Murder on Masaya (Kea Wright Mysteries Book 3)

  Murder on Masaya

  R. J. Corgan

  2021

  Cover art by Justus Lyons. Image credit: Saraedum.

  Disclaimer: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by R.J. Corgan

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

  First Printing: 2021

  ASIN: B08T9WX244

  www.RJCorganBooks.com

  Other books in the Kea Wright series by R.J. Corgan:

  Cold Flood

  The Meerkat Murders

  For Tiffany

  Cast

  16th Century Nindiri

  Friars Blas del Castillo, Diego, Rafa, and Thomas

  Descent Team

  Global Solutions Outpost Staff

  Amirah – Program manager

  Kea Wright – Project manager

  Danilo – Supply manager

  Alphonso –Beta level lead

  Carlos – Team lead

  Nindiri University

  Luis – Professor

  Daniela – Graduate student

  Alisha – Graduate Student

  Dominic – Graduate student

  Josine – Graduate student

  Maria Martinez – Undergraduate

  Adriana – Visiting professor

  Keller – Visiting professor

  Climbing team

  Blanca

  Emilio Martinez

  Mack

  Francisco

  Outpost Team

  Global Solutions

  Bree

  Shona and Jacob

  Sharvil

  Freedom Unlimited

  Deshi Zhao

  Ling Zhao

  Maps

  Prelude

  Masaya, January 2020

  Kea Wright stood in the entrance of a decrepit warehouse and peered into its shadows. Formerly a slaughterhouse, she wasn’t keen to explore its darkened recesses too closely.

  Amirah, Kea’s new manager, hovered beside her, eager for a verdict.

  “It looks … promising,” Kea ventured.

  “Don’t worry about the smell … or the entrails.” Amirah walked brusquely to a silver trailer and patted the door as if it was a favorite pet. “Brand new chemistry laboratory fully equipped with the latest gear. Imagine six more of these beauties.”

  Despite the afternoon heat, Kea hugged herself tightly. She had resigned from her job at UC San Diego only a week prior, risking everything on Amirah’s pitch for Global Solutions’ Outposts: a chance to do cutting-edge research with no worry of funding. As a bonus, the Outposts would help the local students develop new skills and train them to become scientists, with them eventually taking over the long-term monitoring of the volcano. Projects like this were no longer dependent on a single Western researcher who often ran out of funds or switched careers at a moment’s notice, culling projects that required decades or centuries to gather insightful data. With Amirah’s help, Kea thought she could pave the way for gathering data over decades, run by local talent, and improving the economy to boot.

  It had seemed like a dream come true.

  Although I’ve never had a dream start in a slaughterhouse, Kea thought. She didn’t mind the whole start-up vibe, but this was a little extreme.

  Swallowing her reservations, Kea smiled bravely and followed Amirah into the trailer. Boxes of equipment were crammed onto every surface, but she could discern thin seams in the walls and floor. The trailer, Amirah informed her, could expand into a classroom, capable of accommodating up to forty students.

  “It’s nicer on the inside,” Kea admitted. With its gleaming fixtures and art deco style adornments, the trailer was classier than any apartment Kea had ever rented. “How long will it take to build the Outpost compound?”

  “As soon as the demolition is completed,” Amirah waved her hands in the air as if magically wiping away the offending warehouses, “we’ll have the first Outpost buildings constructed and operational within a matter of weeks. As the project lead, I assumed you’d want to supervise the setup and installation of the Outpost from the ground up.”

  Amirah’s smile was a little too broad, as if Kea’s new boss were gently reminding her that while the job’s salary was tremendous, so too were the responsibilities.

  “We’ve arranged for you to assist at the local university until construction is completed.” Amira escorted Kea out of the trailer and back to the car. “They’ll give you an office for a time, as long as you can advise some of the graduate students.”

  Kea nervously watched the vultures perched atop the fences surrounding the warehouses. Their stooped necks and tilted heads seemed to signal their disapproval of demolishing their free buffet.

  Later that same night, Global Solutions put Kea up in a luxurious estate room overlooking the Apoyo Lagoon, a tropical paradise nestled within the crater of an extinct volcano. The lagoon was postcard-perfect, the guest house, palatial. According to the guidebook, the region was home to a variety of howler monkeys, falcons, and several species of hummingbirds. The guidebook also stated that the lake was endorheic, which meant there was no drainage out of the crater.

  Kea sat on a balcony above the pool sipping her drink, a concoction of rum and guava juice, and listened to the monkeys’ calls echo across the water.

  Endorheic.

  She was supposed to know that term. She was, after all, a geologist. Technically, a glaciologist.

  She surveyed the lagoon. In the tropical heat, its surface shimmered, reflecting a lazy haze of clouds flushed with pink from the rays of the setting sun.

  Not a glacier in sight.

  Kea stretched out on a lounger and nibbled on some tostones con queso. Savoring the cheesy bites of plantains with a warm breeze caressing her face, she wondered if the lack of glaciers was a bad thing.

  She had not accepted the position without some trepidation. While she had taken courses in tectonics, igneous petrology, and volcanology in her undergraduate years, she was poised to lead a team of volcanologists and geophysicists who would realize in about five seconds that she barely understood their terminology. Not to mention the fact that her college Spanish was rusty at best.

  Her Icelandic would do no good here, she thought. Nor her ice axe.

  When she’d voiced her concerns, Amirah had assured her that project management was project management: it didn’t matter what the project was and, as for the language barrier, the new artificial intelligence translation earbuds would do the rest.

  In truth, Kea had her own reasons for taking this assignment.

  Four years earlier, standing on a glacier in southern Iceland, Fate slapped her across the face with an advanced stratospheric reconnaissance drone. As an added thrill, the bounty hunters searching for the crashed device tried to kill her. She escaped with her life, but only after losing two of her friends and killing one of her pursuers.

  Although eager to put the events on the ice behind her, returning home, Kea discovered that her apartment and office were constantly being searched. Other bounty hunters, she realized, still thought she had a component from the drone that was worth over ten million dollars.

  Which, of course, she did.

  She knew she could destroy the chip or hand it over to the authorities, which would at least stop their pursuit. Perhaps it was because they had shoved her friends into a crevasse and turned her into a killer, but for once, Kea was no
t about to give up so easily.

  Kea took another long sip of her drink and tucked the miniature umbrella behind her ear. The stars were starting to come out, their dim lights prickling through the sunset’s lavender veil. She turned the tiny stuffed miniature platypus on her keychain end-over-end before giving it a reassuring squeeze.

  How bad could it be?

  Chapter 1

  Masaya Volcano, 1538 A.D.

  FRIAR DEIGO struggled to maintain his grip on the chain. The iron links had already begun to corrode, flaking into orange dust on his sweaty palms. Acrid fumes billowed up from within the mountain, stinging his eyes and burning his cheeks. He brushed away the tears with a robed sleeve and stared into the orange fire that roiled within Masaya, the mouth of Hell. Beneath the thunderous roar of its satanic flames, he heard his fellow brothers urging each other on in hoarse whispers, as if afraid that their words might attract the attention of demons lurking beneath their feet.

  The men labored under the direction of Friar Blas del Castillo. The old man had coaxed his brothers out of the mission long after sunset, leading them up the slopes of the mountain under the cover of darkness.

  “Keep your silence,” Friar Blas repeated each night. “God would not want the gold to be discovered by the rich, but by the poor and humble.”

  Diego stared over the edge of the crater and gaped at the infernal lake that smoldered within the vast pit. Blinking away tears, he could make no sense of the source of the flames nor conceive how they could continue to blaze within a cavity so many leagues across and yet never cool. Fire raced from one side of the lake to the other, seeming to switch directions on a whim, as if demonic spirits were trapped within, writhing in frustration.

  He shuddered as the fire twisted and changed paths once more, before plummeting back down into the depths of Hell. Scalding winds, swept up from the molten lake below, pelted his face with flecks of glass and ash. The harsh grit rode an ever-present yellow plume that caused his lungs to catch and wheeze.

  As Diego steadied the chains affixed to the pole, he heard Friar Blas del Castillo whisper a prayer before stepping into a large basket fashioned of iron. “Non nobis, Comine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.”

  Not to me, my Lord, but to You and the glory.

  Clutching a small wooden cross, Friar Blas del Castillo made a peculiar figure in the basket. His habit strapped tightly around him, his wild hair flared out from underneath an iron helmet as the basket rocked back and forth, clattering the twisted lengths of chains and rods within it.

  Hauling on the chains, the brethren emitted a collective groan. The rickety pulley system clanked and stammered as the friar was slowly lowered into the crater.

  Under the strain, the ash beneath Diego’s feet shifted. He stumbled forward, wincing as the sharp teeth of scoria pebbles bit into the exposed flesh of his heels. His palms, stuttered with slick black flecks of the volcano’s glass hairs, bled as he tightened his hands around the chain. Over the last few days, the slender filaments of glass had burrowed deep into his skin, where they snapped, leaving a thousand infernal splinters that he was never able to wash out. With a curse, he repositioned his feet and hauled on the line, finally rejoining his brethren’s rhythm.

  This was the eighth night they had crept up to the mountain’s slopes. Eight nights of lowering equipment into its throat to construct a mechanism capable of safely extracting the gold from Masaya’s molten heart.

  If the legends of the treasures were true, Diego thought.

  They must be true.

  When many of the brothers had voiced their fears about what lay within the mountain, Friar Blas del Castillo insisted that Masaya’s demons had been tamed. Ten years prior, Francisco Bobadilla had performed an exorcism, erecting a giant cross on the edge of the crater to contain the spirits within.

  Yet, watching the pit rage and spit with an unholy light, Diego feared that the ritual had not been successful.

  Nothing could ever tame this.

  A shout heralded the Friar’s arrival on the plaza beside the lake of fire. Changing positions, the brethren labored to haul the empty basket back up to the crater rim. To Diego, while the basket was lighter, waiting for its return seemed to take an eternity. In reality, it took more than an hour before they finished lowering the rest of the descent team. It was then Diego’s turn to climb into the basket while the rest of the brethren remained on the mountaintop.

  Friar Rafa clambered in beside him. A small man with a bulbous waist and a thatch of brown hair, Diego had to help him swing his short legs over the rim.

  The only consolation of this arrangement, Diego sighed, was that the sulfurous fumes from the pit overwhelmed his brother’s terrible halitosis.

  Friar Thomas, an able man with ginger hair and unnaturally pale skin, joined the group. He nervously stroked the gold cross that hung around his neck as the basket slipped away from the ledge and wobbled into the depths.

  Diego eyed the chain that held their basket. Lit by the Masaya’s flames, the thin iron links appeared too tenuous to prevent them from falling into Hell itself. Worse, the basket swayed violently with every yank of the pulley, spilling tools out of their bags to clatter about their feet.

  Diego buried his face into his robes as the fumes clawed their way into his throat and singed his lungs. His mind returned to the many tales the natives had told of this place, of their gruesome offerings to the mountain. Their lurid descriptions of throwing children and maidens into the crater to ‘fetch water’ from the gods in times of drought made it too easy to imagine their final screams as they were devoured by the hellish blaze.

  False gods, Diego reminded himself. There is only one God. He closed his eyes and recited prayers until a thud signaled their arrival on the plaza.

  Rafa, in his haste to exit the confines of the basket, fell to the rocky ground in a heap. His robes coated in white ash and cinders, Rafa’s terrified gaze was transfixed by the lake of fire. “We stand upon the shores of Hell.”

  “I’m not afraid of the demons of primitives,” Diego spat. “Friar Blas del Castillo, however, is another story. Move out of the way, or you will incur his wrath.”

  Diego climbed out of the basket and together, he and Thomas helped Rafa stand. They removed the supplies from the basket, their eyes never leaving the molten lake. The heat caused the air around them to shimmer, as if they were immersed in a mirage.

  Rafa, still recovering from his fall, paused to rub out a rash of black pebbles from his arm. “If you’re so terrified of Friar Blas del Castillo, why did you come?”

  “I’m not afraid,” Diego insisted. However, in truth, Diego had seen the gleam of madness that crept into their leader’s eyes whenever he spoke of Masaya’s treasure. “I simply am wary of his intent.”

  “Worry less about his motives,” Thomas whispered, “and more about his vengeance, should you disobey him.”

  Unable to meet his brothers’ eyes, Diego rummaged through his bag. He removed a flask of water and tucked it into his robes, before lifting out the metal rods and chains, leaving a few extra tools and a small wooden cross behind.

  As he turned to rejoin the others, however, a fountain of fire erupted from the middle of the lake, ejecting a sulfurous cloud that caused them all to cough and retch. Diego waved away the fumes and snatched up the cross before staggering to the lake’s shore.

  Friar Blas del Castillo stood at the edge of a precipice, his robes fluttering in the waves of heat that gusted upward from the fire. Beside him, a hastily rigged contraption of iron rods teetered at the edge of the lake. Opposite the narrow inlet, not more than fifteen feet distant, stood another tower connected by chains. Two of the brethren worked to attach a small iron bucket to the chains intended to retrieve a sample of the molten gold from the lake.

  The brothers had spent the last several nights trying to erect the pulley system, but their attempts had been fraught with failure. Iron flaked and crumbled after only a short time in the pit. The devils themselves
seemed to be devouring the device, causing it to grind to a halt.

  With Rafa’s assistance, Diego helped strengthen the poles while the others called to each other to adjust the tension of the pulley wheels. Their shouts were lost in the rumble of the churning lake, and its fiery breath licked their skin. Diego had to swaddle his hands with his robes to keep his grip on the scalding metal pole. Once the towers were secure, he braced himself against their length, turning his body away from the burning lake in intervals, like a pig roasting on a spit.

  Spying the bucket dangling midway between the poles, Diego swore. The receptacle remained a few feet shy from the fire’s surface. He would have to wait for them to reset the chain and try once again. He closed his eyes and prayed, fearing that he’d lose his sanity if he remained a moment longer.

  It took two more attempts before the bucket was finally submerged into the lake, swallowing a gulp of the infernal fluid as it slid beneath the surface. By this point, rather than shout for joy, Diego was gagging for a swig of water. However, he kept his weight against the poles, as the bucket’s increased mass threatened to topple the makeshift towers.

  When the iron bucket finally arrived on the far side of the inlet, Friar Blas del Castillo quenched its content with water and a white cloud of steam swallowed him. Within moments, Diego saw him reach into the bucket and quickly wrap its contents in bundles of fabric before secreting them away into a wooden chest at his feet.

  After supervising the re-positioning of the bucket on the chain, the process was repeated three more times, until at last the bucket, overflowing with the glowing material, welded itself to the surface of the lake. Try as they might, the brothers could not extract it, and they left it to succumb to the fires of the earth.

  For which Diego uttered a prayer of thanks.

  They abandoned the site, leaving the poles and chains for Hell to consume and retreated to the plaza’s edge. There, Friar Blas del Castillo insisted that he ascend first, swatting away anyone who tried to inspect the chest that he kept pressed tightly to his breast.