The Devil Takes Half (12 page)

* * *

When Patronas had been at the police academy, his instructor had said murders were usually motivated by one of three things: greed, sexual passion and/or frustration, or blind, animal rage. He thumbed through his notes again. None of those motivations figured here. Occasionally surprising someone—a burglar, for example—would get you killed, the instructor had said, or seeing something you weren't supposed to see. He'd put the latter in the
gafa
category. No one meant for those kinds of murders to happen, but sometimes they did. Perhaps that's what this was, a mistake, a
gafa.
Perhaps Petros had surprised someone. But that didn't explain Eleni. No, he was pretty sure she had been tortured, that her hand had been severed while she was still alive.

Marina Papoulis tapped on the door to the refectory. “I saw the grapes,” she said. “He's not making wine again, is he?”

Patronas looked up from his work. “That was his avowed intention.”

“
Don't drink it. I don't know what he does, but it's stronger than Cretan brandy,
tsipouro
, and it tastes like vinegar.”

She was wearing a blue-green dress and leather sandals with tiny blue flowers on the straps. She'd been out in the sun since he'd last seen her, and there was a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose, streaks of gold in her hair.

A farm woman, she was unsentimental about the dead rooster. “Crowing all the time. I would have killed it myself. Do you know it bit me once?” Bending down, she showed him the place where the bird had pecked her ankle. Her bare legs were tan, and he could see the tiny white scar under the strap of her sandal.

“
It's strange. I don't know how a dog could have gotten in,” Patronas said, following her back to the kitchen. “Papa Michalis swore the gates were locked.”

“
There are owls here. Maybe it was an owl that killed it.”

“
If it was an owl, why didn't it eat it? It just left it there.”

“
Something might have scared it off before it had a chance to feed.”

Patronas nodded. He'd noticed the volume of the priest's television when he'd visited his room. Perhaps that was it.
CSI: Miami
thundering away at 80 decibels.

She opened a cupboard, got out a plate of cookies—
kourambiedes,
covered with confectionary sugar—and urged him to take one. “They're fresh. I just made them.”

The pastry made a mess of Patronas' uniform. She grabbed a towel and moved to brush him off.

Mindful of Dimitra, Patronas backed away until they had the table between them.

She pretended to chase after him, whipping the towel and laughing. “What is it, Yiannis? You scared of me?”

Not you. Never you.

“
I'm just distracted, thinking about the case.” He'd never spoken of his love for her, his desire to marry. She'd never known how he felt.

“
That reminds me. I found something when I was cleaning up.” She opened a drawer and took out a piece of ruled paper.

Patronas glanced at it quickly. It was almost identical to the sheet he'd discovered in Petros Athanassiou's bedroom. “Where'd you get this?”

“
Outside Papa Michalis' room.” She studied the paper for a moment. “Circles inside circles. What do you suppose it means?”

“
I don't know.” Carefully, Patronas folded the paper and put it in his pocket. “Did you notice anything unusual in the days prior to the murder? Someone who didn't belong? Anything out of the ordinary?” He was taking care to address her formally.

“
Now that you mention it, there was a strange smell one night. Like rotting meat. I couldn't pinpoint it. I remember I was coming back from church when I first noticed it. It was very faint, the smell. I thought at first one of the chickens had died and I looked around in their cage for the carcass. But there was nothing.”

“
What time was this?”

“
After vespers.”

“
What were you doing up here at that hour?”

“
Keeping Papa Michalis company. I often do.”

“
Was it only the one time you noticed the smell or did you notice it again?”

“
No, just that once, that one time. The night before Petros died.”

“
Have you noticed a change in Papa Michalis? The last few weeks, has he acted any differently?”
The paper
.

She turned to face him. “You can't be serious. Father would never hurt anyone.”

“
What about Petros? Was there a change in him?”

She returned to her work, angry now. “I don't speak ill of the dead.”

“
Come on, Marina. I'm just doing my job. Police work being what it is, you sometimes have to speak ill of the dead.”

“
Well, find someone else to do it.”

“
Marina.” He caught himself as he said her name. “I want to find the man who did this.” He described the scene on the beach, the plastic bag that had held what was left of Eleni Argentis.

That stopped her. “What can I do? I wasn't there when it happened. I was up here at the monastery.”

“
People around here know you. They're more apt to talk to you than to me or one of my men. I'd appreciate it if you would question them—informally, of course. Don't let them know what you're doing. Start with Vassilis' father, Spiros Korres—he owns the farm on the way here—and work your way through the neighborhood. I'll bet someone saw something. People often know more than they think they do.”

“
I know Spiros' wife, Antigone. I'll stop by their house on my way home.”

“
There's one other thing. Petros' mother told me she and her boyfriend arrived here on July twenty-second. Could you check the boat manifests at your travel agency and verify that? Same thing with the two archeologists. Jonathan Alcott supposedly arrived on July twenty-fourth, Devon McLean a day later. I need to make sure they're telling the truth.”

She wiped her hands on her apron. “Let me write that down.” She dug a little journal out of her purse and asked him to spell their names and give her the dates again. “Okay. I'll check it out.”

He thought for a minute. “Run Antonis and Titina Argentis through your computer, too. See when they got to Chios.”

“
What did you do with Eleni, with her ….” She stopped and started again. “With what you found?”

“
Sent it to Athens. They have better facilities there. Perhaps they'll find something.”

“
So there won't be a funeral.”

“
Not for the time being.” He knew this would be the worst part for Marina, not the violent death of Eleni Argentis or the torture that might have preceded it. It would be that lack of a funeral, that denial of a final blessing.

* * *

It was growing dark by the time Patronas left the monastery, and Papa Michalis got a lantern and walked him down to the car. Olive trees blanketed the terraced fields below, their gray-green leaves fluttering in the wind like flecks of mica. The lights were coming on in the villages below and Patronas could see the headlights of a distant car on the road to the airport. A bird left its perch in the wall and soared out over the valley.

Patronas looked back at the monastery. Silhouetted against the sky, the hulking mass was like something out of the Dark Ages. “All those empty rooms. Doesn't it bother you?”

“
I'm used to it. There were never very many of us up here, only four or five.”

“
What happened to them?”

“
They complained to the bishop about the lack of heat. They're on Psarra now.”

“
Psarra?!” Rocky and mountainous, Psarra was a tiny island with a sad history. The Turks had killed more than 15,000 people there in 1824 and the survivors had fled after the massacre, never to return. It was virtually uninhabited, with no electricity or telephone.

“
I fear if I complain about the isolation, the same thing will happen to me. I will join my brethren on Psarra or someplace worse. Yiaros, the old penal colony, or that rock where they used to keep the lepers. Bishop Germanos is, how shall I say, a little irrational with respect to me. Given to fits.
Apolektikos
.”

“
Why?”

“
We fell out over the poor boxes. He wanted to send the money to Athens and I thought it was best if we spent it here. I impetuously shared my opinion with a few people and the Bishop found out. He was so angry he wanted to excommunicate me, but as there were insufficient grounds, he compromised on Profitis Ilias. The thinking being I would be contained up there, like a toxic virus, and could do no harm.”

The priest gave him a bleak smile. “Unfortunately, there's no Canon law against vindictiveness.” He looked back at the citadel. “It's not so bad. I can come and go as I please. Visit Chora whenever I like. I am, as you policemen say, ‘under house arrest.' ”

“
You should leave this place, Father. Two people dead. It's not safe.”

“
Nonsense. Profitis Ilias is secure. The doors are metal, and they bolt from the inside. No single person could get through them. They're old, but they're strong. They were designed to repel armies.”

Patronas watched him walk back up the path to the monastery, the propane lantern he was carrying a small spot of light against the black hill.

Marriage is an evil most men welcome.

—
Menander

T
he chief officer's wife was stirring something on the stove. “We'll eat in a minute, Yiannis.”

Patronas studied the back of his wife. She was rooted to the earth, Dimitra, no doubt about it, the bulk of her weight concentrated in her hips and thighs as if the force of gravity was pulling her down. She'd recently started dying her hair, a reddish-brown color that reminded him of the polish he used on his shoes. It did little to enhance her appearance. A tree in autumn—that was Dimitra.

He had to admit she was not without abilities. She could supervise the mating of donkeys, the birthing of lambs. Skin a rabbit without flinching and stew the latter in a dish so tasty she'd been asked to include the recipe in a cookbook. She'd declined, of course. It was
her
recipe. Why share? She could brew a tolerable wine and spin yarn out of lamb's wool, put up supplies for the winter, lay out a body for burial.

Occasionally, she helped him with his police work, passing on gossip or asking questions in such a way that he was forced to rethink his assumptions. Her world view was a dark one. People were out to get you, Dimitra felt. Given half a chance, they'll stab you in the back and cause you suffering in thousands of different ways.

He'd never thought about what his life would be like without her. She was just there, a part of the house like the floor or the walls. No, not like that. Dimitra was more of an appliance. Not a car or a television, something that could give you a lift or entertain you. Something dull, but necessary. A clock. Yes, that was it. Dimitra was a clock. Tick, tick, ticking away the hours of his life.

After dinner, Patronas showed her the two pieces of paper. She read more than he did. Perhaps she'd recognize the drawing.

She put on her glasses to see them better. “Where'd you get these?”

“
I found one at the boy's house. The other Marina Papoulis gave me.”

“
When was this?”

“
This afternoon.”

“
I wondered what you were doing with her.” Her face was hard to read. “The neighbor told me that she'd seen Marina, and Marina mentioned that she'd seen you, that the two of you had spent the afternoon together.”

“
All this has to do with the case, Dimitra. She and Papa Michalis, they're helping me.”

“
Yiannis,” she asked in a low voice, “what are you doing to us?”

“
Nothing. I'm not doing anything, Dimitra.”

“
Yes, you are. Your mother told me about you and Marina. She said you wanted to marry her.”

He wondered why his mother had done this. Was she still upset over the lost dowry? The fact that Dimitra's father owned, not a fleet of tankers as she'd originally assumed, but a gas station, a two-pump gas station in the slums of Castro, not far from the home of Petros' grandmother. Did his mother think enough time had passed? That Dimitra would let a thing like that go? She should have known better.

“
I was at your mother's house and she had some old albums out. Photographs of you when you were a boy. ‘Look how happy he looks in this picture,' she said, ‘standing there with Marina.' You were on a school outing. Corfu, I think.”

“
Come on, Dimitra. That was a long time ago.”

“
Why do you have to spend so much time at Profitis Ilias? Why can't you work at your office?”

“
Because I'm Chief Officer and it's a crime scene. In case you've forgotten, two people were killed up there. The priest even set up a ‘murder room' for me.” Patronas shook his head as he said this.
Murder room
.
Holy Mother of God. Poor Papa Michalis.