Sun, Sand, Murder Read online

  I walked the few feet to the backpacker tent and peered inside. A pile of sandy bedding was mounded in the center of the floor. Rumpled clothing spilled out of a pack in one corner. A large jug of water and a handful of energy bars were the only supplies evident. The tent’s contents were in disarray but it was impossible to tell whether they had actually been disturbed or if this was just the way Kelliher kept house.

  I moved to look into one of the excavations. There was only time for a quick glimpse, as my movement away from the body was taken by the gulls and crabs as an invitation to return to the feast. There was a shovel beside the hole, which had been dug waist deep. The digger had gone on until he had encountered a layer of limestone. It did have the appearance of a shallow open grave. It could also have been the work of an ambitious kid playing in the sand. It just depended on the inclination of your mind.

  It suddenly registered that this was my first crime scene. I decided I needed help, which meant I needed to call RVIPF headquarters in Road Town on Tortola. But first I had to do what I could to prevent the crabs and gulls from continuing their banquet.

  In my four weeks of training to become a special constable, less than an hour had been devoted to how to deal with a body at a crime scene. The essence of the training was to preserve the situation as it was found and call in the real police. Calling the real police in the current circumstances meant a trek back to Flash of Beauty and leaving the body alone. I did not see De White Rasta as capable of providing any assistance, given his fear, authentic or sham, of “duppies.” Besides, the idea was to keep civilians away from the crime scene, not bring them in to guard it. Sending De Rasta back while I stayed was not an option either. I had never seen him drive and did not know if he could operate the CB radio in the Land Rover.

  I thought about covering the body with bedding taken from the tent. That would keep the gulls away but the crabs would not be deterred. A crab after carrion is as single-minded as a dog in heat. I could bury the body in one of the open holes, but that would involve moving it a fair distance and contaminating it with sand and dirt. I chose the middle course, dragging the corpse by the legs to the nearby tent and rolling it inside.

  The open head wound smacked my arm as I folded the professor through the tent flap, leaving muculent bits of brain in its wake. The roasting-meat smell was immediately overpowering in the confined space. I zipped the tent closed and deposited the remainder of my stomach contents just outside the tent’s threshold. Despite the heat, the sweat on my forehead was clammy and cold. I sat down in the sand and took some deep breaths. Maybe I was not made for police work after all.

  Retracing my steps to the beach, I found De White Rasta seated with his feet in a tide pool, several broken sea urchins nearby.

  “In all the excitement, I missed breakfast,” De Rasta said. He gave me a cheery smile and offered an open urchin from which he had scooped half the roe. “I will gladly share this one with you, Teddy.”

  I gagged back my stomach’s response to his offer, narrowly avoiding my third upchuck in an hour.

  “Kelliher, the American, is dead back there.” I gestured over my shoulder.

  “What happened? Heart attack? Fall?”

  “Not unless he fell forward onto a bullet. We have to get back to the Land Rover and call Road Town.”

  Neither of us spoke as we covered the mile back to Flash of Beauty. Violent death, even on a sublimely sunny day, can have that effect.

  The difficulties of the day continued. I was unable to reach RVIPF headquarters on the low-powered CB radio. I ended up asking Pamela Pickering to relay a message by telephone. Lord knows what she told headquarters but she radioed back that I should be at the government dock in two hours to meet the St. Ursula, the RVIPF’s only police vessel, bringing in the deputy commissioner and personnel from the Scenes of Crime Unit.

  Chapter Four

  Royal Virgin Islands Police Force deputy commissioner Howard Tuttle Lane stood in the bow of the St. Ursula as it approached the government dock, striking the same pose as George Washington crossing the Delaware. The deputy commissioner projected a gravitas that made the Father of the United States look like an unkempt slouch. A rigid six and a half feet tall, broad-shouldered and rock-solid, Deputy Commissioner Lane seemed to have skipped diapers and been born in navy blue uniform pants and a pressed khaki shirt. A round uniform hat, bearing the trademark navy and white checked hatband of the RVIPF, covered his shaved head and added to his altitude and dignity. His insignia of rank, badge, and belt buckle were polished to a high gloss. His flawless blue-black skin seemed to absorb the light reflected from the waters of Setting Point. He was off the boat in a single stride as the police officer behind the wheel cut the engine and glided to the government dock.

  I stepped forward to greet the deputy commissioner, saluting-fingers together, palm out, as I had been taught twenty years before at the Regional Police Training Centre in Barbados.

  I do not have much occasion for saluting on Anegada. In fact, the last time I had saluted was the day I received my appointment as special constable. The last man I had saluted that day was Deputy Commissioner Lane. After returning to headquarters in Road Town following the academy graduation ceremony, the DC had met with me in his office and given me the keys to the police station on Anegada. He had also provided a stern lecture about my being the only police presence on the island, even though, as he put it, special constables were “not real police officers,” and how I was to be “the only civilization and order in that otherwise wild place.” He concluded by handing me a small piece of paper with the combination to the police station safe and, reaching into his desk drawer, pulled out a Webley Mark III revolver. He released the break-top mechanism, opened the chamber, and eyed it to make certain it was not loaded. Snapping it shut, he handed it to me butt first. Heavy as a brick, the old gun had “HM West Indies Police Force 1932” stamped on the receiver. Spots of rust decorated the barrel.

  “As you are so far removed from any assistance, I think you should have this. The regulations say special constables are not to be armed, but with no regular police officer on Anegada, I am making an exception to the regulations.” The DC’s sober gaze was more disquieting than the pistol in my hand. He handed me a box of .38/200 shells. “Put it in the safe, Special Constable, and do not take it out unless someone’s life is in danger. Dismissed.”

  I pocketed the weapon, saluted, rotated on my heel as I had just been taught two weeks before, and left RVIPF headquarters.

  I had done as commanded, locking the Webley in the safe, where it had remained ever since, with only its box of shells for company. I had never fired the gun. I had never made an arrest. I had never investigated a crime, or made a call to headquarters, until the call that brought the deputy commissioner to the government dock that day.

  My quarterly reports to DC Lane had been the same bland paragraph for twenty years. No crimes, no incidents, no disruptions on Anegada, “that otherwise wild place.” The volunteer fire brigade had a much more exciting life, watching a shack burn down or evacuating a child with appendicitis once every year or two. Virgin Islands Search and Rescue made a regular business of saving sailboaters who piled up on Horseshoe Reef. But crime, criminals, and the police work they generate were unknown to Anegada, until De White Rasta made his report of the dead man at Spanish Camp.

  The British Virgin Islands as a whole experience a murder once or twice a decade. Most BVI homicides occur on Tortola, the rare result of a burst of anger in a not-very-angry place. As for the outer islands, only Virgin Gorda had had a killing in recent memory, a love-triangle murder solved in the first hour by the perpetrator’s simultaneous report of the crime and confession.

  Anegada’s most recent murder had taken place in 1681. After a raid on a merchant vessel bound from Barbados to London, the pirate Bone had returned to his home at Bones Bight Pond on the north coast with two hostages. Captain Bone killed the hostages when the man-of-war sent to hunt him down appeared
off Bones Bight, and attempted to hide the bodies by sinking them in Flamingo Pond. The high salinity of the pond brought the bodies back to the surface just as a squad from the Duke of York and Albany’s Maritime Regiment of Foot on the hunt for Bone passed by. Bone was arrested and hanged at Barbados, as much for the piracy as for the murders. In the three centuries since, the crime that reaches back to Cain and Abel had not recurred on Anegada. It was, therefore, not unexpected that a report of a homicide would receive the personal attention of the second-ranking officer of the RVIPF.

  * * *

  Returning my salute, the deputy commissioner aimed a look of disdain at my uniform shirt, taking in the crusty sweat stains at the armpits and the blood and bits of brain on the sleeve. The air grew frostier as his eyes worked their way down to my nonregulation shorts and sandals.

  I was saved from a dressing-down by the debarking of Rollie Stoutt, an inspector with the Scenes of Crime Unit of the Criminal Investigations Department, from the St. Ursula. Or should I say, he is the Scenes of Crime Unit, as he is the only police officer in the unit. Overweight and soft as a freshly fluffed pillow, he hovered momentarily on the boat’s gunwale before plunging onto the dock. An explosion of Bay Rum cologne traveled ashore with him. He slipped on some discarded fish entrails and nearly dropped the two aluminum equipment cases he carried.

  DC Lane redirected his silent exasperation to Rollie for a moment and then turned back to me. You could almost hear the voice inside his head screaming that he was surrounded by incompetents but he bit back his anger and focused on the task at hand. “Let’s get to your crime scene, Special Constable. You can fill us in on the way.”

  * * *

  The DC strode the mile of sand to Spanish Camp with his shoes and socks on. Inspector Stoutt followed, wheezing asthmatically in the heat. His uniform pants were rolled to the knee and he carried his shoes, laces tied together, across his shoulder. Halfway to the crime scene, it became clear this was as far as he had ever walked without a rest break in his life.

  On the drive and the walk to Spanish Camp, I told the DC and Inspector Stoutt the basic facts surrounding the crime, struggling for the right moment to disclose that it had been necessary to move the victim’s body. That moment never did come. I decided to let circumstances speak for themselves after we arrived at the scene.

  As we walked down the landward side of the dune at Spanish Camp, the crabs seemed mobilized to demonstrate the wisdom of my actions in moving the body. Drawn by the baking-flesh odor, they had returned, moving in zombie waves against the walls of the backpacker tent containing Professor Kelliher’s remains.

  Inspector Stoutt stretched yellow plastic POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS tape from sage bush to rock to cactus around the crime scene while the DC and I kicked crabs away from the tent. I had unzipped the tent fly and was about to pull the body feet first from the tent when Rollie placed his stubby fingers on my arm to stop me. He insisted on inspecting and photographing the body in place. He gamely squeezed through the tent flap with his Nikon, only to emerge a few seconds later. If ever a black man looked wan, it was Rollie. Even his accompanying cloud of cologne was inadequate protection from the rancid stench inside the tent. He asked us to pull the body out while he photographed the process.

  There was no neat way to lift the professor’s remains from the one-man tent, so DC Lane and I snapped on the white rubber gloves Rollie gave us and each took a leg. Rollie spread a plastic sheet at the tent’s mouth and we tugged. The long afternoon in the greenhouselike interior of the tent had done the body no good but at least a leg did not come off in my hand.

  The deputy commissioner was composed and businesslike. He leaned in to inspect the body without further touching it. Rollie, on the other hand, was as tentative as a schoolgirl doing her first dissection in biology class.

  “Inspector, get a grip and get going or we’ll be doing this in the dark,” the DC barked.

  Rollie bustled into action, snapping open his second aluminum equipment case. He pulled out a small tape recorder, placed it in my hand, and said, “Hold it near my mouth. It’s voice activated. I’m going to take photos and record a description of them as I go.”

  The Nikon clicked and whirred. Rollie murmured a short summary after each shot.

  “Photo one—full-body photo of white male victim. Appears to be late sixties to early seventies in age. Height five feet ten inches. Weight thirteen stone. Time of death unknown. Some bloating. Full rigor mortis has set in.

  “Photo two—head of victim, full face on. Bullet entry wound in the forehead, above and slightly left of the bridge of the nose. It appears the bullet angled upward. The left eye is gone, probably due to the actions of scavengers postmortem. Flesh has also been eaten from parts of the nose and cheeks by postmortem scavengers.

  “Photo three—close-up of the bullet entry wound.

  “Photo four—top of skull, showing exit-wound area, and loss of significant portions of cranial bones and brain matter, probably caused by exiting bullet fragments. No bullet fragments apparent.

  “Photo five—right side of head, showing remains of the right ear. Missing portions of the ear were probably removed by scavengers.

  “Photo six—left side of head, with damage to the left ear, same cause as prior photo.

  “Photo seven—torso. No apparent antemortem trauma. Some flesh removed where not protected by clothing, again, probably postmortem action of scavengers.

  “Photo eight—left hand, two fingers completely removed at base, remaining fingers with most skin and significant portions of flesh removed, again probably scavengers.

  “Photo nine—right hand. Two fingers and thumb removed, including bone, to base of each digit. Remaining fingers show significant skin and flesh removed due to probable scavenger action postmortem.”

  Rollie paused, lowered the camera, and mopped sweat from his forehead and out of his eyes. The DC had been watching but now drifted over to inspect one of the excavations. Rollie directed his camera away from the body.

  “Photo ten—entrance to tent from which remains were removed. To the right of the entrance appear to be discharged stomach contents or vomit, source unknown.”

  “That was me,” I interrupted. Now, with the DC a safe distance away, seemed the best time to raise the topic of moving the body. “It happened after I moved the body inside the tent.”

  The camera descended from Rollie’s eyes. “You moved the body?”

  “It was the only way to keep the crabs and gulls from eating it up while I went back to get help.” My explanation had no effect on the look of incredulity on Rollie’s face.

  The DC had meandered back within earshot in time to catch Rollie’s follow-up question to my confession. “You moved the body from where?” He pronounced the words with slow, cold precision.

  I showed the DC and Rollie where I had found the body. Rollie continued snapping photographs, shooting the route I had taken with Professor Kelliher’s body in reverse from the tent to the original location, focusing on a drag mark in the sand here, a bit of brain there.

  When we got to where the body had originally lain, Rollie photographed the remains of my breakfast in the sand. “You again?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  The DC muttered unintelligibly under his breath, brought himself up to his full stature, and ordered me to go for some assistance to help bring the remains back to The Settlement.

  The sun was only an hour from the horizon when I returned with four of the men from the volunteer fire brigade. They carried a canvas stretcher between them. DC Lane met us at the POLICE LINE tape and forbade me from stepping inside its perimeter.

  I stood and watched, alone, from the top of the sandbank as they rolled Professor Kelliher’s corpse onto the stretcher to begin its journey home.

  Chapter Five

  At a few minutes before midnight, Deputy Commissioner Lane sat in my chair behind the metal desk in the one-room Anegada police station. The contents of Paul Kelliher’s po
ckets and the small backpack found in his tent were in two orderly rows on my blotter, just as the DC had unpacked them. The professor had traveled light, with the only identification documents in his effects being his passport and a Massachusetts driver’s license. There was also a Visa card, seventy-three US dollars in cash, and a cell phone with no numbers stored in its contacts and only calls to the American Airlines flight reservations number in its call log. All the clothing consisted of the Anegada uniform of T-shirts, shorts, and underwear. The toiletries were basic as well—a razor, shaving soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant.

  “You are no longer involved in this investigation, Special Constable Creque,” DC Lane intoned in his best James Earl Jones voice. “Your failure to preserve the crime scene—no, your purposeful disturbance of the scene—was contrary to RVIPF procedures and may have endangered this investigation. Perhaps that is the way you do things here on Anegada but that is not the way we conduct ourselves as members of the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force. You are suspended for two weeks without pay, and instructed to take a remedial seminar on crime scene preservation online at headquarters in Road Town after you have served your suspension. Fortunately for you, and unfortunately for the RVIPF, I do not have a spare police officer to send to Anegada and it seems we need a police presence here more than any time in the last twenty years. Your suspension will be served at such later time as I designate.”

  The DC went on. “For now, copy down Professor Kelliher’s driver’s license and passport information. Then locate and inform his next of kin of his death. Put them in contact with the coroner’s office so they can claim the body when the autopsy is completed. That is all, Special Constable.” He passed the two documents across the desk to me. I took them, saluted, and left with the realization that my professional life was going almost as well as my personal life.