Away with the Fishes (25 page)

“Damn it to hell!” Raoul swore. How was he meant to look for Rena Baker if he first had to round up tarps and toilets for an
al fresco
fiasco? The assignment had Raoul cursing with unusual oomph. The combined force, however, of the PM’s decree and Raoul’s professional integrity precluded his declining the job. In fact, he wasted no time getting started. He picked up the phone and made an appointment with the Chief of Police to discuss what articles were needed, and how many of each. An hour later he was seated in front of Lucas Davenport’s desk, pad and pencil anxiously in hand.

“So, what are we looking at here?” Raoul asked the Chief. “Chairs? Tents? What kind of crowd are we expecting?”

“We already have workmen building benches and a dais, so you don’t have to worry about chairs. Tarpaulins or tents, that’s up
to you. We need to keep the spectators hydrated and dry. We also need a public address system, portable toilets, and a prosecutor.”

“A prosecutor. Sure.” Raoul scribbled something on his pad. “You need me to sort out a visa for him?”

“No. I need you to sort out a prosecutor. I hear Monday Jones from Killig is good. He’s never lost a case.”

“What are you saying? I’m with Customs. Prosecution is
your
business.”

“My hands are tied, Raoul. PM’s orders. He doesn’t want too many cooks spoiling the broth, so you’re in charge of the whole stove, the kitchen, and the kitchen sink.”

Raoul raised his voice. “What do I know about prosecutors?” It was bad enough he had been saddled with the logistics of this dog and pony show. Now they expected him to round up the dogs and ponies, too?

“Sorry, man. Who are we to question the authority of the powers that be?” the Police Chief replied, tilting his head upward. Raoul followed the Chief’s gaze, half expecting to see the Prime Minister’s photo stuck to the ceiling with Sellotape.

Though Raoul didn’t have all the information he needed, he got up and stormed out of the office. He supposed that Lucas Davenport wasn’t to blame for the way the duties had been meted out, but he found it galling that Customs and Excise should be called on to do the work of the Police. He hoped at least to manage it without speaking to the Chief in person again, and to that end, Raoul headed to the office of the
Morning Crier
. He figured Bruce, who knew all about the Bicycle Trial, could get him up to speed.

“The way I see it, your problem is the crowd. They’ll turn the trial into a real bashment,” Bruce predicted.

“Bashment, eh?” Raoul repeated.

“Barbecued-chicken stands, fresh sorrel, rum on the sly, and DJs ready to blast their racket the minute the gavel goes down for the day,” Bruce elaborated. “How’d you get involved in all this anyway?”

“Hell if I know,” Raoul told him. “They want to centralize the planning, and it looks like I’m the eye of the storm.”

“Customs and Excise? How do they figure?”

“The prosecutor’s coming from abroad, so is the public address system and the toilets and tarps. Since Customs has to be involved, they decided I should do it all.”

“You up on the facts of the case?”

“Only what I read in the paper. In my official capacity, I’m more concerned with the crowd than with the criminals on the dais. I won’t tolerate tomfoolery at a formal government hearing.”

Bruce shrugged his shoulders. “You may not have a choice, Raoul,” he said with foreboding, and repeated it for effect. “You may not have a choice.”

Bruce suggested that Raoul accompany him to the bakery, where from Trevor and whatever customers were around, Raoul might get a feel for how excited the islanders were about the trial. Raoul agreed, not least of all because, in his personal capacity, he was still as determined as ever to delve into the matter of Rena Baker. As Raoul and Bruce walked, they discussed the weather, not for small talk, but because weather was a real concern of Raoul’s in light of the outdoor trial he had to coordinate.

Typically on Oh, the harder the first rain fell, the longer the wait until the rainy season started. Since the storm that led to the discovery of the bike had been such a doozy, Raoul figured he had
a good month to get the trial wrapped up before it began to rain every single day. (And a month to get his house painted, a niggling gnat reminded him.)

“Well, close to a month, anyway,” Bruce told him. “The Fair’s coming. You need to finish up by then.”

“True. True,” Raoul agreed. “How long does this sort of trial usually take?”

“Hard to say. We’ve never had one here before.”

“Mm,” Raoul answered, too preoccupied with the clouds to banter further with Bruce. He kept his eyes on the sky as he walked, searching for some sign of what the island had in store for them, and when.

The bakery, it turned out, was not as busy as Bruce had hoped. Trevor and Randolph had gone to the courthouse jail to talk to Madison about a lawyer. Patience, Trevor’s wife, was manning the shop, something the Bicycle Trial was forcing her to do more and more often of late. The presence of Patience, who only shared gossip in private, dissuaded customers from lingering, so when Raoul and Bruce arrived, they found her there alone.

“Can I help?” Patience asked, as the two men reached the counter. She assumed they had come for bread.

“No Trevor, eh?” Bruce said, in what was both a question and an observation.

“He went out. What do you need?”

“Raoul here is setting things up for the Bicycle Trial and I thought Trevor might give him an idea of what people are thinking, is all.”

Patience, who up to then had treated the men dismissively, suddenly became animated. Her husband had taken the trial to heart, and she didn’t like his getting mixed up in (even alleged) murder.

“So you’re the one! Sending an innocent man to jail!” she accused Raoul. “And without a stitch of evidence, too!”

“I…uh…I…,” Raoul offered, a little stunned by Patience’s attack.

“Calm yourself,” Bruce intervened. “He’s not Police. He’s just Central Planning.”

“Planning of an innocent man’s demise, maybe! You have Trevor at his wits’ end. Randolph, too. How any of you can have a hand in it, I don’t know.”

“What makes you so sure the man is innocent?” asked Bruce, indignant.

“Madison’s not a criminal! There’s not even a body. How can they say there’s been a murder?”

“There is a girl missing,” Bruce countered. “How do you explain that?”

“A missing girl is a missing girl. A missing girl is not necessarily the same as a dead one! You want to put a man away for not necessarily committing a crime?”

“Bruce and I really have nothing to do with that side of things, ma’am,” Raoul said. “Not officially.”

“You see this?” she shouted at him, ignoring his words entirely. “Do you?” She held a perfect, honey-scented, golden doughnut right up to Raoul’s face. “You see this doughnut with the hole in the middle?”

Raoul and Bruce nodded, not understanding where Patience’s line of reasoning was headed, but suddenly very hungry for doughnuts.

“The doughnut has a hole because that’s how doughnuts are. Some of them have holes. We make them that way, missing the centers. On purpose. Sometimes missing things are just supposed to be missing. It doesn’t mean they were murdered!”

“You can’t know that about Rena Baker,” Bruce said.

“The police can’t know the contrary!” Patience rebutted. “Now, do you need some bread or don’t you?”

Bruce and Raoul looked at each other and replied in unison, “Two doughnuts, please.”

They paid for them and left the shop, eating as they walked back to Bruce’s office. Though Raoul was enjoying the sweet, warm snack, their encounter with Patience had left a bad taste in his mouth. He didn’t doubt that she was absolutely right. He decided to test the waters with Bruce.

“You think she’s right?” Raoul asked him. “About the girl, I mean.”

“She could be,” Bruce mused, not too worried, for he had confidence in island institutions like the press and the justice system. “That’s what the trial is for. Whatever needs to come out will come out there.”

“I sure hope so,” Raoul said, rather wishing they might have avoided a trial altogether. He examined the half-eaten doughnut in his hand. The doughy semi-circle, the missing center now lost to the nothingness beyond the doughnut’s golden edge. In his head a tsetse fly darted and a smile broke out on his face.

“What is it?” Bruce asked.

“Hmm? Oh, nothing,” Raoul said. “Nothing.”

But it wasn’t nothing. It was something. A variable in the equation. The solution’s next logical step. Raoul had seen it. He had seen it very clearly.

32

L
ess than an hour later, Raoul was at the airport, sleuthing. Dare he hope he had found a way to stop the trial before it started? If he could prove that Rena Baker wasn’t dead, the charges against Madison would have to be dropped. His doughnut with its missing middle—it’s purposefully missing middle, as Patience pointed out—had reminded Raoul of the obvious. Like bakers who knew of every hole they—on purpose—poked out, Customs kept track of every islander who poked his (or her) head past Oh’s borders. Rena might not be dead but simply ducked-out, departed, run-away. If that were the case, it would be on record, in the registers of Customs and Excise.

During Raoul’s early Customs career, at the airport, he had monitored the comings and goings of locals and foreigners alike. It might just be possible that Rena Baker had sneaked off the island on a pre-dawn flight, her departure recorded by some drowsy or hung-over entry-level officer, who didn’t remember what he had done and so had not spoken up when Rena went officially missing.

How had Raoul not thought of it before? Wives (and girlfriends) had been known to make themselves disappear, and
husbands (and boyfriends) were in no way to blame if they did! This much Raoul knew firsthand. If Rena Baker was one of these “lost” island loves, it would warm the cockles of Raoul’s heart to catch her out.

Raoul needed no credentials or warrant to gain access to the airport logs he wished to examine. He was practically a legend at Arrivals and Departures and the young man on duty was happy to hand over everything he wanted. Raoul began with the log for the day that Rena went missing. Nothing. Next he checked the logs for seven days before and after. Still nothing. Had Rena kept herself hidden and sneaked off well after Madison’s arrest? Raoul pored over the entries for every single day since the mangled bike was discovered. No Rena Baker had departed from Oh by plane. If she left by boat, then Raoul might never find her; the record-keeping of the maritime officials was notoriously fluid.

Raoul’s mind raced. He felt certain the answer was right at his fingertips and yet the pages he flipped and turned offered up no clues. What was he missing? Was he going too fast? A man’s freedom was at stake. He couldn’t dawdle. It was almost four o’clock! Raoul closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Stan Kalpi would never approve of such haste. Raoul needed to keep calm and to line up the variables he had so far.

He took the departure registers, which were in a jumbled mess on a table, closed them, and stood them upright, putting them in order by date. He noticed their spines all had bright green dots stuck on them, which signified round-trip travel.

“I need the orange dots!” Raoul cried out, smacking his forehead with his palm. “I need the one-way registers right away.”

The young man brought him the registers marked with adhesive orange dots and took away the others. Again Raoul began
with the day the bike was found. Nothing. He checked seven days before and after. Still nothing. He checked every single day since Rena went missing. Nothing nothing nothing. Raoul felt the answer close at hand. He started again on the one-way data for the day that Rena disappeared, checking it carefully line by line. Most of the names belonged to foreigners, who had no reason to come back to Oh. Amongst the few declared citizens with no return ticket, Raoul recognized all the surnames but one (he knew all the family names on Oh, as most islanders did). The unfamiliar surname was Arbe.

It was nearly five o’clock by then, but the Office of Vital Records wasn’t far away. Raoul rushed out of the airport and jumped in a taxi. He got there just as a young lady was locking the door. She told Raoul he would have to return in the morning.