Carter
The sun sinks low on the horizon and paints the ocean gold as the Black Orchid departs Kusadasi and starts toward Santorini, where it will hold anchor during the night in the volcanic caldera. Early the next morning guests will be able to board tenders for shore.
“Are you having a good time?” Gramps asks, not even looking at him. He seems distant, his gaze out to sea, and his thoughts even farther away on some invisible horizon.
“I—I know why you wanted to come on the Black Orchid instead of the Disney cruise.”
“Tell me what you mean, son.”
He hesitates. Then he inhales deeply and says, “It’s Vincent. I know about Vincent Kapoor.”
Silence.
Nerves bite deeper as Carter senses he’s treading into forbidden territory, crossing a line into another world, another realm, occupied by this old hunter of human monsters who has spent a lifetime in the dark interiors of killers and torturers, examining their sick desires.
A place little golden-haired boys are not meant to go.
Yet it’s also a place—Carter knows—where golden-haired boys and girls become easy victims.
“I know he’s on the boat. And that you followed him. And you dragged us with you because you chose Vincent over Disney and the Caribbean and family stuff.”
“And what makes you think Vincent is on the ship?”
Carter is even more scared now. But this is where he really needs to be brave. And a hero. Because if he wants the truth, he has to be honest and truthful also.
“Well, I still plan to be a detective,” he says very carefully, laying his groundwork. “And I do like solving puzzles, and . . .” He chickens out a bit. He shouldn’t have been in the files. Or in the study in LA, looking at the crime board.
“Go on,” says Gramps. “You started, now you better finish.”
He swallows. “I saw some things on the wall in your study when I went to the bathroom. The door was open. I couldn’t not see it.”
Gramps’s brow furrows. “What did you see, Carter?”
“Your crime board—all the bits about Vincent Kapoor and Aline-Claire Lavoie.” He pauses.
“And Sanjay Lohar. I saw the question mark with his photo—it looked like you were questioning whether he could still be alive. And then in your files I saw a photo of an older man. Written on the back was Vincent. Amsterdam. Dec. 15, 2018.”
“You went in my files?”
“You—you lied to me about him being in prison for life in Nepal.”
He sips his drink, thinking, then says, “He was imprisoned for life, Carter. You asked me if he escaped the Kathmandu jail. I said, no, he did not escape it. It wasn’t a lie.”
“But he was released. You could have said that. You lied to me by omission.”
A shadow of a smile curves his grandfather’s mouth.
He nods slowly. But his eyes remain fierce.
Carter reckons any serial killer being interviewed by Gramps would be scared of him.
If it was him being interrogated, he might wet his pants.
Or cry. But he won’t. Not now. He just won’t.
He is Theseus. He will emerge from the darkness of the caves.
“I could have told you that,” says Gramps. “You’re right. Shall we sit?” He gestures with his drink toward the furniture next to the pool.
Before Carter can answer, Gramps goes to the outdoor sofa and crumples his large, heavy frame into the cushions. He gives a deep sigh, takes another long swallow from his drink, and exhales heavily.
Carter feels a niggle of worry. Gramps doesn’t look that well.
He goes to sit beside him. They both face the sea. On the horizon Turkey has faded to a soft purple shadow against the sunset gold. A seabird plays in wind currents off their balcony.
“I’m tired, Carter. When you reach my age, there are only so many seasons left in a life, you know? A few more winters, a handful of summers.”
Carter feels a little clutch in his chest.
Gramps pats Carter’s skinny knee. “That’s life.
It comes with a one hundred percent fatality rate.
It’s just how the world works. And as you get toward the end of a life, things start to happen to an old body.
Like an old car. The parts start to give.
” He watches the water a moment. “At my age, you’ve seen many of your friends and colleagues die.
One just waiting out the other. All physically failing in some form or another.
Diseases: limbs and joints that no longer work, organs that give up, bones that grow brittle and break, metabolic failures, cancers.
For me—” He meets Carter’s eyes. “Now, I haven’t told your mom this.
I was going to wait until after the trip, but you’re an excellent detective and you’re onto me.
You have courage. And I owe you. For not being straight-up honest.” He sips, watches the horizon a moment longer.
“I got a diagnosis a few months ago. I have a disease that’s messing with my brain a bit.
” He taps his head. “Cognitive decline. It’s not an easy diagnosis for an old mind hunter to digest. But I won’t be able to hide it from the world much longer.
I really didn’t have time to both finish my final book as well as spend quality time on a Disney cruise with you and your mom.
So I tried to do two at once. Two birds. One stone.”
“What’s messing with your brain?”
“Nasty little plaques and things. It’s been going on for a while already, and it’s going to make me forget more and more things—everything I learned. A lifetime of study. Everything I ever wrote.” He holds Carter’s gaze. “Even you. And your mom. I will forget who you are.”
Emotion surges into Carter’s eyes.
“This last case, my Vincent Kapoor case—it’s one that has consumed me for decades.
It’s threaded through my entire adult life, and it left me with lingering questions that I have not been able to solve.
Until now.” He pauses. “Maybe I should’ve let the questions go, and taken you on the Disney cruise instead.
But let me ask you, Carter J. Frost—what would you have done?
I know it’s a rough question to ask a very young sleuth, but what if you knew there were families out there who never got answers about loved ones: like how they died, where they died, who killed them, where their remains were buried, or dumped.
And you saw that the answer was almost within reach.
And you had only a few months of brain left to grab them.
But you also wanted to spend time with your own loved ones. ”
Carter swallows. His gramps is right—it’s an adult question.
And he doesn’t like how complicated life seems to get when one becomes an adult.
It’s the same kind of question Gramps might have been asking Gran before she left him: How many murders should be solved, how many killers should be put in jail, versus how many days should be spent with your family?
“I don’t know,” Carter says honestly, his eyes filling with tears that spill down his face. He swipes them away. “Have—have you got the answers for those families now?”
Gramps nods. “Yes. I do. It was precipitated by Vincent’s release late last year. And when we learned he was going to be on the Black Orchid cruise, I couldn’t not follow him. We felt he would lead us to missing links.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Me and three other people. A retired Interpol detective who helped work the original case, the old detective in Nepal who arrested Vincent and finally put him away for life, and the retired Dutch ambassador to Thailand who was instrumental in first bringing the case to everyone’s attention.
Back in the mid-seventies he’d been searching for two missing Dutch citizens who vanished after landing in Bangkok.
It was he who first began to believe there might be a serial killer operating in Bangkok, and preying on tourists embarking on the Hippie Trail to Kathmandu.
Turned out it was worse than anyone imagined. ”
“How did you get involved back then?”
“I consulted on the case. We all formed a bond, and kept up correspondence over the years. We all wanted to know what really happened to Sanjay Lohar—there was no proof. And we also believed there were still many more murders that had not yet been attributed to Vincent. When he was released last year, the old Interpol cop kept in contact with his counterparts in Europe. Vincent was a free man, but they were keeping an eye on him after his release. Turns out he left Paris, went to Belgium, and then the Netherlands, where he set up in Amsterdam as an art and antiquities dealer and started his scams again.”
Carter leans forward. “Has he killed more people since he’s been out?”
“We don’t believe so. Not yet, anyway. But when he suddenly went on a spree, buying expensive designer clothes and luggage, and he secured a ticket on an invitation-only trip on the Black Orchid, our suspicions were aroused. And I followed him.”
“Is he targeting someone on this ship?”
Gramps hesitates, choosing his words carefully. “Vincent thinks he is. But . . . let’s just say, the script has been flipped. Someone else is targeting Vincent. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
“Who?”
He doesn’t answer that question. Instead, he glances down at Carter.
His eyes shine with emotion. “But I got something more valuable than answers on this trip. I got to know you, son. And I’m so proud of you.
You know what else? Your mom and I had some really deep talks.
Difficult but good talks. She’s decided to give things another try with your dad.
He’s going to be waiting for us on Santorini. ”