an undertaker.”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s wonderful. Still, you saw the
misery, too. Your articles on pain control—scientific yet
compassionate. I read them all. Read between the lines.
It’s one of the reasons I felt you were someone who would
understand.”
“Understand what, Bill?”
“Why a crazy old man suddenly wants to organize his
life.”
The other cases
were
routine and he seemed to tire.
As I scanned the chart of a woman with diabetes, he said, “I’ll
leave you alone. Don’t try to do too much, enjoy the rest of
the day.”
He stood and headed for the door.
“I wanted to ask you something, Bill.”
“Yes?”
“I met Tom Creedman in the village this morning. He
mentioned something about a murder a half year ago and some
social unrest that led to the blockade.”
He leaned against the jamb. “What else did he have to
say?”
“That was it.
Ben told me he lived here, caused some problems.”
“Oh, indeed.”
I pointed to the rear storage room. “Was that where Ben
caught him snooping?”
“No,” he said. “That was
my
office. Two bungalows
down. Creedman claimed he’d wandered in and was on his way out
when Ben found him. I might have let it pass, but he
insulted Ben.
That kind of thing isn’t tolerated around here. I ordered
him off the grounds. He delights in accentuating the
negative about me and Aruk.”
“He called this place Knife Castle.”
“And probably told you that yarn about the
slaves butchering every last Japanese.”
“It never happened?”
“Allied bombs killed the vast majority of the Japanese
soldiers. Three days of constant bombardment. On the third
night, the Americans radioed victory and some of the forced
workers left the barracks and came up here to
loot—understandable, after what they’d been put through.
They encountered a few survivors and there was some hand-to-hand
fighting. The Japanese were outnumbered. Mr. Creedman calls
himself a journalist, but he seems attracted to fiction—not
that there’s that much difference, nowadays, I suppose.”
“He also said that you did the autopsy on the murder victim.
Do you agree with the theory that it was a sailor?”
He sucked in breath. “I’m growing a bit concerned,
Alex.”
“About what?”
“Picker’s accident, and now this. You certainly can’t
be faulted for seeing Aruk as a terrible place, but it’s not.
Yes, the murder was terrible, but it was the first we’d had in
many years. And the only one of its type I remember in over
three decades.”
“What type is that?”
He pressed his hands together, clapped them silently and
looked up at the ceiling fan, as if counting rotations.
Suddenly, he opened the door and stepped out. “I’ll be
right back.”
Chapter
11
The folder he returned with was brown with a white paper
label.
ARUK POLICE
INVEST: D. LAURENT.
CASE NO. 00345
The first four pages were a typed report composed by the
police chief in slightly clearer-than-usual cop prose.
The body of a twenty-four-year-old woman named AnneMarie
Valdos had been found at three
A.M.
on South Beach by
two crab fishermen, wedged between rocks overlooking
a tide pool. The amount of blood indicated violence at the site.
Other fishermen had been at that exact spot at nine
P.M.
, allowing Laurent to narrow the time the corpse had
lain there.
During that period, birds and scavengers had done their
work, but Laurent, referring to a conversation with “Dr. W. W.
Moreland, M.D.,” had been able to distinguish the “external
shredding and mostly superficial laceration from multiple,
deep knife wounds leading to exsanguination and death.”
The victim had lived on Aruk for two years, coming over
from Saipan to work as a cocktail waitress at Slim’s but
losing that job after three months due to chronic
intoxication and absenteeism. Her lodgings had been a rented
room in the village and she was two months in arrears. She’d
been known to socialize with Navy men. The only surviving
relative was an alcoholic mother in Guam who had no money to
travel or to pay for burial.
Questioning the villagers produced no witnesses or leads
but did elicit the repeated claim that the viciousness of the
crime proved the perpetrator was a sailor.
Laurent’s final paragraph read:
“Investigating officer
has repeatedly attempted to communicate with Captain E. Ewing,
Commanding Officer of Stanton USN Base, for possible questioning
of enlisted men re: this crime, but has been unable to make
contact.”
I started to turn the page.
“You might not want to,” said Moreland. “Photographs.”
I thought about it and flipped anyway.
The shots weren’t any worse than some of the ones Milo
had shown me, which is to say they’d be additions to my
nightmare file.
I moved past them to Moreland’s report.
He’d been thorough, inspecting, dissecting, enumerating
each wound.
At least fifty-three wounds, additional ones possibly
obscured by scavenger bites.
The killing blow probably a neck slash.
Contrary to what Creedman had said, no sexual
penetration.
All the cuts probably inflicted by the same weapon, a
very sharp unserrated blade.
The next page was written out in Moreland’s elegant
longhand:
Dennis: You may want to keep this private. WWM
Postmortem mutilation
A.The left leg has been severed completely at
the patellar joint.
B.The left femur has been broken discretely in
three places, with a considerable quantity of
bone marrow removed.
C.A deep 26 cm. longitudinal upward slashing
wound extends from the pubic region to the
sternum.
D.Disembowelment has taken place, with the small
and large intestines piled atop the chest
region, obscuring both breasts. The breasts
are intact. (Extensive crustaceal invasion of these
tissues exists, as well.)
E.Both kidneys and the liver have been
F.Decapitation has occurred between the third
and fourth cervical vertebrae with the head
left next to the left side of the body at a
distance of 11 centimeters.
G.A deep, transverse wound of the neck is
visible both above and below the decapitation
line. Probable downward stroke from left ear
across the neck indicates right-handed person
slashing from the back. The trachea and
jugular vein have been severed.
H.Significant enlargement of the foramen magnum
has been accomplished, possibly with some kind
of grasping/crushing instrument. Portions of
the occipital skull have been shattered,
probably by blunt force.
I.Both cerebral hemispheres have been
removed, with the cerebellum and lower brain
left intact.
I shut the file and took a slow breath, trying to settle
my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” said Moreland, “but I want you to
see that I’m not concealing anything from you.”
“The killer was never caught?”
“Unfortunately not.”
“And the Navy man theory?”
He blinked and fidgeted with his glasses. “In all the
years I’ve lived here, the islanders have never engaged in
serious violence, let alone this. I suppose it could have
been one of the cargo boat deckhands, though I’ve come to
know most of them and they’re decent chaps. And Dennis did
question them. Unlike the sailors.”
Remembering Laurent’s remark about not having his
call to Stanton returned, I said, “He never got access to the
base?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Why do you still have the file? Is the investigation
ongoing?”
“Dennis thought I might come up with something if I
studied it for a while. I haven’t. Any suggestions?”
“It’s not your typical sadistic murder,” I said. “No
rape—though Creedman said there was.”
“You see,” he said. “The man has no credibility.”
“No positioning of the body, either. Mutilation, but of
the head and the back and the legs, not the genitalia or the
breasts. Then there’s the multiple organ theft—coring out
the femur to remove the marrow. It sounds ghoulish—almost
ritualistic.”
He smiled sourly. “The kind of thing some primitive
native
would do?”
“I was thinking more of a satanic rite. . . .
Were any satanic symbols left behind?”
“None that we found.”
“Does
the killing bear the mark of some sort of
ritual?”
He rubbed his bald head, took a thick, black fountain
pen out of his pocket, uncapped it and inspected the nub.
“What do you know about cannibalism, Alex?”
“Mercifully little.”
“Conducting the autopsy brought to mind things I’d heard
about when I was stationed in Melanesia back in the fifties.”
He put the pen back, uncrossed his legs, and rubbed a bony
knee.
“The sad truth is, from an historical perspective,
eating human flesh isn’t a cultural aberration. On the
contrary, it’s culturally entrenched. And I don’t mean just
the so-called primitive continents. Old Teuton had its
menschenfresser
s; there’s a grotto in Chavaux in France,
on the banks of the Meuse, where archaeologists found heaps of
hollowed-out human leg and arm bones—your early Gallic
gourmets. The ancient Romans and Greeks and Egyptians consumed
each other with glee, and certain Caledonian tribes wandered the
Scottish countryside for centuries turning shepherds into
two-legged supper.”
He started to sit back, then grimaced violently.
“Are you all right?” I said.
“Fine, fine.” He touched his neck. “A crick—slept
the wrong way. . . . Where was I—ah, yes,
patterns of anthropophagy. The most common motive, believe it or
not, is
nutrition—
the quest for protein in
marginal societies. However, when alternative sources are provided,
sometimes the preference endures: “tender as dead man’ was once
high praise among the old tribes of Fiji. Cannibalism can also be
a military tactic or part of a spiritual quest: ingesting one’s
own ancestors in order to incorporate their benevolent spirits.
Or a combination of the two: eating the enemy’s brain grants
wisdom; his heart, courage; and so on. But despite all this
diversity, there are fairly consistent procedural
patterns—
decapitation, removal of vital organs,
shattering the long bones for marrow. As the Bible says, “The blood
is the soul.”’
He tapped the file in his lap. Looked at me
expectantly.
“You think this woman was killed to be eaten?” I said.
“What I’m saying is her wounds were consistent with
classic cannibalistic practices. But there are also
in
consistencies: her heart, typically considered a
delicacy, was left intact. Skulls are frequently taken as trophies
and preserved, yet hers was left behind. I suppose both could be
explained in terms of time pressure—the killer may have
been forced to leave the beach before finishing the job. Or
perhaps—and I think this is the best guess—he was
just a psychopathic deviant
mimicking
some ancient
rite.”
“Or someone who’d watched the wrong movie,” I said.
He nodded. “The world we live in . . .”
Finishing the job.
I pictured the gentle waves of the lagoon, the arc of a
long blade cutting the moonlight. “What he did to her took
quite a bit of time. What’s your estimate?”
“At least an hour. The human femur’s a sturdy thing.
Can you imagine sitting there working at sawing it free?”
He shook his head. “Repulsive.”
“Why’d you suggest to Laurent that he not publicize the
details?”
“Both as a means of concealing facts only the killer
would know and in order to maintain public safety. Tempers
were already running high, rumors spreading. Can you imagine
what the notion of a cannibal sailor would have done?”
“So the villagers still don’t know.”
“No one knows, other than you, Dennis, and myself.”
“And the murderer.”
He winced. “I know I can trust you to keep it to
yourself. I showed you the file because I value your
opinion.”
“Cannibalism’s not exactly my area of expertise.”
“But you have some understanding of human
motivation—after all these years, I find people more and more
perplexing. What could have
led
to this, Alex?”
“God only knows,” I said. “You said the villagers
aren’t violent. What
about
the sailors? Any previous
incidents of serious violence?”
“Brawls, fistfights, nothing worse.”
“So Creedman’s story about locals storming the southern
road was true?”
“Another exaggeration. No one
stormed.
A few of
the younger men, fortified with beer, tried to reach the base to
protest. The sentries turned them back and there was some
shouting and shoving. But anyone who thinks the Navy would
go to the expense of building that blockade two days later to
keep out a handful of kids is naive. I spent enough time in
the service to know that nothing moves that quickly in the
military. The blockade must have been planned for months.”
“Why?”
He frowned. “I’m afraid it may very well be
the first stage in closing down the base.”
“Because it has no strategic value?”
“That’s not the point. Aruk was
created
by
colonial powers and the Navy’s the current colonizer. To simply
pull out is cruel.”
“How do the villagers make a living, now?”
“Small jobs and barter. And federal welfare checks.”
He said it sadly, almost apologetic.
“The checks come on the supply boats?”
He nodded. “I think we both know where that kind of
thing leads. I’ve tried to get the people to develop some
independence, but there’s very little interest in farming and
not enough natural resources for anything commercial. Even
before the blockade, basic skills were already dropping, and
most of the bright students left the island for high school
and never returned. That’s why I’m so glad people like Ben
and Dennis choose to stay.”
“And now the blockade has sped up the decline.”
“Yes, but things don’t need to be hopeless, son. One
good trade project—a factory of some kind—would
sustain Aruk. I’ve been trying to get various businesses to
invest here, but when they learn of our transport problems they
balk.”
“Pam said you’ve corresponded with Senator Hoffman.”
“Yes, I have.” He placed the murder file on the couch.
“Is there any history of tribal cannibalism on Aruk?” I
said.
“No, because there’s no pre-Christian culture of any
kind. The first islanders were brought over by the Spanish
in the fifteen-hundreds already converted to Catholicism.”
“A pre-Christian culture is necessary for cannibalism?”
“From my reading it’s a virtual constant. Even the most
recent documented cases seem to incorporate Christian and
pre-Christian ideas. Are you familiar with the term “cargo
cult’?”
“Vaguely. A sect that equates material goods with
spiritual salvation.”
“A
spontaneous
sect spurred by a self-styled
prophet. Cargo cults develop when native people have been converted
to a Western religion but have held on to some of their old
beliefs. The link between acquiring goods and receiving salvation
occurs because basic missionary technique combines gifts with
doctrine. The islander believes the missionary
holds the key to eternal afterlife and that everything
associated with him is sacred: white skin, Caucasian
features, Western dress. The wonderful
kahgo.
The cults
are rarer and rarer, but as late as the sixties there was a cult
that worshiped Lyndon Johnson because someone got the
notion
he
was the source of the cargo.”
“Correlation confused with causation,” I said.
“The same way all
superstitions are learned. A tribe goes fishing the night of
the full moon and brings in a record catch: the moon acquires
magical properties. An actor wears a red shirt the night he
gets rave reviews: the shirt becomes sacred.”
“Exactly. Groundless rituals provide comfort, but if the
belief system is shaken up—the missionary leaves and the
cargo stops—the islander may view it as the beginning of
the apocalypse. Stick a charismatic prophet
into the picture and—years ago I was sent to Pangia, in
Southern Highlands Province, to survey infectious diseases.
Fifty-five, right after the war. In the course of my research, I
learned of a minor government clerk who suddenly quit his job
and started reading the Bible aloud twenty hours a day in the
village square. Handsome, intelligent young fellow. His
association with the ruling class had lent additional status.
A small group formed around him, and his delusions grew more
florid. And bloody. He ended up slaughtering and eating his
own infant son, sharing the meal with his followers in an
attempt to bring in plane loads of goods. The morning of the
murder he’d been preaching from Genesis. The story of
Abraham binding Isaac for sacrifice.”