"I have some good news for you," I said, through the door. "You can go home." Still nothing. "I'm getting the key, Seth," I said, loudly. "You might as well get up and let me in."
Getting the key took some doing. Hotel desks do not generally hand keys to people other than those who are paying for the room. I finally persuaded my friend Celia at reception that I was really worried about Seth and that she could come with me, to make sure I didn't steal anything. At last, she agreed.
The room was dark, and it took me a moment or two to get used to the gloom. I tried to turn the light on, but it didn't work. The room had been rearranged, the bed pushed against the far wall. At first I thought Seth was asleep in it, but when I went to shake him awake, I found only a jumble of blankets and pillows. I looked around. The bathroom door was closed and, like the outer door, locked. I knocked there, too, and called Seth's name, then put my ear to the door. I couldn't hear a sound, no water running, no sense of a presence behind the door. With a grave sense of foreboding, I threw my weight against the door. The lock immediately gave way.
Celia screamed and screamed. I just stood there for a second, stunned. Seth was hanging from the ceiling. I struggled to lift him, to ease the pressure on his neck, yelling at Celia to stop screaming and help me. There was no question it was too late. He'd pinned a note to his shirt: I'm sorry for what I did. I hope this will make amends. In a gesture that struck me as incongruous, the note was actually signed: Seth Connelly.
9
THE QUESTION WAS, sorry for what? Making amends for what? Most people at the conference thought poor Seth was confessing to the murder of Jasper Robinson. One or two voiced the idea that he, too, had been murdered. Generally, however, that notion was pooh-poohed as soon as it was uttered. There was no question, however, that Seth's death and the note he left threw Fuentes into a tizzy. Gordon's fancy lawyer was all over this one, and within a few hours, Gordon was back home, although his passport was still in the possession of the carabineros.
Seth had gone to a lot of trouble to kill himself. According to the guard who had been on duty at Seth's door until recalled after the meeting, Seth had closed and locked the door shortly after I left. The guard had knocked on the door to tell Seth that he was going off duty and that Seth was free to leave his room. Seth had not answered and it may well have been too late, even then.
It was not easy to hang yourself in that room. I would have thought it would be simpler to slash your wrists with a razor in the bathtub. But Seth was a tidy sort of man, and I suppose the idea of all that blood would have distressed him even more. You could tell that from his room, which was in sharp contrast to the mess that had once been Dave's.
He'd tried a couple of things, apparently. There was evidence he'd attempted to hang himself from the light fixture in the main room. The bed had been moved, and the light was half out of the ceiling, which explained why it hadn't worked when I flipped the switch. Somehow, though, he'd managed to rig something up in the bathroom. I had a feeling he'd stood on the edge of the bathtub and then stepped off.
I didn't think Seth had killed Jasper any more than Gordon had. I was very troubled by his death, much more so than the others. I had been the last one to have a conversation with him, and I felt I should have recognized the symptoms, the calm that had descended upon him when I'd said I thought Dave was murdered. In some way I had confirmed something for him, and then he'd taken his own life. I kept thinking that if Fuentes' meeting had just been a little sooner, then Seth would be alive. But maybe not. Perhaps knowing he no longer had police protection—albeit in the form of house arrest—had upset him so much he'd taken his own life. Seth, it seemed to me, had been frightened to death.
It was possible, I suppose, that he had been murdered, that this Anakena person had got into the room once the guard had left and strung him up. But there had been no sign of a struggle and, as Fuentes told me later, no sign of drugs in his blood.
Fuentes was in a snit about something else. His pathologist had finally issued a report and said that the blow to Dave's head had occurred after he'd died. The pathologist had not determined the actual cause of death. That meant that Fuentes might have to concede that Dave, too, had been murdered, which surely must have set a new record for Rapa Nui.
I didn't actually intend to go on looking into this Anakena business, but I inadvertently found myself right back into it as a result of a conversation I had with Kent Clarke. Kent and her daughter were in the midst of something of a dustup when I happened upon them. Brittany took one look at me and left.
"Sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to interrupt."
Kent threw up her hands. "Kids!" she said.
"She'll grow out of this phase," I said.
"I hope so," Kent said. "Do you have kids?"
"I have a stepdaughter of sorts. She was a teenager when I met her father."
"Then you know what having a teenage daughter is like. She wanted to get a tattoo. I said no. She got one anyway. I completely lost it. She said it was no big deal. I told her it was a question of trust. I'd asked her not to get one, and she'd gone behind my back. She went and had another one done. Shows pretty much what she thinks of my opinion. I'm afraid a tongue stud will be next."
"Either that or she'll run away to the circus," I said. I detected a hint of a smile.
"Did your stepdaughter do these annoying things?"
"Jennifer went through various phases. At one point she talked backwards," I said. "I don't mean whole conversations, or anything, but phrases. She was in this class for gifted kids, and her teacher thought this would be a good exercise for her. There'd be this pause while she thought through the answer to one of our questions that she didn't like, and then she'd come out with this gobbledygook, and between us we'd try to figure out what she'd just said to us. It was very annoying. We thought she'd never get through that period and that we certainly wouldn't. Her father kept threatening to go to the school and throttle the instructor."
Kent laughed. "You've cheered me up," she said. "Which is hard to do right now: my daughter with her tattoos and of course this documentary, with a director who drinks like a fish and a cameraman who is not only picking up the director's bad habits and who spends half his time making fun of me and the production, but also is the individual who persuaded my daughter to get a tattoo! Why don't you come to my office and sit for a few minutes. I could use some company right now, if you're free. You can watch me pack up."
"Lots of kids have them," I said as I followed her into the hotel. "Tattoos, I mean. They seem to be quite the rage. That and piercing."
"That's what she said. Her father is going to be livid. He already is. Did I mention my revolting ex? She lives with him. I get her for vacations and, when I'm in town, every second weekend. He would never have stood for this. I didn't intend to bring her down here, but when I saw the moai, Orongo, and all this magnificent history, I phoned her father and suggested he take her out of school for a week and put her on a plane. He agreed, much to my surprise. But now she's been here more than a week, and he's threatening to take me to court for kidnapping her or something ridiculous like that."