Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

There was something about the way he said it, and perhaps combined with the impression she had of the island looking ghostlike, that gave Katharine a shudder of unease. To hide it, she said, “Are you visiting, too?”

It came out sounding stilted, overpolite.

“No.” He took his time answering, as if the question had prompted him to think of something else. “I used to live in Santiago, but I retired here.” He glanced at her. “You might not believe it, but at one time there may have been as many as thirty thousand people living down there. Now there are about a tenth that number, mostly Polynesians, and some Chileans, like me. At the worst of it, back around the late nineteenth century, there were barely a hundred people still alive on the whole island.”

The man in front of them had turned around to listen in on their conversation. Katharine and Michael’s friend, Lon Reynolds, was a big blond man with a receding hairline and a booming voice. Now, in a manner that suggested he already knew it all, he said: “They killed each other. They cut down all the trees and ruined the soil. They killed the birds and depleted their fisheries. There never had been much water, and they fought over that. Maybe there was also a climate change, or maybe not. But the formerly peaceful clans who had cooperated with each other for centuries got desperate. They turned on each other in a vicious civil war.” He was using what Katharine’s husband, Michael, called “Lon’s lecturing voice.” As was often the case, it was loud enough to attract attention, including that of Michael, who glanced over with an exasperated expression. Other passengers also looked over and listened to him. Lon noticed his extra audience and said, “At which point, the inhabitants began to eat the only protein they had left...”

Each other, Katharine knew Lon meant, and hoped he wouldn’t say.

The man with the Spanish accent interrupted, but graciously. “You’re right.” His voice took on a dry edge, and his smile turned wry. “There’s a taunt we still use on the island: Your mother is stuck in my teeth...”

“Ew!” said a female voice in front of them.

Katharine smiled to hear her friend Nadia’s predictable reaction to the cannibal joke. Lon’s wife could be counted on to puncture her husband’s more pompous moments.

“...but it’s also true,” the Chilean man continued, in the same dry tone, “that the slave traders didn’t help, nor did the smallpox they brought with them.”

Michael Peters spoke up on the other side of Katharine. He was several inches shorter and about fifty pounds lighter than his friend Lon, but as he liked to joke, “At least I still have my hair.” In fact, he had it in quantity and in length, and wore it tied back in a long, now-graying ponytail at the nape of his neck.

“Don’t worry,” Michael said with a laugh, “we’re only bringing money.”

The wry look in the Chilean’s eyes deepened. “As deadly as any disease,” he murmured, though Katharine was the only one who heard him, just as a recorded voice announced their final approach to landing.

The four friends walked single file down the steps from the aircraft onto the runway at Mataveri airport. Slim, dark-haired Nadia Reynolds led the way, followed by her husband Lon, both in crisp, colorful designer resort attire, and then Katharine and Michael Peters, who looked more as if they’d plucked their jeans and T-shirts off the top of a laundry pile.

“This is it?” Nadia asked at the bottom. She stared around, looking and sounding disappointed. Two Polynesian men slowly pushed luggage carts toward the LAN CHILE Boeing 757 on which the friends had just flown in. Beyond the one-story terminal, the land was flat and brown, sparsely populated, rising to cliffs in the distance. “There’s nobody here! This looks like the middle of nowhere.”

“What did you expect, Nadia?” Lon was sarcastic. “O’Hare? LaGuardia? There are only two flights here a week.” He held up a pair of fingers in front of her face. “Two. We’re not in Chicago anymore. You do realize, Nadia,” he lectured, “that we’re two thousand miles from South America. Why do you think it took us five hours to get here? This is literally the most remote inhabited spot on earth.”

“Well, yeah,” Nadia said, “but I didn’t know it would feel like it.”

“Yes!” Michael Peters made a fist and pumped it triumphantly in the tropical air. “We did it! We have finally come to the ends of the earth!”

“My purse!” Katharine’s face blanched and her eyes widened in panic. The foursome had picked up their luggage and were now walking toward the front doors leading onto the island proper. Because the island was a Chilean territory and they had come from Santiago, they hadn’t even had to go through customs. Their arrival had been disarmingly casual. But now, Katharine frantically checked her other bags. “I’ve left my purse somewhere! It’s got my passport, and our money...”

“Well, that’s gone,” Nadia said, “you’ll never see that again.”

“Michael, did I give it to you?” Katharine pleaded with her husband.

“No, I don’t have it—” He looked stunned, then panicked.

“Come with me!” she begged all of them. “We have to find it!”

With Katharine running in the lead, the other three walked rapidly behind her toward the “No Entrada/Do Not Enter” sign on the door through which they had come only moments earlier. Before they could get there, however, Katharine’s seat-mate, the tall Chilean man, pushed it open. Seeing them rushing toward him, he smiled broadly and held up a large straw object for them to see.

“My purse!” Katharine exclaimed, running up to him. “Oh, thank you!”

“You left it on your seat,” he told her kindly.

Michael shook the stranger’s hand with as much vigor as if he’d saved their lives. “Thank you very much. Muchas gracias. I can’t believe we got it back. I was sure it was long gone.”

“On Easter Island?” The man’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, no. There was no way you weren’t going to get it back.”

“Why not?” Nadia demanded.

He smiled at her. “Because there is no crime on Easter Island.”

“Right,” Nadia said, and laughed.

“No, really,” he told her earnestly. “There isn’t.”

“You must have one hell of a police force,” she said cynically.

“We don’t have a police force.”

“You’re kidding,” Lon Reynolds exclaimed, for once having been taken by surprise. “Why not?”

The tall man in the bright floral shirt and khaki trousers smiled again. “Because there is no crime on Easter Island.”

His name, he told them, was Manuel Noriega. “Just like the former dictator of Panama,” he said, flashing his charming smile. When he learned they had no hotel reservations — because they’d heard it wasn’t necessary during low tourist season — he helped them select a residencia from among the several offered, in person, on the spot, in the airport — and then he hitched a ride with them in the residencia’s van.

“What’s a residencia?” Nadia asked, mispronouncing it.

“Didn’t you read any of those travel books I gave you?” Lon asked her, sounding annoyed.

“That’s your job,” she retorted.

Katharine, in the van’s middle seat in front of them, turned around. “A residencia is a private home, Nadia. We’d probably call it a bed and breakfast.”

“Oh, well, I love B and B’s,” Nadia said, sounding pleased.

“It’s a good thing,” her husband said sarcastically, “that the rest of us know what you like so we can always provide it.”