Deadly Shoals (13 page)

Struck with inspiration, Wiki interrupted, “You still hold a key to the outside door of the surgery in Adams's store?”

“How did you know I had a key?” Ducatel demanded.

Wiki didn't admit that he'd been guessing, saying instead, “You have it now?”

“Yes, I do, but why—”

“Because the proof you want that the sale really happened is there,” Wiki said, and without waiting for any more argument he slapped his reins, urging the mare up the steps into El Carmen. When Stackpole called out his name he didn't pay attention. Instead, he listened to Ducatel's steps as he hurried after him on foot, followed by the other two men on their horses.

The front door of Adams's store was still firmly shut and locked, the windows shuttered tight. Wiki dismounted, secured the mare to the rail, and headed after Ducatel, who had walked around the corner and into the yard. Stackpole and Mr. Hale were a couple of dozen yards behind.

First, Wiki checked the double doors, finding them solidly shut. As he remembered, there was no way of opening them from the outside, once they were bolted and barred on the inside. The only way into the store from the yard was through the outer surgery door. He looked at Dr. Ducatel, and lifted his brows.

The surgeon fished the key out of a pocket in his coat. Judging by the way he braced himself, he expected the lock to be stiff with disuse, but instead the key turned smoothly. The door swung silently back on its hinges, revealing a large consulting room with a desk, a chair, and a long couch that had evidently served as a sickbed, because it was rigged out with neatly folded blankets.

It was as if the surgery were ready to be put to use again at a moment's notice, and Wiki's neck crept with a sense of human presence. Then Stackpole let out a startled curse, accompanied by a ghoulish rattle. He had blundered into a skeleton hanging from a hook that had been screwed into one of the ceiling beams.

“My property,” said Dr. Ducatel. His giggle sounded forced. No one else laughed.

Papers on the desk lifted and rustled as Wiki opened the inner door, letting in a draft of dry, stale air, and flies rose and buzzed. The store looked exactly the same as the last time he had seen it, but the hairs on the back of his neck were creeping. He stood just clear of the doorway of the surgery, staring around as the others pushed past him, and warily sniffing the musty air.

Then he heard Horatio Hale's whine of utter horror.

Wiki jerked around, to find the white-faced philologist pointing a shaking finger at the floor behind the counter. Four hurried strides, and he could see what had gripped Hale's shocked attention—the distorted corpse of the Portuguese clerk.

Seven

The old man was lying on his back with the fallen stool between his legs, frozen by death into a sitting-down position. His eyes were wide open, staring up from between his knees. Judging by the expression of stupefaction on the dead face, he had been taken completely by surprise. The big ledger was lying open on the counter, as if he had been absorbed in noting down the details of a sale when his killer had walked in the door.

Wiki looked down at the body. The attack had been violent as well as sudden and unexpected, because the clerk had been struck with a very large knife so hard that the hilt had left imprints on his shirt before it was hauled out and taken away. The stain of blood about the wound in his chest had dried many hours ago. It was ghoulishly reminiscent of Caleb Adams's corpse, except that the body was entire.

He said to Ducatel, “How long has he been dead?”

The surgeon was staring down at the ungainly remains, his expression withdrawn and brooding. Now he roused himself, glanced at Wiki, and said, “I need to have a better look. Give me a hand to haul him out of there.”

Because of the cramped space behind the counter, it took three of them to drag the stiff, resistant form out into the open, Stackpole lending a hand to pull at the legs. Even though they did their best to straighten him out, the knees remained rigidly bent toward the chest, frozen by rigor mortis into the way the body had landed when it had tumbled off the stool, and the hands still grasped at the air.

Ducatel crouched down by the corpse, and pulled back the shirt to expose the great gash in the ribs. When he stood again, his face was expressionless. “He was killed at least thirty-six hours ago.”

Wiki said, “How can you tell?”

“There are maggots in the lips of the wound.”

For the first time, Wiki felt a snatch of nausea. He swallowed, and said, “What about the stiffness?”

“It takes three to four days for rigor mortis to relax, so he'll be petrified in that position for quite a while yet.”

So, Wiki mused, the clerk had been dead when he and Stackpole had checked the store—he had been killed not long after their departure for the salt dunes. He wondered why he had not sensed the shocked spirit—the
kehua
—when they had tried the door after coming back from the
salinas,
and thought wryly that he was becoming more American by the moment. The flies were circling lower, and he saw two settle on the glazed eyes. Turning to the box of red silk bandannas on the counter, he plucked one up, and dropped it over the dead man's face. It landed neatly, covering the entire head. This made the sight of the contorted body even more grotesque, but to have those staring eyes hidden was a distinct relief.

Ducatel was glancing around the emptied store. He looked at Wiki and remarked, “The thieves must have been a cold-blooded lot—they took their time after killing the old man. Just about everything's been cleared out.”

“No, it's the way we saw it last,” contradicted Stackpole. His voice was low and hoarse.

“Nothing's gone?” Mr. Hale blurted out. “But they must have killed him for
something.
What about the cash drawer?”

Wiki went around the back of the counter to check. When he pulled the drawer open, it rattled emptily. However, the coins he had paid for the bandanna and the poncho, plus some extra cash that Stackpole, presumably, had paid after coming back into the store for a poncho for himself, were in a little purse at the back.

“The killer must have been after the deed of sale,” he said. He was so sure of it that he felt no surprise when no paper fell out as he picked up the ledger by the spine and shook it. Riffling the pages had the same lack of result. The deed was definitely gone. When he looked at Stackpole, the whaleman's face was pale and withdrawn.

“But why did they steal it?” objected Ducatel.

“Because it's proof of ownership of the schooner,” Wiki replied. To make sure, he searched the drawer again, and then went through the dead man's clothing, finding nothing but a key and a grubby handkerchief, both of which he placed on the counter. Finally, he turned back to the last written page in the ledger, to see what the clerk might have been noting when he had been surprised by his murderer. The last entry was the sale of the poncho to Stackpole.

Looking up at the whaling master, he observed, “You're probably the last man to have seen him alive.”

Stackpole's mouth became more tightly compressed than ever. He bit out, “He was perfectly fine when I left.”

“He was sitting on his stool writing in this book?”

Stackpole nodded.

“Did anyone come in while you were going out?”

The whaleman shook his head.

“Was there anyone in the street?” He and the gauchos had gone on ahead, Wiki remembered, and had arrived at the upriver path by the time Stackpole had rejoined them.

Again, Stackpole shook his head.

Wiki turned to Ducatel. “Which one of Hallett's arms did you amputate?”

Ducatel blinked in surprise. “The left. Why?”

“And which hand did he write with?”

“I have no idea. He had no occasion to use the pen while I was watching.”

“Did you watch him use his unhurt hand? To lift a mug, for instance?”

“He was clumsy—the water slopped. But what can you expect of a sick man? Why do you ask?”

Wiki shrugged. “Because the signature on the deed was very indistinct.”

Ducatel silenced. Wiki picked up the key from the counter, went to the front door, and unlocked and opened it. The bright siesta-time street was deserted. He looked back into the dark store, and said, “We'll have to inform his family. Do they live in the pueblo?”

“I know them well,” Ducatel's voice replied at once. “There's a whole tribe of them living in a couple of houses jammed together—in one of the back streets, hard up against the cliff. There are several daughters, and two sons—a shiftless pair, who spend most of their time on the family fishing boat. That is, when they're not busy fathering children,” he added with a snigger.

It sounded as if the clerk had been the main source of family income. Wiki said, “What was the clerk's name, anyway?”

It had been Gomes. As he followed Ducatel through the deserted alleys, Wiki wondered how many tribes of that name were scattered about South America.

The hot sun was just past the meridian, and the hard shadow of the cliff fell upon them as they made their way to the rearmost street of El Carmen. The sprawling adobe house where the Gomes clan lived was in the form of a
U
, enclosing a big yard ruled by a spectacular cockerel with a large harem of cowed hens. Inside, the baked-mud floor was half-hidden with a few mats, and the furniture was rough and scanty. As Ducatel had indicated, at least three generations lived there, including several matronly women and many children. However, it was very quiet, the atmosphere somnolent. The family had eaten their midday meal, and were snoozing out siesta.

Despite the overcrowding, they seemed remarkably well set up. While Dr. Ducatel communicated the awful tidings in experienced tones, Wiki thoughtfully noted bulging sacks of corn, and barrels of oil, salt meat, and molasses, both inside the house and out in the yard. Then his attention was taken up by the reaction to the news. It was almost as if the clerk's death had been anticipated, because the women collapsed with grief before the last words had left Ducatel's mouth. Mothers and daughters threw their aprons over their heads and rocked as they wailed, and small children screamed half comprehendingly.

Finally, however, one of the older women recovered enough to answer questions. Yes, they had all felt great concern for her father-in-law when he had failed to come home two nights previously. The children had been sent to the store, and had reported that the
pulpería
was shut and shuttered. When the woman's husband and her brother-in-law had returned from their fishing they had gone to check, but there had been no response when they had hammered at the door. There was no spare key, and it was impossible, of course, to break in. They had tried again the next day, but with equal lack of result.

Realizing that the grandfather had been lying there dead all the time, she collapsed again—though not so completely that she didn't find the breath to ask Dr. Ducatel if he would be kind enough to attend to her youngest son, obviously calculating that he wouldn't be callous enough to ask for payment from a household that was so recently bereaved. The son, who looked about ten years old, was indeed in a bad way, having broken his leg two weeks before. Judging by the smell in the small, close room where he tossed in delirium, it would not be long at all before he joined Captain Hallett in the graveyard.

So the clerk had been telling the truth when he mentioned the family illness, Wiki meditated. However, as he quickly learned from the other women while Ducatel was passing on advice to the sick boy's mother, Gomes had lied when he claimed to be away from the store. They all insisted that he had gone to work for Adams as usual. They had not actually seen him behind the counter during that time, but he had left for the store at the usual hour, and returned at the usual hour, too.

When Wiki stepped back into the street, it was to find that Stackpole and Hale were standing in a patch of sun and turning themselves from side to side, to finish off drying their trousers, which were still damp from the river crossing. He conveyed what he had learned, and the whaling master asked, “So what are you going to do?”

Wiki turned and surveyed the palisade curving up to the fort, which bulked on the cliff far above his head, and was invisible from this perspective. He felt no desire whatsoever to go up there and report to Ringgold, as the captain would merely repeat his order to forget about the murder. The discovery of a second body would make no difference, as the clerk had not even been English. Captain Wilkes, on the other hand, might be sufficiently scandalized by the piracy of an American-owned schooner to send the
Swallow
out in search.

He said, “I think we should report to Captain Wilkes, and ask him to start up a hunt for the
Grim Reaper
.”

“Now you're talking!” exclaimed Stackpole.

They were interrupted as Dr. Ducatel joined them, rubbing his hands together as if to get rid of the last traces of his examination of the sick boy. The physician said briskly, “We must hurry to the fort. They'll be waiting.”

“Nope,” said Stackpole at once. “We don't have time for that.”

Wiki nodded emphatically. “It's more important to get out to the
Vincennes.
”

Ducatel flushed, and protested, “But the governor sent me with a pressing invitation—for you and Mr. Hale to join his party for a banquet this evening. That's why I was waiting on the path—and he'll be most offended if you don't come.”

So Ducatel survived in this place by kowtowing to the governor, Wiki mused. Undoubtedly His Excellency would be angry with Ducatel, his messenger boy, for having failed in his mission. “Mr. Hale will be glad to attend,” he callously said. “Just convey apologies from Captain Stackpole and myself.”

“But you should report the murder!”