Clint Faraday Collection C: Murder in Motion Collector's Edition (34 page)

A large truck was heard in the distance so
the equipment to repair the road was on its way. Clint went to his
laptop and turned it on. He would wait until after breakfast to
interview the rest of them.

The first memory stick was just business
data. He scanned pages of invoices and such without finding
anything special. There were no pictures-as-pictures in the memory,
though there were product pictures and so forth as PDF files.

The second stick had a couple of pages that
were in code among the business items. There were several pictures,
but nothing in the least out of the ordinary. They were of stores
and fincas, with two of a waterfall from across a valley. Clint had
seen that fall.

This was nothing. Clint stopped with the
cursor over a picture icon. A fine script came on the screen beside
the arrow: 14-4-11, 10:50AM, Olympus 850.

He was in luck in one way – an Olympus Stylus
850 was a special camera that could be used underwater. There was
no way two such cameras would be on that bus. The odds against that
were tremendous.

Clint did have one thing he could do now. He
could find that camera if he had to search every item in that bus.
He had the authority as an agent for the police here in Panamá. It
would be fun listening to an explanation of why a person would have
that kind of camera – unless it was one of the tourists. Surfers
sometimes carried that kind of camera, though it wouldn’t be likely
it was the same model. They were sitting on a culvert eating
breakfast. He decided to eliminate them first thing, though he
never had a serious thought they would be involved.

He asked them if they carried cameras. They
did. He said he would like to borrow one to use for pictures of the
crime scene and so forth.

Goodson went to her backpack and handed him –
an Olympus Stylus 850.

Shit!

He hit the memory button and saw scenes from
weeks back. More than a hundred shots, though the 850 would record
a thousand before you had to empty it. He remarked that it was a
really good camera.

“
I have
one,” Sandy Barnes said. “A lot of us water players have them.
They’re pretty good.”

She said hers was on the bus, which wasn’t
too smart. She should have thought to bring it or it could
disappear.

Odds of two such cameras on one bus in the
middle of nowhere were beyond calculating, at least to Clint. There
were three here. Clint shook his head and said he was going to take
a few pictures of the scene and would be right back. Half an hour.
He would bring Sandy’s camera back if she liked. She would.

He went to the bus and did take pictures of
everything. He should have thought of that from the first. He had a
camera and Judi had one. He had to take some with this camera for
cover when he asked about other cameras.

He checked out the luggage that was still on
the bus. There wasn’t much so the killer had taken the camera to
the culverts.

He went back to hand Sandy her pack and to
download all the pictures he’d taken from her camera. She asked
that he leave them in the memory for her own memories.

Everyone was up and about except Armando
Sucha. It was almost eight o’clock. Where was he?

Several people went to look into all the
culverts. Pacho Sandros called that he found him. He was dead. His
throat was cut.

This was getting out of hand! Sancho had put
that Sucha was from Costa Rica on the list. It wasn’t so bad when
this mess was limited to a small area, but did this mean something
about it reached into Costa Rica? Costa Rica was a long way from
this area.

Clint sighed and said everyone was to come to
the kitchen area and were to stay together. Period. They were to
bring their luggage and were to keep a solid grip on it. One of
them would have a hell of a lot to explain before this was
over.

Everyone was willing to cooperate. The Indios
and the tourists were together most of the time already and had a
sort of rapport developed. They were interested in each other.

They all put their luggage on the top of the
culverts in plain sight of all. No one objected or resisted in any
way so Clint knew the camera was somehow disposed of. It would be
gone – but how? When?

When the killing here was done. That put a
severe limit on where it could be.

Clint could trust the Indios, except Vargas.
He didn’t know anything about him and he didn’t hang around the
rest of the Indios. The way they stuck together meant that left a
couple of very important questions to be answered.

He would call each one and they would bring
him the luggage. He would look through it and ask a couple of
questions.

Maria Guerra was first. She didn’t know much
of anything. She kept most of her attention on her children. This
was not a good thing for children to be exposed to. It was
horrible! There was nothing – like a camera – in her luggage.

Jose and Ana Ricardo were going to Panamá
City to shop and visit her grandmother, who lived there. There was
nothing in their luggage, but that gave Clint an idea that could be
important. Jose was from Divisa and Ana was originally from Panamá
City, but had lived in Las Tablas for nine years before she married
Jose three years ago and moved to Divisa. They took the Las Tablas
bus because they went there to buy a gift for her grandmother.

Dona Comacho was from Bugaba, She was in Las
Tablas for a vacation and was going home. She was the head teller
at Global Bank. There was a camera in her luggage, but it was a
Maxell.

Arturo Taylor was more a solitary type. He
was from Piedasi for the past three years and was from Santiago
before that. He was going to Santiago to visit his brother on the
farm they co-owned there. He had worked for IDAAN for ten years. He
had a Look camera in his carry-case. Nothing else of interest. He
had gone to breakfast about six and didn’t see anyone or anything
out of the ordinary.

The Sandros family were from Colón and were
there to try to find a place to move to. They hated Colón and its
crime. It was dangerous to even walk down the street anymore. They
weren’t wanted anywhere. As soon as they mentioned Colón people
turned to ice toward them.

Clint knew how that was. Colón has such a bad
reputation that people will become suspicious if you’re from there.
Blacks had it really hard. There were plenty of good, decent people
among them, but they had to live with the reputation the criminal
types established. Clint suggested they try Bocas. They’d come to
that conclusion already and would go there next. There was the
usual among their luggage, plus a little bag of pot. Clint grinned
at Pacho and put it back. Pacho giggled. They had two cameras. A
Kodak and a Look.

Guillermo Robinson was from Arenas, on the
other side of the peninsula. He was in Las Tablas to see a man who
wanted to buy his large finca on the seashore there. He would go to
Santiago for the papers and plano for his property and the
certification then would go back to Las Tablas. His luggage was
normal – except for an Olympus Stylus 850 wrapped in a blue
bandana. When Clint pulled it out, Robinson cried, “That isn’t
mine! How did it get there?!”

Clint questioned him carefully. He had been
up since about six fifteen, had used the rocks down by the stream
for a restroom, had met with Jose and Ana for breakfast. His maleta
was in the culvert where he slept. He was the only one in it. He
couldn’t sleep if there was anyone else there. Several were like
that. Anyone could have put the camera in his maleta. Shit!

Pedro Vargas was Indio, but wasn’t very well
accepted by many of them because he was working in a white man’s
job and doing very well with it. He was from Santa Fe and was on
his way home. His luggage was normal, though Clint felt he already
had the camera and that it was a dead end clue.

There was one thing Clint saw as soon as the
maleta was opened. There was a charger for the special batteries
used only in the Olympus Stylus cameras. Vargas had no idea of how
it got there. He was another who got up early and left the maleta
in the culvert where he slept. The only other person in that
culvert was Arturo Taylor and he was up early, too.

David Estevez was a real estate agent from El
Valle. He had lived in Panamá City for the past eleven years. He
went to University there, then worked for a broker, then went into
business for himself. He was in Chitre to consult with a broker
there about a large seaside finca for sale.

“
Near
Chitre?”

“
No.
Pocri. It isn’t that far, but can’t be called Chitre.”

Clint knew about Pocri. He nodded. There was
nothing of interest in his luggage.

That was his crop of suspects. Nowhere else
to look, so get at finding something here. The internet connection
wouldn’t work there, as the cellulars wouldn’t work there.

No
Connections

Clint thought for a few minutes. He didn’t
have anything to hang anything on. Personality didn’t give him a
clue. He had to find what the killings were about. What connected
the two victims and someone else?

There was that code. Two pages of that code.
It could hold all the answers, or none of them. He didn’t know if
that was connected in any way. The pictures didn’t show much. There
were seven.

The waterfalls. Clint had stood close to the
spot where those pictures were taken and had several pictures very
much the same that he had taken. The finca pictures could well be
of that finca from which the waterfall pictures were taken. It was
a very large finca and was for sale. Manny was considering buying
it.

David Estevez was a real estate
agent/broker.

There was the back end of a car showing in
the picture of the gate to the finca. It appeared to be a black
Mitsubishi with a sticker of some sort on the bumper and another
one in the rear window. Nothing out of the ordinary. Probably the
car Santamaria drove there in ... then why take the bus here? That
wasn’t quite in sync with anything he could think of – so it was
probably someone else’s car. Someone who took him to see the finca.
It wouldn’t be Estevez’s car. He wouldn’t be on this bus.

The other pictures: Gran Fereteria Martin. A
medium-sized hardware store. Four cars out front.

Centro Supplies. Another much like the first.
Two cars out front and a truck.

Almacen Florita. Same. Two cars out front.
Clint was moving to the next when he went back.

There was a black Mitsubishi with stickers.
It was the same car. If he was using that car or was being
chauffeured around in it, that would be why it was in two of the
pictures. Not enough. It could be in any of those pictures.
Logically.

Two more, then Santamaria standing in the
door of a Datsun small pickup 4X4. There was an attractive woman
across behind the wheel. The next picture had that truck in it with
him and the woman standing beside it in front of another hardware
store.

Apparently that was the transportation he was
using. The black Mitsubishi suddenly became important. It was in
one more picture, apparently the last taken with that camera on
that date. It was a picture of the Mitsubishi with a tall
gringo-looking man and a fat black man looking at some papers that
were spread out on the hood. There was a third person in the
picture, but he was back and to the side and wasn’t in focus well
enough to identify other than that he was average.

Clint felt that man was the important one
here. He also felt he could find out who that man was by tracing
that car. The license plate was only partly visible in the first.
Other than that it was a Panamanian plate, nothing. The second was
worse. The third showed the plate started with 542. That was
all.

He could find a black Mitsubishi with two
stickers in specific places and with a Panamanian license plate
that began with 542 and trace everything else back from that. He
hadn’t the least doubt he could solve this within hours when he got
back – to Chitre.

He didn’t want to wait. Two were dead
already. That was already two too many.

Judi came in to tell Clint she had the Indio
women looking for anything they could find. One of them was washing
clothes in the stream and found a knife. She hadn’t touched it. She
would show Clint where it was.

That would be the murder weapon. They had the
first. It was sticking in Santamaria’s chest.

Santamaria had met with someone on this bus
and had learned something. What? That it was incriminating was a
given.

Someone else on this bus met with the killer
– and probably with Santamaria.

Then Santamaria would have spoken with him or
her on the bus. It was agreed that he didn’t seem to know anyone
there.

Damn it!
What the
hell
was the
connection with Sucha? Sucha didn’t seem to know anyone else on the
bus, either. There simply had to be a connection.

Maybe the connection was that Sucha saw
something? That seemed the most logical answer.

It still came back to that car.

Clint knew a little about breaking simple
codes. If this was just a substitution code that would possibly
work fairly well. He had nothing much else to do so would spend a
little time on it. It was a number code. Those were the easiest to
break.

He copied the pages and turned off the comp.
No sense in killing the batteries. He had the first paragraph to
work on..

The highest number was 34. It was only used
once. There were series of from one to nine numbers, then a double
space between, so those would be words. The most common two were 2
and 28. There were words that ended in both. It was Spanish if
that’s all Santamaria spoke. A and O. Both were used alone. 16 was
used alone, though not very often. That was most likely Y. Clint
took the laptop from under the bus seat out to look over. It had an
English keyboard. It wouldn’t have certain symbols used in Spanish,
such as the accent mark used in such words as Panamá. That could be
important.