Page 47 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Road Kill

When they finally turned to me again, I explained that my
government wanted custody of the body as soon as possible for
repatriation, and that we would be pleased to receive his
government’s official report of the incident in due course. It looked
like hit-and-run to me, and I expected the Jolibanan investigators to
arrive at the same conclusion. If the victim had been an important
foreigner, then no doubt a perpetrator would be found. But witnesses
had to be few or nonexistent at this time of night on this stretch of
road, and they would have no incentive to come forward—any
contact with officialdom being fraught with peril to life, limb and
fortune. Had it been a family member laid out on the highway and a
relative had seen the collision, then justice—or vengeance—might be
meted out without benefit of police or courts.
Coulibaly, I felt, understood this reality. He was a suave character,
presumably well-connected within the ruling elite. It struck me that it
would take a fonctionnaire (bureaucrat) of his sophistication to be able
to deal with a technical adviser like Labelle Gramercy—young,
female, foreign, a volunteer of low status within her own community
of expatriates. Perhaps he had both assuaged his masculinity and
enhanced his own esteem by having her in tow. But it was not my job
to pry into their personal relationship; I have, perhaps, learned
something of diplomacy in my years of service.
Having said my piece, I went back to my car and watched them go
to work. Labelle, through Coulibaly, issued a series of instructions in
French and Jolikan, the language of the dominant ethnic group. The
police entrusted with these tasks bore the double scrutiny of their
chief and his foreign adviser; I did not envy them. First they
photographed the body with a camera whose flash failed repeatedly.
Labelle, directing every functioning flashlight to various locations,
made copious notes while keeping up a running narrative of her
actions into a (possibly functioning) tape recorder held by her
counterpart. The equipment for these procedures came forth, after
much rummaging, from the back seat of a decrepit Deux Chevaux.
While I was standing there, the embassy medical officer, Lana
Lynn Chafee, drove up in a Land Rover converted into a sort of
ambulance; the contrast with the Jolibanan vehicle was painful. I
greeted her and indicated the defunct Peace Corps volunteer.

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