A few minutes later, Elaine was in the shiny Porsche, with
the top down, cruising along the hilly Oia-Fira Highway, toward Fira.
She had to get her hands on a disposable phone. However,
she had decided that driving to the airport herself, in this flashy, expensive
automobile, was too risky. A deep metallic blue, the sports car was likely the
only such Porsche on the island. Some friend of Spyro’s might see her, and she
had a feeling he knew practically everybody on Santorini, or at least
practically everybody knew him. She glanced at the built-in navigator on the
dash, which she had switched off. It might well be connected to his computer
network, too.
Every now and then she checked the rearview mirror, afraid that
Spyro might have sent Costa or someone else to follow her. She hadn’t seen
Costa at all today. She assumed he was in the cottage behind the villa but
couldn’t be sure. In any case, the road behind her was clear.
When she reached the town of Fira, she turned onto the
street leading towards the center as if following Spyro’s sightseeing
recommendations. She found a parking place, put up the top and locked the car, then
walked around. Just as in the photos she’d seen, the little town had been built
on a steep caldera with the Cubist-style whitewashed buildings that cascaded
down to the seaside. As she wandered along one of the narrow streets, she felt
like she had been transported a few centuries back in time. Elderly Greek
women, dressed head to toe in black, their heads covered with scarves, sat
along the street in chairs, crocheting, chatting with each other. The Greek men
clustered in cafés and taverns, drinking coffee or ouzo, some of them playing
backgammon on old, heavily scarred wooden boards. It was as if the modern world
of television and cell phones and computers had never touched this place.
The instant she had this thought, however, she noticed that
virtually every restaurant, tavern and café had FREE WIFI signs in the windows
or over the archways.
She soon came upon a lovely Greek Orthodox church in the
middle of town. Along the front was a long row of rolling arches supported by
Greek columns that were the same brilliant white as most of the other buildings
on the island. Elaine glanced over her shoulder once again to make sure no one
was tailing her, and went inside. Even though it was low season now, the
elegant cathedral was crowded with tourists. She spent a few minutes admiring
the breathtaking frescoes on the wall and ceilings, as well as the mosaics on
the outer walls. She made two complete circles of the church’s interior, then
exited through a side door that led to an alley.
When she was convinced that Spyro had not sent anyone to
follow her, she stopped at a souvenir shop and bought a SANTORINI ISLAND
baseball cap, and pulled it low over her head, then donned her sunglasses and
began looking for a taxi.
The driver she chose was a heavyset, gray-haired man, who
looked at least seventy years old. As far as she could tell, he couldn’t speak
a word of English. He was sitting in a rather beat-up, dusty taxi about a block
from the church, slumped in his seat, apparently asleep, wearing a Greek sailor’s
cap that was pulled down over his eyes.
“Excuse me, I need to go to the airport,” she said, leaning
in the open window.
The driver jumped a little, then looked at her and said
something in Greek, shaking his head. Apparently he didn’t understand.
“The airport?” Elaine said, and held her hands together to
form the wings of a plane, and tilted them side to side. She said the word the
Russian way, thinking it might help. “
Aeroport?”
“Ah,
Aerodromou,” he said, smiling.
He reached into the back of the car and opened the rear
door for her.
When Elaine got in, she slumped low in the seat, the way he
had been sitting, as if she were tired from walking. She had no idea where Alex
had his swimming lessons and there were very few roads on the island—she was
afraid that she and Spyro might cross paths.
It took about twenty-five minutes to reach the airport. The
closer they got, the more nervous Elaine became. It would be just her luck to
run into Costa or one of Spyro’s staff there.
When they finally reached the island’s modest little
airport and the driver pulled up to the curb, Elaine opened her door and looked
at him. “Wait here, okay?”
He frowned, tapping on the meter, which showed a fare of
eighteen euros.
“I want you to
wait for me. Understand?” She pointed
to her watch. “Five minutes.” She spread her fingers out to indicate the
number.
She thought the driver was going to argue and insist that
she pay in advance, but he merely shrugged and shut off the engine. He slumped
down in his seat and pulled the sailor’s cap back over his eyes.
I wish I were half as relaxed as he is, she thought.
Before she actually got out of the car, she looked around
the terminal entrance. There were a few passengers pulling suitcases along the
sidewalk, but they looked like tourists.
Elaine went inside the terminal as quickly as she could and
walked straight to the kiosk she had seen upon her arrival on the island that
was selling disposable phones. She kept her head down, the cap pulled low.
Just her luck—there were three people in line in front of
her. The Greek woman working at the counter moved with the same sense of
non-urgency as the taxi driver, practically in slow motion. It took Elaine a
nerve wracking fifteen minutes to finally reach the front of the queue, and
then another five long minutes to complete the purchase of the phone and an
automobile cigarette lighter charger that would fit it. The woman did not have
enough change and had to go to a rental car desk to break Elaine’s fifty euro
note. Elaine tried to tell her to just keep the difference, but she wouldn’t
let go of Elaine’s purchase until she made the correct change.
When Elaine finally finished, so much time had passed that
she half-expected the taxi to have left, or to see the driver and a cop
searching the lobby for her. But the old, dusty car was still sitting there in
exactly the same spot outside, the driver slumped in the seat in the same
position she had left him in, the cap over his eyes.
When she opened the door and got in, he jumped again, just
like he had the first time.
“Please take me back to Fira,” she said.
He sighed and started the engine.
As soon they were moving again, Elaine opened the package
and got the phone working. When she established the data connection she logged
into the email account that she and Luna had set up.
There was one message, from Luna.
Hey, baby-doll, hope things are going well for you. I’m
in Pittsburgh right now and have some news. Please call or text me ASAP but don’t
take any unnecessary risks, and of course don’t you dare use that SIM card he
gave you to make any calls!
Elaine looked at the time stamp—the message had come about
eight hours ago. She immediately called Luna’s number.
It was very early morning in Pennsylvania, but Luna
answered on the second ring.
“It’s me,” Elaine said, knowing Luna wouldn’t recognize the
number. “I got your message. How’s Pittsburgh?”
“Oh, it’s interestin’,” Luna said. For a second Elaine wasn’t
completely sure it was her. “I’ve already been all over, been dahntahn, been to
Sliberty, even been dahn to Brahnsville.”
Elaine burst out laughing. “Oh my god, you’re speaking
Pittsburghese!”
Luna laughed. “Everybody here thinks I’m from ‘Worshinton.’
I drank some pop, too. And pumped some Airn.”
“Next thing you know you’ll be reddin’ up your apartment
and sweepin’ your carpet n’at.”
Elaine became still, looking at the back of the taxi driver’s
head. “So?”
“I’ve come to the conclusion that Patrick’s death was...what
I mean to say is that I’m fairly sure that your father did
not commit
suicide.”
“Yes. Just like your mother said.”
Elaine felt a sob well up inside her, and even though she suppressed
it, she let out a small gasp. She could not stop tears from running down her
face. The thought of her poor father being killed in his jail cell was like an
ice pick in her heart, but on the other hand, the sadness was bittersweet. The
moment she’d heard Luna confirm that her father had been murdered, the worst wound
that had been buried inside her all these years—the thought that her dad had
abandoned her—began to heal.
“Are you alright, baby-doll? I wish we didn’t have to talk
about this over the phone...”
“I’m okay,” Elaine said, sniffling. The taxi driver glanced
at her through the rearview mirror, but looked away quickly, as if he thought he
should mind his own business.
Elaine’s grief morphed into anger so quickly that it
surprised her. “Who did it? Where is the son-of-a-bitch?”
“Well, I’m not completely sure. There are two different
suspects, but they’re connected to each other.”
Luna explained in detail about her visit to Thomas Tutter’s
house, going back and breaking in and fighting with him, and his story about
letting the man named Lonnie Hendrix, a.k.a. “Mister Switch” into the cell the
night he died.
“Tutter said my father paid for sex?” Elaine said, now
outraged. “Paid a
man for sex? That’s ridiculous. My father would never—”
“I know, but Tutter didn’t know your father, obviously. He
might have believed what Lonnie Hendrix told him and just taken the bribe. This
kind of sexual activity isn’t uncommon in prison, as you probably know.”
“But
how was he killed? How? Without leaving a shred
of evidence behind that an autopsy would find?”
Luna hesitated. “Baby-doll, you don’t really want to know
the grisly details, do you?”
“Grisly or not, I need to know what you have on those
bastards who killed my father!”
Luna explained about the cardboard roller that was found
under the bed, and the BDSM practice of “mummification.”
Elaine shuddered at the description.
“So,” Luna went on, “if my theory is right, Hendrix could
have easily suffocated your dad without leaving any marks, signs of struggle,
or anything else. And I’m pretty sure I’ve nailed this. I’ve got the cardboard
roller in my possession, and you can easily see that one end was cut off—the
edge is slightly frayed if you look at it very closely, and other end is clean,
machine-cut. The coroner just didn’t have any cause to examine it in detail—they
just assumed it was a piece of ordinary cell garbage.”
As Elaine digested all this, she gazed out the left-hand
window of the taxi, at the shimmering patches of Aegean Sea between the cliffs
in the distance. She could hardly believe she was on a tiny Greek island,
finally so close to punishing her father’s killer, nearly a decade after
joining the Secret Service. But how could they connect these two suspects Luna
had dug up to Spyro Leandrou?
“How do we know this guard, Tutter, wasn’t involved?”
Elaine said. “He could have made up this whole story about Hendrix. The man is
obviously into BDSM himself and—”
“You’re right—we don’t know if he was involved in the
actual murder. All I can say is that Thomas Tutter doesn’t remotely fit the physical
description your mother gave us of the guy that’s been blackmailing Spyro. But
Lonnie Hendrix does, and to a T. Not only that, Hendrix has a history of
blackmail, travels a lot internationally. I just checked with Homeland and
Thomas Tutter doesn’t even have a passport, has never been out of the United
States. On top of that, Tutter is pretty short—I don’t think he could have
lifted your father off the bed high enough to...well, you know.” Luna paused. “So
all indications are that even if Tutter was in on this, the one who actually
carried out the murder had to have been Lonnie Hendrix, or they did it together.”
“Okay,” Elaine said, feeling sick.
“Of course that’s assuming that your mom is...” Luna’s
voice trailed off.
“What? Telling the truth?”
“Well, I didn’t want to say that, but yeah.”
“It’s okay, I don’t trust her myself, as bad as that
sounds. I wouldn’t put it past her to have made this up just to give me the
burning desire to put her husband in jail.”
“Agreed. We’re both on the same page, then. I think the
best way to proceed is to get a positive ID on Lonnie Hendrix from your mom—that
will confirm we’ve got the right man. What I would like to do is email you five
mug shots of random convicts, one of which will be of Lonnie Hendrix. You need
to show them to Kathy ASAP and ask her if she recognizes any of the men as the
one that came to their house and blackmailed Spyro.”
“Great plan, I agree.” Elaine already felt better. “Let’s
do it.”
“Also, I’m going to include one picture of Thomas Tutter in
the mix, just to make sure your mother hasn’t seen him, too. I don’t know why
or how she would have ever seen him, but we need to cover all the
possibilities, just in case.”
“When do you think you can show the photos to Kathy?”
Elaine thought it over. “Give me twenty-four hours.”
“Okay, I’m emailing them now.”
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
Comments 0