"So what happened here? Maddox lost a shoe climbing the fence to get to a horse on the other side, went out to the road, along it, down the hotel lane, through the lounge, and across the terrace?"
Fuentes was beginning to look annoyed. "What happened here was a bad accident," he said.
"I don't think so," I said. I went through the gate now, being careful not to step on any hoof print as I did so, and walked up to the edge of the cliff, peering over the side very cautiously. I do not like heights. "There's a dead horse down there," I said after a moment or two.
"There is?" Fuentes said, stepping as carefully as I had through the gate and joining me at the edge. The horse lay on its side on the rocks below. From time to time a wave washed over it. The poor horse was very definitely dead.
"I suppose that must be the horse," he said. "You may have inadvertently disproved your own hypothesis."
"I don't think so," I said. "How did the horse get down there and Maddox end up here? Please don't tell me the horse felt so bad after trampling Maddox that it threw itself off the cliff."
"Senora," he said, in a pained tone. "It is too bad about the horse. I suppose I will have to send someone down there to have a look. I think you are hinting that Sefior Maddox may have been murdered. I do not agree with you. Murder is almost unheard of on Rapa Nui. I think the only one in living memory occurred when a man killed his wife some time back."
"I'm glad to hear murderers do not run rampant on the island, but the people we are talking about are not from Rapa Nui," I said.
"As far as I know, tourists do not regularly murder each other here, either," he said. "However, lest you think I am being derelict in my duty, I will tell you that I have asked that a pathologist be sent out from Santiago. The doctors who examined the victim and pronounced on his death are somewhat divided in their opinion, shall we say, and so I have asked for an expert to settle this. Unfortunately the pathologist is not going to make today's flight. He will come in tomorrow."
"What do you mean divided in their opinion?" I said. "Could one of their opinions coincide with mine?"
"No, Senora," he said. "One of them thinks Senor Maddox may have hit his head on a stone."
"Which stone?" I said.
"The one his head was resting on. You have perhaps not noticed that there is a lot of rock on Rapa Nui?" he said. He was getting a bit testy. "There was alcohol and barbiturates in his blood. That much we have been able to ascertain here," he said.
"Enough to kill him?" I asked.
"Perhaps not," he conceded. "But maybe enough to make him sufficiently loco to go out and try to ride a horse."
"Everyone is leaving today or tomorrow," I said. "Before the pathologist gets here."
"Not today, Senora. There is an inbound flight from Santiago, but no return. The flight goes on to Tahiti today. It will not be back until tomorrow."
"So nobody from the congress is going to Tahiti?"
Fuentes pulled a small notebook out of his pocket. "Two of you: Senora Susan Scace, Senor Seth Connelly. I am here early in order to take their statements before they leave."
"Maybe you should take their passports until the pathologist gets here."
"I am having some difficulty thinking how I would explain to my superiors in Valparaiso why I impounded the passports of two foreign nationals on the basis of horse poop."
He had a point, I suppose. "What else is down there?" I asked. "There seems to be a path leading down to the water across the way, on the other side of the cove."
"Ana Kai Tangata," he said. "Ana means cave in Rapanui.
That is Eat Man Cave. There are two possible interpretations of the name. One is that this is where Rapa males came for picnics. The other is—"
"I know what the other one is," I said. "Maybe they were starving. Their children were starving. Perhaps in desperate circumstances people do the unthinkable."
"Perhaps," he said. "You should go and see the cave. I do not go sightseeing myself, but I understand there are paintings of birds on the walls."
Fuentes waved goodbye and started back toward the hotel. I was tempted to follow. I realized I was hungry, which, given the state of my insides the previous evening, was a very good sign. I could hear the clink of dishes in the dining room, and while it was still a bit early, I wondered if I might persuade them to make me a large breakfast.
Instead, I followed the path along the edge of the cliff until I came to a rocky path heading down toward the sea. The path wasn't exactly an easy one, nor was it particularly difficult as long as you watched where you put your feet. Soon I was down at the water level, with the waves crashing against stone just a few yards away. In a few strides I was up in the cave. A section of the upper wall of the cave was, as Fuentes had said, painted. You could make out birds in blue and red and white. The paintings were sufficiently high on the wall that some sort of scaffolding would have been required—wood supports, I supposed, if wood were then available, a pile of stones if it wasn't. Fuentes was right about one thing: One commodity this island would never run out of is rock.
I sat there for a while thinking about both the cave and my conversation with Fuentes. If Ana Kai Tangata was haunted by evil spirits emanating from either the victims or the perpetrators of the cannibalism implied in the cave's name, I couldn't feel them. The danger seemed much more imminent than that. I felt trapped in some kind of web with whatever evil was out there, on an island where there are only a few flights a week, some of which went somewhere I didn't intend to go. What was it like, I wondered, to live on an island so far from everything else? Everything you need, or just want, from a lot of your food to the smallest part for your car engine to a grand piano, had to come from somewhere else, by and large, and travel great distances to get to you.
All I could see through the cave entrance was water, the gray of the sky and the gray of the water meeting at a horizon that seemed very far off. I knew once I stepped out of the cave, the horizon would seem limitless. Pablo Fuentes didn't believe me. I wasn't even sure Moira would. Te-Pito-Te-Henua, they called it—the navel of the world. As stunning as this island might be, when it came right down to it, at this moment at least, there was not a lot to be said for being alone at the center of the world.
With those morbid thoughts, I picked my way carefully across the rocks to the dead horse. I wondered if Fuentes would feel differently about the passports of foreign nationals when he saw the poor horse had been killed by a bullet through its brain.
That is Eat Man Cave. There are two possible interpretations of the name. One is that this is where Rapa males came for picnics. The other is—"
"I know what the other one is," I said. "Maybe they were starving. Their children were starving. Perhaps in desperate circumstances people do the unthinkable."
"Perhaps," he said. "You should go and see the cave. I do not go sightseeing myself, but I understand there are paintings of birds on the walls."
Fuentes waved goodbye and started back toward the hotel. I was tempted to follow. I realized I was hungry, which, given the state of my insides the previous evening, was a very good sign. I could hear the clink of dishes in the dining room, and while it was still a bit early, I wondered if I might persuade them to make me a large breakfast.
Instead, I followed the path along the edge of the cliff until I came to a rocky path heading down toward the sea. The path wasn't exactly an easy one, nor was it particularly difficult as long as you watched where you put your feet. Soon I was down at the water level, with the waves crashing against stone just a few yards away. In a few strides I was up in the cave. A section of the upper wall of the cave was, as Fuentes had said, painted. You could make out birds in blue and red and white. The paintings were sufficiently high on the wall that some sort of scaffolding would have been required—wood supports, I supposed, if wood were then available, a pile of stones if it wasn't. Fuentes was right about one thing: One commodity this island would never run out of is rock.