The Surreal Killer (Roger and Suzanne South American Mystery Series Book 2) Page 10

  Norberto, who was driving, invited us to take a detour before we returned to the campus. He and Pablo would show us the sights any tourist should see when visiting Iquique. We jumped at the opportunity and off we went, initially towards the harbor to the west. Pablo pointed out the "Zofri", the duty-free commercial center near the port. This facility, the largest in South America, sprawls over an area of a square mile and includes warehouses, banking branches, restaurants, and duty-free shopping at the equivalent of a large mall. We continued on to the busy harbor itself to see where cruise ships and freighters carrying copper and agricultural goods came and went on a regular basis. A replica of Admiral Prat's ship, The Esmeralda, sits moored in the harbor as a tourist attraction.

  Norberto parked the car, suggested we all get out for a moment, and led us to the Esmeralda replica tied to the dock.

  "Very touristic, very commercial, but probably the only thing that is truly unique in this city," declared Norberto, pointing at the ship.

  "It reminds me of The Star of India, an old clipper ship moored in San Diego Bay that I grew up with as a tourist attraction," I replied.

  "And it reminds me of The Balclutha, another old clipper ship moored in San Francisco Bay that I grew up with as a tourist attraction," added Suzanne.

  "Maybe The Esmeralda isn't all that unique after all," said Pablo a bit cynically. And on that note we returned to the car and our tour of the city continued.

  Iquique, situated in an area with a great deal of seismic activity, has twice been destroyed by earthquakes and seriously damaged several more times in its history. It is easy to notice that the current buildings are substantial and earthquake resistant. Pablo pointed out the Municipal Theater and Plaza Prat as we passed, both standard tourist stops for the passengers from the cruise ships. He also pointed out restaurants, with critical commentary about each, as we passed them. His favorite was The Mercado Centenario, which according to both Pablo and Norberto had the cheapest, fastest, and best no-frills lunch in town. If you preferred frills, there were several sit-down restaurants upstairs offering fresh local seafood. It was impossible to miss the almost infinite number of small shops selling tourism: tours of The Atacama Desert for amateur archeologists and mud-bath enthusiasts, day trips on deep-sea fishing boats, parasailing over cliffs and beaches, hunting, sports and recreation of all kinds, tours of several National Parks, and bus tours of the Andes for ecologists and mountain lovers.

  South of the harbor we got a quick tour of Arturo Prat University and at least five different beaches within a few miles of the campus.

  A couple of hours after lunch and tourism, when we had a few minutes on our own after we got back to the campus, I asked Suzanne, “What did you think of Pablo and Norberto?”

  “I was quite surprised at how much more relaxed I felt with just the two of them than I did when they were part of the larger group in Machu Picchu. They are two very nice guys. I don’t think either of them has what it takes to murder women in cold blood. How about you, Roger, what kind of vibes did you get from them?”

  “Pretty much exactly what you did. For a little while there I was stereotypically hoping that their sexual orientation might be a motive for one or both of them to be killing women, but that just doesn't fit either of these two guys. They're both out of the closet and proud of it. There's no motive there. I think we can erase a couple of question marks and safely add two more names to the guppy list. It’s not that they fit any particular stereotype of gay men. It’s exactly what you said you felt. Without the peer pressure they come across as two very nice guys.”

  “How about the rest of the faculty members we talked to this morning? Did you get any more feelings about them?” I asked.

  Suzanne thought about her answer for a while. Then she looked at me and said, “No, we talked science very freely, and nobody seemed to be keeping any secrets, but I really didn’t have any feeling that we got past the surface with any of them. What was your impression?”

  “Similar to yours. But I'm a lot less ready to put everyone into the guppy tank. I get the sense that they're all hiding something from us, or that we're just not on the same wavelength culturally and I'm expecting them to be more open about their personal lives than they seem to willing to be. Pablo and Norberto were right out front with us, but I don't get the same feeling with the rest of them, at least when they're talking to us in front of each other. We’ll have to try meeting over lunch or dinner with just one or two of them at a time. Or maybe they really are that reserved as some kind of cultural phenomenon in this part of Chile. I don’t actually have any frame of reference to compare them to.

  “Let’s try something a little different this afternoon. You go ahead and meet the faculty members without me there and see if you can draw them out a little more. Maybe the boy-girl thing will kick in and they’ll let their hair down a bit more? I’ll entertain myself until your seminar, and meet you there afterwards. See if you can arrange for dinner with one or two of the folks you talk to this afternoon. Just pick out whoever you think would be willing to join us or seems to be particularly interesting.”

  Suzanne continued to meet the faculty members one-on-one, while I took a break from biochemistry.

  Our dinner plans, courtesy of Suzanne, turned out to be at a downtown restaurant called Casino Espanol with Manuel Obregon and Huberto Rojas. The appetizer was Chilean ceviche, which tasted like it had been prepared the previous day and was no match for the super-fresh ceviche I had eaten previously in Peru. Suzanne took a bite, made a face, and set it aside with a comment about things tasting funny since she became pregnant. Our dinner was rescued by the other cooked seafood dishes, which included delicious crab claws and locally caught fish that were excellent. The two scientists were older than our lunch companions Norberto and Pablo by almost a decade, which put them in the low to middle 40s, but were obviously in much better physical shape. Manuel, one of the two Chileans who had been to Disneyworld, was medium height, good looking, and had a good bit darker complexion than most of the other faculty from Northern Chile that we had met thus far. He explained that he was a descendent of well-to-do Peruvians who had lived here for generations before the War of the Pacific and had opted to stay after the territory became part of Chile. Huberto was tall for a Chilean, almost 6 feet in height, good looking in a cowboy sort of way, and obviously exercised regularly and had the muscles to show for it.

  Manuel and Huberto talked science for a bit, mostly about stuff from Suzanne’s seminar. Both maintained small but active laboratories and were interested in whether the sorts of things she was doing could be done by motivated undergraduate students in their labs if they had access to the proper equipment. After that particular conversation slowed down, we transitioned to what their life was like in Iquique. Manuel was married, had four children, and spent a lot of his time away from work being a husband and father. Huberto, who was divorced from his first wife, had recently married for the second time and seemed to be totally absorbed in once again being half of a couple. He had two teenaged children from his first marriage and tried to spend as much time with them as everyone's busy schedules allowed. Both of them were avid outdoorsmen who spoke enthusiastically about the opportunities for deep sea fishing and hunting near Iquique. Both hunted dove, which were incredibly abundant in the region, for sport, and other local fish, animals, and birds for food. Most of their lives were spent in and around Iquique because anywhere else was such a long distance away and travel was expensive. Manuel asked me if I would have time to join them for dove hunting on this trip.

  I told him, “I don’t know my schedule yet, but I’ll get back to you on that as soon as I do. If I can find the time it sounds like the sort of thing I’d really enjoy. I’ve never hunted dove, but it can’t be all that different from chukar, quail, and pheasant, which I've done in California.”

  Huberto asked us, "What plans do you have for tomorrow morning?"

  "Nothing special," replied Suzanne. "We were hoping to sl
eep in a little later than we've been getting up and get in a bit of running on the beach, before we meet a couple of your colleagues for lunch."

  "How far do you usually run?"

  "We're pretty flexible. Maybe about 5-6 miles?"

  "How about if I join you on your run, and you both bring bathing suits so I can show you a great place for snorkeling as a break during our run? I'll bring the face masks and a little more gear," continued Huberto.

  "That sounds like a lot of fun," said Suzanne, looking at me as I nodded my agreement.

  We worked out the logistics before we said our goodnights.

  They dropped us off back at our hotel. Given the customary starting dinner hour of 9-10 P.M. in this part of South America, it was already pretty late. On the way up to our room Suzanne let me know that lunch tomorrow would be with Romero Sanchez and Pedro Elleman, so after tomorrow's lunch we would have had separate two on two discussion times with all of the biochemists from Arturo Prat University. Dinner would be the scheduled party at Vincent's house, and in between we still had to connect with Eduardo to update each other on our progress, or lack thereof, since Cuzco.

  As we crawled into bed, Suzanne asked me “OK, what species of fish were tonight’s dinner hosts?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. As far as I’m concerned they’re still on our list as sharks with question marks. But I think I’m getting a pretty good idea of what’s going on here and I’m beginning to figure out how to sort out the good guys from the bad guys. If I'm right, we'll be able to get rid of most of those question marks tomorrow, one way or the other.

  “How about you? What’s your take on them?”

  “For a change I'm not sure I agree with you. I'm ready to take my question mark away from Manuel. From his body language and the way he positively lit up when he told us about all of his four children, I'm assigning him to the guppy group, and I mean that as a complement. I assume you’ll share your deductions with me when you’re ready to, but not before then. But we have another agenda item tonight. What's the pun of the day?”

  “Suzanne, do you remember that toothless termite who walked into a bar and asked was the bar tender there? For tonight’s pun of the night we return to that bar, but now the curious bit of life walking in is a tiny little bacterium.

  A bacterium walked into a bar. The bartender said, “You’re not welcome here. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. We don't serve bacteria in this place.”

  The bacterium replied, “But you’ve got to serve me. I work here. I'm staph.”

  Chapter 15. The Two Dreams

  At least three times a week, for as long as I could remember I had one or the other of two dreams about my parents. Both dreams were always the same. I could never see their faces clearly in the dream, but their actions were a familiar ritual. In the first dream, my father was the star.

  My father wore the old corduroy slacks and worn corduroy jacket that he always wore to hunt in. He was unshaven and sloppy looking compared to his regular work clothing, which was always fresh and clean in the morning. He held two hunting dogs, Gordon Setters named Valparaiso and Santiago, by their leashes. Both of the dogs wore hunting collars, stronger than their ordinary dog collars and brightly orange colored to make the dogs more visible against the background colors of green and brown they would be hunting in. The dogs were obviously eager to start hunting as they strained at their leashes, pulling my father's arm towards the door. His strong right arm held the dogs in check.

  “Let’s go hunting, hijo” my father invited me. In the dream I looked to be about 10 years old.

  “No es possible,” said my mother, “today is a school day and he must go to la escuela.”

  My father walked over to where she stood and calmly slapped her several times across her face with his open left hand while simultaneously controlling the dogs with his right hand until she fell to the floor sobbing. “I make the decisions here,” he told her. “Do not ever try to countermand my instructions again.”

  She continued to lie on the floor sobbing for a long time. The dream always ended this way.

  In the second dream, which I had much more often, my mother had the starring role. In the dream I knew that something like this occurred almost every day. From the furniture and the pictures on the walls I could recognize the living room from the house I had grown up in. One of the pictures hanging on the wall was a large wedding photo of my mother and father from about a dozen years earlier, when both looked very young and happy together. A well-stocked liquor cabinet demonstrated pride of place against the far wall of the room. My mother was still young and attractive, in her early or mid-30s. She wore a brightly colored blouse and a skirt and a wide black belt with a fancy buckle. She sat on a chair in the corner of the living room farthest away from the liquor, next to a table that held an empty cocktail glass that had obviously been recently full, a plate of lime slices, and a small container of ice.

  “Bring me my medicine, querido,” ordered my mother.

  I brought her one of the many ever-present bottles of premixed Pisco sour and handed it to her.

  She drank deeply, then pulled out her belt and beat me with it. As she hit me with the belt she said over and over in a flat and emotionless tone, “Next time I ask you for my medicine I want it faster. Don’t just stand there dreaming. Bring it immediately!”

  In this dream I could hear the little boy’s thoughts. “Just wait till I’m older and stronger mi madre. Then you won’t be able to beat me like this! I will say 'no mas, mi madre, no mas'. And you will pay for everything you did to me, Mother. That's a promise.”

  Chapter 16. Iquique, Day 2

  We slept in late the next morning to celebrate Saturday then met Huberto in front of the hotel. He drove us to a beach complex a mile or two from the hotel, parked in front of a specific beach, and suggested we run a few miles to the south and come back to the car to collect our snorkeling gear and swim at that beach. We started off taking a leisurely 5-mile run on several of the interconnected beaches west of the hotel. In honor of Suzanne’s delicate condition we took the run more slowly than usual and had time to enjoy the ocean view as we ran. The South Pacific Ocean at this latitude looked different than the Pacific at about the same north latitude in California. The ocean was calmer, indeed more “pacific”, and we didn’t see any kelp beds and far fewer rocks and rock formations. The water in the protected bays and shallow areas was about the same temperature as we were accustomed to on the Los Angeles beaches in the summer months, quite swimmable.

  We ended up back at the car, collected masks, snorkels, and swim fins for all of us, and spears for Huberto and me. Huberto also attached a large mesh bag to his belt to hold our catch. He gave me a smaller bag to attach to my belt.

  "Have you spear fished before?" asked Huberto.

  "Yes, I have," I answered. "How deep will we have to dive to see fish large enough to be worth the effort?"

  "Not much. Probably 3 or 4 meters will be plenty. You look like you're in good enough shape to handle that, but I guess we'll find out for sure in a few minutes," Huberto said with a condescending smile.

  Suzanne joined us in the warm calm water but skipped the spear fishing part. We swam out a couple of hundred meters until Huberto called out.

  "Roger and I will dive here. There are some rocks at the bottom that usually have some fairly large fish lurking around waiting for their dinner to swim by. I'm planning that we'll get one or two of those larger fish for my dinner. Suzanne, if you just swim around up here and watch, the water is clear enough that you should see everything happening at the bottom. Please try not to kick hard so you don't disturb the fish."

  Huberto checked that my mask fit properly and gave me a quick briefing before we went fishing.

  "Are you familiar with this type of spear?" he asked me. "Nothing fancy, just aim for the middle of the fish and hit him hard."

  "OK".

  "You may see different kinds of fish down there. The thing
s that look like sea bass or cod are the best to eat so go for one of them if you have a choice. If you see any shellfish or sea urchins grab some of them as well. I like eating eels too, but they can be dangerous, so give any you see a wide berth and leave them to me. Do you see those three big rocks down there?" he asked, pointing. "It's usually a good place so start diving there. Stay a few feet away from the rocks so you don't have any surprise meetings with an eel. I'll follow you down just to make sure you don't get into any trouble. Once you're comfortable down there give me a thumbs up, and you're on your own."

  We dove down and I got used to the gear. My mask leaked a bit, but everything else was OK. It had of course occurred to me that this was a good place to have an accident if Huberto wanted to stage one, so I decided not to let him know what my real capabilities were in the water. I checked out the rocks and saw shadows and movement that might be a good fish to come back to. I gave my companion the thumbs up sign, swam around a bit, decided that 30-40 seconds had gone by, and surfaced for a new breath. I got a good deep breath and dove again, headed directly for my earlier maybe fish sighting. Huberto was still down there on his first breath, which was pretty good capacity. I got lucky, found a nice fish that might have been a sea bass and was large enough to weight at least 7-8 pounds, and rammed my spear into its middle, pinning it to the sandy bottom. After a brief struggle I yanked the spear free of the bottom and swam up to the surface with my squirming, but helpless, catch. Huberto ascended with me. He looked at my catch, complemented me on a nice fish, took it off my spear and transferred it to his mesh bag.