Chapter One - Richard Lewis

Chapter 27
Tina showed Nol the Youtube video taken at the beach when the bones were
discovered, and paused the clip when the screeching crone burst into the scene.
"Who is she?" she asked. She was certain that her landlord knew.
Nol grimaced, as if an internal gas bubble was seeking egress. "Her name's Men
Djawa."
Under Tina's prodding he reluctantly added that she was a former Batu Gede
Gerwani officer who'd been in prison for many years. She was half-crazy, he said, always
looking for her two missing daughters, long gone to who knew where. But she made
excellent Javanese cakes that she'd sold in the market. She was now in a private mental
health clinic in Gianyar.
Tina drove out there that afternoon. At the clinic, she was relayed like a baton
before she ended up in the cramped office of a young Chinese doctor.
"How may I help you?" he asked, his eyebrows twitching.
Tina put her laptop on the desk. "As I've told your staff, I would like to see one of
your patients. A named Men Djawa."
"She is not allowed visitors."
Tina turned the laptop toward him. "I'm an anthropologist. During my researches
here on Bali, I've long been aware of a big blank spot in history. The 1965 massacres."
She played the video. She frankly stated her suspicions that the bones discovered
were those of Gerwani members, slaughtered naked on the beach. Perhaps they'd first
been tortured and raped. Certainly one was beheaded. She said that Men Djawa, the
distraught woman on the video, had also been a Batu Gede Gerwani member who
escaped the killings.
"And that man you see there," Tina said, pointing at a slender elderly fellow
carrying a black cane, "is the man who killed them."
The doctor's brows rose and twisted and dipped. "That is a very serious
accusation. That gentleman you accuse of being a killer is paying Men Djawa's bills."
"To keep her quiet?"
"She is making good progress."
"Is she lucid? I would like to talk to her, Doctor. I think she has a story that needs
to be told."
The doctor fiddled with a bronze paperweight shaped as a Komodo dragon, his
brows still twitching, but in a troubled manner. He put down the paperweight and said,
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