The Kill Room

studying?”
    “Latin American literature for the semester at Nassau College. And working part time—and, of course, partying.” He sighed. “Apparently to excess. Now, I’ve called her family in America. They’re coming to claim the body.” His voice faded. “I have never made a call like that before. It was very difficult.”
    She had a trim figure, athletic, a modest tat on her shoulder—a starburst—and she favored gold jewelry, though a silver necklace of small leaves surrounded her neck, now stripped of skin.
    “A shark attack?”
    “No, barracuda probably. We rarely get shark attacks here. And the barracuda were just feeding, after she died. They’ll occasionally bite a swimmer but the injuries are minor. She probably got caught in the riptide and drowned. Then the fish went to work.”
    Rhyme noted the worst damage was around the neck. Stubby tubes of the carotid were visible through tatters of flesh. Much of the skull was exposed. With his fork Rhyme speared and then ate some more conch.
    Then he slid the iPad back to the officer. “I assume, Corporal, that you are not here to arrest us.”
    He laughed. “It did occur to me. I was quite angry. But, no, I’ve come here to help you again.”
    “Thank you, Corporal. And now in fairness I’ll share with you everything that I know.” And he explained about NIOS, about Metzger, about the sniper.
    “Kill Room. What a cold way to put it.”
    Now that he knew Poitier was, more or less, on his side, Rhyme told him that Pulaski was waiting to speak to the maid at the South Cove Inn to learn more about the sniper’s reconnaissance mission the day before he shot Moreno.
    Poitier grimaced. “An officer from New York is forced to do my job for me. What a state of things, thanks to politics.”
    The server brought the food—a hot stew of vegetables and shreds of dark meat, chicken or goat, Rhyme guessed. Some fried bread too. Poitier tore a piece off the bread and fed it to the potcake dog. He then pulled his plate toward him, tucked his napkin into his shirt, just where the chain that led to his breast pocket was affixed to a collar button. He keyboarded on the iPad then looked up. “I will eat now and while I eat I can tell Thom about the Bahamas, the history, the culture. If he’d like.”
    “I would, yes.”
    Poitier pushed the iPad close to Rhyme. “And you, Captain, might wish to look at some pictures in the photo gallery of our beautiful scenery here.”
    As the corporal turned to Thom and they struck up a conversation Rhyme began scrolling through the gallery.
    A picture of the Poitier family, presumably, at the beach. A lovely wife and laughing children. Then they were at a barbecue with a dozen other people.
    A picture of the sunset.
    A picture of a grade school music recital.
    A picture of the first page of the Robert Moreno homicide report.
    Like a spy, Poitier had photographed it with the camera in the iPad.
    Rhyme looked up at the corporal but the cop ignored him, continuing to share with Thom the history of the colony, and with the potcake dog more lunch.
    First, there was an itinerary of Moreno’s last days on earth, as the corporal could piece it together.
    The man and his guard, Simon Flores, had arrived in Nassau late Sunday, May 7. They had spent Monday out of the inn, presumably at meetings; Moreno did not seem like the sort to swim with the dolphins or go Jet Skiing. The next day beginning at nine he had several other visitors. Shortly after they left, about ten thirty, the reporter Eduardo de la Rua arrived. The shooting was around eleven fifteen.
    Poitier had identified and interviewed Moreno’s other visitors. They were local businessmen involved in agriculture and transport companies. Moreno planned to form a joint venture with them when he opened the Bahamian branch of his Local Empowerment Movement. They were legitimate and had been respected members of the Nassau business community for years.
    No witnesses reported that Moreno had been under surveillance or that anyone had shown any unusual interest in him—other than the phone call before he arrived and the brown-haired American.
    Then Rhyme turned to the pages of the scene itself. He was disappointed. The RBPF crime scene team had found forty-seven fingerprints—other than the victims’—but had analyzed only half of them. Of those identified, all were attributed to the hotel staff. A note reported that the remaining lifted prints were missing.
    Little effort