Die Again (Rizzoli & Isles, #11)(77)
“First time for both of us. It’s beautiful here. So is your home.”
“This farm’s been in Chris’s family for generations. He should give you a tour later.” Millie paused, as if the effort to keep up even trivial conversation exhausted her. Her gaze dropped to the empty coffee table and she frowned. “Did you not offer them tea, Chris?”
At once DeBruin jumped to his feet. “Oh yah, sorry. Completely forgot about that.” He took his daughter’s hand. “Violet, come help your silly dad.”
In silence Millie watched her husband and daughter leave. Only when she heard the faint clang of the teakettle and water running in the kitchen did she say: “I haven’t changed my mind about going to Boston. I suppose Chris told you that.”
“In so many words,” said Jane.
“I’m afraid this is a waste of your time. Coming all this way, just to hear me repeat what I told you on the phone.”
“We needed to meet you.”
“Why? To see for yourselves that I’m not a lunatic? That everything I told the police six years ago actually happened?” Millie glanced at Gabriel, then back at Jane. The phone calls had already established a link between the women, and Gabriel stayed silent, allowing Jane to take the lead.
“We have no doubt it happened to you,” said Jane.
Millie looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, and said softly: “Six years ago, the police didn’t believe me. Not at first. When I told them my story, from my hospital bed, I could see the doubt in their eyes. A clueless city girl, surviving two weeks alone in the bush? They thought I’d wandered away from some other game lodge and gotten lost and delirious in the heat. They said the pills I took for malaria might have made me psychotic or confused. That it happens to tourists all the time. They said my story didn’t ring true because anyone else would have starved to death. Or been torn apart by lions or hyenas. Or trampled by elephants. And how did I know that I could stay alive eating papyrus reeds, the way the natives do? They couldn’t believe I survived because of pure dumb luck. But that’s exactly what it was. It was luck that I chose to head downriver and ended up at the tourist lodge. Luck that I didn’t poison myself on some wild berry or bark, but ate the most nutritious reed I could have chosen. Luck that after two weeks in the bush, I walked out alive. The police said it wasn’t possible.” She took a deep breath. “Yet I did it.”
“I think you’re wrong, Millie,” said Jane. “It wasn’t luck, it was you. We read your account of what happened. How you slept in the trees every night. How you followed the river and kept walking, even when you were beyond exhausted. Somehow you found the will to survive when almost everyone else would have given up.”
“No,” said Millie softly. “It was the bush that chose to spare me.” She gazed out the window at a majestic tree, its branches spread like protective arms embracing all who stood beneath it. “The land is a living, breathing thing. It decides if you should live or die. At night, in the dark, I could hear its heartbeat, the way a baby hears the heartbeat of its mother. And every morning, I woke up wondering if the land would let me live through the day. That’s the only way I could have walked out alive. Because it let me. It protected me.” She looked at Jane. “From him.”
“Johnny Posthumus.”
Millie nodded. “By the time they finally started searching for Johnny, it was too late. He’d had plenty of time to vanish. Weeks later, they found the truck parked in Johannesburg.”
“The same truck that wouldn’t start in the bush.”
“Yes. A mechanic explained to me later how it could be done. How to temporarily disable a car without anyone spotting the problem. Something about the fuse box and plastic relays.”
Jane looked at Gabriel, and he nodded.
“Unplug the start or fuel pump relay,” he said. “It wouldn’t be easy to detect. And it’s reversible.”
“He made us think we were stranded,” said Millie. “He trapped us there, so he could kill us one by one. First, Clarence. Then Isao. Elliot would have been next. He was taking out the men first, leaving the women for last. We thought we were on safari, but we were really on Johnny’s hunting trip. And we were the game.” Millie took a breath and it came out a shudder. “The night he killed the others, I ran. I had no idea where I was going. We were miles from the nearest road, miles from the airstrip. He knew there was no chance I’d survive, so he simply packed up camp and drove away, leaving the bodies to the animals. Everything else, he took. Our wallets, cameras, passports. The police say he used Richard’s credit card to buy petrol in Maun. And Elliot’s card to buy supplies in Gaborone. Then he crossed the border into South Africa, where he vanished. Who knows where he went next. With our passports and credit cards, he could have dyed his hair brown and passed for Richard. Could have flown to London and breezed straight through immigration.” She hugged herself. “He could have turned up on my doorstep.”
Gabriel said: “The UK has no record of Richard Renwick reentering the country.”
“What if he’s killed other people, taken other identities? He could go anywhere, be anyone.”
“Are you certain your guide was actually Johnny Posthumus?”
“The police showed me his passport photo, taken just two years earlier. It was the same man.”