Away with the Fishes (26 page)
Read Away with the Fishes Online
Authors: Stephanie Siciarz
“Sorry, miss. This is official business,” Raoul said, pulling rank and flashing a badge that said he was Head of Customs and Excise. She wasn’t at all convinced it meant she had to work overtime for his benefit, but she chose not to argue.
Raoul felt a tinge of guilt for inconveniencing the girl. He didn’t really know what he was looking for. The name he hadn’t recognized had nothing to do with the case as far as he could tell, but it bothered him that he had never come across it in all his years of checking passports and collecting tax. “I need you to look up a person, please,” Raoul told her. She passed him a form, which he filled out in block letters. Personal/Fiscal Data requested for Oh citizen of family name: A-R-B-E. First name: K-A-R-E-N. (Signed, R. Orlean.)
The young lady disappeared into a back room and returned after just a minute. “You sure you have the name right?” she asked Raoul.
“Yes, I’m sure. Karen Arbe. A-R-B-E.”
“I don’t have a record for a Karen Arbe,” the young lady told him.
“What does that mean?” Raoul asked.
She shrugged her shoulders and handed him back his form. “It means Karen Arbe doesn’t exist. There’s no one on Oh by that name.”
Raoul thanked her for her assistance and left. He didn’t know what to make of his discovery. Oh had only
one
unaccounted-for female when Raoul went into the Office of Vital Records, and now it had
two
? His investigation seemed to be making matters worse! If Karen Arbe didn’t exist, then who signed the register and flew out on a one-way ticket? Frustrated, Raoul crumpled the useless paper in his hand. He walked forward a couple paces and spotting a rubbish bin in the distance, stopped and took aim, about to throw away the balled-up form. As he did so, the setting sun fell into his line of vision and momentarily blinded him (as, you’ve seen, the sun on Oh sometimes does). It pushed him, as if back in time. He withdrew from its shine, turned his face away, and like a corkscrew unwinding, he un-made the last of his moves. He lowered the arm that was poised to toss out the paper, walked backwards a couple of paces, and un-crumpled the crumpled form he held in his hand. As he flattened it out and studied it in the sun’s angry rays, the solution to the riddle appeared.
“I see it,” he said, as if answering to the sun itself. “I see it very clearly.”
Waving the wrinkled form wildly over his head, Raoul flagged a taxi. He had to get to Bruce before Bruce put the morning edition to bed.
33
Mystery Woman Runs Away From Oh
Is Rena Baker Really Dead?
According to an official airport departure roster that has recently come to our attention, the day of the discovery of a mangled bicycle on the Thyme shortcut, a young citizen of Oh calling herself Karen Arbe left the island, on an early morning flight, for a one-way journey to an unknown destination. Based on the required information supplied by the young lady at the time of her departure, her itinerary was to take her to Killig, where she was to board a series of connecting flights. Her ultimate destination, although recorded with her departure data, is illegible. Whether this is owing to her own efforts to conceal her whereabouts or to the poor record-keeping of the officer on duty at the time is impossible to ascertain; while passenger departures are reported in the registry, the names of on-duty Customs officers reporting said departures are not. What makes the one-way flight of the young Ms. Arbe particularly significant is that no Karen Arbe is listed in the birth registries of Oh. This begs the question, if it was not Karen Arbe who left the island that morning (since Ms. Arbe does not exist), then who was
it? There is in fact a young female citizen of Oh who is presently missing, Ms. Rena Baker of Glutton Hill, better known as the alleged victim in the Bicycle Trial soon to take place in Port-St. Luke, where Madison Fuller is facing charges for Ms. Baker’s murder. Because the body of the allegedly dead Ms. Baker has never been recovered, this reporter is forced to ask himself if Ms. Baker and Ms. Arbe might not be one and the same. Evidence would indicate that they are: Ms. Arbe departed the same day that Ms. Baker supposedly died; Ms. Baker’s body has never been found, suggesting she may be vacationing in the illegible land whose name she scrawled in the airport roster under the pseudonym of Karen Arbe; the name of RENA BAKER is easily scrambled to produce the convenient alias KAREN ARBE, a coincidence that we are not prepared to attribute to the magic of Oh or to island caprice. As the trial of Mr. Fuller gears up—if indeed a trial is warranted—we can only hope that the prosecuting authorities will have the foresight to read not only between the lines, but between the letters.
Bruce was delighted to cause a stir with his news report, because, he believed, that was what effective journalism aimed to do. Police Chief Lucas Davenport, upon reading the article about Karen Arbe at work the following morning, immediately summoned Officers Tullsey and Smart to his office. He sent them straight to Bruce’s house.
The officers banged on Bruce’s door, threatening him with charges of obstructing justice and demanding he tell them how he came upon the information contained in his inflammatory report.
Bruce refused to reveal his sources, but he suggested the officers investigate his theory and verify it for themselves at the airport. “Don’t think we won’t do it!” they threatened, and suggested in turn that Bruce not leave the island until further notice. (Police procedure called for confiscation of his passport, but Arnold and Joshua both forgot about that.)
They stormed off, while Bruce (
déshabillé
and drinking his morning Milo) stood grinning in the doorway, watching them go. For fun, in his head he scrambled his name into possible aliases, just in case, and nearly laughed out loud when he came up with DEREK CABLUNE.
Bruce’s mood was not the only one lightened by his headline. Trevor and Randolph were happy and hopeful, as was Branson, and May. They couldn’t prosecute her brother for a crime that hadn’t been committed, could they? Patience was thrilled that her husband might soon be able to wash his hands of the Fullers forever. Even Ms. Lila had visions of a dismissal and of four finally finished cottage walls. Raoul, cloaked in blissful journalistic anonymity, went to work on what should have been his day off, to wait for the call from Chief Davenport, or the Prime Minister maybe, informing him that the trial had been called off.
Not taking the article quite so blissfully, apart from the police, was the accused. Madison, who learned of the development through one of his more literate jailers, wrangled with doubt and despair. He didn’t want to believe that Rena would leave him at all, let alone in such underhanded fashion, and yet it was the only explanation that made any sense so far. Did Rena’s disappearance mean she didn’t love him? Or did it mean she didn’t love him
enough
? Of the two scenarios, he tried to
calculate which was less painful, but his fisherman’s mathematics came up short.
By noontime, the call Raoul awaited had come through. The Chief of Police wished to see him at the station straightaway. Raoul groaned as he hung up the receiver. Why couldn’t they tell him over the phone that the trial was undone? Why drag him to another face-to-face with the useless Lucas Davenport? Cursing under his breath, he collected his things and set out, thinking only of the celebratory beer he planned to down at the Belly, once the Chief told him the case was dismissed.
At the police station, Raoul sensed a somber mood as he was shown into Chief Davenport’s office. He attributed the sobriety to collective disappointment on the part of the police, who would not only have to cop to poor policing, but would have to renounce the bogus Bicycle Trial they had expected Raoul to arrange.
The Chief sat at his desk, quietly studying some papers, seemingly unfazed by Raoul’s arrival. Raoul sat down, cleared his throat, and broke the silence.
“Looks like Bruce’s article has added some salt, pepper, and vinegar to the plans,” he said. “Have the police corroborated the newspaper’s story?”
Chief Davenport looked up from his papers, as if annoyed that he and Raoul were forced to have the conversation they were having, what with so many more important official things either one of them could have been doing.
“Yes,” he replied. “A woman named Karen Arbe did leave the island.”
“Then you’re dropping the charges against Madison Fuller?” Raoul preceded him, anxious to get the Police Chief to the point.
“Why on earth would we do that?” Chief Davenport asked him in turn.
Raoul was stunned into momentary speechlessness, his flies quiet with disbelief. When he had collected himself, he argued that the charges should be dropped because there was no dead body, so technically no murder, and in all likelihood Rena Baker and Karen Arbe were one and the same.
“Let us suppose for a minute that Rena Baker did leave the island using a false name,” the Chief said. “Do the laws of this land not require that a passport be shown prior to leaving the island? Are we to suggest to our citizens that the authorities of Oh were sleeping on the job? That they let a woman go without proper documentation? Are we to imply that our own government workers don’t know how to read? That they mistook one name on a passport for another?”
Raoul was flabbergasted. “But you might have an innocent man in jail!”
“Which is precisely why we must proceed with the trial, don’t you see?”
Raoul did not and said so.
The Chief continued: “Even if a woman going by the name of Karen Arbe left the island, what does that prove? Any woman on Oh could wake up and decide to call herself Karen Arbe. Maybe she wasn’t an islander at all, but a foreigner who checked a wrong box or signed the wrong register. Bruce Kandele’s fancy theory is just that, a fancy, a whim. It’s completely inadmissible as evidence. He peddles invisible girls with mixed-up names just to sell a few papers. Meanwhile, there are hard, tangible truths to take into
account. Truths like that mashed-up bicycle that was run over by a very real vehicle.”
“The Prime Minister?” Raoul tried. “He supports the Police decision to pursue this matter?”
“Oh, yes. He’s the reason I had to inconvenience you. He wanted me to express our position to you in person.”
“But he can’t possibly think—”
“Raoul,” the Chief interrupted, his hands opened and pleading, his tone condescending, his eyes again lifted ceilingward. “The authority of the powers that be.”
Raoul stood and snorted disdainfully.
Chief Davenport, in reply, waved him out of the office, like a gnat from a bowlful of mangoes.
34
R
aoul was furious when he got back to his desk at headquarters. The smug Police Chief had gone too far. Encouraging false charges was bad enough, but dismissing Raoul? How dare he?! They wanted a trial? Fine! They would have their trial. Raoul was a government official and a professional and would coordinate it to the best of his abilities. If they thought they could stop his finding Rena Baker, however, they all had another think coming.
“Stupid girl!” Raoul swore. He was more sure than ever that Rena Baker was Karen Arbe. A fly in his head confirmed it beyond all reasonable doubt. She thought she could get away via Killig, did she? Well, Raoul had connections in Killig. He had been involved in more than a few cases over the years in which Killig had figured, and he hoped he might call in a few favors. He dispatched a flurry of unofficial letters on official pale green letterhead, explaining about Rena. If there was record of her passing through the airport at Killig, perhaps there was record of where she had passed on to. Next, he sent a telegram to Mr. Monday Jones, Killig’s top prosecutor, inviting him to Oh on behalf of the Prime Minister and the Chief of Police. Once that was taken care of, Raoul went to the Belly for a much-deserved drink.
“What a horrible day off!” he complained aloud as he walked there. “Even worse than last week’s with all its painting and its BAKER problems.” His cozy corner at the library seemed as far away as the neighboring isle to which Rena had likely fled.
While Raoul drowned his sorrows and thought about the bicycle crime’s alleged victim, Trevor and Randolph tried to sort out legal counsel for the accused. They had been conceded a visit with Madison in his cell and tried to focus on the problem at hand instead of on the squalid surroundings, which were dark and mostly cement, with a tiny window and a crooked cot. Everything appeared as clean as one could hope to find in a courthouse jail, though the smell that permeated the corridor of barred rooms belied the apparent lack of filth.
