"If the police want me, they'll have to get me out," he said. I hated to leave him, but there was nothing else I could do. I had to get back before I was missed.
"I'll be back," I said.
He grabbed my hand with his good one. "Thank you," he said.
When I got back to town, it was light. I parked the vehicle closer to the hotel and on the side where I did not have to cross in front of the guard to get to the sliding glass door at the back of the room. It was open, of course, but the room was empty. I was chilled to the bone and got into the shower forthwith, then climbed under the covers and fell asleep.
I couldn't have slept more than a few minutes when the door opened, and Moira, with a policeman behind her peering over her shoulder, stepped into the room. "Are you feeling better?" she said. "I went to the gift shop and got you some pills for your tummy. I also brought you some breakfast and coffee," she said, "for when you're feeling up to it." The policeman looked at me, grunted, and left.
"You're good, Moira," I said.
"I know," she replied. She wrote me a note in which she told me she'd realized that the police were going to go door to door if people didn't show up for meals, so she'd gone and just told everybody I wasn't feeling well. The policeman had followed her back to the room, so she'd played her role to the hilt. While I was reading her note, she even took two pills out of the package and flushed them down the toilet in case someone checked to see if I'd taken anything for this tummy of mine.
"Details count," she said, as I devoured the breakfast she'd brought. I wrote her a very long note about Gordon, and she looked dismayed as she read it. At the end of it, I told her I'd be going out again that night.
"I sure hope this rain stops soon," she said. "For everyone's sake."
Victoria had written me a note as well. In it she said she was planning to have a fit of hysterics that evening and that she was going to insist the police accompany her to the hospital to see Gabriela. I was to be there about midnight if I could.
Moira was rolling up a blanket and placing it in my bed as I slipped out the back door again in the dark. "In case they do a bed check," she scribbled. Fortunately, given where I'd left the vehicle, I didn't have to jog into town this time, nor did I have to cross the hotel entrance without being seen. I parked a block or two from the hospital. It was a good thing Victoria had included a map of its location in her note, because I would never have guessed this low-rise building that looked like a school maybe, or a retirement home, was the hospital. The only clue was an ambulance parked out front. After locating the policemen that I knew would have escorted Victoria to the hospital—they were in their vehicle on the street—I crept behind the ambulance and slipped in.
Victoria was watching for me and quickly pulled me behind the curtain that surrounded Gabriela's bed. I told Victoria that Gordon was all right, that I'd managed to get him food and water, and would do it again if necessary. She flung her arms around me and held on tight. Then I told her about his injury, and she teared up a bit.
"I've got to go," I said. "I don't want to stay any longer than is absolutely necessary. How is she?" I asked, gesturing toward Gabriela. It was a stupid question. I'm not sure I would even have recognized Gabriela under different circumstances. Her face was so white as to be almost unreal, there were tubes everywhere, and somewhere just outside the curtain some machine was thumping along. I think it was doing her breathing for her.
"Not good," she said. "We're still waiting for tests. They had to send the blood samples to Santiago! The doctors say there was alcohol and sleeping pills in her blood, but not enough to do this. She doesn't drink, you know. I'm not saying she doesn't go out with friends and maybe have the odd drink. Maybe she does. She likes to dance, so she goes to the clubs sometimes. But no one has ever seen her drunk, and we have no idea where she would get sleeping pills. I cannot understand this. Anyway, it doesn't matter if she did this to herself or not, I just want her to get better. She did wake up from time to time the first day or two, but she hasn't in a while. The nurses tell us to speak to her, that she may know who is here. I hope she does."
Gabriela looked so terrible that I could hardly stand to look at her, but I reached over and took her hand for a minute. "She didn't do this to herself," I said. "There is something else going on. I don't know how I know this. I just do."
"I keep thinking it must be something else, too," Victoria said. "If there isn't enough alcohol and drugs to put her into a coma, what did?"
"Hold Edith safe," I said.
"I will," she said. "Thank you for helping us."
I let go of Gabriela's hand and saw something that gave me pause. "What's that on her arm?" I said.
"It's a tattoo," Victoria said. "Or at least the start of one. I guess she must have had it done just before this happened. The doctors thought at first it might be the cause—septicemia, you know, from a dirty needle—but it isn't that. It's just a tattoo. You can see the lines where the tattoo artist drew them to help with the design. It's a tattoo of a little bird."
That's strange, I thought, but it would take me a while to figure out why.
I slipped back into our room, waking Moira as I did so. "How did it go?" she asked.
"Mission accomplished," I whispered.
"Brava!" she said.
"You know something, Moira?" I said, completely forgetting, in my general relief, that I wasn't supposed to talk in the room. "Now that I've managed to get food and water to Gordon, I want to go home. Once the storm abates and the airport opens, he'll have a lawyer and the support of his embassy. I don't for a minute think he killed Jasper Robinson, or especially, for that matter, Dave. But there is nothing more we can do for him. He's someone else's problem now. It is a fabulous place, this Rapa Nui. The antiquities are unparalleled, the people lovely, the scenery rather breathtaking, once you come to appreciate its relative barrenness and begin to see the subtleties in the landscape. But I've seen it. Now it's time to go home."
"What do you think it will take to get us off the island?" she said.
"Maybe having Gordon turn himself in," I said. "I hate to see him charged with a murder just so I can go home, but it's beginning to reach that point."
"I'm beginning to feel the same way," she said. "I'd like to see Rory before we go, though. I suppose if Gordon is charged, they'll at least let the others leave for home."
"It's still raining," I said. "I hope they get that airport open soon."
"Go to sleep," she said. I did. I was deep in the dream in which Rob was telling me I'd overlooked something very obvious, when the still of the night was rent by a bloodcurdling scream.
8
THAT SCREAM WAS one of the worst sounds I have everI heard in my life. It was barely human. Given the way the hotel was configured and the less than optimal sound insulation in it, I think just about everybody in the place heard it, too.
The first scream was followed by a second, and soon doors started slamming, and most of us found ourselves out on a wet lawn. The rain, at least, had stopped.
"Has somebody else been murdered?" Brenda Butters said, almost shaking with fear.
"Maybe it was an animal," Albert, clad in rather dapper red-and-white striped pajamas, proposed, unconvincingly.
"There were two screams," Lewis said.
"The second one was me," Yvonne said. "I was so startled by that awful sound that I screamed, too. Sorry." Enrique put his arm around Yvonne in a protective way.