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VIN: Let me stop you there.

ALYSON: You don’t understand—

VIN: Yes, I do understand. Now listen. You are on the phone. I need you to speak…more exactly.

ALYSON: Oh.

VIN: You understand what I am saying?

ALYSON: (pause) Yes.

VIN: Okay. Now. Where is the object?

ALYSON: (pause) Not available. Vanished.

VIN: Okay. Then I don’t see a problem.

ALYSON: I am still worried.

VIN: But the object did not reappear?

ALYSON: No.

VIN: Then I suggest there is no problem. We can discuss this further in person but not now. Are you coming back now?

ALYSON: Yes.

VIN: All right. See you soon.

Click.

Jorge said, “There are two other calls. Want to hear them?”

“Maybe later.”

“Okay. I’ve e-mailed them to you as .wav files. You should be able to listen to them on your computer.”

“Thanks.” Peter looked back at Alyson, and shivered. “Can I take this to the police?”

“No way in hell,” Jorge said. “You need a court order to access this stuff. You take it to them, you ruin any chance of prosecution. Illegal search and seizure. Also—you’ll, uh, put me in a jam.”

“Then what should I do?”

“Hm—yuh,” Jorge grunted. “I don’t know—get them to confess.”

“How?”

“Sorry, can’t help you there,” Jorge said. “But if you need more phone records, call any time,” and he hung up.

Peter walked back to Alyson, feeling a cold sweat on his body. It was getting dark now, her expression impossible to read. She sat very still on the sand. He heard her say, “Is everything all right?”

“Yes, fine.”

In fact, Peter felt as if he was drowning, overwhelmed by onrushing events. All his life he had been a student, and until now, he felt his life experiences had given him a clear—even cynical—sense of his fellow human beings and what they were capable of. Over the years, he’d had to deal with cheating students, students dispensing sexual favors in exchange for grades, students falsifying their results, and with professors who appropriated student work. In one bizarre instance, there’d been a thesis advisor on heroin. He felt, at the age of twenty-three, like a man who had seen it all.

Not anymore. The idea of murder, that someone would, with calculation, try to kill his brother, left him shaken and sweating and cold. He didn’t trust himself to speak to this woman, who was supposed to be his brother’s girlfriend but who had evidently plotted against him. No tears from this girlfriend—she didn’t seem upset at all.

She said, “You’re awfully quiet, Peter.”

“It’s been a long day.”

“Buy you a drink?”

“No, thanks.”

“Mai tais are famous here.”

“I think I better call it a night.”

“Have you had dinner?”

“Not hungry.”

She got up from the sand, brushed herself off. “I know you must be upset. I am, too.”

“Yes.”

“Why so cold toward me? I’m just trying to—”

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. He didn’t want her to suspect anything. That would be unwise, even dangerous. “It’s all been such a shock.”

She put her hand up, touched his cheek. “Call me if I can do anything.”

“Thanks. Okay.”

They walked back inside the hotel. “All your friends are arriving tomorrow,” she said. “They’re upset about what happened to Eric. But the tour of the facilities is all arranged. Do you want to go on it?”

“Absolutely,” he said, “I can’t just sit around…feeling like this. Waiting.”

“The tour will start at the Waipaka Arboretum, in Manoa Valley, in the mountains near here,” she said. “That’s where we get a lot of our rain-forest materials for research. Four o’clock tomorrow. Should I pick you up?”

“That’s not necessary,” Peter said. “I’ll take a cab.” He somehow managed to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for coming by, Alyson. It means a lot.”

“I just want to help.” She looked at him doubtfully.

“And you are helping,” he said. “Believe me. You are.”

Unable to sleep, unable to eat, tormented by Jorge’s information, Peter Jansen stood at the balcony of his room. The view looked away from the ocean, across the city, and up into a jumble of mountain peaks, wild and black, without lights, outlined only by stars in the night sky. Alyson Bender had made three brief calls to a phone number. The time of these calls, 3:47 p.m., stuck in his mind. Late afternoon. He remembered that the video shot by the couple had been time-stamped. He tried to recall the time stamp. He had a head for numbers; he used numbers constantly in his data sets. The time stamp rose in his mind’s eye: 3:50 something. Just three minutes after Alyson made those calls, Eric’s boat was stalled in the video.