Hawke

When he finally turned away from the window, he saw Congreve slumped in his chair, staring down at his hands, which were folded in his lap. Tears were streaming down the Englishman’s face. He made no effort to wipe them away.

Inspector Sutherland was gathering the photographs and returning them to the folder. His eyes, too, were red. It occurred to Witherspoon that these two men had been looking at the nightmarish pictures not with their own eyes, but through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy. A boy, now a man, whom they both deeply admired, perhaps even loved.

“Would you like to take a little walk in my garden?” Stubbs Witherspoon said, putting his hand on Congreve’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Congreve said, composing himself. “Indeed, we should both like that very much.”

“Come along then,” the old fellow said, picking up his folder, and they followed him outside onto the porch.

“Those plants are quite amazing,” Sutherland said, pointing at a bizarre group of palms. “Nothing like that in an English garden, Mr. Witherspoon.”

“Thank you. Birds of Paradise. And that tree? That’s what I call a ‘Tourist Tree.’ ”

“Why is that?” Congreve asked.

“Just look at de bark of it, mon! It always red and peeling!” Witherspoon said with his merry laugh. “Real name of it is Gumbo Limbo. You see that other tree over there past the Tourist Trees? That big old Calusa tree?”

“It’s lovely,” Congreve said.

“Alex Hawke and his grandfather helped me to plant that tree.”

“You don’t say?” Congreve said. “How extraordinary!”

“Not really. I had just bought this old place at the time. I invited them for luncheon one day, just before they flew back to England. Considering the circumstances, we had ourselves a fairly jolly good time, I remember. Little Alex and my dog Trouble, he was the grandfather of old Roscoe over there, ru

“Of course,” Congreve said quietly. “You would have interviewed little Alex in the course of your investigation.”

“Oh, I wasn’t the lead investigator. Far from it. But I loved that little fellow. I took some little toy or something to that hospital room every single day,” Witherspoon said. “I sat by his bed most of the time. But I wouldn’t call it investigation. Just keeping him company. Poor boy Alex, he couldn’t talk at all at first. When his grandfather got down here, well, he started to come back a little.”

“No memory of the crime, even then?”

“None at all. The first time I saw him he kept repeatin’ somethin’ over and over. Three knocks. He never would explain it, but I figured it out eventually.”

“Three knocks. What do you think it meant, Stubbs?” Congreve asked, leaning forward in his chair.

“I think it was a code. Between him and his father, I mean. See, little Alex was locked in that locker from the inside. And the key to the locker was found in Alex’s pocket.”

“So his father, probably having heard someone up on deck, had hidden him in the locker, then given him the key and told him to lock himself inside,” Ross said.

“And told him not to come out for anyone unless he heard three knocks on the door,” Congreve concluded.

“That’s just the way I saw it,” Witherspoon said. “His father, he died with his back to that door. Wasn’t any way anybody was going to get through him to that child.”

“How do you know that?” Ross asked.

“If you look closely at the photo of the bulkhead wall where the door was, you’ll see two deep holes on either side of the door. Those holes match the two knife wounds that penetrated the victim’s hands.”

“He was nailed to the wall?”

“He was crucified. As I said, the photographs reveal the name of the man responsible for the murders,” Witherspoon said.

“The method of killing then?” Congreve asked.

“Yes. You see, that kind of mutilation—the throat slit with the tongue drawn out through the opening and left hanging on the chest, for instance—”

“The infamous ‘Colombian necktie,’ ” Ross said, and Witherspoon nodded at him.

“We had a reign of terror down here, early in the seventies and into the eighties,” Witherspoon said. “Anti-British feelings in the islands. Then, anti-American. It was also the begi

“And that’s the man you think is responsible for the Hawke murders?” Congreve asked.

“Yes, sir. I’m sure of it. Whoever killed Alex’s parents, he worked directly for a man named Pablo Escobar.”

“Escobar is dead, as you know, Chief,” Ross said to Congreve. “Tracked down and assassinated in Medellin in 1989 by a team of Colombian special forces. No one will admit it, of course, but there were Americans involved, Delta Force black ops.”

“So the murderers are Colombian,” Congreve said.

“No,” Witherspoon said, “I think they were Cuban.”

“Please explain,” Ross said.

“Three Cuban boys on a murderous rampage. I think the killings occurred in the Exumas. That’s where Seahawke was last seen, moored in a little cove near Staniel Cay.”

Sutherland and Congreve looked at each other but said nothing.

“But the style of the thing, it was pure Colombian. So, I went down there to Staniel Cay myself,” Witherspoon said, “on a tip from a friend of mine, a young policeman down there by the name of Bajun. He said there had been three Cuban boys, brothers, who’d been working odd jobs in the Exumas. Bartenders, paid hands, fishermen, you know.”

“Yes, go on, please,” Congreve said, plainly excited.

“They attracted Bajun’s attention, he told me, because they all wore expensive gold jewelry. Colombian jewelry. He thought they were narcos killing time between drug drops, and he had his eye on them.”

“So. Not Escobar himself. But three Cubans who might have been working for him at the time,” Ross said, mulling it over. “Entirely plausible.”

“That was our thinking, me and Bajun. We dusted the murder scene for prints but our techniques were pretty primitive back then. We did find three sets of footprints, in addition to the victims’. All had bare feet. So, there were three murderers. And the three Cubans disappeared the same night that the yacht did. Never seen again.”

“What happened then?” Congreve asked, leaning forward and rubbing his hands together. A chill of excitement had made him forget all about the tropic heat.

“Nobody paid me no mind. I didn’t have too much credibility at that time. And we had a backlog of cases two miles long. So I went out on my own. I tried the Americans first. The CIA station chief here at the time was an acquaintance of my father’s. His name was Benjamin Hill.

“Now, Ben knew that I knew the CIA and the U.S. Army were all over Colombia. It was the worst-kept secret down here. They had the Medellin cartel under daily surveillance. But, of course, Ben couldn’t admit to anything, even though he wanted to help. Officially, the Americans were not in Colombia, so I hit a stone wall.”

“What did you do then?” asked Ross.

“Simple. I emptied my savings account and borrowed some money from my father. Then I went down to Colombia,” Witherspoon said. “I had a good description of the three brothers from Bajun. And a warrant based on the evidence we had gathered in Staniel Cay. I poked around a little. ’Bout a week. People smile in your face, shake they heads. Got nowhere. Finally, I met with the chief of police in Medellin. I showed him the police sketches I’d had done of the suspects.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Congreve said, his words tinged with excitement. “You still have those sketches?”