A shiver rolled visibly down his body. The energy went out of him once more. He closed his eyes again and didn't open them as he continued. “There's a fireplace with a raised hearth. He hit the back of his head on it. I…heard it crack. He didn't move. When I went to look at him I could see-"
Dumont came back, huffing from his run. “Dead as a herring,” he said to Bertaud in French. “Gunshot wound in the right temple, blood all over the place, what a mess. I called headquarters. LePeau and his people are on the way."
"Good. See if Dr. Viennot is available too. He'll want to have a look. Then get this one"- this one was Rudy-"off to the hospital to have his head looked after, and then have Brusseau take his statement."
"I don't need a hospital,” Rudy said in English. “I'm perfectly fine, all I need is a Band-Aid. I was just a little woozy there for a-"
The policeman ignored him. “Should I seal the cabin?” he asked Bertaud.
"No, I'll take care of it. I want to go and see for myself."
Dumont left, hauling a querulous, weakly protesting Rudy with him.
Bertaud opened the back door, then hesitated. “Mr. Lau, Dr. Oliver-if you would care to see the scene…?"
They both answered at once.
"Sure,” John said.
"Good God, no!” said Gideon.
Chapter 25
"Sorry, I just don't buy it,” Gideon said with a shake of his head. “I just feel there has to be more to it than that."
"Interconnected monkey business?” John said, munching peanuts. John too had heard Abe discourse on the subject.
"That's right. There's too much going on, John. Brian's murder figures in here somewhere."
John scooped up another handful of nuts from a bowl on the bar and popped some into his mouth. “What happened to that other law you're always spouting off about-the one about how you're not supposed to make anything more complicated than it has to be?"
"Occam's razor, the law of parsimony,” Gideon said “Economy of assumptions. Choose the simplest explanation that's consistent with the data."
"Right, makes sense, so why go out of your way to assume there's some mysterious connection to Brian when you don't have to?"
Gideon sipped from his glass of Chablis. “Then what's your explanation?"
"Of what? When Brian got killed Tari figured that was his chance to get away with a little skimming, but he got greedy-or stupid-he got caught with his hand in the till, he panicked-and he wound up dead. What's to explain?"
"Brian's getting murdered, for starters."
John sighed. “As far as we know, that's an unrelated issue, Doc. Let's not make things any harder than they are. You know what my boss says about you?"
"Yes, I know,” Gideon said sourly.
John waggled his fingers to call for another Hinano. “Economy of assumptions, I like that. Uh-oh, watch out, here she goes again."
The bartender, one of a pair of Junoesque Tahitians in floral tiaras, bright pareus, and bare feet, used a hammer to whack a mounted pair of cymbals at the center of the circular bar.
"BOOM-BOOM!” she bellowed as the reverberations died away.
"That's three times in three minutes,” Gideon said, his head ringing. “Maybe we ought to move away from the bar. What do you say to the terrace?"
"Amen,” said John, picking up his glass.
After the wild scene in Nick's office they had not managed to get together again until almost five in the afternoon. They had gone to the Shangri-La's bar to talk things out undisturbed, only to find the place jammed. Thursday, it seemed, was half-price-happy-hour day, and the bar was packed with locals, mostly couples consisting of merry, matronly, spreading Tahitian women and their lean, aging French husbands, lined, taciturn men who smoked their cigarettes down to quarter-inch stubs and concentrated on getting quietly sloshed.
The specialty drink of the day, at only 100 French Pacific francs, was Boom-Booms, every order of which was accompanied by a ceremonial clash of cymbals and the full-throated cry of “Boom-Boom!” Out of curiosity Gideon had asked one of the bartenders what went into one and listened appalled as he was told: light rum, dark rum, brandy, vodka, curacao, mango juice, papaya juice, passion fruit juice. And a sprinkling of grated chocolate on top.
"Wow, not bad for a buck,” John had murmured, but although he had wavered perceptibly for a few moments he had sensibly stuck with beer.
The atmosphere on the terrace was more pleasant by far. An afternoon rain squall, still visible to the west, had swept through a few minutes before, bringing out the perfume of a hundred different kinds of flowers and leaving the slate paving stones shimmering with reflections from the sky.
"All right,” Gideon said as they sat themselves at an umbrellaed table, “how do we know that Tari didn't get greedy before Brian died? How do we know it wasn't Tari who killed him to get him out of the way? Or maybe Tari was already skimming, and Brian caught on to him, and Tari murdered him to keep him from telling."
"No good,” John said. “If Brian found out something like that, how could Tari afford to wait until he went off on his vacation? He would have had to kill him right away, before he had a chance to tell anybody else. The way he tried to do with Rudy."
"That's true,” Gideon said. “How is Rudy, by the way?'
"A little shell-shocked, but not too bad. They're keeping him in the hospital overnight to play it safe. I dropped in on him for a while. All he wants to do now is get out of here and go back to Whidbey Island where it's nice and quiet."
"You can't blame him for that."
"No.” He moved his bottle of Hinano from place to place on the table, leaving interlocking rings of moisture. “Listen, there's something else I want to say about Tari. This is a guy I got to know pretty well over the years, and I always thought he was okay. Yeah, I can see him, you know, yielding to temptation and maybe skimming a little off the top, I can see him panicking when he got caught, I can see him flying off the handle, I can even see him losing it altogether and trying to blow Rudy away-but cold-blooded, premeditated murder? Uh-uh, I just don't see him sneaking up on Brian and slitting his throat."
After a few seconds he added: “Let alone being in on all those other goofy ‘accidents.’ It just wasn't his style, the poor bastard."
"You're probably right” Gideon sipped his wine and watched the gray, slanting threads of the retreating squall roil a patch of ocean, heading for Moorea. “Besides, we know he wasn't in on those accidents. Not the one with the jeep, anyway."
John frowned. “How do we ‘know'?"
"Because he wouldn't have been dumb enough to be right there in the jeep with Brian when it went over the side. He almost got killed himself."
"That's a good point, Doc. I forgot all about that."
"Afternoon, gents.” It was Dean Parks, convivial host. “Thought I'd let you know the Leaky Tiki 's about to embark on the evening sunset cruise. All aboard that's going aboard. Real peaceful-like, why don't you give it a try?"
John and Gideon looked at each other. “Why not?"
Peaceful the Leaky Tiki wasn't. Essentially an awninged platform mounted on two large outrigger shells, it included a bar that continued to dispense Boom-Booms (happily, without the cymbals), and although the Frenchmen merely sank into a deeper gloom, their wives got louder and more talkative, and a contingent of soused Chileans chimed in with a jolly medley of South American songs of death, betrayal, and revenge.
Still, Gideon and John found a relatively quiet place at the rear, sitting at the edge of the platform with their legs dangling, their feet not quite touching the water. From there, with their backs to the others, they sat looking out on a scene so gorgeous that it drowned out the hubbub behind them. They were putt-putting slowly through the lagoon in water that varied, depending on its depth, from bright, pure yellow to green, to aquamarine, to vivid, almost purple indigo. When they looked down they could see schools of small striped fish, yellow and purple and red, wheeling in a body through the clear water. And always in the distance, the strange, moonscape-silhouette of Moorea, with the sun abruptly disappearing behind the tallest peaks so that an incredibly colored sunset suddenly flared as if someone had just flung open the door to a colossal blast furnace.