Hawke: A Novel (22 page)

“You say you know the name of the murderer?” Congreve said, staring at Stubbs Witherspoon in disbelief.

The elderly gentleman had returned to the table with an ancient cardboard box containing the Hawke file. He removed the cover and pulled out a pale blue folder.

“No. I said I know the name of the man
responsible
for the murders, Chief Congreve,” Witherspoon said. “I will come to that. Please bear with me.”

The old man put his hand on the blue folder. “These are the crime-scene photographs,” he said. “Before I show them to you, could you indulge me a moment? I’m a little curious about Scotland Yard’s interest in a thirty-year-old murder case.”

“Of course. I should have explained that earlier. Have you ever heard the name Alexander Hawke?” Congreve asked.

“Yes. That was the child’s name. The sole witness,” Witherspoon replied. “The husband was Alexander. An English lord. The wife, of course, was Catherine, although everyone called her Kitty. A famous actress. She was one of the truly great beauties of that era. An American, from the south. New Orleans, I believe.”

“Yes, it was a famous marriage on both sides of the Atlantic. The sole issue of that marriage is my employer as of this moment. I met young Alex Hawke over twenty years ago. A famous jewel robber was holed up down on one of the Channel Islands and I was hot on his trail. I found him on the same island where Alex was living with his grandfather, Lord Richard Hawke. A brilliant detective himself, he helped me solve the case. And his grandson has been like a son to me ever since.”

“So the reason for your interest in the case is personal?” Witherspoon asked.

“Entirely,” Congreve said. “I should explain that I am mostly retired at this point. Although I do maintain an office in the Special Branch, I work, as I said, primarily on assignments for Alex Hawke himself. As does Inspector Sutherland here, who is on loan from Scotland Yard.”

“So, Mr. Hawke has decided to reopen the issue of his parents’ murders?”

“No! Alex Hawke has no idea I’m even looking into this. In fact, he has no memory of the actual murders—”

“Which he witnessed,” said Witherspoon, shaking his head sadly. He poured each of them some more lemonade.

“Which he witnessed,” Congreve said. “He has those memories buried very deeply in his mind. He has, in effect, erected a wall of denial around them. He never, ever refers to that terrifying chapter in his life. But, I think it haunts him to this day. In fact, I know it does. It is a source of enormous pain.”

“You want to exorcise your friend Alexander Hawke’s old ghosts, Chief Congreve?” Witherspoon asked.

“I’d like very much to somehow put his mind at rest, yes,” Congreve said. “That’s why we’re here in Nassau. If we could solve this thing, even bring the murderers to justice, it might offer him a bit of peace.”

“I see.”

“You should probably know that Alex Hawke is one of the wealthiest men on earth,” Ross said. “He controls a vast business empire. You may have heard the name of the holding company. Blackhawke Industries.”

“They own a shipping company based here in Nassau, I believe,” Witherspoon said.

“Not to mention the banks and brokerages,” Congreve said. “Blackhawke’s central operations are run out of London, but the reach is worldwide. Because of this, he has tremendous contacts at the highest levels of every major corporation and many governments.”

“In recent years,” Congreve added, “he has been doing a lot of work with both the British and American governments. Because of who he is and whom he knows, he has been invaluable to both governments in certain delicate matters.”

“One such mission for the Americans has brought us to your beautiful islands, Mr. Witherspoon,” Ross said. “But my superior and I are here in Nassau completely unofficially. We are looking into these murders on our own.”

“I think I understand now. Thank you,” Witherspoon said, holding the blue folder in his hand as if he were unsure about sharing it.

“We are eager to hear what you have to say,” Ross said.

“Well. I told you that I know the name of the man responsible for the murders. That is true. His name is revealed in these photographs.” Witherspoon slid the file across the table to Congreve.

Only the birds outside and the whir of the fan could be heard in the room. The minutes stretched out as Congreve studied each black-and-white photograph and then handed it to Sutherland, who did the same.

The old policeman rose from his rocker and crossed the room to stand at the window. He had no need to see the photographs again. He had been first to board the yacht when it arrived in the harbor. The first police officer to view the crime scene. The image of that stifling room and what horrors lay inside it would be engraved in his mind forever.

A small, bright green bird alighted in the yellow hibiscus outside his window. The bird turned its darting glance this way and that, finally settling its tiny black eyes on the old man standing in the window. Stubbs Witherspoon willed the vision of the little bird to drive the other vision from his mind. It almost worked.

When he finally turned away from the window, he saw Congreve slumped in his chair, staring down at his hands, which were folded in his lap. Tears were streaming down the Englishman’s face. He made no effort to wipe them away.

Inspector Sutherland was gathering the photographs and returning them to the folder. His eyes, too, were red. It occurred to Witherspoon that these two men had been looking at the nightmarish pictures not with their own eyes, but through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy. A boy, now a man, whom they both deeply admired, perhaps even loved.

“Would you like to take a little walk in my garden?” Stubbs Witherspoon said, putting his hand on Congreve’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Congreve said, composing himself. “Indeed, we should both like that very much.”

“Come along then,” the old fellow said, picking up his folder, and they followed him outside onto the porch.

“Those plants are quite amazing,” Sutherland said, pointing at a bizarre group of palms. “Nothing like that in an English garden, Mr. Witherspoon.”

“Thank you. Birds of Paradise. And that tree? That’s what I call a ‘Tourist Tree.’”

“Why is that?” Congreve asked.

“Just look at de bark of it, mon! It always red and peeling!” Witherspoon said with his merry laugh. “Real name of it is Gumbo Limbo. You see that other tree over there past the Tourist Trees? That big old Calusa tree?”

“It’s lovely,” Congreve said.

“Alex Hawke and his grandfather helped me to plant that tree.”

“You don’t say?” Congreve said. “How extraordinary!”

“Not really. I had just bought this old place at the time. I invited them for luncheon one day, just before they flew back to England. Considering the circumstances, we had ourselves a fairly jolly good time, I remember. Little Alex and my dog Trouble, he was the grandfather of old Roscoe over there, runnin’ all over the place, chasing Trouble’s little red ball.” The three men walked out into the yard. There were a few wooden chairs under the Calusa, and they all sat down in the quiet shade of its branches.

“Of course,” Congreve said quietly. “You would have interviewed little Alex in the course of your investigation.”

“Oh, I wasn’t the lead investigator. Far from it. But I loved that little fellow. I took some little toy or something to that hospital room every single day,” Witherspoon said. “I sat by his bed most of the time. But I wouldn’t call it investigation. Just keeping him company. Poor boy Alex, he couldn’t talk at all at first. When his grandfather got down here, well, he started to come back a little.”

“No memory of the crime, even then?”

“None at all. The first time I saw him he kept repeatin’ somethin’ over and over.
Three knocks
. He never would explain it, but I figured it out eventually.”

“Three knocks. What do you think it meant, Stubbs?” Congreve asked, leaning forward in his chair.

“I think it was a code. Between him and his father, I mean. See, little Alex was locked in that locker from the
inside
. And the key to the locker was found in Alex’s pocket.”

“So his father, probably having heard someone up on deck, had hidden him in the locker, then given him the key and told him to lock himself inside,” Ross said.

“And told him not to come out for anyone unless he heard three knocks on the door,” Congreve concluded.

“That’s just the way I saw it,” Witherspoon said. “His father, he died with his back to that door. Wasn’t any way anybody was going to get through him to that child.”

“How do you know that?” Ross asked.

“If you look closely at the photo of the bulkhead wall where the door was, you’ll see two deep holes on either side of the door. Those holes match the two knife wounds that penetrated the victim’s hands.”

“He was
nailed to the wall
?”

“He was crucified. As I said, the photographs reveal the name of the man responsible for the murders,” Witherspoon said.

“The method of killing then?” Congreve asked.

“Yes. You see, that kind of mutilation—the throat slit with the tongue drawn out through the opening and left hanging on the chest, for instance—”

“The infamous ‘Colombian necktie,’” Ross said, and Witherspoon nodded at him.

“We had a reign of terror down here, early in the seventies and into the eighties,” Witherspoon said. “Anti-British feelings in the islands. Then, anti-American. It was also the beginning of narco-terrorism. Everywhere in these islands were the narco-traffickers and
sicarios,
or the assassins. Most learned their trade at the foot of a vicious Colombian drug king we called
el doctor.”

“And that’s the man you think is responsible for the Hawke murders?” Congreve asked.

“Yes, sir. I’m sure of it. Whoever killed Alex’s parents, he worked directly for a man named Pablo Escobar.”

“Escobar is dead, as you know, Chief,” Ross said to Congreve. “Tracked down and assassinated in Medellín in 1989 by a team of Colombian special forces. No one will admit it, of course, but there were Americans involved, Delta Force black ops.”

“So the murderers are Colombian,” Congreve said.

“No,” Witherspoon said, “I think they were Cuban.”

“Please explain,” Ross said.

“Three Cuban boys on a murderous rampage. I think the killings occurred in the Exumas. That’s where
Seahawke
was last seen, moored in a little cove near Staniel Cay.”

Sutherland and Congreve looked at each other but said nothing.

“But the style of the thing, it was pure Colombian. So, I went down there to Staniel Cay myself,” Witherspoon said, “on a tip from a friend of mine, a young policeman down there by the name of Bajun. He said there had been three Cuban boys, brothers, who’d been working odd jobs in the Exumas. Bartenders, paid hands, fishermen, you know.”

“Yes, go on, please,” Congreve said, plainly excited.

“They attracted Bajun’s attention, he told me, because they all wore expensive gold jewelry. Colombian jewelry. He thought they were
narcos
killing time between drug drops, and he had his eye on them.”

“So. Not Escobar himself. But three Cubans who might have been working for him at the time,” Ross said, mulling it over. “Entirely plausible.”

“That was our thinking, me and Bajun. We dusted the murder scene for prints but our techniques were pretty primitive back then. We did find three sets of footprints, in addition to the victims’. All had bare feet. So, there were three murderers. And the three Cubans disappeared the same night that the yacht did. Never seen again.”

“What happened then?” Congreve asked, leaning forward and rubbing his hands together. A chill of excitement had made him forget all about the tropic heat.

“Nobody paid me no mind. I didn’t have too much credibility at that time. And we had a backlog of cases two miles long. So I went out on my own. I tried the Americans first. The CIA station chief here at the time was an acquaintance of my father’s. His name was Benjamin Hill.

“Now, Ben knew that I knew the CIA and the U.S. Army were all over Colombia. It was the worst-kept secret down here. They had the Medellín cartel under daily surveillance. But, of course, Ben couldn’t admit to anything, even though he wanted to help. Officially, the Americans were not in Colombia, so I hit a stone wall.”

“What did you do then?” asked Ross.

“Simple. I emptied my savings account and borrowed some money from my father. Then I went down to Colombia,” Witherspoon said. “I had a good description of the three brothers from Bajun. And a warrant based on the evidence we had gathered in Staniel Cay. I poked around a little. ’Bout a week. People smile in your face, shake they heads. Got nowhere. Finally, I met with the chief of police in Medellín. I showed him the police sketches I’d had done of the suspects.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Congreve said, his words tinged with excitement. “You still have those sketches?”

“Of course. Anyway, I got nowhere with that damn man. It was clear the chief down there was, like most everybody in those days, in Escobar’s pocket.”