Titanoboa (7 page)

11

The day dragged by slowly when he had nothing to do. Mark ran a background check on Billy. Nothing out of the ordinary. A couple arrests for pot and a bad credit history for a repossessed car.

Then he ran one on
Riki.

Hers was much more interesting.
Not a single arrest. Her credit history didn’t show a single late payment on anything. Her current address was listed in Austin, Texas. Not California as she had said. But then again, sometimes these reports were outdated.

At lunchtime, he ate a
t a little seaside crab shack and ordered a fish sandwich and fries to go. He dropped them off at the school and watched as Mariah gave the boy the sack lunch. He often wondered things about the boy. Who he would grow up to become, would this mean anything to him or would he not even remember, would he become a good man or a bad one?

With his own daughter, he couldn’t answer such questions. He didn’t know who she was. His ex kept a tight lid on her and, Mark knew, purposely limited their contact time.
Leah wanted their daughter to bond with her new husband, Jake. So far, the bond hadn’t formed. From what Mark could tell, which was little, the man had difficulty around children.

Mark had thought about a custody suit more tim
es than he could count. In the end, he didn’t know if he had the fight in him. Leah wouldn’t give up easy, and their daughter would be on the stand during a trial, choosing between parents. But it would be much better for her to live out here. The education system was actually superior to the United States. When children left middle school here, they typically spoke three languages and had already taken two semesters of calculus.

Mark thought back to his own father
, who had only graduated high school. He was one of the smartest men Mark knew. He wondered if the education system could really have declined so much in just forty years, and what would it look like forty years from now.

Well, this wasn’t a time for philosophizing. He had to find something to kill some time while he waited for the phone call. As he rose to leave his office, a man in a police uniform
said hello to his secretary.

Rashan
Ali leaned against her desk and smiled widely as he flirted with her. As he did every time he was here. He saw Mark, said a few more words to her, laughed, and walked into the office. Mark sat back down into the chair.

“She’s outta your league.”

“I’m not sure what that means
.” He sat down and placed his hat on the desk.

“Literally or figuratively?
”

“Both.”

Mark smiled. In reality, most people’s English was fluent on the island, and because of the dominance of American television, they even understood colloquialisms and expressions. Sometimes better than he did. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I have a case the chief would like contracted to you. If you’re interested.”

“Actually, I am. You caught me at a bit of a slow time.”

“Good. It’s a missing persons.”

“It’s not Billy Gilmore by chance?”

“No. Stanley. The old man that was always out on his boat.”

“Oh, right. The old Marine. You sure he’s missing?”

“That’s what I thought, too. He leaves the islands for months at a time. But we found something on his boat.”

“What?”

His forehead crinkled. “You better have a look yourself.”

The day was turning out to be a hot one. Mark always carried a handkerchief that he used to mop up the sweat on his forehead and neck. When no one was looking, he dried his armpits and chest with it.

He could take t
he heat, but the mugginess was something else. Much of the time, it felt like he was in a sauna. The sensation, other than the constant drip of sweat, wasn’t entirely unpleasant, though.

Ali
drove them down to the pier and parked right up on the sand, something for which anyone else would’ve been arrested. Out in the distance, Mark saw something he had never seen near the island. A massive ship. Sometimes cruise ships came by, but Kalou had no major ports, so they could never dock. This one was close, and it didn’t look like a cruise ship. More like an oil tanker.

“
What’dya think they’re doin’?” Mark asked as the two men trudged through the sand.

Ali glanced to him. “You living under a rock, Mark?”

“I hear that a lot. Don’t really stay up on island gossip.”

“We’ve contracted with
VN Oil. They’re beginning drilling next year.”

Mark stopped and turned to Ali. “You’re
kiddin’ me?”

He shook his head. “No. It’s a big deal. They’re promising jobs for every man and woman on the island that wants one.”

“I bet they are.”

“I’m not a
mind reader, but I’m guessing you don’t approve.”

“The island is perfect the way it is. I just don’t want that ruined.”

Ali shrugged. “It goes higher than us two.”

They continued their walk up the beach. A wooden pier jutted out into the crystal blue waters. At the end was a small shack with a straw roof
, something intended for use as a lifeguard station but used instead as a place for boaters to try to sober up before heading out if they were too drunk.

Lashed to the pier was Stanley’s boat. Ali climbed aboard first
, and Mark followed. The boat bobbed slightly with the swells. Mark gripped the handrail and waited until Ali answered a phone call. He spoke in Fijian. Mark picked up a few words here and there, but he was no polyglot. Language had always been difficult for him. And one of the factors that made him choose this particular island was that Wikipedia said about ninety-eight percent of the population spoke fluent English.

Ali hung up and replaced the phone in his pocket. He turned to Mark with a look on his face that said he wasn’t happy with whatever news he’d just heard.

“What?” Mark asked.

“Another missing person. A mother’s hysterical at the station right now. She’s saying her boy disappeared from the beach. Probably just another drowning. We get six or seven of those a year.”

Mark scanned the boat. “What did you want to show me here, Rashan?”

“Over here.”

They walked toward the stern. Near the transom, the deck was a different color. A stain. Mark bent down and looked at it. “This is what you wanted to show me?”

“It’s blood.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we found some meat
and teeth with it. We took it back and sent it to Nasinu. Their police have a laboratory. They confirmed that it was blood. We didn’t know what the meat was. They said it was human organ tissue. Part of the spleen and kidneys.”

Mark looked over the stain again.
Amazing how knowing the origin of something completely changed your perception of it. He had once heard pans being thumped in Africa and thought it odd out there. When he drew nearer, he realized it was about twenty African children thumping a dead elephant’s hide. The sound, like this stain, had then taken on a completely different meaning.

“You think he was killed?”

“What else could it be?”

Mark stood up, looking over the rest of the boat. “I don’t think we’ve had a murder since I’ve lived here.”

“No, we haven’t. The last one was a husband that killed his wife almost eight years ago. It’s not good for tourism to have these things go public.”

“Oh, I see. So that’s why the chief wanted me. People might notice you guys working a murder but not me, huh?”

“You get paid either way. What do you care?”

“I guess I don’t.”

Ali sat down on the transom, his eyes on the stain. “You have worked a murder before, haven’t you?”

“I helped on a
few, but I wasn’t a homicide detective. I was in missing persons and then property crimes.”

Ali reached under his hat and scratched the top of his head. “Well, you’re the best thing we’ve got right now. So it’s yours if you want the job.”

Mark shrugged. “Sure, why not? I’m not doing much else now. But this is a premium job. I’m going to have to charge double my normal hourly rate.”

“Of course you are. Anything else?”

“Yeah. How ’bout a forensic unit?”

Ali grinned. “I’m afraid your wits are all you’re going to have for this.
If you need something sent to the lab, it comes out of your pay.”

“Great.”

12

When night fell, Mark was beginning to think that the hotel clerk had ripped him off. Seemed like an odd thing to do
, since Mark lived on the island and could pay him a visit.

As
he was debating what to do, his cell phone vibrated with a text message. All it said was,
She’s here now.

Mark decided to walk to the hotel. The night air was pleasant
, and plenty of people were out. He enjoyed crowd watching here. As he strolled up the street, he glanced into shops and restaurants, observing the way people acted while on vacation, and wondered if they acted that way at home as well.

At t
he well-lit hotel, he saw a group of tourists drunk on the corner. They were speaking a language he didn’t recognize, something that sounded close to Russian. He smiled to them and walked inside the building. The same clerk was still there. It wasn’t unusual for most jobs on the island to require four twelve-hour days. That seemed to be the preferred schedule, though Mark favored fewer hours in a day. The clerk nodded to him, and he nodded back before heading up the stairs.

The hallway was empty
. He knocked on 217. He could hear water running, then it turned off. Footsteps and the door opened. A young woman, perhaps twenty, stood there. Blond hair with soft green eyes. She wore shorts and a white V-neck shirt.

“Rebecca Langley?” Mark asked.

“Yes? And who are you, please?”

“Oh, no need to be nervous. I’m Mark Whittaker. I’m a private investigator here on the island. I’ve been hired to investigate the
disappearance of Billy Gilmore.”

“Oh.”

“I was hoping you had some information that could help me.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I was told you were here on the island with him. That you two may have been an item.”

She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t like that.”

“Well, what was it like?”

She was silent.

“Look, I’m just trying to find out what happened to him. That’s all. His family is thinking the worst. His sister is the one that hired me.”

“Sister? I don’t think he had a sister.”

“You sure about that?”

“No, but we spent a lot of time together. He mentioned his parents and a brother, but never anything about a sister.”

“I’d still like to talk to you about him a little if I could.”

She sighed. “Look, I’d like to help you, but I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“No, I really can’t. I signed a document saying I couldn’t talk about anything relating to what’s going on.”

“A document? Like a non-disclosure agreement?”

“They’ll fire
and sue me if I say anything. So I’m sorry, I can’t talk.”

Mark placed his hand against the wall in the hallway, leaning his weight on it. “Who exactly did you sign a non-disclosure agreement with?”

“I’ve… I’ve already talked more than I’m comfortable with. Sorry.”

She
tried to shut the door, but he stopped it with his free hand. “Please, just the name of the people you signed it with. I just need someplace to start.”

She hesitated then said, “VN Oil.
That’s all I can say. Please just leave.”

Mark backed off the door and let it shut. He had a thousand questions for her, but he had a good sense of people
, and she wasn’t lying when she told him she had signed something. She was clearly frightened of someone.

That left one person
who may have known what was going on, and Mark had a feeling she wasn’t who she said she was.

He left the hotel and headed to the police station.