ISLANDS

The sun seethed at the horizon, molten glass poised for its fiery plunge into the tempering sea. Its burning threw a bizarrely cheerful rosy light over Harbor Drive, the flood-damaged buildings and shattered palm trees, heaps of mud bulldozed from alleys and storefronts and sidewalks, piles of sodden refuse, cracked timbers and tiles, drowned rats.

The Jeep rumbled slowly around the curve of the bay, skirting potholes, bumping across stretches of torn pavement. I stared blankly over the glittering bay into the sun’s fire. A turn of the road finally swept it behind me, its image still burning on my retinas.

Vic turned his head my way, let out a gusting sigh. He downshifted for the steep climb up the mountain, awkwardly tugging the wheel, left arm encased in plaster from knuckles to biceps.

The mountain roads were a tangle of detours, fallen boulders, puddles and washboard ruts, narrow tracks skirting cliff-edge gaps like the bites of hungry monsters. A muddy road crew leaned against their truck, filthy tools piled in its bed, raising beer bottles as we chugged past.

The disaster crews had finally given up searching for more bodies in the unstable landslide that had swept away the cult’s ceremonial ground, buried the Bocor’s cavern and the petroglyph boulder. They hadn’t found Laura’s body, but I knew that was her grave. They’d found no trace of Phillip, either.

Captain Wilkes in his office: Wearily shaking the baggy folds of his face, he pushes a grainy photocopy at me, blunt finger jabbing the circled face among a gathering of old-fashioned suits. “This is the only thing we could dig up, some academic conference thirty years ago. Far as we can tell, the Phillip Holte who was operating here in the islands must have taken over the older professor’s identity, changed all the records. God knows why.”

I stare at the tiny face in the old photo. Square-cut jaw, thick gray eyebrows, ironic twist to his lips. Phillip. Unchanged.

Wilkes’s voice rumbles on, oblivious, “Too bad nobody looked closer at that smeared part of your brother’s letter, obvious now it was ‘H.’ll kill me if he finds out.’” A cough. “Still no sign of Holte’s yacht. Must have been offshore, ready for his getaway, whoever was aboard took off. Our patrol only intercepted a couple of his men who got out early through the cove, before the landslide. While Holte was still finishing up his . . . ceremony.” He clears his throat. “No one got out overland. There’s no way he could have escaped.”

Mocking laughter of the bête noir, echoing inside me. Phillip was out there, alive. He’d never die.

The Jeep growled along, taking us around another bend, between leaf-stripped trees and jagged snapped trunks, cottages still half-buried in mud. An elderly native couple paused with their rakes beside piles of leaves, palm fronds, broken branches.

Vic waved as he slowed. “Looks like you’re getting there.”

The man laughed. “We does it all again nex year!”