I felt sick. Stood there and argued with myself about returning to the spa compound. But what could I do for him now? Couldn’t avoid the obvious question: Was it true I couldn’t help? Or was I afraid to go back over the fence?
Afraid. Yes, I was afraid-an honest admission. But it was also true that if the screams I’d heard were Sir James, he was beyond my help. Even if he were alive, the compound would be on full alert. An anonymous call to the island police was my best option. Contrive some lie to get an ambulance and a couple of nosy cops to have a look around the spa.
It was quarter after eleven. I still had to cross four miles of open ocean in an eighteen-foot boat. But first I had to get to a pay phone. Or… I could try to raise the local water cops on the handheld VHF radio I’d left on the Maverick. That would be faster. No chance of caller ID giving away my location, either.
I started downhill, jogging when I could, walking when the trail narrowed. People who are obsessive by nature are commonly the victims of their own cyclic thought patterns. Their brains function like a compass needle, swinging inevitably back to whatever it is they are trying to put out of their mind. I am obsessive. To muffle the screams ringing in my head, I thought about Senegal Firth. What would I tell her?
The decision wasn’t as time-consuming as I wanted it to be. Long ago, in a faraway jungle, a buddy and I dulled our own fears by constructing a series of brave maxims. Maxims are distilled truths, orderly beacons. In our violent world, they reminded us that the existential has an orderly counterpart. One of the maxims we hammered out was this: When telling the truth is the most difficult choice, it is almost always the right choice.
I would tell Senegal the truth, but an amended truth to spare her pain. It would be after midnight by the time I got to Saint Lucia. I would hike up the steps to James Montbard’s home and bang on the door. Get it over with. She deserved to know.
The boat was hidden in a tidal creek in a tunnel of mangroves. The creek was a hundred yards off a gravel road that circled the mountain, jungle on one side, sea on the other. I’d marked the place by tying reflective tape in the trees.
When I got to the road, I stowed the night-vision monocular and jogged the last quarter mile in darkness. There was no sense of relief that I’d made it off the mountain, but felt no pleasure in the thought of getting in the boat and pointing seaward. Instead, I felt flat and empty, as if the dogs, the screams, the jungle had punctured my spirit and drained me of purpose.
It is remarkable how quickly we recover when good fortune displaces misfortune-and it always does, sooner or later.
On this night, it was sooner.
When I was close enough to spot the tape, I took out the infrared flashlight, fitted the night-vision harness over my right eye, and flipped the switch. Instantly, shadows were illuminated… but there was another source of light, too. An unexpected source.
In the mangrove thicket where the boat was hidden, an infrared light was painting slow circles on the tree canopy. It wasn’t my infrared light. It wasn’t me who was flashing Montbard’s signal to regroup.
I ran toward the boat. Unholstered my pistol just in case, but didn’t bother trying to cover the sound of me crashing through the mangroves. Sir James was lighting his pipe when I broke through the trees.
“About time, old boy,” he said calmly. “I was beginning to worry dogs had caught more than one trespasser tonight. Poor bastard-up there poaching orchids. You heard?”
“Yes.”
“You sound a bit shaken.”
“I am. I thought it was you.”
“Could’ve been. Terrible way to go. But you would have heard at least one shot-better by my own bullet than the indignity of being ripped apart by dogs. It was a local boy, barely out of his teens. Nothing I could do.”
“A boy?”
“Sadly, yes. Athletic-looking lad; poor family, judging from his rags.” For the first time, Montbard sounded like a weary seventy-year-old man.
He had used the VHF radio, he added, and told harbor patrol that a wealthy tourist had been attacked, and might still be alive. There was a better chance they’d respond if they believed it was a tourist.
I untied the boat, started the engine. We were idling into the slow lift and fall of a trade-wind sea before I said, “I don’t know about you, but I could use one of your midnight teas.”
Montbard tapped his pipe empty before putting it in the pocket of his dinner jacket. “Right you are. A stiff whiskey or two’s just the thing.”
26
The Hooded Orchid was on an early-to-bed, early-to-rise schedule. Senegal and I signed the guest book before noon the next day. She was assigned Room 7, one of two dozen doors spaced along the cloister on the inland side of the monastery. I was in Room 36, a stone cubicle on the seaward side: an iron convent bed, a chair, a tiny bathroom, a pad of Persian carpet, a cross, and an incense burner in the “meditation corner.”
Couples were forbidden to “interact,” we were reminded-as if putting us in different buildings wasn’t reminder enough. Orientation was at 4 p.m.; attendance mandatory. Until then, we were asked to stay in our rooms and rest.
I didn’t feel like resting. I unpacked and headed outside.
A few minutes later, I was standing at the edge of the cliff that had scared me dizzy the night before, imitating a tourist who’d never seen the place. The rope I’d secured to the tree was hidden in the rocks. I had to peek over the safety railing to confirm it was still there.
I also was surprised to confirm that a police boat and two fishing boats were anchored at the base of the cliff. They had a line and a grappling hook attached to something that looked like a chunk of brown sponge. A man’s body. No… the man-sized body of a teen.
Surf was breaking under the rocks, geysering upward through spume holes. From where I stood, the geysers appeared stationary, like ice sculptures. I knew better. The boats were standing off because of the rocks and whirlpool currents. Not an easy place to retrieve a body-what was left of the body, anyway, after a night crashing among rocks.
I had seen the boats from our helicopter on the flight in, but didn’t get a good look. I was seated next to Senegal, but said nothing because we were crammed among four other new spa arrivals. I wouldn’t have said anything anyway until I was sure. Now I was.
This was how Isabelle Toussaint’s staff dealt with trespassers-convenient, clean, and utterly ruthless. For those with blood on their hands, high cliffs and deep water are efficient disinfectants. It is something that accomplished criminals know.
Extortionists are motivated by greed, but these were killers. Blackmail was a sideline-one of several, I suspected. How many people had gone off that cliff? If Montbard hadn’t contacted the harbor patrol, I doubted if the boy’s body would’ve been found.
It was freeing, in ways, watching the grappling hook do its work. It changed the rules. It expanded the limits of my own conduct. I’m not a policeman; was never trained in the protocols of assembling evidence. But I know how to deal with killers. After years in the trade, I am competent.
Freeing, yes. But I was also aware that somewhere a mother was grieving. The teen’s family would turn from his coffin with scars they would carry to their own graves. Through association, I was now vested in their loss-I had heard the boy’s screams. Only sociopaths and the righteous feel unconstrained by convention. I was suddenly at liberty to take righteous action.
A few days before, I’d tried to make Shay smile, saying her blackmailers had no idea who they were dealing with.
Now it was true.
“Excuse me, sir. The Lookout’s off-limits to guests. You need to return to your room.”
I turned to see the man I’d mistaken for Ritchie. Similar size; muscles under the white shirt with its Hooded Orchid logo. Otherwise, there was no resemblance on this afternoon of