Leper

By Elizabeth Cameron

When the interior designer for a major hotel chain, Mia Kensington is sent to a small South Pacific Island to solve the troubled completion of one of its newest hotels, she’s prepared to meet the usual problems. But the mysterious suicide of a hotel guest is compounded by the fact that the presiding doctor attends to one of the few remaining leper colonies in the world. Only the patients in this colony situated on the southern end of what had been a Japanese Submarine base during the Second World War are being treated like inmates of a concentration camp. Then Craig Stevens, the handsome pilot and co-owner of Interisland Air Services whose company services the island experiences a near fatal crash adding to the suspicions that both he and Mia are being are being targeted for death.
Taking her life in her hands a mother living in the camp approaches them, pleading to take her child to safety but inadvertently disclosing vital and damning information. Then, with the island in the direct path of an oncoming typhoon, Mia pieces together a plot both hideously sinister and for her certain death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elizabeth Cameron
• Release date: Mar 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452471815

Elizabeth Cameron

Elizabeth Cameron is a known artist having published many non-fiction books as well as a syndicated newspaper column.Retirement has enabled her to concentrate on her true love of suspenseful and mysterious novels.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

They were in a living hell - a hell that at any moment would snuff out the lives of all thirty-eight officers and crew on board the Japanese Kaisho Type R0-118 submarine. Then it came again. The deep explosive boom as another depth charge - this one even closer - shook the submarine like a terrier. Some lights dimmed while others died as circuits shorted out casting a sickly pallor over both men and machinery. Sea water finding small fractures in the hull hissed under the intense pressure.

In the eerie gray green light the commander surveyed the faces of his officers and crew, greasy with sweat, eyes wide with fear, and all bearing expressions barely containing the terror of what the next moments could bring.

The first minute ticked by and then the next. Was he imagining this or were the sounds of the engines actually growing fainter? Yes, they were moving away. A sudden sigh of relief seemed to spread throughout the men as they too now recognized the distancing sound of the enemy ship.

But to Commander Yotomoto the fate of the submarine had already been ordained. In the next minutes it was confirmed. Damage to rudder controls, critical damage to valves, and two breaches to the hull were barely controllable. The long voyage ahead sanctioned by the Emperor himself was now impossible. Humiliation at his failure swept over him. He had failed his Emperor, his admiral, his men and his country.

Yet even as he ordered his crew to surface another enemy seized its prey. Caught in the direct path of the advancing typhoon, its full fury caused the seas to roll and pitch as if they had gone mad. The winds tore at all of the 199 foot length at unbelievable strength as if intent on killing this already maimed and dying creature of the sea. Four hours later under the commander’s orders they neared the approach to the submarine base, the closest haven of safety from enemy attack.

Maneuvering a submarine already barely responsive to navigational control through a narrow entrance itself an outcropping of jagged rocks was almost self - destructive. Choice? There were none.

Twice the grating of the hull against rocks sent men reeling off their feet. Then the bow slammed head first into rocks in what felt like a death blow. The submarine eased its nose finally into the entrance of the eerily dark cavernous base.

The list to port was slight. The crew working feverishly at damage control seemed unaware that something was happening. Suddenly the deck below their feet fell away to the port side and they found themselves in sea water. The scream of tearing metal rose above the shouts and cries of the men and as the water level rose the submarine rolled on her side, a weary dying sea monster exposing her belly to the enemy. One by one the lives, 38 officers and crew were snuffed out as the submarine sank to the ocean floor, unseen, unheard, undetected where it would lay with its precious cargo as another casualty in the annals of the Japanese Imperial Navy.

Two days later the typhoon which had hounded the submarine and wreaked havoc on other military, commercial and fishing vessels had exhausted its fury. It would be many, many years, and by coincidence another November 23rd. before it would again gather its forces and fury to destroy again.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1st

CHAPTER 1

I'd never seen so much blood! It was everywhere. On the walls, on the windows, on the floor, and on the bed - along with the remains of the inconsiderate hotel guest who had managed to generously distribute this vital substance before turning up his toes.

I'm not sure he’d turned up his toes. Maybe they'd been turned up for him. But any evidence of that, thankfully, was lurking under the bed sheet that covered the body. Except for his toes, that is. The sheet had left them uncovered which were why I knew it was a he. Small but male, no sign of a zebra tan indicating sandals or straps, or polish on the toenails. Just garden variety toes, ten of them, attached to two equally unspectacular feet.

Of course, hotel guests do die in hotel rooms from time to time. Hotel management doesn’t like to admit it, but they do. Occasionally a solitary guest will have the courtesy to exit face down into their vichyssoise in a remote corner of a dimly lit dining room just before closing time. Even a busboy could whisk the body away on a tea trolley and no-one would be any the wiser. But others seem to delight in departing in someone else's bed while keeping company with someone else's wife, husband or both.

Not that we do a body count each morning. In fact, this body in this hotel was the first. But the initial shock of being summoned to the room had in the forty five minutes I'd been here shifted from the body or the remains of it, to the room.

That was going to be my job. No simple just call housekeeping. One sight of this room would send our native housekeeping staff fleeing back to the jungle to ward off all the evil spirits. After a week, maybe one or two of the braver ones might venture back. I didn't have a week. In fact at best I had a day. Because if I could salvage the furnishings from indelible damage, then I could salvage this room, three sixteen, and that made only two rooms left that I had to miraculously resurrect in forty-eight hours. In forty eight hours we were facing a Japanese invasion (albeit from the Mitsubishi Company) for a three day convention. And if I thought I had problems, I wasn't alone. Kirkland had been in a frenzy for days in preparation for their arrival. His priorities were keeping them alive and healthy by having them avoid such things as falling down the shaft of an elevator under repair or diving into an empty pool or waltzing onto a lanai of freshly poured concrete.

He had good reason to be concerned about liability. Certainly the local labor force wasn't. Which was why we had a hotel full of these accidents waiting to happen. No matter. He had his problems. I had mine. Given that Asians are known for having weak eyesight maybe this fact would be an asset to me. Who knows? The bloodstains just might have appeared as subtle shading to the grass cloth wallpaper. But no, I had foolishly done away with the grass cloth.

Actually it wasn't the grass cloth I had objected to. It was the one and a half inch border reading THIS WAY UP, the standard guide for paper hangers that I had objected to. Every twenty six inches all the way around the room. But what would you expect from a paper hanger living in a grass hut with a thatched roof? He probably used mud on his walls. So I had used three gallons of #7163 Blue Indigo to bury both the grasscloth and the instruction strip. But even I, plotting for every conceivable contingency had not anticipated having to have the walls repainted quite so soon. And my guess was that's what I'd be doing before daybreak.

At least I had more paint. That was a cheerful thought. Because that's all I had. I didn't have a spare mattress, or box spring or what would have been a whole lot simpler, another room. And since I was going to have to do something with the one I was standing in, the sooner everyone left the better. Except at the moment besides myself and the cadaver of course, it was beginning to take on all the aspects of a management meeting of the entire top brass of the Mariana Island Inn. All three of them.

Kirkland, who had summoned me to witness all this ghoulishness at the ungodly hour of three AM, had been giving orders and instructions since I had arrived. Gordon Holt, the assistant manager had arrived briefly and left and even Nan who I gathered had been with Kirkland when they had arrived at three sixteen now was seated on the one chair of the two that had been spared. I was thankful for that. Not just that I didn't have another spare chair either, but that if I was going to need help, she was going to be it.

Of course the first person outside of the hotel staff who had been called was the one and only doctor on the island, Dr. Sheffield, and that apparently was what was taking the time. As I had learned from the orders Kirkland had given, the hotel had sent the van and driver to pick him up from his house. But it was still the middle of the night (or the beginning of my day as I suspected) and the roads had ruts and potholes, wild pigs and mongooses (or if they travel in flocks is that mongeeses?) to make traffic about as efficient as midtown Manhattan on a Friday at five.

Hell of a mess, isn't it? Kirkland voiced my very thoughts as he paced up and down the room. The perspiration despite the air conditioning had glued his white shirt to his body. And his body at the moment resembled the stalking of a recently captured lion in a cage.

He was six feet or so in height, lean and athletically trim. His fifty-five years were really only evident in his closely cropped curly hair which had turned a steel grey and a chronic tan that had rendered his face into crocodile hide. He had designated a six foot long corridor of carpet to pace, shirt sleeves rolled up, hands in his pockets, his eyes roaming the room as if searching for a solution.

I could have asked him to be more specific. Was he meaning the room, the hotel, the scheduled Japanese invasion or the island? They all qualified, as far as I was concerned. The Mariana Island Inn, barely completed but scheduled to go into full operation was being plagued by one problem after another. Then to make matters more than worse, disaster had struck. A telecommunications tower had been destroyed in a tropical storm ten days ago rendering us without phone or internet access. The prospects of the hotel with fully operational facilities, staff and services were at best dismal if not downright disastrous. That’s why he was here and I was here. Mind you, our fields were a little different. He was general manager and I was the chief field designer. But our objectives and it seemed, our problems, were at least the same.

I hadn't replied with anything more than an uh huh and neither had Nan, but even that had hardly been necessary. The conversation was an exact repeat of what he'd said only five minutes before.

What's taking him so long? He'd voiced that one too. But since I wasn't doing much else I offered him a few options that neither of us particularly cared to hear.

Maybe the doctor wasn't at home. Maybe there was some medical problem and he's been called away. He could be anywhere on the island. And if that's the case he might not be back for hours.

Wonderful!

I could tell. He didn't like the idea at all.

But at least he came up with one of his own.

Anyone want anything? Coffee? A drink?

He didn't offer what I really wanted - another four hours of undisturbed sleep.

Sure, good idea. I said it with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. Coffee would keep me awake which I didn't want to be and a drink would put me to sleep which I couldn't be. So I compromised.

An Irish coffee for me. Nan?

Sounds fine.

Damn! He cursed irritably. I just remembered the bar's closed."

Maybe he'd forgotten it was after three AM. I could have told him that. That's when he'd called me from my nice comfortable bed.

I'll see what I can find ... page me in the lounge if Sheffield arrives will you? He left closing the door none too quietly behind him.

I glanced at Nan and she back at me. Both of us presumably sharing the same wave length that said that we didn't have anything meaningful to say.

She wore the same inscrutable Japanese expression she always wore. Only her chin resting against her hand gave the only indication that she'd also resigned herself to yet another crisis. So I wandered over to the windows and yawned at the black night and the sea and the white lace of the breakers crashing eternally on the shore. In less than an hour the night would give way to the first pink blush of dawn and then explode in the brilliance of blue sky, turquoise sea, and white sand and blazing sunshine.

One more day in a tropical paradise.

For about the umpteenth times in as many days I wondered what I was doing on this remote and primitive island in the middle of the South Pacific, working in a luxurious but barely completed resort hotel where now in one of its most recently completed rooms a guest had terminated his life by reducing himself to chopped liver. Maybe he hadn't liked the Blue Indigo. Maybe if I'd stayed with the grasscloth.

CHAPTER 2

If time was measured in Irish coffee I was on my second when the doctor arrived. Kirkland sprang to the door, and with a smattering of a greeting ushered Dr. Sheffield in. He was perhaps in his mid-fifties, tall, gaunt, with an almost cadaverous face, pale and severe with thin unsmiling lips, a beak like nose supporting smudged wire rimmed glasses, cold analytical eyes under hooded brows and hair thinning to strands of grey brown. He glanced around the room, giving the merest nod of acknowledgment to Nan and me and turned back to Kirkland.

He didn't waste any time in pleasantries such as - my it's going to be another fine day, or to anyone assumed to be a newcomer to the island if they were associated with the hotel, have you tried the island papaya yet? The flavor is excellent. That question I'd learned had become almost compulsory after hello. But then I hadn't gotten a hello either. Maybe such pleasantries become unnecessary when you walk into a room that looks like a Red Cross blood bank truck had just run over an I.E.D.

So what do we have here? He stopped only to put down his battered black medical bag, then walked over to the bed and lifted the sheet. It took him all of about three seconds to make the diagnosis.

Seppuku. He said it as though that explained it.

What? Kirkland asked.

Seppuku – in Japanese, to Westerners - Hara-kiri. Suicide. He spoke without any indication of surprise, concern or compassion. He could as easily have been discussing wart removal to a toad. The way with face. They disembowel themselves. Usually a friend is appointed to behead them at the time of the insertion.

My Irish coffee threatened to make a return trip. I moved a step or two closer to the air conditioning vent so the cold air passed across my face. Presumably Dr. Sheffield had seen his share of this delightfully innovative way of pulling the plug because he continued without pause or emotion.

The Japanese and even the traditional natives of the Marianas occasionally still choose this form of suicide. It's considered death with honor.

Kirkland apparently didn’t give a damn about honor. So why death, with or without honor here in my hotel? The guy’s name is Takahashi and he’s …was from San Francisco. So why this island and why not some grass shack that masquerades as a native hotel? Kirkland was a little less than empathetic.

Sheffield shrugged. Probably because this hotel is as close to a temple as you can get on this island. The spirits have to be freed from the body just before death and they can't encounter other spirits while that's happening.

Yeah, that could really ruin their day. Kirkland answered sarcastically. So what do we do now - with the body I mean?

Dr. Sheffield dropped the sheet back in place and straightened to face Kirkland. Have your people get him downstairs and I'll arrange for my man to pick the body up for burial this afternoon.

That's all? What about a death certificate? And what about notifying the next of kin? You know who he is... was?

No, but the villagers will probably know. He removed his glasses and was cleaning them on a rumpled handkerchief. He's more than likely an islander who returned home to die. I'll sign a death certificate if you want one. A piece of paper though, isn't going to make much difference to him or you now.

I was having difficulty finding something to like about the man. Certainly he was cold and impersonal. But then maybe being a doctor on an island like this simply made a professional bedside manner an unnecessary waste of effort. More likely, he didn't have one to begin with. I made a mental note that as long as I was on this island, not to develop anything more serious than a hangnail. Then again, maybe I was being unfair. At least he'd solved our problem. All in less than five minutes. And it certainly didn't seem as though there were going to be any other bureaucratic delays either, like a coroner's inquest or a police investigation. But then I guess if someone reduces themselves to kibbles and bits in order to save face, on a remote tropical island, it's probably what the police would call it anyway - an open and shut case.

And ours was now shut. The doctor had replaced his glasses and was reaching for his medical bag.

I took the opportunity to voice a question. What kind of a funeral will he be given? I had been a little surprised that he was going to be buried so soon. Not that I wanted the details, I was just hoping that at least it would be civilized. I certainly didn't think his choice of suicide had been.

He answered my question without bothering to give me more than a second glance. Sea. Lava rock's too close to the surface for burial, and firewood's too precious for cremation. In these temperatures a body deteriorates very rapidly. The sea takes care of it all.

Of course I thought to myself. Why didn't I think of that? Fish bait. Well, it was better than hauling him up to the top of a mountain and having the vultures polish him off. But the way he had so flatly answered my question, I doubted there would be much formality to this burial at sea.

So we can get on with the clean up? Kirkland interjected.

Sheffield had his hand on the door ready to depart. Get on with whatever you want to do. There's nothing more I can do for him. Goodnight. He let himself out.

Well, I said cheerfully as the door closed, it seems we can't complain about either medical or legal red tape now can we?

Kirkland grunted a reply. That's at least one small mercy to be thankful for. He jerked his head in the direction of the bed. If they took as much time burying their dead as they do everything else on this island, he'd become a fossil long before the funeral. He gave a few brief orders to Nan as I moved towards the door.

If the dearly departed is about to depart, so am I …to get dressed. I didn't relish the work ahead of me dressed as I was in slippers and a bathrobe and a carcass to keep me company.

Lemme know what's being done here will you? God knows we need every room we've got!

Somehow his statement was too redundant to warrant more than a muttered acknowledgment so I left and padded my way down the hall, down the elevator (not the shaft) out the cabana doors, through the gardens and along the path towards the row of bungalows to my own.

In the predawn darkness, tired and preoccupied with the details of the day ahead I failed to notice the bloody footprints leading away from hotel.

CHAPTER 3

It was nearly five A.M. and the sky was going through its kaleidoscope of dawn to day. I put coffee on to brew, showered and then with a mug of it in hand, faced the mirror to resurrect what stared back at me.

The face despite all the glorious sunshine that made this such a heavenly paradise was the color of oatmeal. The hair was blond, naturally, and softly curling, unnaturally. Brushed and fluffed it looked like it belonged on a standard poodle being readied for a dog show. But I’d long ago come to appreciate a casual easy care style when one’s hairdresser was some six thousand miles away.

But the face, despite the lack of sleep and three weeks of fourteen hour work days reluctantly responded to my bag of tricks. I erased the shadows under my eyes with a little help from Max himself. I added foundation and contoured some highlights, a dash of lip and eye color and I questioned whether a mortician could have done any better.

Sea green blouse and matching cotton pants, a splash of perfume, sandals, the last of my coffee and I was about as together as I was going to get.

So was Rupert. He'd observed my movements through half slit eyes as just a fickle female indulgence and since I hadn't made any serious motions to contribute to his three dish smorgasbord he resigned himself to his first four hour nap of the day.

I had just approached the edge of the terrace when I saw the footprints. Dark red footprints, three of them, the fourth already diluted by the daily routine of early morning maintenance - the washing down of the decks, terraces and pool areas of the hotel. Even now I could see a dark skinned man hose in hand rinsing the cleaning agents from a distant patio area. If someone had cut their foot hopefully it was on a piece of coral, or a sharp shell and not some carelessly misplaced state- of- the- art construction equipment – like a machete. Then remembering the aloof Dr. Sheffield, hoped that the patient wasn’t going to need more than a Band-Aid.

Back in three sixteen I found, thankfully, that the departed had done so, at least from the room. If he was still lurking in a laundry basket near the service entrance then he could rest in peace for as long as he cared to. I had enough to do with what remained of him on the bed.

The mattress cover fortunately had saved most of the mattress but had done nothing for the sides of either the mattress or box spring. I decided to tackle it and the upholstery first, then the carpet, walls and windows.

I made a couple of trips rounding up cleaners and detergents, then back to my bungalow for my blow dryer and an extension cord then back to the scene of the crime. As I worked my thoughts turned to the man who had decided to end his life in this room, in this hotel and on this island. How strange. The hotel was a twenty-first century statement of advanced engineering technology and the ultimate in architectural excellence. His death in contrast was barbaric. Why had this man, this Mr. Takahashi flown some 2500 miles to this remote island to commit suicide? There had to be a reason, some connection to this island. Maybe he was, as Sheffield had suggested, an Islander who had returned home to die. Somehow though, even that didn’t seem reasonable.

By nine I had succeeded in turning myself into Shakespeare’s Macbeth and had reduced almost the entire room to large very soggy brown stains that anyone else would probably pass off as spilled tea. To me it was still spilled blood and any further disappearance of said spots (damned or not) was going to be nil.

Despite a dozen interruptions that ate the morning away, I had still succeeded in giving the walls the first coat of paint which I hoped when it had dried just might hide the remains of what had lurked underneath.

Well past lunch time, I delivered myself in a heap on a corner of Nan's desk and suggested that I thought it time for a Tahitian Punch and a seafood salad platter because nobody in the world deserved it more than we did. And she agreed.

We picked our own ocean view table and settled down to await our drinks.

Both the meal and the company promised to be as it usually was, one of the few but more enjoyable interludes of the day. Though I still didn't know her well I had come to like Nan. Always the inscrutable Japanese, she seemed to have a bottomless well of knowledge about the most odd and unusual things. I'd assumed that in the Japanese tradition, knowledge was of supreme importance.

I guessed her to be maybe ten - fifteen years older than I was. Though I knew little about her personal life, I understood that she was long widowed, and had a son in his fourth year of engineering somewhere in the states.

She was small and delicately boned, straight coal black hair cropped at the chin, with a small flat face adorned by only a hint of make-up, barely discernible behind her bifocals. Routinely she wore tasteful, but conservative clothes that just squeaked past being considered dowdy. All of which succeeded in making her a pea in a pod of millions like her. Though born and raised in Japan she had come to San Francisco after she had graduated and thus had acquired the ambience of both cultures that had left her poise and intelligence barely subordinated beneath her gentle Japanese charm. She had worked for the Kaiser Corporation at head office for several years and then been temporarily transferred here where she appeared to manage a million and one jobs that all landed on her lap. And all of it stoically and conscientiously she dealt with in her usual competent manner.

To be expected, our conversation wandered to the night's events. Also to be expected she hadn't gotten anymore sleep than I had.

"So why did Kirkland have you hanging about up there? You were the one who notified him weren't you?

"Oh I'm sure he just forgot I was there. After all he'd been working most of the night. Briefly I'd been told about events leading up to our middle of the night soiree but half of me had still been asleep.

She continued. You remember that Mattie on the front desk had someone report sounds as though there might have been some kind of problem. So she asked me if she should call security and since Mr. Kirkland was still up and working I thought it might be better if we called him instead, under the circumstances.

She didn't have to explain the circumstances. Security would have spread the word faster than a three alarm fire.

Mr. Kirkland and I went up to three sixteen. He thought I should be along in case there was some kind of an emergency.

Wise move that one was. Can you imagine the pickle we'd be in now if any of the locals had walked in on that?

There was no mistaking the look of relief in her eyes. I don't even want to think about that. We've got enough problems without half our staff beating drums in the jungle. Is the room going to be usable?

"Damp, but