conclusions.'
Tassos stared at Andreas for a moment. He seemed to be deciding whether this was just another — albeit former — Athens hot-shot putting on the local cops. 'All right, have it your way. Show me what we've got.'
Andreas pointed him toward the open door and watched as Tassos studied the room from the doorway, just as Andreas had, then carefully approached and methodically examined the body with his flashlight, just as Andreas had. Tassos walked past Andreas without saying a word. Once outside, he told the three men with him, 'I want everything in there recorded and rerecorded. Get an ambulance here. We're taking the body and everything else in there back to Syros.' Then he walked away from the church.
From their equipment, Andreas could tell one of the three was with the coroner's office and another was a crime scene technician. The third probably was one of Tassos' investigators. All three went inside. Andreas told them to let him know when they were ready to inspect the body — and told Kouros to keep an eye on them to make sure they did.
Tassos was sitting on a low stone wall in the shade of a wild fig tree looking at the view. Andreas sat next to him. A soft breeze was blowing in off the sea, mixing the scents of wildflowers and herbs.
'There are no views in the world like the ones from our Greek islands, Andreas.' A bridge had been built.
'It's eternal,' said Andreas.
Neither spoke for a moment.
'What are we going to do about this?' Tassos' voice was flat and serious.
'Do we have a choice?' Andreas used the same tone.
'A murder in paradise is bad. A tourist murdered in paradise is worse. But something like this… is unthinkable.' Tassos was shaking his head.
'Why do you say she's a tourist?'
Tassos looked down and kicked at the dirt. 'In thirty years on Syros I've only seen a few Mykonian or other local woman that tall, and she's not one of them.'
Andreas smiled at the obvious — and Tassos' insight. 'What's on your mind?'
Tassos looked down. 'Something neither of us wants to say, and no one anywhere in Greece will want to hear.'
'That's about what I thought.'
'So, I guess we won't call it what it is, just use the clues to catch the bastard who did it.' Tassos kicked at the dirt again.
'As long as we catch the bad guy,' Andreas said.
'Yeah, as long as we catch the bad guy.'
Andreas picked up a bit of something else in Tassos' tone. 'What's bothering you?'
Tassos looked up and stared out toward the sea. 'One summer, about ten years ago, an American girl working at a bar here in town didn't show up for her shift. A girlfriend went looking for her and found her room covered in blood but no body. Brutal thing. Another young woman, a Scandinavian, disappeared around the same time. The whole island went crazy.'
A small lizard, as brown as the dirt, scurried out from the base of the wall, past their feet, and into the shade of a wild thistle. Tassos didn't seem to notice.
'We tied the American to an Irishman here on holiday. He'd met her at the bar. He was a convicted child killer released from an English prison after twenty-five years.' Tassos paused long enough to shake his head, a disgusted look on his face. 'On humanitarian grounds, because of a bad heart. We caught up with him by the Bulgarian border and brought him back to Mykonos for questioning. Had to get him drunk to talk — his heart wouldn't stand up to how I wanted to interrogate the bastard.' He didn't have to explain to Andreas what he meant by that.
'He finally showed us where he'd buried the American's body — over there by Paradise Beach.' He gestured south. 'But he wouldn't say what happened to the other one. He refused to talk about it. Never denied it, never admitted it.' Tassos took out his cigarettes and offered one to Andreas. They shared a match.
'We had the military, police cadets, Boy Scouts, farmers — anyone willing to help — out looking for the other woman's body. Never thought we'd find her, but we did.'
Tassos took a drag on his cigarette. 'She was in a shallow grave, right by a road not far from here — almost like she was meant to be found there, to end the search. The Irishman still wouldn't admit to killing her but everyone from the mayor on down wanted to pin it on him, mark both murders solved and move on to other things. One killer here was enough bad publicity — no reason to suggest another one might still be lurking around.'
He paused to puff again. 'Besides, if someone else did it, it had to be a tourist long gone by now who wouldn't dare come back — at least that's what the mayor said.'
Tassos flicked the ash from his cigarette. 'Before the Irishman could come to trial and maybe say which murders were his — and which weren't — he committed suicide in custody.' He looked directly at Andreas. 'I took that for a 'case closed.''
Andreas shrugged. 'We have to put up with that sort of cover-up shit all the time. Politicians don't like loose ends.'
Tassos smiled. 'Funny you should say 'loose ends.' The American was cut up, raped, and beaten to death in one place then buried in another, cleverly hidden location. The Scandinavian was full of crystal meth — the 'let's have sex drug' — but otherwise unmarked and died of suffocation — buried alive — under a virtual 'find me here' sign.'
Bitching at bureaucrats was a hallowed police pastime, but that didn't seem to be what this was about. 'How's all that tie in to this?' asked Andreas.
Tassos stared off at the horizon again. 'Never thought the Irishman did the Scandinavian.' Without looking back, he pointed toward the church with his cigarette. 'She was shaved and tied up just like the one back there.'
3
Ambassador Vanden Haag's initial response to his wife's telephone description of their daughter's travel situation was predictable: ask the Queen to call out the marines. Then he took a more measured approach. His office contacted American Express for a list of Annika's recent charges. That should tell him where she was. But American Express wouldn't release the information to his office, to him, or to the American ambassador he asked to call on his behalf. It took some ingenuity from an old CIA friend to get the information, but he got it.
It showed no recent activity. The last charges were in Italy, indicating she had traveled from Sicily along the eastern mainland north past the heel of the boot. They stopped in Bari, with a payment to Superfast Ferries. He went online and found that it served the North Sea, Baltic, and Adriatic, but from that part of Italy the line had only two destinations: Igoumenitsa and Patras — both in western Greece. From there Annika could have caught any number of ferries to any number of places — or traveled some other way.
No doubt she was in Greece. That explained why the Amex charges stopped. Many businesses in Greece wouldn't accept the card — too slow paying, they claimed. Annika probably was using another credit card. He'd try to get that information tomorrow, but now at least they knew where she was — sort of — and the news was reassuring. She'd been to Greece more times than he could count, was fluent in Greek, and in a pinch, her uncle and aunt were there to help. Catia's brother was Greece's deputy minister for Public Order — the country's equivalent of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Catia would make a few calls tomorrow, and they'd know where Annika was in no time.
It was comforting to know their daughter was in a safe place. Andreas stood quietly listening to Tassos tell his three men where to place the lights in the church. The five of them were crowded together around the crypt when the lights went on, the videotaping began, and the coroner started his examination. It was not pretty, but the smell was worse — and more than a match for the drops of menthol gel on Andreas' upper lip.
The autopsy and serious forensic testing would take place at the coroner's lab on Syros, but there were crucial observations to be made here. The coroner spoke loudly and distinctly to assure that what he said was accurately recorded.
'Bruises on body are consistent with the shape and location of nearby bones,' as if she had thrashed against
