How careless of Paxhali, she thought, irritated but hardly alarmed. There was no cause for alarm because the old man in the canoe was heading for the reef.
Paxhali stepped into the canoe while Pamela was still wading through knee-deep water in that direction. By the time she reached the high spot where the young Indian had been standing, the canoe had drifted off a dozen yards. Pamela stood looking at it expectantly, waiting for its return. Paxhali was seated in the boat’s center and had picked up a paddle. The old man in the stern had his paddle in the water and was moving it just enough to keep the canoe stationary.
After a few moments, Pamela said, “What are you waiting for? Tell him to bring the canoe over here, Paxhali.”
“He understands English, señora,” the young Indian said. “His name, Pia.”
Pamela said to the old man, “Pia, come here and get me.”
Pia stared at her unblinkingly, still moving his paddle just enough to keep the canoe in place.
“What’s the matter with him?” Pamela asked on a high note. “I thought you said he understood English.”
“I guess he close his ears,” Paxhali said. “He Wawaiya’s father.”
“Who?” she asked blankly.
“Wawaiya, my bride-to-be. You remember, the one bitten by la serpiente.”
Pamela gazed at him openmouthed.
“We would return for you, La Madre, but we have no time,” Paxhali said tonelessly. “Is something more important we must do. Is the funeral of Wawaiya today, and we must hurry there to make sure her akamboue, her spirit, goes to the eternal jungle.”
His paddle sliced into the water, turning the canoe toward shore. Then both blades were driving the canoe toward the outlet with powerful strokes.
“Paxhali!” Pamela screamed. “Come back! Pia!”
The canoe shot through the wide gap in the cliff and disappeared upstream.
Pamela screamed for help until the water was halfway up her thighs, but no one answered. Eventually she had to swim for shore because she had no other choice.
Her only chance was to make for the outlet, because at high tide the surf raged against vertical rock either side of it. She thought she was going to make it until she got within twenty yards, but then discovered the current of the freshwater stream was too strong to swim against. It kept pushing her back.
She continued to struggle against the current until she was too exhausted to struggle any longer, then despairingly let it carry her back toward the reef.
She had been lucky on the way in, but halfway back to the reef the sharks discovered her.
Friendly Witness
Originally published in The Saint Magazine, July 1984.
Sergeant Gunner wanted the three old people to wait at the morgue’s front desk while he took Mrs. Worth to the viewing window.
“You’ll have to go over to Homicide with me later,” he said to the aged man and two aged women with the retirement home manager. “But all I need to make an identification is Mrs. Worth.”
The manager of the Riverview Senior Citizens Retirement Home said, “They want to see Olivia, Sergeant. They were her best friends.”
Sergeant Gunner didn’t particularly care how many people viewed the body of old Mrs. Olivia Pritchard, but he was uneasy about elderly viewers. Over the years, he had piloted enough witnesses to the viewing window at the morgue to know the traumatic effect the sight of a body full of bullet holes could have. He didn’t like the prospect of three visitors in their eighties keeling over from shock. But since they seemed determined to view the body, he couldn’t bar them. Leading all four along the corridor to the viewing window, he moved the lever that parted the curtains.
Beyond the glass, the withered body of an old woman lay on a morgue cart. She was naked and the blood had been washed from her, but four puckered purplish-black holes across the chest and stomach showed how she had died.
In a faint voice Mrs. Worth said, “It’s Olivia Pritchard all right.”
Sergeant Gunner glanced at the three old people. Apparently, his worry had been needless. None showed emotion. Although sad, their expressions were curiously lacking in grief. It occurred to the homicide officer that after you pass eighty, death probably doesn’t seem very tragic.
Anna Stenger, the oldest of the trio, was eighty-six. A retired schoolteacher, she was a straight-backed spinster with snapping black eyes and a birdlike manner of cocking her head to one side. Except for a face so wrinkled it resembled cracked parchment, she might have passed for sixty.
Mrs. Hester Lloyd, like the dead Mrs. Pritchard, was a widow. She was a pear-shaped little woman with a gentle smile and a nearsighted manner of peering over thick-lensed glasses. She was eighty-four.
Gerard Hawk, the youngest of the group, was eighty-one. Tall, stoop-shouldered, and beak-nosed, with curling white hair and a white handlebar mustache, he had clear blue eyes that were still strong enough not to require glasses. Mrs. Worth had told Gunner that he was a lifelong bachelor.
Closing the curtains, the homicide detective said, “Now, would you all please accompany me to Homicide?”
As Police Headquarter’s was only a half block from the Coroner’s Court Building, they walked. Sergeant Gunner expected that he and Mrs. Worth would have to cut their paces to accommodate the old people. Instead, they had to walk briskly to keep up.
As they fell a few steps behind, Mrs. Worth said, “They’re going to miss Olivia. The four were inseparable.”
When Sergeant Gunner only grunted, she said, “So many of our tenants are mentally slow — some even senile. Anna, Hester, and Mr. Hawk are still smart as whips, and so was Olivia Pritchard. They had nothing in common with most.”
“I know,” Gunner said. “When she came in to report seeing the Sloan Company bombing, there was nothing vague about her description of the suspect who tossed the bomb.”
“You think it was this Nick Spoda person?”
“The description fits. We’d have a better case if we had caught him in time for her to make a positive identification.” His expression turned glum. “I didn’t think she was in danger, because we kept from the media the fact that we had her as a witness. I had no idea it had leaked to Spoda. If she had phoned me when Spoda called on her the day before yesterday, I would have put her in protective custody.”
Mrs. Worth said, “I would have phoned you myself if I had known who the man was, but Olivia wasn’t in the habit of confiding in me. She told Anna and Hester and Mr. Hawk, but I knew nothing about it until after she was dead. It didn’t seem to occur to any of them that the police ought to be informed.”
The three old people waited in front of Police Headquarters for Gunner and Mrs. Worth to catch up, and the five crossed the lobby together to take the elevator to the third floor. In the Homicide squad room, Sergeant Gunner briefed them on the situation.
“We figure this as a gang kill,” he said. “With Mrs. Pritchard scheduled to testify against Spoda when we eventually caught him, it’s pretty obvious she was gunned because she could identify him as the one who threw the bomb through the window of the Sloan Cleaning Company. But suspicion is not proof. Your testimony may make the difference between Spoda getting away with this raw deal and going to the gas chamber.”
The white-haired and white-mustached Hawk said, “How could he get away with it, Sergeant? If I was on a jury in a case where the only witness against a gangster was shot down in broad daylight, I would figure either the gangster himself did it or had it done. Hardly likely anyone else would be gunning for a harmless woman like Olivia.”