Molten Mud Murder Page 21

  A damp thread caressed her face and returned her to here and now.

  “In the beginning,” Cooper whispered, “there was great night, dark night, long night. And then—the glowing of the worm.”

  The two women stood, quest postponed, kinship established, soaking up the magic. Alexa, distracted from fear, felt awash with gratitude for a land so unique, it shone light in its darkest places.

  Taking a baby step backward, Alexa reached out to touch the wisp of emerald light.

  “Now the glowworm will eat you,” Cooper said, her voice back to normal. “They use their light to attract prey.”

  Alexa dropped her hand.

  “Turn on your flashlight,” said Cooper, clicking hers on. The glowworms vanished. Alexa did the same, and suddenly, they were standing in a small sanctum of the cave. More beauty astounded Alexa as she marveled over stalactites hanging from the ceiling, limestone icicles reaching for earth. A small pool of water in the corner, still and clear, reflected the formations. And, she noted, an infinite number of places a person could hide.

  “The burial chamber,” Cooper said, pointing toward another passageway with her light.

  It was short and opened to a large chamber that the two women, standing close together, explored with their lights. A center pillar of stone supported the ceiling. Niches in the far walls looked like submarine bunks. A pile of rocks and debris in front of the stone pillar had a dropped-from-the-sky look, jumbled and disorganized. Cooper rushed toward the jumble and began talking in Maori, her voice loud and panicky.

  “Kāo, kāo, kāo.”

  “Stop,” Alexa said. “What are you saying?”

  “The chief ’s tomb has been raided,” Cooper yelled.

  They scanned the disarray of bowling ball-sized rocks and wooden sticks. Cooper began to thread herself around and over them, Alexa following. A cleared hollow lay in the middle of the helter-skelter as if someone had stood there, lifting and hefting rocks. Alexa remembered Mr. Wright from the Rotorua Museum describing the burial bier’s pyramid shape and knew that they had once been carefully placed upon the body of Chief Rangituata. She edged forward, forcing herself to peer into the hollow, expecting skeletal remains.

  Empty. Somehow, Alexa wasn’t surprised. Dismayed, but not surprised.

  “The grave has been destroyed,” Cooper said, her voice back to impassivity. They stood and stared. Neither knew what to do. Dank cold penetrated her rain jacket and blouse, and Alexa shivered.

  “Water,” Cooper said suddenly. “We have to douse the gravesite with water.” She flew back toward the passageway, nimbly picking her way through boulders. Alexa followed and promptly tripped, falling hard atop a pile of sharp-edged rocks. Her cell went flying.

  “Stupid klutz,” she muttered, untangling herself from the crime scene bag. She stood to assess the damage and fish her beaming cell from between two rocks. Her left knee throbbed, and her right wrist was gashed, blood weeping instantly.

  Panic at being left alone grabbed and squeezed. She limp-hopped after Cooper, thankful her knee could bear weight, and found the officer kneeling by the small pool in the glowworm area.

  “What are you doing?” Alexa asked.

  “I need a container. What’s in the crime scene kit?” Cooper said.

  Alexa dropped the crime kit. “What for?”

  “Fresh water can neutralize tapu. If we don’t douse the burial site, we will meet evil.”

  “But we aren’t the ones who disturbed it.”

  “We need to protect ourselves and our families and whoever might come after us.”

  Alexa opened the kit. They used plastic evidence bags, filling them with cave water and returning to the burial chamber. Cooper’s voice trembled as she said Maori words and slowly splashed water over the rocks and empty tomb as Alexa shone light. Glistening, the burial ground turned a deeper hue, red and angry. Cooper did the same with the water Alexa had collected. Then she turned. “We need to leave now.”

  Rangiora and Walker stood like driveway lions on either side of the cave entrance when Alexa and Cooper emerged disoriented and blinking in bright sunlight.

  “We thought the spirits had gotten you,” Walker said, his face anxious.

  “What did you find?” Rangiora asked.

  Neither woman spoke. Alexa wanted to hear what Cooper would say, but Cooper didn’t say anything. “The burial site, where the chief was, has been disturbed. There’s no trace of bones or artifacts,” Alexa finally said. “We’ll need to tape off the entrance, get experts here to assess the theft. I’ll call it in.”

  “Bob’s your uncle,” Rangiora said. “Herera was robbing the grave.”

  No bars.

  The team used the last of the yellow tape while Rangiora reported what he and Walker had discovered at the lookout. “Someone had been camping up there. Could have been where Herera was tossed into the lake. We bagged some stuff, but there’s something stuck halfway down the cliff, a blanket or a parka,” he said. “It’s too steep to retrieve. Walker here has volunteered to stay and guard it until we can get equipment to pull it up. Whoever killed Herera could still be on the island.”

  Walker paled. Cooper volunteered to stay with him before he could protest.

  The lake flattened to stainless steel as the police launch skimmed its surface, fast and urgent, to Rotorua harbor. Rangiora and Alexa did not speak.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Situation can’t get worse,” DI Horne said to the reduced team. They had assembled in the conference room at two p.m. after sending reinforcements to the island. He stood at the head of the table; everyone else was seated.

  Alexa silently agreed.

  “The results of Herera’s autopsy…Trimble, share,” Horne said. The bespectacled man opened the folder in front of him and extracted several eight-by-ten photos that he centered on the table. Alexa stared at the nearest: Herera’s face, covered in tattoos, eyes pried wide, stared back.

  “This is Dr. Hill’s report,” Trimble said. “Postmortem examination reveals bloodshot eyes, visceral congestion, fluid and cyanosis in the blood and tissue, hemorrhages and skin discoloration. Death attributed to asphyxia.”

  “Strangled?” Horne asked.

  “Dr. Hill said smothered. No marks on his neck, but look at his lips.” Trimble pointed to a closeup of lips. “They’re blue and there’s bruising.”

  Maori women, not men, had their lips tattooed blue—long ago to make themselves beautiful and desirable, today, like Cooper, to express cultural pride and identity. Herera’s lips looked like they had been inked. But his blue lips were from lack of oxygen in the blood.

  “You can see the impression of his top teeth on the inner lip from pressure being applied.” Trimble pointed to a photo of Herera’s inner lip turned back. “He was dead before being dumped in the water.”

  “Any trace?” Alexa asked.

  “Mostly washed away,” Trimble said. “He was in the water eight hours or more. I took what’s left down to the lab.”

  “Time of death?” Horne continued.

  “Between six and eight a.m. He had postmortem contusions on his shoulders and thighs as if he had rolled over something rough.”

  “Pushed from the lookout, probably,” Rangiora said. “We were just there.”

  Alexa calculated. Herera must have been killed the morning after leaving the bird in her house. Had someone been watching him watching her? Followed him?

  The room was silent. Now they knew, not just suspected, they were facing a second murder. Which meant there was always the possibility of a third.

  Someone was getting nervous, covering tracks, acting irrationally, dangerously.

  DI Horne broke the silence. “Which of you wants to give the lowdown on the island?”

  Senior Officer Rangiora seized the opportunity. “I’ll recap. First Glock trip
ped on human bones in a shallow grave. They looked like they had been dug up.”

  “What?” said McNamara. “Another body?” He was next to Alexa and turned to frown at her.

  “A skeleton, right?” Horne looked at Alexa, and she nodded, wishing Rangiora hadn’t said tripped. She tried not to wince from pain. Her good black jeans, torn at the knee, were ruined.

  “The bones were old, and all we spotted was a thigh bone and rib cage,” Rangiora said. “We secured the scene and went on. Next, we found Herera’s shack. Inside was a three-foot totem that Coop says was moved from the cave entrance. Nothing in the cabin had been disturbed. We made a list of items he had stored in a footlocker, which includes death certificates of his wife and kid. Blunt force trauma.”

  “Senior had me check that out,” Trimble interrupted. “Car crash, State Highway Five. Lorry ran off the road and overcompensated. Hit them head on.”

  Horne bowed his head. Alexa imagined him thinking of his own daughters, gone in an instant, like Mary.

  “What next?” he asked.

  Alexa interrupted. “I think we should look into the archaeological dig that was halted a couple years ago on Pirongia. There might be a connection.”

  “What dig?” Trimble asked.

  Horne looked surprised. “It was a joint study with some uni profs and the Maori Cultural Association in 2016. Someone spray-painted racial slurs on the tents. The iwi closed the dig.”

  “Had they found anything?” Trimble asked.

  “It depended on your point of view. Pottery, adze. Fish bones. Not human remains. I don’t see how the dig connects to this, but look into it. Anything else to report?” The DI looked back at his senior officer.

  Rangiora continued. “Cooper and Glock entered the cave and discovered the burial chamber was ransacked and empty. Grave robbers.”

  “For real?” Trimble asked, shaking his head. “This isn’t a made-for-telly movie?”

  Rangiora nodded. “While they were in the cave, Walker and I hiked to the pā above. There’s a bunker made from rocks and logs and evidence someone had camped there. A firepit with ashes and fish bones. Too rocky to see footprints. It’s steep, and the edge is crumbling. Walker spotted something over the ledge, about halfway down to the water, thought at first it was another body. I think it’s a tarp or parka. Coop and Walker are waiting for equipment to retrieve it.”

  “Any signs of someone on the island? Someone alive?” Horne asked.

  “We didn’t see or hear anyone,” Alexa said.

  “First someone kills Koppel, and then a week later, Herera. They both knew something or had something and were killed for it,” McNamara said.

  “That’s a possibility,” Horne said. “The exposed bones may or may not factor in. I located a forensic anthropologist in Auckland. I’ve left a message for her to contact me as soon as possible. And the Ministry for Culture and Heritage is sending someone to assess the cave damage and figure out what’s been taken.”

  “Rawari Wright from the Rotorua Museum might have ideas about where the stolen objects would be taken,” Alexa said. Blood was seeping through the Band-Aid on her wrist.

  “Go talk to him,” Horne said. “I believe he was a liaison for the archaeological dig as well. Ask if he knew Herera.” He issued directions to each team member and dismissed them with a wave of his hand.

  * * *

  Alexa limped to the lab to check in with Jenny. The young technician was working on the prints collected last night from the lab and exit doors.

  “So many were superimposed that the comparator only accepted three,” Jenny said. “They match Officers Abel Rangiora and Wynne Cooper.” Jenny looked at Alexa to gauge her reaction.

  “Rangiora touched both last night,” Alexa said. Possibly on purpose. He could have been covering his tracks. But Cooper? Why would her prints be in both places? “Who was the third?”

  “There was a match.” She gave Alexa a slip of paper. Alexa scanned it but didn’t recognize the name written down. Had this person been the face in the lab door window?

  “Thanks. I’ll look into this. Have you gotten anything from the Herera autopsy?”

  “That officer on loan from Auckland, the one with glasses, dropped off evidence twenty minutes ago. I took a quick look. There’s not much—fiber, hairs, some soil.”

  “Cause of death was asphyxiation, not drowning.”

  “But water washed away a lot of trace. I’ll start with the fiber. It was extracted from the mouth.”

  “Good. Yesterday, Horne sent a team to search a boat belonging to Paul Koppel’s father-in-law. Have you looked at findings yet?”

  “Again, there wasn’t much. Some soil and trash. Officer Walker said it looked like the boat had been scrubbed down. Which should I do first? Autopsy or boat?”

  “Start with the boat. I collected soil from Pirongia this morning. Compare the soil to it and to the mud pits,” Alexa directed. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m okay,” Jenny said, touching her head. “I’m not happy they shaved my hair.”

  Alexa smiled. “Survival trumps vanity, I guess.”

  Jenny’s gaze traveled from Alexa’s hair to her ripped jeans to her dirty Keds. “You look a bit roughed up yourself.”

  “Exciting morning.” She had stopped by the ladies’ to wash up, press a fresh Band-Aid to her wrist, and inspect her knee. But her hair, curled in an every-which-way frizz, had defeated any attempts at taming, so she’d stuffed it behind her ears. One side had liberated itself. “I have to eat something, and then Bruce, I mean DI Horne, wants me to visit Rotorua Museum. I’ll take care of the crime scene prints I lifted this morning later on. You’ve got enough. Go home if your head bothers you.”

  The officer she had insisted be placed outside the lab doorway was still there. Alexa nodded at him as she left.

  Scarfing a yogurt in the canteen, Alexa read a text from Aria, the dispatcher in the Communications Office: Stop by. I have info you requested.

  Had Aria identified the person in the hoodie? Alexa slurped the last spoonful and threw the carton in the bin. Time to find out who was caught on camera last night.

  Aria Thompson was gone. “Her shift ended at two,” another woman in the office said.

  “Do you know if she left a message for a Ms. Glock?” Alexa checked her watch. It was a few minutes after.

  “She said to give this to a Miss Clock.” The woman handed her a note.

  “Glock,” Alexa said and unfolded the note. “Like the gun.” The hooded man who had entered the police station at 8:01 pm last night had been Carl Rogers, the evening janitor. Aria had provided Rogers’s address and phone number.

  Wait a minute.

  She unfolded the paper Jenny had given her: Carl Winston Rogers.

  Relief. The face in the window had been a janitor. But had he left the exit door ajar? Or let someone in?

  Leaving the Communications Office, Alexa wondered who she could get to check into him. Whom did she trust besides Bruce Horne, who seemed forever unavailable for private chats?

  The undercover cop from Auckland. Trimble. She found him and explained her request.

  * * *

  Rawiri Wright answered on the first ring as if expecting her call. When he heard about the theft from Chief Rangituata’s tomb and the discovery of skeletal remains, he insisted Alexa drive to the museum right away. Twenty minutes later, she was seated across a desk from him in his small office. His eyes, behind glasses, weren’t sparkling this time.

  “Whoever robbed the burial chamber is cursed. The spirits have latched and won’t let go.” Wright pushed a stack of papers to another spot on his desk for emphasis.

  Alexa froze. The pen in her hand was still, her notebook page bare, her thoughts jumping to Herera, washed up like driftwood on a beach.

  Wright continued. “Vandalism and
theft of archaeological materials are as old as humanity. Think Egypt. King Tutankhamen and that obsessed British tomb-hunter Howard Carter. A predator, he was, claiming the tomb had already been robbed. Taurekareka! He was the one who robbed it.”

  King Tut? Taurekareka?

  “You have much archaeological theft in your country. On Native American land. New Zealand is much smaller and newer than your country.”

  “Newer?” Alexa asked. The man was confusing her, maybe on purpose.

  “North America’s first inhabitants arrived sixteen thousand years ago. Polynesians arrived in New Zealand only one thousand years ago.”

  “That’s interesting,” Alexa said, her page blank except for the word “newer.” Time for redirection. “I hear you repeating ‘archaeological theft.’ What do you know about the dig on Pirongia in 2016?”

  “Nothing. I was a liaison on paper only. I was never out there.”

  “Perhaps you hoped the museum would benefit.”

  “Pākehā should not have been mucking about on Pirongia. It is sacred land.”

  Now he sounded like Mary’s brother. “What about the selling of antiquities that might have been dug up then or later?”

  “People must be registered with the Ministry for Culture and Heritage to possess Maori artifacts and can only sell or trade them with others who are registered. I’m registered on behalf of the museum.”

  “I doubt the thieves were card carriers.”

  “Or dealing with people who are registered. I agree,” Wright said. “We don’t have much documentation to the extent that illegal trading in New Zealand goes on. But it happens on every continent and in every nation. Some say it has reached epidemic proportions and helps fund organized crime, terrorist groups, even ISIS.” He leaned closer to her and rested his chin on his intertwined fingers. “Think of it this way. Illegally excavated artifacts are easy to fence because they won’t be in a stolen objects database.”

  “What type of artifacts would have been in Chief Rangituata’s tomb?” Alexa asked. “A greenstone club?”